Changing Habits

Since this is (half) my blog, I get to pick my posts and topics. Now I SO don't want to turn into a "diet blogger" because really, no one wants to hear about that, I do enjoy the fact that I have successfully lost some weight in the past 3 years and have been eating better. And more interestingly. Not that I didn't before, but I definitely have changed eating habits and exercising habits (which, when I exercise, I can eat more sweets, so I'm all for it) for the better.

I was at a Weight Watcher's meeting last night and the leader mentioned briefly how your taste buds change when you loose weight. Well, not necessarily change, but are different. He talked about fried chicken. How he eats it and is disappointed. And I have a similar situation. Not with fried chicken, but (sadly!) with Chinese Food.

It started in April. I was home for a wedding and had been really craving good, New York Chinese food. The greasy, saucy kind. The fried chips with duck sauce, the dumplings, the cold noodles with sesame sauce, moo sho with lots of hoison, the works. The only thing I didn't get was General Tso's Tofu (or mock chicken) mostly because the don't have it at the restaurant we went to. But I can taste it in my mouth. There is one really good take out place that does the tofu and it's amazing. Sweet, spicy, fried, saucy, amazing. The problem: after I had the dinner I'd been waiting for, I wasn't happy. I was overly full for one thing and for another, it just wasn't as comforting anymore. A few weeks later, The Pedant and I ordered in lots of Chinese food one night (it was after an argument and both of us didn't really feel like cooking or going out so we ordered a bit too much) and again - same thing. Too greasy! Too fried! Not what I wanted. I was a little bummed. Maybe my taste buds have changed. Or I can't handle the amount of food I used to and therefore am eating too much without realizing. I'm not sure. I still crave Chinese food (I will get my Gen. Tso's one day as a treat dammit!!) but no longer want to go out of my way for it. It might also have to do with proximity. In college and grad school, I would order from a local place a few times a month and it was always just good enough. Here, I can't replicate that meal (there are apparently no scallion pancakes in DC?!) and when I have Chinese food infrequently I build it up in my mind for being amazing. And it's not. It never was, but it was always good.

Man, now I want some Gen. Tso's. TP - want to not make another curry from our favorite curry book and order in?! Probably not, but worth a shot.

Coconut Milk Night!

For dinner last night there was a theme - coconut milk. The Pedant saw that at the Teet last week there was a sale on mangoes. Now, I love mangoes. And, while doing a project started over the week off I had of organizing recipes we've amassed over the year (VT, internet sites) in a binder, I printed out a Mark Bittman recipe for Savory Mango Soup (Mangoes, milk, coconut milk, yogurt, ancho chili powder for big, bold flavor). An excellent way to utilize the sale. Plus, a few months ago we made a tofu asparagus stir fry (that uses, you guessed it, coconut milk!) from a weight watchers cook book so we decided to work off of a theme.

The mango soup was good - not perfect, but we used fat free milk and yogurt which made it a bit less creamy. I think it will be even better when mangoes are actually in season. The tofu was good and we made it very spicy. TP suggested adding curry next time to kick it up.

On a different note, I made myself a snack for work yesterday - Greek Yogurt, honey and almonds. It was delish. Not uncommon at all, but really tasty. This will be made again, never fear!

Orzo? I Hardly Know you!

Last night, The Pedant was gracious enough to make dinner and he posted about the prep part for our orzo and broccoli. I enjoyed it a lot - it was very tasty and nutty and quite creamy in fact (well, for a "diet" food). We tried to come up with ways to modify it a bit without making it too unhealthy. Here's what we came up with*:

--Use a fake beef stock (or real?) instead of veggie broth
--potentially make a roux as a thickener, instead of the fat free half and half (also to avoid using an oxymoron)
--increasing the vegetable amount (possibly adding spinach also?) and decreasing the orzo amount.

*The recipe was basically 16 oz. frozen chopped broccoli (thawed), one carrot, pine nuts, 1/4 cup fat free half and half (yes, I know, a real oxymoron!!), garlic, shallots, a vegetable broth and water mixture, and orzo (duh), Parmesan cheese

But it was very tasty. We really enjoyed it.

Autumn Dinner

I'll spare you the excuses for not posting. Especially since I don't have any. However, The Pedant and I are back with a vengeance! Mwahaha!!

Starting off with a weekend of eating well. We, like oh so many, have decided to pinch some pennies and try eating out less. Our goal is to go to fewer restaurants but when we do go out, we'll eat only at top notch establishments and spend wisely. No shlock for us!! So, Friday I happened to be off from work and decided to make a nice meal for TP. (I also made bran muffins, ala Mark Bittman. Quite tasty!). Speaking of Bittman, I took a hint from his menus for "Autumn Dinners" and made a 3-course meal for us (oo-la-la! But also: leftovers!)

The Menu:

French Potato and Leek Soup
Spicy Autumn Burgers
Caramelized Onion Chutney
Whole Wheat Couscous
Apple Crumble

The soup was a Weight Watchers recipe that I'd made before and was nice and thick and warm and tasty. I slipped with the fake chicken soup and it's a bit salty for my tastes, but it's so good I don't mind too much.

The burgers, made with kale, white beans, sweet potatoes, panko and spices, were lightly (like a total of 2 tablespoons EVOO for 8 patties) fried and really good. It was a Bittman recipe and he suggested (in the menu, from which I stole the soup and apple crumble from too) to serve it with the caramelized onion chutney and millet mash (hence couscous) and was really great. It was sweet and spicy.

The chutney was super easy to make and the perfect opportunity to try out our new food processor. It gave a lot of extra flavor to the burgers.

The dessert, a WW recipe for apple crumble, was good but not fantastic. First, you are to bake the apples with some splenda and cinnamon in the oven for like 10 minutes. Then, you take some rolled oats, egg whites, splenda, and cinnamon and roll it out thinly on a baking sheet and "toast" for 2 minutes in a hot oven. The apple part was tasty - very autumn-y and soft, but I didn't roll out the crumble topping enough and it was clumpy and hard. However, very low calorie and really good. We even ate on our balcony - perfect for DC fall weather!

In my on going quest to lose weight, I recently decided to kick it up a notch (very Elzar) and not only attend Weight Watchers and exercise with The Pedant at the gym, but take classes and work with a personal trainer. She's very nice and we haven't worked out together yet, we had a consultation session (plus I went to 2 pilates-on-crack classes). In our consultation we talked about weight loss and she suggested I eat continuously throughout the day - about every 3 hours. I'm totally fine with that, since, well, I love to eat (which is perhaps the whole reason for this program in the first place). I promise not to make this blog about my weight loss (there are 3/4 of a million out there already) but I will talk about one thing: BARS. Since I work in an environment where I can't eat all the time at my desk, I have decided to eat "hideable" snacks in the AM and PM, mostly bars and such. I went to a local store to stock up and also bought many 1 and 2 point bars at WW itself. Now, these "bars" aren't the delicious granola bars of my youth (that I mostly had to trade my meager pretzels for because my mother saw right through their "nutrients" and saw their true sugary colors) but mostly Luna Bars, Cliff Bar Products, Kashi ones, WW ones and the like. I was looking for something with lots of protein but not 15 grams of fat. Also, so many of these taste like cardboard I had trouble narrowing it down to tasty ones.

Here's the low-down so far.

Weight Watchers 1 Point Bars:

Pure delight. I found the Dark Chocolate Raspberry ones are the best, but I eat them too quickly. The Chocolate Caramel are inferior, but they take a while to eat. Also, I tried the Oatmeal Raisin which aren't bad. A little less desert-y, but good.

Weight Watchers 2 Point Bars:

Not terrible. Just hard to eat 1/2 and therein lies the problem of a small snack. But the chocolate mint are like a candy bar!

Luna Bars:

Always a winner. They have a direct line into my taste buds. Granted, not low in calorie or fat, but chock-full of protein. I love, love, love the Chocolate Peppermint Stick, but decided not to get a whole bunch of them. The lemon zest, which I started with, are very tasty. Sad note: while most are 3 WW points, the nuts ones are 4. Boo. Silly nuts and their good fats.

Cliff Bars for Kids:

So Cliff Bars are for men and therefore have less chcolate flavors and more cardboard taste. Blech. But the kids bars are so far pretty tasty. The Chocolate Brownie is 2 points for the whole thing and not too cardboardy.

I also bought Kashi bars, but no verdict yet.

In the full fat category, TP and I went to a CakeLove Satellite store for desert on Friday (which is full fat, because as their sign says "Cake without fat is just bread") and was amazing. A bit dense for my taste, but the frosting was tasty.

Sadly, life has been busy since post Quebec, and mostly with The Pedant and I being relatively sick with cold, mountains of laundry (finished! yay!), a visit to New York (more to follow) and just general exhaustion.

Food wise, our visit to New York was fun. We saw my family and ate really tasty things (i.e., spinach dip, a (homemade) baked mac and cheese, pastas, lots of good desserts that my mom made) and then went to a great place in Chinatown, Buddha Bodai. It's a 100% vegetarian restaurant that does dim sum and other great dishes. It's great for me because I can eat almost anything there. We had great dim sum Sunday morning.

We haven't made anything exciting this week, although (for the third time), we made Fusilli with Creamy Gorgonzola sauce. It's a Weight Watcher's recipe that is very tasty. I also got a new Weight Watcher's Cookbook, Mix and Match. I promise not to make this blog all about dieting, because anyone can find enough blogs about that, but TP and I are eating healthier (relatively at least, and without compromising our tastes or that fact that he's not on WW) and a new cookbook is exciting.