You know that Tony is starting to feel a tiny bit better when . . .

He did this to me. . . I turned my back to the stove for a minute, I thought he was getting water at the sink, then next thing I do is turn around and see this . . .  and jump!

You would think I would just throw the damn thing out, but I seriously forget about it!

Now breakfast yesterday may seem weird, but trust me, its delicious.  6 ounces of baked potato that I fried in a teaspoon of olive oil.  I topped it with a fried egg (its under there!) with 1/2 ounce mozzarella cheese and 1/2 cup of my homemade marinara – this whole delicious bowl is only 8 points! 😀

the fresh basil on top was nice too 😀

I’ve talked in the past about how I have to tweak my insulin intake in order to work out at lunch.  I typically have to take 1/2 the amount of insulin at breakfast, so that before I work out, my blood sugar is between 200 and 220.  Yesterday I was at 227 – perfect!

I decided to run TWO MILES without stopping yesterday – I did a 5 minute warm up, reset the clock and just ran.  I did adjust the mph a few times up or down, but I never stopped. 😀  I did two miles in 26:58 – or about a 12:30 mph pace – not bad!  I cooled down so my total treadmill time was 40 minutes.

I remember Ali from Biggest Loser was always asked how she had such toned arms, and she said every day she did the rowing machine for 20 minutes – 10 minutes overhand and 10 minutes underhand.  I decided I would try to do 5 minutes each way for a total of 10 minutes.  Nope!  It’s fricken hard!  I ended up doing 5 minutes and then finished with 5 minutes of abs on the balance ball. 😀

But, since I pushed it really hard, I realized as I was heading up the elevator to my office, that my blood sugar was low.  REALLY LOW.  I can always tell because I start to see white spots in my vision and the sweat starts.   When I got to my desk I checked my blood sugar – it was 40!

While my first instinct was to go to the front reception desk to eat tiny snickers, I knew I had fruit in my lunch bag – I quickly eat this and was feeling much better.

I never realized this about myself before, but whenever I eat a fruit salad, I eat each fruit separately - same for this dish

I am the queen of shopping off of my stores weekly sale flyer.  One thing that I noticed that I have never gotten before is boneless pork stew meat.  It was only $2.69 a pound!  I did a quick search on tastespotting, and found this dish, which was my inspiration for my lunch.  It’s not exactly the same recipe, but holy cow is this a flavorful dish!

Since I am not sure I can actually call it a true Carne Adodava as the original recipe, I am simply calling this:

Spicy Pork Stew with Zucchini and Brown Rice

• please note that the actual calories and point values will not match because the recipe builder includes the TOTAL nutrition, even for the free stuff like peppers
• This makes 4 servings (4 ounces of pork per serving, the sauce and veggies are 0 points) 280 calories, 12.5 fat, 6.8 carbs, 1.7 fiber and 33 protein: 4 PointsPlus

Ingredients:

• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 1 pound lean pork stew meat, trimmed of all visible fat
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 red pepper, sliced
• 1 green pepper, sliced
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 2 ounces New Mexican red chile powder*
• 5 cups water
• 2 large zucchini, diced

In a stock pot, heat oil over medium heat.  When hot, add pork pieces until brown (1/3 of a batch at a time) until browned all over.  Pork should sizzle when it touches the pot, if it doesn’t, remove it and wait for the oil to heat up.  Transfer all of the pork to a separate bowl.

Add garlic and salt to the pot, cooking for 1 minute.  Add flour and cook for 3 minutes.  Add red and green peppers, the chile powder*, and 4 cups of water.  Simmer for 30 minutes until the peppers are tender.

Using a stick blender, puree until smooth.  Add pork back in – add an additional cup of water if desired, I left it at 4 cups because I wanted a thicker sauce.  Cook for an additional 45 minutes, until the pork is fork tender.   Turn off heat and add the zucchini.  Let cool.

After I trimmed off all the fat, I used 1 pound of the meat, and the dog got the rest in his bowl – he was a happy camper!

Here is where the ** comes in.  I couldn’t find didn’t look hard enough for the New Mexican dried red chile powder.  What I did find was this:

when I read "for orange" I thought this might not be too spicy and I was right - just a hint of citrus - yum!

I had cooked brown rice in the refrigerator, so added 1/2 cup of rice to my dish to soak up all this wonderful sauce – next time I might even add broccoli and carrots to bulk it up.  This was so satisfying – something about a high protein lunch just keeps me full for hours. 😀

the pork was so tender 😀

So Tony still didn’t have much of an appetite for dinner, so I made him some noodles with chicken broth – no veggies or chicken.  😦

So dinner was all me since Hannah had school and then hung out with friends.  Ever since we saw Bobby Flay do a throw down of lasagna, I’ve been thinking about it.  Although in the version we saw, they breaded and deep fried the zucchini for the pasta layers.  I used naked zucchini – and I will tell you this – I never missed the lasagna noodles.  Since the other half of this is going to be for my lunch tomorrow – you’ll have to come back tomorrow for the recipe.

I’ll just tell you this – half of the casserole – this giant serving is only 7 points!

Stats for Wednesday:

• 34 points (including 6 for wine)
• 40 minute treadmill, which included a 2 mile run at 26:58
• 5 minute row machine
• 5 minute abs on the ball
• average blood sugar – on the low side – 85

Another quick note – I have been a food journal person for the longest time, either in a book or now online at eTools.  I pulled out my journals for 2007 when I was using calories and carbs to manage my diabetes.  I weighed 150 pounds at the time (which I thought was a lot – ha!)

notice the blood sugar numbers on the bottom right - back then I was happy with anything around 200 - and sometimes I still had readings in the 300s!

Then I picked out two consecutive days to see where the points came in at:

Not bad! 29 points and 1303 calories.

The next day:

Wow - 29 points again!

But WTF?  I ate 553 more calories the second day than the first day.  What was the difference?  On the second day I had 8 servings of fruit and vegetables and twice the amount of fiber – the PointsPlus program finally makes sense to me – I couldn’t figure out how the calories didn’t count, but it the quality of the points that matter most.

Do you journal your food – if so, paper or computer?

I am off to take a walk before work, not sure I’ll be able to work out during the day today because of my work schedule – can I just say its sad that its March 10 and it’s 34 degrees but with the windchill it feels like 20? 😦