Core WW Cherry Cheesecake Smoothie

I switched to the Weight Watchers Core program over a week ago and lost 4.6 pounds my first week. I continued to do it this week, and am guessing I will have another loss, although I won’t find out until Wednesday morning.

 No counting points, I just eat as much as I want from the Core food list until I feel satisfied. Plus I still can earn and eat my activity points and eat 35 points for my weekly allowance. It’s much easier, plus I’m paying more attention to my body, hunger and fullness signals.

Here is one of my new Core dessert recipes.

Cherry Cheesecake Smoothie

1 cup skim milk
1 cup frozen cherries
1 tsp vanilla
2-3 tsp sugar free fat free cheesecake instant Jello pudding
1/2 cup of ice

Add to a blender and mix until smooth. Delicious!

Girl Scout Cookies and Weight Watchers

Girl Scout Brownie - Michelle

Our first boxes of Girl Scout cookies arrived last Friday. There were 2 boxes which my husband had ordered from his friend. He only shared a few Somoas with me.

I had ordered several boxes from a neighbor, but had yet to receive them. Well, I got my six boxes today, and my dilemma is what to do as a Weight Watcher.

I have a long history with the Girl Scouts, as I was one. View the lovely photo of me in my Brownie outfit (very figure flattering) in the 1980’s. My mom was even a leader for my troop for a number of years.

We had fun singing songs, going on trips and camping, but one of my best memories is of the cookies. Our house would be full of the cases of cookies, where my mom had to sort and distribute them to the girls in her troop.

My favorites are Thin Mints, Samoas and Trefoils who have kept their lovely 70’s shape throughout the years.

Now I have a daughter of my own who can join the Girl Scouts when she starts school, but that’s a few years off.

I know I can count the points for the cookies, but for me, it’s hard to resist only having 3, 4 or 5 cookies. I usually can eat half a box of cookies a day. My 6 boxes could be gone before the end of the week. I know I can freeze them too, and the Thin Mints in particular taste particularly yummy frozen.

I looked up the points, and the best amount of cookies for the points turns out to be the Trefoils with 5 cookies for only 4 points. I had even ordered a box of the Sugar Free Chocolate Chip cookies to try, but turns out you only get 3 cookies for 4 points!

Here are the points values that I calculated from Little Brownie Bakers.

Cookie	Amount	Points
Trefoils	5 cookies	4
Thin Mints	4 cookies	3
Samoas	2 cookies	4
Do-si-dos	2 cookies	3
Tagalong	2 cookies	4
All Abouts	3 cookies	4
Sugar Free Chocolate Chip	3 cookies	4
Lemon Chalet Cremes	1 cookie	2

So far today, I’ve only had five Thin Mints (and put down 3 points on my WW tracker), but it’s going be hard to make it through tonight, the rest of the weekend, and heck, even the rest of the week. What’s a girl to do?

Fabulous Apple Spice Cake

I’m starting the holiday baking for a party at work tomorrow and am using this old favorite Weight Watchers recipe. I was going to make my homemade, non-WW friendly cookies, but decided to wait till this weekend for my normal Christmas cookie baking.

This is a very moist cake that only has three ingredients, a box of spice cake mix, apple pie filling, an egg and egg whites. I’ve also used 2 eggbeaters as a substitute for the eggs before, but here is the orginal recipe.

 Fabulous Apple Spice Cake

1 Spice Cake Mix (I prefer Duncan Hines)
1 cap apple pie filling (try the no-sugar added ones)
1 egg
2 egg whites

Mix ingredients together by hand. Spray a bundt cake pan with cooking spray. Pour mixture into pan and bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees.

Makes 18 servings for 3 points each.

Holiday parties are all about the food

It’s a miracle. I just completed three days of holiday parties without gaining more than a pound. I don’t know how I did it, but I’m not going to argue with the scale.

Wednesday kicked off the start with a little “sweet” holiday soiree by a department at work other than my own. It was held in the afternoon and only had desserts and sweets which included cake, chocolate crème puffs, cinnamon sugar covered walnuts, cookies, fruit, ice cream and Ghirardelli chocolates. If you know me at all, I have a rather large sweet tooth, so I indulged in most of the goodies, and even included some fruit on my plate.

Thursday was my husband’s holiday party during the work day at his place of employment. Spouses were not technically invited, but I snuck in. Their spread of dishes included many healthy options like salad, sandwiches, vegetarian dishes, and of course the dessert tray with an assortment of lemon bars, cheesecake bars, cookies and other treats. For beverages they had smoothies, and for dessert they had sorbet! The main dishes were too delicious for me to know it was healthy for me.

Friday night was our company’s party, held at the Signature Theatre in Shirlington, where spouses were invited. Timed from 4-8pm, we got my sister to be our sitter, and arrived a little before 5pm. We each got two drink tickets, and beer and wine was served until 5, and then after the full bar opened.

Dinner was more of an appetizer/buffet style with two tables of food. It wasn’t ready until about 5pm either. One table had an Asian food theme going on with spring rolls. They were being hand rolled and the line was enormous.

The other spread was more American style with mini grilled cheese sandwiches that had salmon or ham inside. They also had glasses with chicken and a whole grain we couldn’t figure out at the bottom, followed by grilled meat of some sort and grilled mushrooms. This was the shorter line, so I started here first.

My main complaint, no dessert table to begin with. From 5pm – 7pm, it was drinks, and two tables of food. At 7, they brought out the dessert.

Now if I’m planning what I want to eat, I want to see all of my options in front of me! I didn’t know if the dessert would be fabulous or just average, and if I should hold back on my dinner choices.

In the end, the dessert was just slightly above average. They had fruit on kabobs, some mini spice cake/brownie things, but the best part was the servers who went around carrying trays of chocolates. My husband spotted them first, brought me two, brought me another one, and on my way out I grabbed two more. They were a variety of dark and milk chocolate on the outside and different crèmes on the inside. The only one I didn’t care for was the coffee flavored one.

Sure there were drinks and dancing, but for me it’s all about the food.

My two highlights of the evening, the chocolates and taking a snap shot of our VP doing the DJ Casper Cha Cha Slide dance.

New breakfast foods

Greek yogurt from Trader Joe’s. Zero percent fat and 20 grams of protein. It is very thick, sour and tart by itself, but tastes delicious with some strawberries and Splenda. 1 cup is 2 points.

Kashi Go Lean Crunch cereal. Recommended by a coworker, has a lot of fiber and some protein in it. 1 cup is 3 points, plus 1 cup of milk equals a nice 5 point breakfast that lasts almost until lunch.

Amy’s Breakfast Burritos. Raved about by my former WW leader. I saw them on sale, buy one get one free, so bought a few. Entirely vegetarian with beans, tomatoes, potatoes, and tofu. Takes about 3 minutes to heat in the microwave, and only 5 points.

It’s the most important meal of the day. Enjoy!

Crockpot time – Moroccan Chicken and Lentils

I forget how much I love my crockpot until fall and winter comes along. I never break it out during the rest of the year, but it’s so easy to make dinner with a slow cooker!

Since I’m done with grad school, and trying to do better with this weight loss thing, I decided to try and plan some meals this past week. This involved me looking through my freezer and panty to see what it held, and what was going to expire soon.

I had a new bag of lentils plus about a half a cup of lentils left over from last year in my panty. In my freezer, I had about three bags of frozen chicken parts. One bag of breasts, one of thighs and one of breast tenders, all from Trader Joe’s. I don’t have ground red pepper, so I substituted a few red pepper flakes.

I’ve made this for friends before, including once for my best friend from high school who married a man from Morocco. He said it tasted authentic and they enjoyed it. It’s from my Weight Watchers 5 Ingredient 15 Minute Cookbook.

When I stayed home and made it, the timing worked perfectly, but since I work a full day, this time I may have cooked it a little too long, the chicken was a little dry.  The carrots that were on the bottom were nice and moist though.  I’ll work on the timing.

Moroccan Chicken and Lentils

Ingredients
8 ounces baby carrots	3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups uncooked lentils	3/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 1/2 lbs frozen chicken tenders	1/2 teaspoon ground red pepper
2 (14 1/4 ounce) cans fat-free chicken broth	1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons minced garlic

Directions:

Place the carrots in the bottom of a 4-5 quart slow cooker. Pour the lentils over the carrots. Arrange the frozen chicken tenders on top of the lentils. In a separate bowl combine the tumeric, ground red pepper and cinnamon together and sprinkle evenly over the chicken. Pour the 2 cans of chicken broth over the arrangement.

Time: Cook on high for 5 hours, or cook on high for 1 hour, then on low for 7 hours.

Serves about 4-6. A 1 cup serving is 5 points. With the lentils, it’s very high in fiber.

Vegetarian for a day

I didn’t set out to be a vegetarian for a day, but that’s how my day turned out. Last night we grilled out Laura’s Lean burgers, and they were delicious, but I didn’t get all my servings of fruits and vegetables in for the day.

I love meat, especially Omaha Steaks, but only eat red meat two to three times a week. My main meat choice is chicken, followed by fish maybe once a week. I’ll also have the occasional turkey bacon, ground turkey in a dish or a turkey sub.

Today I started out with a breakfast of organic yogurt and a banana. Work was busy, so I didn’t get a snack. I choose a vegetarian lunch of Pad Pak at a Thai restaurant and a salad. My dinner consisted of a Robeks fruit smoothie, a chocolate Vita-muffin and a glass of milk. My evening snack during class was a cup of watermelon from Whole Foods.

I guess I got all my servings of fruits and veggies in for the day, plus my two milk servings. However, I probably did not get much protein. While at Robeks, I was struggling with my daughter and forgot to add my whey protein to my smoothie.

I’ll probably add meat back into my diet tomorrow. I’m going to bed hungry tonight.

Candy and Halloween

Only 15 more days until Halloween, but between now and then I have at least three parties to attend, two of them with my daughter. If you know anything about me, candy is a weakness of mine. Especially at this time of year.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I don’t know if that’s because of the candy or dressing up. Even before I had a kid, Halloween was my favorite. Mark down candy for me as a reason. We have a friend who is a dentist, and you can guess the holiday that she hates.

My daughter’s first Halloween she was only 6 months old, and I dressed her up as a lady bug and took her trick-or-treating. Granted only to the neighbors that knew us, but I still got candy and ate it all since she couldn’t eat it. The next year she was Minnie Mouse and I allowed her a few pieces of candy. Who ate the rest? Guess.

Last year she was a cowgirl, and the prettiest little cowgirl you ever saw. By this time she was a great walker, and we covered a good deal of our neighborhood taking in one pumpkin plus a bag full of candy. I helped hold her stash. That year I found out she was a chocolate freak like me.

This year, she’s 3 and a half. Since I’m trying to get serious about this weight loss thing, I have to change my strategy. I’ve decide I’m going to let her dress up and take her trick-or-treating, but only to a few neighbors houses to show off her outfit. Then we will return home to watch a movie! I guess I’m going to have to buy her a new movie to make it more appealing than trick-or-treating, but I’ll do whatever it takes to try and keep a ton of candy out of my house.

Now the other dilemma is that I have children coming to MY house to trick-or-treat.  I don’t want to be a super downer and hand out pretzels and raisins, but if I end up buying candy to give out, who ends up eating it? A strategy I deployed one year was only buying candy I didn’t like. That doesn’t leave much available, but I think I bought Almond Joys and Mounds, about the only chocolate that doesn’t really do it for me. Not chocolate related, I’m not a huge fan of Skittles, but I will eat them in small quantities.

I also don’t want to hand out those cheesy little cheap toys or non edible things. What would you recommend I dish out to all the little ghouls and goblins that come to visit?

Las Tapas for lunch

Went to lunch on Sunday afternoon with two girlfriends/past co-workers. It’s been a few months since I’ve seen them, and we decided to meet at Las Tapas on King Street in Alexandria. My friend A had been there before, but the rest of us had not.

I arrived a little early and snagged two tables outside. It was in the shade and a beautiful day.

I got an iced tea from the server and waited for the others to join me. I had already decided I wanted the calamari (fried and oh so healthy), but was trying to decide between the gambas (shrimp) or a quesadilla.

To sum it up, the food was excellent but the service stunk. We had between 2 to 3 gentlemen serving us but they would often disappear for long periods at a time.

The pub across the street was crowded and every so often we’d hear a loud roar of cheering coming from inside. I theorized that our waiters were watching the game.

Waiter didn’t get a drink for A, but did get one for J. L’s soda was flat, and she had trouble ordering a replacement due to a language barrier (a bottle of sparkling water). Our tapas and entrees came out scattered in about 3 runs, 15 minutes between the first delivery and the second. J’s salad came with no dressing. We also had trouble getting silverware.

After getting my calamari, I realized it had no sauce, and had to ask for sauce which by the time I got it, the squid was cold. It only took two hours for the whole lunch. We felt very European.

I had a nice visit with my friends, and we caught up with each other, so that was the highlight. I raved about the new show Pushing Daisies, and plan to watch the second episode tonight.

Of course, the food was really good, so maybe I’ll give them another try sometime with the husband and the kid. That will really put them to the test.

Buttermilk Biscuit memories

One of my favorite childhood memories is of Saturday morning and making buttermilk biscuits with my dad. He would make up a batch from scratch, and let us kids help roll out the dough and cut out circles. It was a ritual, and probably helped create my love of baking. I still adore hot out of the oven biscuits, drizzling honey on top of them, and eating while warm. They even taste good later in the day cold too.

I have the original recipe, which I think may be from Betty Crocker, but have lighted it up a bit and reduced the shortening and substituted some whole wheat flour for white. I learned some of the tips from the book Secrets of Fat-Free Baking, but you do really have to experiment to find the right combination of fat ingredients vs. no-to-low fat ingredients.

I use whole wheat pastry flour which results in better texture than regular whole wheat flour. I also use unbleached white flour. I stuck with the tablespoon of sugar instead of substituting Splenda, but I did reduce the shortening by half and substituted with unsweetened applesauce.

Low-Fat Buttermilk Biscuits Recipe

Ingredients
1 cup whole wheat flour (pastry flour)	1 cup all purpose flour (unbleached)
1 tbsp sugar	2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda	1 tsp salt
1/4 cup shortening	1/8 cup unsweetened applesauce
3/4 cup fat free buttermilk

Heat oven to 450 degrees. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Cut in shortening. Stir in milk and applesauce. Place dough on floured surface. Knead lightly 10 times. Roll or pat to 1/2 inch thick. Cut with floured 2 to 2 1/2 inch round cookie cutter. Place on un greased cookie sheet one inch apart. Bake 10-12 minutes. Serve warm.

Each biscuit is approximately 2.5 points. Makes about 12-13 biscuits. Serve with honey, jam or other favorite topping, and let the kids help roll and cut the dough. Great memories making and baking biscuits with the family.