Also, I’m pretty sure I won’t be losing weight this week. I’ve suddenly found myself in one of my moods where I can eat an infinite amount and never feel satisfied.
At least I have a fresh batch of lettuce – I’ll try myself on infinite amounts of salad when I get home.
Until then, though, I have the M&M’s my boss brought back from M&M World in Las Vegas.
And tea.
It’s all right, but just letting you know that if you wanted to go out to eat this week, I’m totally your girl.
Okay, so I haven’t been giving you all recipes for salads, but let me tell you that I am loving them. I am a salad god. Or something like that. But I’ve been making a lot of salads lately, and they’ve all been pretty awesome… so now I’ll try to reconstruct them from (dubious) memory and my sketchy notes:
8/8/08
Cold Bit
spring mix
small bits of broccoli tops
1 Tbsp pickled ginger, patted dry
(would have also been good with some napa cabbage shreds here)
Hot Bit
thinly sliced baby carrots
thinly sliced purple onion
thinly slices garlic
thinly sliced broccoli stem
stir fried in 1/2 tsp olive oil, 1/4 tsp sesame oil, and San-J Szechuan sauce
Dressing
1/2 tsp chinese mustard (mixed up according to the directions on the bottle)
1 tsp black pepper sauce
juice of half a lime
1 tsp buckwheat honey
1/2 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp black vinegar
~*~
8/1/08
Hot Bit (part 1)
cooked up one slice of bacon on the stove, set it in a paper towel, and drained the fat from the pan
Cold Bit
spring mix
1 diced jalepeno pepper
2 Tbsp blue cheese crumbles (oddly, this was a bit too much cheese – just 1 Tbsp for a more balanced flavor)
sun dried tomatoes
broccoli
grind of pepper
Hot Bit (part 2)
in same pan, cook:
sliced red onion
3 ounces of sliced leftover chicken breast
Dressing
juice of half a lime
2/3 tsp black pepper sauce
1/4 tsp buckwheat honey
5 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp Grey Poupon mustard
1 tsp Manischewitz concord grape
~*~
7/26/08
Cold Bit
spring mix
baby carrots, sliced thinly on an angle
1 tomato, quartered and then sliced thinly
3 oz extra sharp cheddar cheese, sliced
Dressing
salvaged bits from very, very ripe apricots
1 diced jalepeno pepper
2 finely sliced shallots
3 Tbsp white balsamic vinegar
lime zest
(let the above sit a while, thinking they might become salsa… then realise the apricots have completely liquefied and should be salad dressing)
2 tsp Grey Poupon mustard
juice of 1 lime (already missing some zest)
~*~
7/7/08
Cold Bits
spring mix
salmon jerky (from Alaska)
thinly sliced red onion
1/2 avocado, sliced (and the rest eaten with a spoon and some more of the dressing – it was perfect)
Hot Bits
slight handful of slivered almonds, toasted
Dressing
juice of 1/2 lime
2 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 tsp lime brown sugar (brown sugar with lime zest in it – lime bit optional)
1 tsp Grey Poupon mustard
1 Tbsp soy sauce
grate of nutmeg
pinch of chipotle
~*~
7/4/08
Cold Bits
spring mix!
a few baby carrots, sliced in half and then thinly lengthwise
2 scallions, sliced thinly into rounds
1/4 cup roasted red pepper, sliced roughly against the grain
1/4 cup sliced dried tomatoes
Hot Bits
2 Tbsp fried leeks
3 oz thinly sliced beef
Dressing
1 tsp tamarind-lime-honey sauce
1 tsp Grey Poupon mustard
4 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
dash of 5 spice powder
~*~
6/26/08
Cold Bits
spring mix
several baby carrots, sliced thinly on an angle
1 very ripe banana, cut in half lengthwise, and then sliced
sections cut out from 1 orange
Hot Bits
4 oz leftover pork (having been cubed braised in taco seasoning and orange juice)
Dressing
5 tsp balsamic vinegar
2 tsp tamarind-lime-honey sauce
2 tsp wildflower honey
1 tsp Grey Poupon mustard
Topping
1/4 cup roasted salted cashews
2 scallions, cut in rounds, but on a slight angle
I have way too much meat in the house
food I have
Produce
rapidly aging lettuce (one last meal there, if I pick through it tonight)
broccoli
2 grapefruit
carrots
1 red bell peppers
jalepeno peppers
tomatoes
plums (1 purple/black, 3 green)
pears
2 eggplants
1 yellow squash
1 zucchini
bunch of scallions
1 kiwi
potatoes
yellow onions, 1 purple onion, and shallots
Meat
chicken stock
most of 1 breast of chicken
rapidly aging roast beef leftovers
Harry’s roast beef leftovers
Harry’s beef sirloin leftovers
pork leftovers
leftover meatloaf
menu planning
Monday, August 4
dinner: salad – with pickled carrots, ginger, scallions, maybe some zucchini, and some purple onion – using some of the chinese mustard in the dressing
Also prep for lunches: hash using up potatoes, oldest beef roast, the last of the purple onions, and some garlic. Freeze meatloaf into portions, too.
Tuesday, August 5
try to get to Whole Foods to buy more salad greens before Weight Watchers
dinner: Do something with eggplant, yellow squash, and zucchini. Stir Fry? Ratatouille? Or just roast them and use them in salads for a couple weeks? Turn the eggplant into curry and save the squash for later?
Wednesday, August 6
Think about making a soup.
Also think about what to do with the sexy leftover beef that is not hash
An adventure in center city led to a lovely lunch. Let me tell you about it!
Kanella! It’s a Greek Cypriot kitchen.
And there was cuttlefish on the menu! Prepared some way other than “in its own ink.”
Sadly, I was in a rush, so I did not order the cuttlefish, but the (very cute) server told me that it is often an appetizer, so when I make reservations I should ask to make sure they would have it.
Instead, I had the Spanikopita. There was more feta than spinach and it had a lemony tang… and while neither of those are my first choice in how to prepare the dish, I was still delighted by the flavors and textures. If I say it was creamy goodness (with a little bit of tart) exploding in my mouth – you guys will take that as a good thing, right? I think even the phyllo dough had flavor! Slightly nuttier than the average phyllo.
It came with a delicious salad, which would have made me quite happy on its own, and a mound of greek yogurt – sexy, tasty, creamy greek yogurt.
Because I was eating at 2pm, there were only 4 other tables filled, so I got to talk a little with the server and owners/chefs. They have only been open three months. The owners/chefs are from West Philadelphia. And they already fill up with reservations most nights for dinner.
In addition to loving the fresh foods, I also loved how it was decorated – it’s a bit like Lourdas, in Bryn Mawr, with the white washed walls and blue trim (possibly required for 78% of Greek restaurants in a geographical area), but it goes even further with rough-hewn wood tables and benches. Over the doorway is a massive bundle of the eponymous cinnamon, and the windows are lined with potted plants – some floral and some herbal (and looking like they might actually be used in the cooking). There’s even a lemon tree. It was strange to have the restaurant be air conditioned because it felt as though it was an open air taverna… a fairly fancy one.
So I’d love to go back there. I’d love to share this restaurant with you guys. I’ll warn you now that the dinner entrees went up to $26 & market price, but there weren’t any appetizers over $10 so I’d propose a dinner of appetizers and salads (at least for my part). And I can’t tell you what they’ll have because the menu seems to change daily – they had just printed up today’s dinner menu and brought it out when I got to see it.
You know… I am not so sure about my Weight Watchers meeting. I mean, I really do like the way the program is structured and I think it’s very reasonable. No, it’s the actual people who worry me.
There’s the woman who believes all of her problems are solved by a sugar substitute called Whey Low because it has zero points and doesn’t have that crazy artificial stuff that other sweeteners do. So she’ll eat half a Boston Cream Pie or so, if it’s made with Whey Low. She brought samples for us to try, and I’ve got to say that it’s the only sugar substitute I’ve tried that gets the nice, crunchy texture of sugar right. But it’s primarily highly processed fructose, which some people think has exactly the same problems with it as high fructose corn syrup… and I just can’t burst her bubble.
There’s one woman who is incredibly bitter and keeps talking about how she thinks the reason she isn’t doing well on her diet is because she doesn’t think she deserves to look good. Because her job isn’t as happy a place as it used to be and she’s not getting any validation there and can’t control anything. At which one of the other women turned to her and – I kid you not – said, “See, that’s what’s great about dieting. That’s the one area of your life you can control, so you should focus on that.” And until I said something, not one person was going to come up with, “Honey, maybe you should see a shrink!” (though I did phrase it a bit more tactfully…) But I totally waited for someone else – especially the group leader – to come up with the idea.
I think I am the only one in the group who doesn’t have alcohol as a major source of calories.
This week, we were told that in order to get more control, we should work out a schedule so that we’d always snack at the same time and all – and have a rigid timeframe for food. And, oh my god! I am totally cool with keeping track of everything I eat – partly because I find it hilarious every time I pause to enter things into the computer so I can see how much more food the computer will let me eat, and partly because I like making lists. When [redacted] saw me entering food, her response was, “Oh, I understand now why this particular diet appeals to you.” But you know what? Writing down everything AND scheduling everything is just way too OCD for me. And I think that if it’s too OCD for me, then nobody could be healthy doing it.
And then just today I have noticed a couple point weirdnesses on the computer:
1) Bagels. For some reason (lots of highly processed flour/carbohydrates), Weight Watchers hates bagels. I love bagels. And there was a meeting a few weeks ago where everyone else had given up bagels because they were just too many points, and I am totally still in the bagel camp. But then again, today people were saying that a standard, 6-inch bagel was 2n points. But on my computer, a medium bagel is definitely n points. Is there a different bagel scale of which I am unaware? I’m pretty sure my bagels are medium-ish. ETA: apparently the right answer is 2n+1
2) Lettuce. Betrayed by lettuce! So I can put in up to 10 ounces of lettuce on the tracker at one time. (I love discovering places that sell a pound of spring mix for cheap) And according to the computer, 10 ounces of lettuce are 0 points. Just today, however, I had accidentally left it measuring in cups, and 3 cups of lettuce is .5 points… and I’m thinking that unless I am damaging my lettuce by squishing it into those cups, my 10 ounces might have taken up a bit more space… maybe… after I fluffed it in its box.