Hamburger Buddy

This past week has been a bit crazy, trying to get into the rhythm of not really having a rhythm (no jobs yet make for a somewhat stressed Cora), so I am sorry that I have not been posting. I will try to get "back on the horse" so to speak. I do have a little bit of good news though; I noticed last Friday that I have actually dropped 5 lbs since we started this. Doesn't seem like a whole lot, but not too bad either. I'm sure that would pick up a bit if/when I start my running/regular exercising.

Now back to the food. My poor hubby has been doing so well in letting me force feed him meals with more veggies, less carbs, and less meat than I am sure he would like to see on his plate, so I thought I would try something a bit more "Man-friendly."

Hamburger Buddy

I liked the looks of this because it made me think of Hamburger Helper and, although it does have a good number of veggies in it, it looks more like something we ate in years past. And the taste of the "healthier version" was actually not bad. It doesn't have any cheese in it, which I was kinda subconsciously looking for, but the taste was still pretty good and it was actually kinda creamy, which was nice. And was it ever filling!!! We each had a serving that was just over 1.5 cups, yet it was a bit too much for both of us!! 

Now one thing you may notice in my photo, is that my hamburger buddy has some small yellow pieces in it. That would be because I kinda forgot to pick up mushrooms (oops!) so ended up using yellow pepper instead. That was the only substitution that I did for this meal. (I do have to say that I was a bit hesitant using mushrooms anyway after that pasta salad I made where the mushrooms kinda took over the texture/flavour of it; must have been subconsciously on my mind when I was shopping).

The only unfortunate thing about this meal, is that it doesn't really heat up very well in the microwave. I love making things like this with bigger portions because than I can put them in serving-sized containers in the fridge and it makes lunches really easy to pack. Unfortunately however, not for this one.

Overall Rating:

Number of calories: 326/serving (1 and 1/3 cup each)

Will I "Make Again"?: I think so but in smaller batches

Tastiness?: 3.5/5

Fills my tummy?: 5/5

I would like to also point out something I thought was rather surprising. I was excited about this at first thinking it was a "healthy Hamburger Helper" when in fact it wasn't much different! I think this meal saves you about 30 calories per serving, and that is mainly because this meal has no cheese. FYI

Kale Smoothie (original)

This was a recipe that Cora Ling got from a friend. We drank a couple of these while I was visiting over the summer and I really liked them. So much, in fact, that I have one for breakfast nearly every morning now. It may look pretty gross, but I assure you, it really is delicious (if you can get past the colour.)

You take kale and chop it up and stuff one half of a regular blender. Add 1.5 bananas and then fill the rest with berries up to the top. (I use strawberries last to pack in as much as possible.) Add 1.5 cups of vanilla almond milk and blend until smooth.

It turns out this gross greenish brown colour but tastes just like a fresh fruit smoothie. And the best part: it’s only 195 calories! (per serving; makes 2) I bring it to school with me in one of those soda cups and drink it throughout the first part of my day. My students think it’s gross but it keeps me full until lunch so they can think whatever they please.

A note about almond milk: I had no idea how long this stuff lasts. It’s good for about two months from the date it’s bought. I’ve also found some flavoured coffee recipes that I will be trying soon that use it instead of cream making for a lot lower calorie drinks. The chocolate flavour, however, does not taste like chocolate milk.

Overall Rating:

Number of calories: 195/serving

Will I "Make Again"?: Yes, obviously. I make it 5 Days a week!

Tastiness?: 4.5/5

Fills my tummy?: 5/5

Weight Watchers Beef Stroganoff

I love creamy beef stroganoff so I jumped at the chance to try a lower calorie version of this dish.

Weight Watchers Beef Stroganoff from Food.com

Like the last Weight Watcher’s recipe I tried, this was pleasantly easy to make and really tasty. We paired it with peas and some yolkless egg noodles to make our full dinner worth about 600 calories in total. My husband and I both really liked it and it made a large amount that filled us up for quite some time.

I’m down 12lbs in total now and I was hoping things would start getting easier here on in. I’m still hungry most of the time though and still really cranky about not having cake. (It’s all I can think about!) In fact, I was so hungry last night before dinner that my cat started looking like one of those cartoon roast chickens. I’m afraid I might eat him soon if my stomach doesn’t start shrinking and filling up faster and for longer.

I also found a sports bra that fits and I didn’t even have to go very far to find one. There happens to be a running store in town (who knew?) and they had lots of large sizes in the types that I researched. I’ve now been walking a few days a week and I actually jogged for a full minute the other day.

I’ve also been trying to find ways to make my breakfast lower calorie. During the summer I skipped breakfast, mostly because I was sleeping in so late I didn’t see the point. Now that I’m back to work I need to eat something before I walk out the door in the morning. My usual 2 cups of Honey Nut Cheerios is a whopping 400 calories. I’ve tried substituting 1 cup with a banana for now. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyways, back to the stroganoff...

Overall Rating:

Number of calories: 281/serving

Will I "Make Again"?: Yes

Tastiness?: 5/5

Fills my tummy?: 5/5

Dinner: Steak Burritos and Summer Salad

I love Mexican food, and tacos used to be a regular occurrence at our house, but tacos don't seem to be "weight healthy" (except on the rare occasion). So when I found a recipe for Steak burritos, it made it onto my weekly list very quickly. The burritos are still rather high in calories though, so I paired with with a Summer Tomato, Onion and Cucumber salad.

Steak Burritos: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/steak_burritos.html
Summer Salad: http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/tomato_onion_cucumber_salad.html

This was an interesting dinner choice, and it looked nice and colourful on the plate (which my mom has always drilled into me is important; lets you know you got all the food groups and makes it more appetizing). Unfortunately, in this case, that was not entirely the truth.

Lets start with the salad. Very colourful and has lots of great, fresh picked veggies; the dressing was also light and sounded like it would enhance the flavour of the veggies without overdoing it. Maybe it kinda "under-did-it". I was really surprised that something that looked wonderful, had very little flavour to it. The tomatoes were good; the cucumber nice and crunchy; the onion not overly hot (being a Vadalia), but it didnt really come together very well. The dressing was so light it was almost non-existent, and I think that was what stopped this from being "a salad", and kept it as a "bunch of cut up veggies". I like the idea of this salad, so will probably try it again but will futz with the dressing. Fingers crossed.

The steak burrito kinda went the other way. Again, it had a lot of great ingredients and it looked great putting it together, but the taste was kinda....all the same? It was almost like it mixed together so well, that it became one taste that was mediocre. It was, however, extraordinarily filling. I had smaller tortillas, so made two small burritos instead of one larger one, but even that was almost too much for me. And I have enough leftovers for another meal. I would like to do this one again, simply because I like burritos (and my hubby enjoyed it) but, again, would futz with it to try to get a bit more flavour out of it.

On that note, I do want to pass along a bit of "word to the wise" that I learned from this recipe; Giant avocados......not a substitute for regular ones!! At least not when making guacamole. I had decided to make my own guac. (care of Saturnine's easy, yet wonderful recipe) as I tend to like it better than store-bought stuff. So when going grocery shopping, I thought to myself, "Hey! Two regular avocados for 5$, or one massive one for 1.99$?! Well, that seems obvious!" Yup....nope. It had little in way of flavour at all, so made my gracamole taste...like nothing. It was sad. Learned my lesson. When it comes to avocados....you get what you pay for!

Summer Salad Overall Rating:

Number of calories: 58/serving

Will I "Make Again"?:  Try again with adjustments to dressing

Tastiness?: 2/5 (mainly from yummy tomatoes)

Fills my tummy?: 3/5

Steak Burritos Overall Rating:

Number of calories: 471/serving

Will I "Make Again"?:  Try again with adjustments

Tastiness?: 1.5/5

Fills my tummy?: 4.5/5

Creamy Red Potato Salad

September has finally arrived. This September is a bit different for me, as instead of going back into the classroom to teach, I have become a housewife to a husband returning to University. Eating out has always been a bane on dieting, and on the wallet, so my goal for the next little while is to find food that can be packed well in a lunch bag, yet is still filling.

Salads are a great lunch-y thing to have on hand, so I thought that I would try a potato salad to start off with.

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/creamy_red_potato_salad.html

This salad is yummy!!!! First I want to point out that, again, when it comes to potato or pasta salad, my husband and I crave different things. My "go-to" potato salad is a German potato salad (like my grandma makes it) and I love it! But although my husband likes it, he tends to feel more that potato salad should have mayo in it.

This salad is a great compromise. The yogurt helps to cut the heaviness of a mayo-based potato salad, yet still gives it a nice creaminess. And it makes TONS! Again, although it says it makes 8 servings, I would say that this makes more like 10, unless you are having bigger servings (I tend to go with a cup to a cup and a half per serving).

I did a couple of small changes; I used low-fat Greek yogurt instead of regular yogurt (because I had it left over from another recipe), and I didn't add celery (mostly because I use celery in very little so buying a whole head of it for one or two stocks means that the rest will get wilty and have to get thrown out). I also used baby potatoes instead of red potatoes (again because I already had them). The end product, although maybe not as colourful, tasted wonderful so it must have worked out!

Overall Rating:

Number of calories: 152/serving

Will I "Make Again"?:  For sure!

Tastiness?: 4/5

Fills my tummy?: 4/5 although still best as a side

Eating Well Cobb Salad

Another salad for dinner.  I’ve had cobb salads before and I generally really liked them. So, with this one, I was hoping for the best. The thing I liked about this recipe is that it didn’t include the blue cheese that normally comes with this dish. (I hate blue cheese which is interesting because it’s all my mother ate when she was pregnant with me.) It also included bacon which was super exciting!

http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/the_eatingwell_cobb_salad.html

This was a reasonably filling salad. It had a lot of toppings but the avocado and tomato sections were significantly bigger than the bacon and egg sections. It had a really nice light dressing but we found it needed more for the amount of salad we made so we added a bit more olive oil. We also left out the cucumbers because my husband is adamantly against them.

We also made enough for four servings so it was lunch again the next day. This is the thing with salads; you can’t eat them two days in a row. It’s just not possible without losing your mind. I liked this one, but the next time I make it, I’m just going to make half and have it for a lunch, not a dinner.

Overall Rating:

Number of calories: 285/serving

Will I "Make Again"?:  Maybe for lunch

Tastiness?: 3/5

Fills my tummy?: 3/5

Also, finding a plus size sports bra is probably the most frustrating and disappointing endeavour of my entire life. I thought society wanted fat people to lose weight...  It’s the same with workout clothes in general. There are very few places that actually sell active wear in plus sizes and when they do, it’s at least twice the price as anywhere else. It’s like these stores don’t expect us bigger ladies to ever want to better ourselves. They must think we are happier being fat, (maybe because we eat) and that we are too lazy or something to try working out. I want to jog! I want to do jumping jacks!! I cannot do these things without a proper fitting sports bra unless I want to give myself two black eyes with my enormous bouncing chest.

But seriously, us bigger ladies need the support so we don’t hurt our shoulder and chest muscles when we work out. Ladies with little breasts need sports bras too, and they get them. Us big girls may need them more and we can’t find them anywhere. I looked at 4 different types yesterday and about a million bras and not one of them fit well or gave me the control I needed. Now I’ve done my internet research and I’m going out to search for better ones but my suspicion is that when I get to the retailers that carry these brands, they won’t have the larger sizes in stock... I hope I’m wrong.

Five Spice Turkey and Lettuce Wraps

I was really excited about this one. I really was. This was our first really disappointing meal.

There were several things we didn’t like about this one and we made very few changes to it. We couldn’t find fresh mint or cilantro at the grocery store on shopping day so just didn’t use them.

First, and probably the most obvious, was that it was completely over powered by the ginger. I like a little bit of ginger flavor in my Chinese food, but this was waaaayyy too much! It also had a strange flavor from the five spice powder. It was like there was too much spice and not enough actual taste. It struck me as amazing that something this strong could be a bit tasteless. The Boston Lettuce was not nearly as structurally sound as the picture led me to believe either. We not only didn’t like the taste, but it didn’t fill us up either. This was advertised as a lunch meal, not an appetizer.

It was, however, easy enough to make and did make enough for two servings of leftovers the next day (Lucky us, we got to eat it twice.) 

And we hated it so much, we forgot to take a picture. (sorry)

Overall Rating:

Number of calories: 285/serving

Will I "Make Again"?: No

Tastiness?: 1/5

Fills my tummy?: 1/5