Mothers Day 2012

Happy Mothers Day!

It seems everyone I know is pregnant right now, which is not true, I really only know like 5 pregnant people right now, but still, it’s a lot of moms-to-be! Also three of the bloggers I read daily are also pregnant, so I think it’s just in the air.

We had such a lovely mothers day this year! It was actually the first time Mr. Gaunt and I hosted a dinner that wasn’t just my mom and siblings. My grandparents came up for the afternoon too, which was really cool. My grandparents are really awesome people with lots of really great skills. They can cook better than anyone I know (my grandpa is a professional BBQ and they owned restaurants for years) so getting the opportunity to make a meal for them was kind of exciting. The house and yard also look really awesome right now (if I do say so myself) and with prefect weather and a perfect cat, the day was splendid! I felt like such a grown up. I can’t wait until we have kids and can have birthday parties and other fun holiday celebrations at our house.

Mr. Gaunt did all the grilling today, while mom and I made salad, potato salad, asparagus, sangria, chocolate cover strawberries, and garlic bread. Yum. We really know how to eat.

This first photo is really awesome. It’s me and my mom and my grandma, I think it’s the only three generation photo I have, all we need now is a baby (I know I’m starting to sound baby crazy!). We all look so similar, and blonde…lol!

Mr. Gaunt cooked his first Salmon, and we also did steak kabobs and Asparagus on the grill.

My mom bought me that cute cherry tablecloth at a thrift store in Portland, and today she made a quick stop at Kmart where they had flat sheets on clearance for $5, so that’s what that green one is. Who knew a flat twin sheet fit a 6′ card table so well?

My Fur Baby was extra sweet all day too!

Tomorrow its back to work. My back is a bit sore tonight from cleaning, gardening, moving the lawns and cooking all day. Lordy. It’s also back to the gym this week. We took all of last week off from the gym and worked out outside in the nice weather.  This coming week is supposed to be pretty darn nice too, but we paid for the membership so we rally should use it. It’s just so much nicer, and we work out so much longer outside. Oh well. I’m a little sun burnt too.

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY TO ALL, especially my awesome mom.

Not A Cook Anymore

I kind of miss cooking.

I haven’t really cooked anything since we started round 2 of weight loss. I know I cooked a lot when we did Weight Watchers, but were doing things a little differently now. For me cooking is a way to really enjoy food. To mix flavors and textures and really take full pleasure in what you eat. I’m avoiding that. The 45 pounds I’m trying to lose means that I have enjoyed the pleasure of my fair share of food. Now I’m trying to enjoy the pleasure of my body (well that just sounds awkward) but seriously. I’m tying to see changes and feel changes in what my body can do. I WANT to be proud of my body, not to hate it.

But I miss cooking. And baking. And Food Gawker. And Cookbooks. And GROCERY SHOPPING! Sweet sweet grocery shopping, how I loved thee. I use to love nothing more than spending an hour wandering around Whole Foods or Sunflower Market picking out all the good things I would cook. Getting home and putting them all away and staring at a fridge full of veggies and goodness!

Now I got to the store and grab the five things I NEED to get through the week. Yogurt, Fruit, Granola, Chicken, Vegetables.

It’s not fun anymore. Althought being fat was never fun either, so who am I to complain. You cant bake your cake and be skinny too!

The good news is I am having a little Veggie Potluck with friends in 2 weeks and I’m going to go all out and make something awesome!

Until then I’m going to go workout and eat BBQ Chicken and Dill Relish for lunch….Dont Judge!

GOALS GOALS GOAL…

Vegan Apple Banana Mini Muffins

My friend Jenny made these for Liam to have in the morning for breakfast. She joked that she made mini ones to be baby size, but Liam just eats 4 or 5 of them. There still extra cute in mini form, I chose to make mini just to reduce my portion size.

About a week ago I broke down and bought Organic Unbleached Flour instead of my usual Whole Wheat Flour. As much as I LOVE WW Flour, it’s not the best for baking, and I really like to bake. When Jenny gave this recipe to me it wasnt Vegan. The recipe called for 2 eggs, which I substituted for 2 overly ripe bananas, works perfect! Also I switched the regular butter to Earth Balance Vegan Butter. Lastly it calls for chunky Applesauce, but I only had smooth, so I diced up a small apple and threw that in with it.

They turned out amazing! So moist and yummy! Perfect for breakfast and a mid day snack, they don’t need butter or anything. I will be making these often. Jenny freezes them and throws them in the microwave for breakfast, seems like a pretty good idea.

VEGAN APPLE BANANA MINI MUFFINS:

Ingredients

6 Tablespoons Vegan Butter Melted

1.5 Cups Organic Unbleached Flour

1 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Cinnamon

1/2 tsp Salt

2 Very Ripe Bananas

2/3 C Brown Sugar

1 Cup Organic Unsweetened Applesauce

1 Small Apple

Directions

Preheat oven to 375

Spray mini (or big) muffin pan with PAM

Melt Butter in large bowl

Add Bananas, Applesauce, Diced Apples and mix well

In a separate bowl mix all dry ingredients.

Combine Dry ingredients with Apple mixture, stir well.

Fill muffin tray 3/4 full

Bake for 20 minutes.

These would also be good with some walnuts in them too!

In other fun news I will be ordering a Cherry Pitter and a Food Dehydrator tomorrow! I also got the latest issue of Clean Eating Magazine and it is FULL of amazing summer recipes I need to try, including Roasted Cherries that will be so much easier to make with my cherry pitter.

My food diet has been going amazingly well, I am down 4.5lbs since Monday morning! Crazy! I did however cheat tonight, a good friend of Mr. Gaunt’s is moving tomorrow to Arizona and wanted to take us out to dinner. I picked going to Merels one of our favorite restaurants, because I knew they had some good vegetarian options. I ended up getting a Veggie burger with a fruit cup side, plus a basket of yam chips and guac for the table. I limited myself to only a few chips and just half my burger, plus FOUR giant glasses of water to make me too full to keep eating. Still feeling a little guilty I made sure I went straight to the pool when we got home. Usually I swim 20 laps and then do another 1/2  hour of water aerobics. Tonight I stepped it up and did FORTY LAPS! Wowza! It felt amazing. I have now done 5 consecutive days of lap swimming, go me!

Day One in Pictures!

I wanted to share how my first day of Eating Like a Baby went! Just so you can see what exactly I will be eating, and also to give you a bit more information on my techniques.

First off I had someone ask me what the importance of cutting food up is. To help explain this I’m pulling a paragraph from this article:

Cut your food up into bite sized pieces. Cutting your food up into smaller bite sized pieces will ultimately make you ‘think’ you have more food.

You can ‘see’ it.

This optical perception is transmitted to your brain. If you see more food on your plate, your brain will acknowledge that and you’ll trick yourself into believing you’ve actually got more food on your plate. Your stomach will feel fuller from eating such a ‘large’ meal, when all you really did was cut your food up into smaller bite sized pieces.

You can lose weight, just by utilizing the perception that you have eaten more!

This is a ‘brain trick’ you can use often. Cut your food up into smaller pieces and you will ‘see’ why its one of the most terrific ways to lose weight that I know!

See totally worth it! i even cut my pizza up into small pieces tonight! Ok onto the meals (please note this is what pictures look like when taken in poor lighting with zero staging…lol!):

BREAKFAST (4:45 am):

1 Whole Wheat Low Fat Eggo Waffle (70 calories)

1/2 Cup Organic Unsweetened Applesauce (50 calories)

1/2 Pink Lady Apple Diced (40 calories)

1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon

I mixed the apples in with the apple sauce and cinnamon over night. No Butter, No Syrup.

MID MORNING SNACK (8:00 am)

1/2 Cup Honey Nut Cheerios (100 calories)

1 Cliff Bar (250 calories)

6 Raw Almonds (20 calories)

LUNCH (10:00 am)

1/2 Cup Pasta (110 calories)

1/2 cup Grilled Veggies (20 calories)

3 mozzarella Balls (10 calories)

1/2 mango Sausage (80)

1/4 Avocado (50)

1/2 cup watermelon(20 calories)

1/2 cup cantaloupe (30 calories)

LATE AFTERNOON SNACK (3:00 pm)

1 Slice Ezekiel Bread (80)

1 Slice Light Swiss Cheese (60)

1/4 Avocado (50)

DINNER (6:30 pm)

1/4 cup Pasta (50 calories)

1/4 cup Grilled Veggies (10 calories)

1/2 cup watermelon(20 calories)

1/2 cup cantaloupe (30 calories)

2 slices Caprese Pizza (recipe to come) (300 calories)

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In total I ate just under 1500 calories. Im not really concerned about calories, but every now and then I like to see where Im hitting in a day. 1500 is good for weight loss. I also did about 45 minutes of aquatic work out. 20 laps + aerobics. I feel really great about how the day went! Even now at 9:15 I could totally do a snack, but instead I brushed my teeth and put on my crest white strips…cant eat now! ha!

Weekend Meals

POACHED EGGS & TOAST : Protein (22g) Fiber (4g) Calories (242) Fat (11)

MACARONI & CHEESE : Protein (18g) Fiber (10g) Calories (309) Fat (6g)

SALMON DINNER : Protein (47g) Fiber (11g) Calories (582) Fat (23)

DAILY NUTRITION CONSUMED: (please note I only counted the large food and did not count oils, seasonings, and drinks)

CALORIES: 1133  DAILY REQUIRED: 2000

PROTEIN: 87 grams  DAILY REQUIRED: 46

FIBER: 25 grams DAILY REQUIRED: 25-30

FAT: 40 grams DAILY REQUIREMENTS : 65

These werent actually eaten in one day, they are parts of two days meals. The above chart also does not include any snacks or beverages I consumed. This is just a good way to show you what kind of nutrition my main meals have.

Looking at this though, it shows that I am in fact lacking in FRUIT! Grrr I cant wait for summer! Today I am planning on getting a big bag of Grapefruit and peeling them all and putting them in Mason Jars to eat throughout the week. I love fruit, and I get sad when I don’t have it. Other than that each meals includes Whole Grains (the toast, the Orzo, The macaroni) and a healthy Protein (Organic Eggs, Low fat turkey Sausage, salmon) I also managed to get veggies in two of the dishes (Kale in the Mac-n-cheese and Asparagus).

Obviously all the meals do include carbs.  I usually do at least one meal a day without carbs, but the carbs were all whole wheat. The Mac-n-cheese is a “were too lazy to cook and we want comfort food” meal for Mr. Gaunt and I. I get the Back To Nature 100% Whole Wheat macaroni and White Cheddar at Sunflower market or Whole Foods. We almost always add a lean chicken sausage to give us a little protein, and yesterday I chopped up some kale and threw that in (I’m pretty much convinced you can throw Kale in anything). As soon as I did this (added the Kale) it got me thinking about Kids and feeding them vegetables. Teaching my children good nutrition is really important to me, and I plan on doing a post on this at a later date.

The Salmon is also a new thing. I have been purchasing Tilapia because its cheap and easy and lower in fat, but have recently heard poor reviews on its nutritional values. As a kid growing up in Washington I was always the odd man out because I hated Salmon and people cook a ton of it there. As I’ve gotten older my taste buds have changed greatly and now I really like Salmon. The cost is a lot higher (almost twice as much) for frozen Salmon Filets at Costco versus Tilapia, but investing in my health is what this year is all about! So Mr. Gaunt and I bought the Salmon and we attempted to grill it (on our cooktop grill) last night. Things started out well but then flipping the steaks caused them to break apart, so Mr. Gaunt just chopped them all up. It was actually quite yummy because it has a bunch of crispy parts. We put it on a bed of Orzo with some sesame asparagus, delish.

Anyway I just wanted to show some good healthy meals that are pretty damn easy if I do say so myself. Now Im off to get Grapefruit!

Moving to Bollywood.

Chicken Masala

Sunday Mr. Gaunt and I decided to make this Indian dish that I’ve had on the menu for a while. I had tried last week to find garam masala seasoning at the regular grocery store but couldn’t, so Mr. Gaunt and I found an Indian Grocer near our house on Sunday. The Grocer we went to was suer small but had tons of cool Indian spices and ingredients. There was also a super sweet young guy working there that we chatted with for a while who gave us a great website to look up Indian recipes and videos. We found the one thing we needed and got some other fun items, including my favorite Naan Bread!

The Recipe I used was the easiest I could find, indian food often has a million ingredients. We of course did a few substitutes, instead of white rice we did Quinoa, and I only used 2 chicken breast dipped in Whole Wheat Flour. I also used half a bag of frozen red and green peppers instead of peas. It turned out really well, and pretty spicy (we did 2 tablespoons of the Garam Masala) both of really enjoyed it. Oh and incase you make this recipe note that it feeds at least 4 people, so you will have leftovers!