Ramblings, What I ate

When hunger calls

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When I woke up this morning, I was STARVING.  I thought that was pretty odd, since I didn’t eat dinner til around 8pm last night.  Regardless, the grumbling monster in my belly needed food.  STAT.  I wanted something to hold me over til breakfast #1, so I downed 1/2 of a Thomas english multi-grain english muffin with 1 tsp JIF peanut butter in about 2 seconds flat. 

My crazy hunger pangs reminded me of the Wanda Sykes comedy show I caught over the weekend on TV.  She named her belly “Esther Roll,” and apparently Esther loves bread, beer, and cheeeeeessseeeeecake.  Sounds like my kind of girl 😉

Take a look!

Breakfast #1

Fruit and nut butter wrap!  1 tbsp JIF with 3 medium strawberries atop a Mama Lupe’s Low carb tortilla:

Wrapped it up burrito style and grilled on the George Foreman for about 5 minutes til nice and ooey gooey and the tortilla was crispy:

I wrapped this little guy up and took him with me to work:

Yum yum yummmmmmmm 🙂

Stats on the FNBW:  167 calories, 14g carbs, 11g fat, 9g protein, 6g fiber

Breakfast #2

I was planning on having yogurt with strawberries, but I somehow left the yogurt at home!  Lucky for me I had a blueberry bliss Luna Bar in my desk at work:

I LOVE this flavor

Lunch

Nothing really sounded good for lunch today… Don’t you just hate when that happens? 

I decided to make some healthified buffalo chicken.  This time I used 3 ounces chicken, 2 tbsp Plain Fat Free Stonyfield Farm yogurt, 3 tbsp Franks red hot, garlic powder, and some black pepper, all atop a Mama Lupe’s Low Carb tortilla:

I also added some lettuce, tomato, and onion and had some carrots on the side:

Even though I wasn’t craving it, the wrap sure was tasty!

Stats on the Lunch:  298 calories, 27g carbs, 6g fat, 34g protein, 8g fiber

Dinner

Whelp, even though nothing sounded good at lunch by the time dinner rolled around I had a serious craving for pizza and salad.  I love the pizza salad combo!

I ran to the grocery store to pick up some light mini babybels, but they didn’t have any!  Ughhh… sometimes I hate living in a small town!  I looked around the store and ended up with these guys:

I used a Joseph’s low carb tortilla as my base and topped it with 1/4 cup Classico Fire Roasted Tomato and Garlic sauce that I doctored up with Black Pepper, Red Pepper Flakes, Garlic Powder, and Onion Powder.  Then I added 1/2 of a sliced up Jennie O’s Hot Turkey Sausage, 1 chopped up Sargento light string cheese, and some thinly sliced tomato and onion:

I baked this in the oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, then chopped with some sliced up fresh basil that I plucked from the backyard.

Voila!

And on the side I had a huge delicious salad with romaine, cherry tomatoes (from the back yard 🙂 ), onion, tomato, banana peppers, and 2 tbsp Ken’s Steakhouse Lite Italian Romano dressing:

Stats on the Pizza & Salad:  340 calories, 30g carbs, 16g fat, 25g protein, 10g fiber

 

Finished dinner about an hour ago… and I’m already getting hungry!  What’s up with that?!  I see a green monster smoothie in my future 🙂

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Ramblings, What I ate

Planning ahead

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When I’m busy at work, I try and do whatever I can to simplify my daily routine.  Oftentimes, this involves cooking meals in “batch” so that I don’t succumb to eating fast food to compensate for not having time to cook.

This past tax season, I was really hardcore about precooking meals.  Every Sunday I would set aside a couple hours and cook ALL of my meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) for the workweek ahead of time.  This took a lot of planning and creativity on my part.  Since FerventFoodie.com didn’t come about until after tax season, I don’t have any documentation of my meal plans.  Guess we’ll have to wait til next tax season for that 😉

Breakfast #1

Last night, I decided to pre-cook a few things for the week.  I threw 3 chicken breasts and 3 Jennie O’s turkey sausages on the George Foreman grill to cook up.  I don’t have a plan in mind for the meat at this point — just hoping to simplify what I expect to be a very busy workweek!

I decided to use one of the turkey sausage links in an egg scramble.  I whisked up 11 egg whites and 1 whole egg with a splash of water.   Once in the pan, I seasoned with S&P and some Red Pepper Flakes.

When the eggs were about 1/2 way done scrambling, I added 1 chopped up turkey sausage link and a few splashes of Frank’s Red Hot.

I also roasted up 3 cups of broccoli.  When I roast veggies, I typically spray a heavy coat of cooking spray on a cookie sheet, toss the veggies around on it, then add S&P (and sometimes garlic powder, onion powder, or red pepper flakes).  Then, I cook in a 415 degree oven for 15 minutes. 

This mix made 3 lovely portion-controlled breakfasts:

One of which I enjoyed at work this morning with a dollop o’ ketchup:

I’m glad roasted veggies taste just as good when heated up in the microwave 😀

Stats on Scramble, Broccoli, & Ketchup:  180 calories, 10g carbs, 5g fat, 24g protein, 2g fiber

Breakfast #2

Chobani strawberry greek yogurt + 1/2 cup blueberries =

I <3 Greek Yogurt

Stats on B#2:  181 calories, 31g carbs, 0g fat, 15g protein, 3g fiber

 

Lunch

Last month, the BF and I made some zucchini turkey burgers.  Jarrod liked them so much, that he replaced the daily burger on his meal plan with a turkey burger.  When I was cooking all my foods up last night, I decided to help Jarrod out and make up his turkey burgers for the week… for the low LOW fee of one burger of course 😉

Here’s what went into the turkey burgers this time:

  • 1 package Nature’s Vally 99% Fat Free Ground Turkey Breast (about 20 ounces)
  • 1 small zucchini, grated
  • 1/3 cup red onion, grated
  • 2 cloves garlic minced
  • Salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes

This mix made four burgers, one of which I brought with me for lunch today.  I heated the burger up, then sandwiched it with a Pepperidge Farm 7 Grain Deli Flat, ketchup, mustard, tomato, and onion:

Side shot:

I also had a crap ton 2 cups of roasted cauliflower on the side:

I wish my lunches ALWAYS made me this happy!

Stats on just the turkey burger (no bun/toppings):  163 calories, 3g carbs, 2g fat, 33g protein, 0g fiber

Stats on whole lunch: 363 calories, 45g carbs, 3g fat, 44g protein, 12g fiber

Side note of the deli flats — I compared the backs of various brands and varieties of the “deli flat” style buns in the grocery store the other day.  Both Pepperidge Farm and the Arnold varieties were comparable — though the Pepperidge Farm deli flats have 2 less grams of carbs and 1 more gram of protein.  Not necessarily something to write home about, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless 🙂

(Screen shot taken from myfitnesspal.com)

Speaking of planning ahead, some things to look forward to in the coming months:

  • Healthy Living Summit in Chicago in August (shout out to my roommate Haya!)
  • Wedding in Columbus in September (I love weddings!)
  • Pittsburgh with mom/sister/brother in September
  • New Orleans in October
  • My Annual Halloween Spooktacular 😀
  • And the holidays….

I have a feeling the rest of this year is going to FLY.  Plus, I’m hoping we can squeeze in another trip to Charlotte before year-end….

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Ramblings

July 12th

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Happy day of birth to me!

Today’s morning started off with:

That’s a card from dad and a card from mom 🙂

Last night, I cooked up some of my low-carb waffles.  I’ve been tweaking the recipe little by little, and each attempt gets better and better!

This time I mixed the dry ingredients in one bowl:

  • 1/4 Bob’s Red Mill Low-Carb Baking Mix
  • 1/8 tsp baking powder
  • 1/8 tsp cream of tartar
  • 1/8 tsp cinnamon

In another bowl, I whipped an egg white light and frothy.  Next, I added 1/4 cup of Almond Breeze Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk and whipped the two of them together. 

Then I slowly and gently mixed in the dry ingredients and added another tsp of almond milk, and cooked them up on the waffle iron for 10 minutes.

At work this morning, I popped the waffles in the toaster then topped them off with some fresh frozen strawberries and blueberries that I heated up in the microwave and some Smucker’s Sugar free syrup.

 

These waffles just keep getting better!  They were definitely fluffier.  Definitely tasty.

Good news/bad news: 

Good news is it’s birthday and vacation time!  Bad news is, I’ll be doing little-to-no cooking over the next week or so :-/

I’m going to keep my blog updated with all the delicious foods and restaurants I get to try, and also my attempts to eat healthy while out of town!

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Ramblings

Early b-day dinner with the moms

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The older I get, the cooler and cooler my mom becomes.

Let me clarify – my mom has always been cool, and I’ve always known that fact, but I feel the older I get the more and more I appreciate what a cool lady she actually is.  Why is it some things can only be appreciated with age?  Fine wine, gourmet cheeses, black coffee… 

My birthday is coming up, so in honor of that momentous occasion I thought it would be fun to have dinner with my mom and my friend Tracy tonight.  Mom suggested she make her paella — which is one of the dishes she used to make when I lived at home and that I always really really liked. 

Paella is a Spanish rice dish that includes sausage, chicken, and shrimp.  Reminds me of the jambalaya I made a few weeks back.  You just know any dish that includes three types of meat is going to be amazing.

One GIANT paella:

One birthday cannoli  😀 

Ninni’s Bakery makes THE best cannolis, Italian cookies, and lemon ice.  Hands down.

Super excited to have the leftover cannoli with my morning coffee tomorrow 🙂

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Ramblings

Foodie who is anti-food?

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All throughout my life, I’ve been a big eater. 

Eating minimal food throughout the day so that I could engorge at dinner was commonplace for me for many years.  Family members would tease me about always being the first person in the cookout buffet lines, and the first person to go back for round #2.  I’ve been a foodie for as long as I can remember.  I just love food.  Yes, my world basically revolves around it.  Yes, that may mean I have issues… but I’m ok with that 🙂

Over the past year, I’ve changed a lot of my old habits.  Nowadays, I take the time to plan my meals out in advance so that I’m sure I’m giving my body the fuel it needs to chug along throughout the day.  And I try as hard as I can to not over do it in one sitting.  I HATE that sickly full feeling you get when you overeat.  (Despite other changes I have made, I am still always the first in the buffet line…  watch out, I throw elbows 😉 )

Never in my life have I even been called a person who is “not really into food,” until today that is.  I was incorrectly classified today after I suggested a place with “healthy options” for lunch, and then proceeded to only eat 1/2 of my ginormous plate of food.  I must say, I was a little taken aback.  Dare I say, I scoffed in the commenter’s general direction.  I LOVE FOOD.  LOVE, I say, LOVE! I just try to incorporate as many healthy choices into my day as possible. 

Does that make me anti-food?  I think not!

 

Breakfast #1

I had a leftover link of Jennie-O Hot Turkey sausage from the weekend I wanted to use up, so I decided to make a double batch of scrambled eggs. 

I mixed up 8 egg whites, S&P, red pepper flakes, and some water and got my scramble on.  Once the curds started to form (least attractive word ever), I added some splashes of franks red hot to the eggs and dumped in the diced up turkey sausage.

I also roasted up some broccoli to go along side. 

2 days’ breakfasts & minimal effort.  Love it!

B#1 Stats (1 serving = 1/2 of recipe above):  174 calories, 8g carbs, 5g fat, 24g protein, 1g fiber

Breakfast #2

As I was preparing to make my overnight oats last night, I stood in front of an open cabinet pondering what I could possibly put in my oats to mix things up.  Then a little voice inside me said.. you know you want the same exact oats you made for Monday.  And guess what, that little voice was right.  🙂

  • 1/2 cup uncooked quick oats
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened almond breeze almond milk
  • 1 tsp brown sugar
  • cinnamon
  • fresh strawberries

Heaven.

B#2 Stats:  208 calories, 38g carbs, 5g fat, 6g protein, 6g fiber

Lunch

Lunch today was courtesy of Aladdin’s Eatery.  I went with the Jasmine’s Favorite Plate (plain)–which according to the Daily Plate only has 400 calories.  I find that hard to believe, given that the plate of food they brought me was overfloweth with food.  What do you guys think of that website?  Reliable?  Not reliable?

Anyway, the Jasmine’s Favorite is “a fresh mix of cooked beans, vegetables and rice seasoned with a blend of herbs and spices,” and it was DELICIOUS.

I wasn’t able to take a pic of everything, but here’s some of what was leftover:

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