Four Food Groups Bento

The Four Food Groups may have been replaced by some weird rainbow pyramid, but they were alive and well in yesterday's bento.

We had lots and lots of fruits and veggies left over from a Super Bowl gathering where all guests were on diets so the theme was healthy eats (many of them green to support the Packers).  I served my now staple Skinny Ranch dip.  My friend brought homemade hummus (needed some more spices in my humble opinion).  A good time was had by all....and there were lots of leftovers.

The only real indulgence were my brother in law's secret cocktail meatballs.  Well he's told me the recipe and I doubt it's that dissimilar to other cocktail meatball recipes that involve grape jelly, but that's all I'm saying.  They were delicious - even the next day.  It was like a party at my desk, minus the toothpicks.

Weight Watchers Info and Food Groups

Dairy - ranch dip made with Greek yogurt (1 point - once again I only ate half of the serving, never have enough veggies)

Fruit - Clementines (I love these so much, I eat them by the case) - 0 points.  Grapes - 0 points.  Kiwi (you can't see them but there were a few slices under the grapes) - 0 points.

Veggies - Celery sticks - 0 points.  Baby carrots - 0 points.  Bell tomatoes - 0 points.

Meat - Cocktail meatballs - probably 13 points but worth every one.

Total = 14 Weight Watchers Points Plus and a whole lotta yummy things to munch on at my desk.

Back to Bento Blogging

After an initial run of making my bento everyday, I got busy, lazy, etc.  I was still eating healthy at work for the most part...but the rest of the day I should have been doing better.  A little disappointed that a few of my initial 7 pound weight loss my first week of Weight Watchers have returned.  So here I am, committed to eating healthy again.

I wanted to make hummus but Jess used the rest of the lemon juice.  Instead I made the Skinny Ranch dip from this post.  It's a bit of a weird breakfast but I'm enjoying it.  I may have to go to the cafeteria to get more veggies to dip in it later as I'm almost out of baby carrots.

I made my first ever miso soup last night.  I love miso soup and picked up some packages of the instant stuff a while back.  I threw in some tofu and hopefully it will taste yummy (I only sampled a little last night).

And I was at a loss for what to put in the "food" section of the bento until I realized that the wheat sandwich thins we bought we just about the perfect size.  So crunchy peanut butter and jelly sandwich it is!  Weight Watchers seems to hate peanut butter and jelly but at least I know it will keep me from the evil evil vending machine.
Happy desk eating!
Weight Watchers Info:

Skinny Ranch Dip = 1 point per serving (so maybe 2 points if I get more veggies)
Carrots = 0 points
Peanut Butter and Jelly on Wheat Sandwich Thins - 8 points?  (I estimated it was 3/4 of a "restaurant" PB&J - who gets PB&J at a restaurant?)
Miso soup - 2 points (1 cup)

Total = 11 points

Eating for One at Home on a Diet

I love having the day off.  That, plus Jess being out of town until Thursday means I can catch up on some "me" time.  This includes eating of course.

For breakfast I had this Slow Cooker oatmeal from Weight Watchers, except I subbed raisins for cranberries, skipped the almonds and threw in some brown sugar.  Most importantly, and why there are no pictures, is that I used rolled oats instead of steel oats.  I now know, from googling a zillion slow cooker oatmeal recipes, that steel oats are a must, though my oatmeal still tastes good.  It looks like a congealed brown blob, but it's pretty filling.

I boiled some eggs last night so that I could experiment with this Egg Salad with Curry recipe.  Yum.  A nice twist on an old favorite.

The recipe is only for one egg which I found like a waste of time so I made it for six eggs.  It did screw up my math skills a bit. I probably added too much curry and could have used a little less celery but it still turned out pretty great.  I threw in some paprika because everything needs paprika.    I served myself a side of clementine slices.


Now for my late afternoon snack I am having a deliciously ranch dip adapted from Ginny's Skinny Recipes.  I mixed together 2 tablespoons of light mayonnaise, 2 tablespoons of Greek yogurt, onion powder, parsley, dill, and some minced onion and came up with a fabulous one point snack.  Thanks Ginny and her commenters for the improvements.  It made for a great way to eat a lot of zero point baby carrots that I love. 

Tonight I'm looking forward to leftover turkey chili that I made in the slow cooker last night.  Yum.

Weight Watchers Info:

Oatmeal = 9 points (1.5 cups)
Egg salad sandwich = 12 points? (really Weight Watchers?  I used low fat mayo and whole wheat bread?)
Clementines = 0 points
Skinny Ranch Dip = 1 point per serving (half the recipe)
Carrots = 0 points

My First Spinning Class Part 1

First, some great Weight Watchers news.  I lost friggen 5.6 pounds in my first week!!!!!!  And I stepped on the scale at least three times to make sure it wasn't playing a mind trick on me.  Color me motivated to keep going.  I know it's likely because I have a long ways to go and the first few pounds just sort of melt off once you stop eating crap (or in my case drinking lots of wine AND eating crap) but I'm still pretty excited.

Anyway, at the gym last night I got a copy of the workout schedules.  Unfortunately there's not much in the way of classes on the weekends.  This prompted me to ask Jess if I could be a Stay at Home Wife in order to lose weight.  The answer, sadly, no.  But they did have three spinning classes - one at 8:10, 9:10 and 10:10.  To me, an intelligent person, it looked like the class at 10:10 (the only one we have a realistic chance of waking up on a Sunday to attend) was only twenty minutes, not fifty minutes like the others.  I have credible evidence to back up this assumption.  The earlier classes all stated "50 minutes" under the class title, whereas the 10:10 class did not.  Most importantly, the box was only shaded to 10:30 in the weekly schedule grid.

Thus, I suggested to Jess we head to the gym today and try spinning.  He loves loves to bike and I figured I could do just about anything for twenty minutes, right?  Oh, how I would learn...

Wall Sconce Ideas

Abandoning the search for a living room pendant lamp that I love, I am going to ponder the idea of hanging wall sconces above our bed.  The only problem is, like much of our apartment, the bedroom will "soon" have new furniture so it's hard to coordinate anything with furniture you don't yet own.

Luckily I haven't been able to find a bedroom set more than this one from Raymour and Flanigan, even though my inlaws are right that we'd be better off buying a set made of real wood (said unironically in their dining room/office with peeling wallpaper).  Oh well.  It looks nice and it's not so expensive (though more expensive than we can afford now considering we'd also have to replace our mattress from a Queen to a King):

So, hypothetically, if that were our bedroom set, which of these wall sconces would look nice above the bed?


A. Fleur de Lys Wall Sconces

B. Carlotta Wall Sconces

C. Lucia Sconces

And more to come maybe if I decided I don't like any of those.

Mostly Liquid Bento

I didn't have any leftovers to put in Friday's bento so I just sort of made do with what I did have - not of whole lot of solid food but still some yumminess to be had.  I recently brought a box of Special K Red Berries with me to work, so I decided to use the soup container of the Mr. Bento to contain milk.  Then I got all McGuyver and poured the cereal into the top of the Mr. Bento (which isn't technically a bowl but it worked just fine).

For my afternoon snack, I dipped some apple slices into my Greek yogurt.

I used the largest container to put soup since I wanted to enjoy a full can of Price Chopper's Grilled Chicken Gumbo (seriously so good and on sale!).  I was worried there could be spillage but that worked out too.  I love my Mr. Bento!

Sort of a hodge podge meal but it kept me from the vending machine.  And can you believe I drank two full Nalgenes of water?  Go dieting!

WW info:

- Special K red berries (1 cup) and 3/4 cup nonfat milk = 5 WW Plus Points
- Greek Yogurt (about a cup) = 2 WW Plus Points
- Apple = 0 WW Plus Points
- Price Chopper Gumbo (3/4 can since I spilled a lot out so it would fit in the container) = 6 WW Plus Points

I promise the pictures will get better when I remember to bring my camera with me to work.

Accidental Mediterranean Bento

I decided I wanted to try my hand at making falafel.  My brother is serving in Iraq and has been eating falafel almost exclusively for months and has developed a taste for it.  The joke is that, at first, he thought he was eating some sort of mashed up chicken - ha!  My brother, the accidental vegetarian.  Despite what you may have heard, burgers and Pizza Hut are hard to come by in the desert - especially where he's serving.

So I set my sights on google and came up with this recipe.  I took the advice of some of the comments and used 2 eggs so that my mix would stick together.  Note that you probably only need one egg though since I had to add flour at the end to make it less wet.  They came out good but I'm still going to try a few more recipes - perhaps ones that aren't fried in oil.

After adding the hummus I had on hand, carrots and the Greek yogurt I'm on a kick of, I realized I had inadvertently composed my bento of Mediterranean foods.

Here's how I did with my Weight Watchers points, only to completely sabotage my day later on at a party:

- 1/2 cup Hummus with baby carrots = 7 WW Plus Points (the carrots were 0)
- Apple = 0 WW Plus points
- Greek Yogurt (about a cup) = 2 WW Plus Points
- 3 Falafel Patties (this is the closest thing WW had so I went with it) =  WW Plus Points

Total = 12 Points