Let's talk about a few of the foods that have been on my menu lately.
Cevice: About a month or so ago I mentioned that Snackers discovered a little market that sells shrimp cevice, white fish cevice, and crab cevice. For those of you who've never had it before, cevice is basically pico de gallo with some kind of (usually cooked) seafood in it served cold. It contains tomatoes, onions, cilantro, jalapenos, lime juice, salt, and then the seafood. It's YUMMEH! But it does have some pro's and cons. One the one hand it's mostly veg so it's pretty healthy and very low in calories (except the crab cevice because crab is a high calorie seafood but I get the fish and/or shrimp). You get these little crunchy, flat tostada shells - spread a little cevice on one, sprinkle on some Frank's Red Hot, add a squirt of lime juice and some cracked pepper and enjoy. It's INSANELY easy to prep since you can just put everything on the table, grab a fork and build them as you go and it's absurdly inexpensive. We can get a bag of shells and 2 lbs of cevice for under $5. No kidding! So what's the downside you ask? Well for 3 of the tostada shells you're looking at 160 calories, a full cup (which is plenty for 3 tostadas) of shrimp cevice is 80 calories (the white fish is 70 per cup) and the Franks/lime is 0. The meal is light and refreshing and 3 tostadas is satisfying and feels like plenty of food but, in reality, you're only eating about 240 calories so an hour or so later you're hungry again. My intake for the entire day after dinner last night was 830 AND I'd completed a full workout on the treadmill where I burned an estimated 460 so I knew I needed to find something to snack on that wasn't crap.
Segway:
Trail Mix: The world is full of trail mix and you can buy it already mixed or mix your own. My favorite (flavor wise) is the Indulgent Trail by Great Value (WalMart) but it's also chocked full of milk chocolate, white chocolate, and butterscotch chips which makes it a big giant no-no (I used to be able to devour a half-bag in a single sitting of that stuff which is probably close to 1,000 calories or more). So I've been experimenting with other trail mixes and most recently decided to try one that has chunks of dried fruit in it. If you've known me for awhile, or even have been following this blog for awhile, you know that fruit is a problem for me. I love fresh fruit but it's expensive, a lot of work, messy, and the shelf-life sucks. I like making fruit shakes with fresh fruit but still ... it can be a lot of work to cut everything up so it's not something that I like to do often. I dislike canned fruit because it's mushy and overly sweet so when I saw this trail mix with dried fruit in it I thought "perfect!". Well kinda. Turns out it's not all just dried fruit, some of it is candied so I've been picking out the giant chunks of candied pineapple and papaya and giving them to Snackers. As-is the trail mix sits at around 140 calories for a 1/4 cup. WHOA! Now I do know that nuts, pretty much all of them, are high in calories but also high in proteins and other good things so last night when my intake was low I figured some trail mix was the perfect win-win. It's filling, good protein to help me recover from the workout, tasty, and a way to bring my intake up to where it should be and satisfy the hunger that I had an hour-or-so after the cevice dinner. But that makes me wonder - I'm sure that the health benefits of dried fruit aren't quite as good as those of fresh fruit but if I were to simply get a fruit dryer and dry my own and stock up on it ... is this at least a decent way to eat fruit. I know drying my own is going to be a LOT of work but I figure if I get some containers (I have over a dozen Folgers containers saved up) I could do a whole bunch of it at once on a Saturday or something and then stock up on it. It would be cheaper than buying it from the store and I could ensure that it's just dried and not candied. Do any of you have any prior knowledge re: dried fruit nutritional facts that you could share with me?
Food:
116 oz of water
1 cup of coffee w/creamer
1 granola bar
1 healthy choice lunch
1/2 serving green bean fries
1 serving chicken marinara
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Daily Caloric Intake: 1387
Activity:
Yoga: 30 minutes
Walking: 45 minutes (Snackers is getting restless sitting around the house so he asked me to go for a walk with him instead of getting on the treadmill last night).
Sprints: 10 sprints @ 60 ft. each (On our walk we stopped by the softball field and took turns timing ourselves sprinting the bases with the stopwatch on my phone just for kicks)
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Fitocracy Points: 143
I, myself, watch out for sugar and carbs, not calories...so I cannot answer you in regards to the calorie value. BUT I do have a dehydrator and can tell you that using it really isn't all that much work. I frequently make beef jerky to insure there isn't any added sugar to the recipe...basically the same thing you want from your fruit. I have also dehydrated carrots, zucchini, and sweet potatoes. A coffee can is not a good method for storage. Dehydrated food needs to be either vacuum sealed or at minimum kept in a tightly closed, with the air squished out ziplock bag. Reason being that once the food is dehydrated it can reabsorb moisture in the air and go bad...hence, a coffee can isn't going to seal well enough. Now, with all that being said, drying fruits can concentrate their sugar content as they shrivel and shrink as the moisture is removed. Also because of the smaller size, you can often eat more of it than intended, thereby consuming more calories than you may be aware of. It is a great option for having a snack...especially on the go since you can bag it up in a ziplock and take anywhere with you. If you like it better dried than any other way then it's a great option still. I recommend it because no matter how you get around it, it's still by far a healthier means of getting fruit than the processed type they include in trail-mixes. Just err on the side of caution for the aforementioned reasons and you should be good to go! I do not for one second regret having bought MY dehydrator.
ReplyDeleteI love ceviche! However my understanding is that the seafood is raw and the lime juice in the mix "cooks" the meat. I haven't had it in years but the stuff I did was sooo good. I could just drink the juice! LOL
ReplyDeleteMisty: Yeah I wasn't clear in my original post but I was planning on bagging the fruit in single-serving portions and then putting those into the folgers canisters. If I can presume that the number of calories in a piece of nothing-added dried fruit are the same as they would be in a piece of fresh fruit I can avoid the "eat more" issue by pre-bagging 100 and 200 calorie servings so that, based on what my intake need/availability is I grab a baggie and that's it. Home made jerky sounds goooood. If I get a dehydrator you'll have to send me some recipes for that. :) Thanks a ton for the first-hand info. I can even get some raw nuts and add them or small pieces of jerky to my dried fruit bags to make my own trail mix but cut out the M&M's and other sugar that store-bought mixes often contain.
ReplyDeleteSwan: You're right. I thought that was just how tartar was made but I Googled it out of curiosity and found a recipe. That's kinda cool how that works. It is yummy stuff. I am obsessed with pico de gallo anyway so you add seafood to it and it just makes it even better lol. I'm also obsessed with Franks and I looooove putting a splash of it on my ceviche so it's like combining some of my favorite things and still soooo low cal. Hmmmmm actually you just gave me an idea. I could slice up some fresh avocado to go with the ceviche tostadas which would increase protein and calories and probably make it so I don't feel hungry an hour later! :) I wonder if avocado's dehydrate well ... they're a fruit right? Mmmm they probably just turn brown lol