Weigh-In Monday and BSI – Win!

Without further ado, drum roll please. . .

-1.2 this week!  Not too shabby considering all the good eats I had!  I have to credit getting the 60 minutes of exercise in most days and my running a 5k at lunch so that I can splurge on a couple of meals this past week.

What?  Don’t remember?  I had Chinese take out one night.  For lunch one day I had a Turkey Rueben with Acorn Squash Bisque.  And I had roast beef with horseradish sauce and a giant baked potato.  Shhh.  Don’t tell anyone I am trying to lose weight!

And I won BSI – Blue Cheese!  It was my Pear Blue Cheese Soup with Pancetta and Pesto Bread Crostini that tipped the scales.  Thanks for hosting this past week!

Next week’s hostess is Holly at The Balanced Broad. She chose Flax!  Which I assume includes flax seeds?  Have to put my thinking cap on for that one!

Breakfast was more of the crab and spinach quiche from yesterday.  Thanks to HealthyYum and Tastespotting for publishing the picture of it!

I had 3 ounces of apple on the side and my new favorite apple dip:  1/4 cup Fage 0%, 1 teaspoon peanut butter and 1 tablespoon agave nectar = YUM!

 

Breakfast: 372 claories, 20 fat, 31 carbs, 19 protein, 3 fiber.

I am trying to use up stuff I have in the house this week.  We had shrimp in the freezer, so I decided to make The Best Shrimp Cocktail Ever! You haven’t made it yet??

Once the water hits 165 degrees, remove and drain quickly.

And then quickly put in a water bath to stop the cooking.  This was made for dinner

I had a bag of potatoes that needed to get used up – too many eyes!  This one I kind of threw together with what I had.

Biz’s Simple Low Fat Potato Soup

• 13 ounces of diced potato (all that I had)
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1 can evaporated milk
• 3 tablespoons corn starch
• 2 ounces shredded cheese ends
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon bacon salt (you’ll see!)

Put chicken broth in pot with diced potatoes.  Simmer on medium heat for 20 minutes, or until potatoes are tender.  Mix 1/4 of evaporated milk with corn starch and mix to combine.  Add to potatoes and cook for 2 minutes.  Add seasonings, the rest of the evaporated milk and cook for 5 more minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in cheese.

Yep.  So everything can taste like bacon!  It really gives the soup a smokiness!

I bought this package of cheese ends for $2.19 and got 4 cups of shredded cheese!

Tony and I went on an impromptu lunch out today!  I got my bento box – teriyaki chicken, tempura vegetables, California roll and fried rice.  I ate only about 1/4 cup of the fried rice, and half my roll, but everything else.

606 calories, 22 fat, 66 carbs, 35 protein, 2 fiber

I took Ed for a quick walk to the river and back.  It was pretty chilly today – maybe 45??  I’ll be kicking myself when I say that when its –10 degrees!

Tony and I went out to an impromptu lunch!  I got my teriyaki bento box – I ate all the tempura, half the California roll, about 1/4 cup of the fried rice, and about 1/2 cup of teriyaki chicken.

Then I went to the Fitness Center!  While I had visions of working out 1.5 hours while I was off this week, um, I am going to stick to my 60 minutes a day!  I did 50 minutes of the hill climb on the elliptical. 

We had such a late lunch, we weren’t sure we would be hungry for dinner, but around 7:00 I was hangry!  I had defrosted a t-bone steak for Tony and I to split.  This was one of a three pack, but this is the only one we froze.  It had no flavor even being sprinkled with bacon salt!  But the shrimp cocktail was the star!  And to put some sort of vegetables in my diet today, I made us side salads.

I did our steak indoors on our cast iron griddle.  Man o Man – I smoked up the whole house.  You know I am cooking when the smoke detector goes off!  Yep, pretty proud of my grill marks!

My plate – 4 ounces of beef, 4 ounces of shrimp cocktail, 1 teaspoon of horseradish sauce and 1 tablespoon of cocktail sauce (not pictured).

Now I am off to watch the last episode of Jon and Kate Plus 8!  I loved the show when it first started. . . now I am not sure?  Do you still watch it?

Stats for the Day:

• 1,335 calories
• 53 fat
• 109 carbs
• 104 protein
• 7 fiber
• 50 minutes on elliptical
• 15 minute walk with Ed
  

See you tomorrow night!

Love Bizzy Days in My Kitchen!

I have a long list of things to do while I am off this next week.  One of them is to organize my deep freeze.  The problem is that its a) huge and b) there are only two shelves otherwise its just a bottomless pit.  While I was contemplating what to do, I realized that we had snow crabs that hadn’t been cooked.  There wasn’t enough for a meal, so I decided to cook them, pick out the meat and figure out what to do with it.

Biz’s Crab and Spinach Quiche

• 1 refrigerated pie crust (you won’t judge me after you see what else I made from scratch today!)
• 4 eggs
• 1/3 cup fat free sour cream
• 1 cup skim milk
• 4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cracked pepper
• 6 ounces cooked crab (that’s all I got out of those three crab clusters above!)
• 2 ounces shredded Swiss cheese
• 1 handful of baby spinach

Put crust in pie plate.  Layer spinach and crab over the bottom.  Mix all the rest of the ingredients together and then pour into pie plate.  Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes.

I asked Tony if he liked it.  His response: “it was fine until I saw the green crap!”  This one is a keeper.  1/8 slices is 223 calories, 15 fat, 15 carbs, .75 fiber and 12 protein.  My plate with blackberries tossed in Splenda – they were a bit tart by themselves!

Since my step-son Joe was coming over, I decided to make crab ravioli.  First I had to start with the sauce.  While Tony and I usually make our sauces from fresh tomatoes, at $1.79 a pound, canned tomatoes would do just fine!  I like to buy Italian plum tomatoes (tomatoes I never even heard of until I met Tony!)

Simple Tomato Sauce

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
• 1 large celery stalk, chopped
• 2 gloves fresh garlic chopped
• 2 – 35 oz. canned plum tomatoes
• 4 basil leaves
• salt and pepper
• pat of butter at the end

Sauté the carrots, celery and garlic for about 5 minutes.  Add canned tomatoes and simmer for one hour.  Using a stick blender, puree until smooth.

This made about 9 cups of sauce.  Since Joe likes a creamy tomato sauce, I pulled out 4 cups of sauce and added one pint of heavy cream and 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese.

So once the sauce was done, I decided to make my crab filling!  I bought this can of crab meat at our local grocery store – $9.00 a can.

Since its lump crab meat and hand picked, you still need to make sure there are no shells!

Biz’s Crab Ravioli Stuffing

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 clove of minced garlic
• 1/4 cup white wine (I used chardonnay)
• 1 pound canned crab meat
• 1 pound ricotta cheese
• 2 tablespoons Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg
• 2 eggs
• salt and cracked pepper to taste

Mix all together and put in refrigerator until ready to use.

Before I moved onto the dough, it was time for Man Food!

Joe and Tony both like mild wings.  It’s so hard to judge though since Tony believes I have burned all the taste buds with all the hot shit I have eaten over the course of my life!  I mixed a ratio of 6 tablespoons butter to 1/4 cup Frank’s Red Hot Sauce.  They were deemed wimpy!  But they still loved them!

I had Lady Like Food for my lunch!  I made the Roasted Butternut Soup with Goat Cheese Crostini from December’s Cooking Light.  Don’t skip the goat cheese crostini – it makes this soup!

Roasted Butternut Soup

• 1 large butternut squash (about 2.5 pounds)
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 garlic cloves
• 6 cups roasted vegetable stock (that I made yesterday)
• 2 cups peeled and chopped potatoes
• salt and pepper to taste
• bread for crostini
• 1 tablespoon herbed goat cheese (for one serving)
• NOTE: I left out the sage and didn’t add the honey the recipe called for

Bake the cut squash on a cookie sheet for 30 minutes at 400 degrees.  Cool and scoop out pulp.  Meanwhile, add oil to stock pot, add garlic and sauté for 2 minutes, stirring so they don’t burn.  Add squash, vegetable stock, potatoes and salt and pepper.  Simmer for 45 minutes or until potato is tender.  Using a stick blender, puree until smooth.  Toast bread and then top with goat cheese.  I loved the addition to goat cheese balanced against the sweetness of the butternut squash!  It’s slightly sweet, then you get the tanginess of the cheese = YUM!  This serving comes in at 292 calories, 10.1 fat, 47 carbs, 5 fiber and 7.3 protein.

Next time I think I’ll sprinkle goat cheese all over and ditch the bread!   The goat cheese makes this soup!

So then it was time to make the dough for the ravioli.  I love youtube because you can watch people make things – I am so much better at attempting a recipe after I’ve watched someone do it rather than reading a recipe!  So I watched a tiny Italian grandma make pasta. And while she was hard to understand, the basic principal is use semolina flour, and for each pound of flour you need to use 2 eggs.  Then she adds warm tap water as needed to get the right consistency.

So far so good!  I had two pounds of flour so I added four eggs.

After five minutes though, this is what evolved!

 

I resorted to bringing up the stand mixer and did the rest using my dough hook – I ended up adding about 3/4 cup of water in total.  Then rested the dough in a bowl that had olive oil in it.  I love this dough!  So simple.  I love how it never lost its texture even after re-rolling it over and over again.

I rolled out one big sheet, then dropped tablespoon sized amounts of the crab/cheese mixture, then folded the dough over the crab.  I don’t have a fancy ravioli cutter, so I used my biscuit cutter and it worked fine.  I pinched the sides closed, then used a fork to make it pretty.

It made all these, plus 7 more which are just cheese for Hannah – she doesn’t like crab!  Since they are fresh, they only cook in five minutes.  If you go from freezer to boiling water, it will take 10-12 minutes.

Before I made them all up though, I needed to make one to see if the seasoning was right – Tony happened to be in the kitchen and was like “the fryer is still on?!”

So Tony tried a fried ravioli:

And Joe had a boiled one:

The verdict?  Just needed more salt, but other than that, they loved them!

So my dinner: 

• 6 crab ravioli
• 1/2 cup sauce
• 1 tablespoon fresh parmesan cheese
• handful of baby spinach on the bottom

Stats for the Day:

• I have no idea, taking the day off from being overly obsessed with calories – my blood sugar is in check – it’s all good!
• Sunday is my rest day, so no exercise

Weigh in is tomorrow – looking forward to seeing what the scale says after eating all this delicious food!   See you tomorrow night!

Gorgeous Day!

Best way to start Day 1 of Staycation?  Sleep in until 9:00 a.m.!  Love it, although Hannah already left for work before I even got up!   I decided to do a Mama Rini’s Diner breakfast at home.  My plate: 1 whole wheat mini bagel with pat of real butter, 1/4 cup corned beef hash, 4 ounces of potatoes, 1 egg and handful of blackberries.

We have approximately 10,000 acres of Nature Preserves a mere 2 miles from our house!  Last week I decided to take Ed to the trails, only to discover that they were closed due to deer thinning.  Once a year they thin down the deer population and close ALL trails for a week!  I decided to do a drive by to see if they were open – yippee – they were!  I came back and get Ed!   He loves being in the woods – so many smells!  But 30 minutes is about his limit.  If I walk him any longer than that, he doesn’t have the energy to get back in the car and I have to lift him – and he’s about 90 pounds!

I could have walked for hours it was so nice out!  I love how they maintain the paths too – and when it snows you can sky on the trails!   No horses allowed though!

Tony and I went to the store to pick up a few things.  I believe he wanted to bring this 20 pound whole ham home!

After our shop, I knew it was almost time for Hannah to get off work, so we met her at Friday’s for a late lunch.  Since we didn’t eat breakfast until almost 10, lunch was at 4:00!  I had to get a Sam Adam’s Winter Ale since it was on tap – I love that beer!

We may have gotten crack fried green beans for an appetizer!  The dipping sauce is killer too!

For my entree, I chose the Thai Chicken Wrap – I only ate 1/2 the sandwich and about 10 fries (which I am considering a small fries on sparkpeople).

 

So guess what lunch comes in at??  921 calories, 27 fat, 108 carbs, 20 protein and 6 fiber!  The only good news is that since we ate so late, and since I am still so fricken full, that’s all I have to eat today.  But what was interesting is that I am still within my range!  Well, except for not hitting the right amount of fiber

Have you gotten your December issue of Cooking Light yet??  As soon as I saw the recipe for Roasted Butternut Soup with Goat Cheese Toasts, I knew that would be on my list of things to make soon!  But as I was reading the recipe, it called for making roasted vegetable stock.  What?  In all my years of cooking, I’ve never made a vegetable stock before!  And it was easy!

The recipe is on page 212 of the magazine.  Another vegetable I’ve never tried before??  Turnip!  It kind of tastes like a radish to me – and I liked it!  Do you have any recipes using turnips?

You roast the vegetables at 450 degrees for 45 minutes.

I love how the garlic turned out!

Throw all the veggies into a stock pot and let simmer for 40 minutes. 

While that cooked, I needed Tony’s help to cut open my butternut squash!  He has the strength of ten men!

The soup is cooking now, so you’ll have to come back tomorrow for the recipe for that!

Stats for the Day:

• 1403 calories
• 43 fat
• 174 carbs
• 40 protein
• 16 fiber
• 30 minute walk with Ed

So excited for tomorrow – I am going to attempt to make crab ravioli from scratch.  Not your typical football food, but my step-son Joe is coming over to watch the games, and one of his favorite ravioli is lobster ravioli.  Considering I’d have to buy two whole lobsters to make it from scratch, let’s just say I bought a $10 can of lump crab from the grocery store.  I plan on making a vodka cream sauce for it.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend – see you tomorrow night!  Oh, and don’t forget to check out Jen’s e-Cookbook!  It’s only $5.00 and $4.00 will go to her local YMCA!

I am on staycation for 9 days!!!

A staycation is where you are off of work, but you stay at home.  Love it!  I have a ton of stuff I want to do while I am off.  I have lots of new recipes to try, one day I am going out to lunch with my Mom and going to a movie, then the day after Thanksgiving, Hannah and I are going to take the train downtown Chicago and see all the Christmas lights!  And lots of fitness center time!

I am glad I am not alone in grabbing the Christmas spirit too early!  My blog friend (even though I am old enough to be her Mutti!)  K and I are on the same page – Christmas music on the radio!!  Um, since I have new readers this year, I have a confession to make.  I like snowmen.  Um, I may have about 300+ snowman of all shapes and sizes, not including the snowmen ornaments I have!  It is my goal, to one year have an all snowman Christmas tree!

Okay, back to today!  I had no clue what to make for breakfast, so I stopped by Panera Bread.  I called ahead, hoping my Power Breakfast Sandwich and Small Fruit Cup would be ready by the time I got there.  Um, not so much!  Now I have had issues with this Panera Bread before – they seem to have tons of people working, but its so f’ing slow!  I get there, give them my name and he says it will be right up.  Mind you, this is 10 minutes after I called in the order!  I sit back, I wait.  They said “we ran out of eggs so we are making more – it will be just a couple minutes.”  Try 10 minutes later! So it took them 20 minutes to make a breakfast sandwich and fruit cup?

Once Tony has been to a place that has slow service, bad food, he won’t go back.  Me, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.  But I am seriously thinking I may just drive past this place!  That being said, the Power Breakfast Sammie was. . . delicious! It has this sharp Vermont cheddar cheese that just pulled the whole thing together for me.  So my thought is next time I order it 20 minutes before I want it!

It was a very filling breakfast!  I eat this around 8:45 and didn’t fix my lunch until 1:30! I took the rest of my Chinese food from last night and just rinsed it under cold water.  I was left with 2 ounces of shrimp and 4 ounces of broccoli.  I added carrot, bean sprouts and water chestnuts, and used my Korean bbq sauce at 20 calories a tablespoon for the seasoning.

Reason # 1,202 that I love my husband!  He bought me these chips!

Yep – Habanero lime potato chips – so good!  I had 1/2 a bag while the grill was getting to temperature.

Reason number #1,203 that I love my husband?  He made dinner!  I hog the kitchen all the time, but it is nice to sit back and get served dinner!   On the menu?  Man Food! Beef roast on the grill with salt and pepper baked potatoes.  Heaven on a Plate!

Rare meat is at 140 degrees, so well pull our meat off at about 125 degrees, since it still cooks while resting.  Perfect!

My plate: 6 ounces of potato, 1 pat of butter, 5 ounces of beef and 1 tablespoon of horseradish sauce.

Dinner was: 482 calories, 36 carbs, 16 fat and 47 protein

It was so nice out tonight that we sat outside and had a glass of wine while Tony was grilling.  Thank you Tony for a great start to my relaxing staycation! I love you! 

Soon these days will be gone when our yard is filled with snow!

Stats for the Day:

• 1480 calories
• 44 fat
• 172 carbs
• 107 protein
• 18 fiber
• 50 minute walk at lunch
• 90 ounces of water – nice!

Off to snuggle with Tony!  See you tomorrow night!

Who Ran a 5k at lunch?

Until I read Errign’s blog the other day, I never even thought about running a 5k on a treadmill before!  (And speaking of Errign – she has another giveaway – go check it out!).  I usually do my typical 5 minute warm up and then my 5 minute intervals of jogging and then sprinting the last 30 seconds, increasing the sprint on each 5 minute interval.

But today after I warmed up, I said “just run until you can’t go anymore.”  I decided to take it 5 minutes at a time. Mind you, I was only going 4.5 mph, but I was watching FoodTV (Boy Meets Grill with Bobby Flay then Guys Big Bite!).  I told myself to just watch the t.v., and to only look down at the treadmill at the beginning of each commercial.

Before I knew it I had run 20 minutes straight!  Then the next thing I knew, I was at 2.9 miles and knew I could go the distance!  At exactly 39:01 minutes of continuous running, I ran 3.2 miles!  I was such a dork – I am in the fitness center at my office, all by myself, but I put my hands in the air like I was crossing a finish line!

And I actually felt I could have gone longer!  Talk about my inner athlete starting to come out!  And all this time I told myself I couldn’t continually run when I guess I never let myself even try! I pushed outside my comfort zone, and it felt good!

I had to be creative with breakfast today since I didn’t do a full grocery shop.  I kind of felt like my bread/apple/cheese combo, when I realized we were out of bread.  And that’s when I saw them – corn tostadas!!  Each one is only 43 calories!

My egg mixture was 1 fresh egg, 1/2 cup egg beaters, 1 ounce deli ham, 1/2 ounce Mexican cheese on each tostada, spinach, and orange pepper.  I cooked the eggs before work then assembled my tostadas and put them in the office toaster oven to melt the cheese.  Then drizzled taco bell sauce on top – it was crispy, crunchy – yummy!  I had the last of the cantaloupe – 4.5 ounces.  It was almost over ripe, but still good!

My plate:

After my run I waited about 1/2 hour to eat – I actually wasn’t too hungry, but since I could feel my flood sugar dropping, I knew I had to eat.  1 cup of my pear blue cheese soup!  I brought the other half of the recipe to my co-worker.  She called me and said: “I would eat this soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 365 days its that good!”  Not to brag, but I do think it is a winning combo!  I had a turkey wrap on the side.

I had to work a bit late tonight, so Tony picked up some Chinese food for dinner.  I had one egg roll, 1 cup of shrimp and broccoli with 1/2 cup shrimp fried rice.  I kind of guessed on the calories – do you think I am close??

Stats for the Day:

• 1520 calories
• 42 fat
• 189 carbs (I went about 14 grams over)
• 105 protein
• 30 fiber
• 5 minute warm up
• 39 minute run!
• 5 minute cool down
• 10 minute walk with the dog after dinner
• 90 ounces of water

Gotta scoot. It’s almost 9:00 p.m. and I don’t have my comfy clothes on yet!  Hannah and I had another meeting at the high school tonight about her German Exchange Program!

If I am not going out at night, I put my pajamas on as soon as I walk in the door, even when cooking dinner!  Do you put your comfy clothes on asap?

See you tomorrow – only one more work day and I am on staycation for nine days!!!!