Category Archives: Dinner

Back on Track

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After my weekend in Florida and my donut extravaganza yesterday morning I’m feeling like I’m back “on track.”

Breakfast: Green smoothie (3.5 points for those of you who count :)

  • unsweetened almond milk
  • vanilla Spirutein protein powder
  • banana
  • spinach
  • cinnamon, vanilla, almond extract

Lunch: Fruit salad

  • blackberries
  • blueberries
  • raspberries
  • strawberries
  • mango
  • kiwi
  • shredded coconut
  • sliced almonds

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+ Trader Joe’s fat free vanilla frozen yogurt drizzled with honey for dessert.

Dinner: Salad + 2 homemade biscuits + another small bowl of froyo

Salad

  • mixed greens
  • cherry tomatoes
  • cucumbers
  • carrots
  • red pepper
  • Newman’s Own Lowfat Sesame Ginger dressing
  • hemp seeds

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The hemp seeds kept getting stuck in my teeth – I don’t recommend adding them to salads! I keep trying to find a good use for them…any ideas on how to use hemp seeds?

Exercise:

  • Yoga: 20 minutes
  • Walked: 2 miles with the dogs (40 minutes)
  • Ran: 6 miles in 50 minutes
  • Walked: 2 miles with the doggies (35 minutes – hubby wasn’t with me!)

Sorry for the blurry pictures – I’m working on it! I did manage to snap this beauty:

DSC_0158awwww….isn’t she awesome??

Never Mess With a Man's Pizza

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I thought I would be clever tonight and sneak some spinach into Doug’s Cheese Pizza. As I’ve explained before, Doug will only eat Cheese Pizza – there is no other kind. So since we always add spinach into our smoothies – and never taste it at all – I thought I could add it to his pizza and he wouldn’t even know it was there.

So while he was out back cutting the lawn, I dumped the pizza sauce into the Vitamix and tossed in great handfuls of spinach. When I blended it all together, well, that’s when I realized that the tomato sauce was turning a sickening greenish-brown color! DUH!

I didn’t have any other sauce on hand so I figured maybe I could cover it up with a bunch of cheese and he wouldn’t notice. I thought the pizzas looked pretty good!

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OK maybe they didn’t look that great. That’s mine on the right. I went “no cheese” tonight since I found out last week that just a little teeny bit of cheese was fine and maybe just maybe I could go completely Cheese Free. I sauteed the mushrooms in my non-stick pan and didn’t use any oil – the mushrooms turned out great! So mental note – you don’t need oil to saute mushrooms – you just have to keep stirring them so they don’t stick to the pan.

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Anyway, back to my story.

When Doug came inside the house the pre-cooked pizzas were sitting on the counter and Doug spotted the green/brown sauce right away. He was NOT HAPPY. In fact he was kind of Pissed. But since he is so good-natured and willing to try anything I cook, Pissed quickly downgraded to Miffed.

We sat down to eat our cooked pizzas and after just one bite we looked at each other – the spinach was a HUGE MISTAKE! You could TOTALLY taste it and it didn’t taste so great. In addition, a Cheese Free pizza just does not taste the same. MAYBE it would have been ok if I hadn’t messed up the sauce. I’m not sure why the spinach wasn’t good – last week I put sauteed spinach on top of my pizza and I really liked it. But when I blended it into the sauce it was gross. Anyway, I really messed up dinner tonight but Doug eventually said it wasn’t too bad – I think he wants that to be off the record though.

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Waiting for Kombucha

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Hi there!

So it’s raining again today for the 1 billionth day in a row! Really it is crazy how much rain we’ve gotten. On the positive side I saw this outside my  house today:

flower

This morning I took Marty and Rosie for a walk and as usual they were FREAKING OUT with happiness as soon as I picked up their leashes. It’s so cool how they are completely jazzed about going for the SAME WALK that we went on yesterday, and the day before, and the day before!

I had my standard Smoothie for breakfast: banana, spinach, Spirutein vanilla protein powder, cinnamon, a little salt, vanilla hemp milk (unsweetened), and pb2. In addition to Better N Peanut Butter, pb2 is my other favorite peanut butter-type product. I even wrote about it on the Double Dog Blog.

For lunch I had another gigantic salad, this time with lots of cauliflower, tomatoes, and chickpeas and topped with Newman’s Own Low Fat Sesame Ginger dressing – YUM!

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I also had the other half of the deceptive Trader Joe’s muffin that I started yesterday. And an apple. I’m HUNGRY today!!

I just checked on my kombucha. Yes, I’m making kombucha from scratch! Kombucha is a fermented sweet tea – you can read all about it here. My friend Kristen gave me the starter kombucha mushroom (called a “skoby“) and besides that all you need is tea, water, and sugar. My first batch didn’t turn out so well (it didn’t taste great and it wasn’t fizzy like the kombucha you buy in the store) but I think I figured out what went wrong. I used decaf green tea and you have to use caffeinated tea. So this time I used a black Chai tea. I also learned that once it’s ready you have to bottle it up and let it sit on the counter for a few days before refrigerating it. SO…it’s fermenting on my counter as we speak and tomorrow I think it will be ready :) I’m really excited to try it. For now, it looks like this on my counter:

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Don't Forget the Edy's!

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Over the winter I gained about 5 pounds and I’ve been trying to get rid of them but they are sticking to me like glue!  I swear it gets harder the older you get. So I decided to go back on Weight Watchers, which is how I lost all my weight in the first place. I get a whopping 19 points a day! In case you don’t know, that’s not very much. So here’s what I had today:

Breakfast

Smoothie made with Spirutein vanilla protein powder, vanilla hemp milk, banana, lotsa spinach, cinnamon, and a dollop of Better N Peanut Butter*

Lunch

1/2 of a Trader Joe’s muffin. I was totally schnookered by the package that said “120 calories per serving” (see it? It’s on the right side). I LOVE muffins so I was pretty excited except when I got them home I realized that a serving is HALF a muffin! What a joke! So I had half a muffin today :)

Organic Moral Fiber

A huge salad with cucumbers, chickpeas, tomatoes, carrots, cauliflower, radishes, and baby greens

Saladwith my homemade oil-free dressing

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And finished with an Edy’s Orange & Cream Fruit Bar (I love these)

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I felt pretty satisfied with my lunch. After a little time to digest, I headed out for a 6 mile run that felt AWESOME. I used my new Phillips headphones and they worked really well and didn’t slide off my head like other headphones have in the past.

So…dinner.

We made personal pizzas with Boboli crusts. Doug piled his high with cheese but I used less than 1/4 cup on mine and instead piled it with spinach and sauteed mushrooms. I’m trying to get cheese out of my diet all together but when it comes to pizza…

pizza

(The spinach puree is hidden under the sauce :)   (Sorry for the bad photo!)

I was surprised how good it was because I always thought you had to have a ton of cheese on your pizza. I think next time I’ll skip the cheese altogether and see how it goes.

I had a few other snacks today but I thought I was within my points. Then I realized that I forgot to figure in the Edy’s! So I was over by one point – but I figure that’s ok since I did run today! I’m trying not to get too hung up on the points thing anyway – it’s just a guideline :)

Time for beddie-by!

*Better N Peanut Butter is AWESOME! You have to try it if you haven’t already. It has half the calories of regular PB and 85% less fat than regular peanut butter. I use it in smoothies mostly – I haven’t yet baked with it but the BNPB website has some recipe ideas.