One day: what I ate to be healthier - Jan 20
But the food, man, that's a hard habit to break. And the last two days I've let myself snack at night again, probably negating the progress I've made.
Not to let that get me down, I decided that if I blog what I ate all day knowing my faithful readers (both of you!) will see it, it may break me out of this bad habit, at least for today!
So, here it is. You're welcome.
BREAKFAST 830am:
Adding herbs to my eggs looks a bit more finished, don't you think? Parsley doesn't add a ton of flavor, but if the egg is good, and the toast is rye, you're probably not going to care. And it's pretty. Plus it hides the fact that I broke the yolk again. Luckily I cooked it fast and still had some drippy yolk to the dish.
Healthier: used olive oil instead of butter, and less salt.
Not giving up my coffee. I did switch out the cream for 2% lactose free milk because of necessity, and we will leave it that. And then I am lowering the amount of sugar in my coffee by adding a packet of Splenda. Not sure if that's going to be the final phase or not. But it's where I am.
Healthier: used 1/2 Splenda and 1/2 sugar instead of all sugar.
Of course, Otie must be there to watch the floor. Why? Because clumsy me drops food there often. It's annoying that he's right to stare at the floor. I kind of hate that.
LUNCH 1200pm:
One of the things you will notice about me is that I don't like to waste food. A few days ago we went to breakfast and I got the smallest thing on the menu: 1 egg, toast, and bacon. It came with a bunch of hash browns, I think maybe 5 strips of bacon, 2 large pieces of rye bread cut in half, and the one egg.
I was used to 1 egg over 1/2 large or one small piece of toast!
So I ate the egg, the 1/2 piece of rye and one piece of bacon, and brought the rest home.
Because of that I've been whittling away at the leftovers. A piece of rye under my egg this morning was an example of that. And this afternoon for lunch I made my version of Waffle House's hash browns Scattered, Covered, and Smothered.
This means I needed onions and mushrooms and cheese.
I barely had any potatoes left, but it didn't matter. I first put down olive oil but added a pat of butter for the taste. Potatoes were meant for butter!
I added a the onions first, browning them. Then I added the potatoes in the center. Then once the potatoes had a chance to crisp a little, I mixed it all together until it looked done but not too done.
I then put the mushrooms in the pan and added only more olive oil. Can't do a lot of butter you see.
This I laid over the potato onion mixture and while it was still hot, sprinkled on the cheese
This was just what I needed on a frozen January day to thaw myself out for the last part of work. I love to sit apart from my desk at home and read while I eat lunch.
Healthier: use combined olive oil and butter instead of just straight butter & only a sprinkle of cheese instead of an entire slab. I found that not melting the cheese completely gives more flavor and thus less need for a lot of cheese.
TEA TIME 300pm
This is not an American thing, really, but I do get hungry around 3pm every day, so I adopted and adapted. The rules are, it can't be a whole meal, it happens around 2 or 3pm, and tea is involved.
I'm unreasonable when I'm hungry and want to eat an entire chocolate cake at this point.
So I got to thinking, I've been missing vegetables while eating my hashbrowns for lunch, I think it's time to remedy that.
I made a platter for the whole family (Son is on his way home from school any minute) of Crudité (vegs) and a dip made of vegan cream cheese, mayo, sour cream, a touch of feta cheese, dill and garlic mix from Pampered Chef, and some Lactose Free milk to thin. Its an odd combo, I'm not vegan but certain things have a lot of lactose and others don't, if you are looking for clues.
Note on the little peppers I used, finally found a way to cut them easily - you cut the tops off, then cut them in quarters the long way. This allows you to just scrape out the seeds easily. I may try that with bell peppers.
I just went with black tea and a second Splenda packet. Should be good til dinner now.
Otie is willing to help me eat it. I swear he has a whole bowl of food, we don't starve him.
DINNER 530PM
Since the Boy is going to be at his friend's house around dinner time, we are just the two of us eating dinner. So that means Hubby and I eat something the Boy hates - Shrimp and Grits!
The animals that are not in tanks (2 cats, 1 dog) are wandering the kitchen anywhere from 4pm on. I've never fed them at 4, it's always 5pm, but they still roam around, "starving". The rules are, get underfoot as much as possible, meow (not the dog) as cute and squeaky but insistent that they haven't eaten in Months. At least.
And when you do open the silverware drawer, it must mean the small fork we feed the cats with, dash quickly to the food bowl, but crossing the human's path so she dies trying to feed us. I think it's the adventure they're after, and a good story of how their Owner died.
I've learned to walk in skips, fits and starts when its after 4. I often answer back that no it is not 5pm and that try as they might, they cannot tell time. They always have dry food so I don't believe that they are quite starving. Just choosy.
If this doesn't work, they sit by each other, near me, "not watching" my every move until I look like I'm getting up and then race back to the kitchen. When it's not feeding time they are nowhere to be found. You can rest assured, they have better things to do.
Walter (black cat) gives up before Gus (orange cat) does. He's new.
5 o'clock rolls around and I fed the cats. As promised they are now out of the kitchen.
I tried not to have all one color in the meal, honestly, but that's just how it turns out some times.
I dug around in the crisper and found a head of cauliflower. It was time, the white parts were starting to get some black that had to be cut off. It was now or never.
So I cut it in half, cut out the stem and broke it into pieces
I tried to think what would be a good texture with shrimp cooked in oil, soft grits with some cheese, and came up with a tempura batter that honestly I made up myself. Dinner is more often my time to play in the kitchen, and I only vaguely follow recipes at times. This batter was made of flour, corn starch...
...yeah, I always get corn starch on my shirt when I use it. (the bottom of the pic is my hoodie covered in corn starch). It's lighter than air, ya know. Anyway I added some egg whites that were saved from another meal, salt, pepper, garlic salt, and paprika. Which made it ... orange. Along with the pink shrimp and the orange cheese grits. Dang. I added water until the batter was thinner than pancake batter and dumped handful of cauliflower in the batter. I set up a wok with oil and when it was hot, we were in business.
When that was about half way through the cauliflower, I started up the water for the grits.
I'm a big fan of quick grits. I'm not even sure I ever tried grits that weren't quick. Nor have I seen them up here in Michigan. Maybe I'm not just not looking very hard. Anyway once the water was done, I filled the pot half way up with grits and turned down the heat. That sat for a bit while I continued on the cauliflower.
The shrimp was thawed a bit more in the microwave. But I didnt cook it until the grits were done.
Once the grits were cooked but had no flavor yet, I added a handful of cheese and added some green onion from my neverending jar of green onions
Now that the grits were done and the caulifower was down to a final handful, I grabbed the shrimp and cooked it in olive oil and this citrus basil mix. I don't love it but it resembles lemon pepper which Hubby loves.
A master at timing since I've been taking culinary classes, it all came together at the same time. Except it was all orange. Well shoot.
I grabbed a couple of bowls, ripped up some green/purple lettuce and served. We each like our different salad dressings so I just handed Hubby his and I sat down with mine. It was pretty good but the texture of the shrimp is not as good when they are big like that. Ill have to get smaller ones next time.
Healthier: Not too much healthy about dinner to be honest. However I did try to add more veggies than I normally would, even if it was just a salad. And I would normally have a bunch more cauliflower and another scoop of grits. But knowing my calorie goal, I decided to check before doing so, and I was glad I did.
Otie didnt care much about dinner for some reason, maybe he was tired out. But he did bring me the ball so we could play a little while I was eating, and he finally ate his own food. Now the whining to go out, then in, then out ,then back in, and back out commences. Sigh. He has night creatures to annoy.
AFTER DINNER
Since today is Thursday, I have my martial arts class. I will need to know when I get home if I can afford any more food. At this point I grab "loseit.com" and figure out what i already spent in calories.
Sadly I could not even afford an orange because of the cauliflower. But it was worth it!
So at this point, it would appear that I am done.
Can I make healthier choices? Yes. But I did stop myself before I got outside my calorie range.
I'll finish off the night with a cup of peppermint tea while I watch my murder mystery show, snuggled into my heated throw to warm up.
I hope this was entertaining if not enlightening, and that you maybe feel validated not getting everything right. But maybe I got close enough.
Talk to you later!
Vicky
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