Monday, January 17, 2011

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

Sunday, January 16, 2011

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...

Saturday, January 15, 2011

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.

Friday, January 14, 2011

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

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

I Hate My Light Fixture

We have a great big living room with gorgeous crown molding....as well as the worst builder basic overheard light fixture known to man.  Don't believe me?  Feast your eyes on this baby:


There it is in all it's frosted plastic glory.  Though I have never loved it, it was never a project that was big on my priority list until we just happened to have some electrical problems.  So, if we have to have someone come out and fix lights then I thought maybe she could hook us up with a new light fixture too.  (Jess claims he can install light fixtures himself but the jury is still out.)

So now onto shopping....


[pictures of cute light fixtures to come]

Monday, January 10, 2011

My First Bento and Joining Weight Watchers

For my birthday yesterday I was excited to receive my Mr. Bento.  So excited that I ran out and got fresh tahini to make hummus.  I used this recipe and added some paprika but I'm on the lookout for recipes with a little more zest.  Any tips?  Do I have any readers yet?  Please comment if so!

My birthday also coincided with the day I decided to get off my butt and join Weight Watchers Online.  I've tried and liked Spark People in the past but never followed through with it.  I hope that actually paying for something motivates me to use it more.  Also I've heard so many glowing reviews from WW members so we'll see how it goes during my free trial week.  The system wants me to lose ten pounds as a starting out point but I don't know how long I have to achieve this and it's sort of hard to navigate.  I weigh in on Sunday - wish me luck!

But now onto the food.  Today I packed:

- 1/2 cup Hummus with baby carrots = 7 WW Plus Points (the carrots were 0)
- Apple = 0 WW Plus points
- 1.5 cups tomato soup with skim milk = 5 WW Plus Points
- Grilled Cheese and tomato (small) = 7 WW Plus Points (the tomato was 0)

The Mr, Bento kept the soup and the grilled cheese nice and hot.  I, however, only lasted until 12:30 before eating them.  I had planned on going to the gym right downstairs at work but I forgot my towel.  Boo.  I will go tonight with the H when he gets home.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Book Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Wow.  Never Let Me Go has been coming up on my "suggested for you" list on Amazon for a while but I was reluctant to buy it at full price.  A price reduction (now $9.99) and my Amazon gift card convinced me to finally download this book and I'm seriously glad I did.

Now that I'm finished I have SO many questions.  Don't read this book if you expect everything to be wrapped up in a neat little bow.  I don't want to spoil anything, but holy heck!

I'm not great at describing plots so this is taken from Amazon.com's review:

"All children should believe they are special. But the students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them, and only by rumor and the occasional fleeting remark by a teacher do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny. Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, is a masterpiece of indirection. Like the students of Hailsham, readers are "told but not told" what is going on and should be allowed to discover the secrets of Hailsham and the truth about these children on their own.

Offsetting the bizarreness of these revelations is the placid, measured voice of the narrator, Kathy H., a 31-year-old Hailsham alumna who, at the close of the 1990s, is consciously ending one phase of her life and beginning another. She is in a reflective mood, and recounts not only her childhood memories, but her quest in adulthood to find out more about Hailsham and the idealistic women who ran it. Although often poignant, Kathy's matter-of-fact narration blunts the sharper emotional effects you might expect in a novel that deals with illness, self-sacrifice, and the severe restriction of personal freedoms. As in Ishiguro's best-known work, The Remains of the Day, only after closing the book do you absorb the magnitude of what his characters endure."

So basically these kids grow up knowing they have a certain future but don't really grasp what this means.  The main characters aren't exactly likable - the narrator Kathy lacks introspection and is a bit of a follower and her best friend Ruth is a dreamer and a leader but also a manipulative little bitch. The character Tommy is more than a little bit slow.  But seeing these character's many flaws makes the reality of what they have to endure all the more tragic and poignant.

Read it and weep.  Or just scratch your head.  You will probably enjoy it.