Fruity

It’s been harder and harder to post these past few days.  Now that the warm weather is here I just want to be outside!  And cooking, I’d rather leave the stove off.  In fact on Monday I was cooking something (what was it?!?..no really i can’t remember) and I took the pan out of the oven.. (oh yes I was making cookies for a co-worker at my husbands work) and set it down on the stove top and then reached up toward the cabinet and burnt about a 12″ strip on my stomach…yeow!  My shirt got stuck on one of the knobs so I was sizzling for a few seconds until I could knock the pan out of the way.  I can’t tell you how much that hurt.  I’m pretty sure it’s a second degree burn, my stomach is swollen where it happened and its red, blistery and sore as anything.  It’s really painful to move, so I’ve been taking it kind of easy.

I did manage to make a bowl of fruit for dinner though last night   My husband was not impressed:  ”urr… where’s the meat?”  It’s going to be a long summer (hopefully)!

This weekend we’re on our way to Boston with friends.  Stay tuned for lots of pictures from The North End, Mike’s Pastry, Cheesecake Factory, Faneuil Hall, etc.   Pray that I can stay on point.  I already have a plan going in. 

Part of the plan:  Night 1 – Cheesecake Factory

PEAR AND ENDIVE SALAD  (12 Points)
Grilled Chicken, Endive, Radicchio, Arugula, Butter Lettuce, Roasted Pear, Blue Cheese, Candied Pecans and Tomato Tossed with Low-Cal Vinaigrette

1/2 Piece of Original Cheesecake (4 points)
The one that started it all! Our Famous Creamy Cheesecake with a Graham Cracker Crust and Sour Cream Topping

Have a great weekend!

Tagged and Turkey, Spinach & Feta Meatloaf

I’ve been tagged by Kate at Winning Friends with Salad. Here are the rules!

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 5 facts about yourself.
3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post and list their names, linking to them.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment at their blogs.

My Five Facts:
1. If I could only only eat one thing for the rest of my life it would be cheesecake.
2. I am the second oldest out of 8 children.
3. One of my favorite things to do growing up was making and pulling taffy from scratch with my best friend Erica.  She is still my best friend today.
4. Two of my sisters were Lumberjack Princesses. They rode in the Lumberjack Parade every 4th of July and held hunks of wood instead of flowers.
5. My great-grandfather on my Mother’s side worked as a cranberry bogger South of Boston in the early 1900′s.  He died before I got to meet him.

Ok, now I tag:  PB Boy, Melissa, Anne, Gluten-Free Girl  and Dieting Battle girl.

Now that we got that out of the way, I present glorious Turkey Meatloaf Roll:

Happy Anniversary….to Me!

My husband and I celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary today.  We slept in and then headed for Becky’s diner (check out their website, it’s really cool); a Portland, ME landmark.  As expected it was packed, but we were more than happy to sit among the locals at the counter. 

I agreed to “take a day off” from counting and indulge, because hey, it’s a really special day.  We ordered the wharf special.  Next time we’ll only order 1 and split it.  It was WAY too much food.

This was just my portion (Holy crap, right?):  Homemade blueberry pancakes, hash-browns, homemade wheat toast, bacon and scrambled eggs.  I ate 1 pancake, a few bites of hash-brown, 1 egg and 1/2 a piece of toast.  Thankfully, I was wearing elastic pants. 

Needless to say, we skipped lunch.

We spend the rest of the morning walking around the Old Port.  Window shopping here and browsing through random art galleries (this was not my husbands favorite part-).

For dinner Andy took me to Cinque Terrain the Old Port (we burned a lot of gas today).  His boss took him there a few weeks ago and he loved it.  I can see why!  I’m a big fan of Italian food, especially upscale Italian food (not that I’ve had thatmuch experience).  The restaurant had very modern decor (no large red pepper pictures like at Olive Garden), beautiful lighting and a-m-a-z-i-n-g food.  I’m already planning a trip back for my birthday.  I will need to hop on the treadmill for a few hours tomorrow – but it was totally worth it.  For dinner I had:

Starter: Fresh mozzarella, confit tomatoes, organic arugula, aged balsamic vinegar.

Main Course: Handmade Fettuccine with seasonal mushrooms, local ramps, herbs, speck ham.

Dessert (!): Brown Sugar Cheesecake, Shortbread Crust, Blackberry Compote, Caramel Sauce.  Truly the best thing I’ve ever eaten.  I dragged it out for a 1/2 hour.

      

Well, i’m off to do some crunches!  See you tomorrow!

Week Rewind: Part 2

I’m back from lunch and ready to share the last part of my week.  Missed the first part? Click here.

Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday: Work days.  Get up, go to work, go to bed.  You know the kind. 

Monday, I made spinach & cheese stuffed shells for friends who recently lost their baby.  I made a few extra for myself for dinner that night.  Well worth the 12 points for 3. 

Tuesday, I experimented with my new Hungry Girl Cookbook and made a modified version her Meat-lovers Spaghetti with Tofu noodles.  This is my second time trying the tofu noodles and I must say the first time was MUCH better.  Maybe I couldn’t taste them over the strong flavor of the soup, but this time I wasn’t impressed.  In fact I ate the turkey meatballs and threw the rest away.  I feel like barfing just thinking about it.  Ugh.

Wednesday, we had to eat dinner fast so we grabbed a $5.00 Little Cesar’s cheese pizza.  4 points per slice for cheese is not bad in my book.  Not bad at all.  Obviously, we won’t be making a habit of eating it for nutritional reasons but it’s good once in a while as a treat.

 

Thursday:  I have Thursday’s off now due to cut backs at work.  I was really sad at first, but I’m learning to love the extra day.  Don’t worry, I’m not sitting around watching Day’s of Our Lives or anything.  Yesterday, I actually babysat a friends daughter while she went to a doctors appointment.  You’ve met her before….remember?  We made cinnamon flax sconeslast time she came over and this time she was ready to bake again!  I convinced her to eat lunch first (I thought this was wise considering we were about to make brownies).  Her mother packed a blue box of spiderman shaped macaroni & cheese and she was more than happy to eat the entire thing.  This kid is an eater! 

 I bought that chef’s hat and apron at a garage sale a few weeks ago.  I though she would love to wear it when she comes to my house to cook.  Boy was I right!   We couldn’t pry it off of her when it was time to leave.

 Carefully mixing the batter.  We made a standard low-fat box brownie mix.  I usually make Black Bean Brownies (2pts), but since we were making these to give away we went with the classic box variety.

Things got a little messy toward the end…

 

Up next (read: tomorrow):  Chicken Marsala, more creations from the Hungry Girl Cookbook and 5 year Anniversary cuisine. 

Spring Pasta Salad

This salad deserves it’s own post – it’s that good. Oh my.

Spring Pasta Salad
(Click here for a Printable recipe)

I don’t have a lot of experience with asparagus or squash. In fact I’ve exhausted a lot of energy avoiding these two vegetables quite successfully for the last 20ish years. Last week though for some reason I brought them both home from the grocery store and came up with this pasta salad. I hope you try it – I really like it, and the husband actually ate it.

Look at the nutritional information for Asparagus! It’s crazy good for you!

INGREDIENTS:

• 8oz. Rotini (I use Heartland Plus ALA Omega-3), cooked.
• 1/4c. Fat Free Italian Dressing
• Grilled Asparagus
• Grilled Yellow Squash
• Black Olives
• Cherry Tomatoes
• Turkey Pepperoni
• Cubed Cheese (Cabot 75% Reduced Fat Cheddar)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Grill Asparagus and squash on indoor grill until soft. Set aside to cool.

1. Slice tomatoes, olives, pepperoni & cheese into bite size pieces.

1. In a large bowl combine pasta (cooked), veggies and fat free Italian dressing.
2. Serve or cool in refrigerator.

Yield: 8cups
WWP: 3 (1/2c portion)

Click here for printable recipe of Spring Pasta Salad

Week Rewind

We all know I haven’t been blogging this week, so what have I been up to?

Saturday:  My husband, and fellow youth group leader, took our teens to see The Chronicles of Narnia:  Prince Caspian.    It was another great movie by Disney.  It did deviate from the book a little too much for my husbands liking, but if you don’t study the works of C.S. Lewis on a daily basis you probably wouldn’t have noticed the difference.  I certainly didn’t.  I’m sorry to say that I did indulge in a little movie theather popcorn.  Bad, Amanda.  I could should have brought my own snacks like one of these choices:  Kettle Korn Mini Bag (1 Point) , Fiber 1 Bar (3 points for the Peanut Butter one), even taking Almond M&M’s(5 points) would have been better than the fatty-full-of-bad-calories Movie popcorn.  Oye.

For more choices read:  Eat Smart at the Movies

Sunday:  After church we met friends at Old Orchard Beach for a little seaside fishin’.  It was positively freezing!!!  I didn’t last too long so my friend Jessica and I went home to prepare the feast:

Jessica’s Homemade Salsa – 0pts per 1/2c.
(Click for Printable Recipe!)

Grilled Hamburgers, Hotdogs and Brats and…

Spring Pasta Salad – 3pts per 1/2c.
(Click for Printable Recipe!)

OK, my fingers are tired from typing.  I need to refuel, get some lunch and then I’ll be back to share more good times from last Monday to today. 

I’m back. Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!

Tip:  Apparently when you save pictures that 48″ wide by 32″ high for 6-months it eats up your computer’s memory.  Gooble Gobble.

In short, I am the reason the computer exploded.  Me.

With that said, I am still going to take large pictures, but now, i’m going to save them on my shinny new 500 gig external hardrive.  That should be enough space.

It’s been a long week.

Backed up.

Update:  My computer guy (read: husband) is working fervently on our computer.  You’d think he works for the government, but he doesn’t.  He assures me it will be up and running tonight (Wed).  I hope so, because I bought a new cookbook and have been cooking up a storm!  C U Soon….I hope!

Our computer exploded this week.  Well, not exploded exactly, but it broke.  Hence the quietness.  Don’t worry, i’ve been cooking up a storm and taking a lot of pictures.

I should be back up by Sunday…we’re in Best Buy now!

Have a good weekend!

Chicken Cordon Blue

Chicken Cordon Blue Bleu

Tuesday is golf day around here. After work I pick up my husband (we commute together) and he drops me off at home then speeds north to the driving range. On these nights we don’t eat together, he usually eats on the road (read: fast food) and I take the opportunity to make something I like for dinner (it’s so nice not to ask the age old question – “What do you want for dinner?”). Tonight it was Chicken Cordon Blue. Yum, right?

Most CCB is really high in calories and fat because it’s deep fried, but this version is baked. It’s not exactly like the real thing, but its still really good. I served mine with 1% cottage cheese, but it would go great with mashed sweet potatoes. That was just way too much effort tonight though.

INGREDIENTS: (for one)

• Boneless chicken breast, fat trimmed
• Deli ham (I use Healthy Choice – it’s 40calories for 3 slices)
• 28g. Weight Watchers Mozzarella Cheese
• 1/4c. Corn flakes, crushed
• 1/4c. Egg Beaters

Food Journal – Monday

Breakfast: 8
Plain Bagel, Dunkin Donuts (6pts)
Light Cream Cheese, Dunkin Donuts (1.5pts)
Ice Coffee with Skim milk & Splenda, Dunkin Donuts (.5pts)

Morning Snack: 2
Light String Cheese, Frigo (1pt)
Fiber 1 Yogurt (1pt)

Lunch: 6
2c. Mixed Greens (0pts)
20g Dried Cranberries (1.5pts)
12g. Reduced Fat Blue Cheese (1pts)
Red onion (0pts)
70g. Leftover Chicken (1.5pts)
3 TBSP Fat Free Balsamic dressing, Maple Grove Farms (0pts)
2 South Beach Peanut Butter Cookies (2pts)
No sugar added peaches, Del Monte (0pts)
20oz. Water (0pts)

Afternoon Snack – 3
Kettle Korn (1pt)
1/3c. Frozen Yogurt (2pts)

Dinner: 14
3c. Salad (same as lunch except I added Walnuts) – (7pts)
140g. Sweet Potato “Fries”, McCain (4pts)
Sugar Free Jello Pudding Cup (1pt)
Mixed nuts (2pt)

Evening Snack: 3
Fiber 1 Granola Bar (3pts)

Total Points for the day: 37

Daily Activity Log
1 Hour walk