Red Friday and Healthy Lasagna

I really didn't feel like getting dressed today, but like last week, I am Making An Effort: Inigo is not impressed with my efforts, clearly. It's also Wear Red Day in the US and February is Heart Month with the Heart and Stroke Foundation in BC (an organization I support because of my dad dying of a heart attack). Anyway, I have my red sweater on and my red patterned socks.

Well, most of the time you can't see my socks:

My feet look like leopard loaves of bread, but at least they're warm!

Sweater (Tobias), jeans (Seven7, gift from Caro), belt (swap from Ruth), slippers (Isotoner).

I really don't like cooking, but I make more effort at it over the past four years, since I lost weight. I used to buy frozen lasagna and throw it in the oven - sure, it saved time, but that processed food will kill you, man. All that salt! All the added sugar! Lack of whole ingredients and whole grains! Lack of veggies!

So I bought some whole wheat lasagna noodles and played with the recipe on the back, combined with my mom's recipe. I don't have my own recipe written down, and I tend to vary it a bit every time I make it, but if you're interested, here's how I make it.

Ingredients:

9 whole wheat lasagna noodles - 8 PointsPlus Values (Weight Watchers)
3 cloves of garlic, diced small - 0 PP
1 3" diameter onion - 0 PP
4 tsp olive oil - 4 PP
1 can unsalted diced tomatoes - 2 PP
1/2 can unsalted tomato paste - 1 PP
6 oz extra lean ground beef - 6 PP
500 ml fat free cottage cheese - 9 PP
1 egg - 2 PP
2 cups finely chopped spinach - 0 PP
4 green onions, finely chopped - 0 PP
Ground pepper, nutmeg, cayenne, red pepper flakes, basil, oregano - 0 PP
1/2 cup finely chopped broccoli - 0 PP
1 whole pepper, finely chopped - 0 PP
2 stalks celery, finely chopped - 0 PP
4 large mushrooms, chopped - 0 PP
1/3 package of skim mozzarella, grated - 10 PP
6 tbsp shredded Asiago cheese - 3 PP

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes, covered, then 10 minutes uncovered. Rest 10 minutes before serving. Refridgerate any unused portions and use within 2 days.

Process:
I line my non-stick big cake pan with aluminum foil, creating a divider in the middle with another piece:

The reason I make a divider is that I LOVE mushrooms and L loathes them. This way, I have my yummy mushroom lasagna, and he has no mushrooms at all. Poor L.

I've calculated out the PointsPlus values for all my packaged food. I went through my freezer, fridge and cupboards with my WW calculator when I started the new program and wrote all the PointsPlus values on the packages with a permanent marker. The lasagna noodles are 8 PP for one serving or 15 for two. As my recipe needs 9 noodles total, that's a two serving amount.I snap the noodles in half and pop them in a pot of boiling water. At the same time, I saute up the garlic (chopped up finely) and onion (diced) in the olive oil. Preheat the oven to 350.
Yum...I love the smell of onions and garlic cooking. This is the base for nearly everything I cook, from burritos, to spaghetti, to soup.

I track my PP as I go, calculating or looking up the PP values and jotting them down on a sticky note:I keep my sticky notes in my 3-month tracker to refer back to the next time I make that recipe.

I've gone through my Pocket Guide book and highlighted all the foods I regularly eat so that it's easier to look them up. I buy my extra-lean ground beef in large quantities when it's on sale, flatten it into patties (faster to thaw than a ball) and divide it up into freezer bags - this is about 6 ounces (the size of two small patties).

I cook that up with the onions and garlic:Mmmm...the whole house smells good!

I don't buy most tomato sauces because they are loaded with sugar and salt. This brand is organic, no salt, just diced tomatoes.

In my book, it's 0 PP, but since I'm using the entire can, I calculated it out at 2 points. I'm only cheating myself by trying to work around the system. *sigh*

I also added half a can of organic tomato paste because the diced tomatoes alone are fairly bland:

Although the paste is just straight tomatoes, it's concentrated tomato flavour and really adds a lot of zip. This was 1 PP. I dumped it in and added a bit of water to keep the mixture from getting too thick. I'll use the other half when I make spaghetti this weekend.

I add my spices at this point. This is what I loaded up my sauce with:

Lots of ground mixed black and coloured peppercorns, cayenne pepper (L and I both love spicy food, and the spice helps balance out the lower sodium content), red pepper flakes, oregano and basil. I load it up!Mmmm...that's looking good. While it's simmering on low (add water if it gets too thick), I mix up my cheese filling layer:
That's the cottage cheese, egg, chopped spinach, and half of the green onion. I also added nutmeg, gave it all a good stir and set it aside for a few minutes.

I chop up my veggies:I do a pretty fine chop on all of these: broccoli, orange pepper, celery and the rest of the green onions. Sometimes I vary this up with some zucchini, cauliflower or asparagus, whatever I need to use up in the veggie bin.


I add the veggies to the meat sauce and let it simmer for a while:Heavenly! This is my spaghetti sauce almost exactly.

While the veggies are getting soft, I chop up the mushrooms:

I always do them last so that they don't touch the other veggies. I'm such a good wife.

When the noodles are done (they usually are cooked by this point - I leave them in the water so they don't dry out and stick together), I start assembling the lasagna.Smoosh around a bit of the sauce in the bottom of the pan so that the noodles don't stick to the bottom:

Then add 3 of the half-noodles per side:

L's side gets half of the cottage cheese/spinach mix. I mix in half of the mushrooms to the remaining mix and spread it in my side.

Another layer of 3 half noodles goes on top of that, then half of the remaining sauce:I add the rest of my mushrooms to the sauce and stir them in. I save a few pieces of mushrooms for the top.

Add the last layer of 3 half noodles, and cover the top with shredded skim mozzarella. I buy a package of skim mozza when it's on sale, calculate the PP of the entire package, cut it into 3 sections and freeze the portions I don't need (I write on the freezer package how many PP there are).You can see that I've added the last few bits of mushroom on top so that I can tell whose is whose. I also add Asiago cheese:

Dry cheeses are surprisingly low in fat and have loads of flavour. I also buy Parmesan, Romano and a Mixed Cheese variety of this brand.

Next, insert toothpicks at regular intervals all over the top:

Next, cover it with another sheet of aluminum foil:
Bake it for 45 minutes. This is a bit of a time-intensive recipe because of the prep time and baking time - this took me a little over 2 hours to make - so because of that, I usually make this on the weekend when I have more time.

After 45 minutes, take it out:

Remove the top layer of foil and take out the toothpicks. Pop it back into the oven for another 10 minutes to brown up the top a bit.
After 10 minutes is up, take it out and let it sit for another 10 minutes. This is the hardest part, because by then, I'm starving and it smells So. Darned. Good.


I distract myself by calculating out the PP values for the entire pan:

Oops, I forgot to add 2 PP for the egg - so it's actually 52 PP. That seems like a lot, but that's 26 PP for half of the pan, and 13 PP for a quarter of the pan (my usual serving). If I choose to be a bit more restrained, I could roast some veggies or have a salad on the side and eat 1/8th of it for only 7 PP!

This is what our dinner looked like: Mine was a little harder to get out of the pan! That's a big portion, as you can see - half of that (or 1/8th of the pan) would still be a good-sized serving.

I immediately put another serving on smaller plates and wrap it up and put it in the fridge for the next night's dinner (two shots in the microwave at about 2.5 minutes each will do it). It tastes even better the next day!

Yum!

Check out the nutritional benefits per 1/4 of the pan:

- loads of fibre (noodles, veggies)

- a great source of mostly lean protein (beef, cheese, egg)

- 1 serving of low-fat dairy

- 2 servings of veggies

- 1 serving of healthy oil

And believe me, I am happily full after eating that! It keeps me satisfied, and I'm not even interested in evening snacks. When I compare this to the packaged, processed lasagna I used to buy, sure, that was easier and faster to make, but my version is so much healthier! I would rather spend the time once a month and make something that I know is going to be good for my health.

The Unseen Outfit and My First WW At Work Meeting!

Woo, I've had a couple of crazy days! My first Weight Watchers At Work meeting started this week, and I have been scrambling, trying to get all the materials together, not mention I just got trained for this yesterday! Yes, yesterday!

Gee, you'd think they'd launched a new program, or something, haha.

I had to run up to the local centre yesterday afternoon to grab supplies and beg for presentation material, so I made an effort to get dressed.
It was trying to snow out, so I went with layers: a cami, with the leopard shirt (last seen here), and this navy cashmere sweater that I haven't worn since I got it last December (shocking!).

The skirt (another long one!) was just last seen a couple of months ago (here). A few people have asked me about walking in long skirts - I find that as long as they widen out just above the knee, they are totally comfortable. I really like the A-line or mermaid shape in my long skirts because of this. I have various thicknesses (from denim to leather to this faux thin suede) and they can be stiff or they can be drapey. This one's really flowy. When you try one on, stride around with big steps in it to see how it feels. I also sit down in them to see how they drape.

Aside from L at home (with very attractive socks on, sorry, love), it ended up that no one saw me - I kept my coat on everywhere - so this is what I wore on the bus and at the grocery store afterwards.

My awesome thrifted coat, my faux fur gloves and brown velvet hat - I look like a Hussar!

The stuff:

These Clarke's Indigo boots are my best walking heels I own, hands down. Love 'em!

A close-up:

I've been grooving on hip belts lately. I got these earrings on 1/2 price sale at Plum for about $7 a few weeks ago.

Sweater (Land's End, consignment), blouse (Planet, consignment), skirt (Marc D'Alcy), boots (Clark's Indigo, consignment), belt (Anne Klein pour Caleche, consignment), earrings (Plum).

Kitty interlude!

I hate when the recycle bin is full, but at least Inigo has a box to sit in:

He's upset because we finally flattened his boxes that he plays with in the dining room, in preparation for New Year's.

And...back to fashion. (ahem)

Today, I put a lot of thought into my outfit for my first At Work meeting. I really wanted to highlight my figure, but look professional and competent (ha, the opposite of how I felt!). And of course, I wanted to look funky!

Did I succeed?

I adore this cardigan so much (I last wore it here) - cranes! I love picking out the red and green in it.

I'm not usually a fan of skirts that hit this low on the leg, but the shape of this one is so perfect (it has a couple of deep box pleats right behind the knee). Last seen here.

The meeting went well and even though I feel like I screwed up right and left, I'm sure no one but (perfectionist) me noticed. But gads, so much paperwork involved! WW, you need to streamline some of your processes!

I was thrilled to see when I weighed myself (to test the scale) that I've dropped a pound and am once again below my goal weight - I've been really struggling with that lately. Getting back to tracking on the new program (although I didn't track at all while away this past weekend) is really helping me get myself under control again.

The stuff:

I would usually hesitate over these shoes with this because the laces are more of a pinky-burgundy than a bright red (and you know I like the matchy!), but I think they go just fine. I also wanted to wear a low-ish, more comfortable heel, and you can't go wrong with a good Fluevog (I last wore them here).

A close-up:

Another new piece of jewelry from Plum - the red stones are actually stone, and I love the weight of them.

Cardigan (Lucky Brand, consignment), cami (Smart Set), skirt (Precis Petites), shoes ("Sumatra Coffee" Fluevog), bracelet (Plum), earrings (Aldo Accessories).

First WW Meeting...and Some Thoughts on the New Program

So I do have a few things that I'll be doing outfits for in the near future: Weight Watcher meetings! I had my very first one today as a leader, and this is what I wore: New top from Plum - it has tabbed sleeves, which really take me back. I remember having a shirt with tabbed sleeves back in high school (1984-5 for those of you keeping track). Things always come around, don't they? I liked this top due to the cut - it gathers at the waist, then has that nice finished bottom. I love details like that.

My meeting went fine - there were only about 6 people there, so it was quiet. I have another one that I'm filling in for (today's was also a fill-in) tomorrow morning, and it should be quite a bit busier.

Mr. Kitty was in the room but not in the picture today:

He kept an eye on the whole business, though.

The shoes are also new:

Look at that fabulous heel! Swoon! Because these have a very high vamp (the part that scoops on the top of your foot), I wanted to wear a darker tight with them so that they don't stumpify my legs.

A close-up of the stuff:

The shoes are suede, regular leather and the heel and platform are patent leather. My usual black accoutrements, otherwise. You can see the nice pink and red plaid of the top there, too - it has deeper red sort of splotches on it as well.

The shoes are Poetic Licence (I have three other pairs of Poetic Licence, seen here, here and here), and have the distinctive purple "ribbon" sole:

That $139.95 is the regular price. I paid $40.00. Score!

Top (Plum), cami (RW & Co.), skirt (Tobias), tights (Miss Sixty), shoes (Poetic Licence), belt (Plum), bracelet (Le Chateau), earrings (The Cobbler).

***********

A few people have asked me in the comments what I think of the new WW PointsPlus (PP) program. Now, I've been a WW member/lifetime member for over 4 years, and a leader for about a month, and I've gone through a couple of changes in their programs. This one is easily the biggest.

Disclosure: as mentioned, I am a leader and am employed by WW of Canada. I am not being paid to write about this or answer any questions about it. I did get free supplies of the new gadgets, gizmos and books as part of my training. All opinions of WW and the program are my own.

What I like:
0 PP Fruit: It has always bothered me that previously it was a better "bargain" to eat a 1-point processed bar than to have a 2-point banana. Obviously, the banana is better for you! Whole food is always better than processed foods. So having all fruit be 0 PP is awesome - I think that goes a long way towards weaning people off processed sweet snacks and steering them towards whole foods.

More science: I like that there are more factors involved in calculating the PP values in food. In the previous system, we only used fibre, fat and calories. But calories are different - they are not all the same, you can't just single out fat and fibre and leave carbs and protein out in the cold! It always felt like something was missing.

It also meant that some carb-y items were deceptively low in points (like my 1 point wraps that had huge amounts of fibre per serving)...which with my lawyerly/loophole-seeking bent, I would seek out and eat a lot of, even though I knew those couldn't be as good or as "cheap" as the numbers were telling me. And now...they're not. My 1 point wraps are now 3PPs, which, to be honest, seems about right.

A more balanced approach: We used to cover exercise 4 or 6 weeks in (I forget), and whole/less processed foods were mentioned with the "Simply Filling" technique for non-tracking types (like me). The emphasis was on points and tracking, and that's pretty much it. Now, they're pushing exercise right away, and "power foods" are the focus (just a new name for whole/low-processed foods). I also like that there is a "no food is forbidden" attitude - that hasn't changed. I'm not going to stick to any eating system that forces me to give up my chips, chocolate or booze.

What I don't like:
Having to learn a whole new set of points/PointsPlus: Yeah, yeah, I know, I did it once, I can learn a new set of numbers. But I'm lazy! I knew all the old points. I don't really want to have to learn all these again. I also don't like saying "PointsPlus".

But...I'm a leader, I have to "walk the walk" if I'm gonna "talk the talk". I went through my cupboards with my calculator and a permanent felt marker and labeled all my food with the new PPs. *sigh* I'm getting used to it. And I'm tracking for the first time in oh, three years!

Not getting a free calculator: I liked the little cardboard sleeve slide-rule thingy. It was great! It was free! Sure, you can get most PP values from the little book they give you when you join, but who wants to carry that around?

But...all the new stuff is heavily marked down (reiteration of disclosure: I got my stuff free as a leader), and it's not THAT expensive, considering I use it every day. You can also get an app for your phone to look up PPs if you have an online membership (I don't have a phone and I haven't looked at the online system - I spend enough time on the computer as it is!).

I'm resistant to change: I think I am not alone in this one. I know a lot of people don't like change, especially when they see WW as an "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" situation.

This isn't really a criticism, though, is it? This is just me, bitching about change. Hee.

However, my criticisms against the new stuff really aren't that major. I still think WW is one of the most balanced programs out there. I like that they aren't settled into a rut and are updating to stay with recent technology and science. The best thing about the program, to me, has always been that they encourage you to examine why you overeat, to be mindful of what you eat, and to make positive changes towards a more healthy lifestyle. It's not about the quick fix, a diet or rigid food options - those never work in the long run. It's about keeping the weight off and keeping healthy.

I know that 5 years ago, I would have put on about 6-8 pounds over Christmas, easy. This year, I made it through travel, sickness, work stress and all the other holiday stuff with only a 1 lb gain. I'm proud of that, because it shows me that I can - and I did - change how I think about food. It's in the deep grey matter now.

Do you have any questions for me about WW, or about food or eating in general? What do you like or not like about the new program?

Special Request: What I Eat - and a Couple of Questions

Hey! This is not a fashion post, so skip on by if this isn't your thing. I don't mind. Really, go ahead.

Lyn, or Lady K, has been full of questions (Lyn, I'm not sure where you're from - Hungary? but your English is excellent):

I was amazed to find out that you was once on the heavier side of the world!!!??!!! No ideea of this at the beginning! Loved also, your posts about your dear Father and your daily fast walking to-and back from your workplace!(how many km. is that/day?-and how long takes you that?)You are very brave and a wonderful person!! Congrats and keep on doing! thank you so much for inspiration!!!

You're very welcome!

I was absolutely on the heavier side of the world! I weighed close to 200 lbs...and I am 5'4". I have struggled with my weight and body image issues for nearly my entire life.

Part of starting this blog was to be personally accountable to myself about how my clothes fit and how I feel about my body. A surprising side effect to blogging has been that I have a much more accurate picture of what I really look like...after all, there are pictures.

To get back to the questions, my walk each way to work takes about 40-45 minutes, depending on traffic (some days, the lights are against me!) on how late I am. It's about 6K each way, and I do it 4 days a week, so 48K a week, just from going to and from work.

Thanks for the kind words, Lyn!

Will you tell us again how you rewarded yourself after you loss weight? I mean how did you do it after certain markers? I think you said shoes. Makes good sense! You look nice and trim as always. I keep remembering I can do it too.

As I lost weight, I set small milestones. First, it was the 10% of my starting weight (I got a keychain from WW). Then, whenever I hit a round number, like 170, or when I had lost milestone of weight, like 5, 10 or 20 lbs, I rewarded myself.

For the first 25 lbs, I bought accessories, shoes, things that wouldn't be too big as I lost more. At 25 lbs, I spent about $250 and bought a mini-wardrobe of about 12 clothing items, so that I'd have clothes that fit me for work. Thereafter, I would reward myself with a clothing item (a pair of size 10 jeans! a medium top instead of XL! a belt!). When I hit the 50 lb mark (my official goal), I bought a wonderful dress, which I don't think I have worn on the blog - I need to get it hemmed - appropriately, I call it my Fifty Pound Dress.

I had also been saving my money, and once I'd lost 55 lbs, I spent about $2,000 and bought a full new wardrobe. Everything had to be replaced, from my underwear, to my workout clothes, to my winter coat, and even my tights! Everything. The only things I had left that fit were shoes (and some of those were too big as well) and jewelry. I had to have my wedding ring resized too.

So I spent quite a bit of money on all those clothes, and I want to make sure that I keep my weight off! I don't ever want to go back to being heavy and unhealthy.

I know, this is not exactly the place to deal with, but could you please make us once a post on your diet which keeps you so thin and beautiful for ever? For ex. to see exactly what you eat, on a weekday.(if possible, with photos:-). This can help some of us a lot, especially regarding meal sizes, quantities, and time schedule on a healthly diet...thanks so much

Okay, first of all, sucking up is so nice.

Regarding food, I'm a Weight Watchers' lifetime member (I've maintained my goal weight loss for nearly 2.5 years). One of the things WW teaches you is to write down what you eat - and I have been tracking my food for over 3 years now...but I've never actually taken pictures of my food, so I was intrigued to see how my attitude towards my food is when I can actually SEE what I've eaten. You know, like on those health makeover shows when they lay out all the disgusting junk that the person has eaten in a week?

So here we go!

Monday to Thurday - Breakfast and Daytime: I'm really very boring. I eat the same thing for breakfast every day, and I take the same lunch to work every day. The plus side is that it makes grocery shopping easier (I know exactly how many apples to buy), and I do have little variations. My breakfast is always 1/4 cup of Fibre One, with some sort of unsweetened or barely sweetened cereal on top of that. Lately, I've been into the Nature's Path Whole-Os. I use skim milk. In the summer, I have raspberries, blackberries, strawberries or blueberries on my cereal as well.

This is my daytime food - see why my coworkers make fun of my massive lunch?:Yes, I take all of that to work and I eat all of it every day. I buy whatever fruit is in season, plus always apples and bananas. This week I had nectarines, pears and kiwi fruit. I also have a baggie of sugar peas and radishes. I pack a salad of mixed greens, a tub of cut-up carrots and a tub of plain yoghurt. I also have a sandwich on whole wheat WW bread. A couple of days a week, the sandwich is deli turkey with Dijon mustard and onion sprouts, and a couple of days a week, I'll have egg salad (made with low fat lemonaise) with sprouts.

Around 11:30, I get hungry, so I have "second breakfast":Usually, I have a grapefruit too, but they didn't look good last week. I had them all this week. I spoon bits of yoghurt onto the banana, then I quarter the kiwi. I eat half of the yoghurt each day.

I keep dressing in the fridge at work: I finished this bottle of Annie's low fat Ginger Vinaigrette, and am now onto Newman's Own low fat Balsamic Vinaigrette. Hmm...looks like I ran out of sugar peas that day and was down to just radishes.

I eat the carrots and the apple on my walk home, so that I'm not starving when I get there. When I run out of carrots, I cut up celery instead.

Main Meals during the week:

Monday:L and I usually eat late (we both blog, then I cook), around 7. This is chili (okay, actually a mix that I got at the Fair from Mitchell's Soup Co. - you just add extra veggies, meat and water and stew it for about 6 hours) that I made the weekend before, using leftover pot roast. I also added in fresh tomatoes, green onion and yellow peppers. This dinner is the thawed out remainder.

As those bowls are smaller than they look, I also made us bun melts:
Whole wheat kaiser buns, with a slice of Canadian bacon, with chopped up peppers, green onion and tomato, topped with a sprinkle of asiago cheese, then done in the oven for about 10 minutes. Yum!

Tuesday:

Tuesday is our poker night - it's also the night we get groceries, so time is tight before 3-4 guys arrive at our house at 7. L and I treat ourselves to Subway:
I always get a turkey wrap (no cheese, lettuce, tomato, cucumber, pickles and mustard), and I always peel off most of the wrap. I find Subway's wraps too doughy - I wish they did whole wheat wraps.

Wednesday:We each had a plate of shrimp with Seattle's Public Market Wasabi cocktail sauce (spicy! woo!) for an appetizer.

Then we had dinner about an hour later:
Fresh corn on the cob, and thawed out soup. I make a giant batch of soup about once a month, whenever I buy one of those BBQ whole chickens at the grocery store. After we have a meal with the chicken, I debone it and cook up some dee-lish soup. This soup has mushrooms, brown rice, carrots, celery, yellow pepper, green onion, broccoli and cauliflower in it.

Thursday:
On Thurdays, we always have a bottle of wine with dinner. After all, it's almost Friday! This night, we had spaghetti. Extra lean ground beef, onion, celery, red pepper, green onion, broccoli, cauliflower and mushrooms. Sometimes I skip the ground beef and do prawns - then I add a big scoop of fat free sour cream and it's a nice creamy tomato sauce. I usually do a double batch of sauce (I cook two different ones, since L loathes mushrooms, and sometimes I like to add zucchini to mine. He also likes his a lot hotter than I do.), and then we have it again within a couple of days, but with a different pasta. I always use whole wheat pasta.

Friday:
Friday is the start of the weekend, and I treat myself to plain oatmeal and frozen blueberries (fresh fruit if it's in season, sometimes a bit of honey for extra sweetening), plus an egg (like my microwave egg cooker? it rocks!) and a glass of milk for breakfast.

In addition, Friday is my "no exercise day" and it's "eat out lunch" day. I bring all the fruit, yoghurt and the carrots to work, and eat them, but my main lunch is at a restaurant. This week, we went to Kelsey's and I had the grilled salmon salad (dressing on the side, of course!):
It had walnuts, red onion, strawberries and crumbled blue cheese along with a nice-sized piece of grilled salmon. Yum!

To prove that I dip my fork in the dressing vs. dumping the dressing all over everything:
We had to rush out to meet friends to see a movie after work, so I whipped up a quick chicken burger for each of us (10 minutes prep). I buy bags of pre-cooked chicken breasts and always keep a stash of frozen whole wheat kaisers handy. I put lemonaise, lettuce, sliced tomato, ketchup and Dijon mustard on these.

I forgot to take a picture until I was nearly done!
I didn't have the camera with me, but we went to the pub after the movie and I had two pints of Coors Light (it's Friday!) and Mexican lettuce wraps to eat (spiced ground beef with salsa and sour cream that you wrap up in lettuce leaves to eat).

L had to take the camera to work with him on Saturday, but I wrote down all my food. Saturday is my "free day"; I go to my WW meeting in the morning, and my new week of tracking starts on Sunday morning, so I reward myself by allowing myself to eat whatever I want for Saturday. This way, I never feel deprived, and I can hold off more easily on mid-week temptations if I know I can have that special or "forbidden" food on Saturday.

I ate:
- my weekend breakfast of oatmeal with blueberries;
- Eggs Benedict (English muffin, two soft-poached eggs, spinach, mushrooms, green onion, pesto hollandaise on the side) with salad at my favourite diner while I was out shopping;
- most of a bag of Barbara's Jalapeno Cheese Twists;
- a little box of Jelly Belly jelly beans;
- a can of Amy's organic chili (with mushrooms added) and a whole wheat bun for dinner.

I'm pretty sure I drank either most of a bottle of wine or a few vodka and Frescas, too.

Sunday:

Sundays right now are NFL day. I usually watch the morning game and the evening game. In the afternoon, I either go shopping at my favourite consignment stores, or I go for a run, then nap, read, blog...whatever. L and I don't do anything on this day. It's very relaxing.

I had the usual oatmeal/blueberries, and for lunch I made quesadillas: A multi-grain tortilla, with Canadian bacon, mushroom, peppers, green onions, refried beans and a very small amount of skim cheddar, cooked in olive oil, served with salsa.

For dinner, we had a smoked salmon and goat cheese pasta:
It was loaded up with broccoli, cauliflower, red pepper, celery, green onion and mushrooms.

"Wow," you're thinking, "Aside from the booze, she eats disgustingly healthy."

But you would be wrong. For I have not yet mentioned The Snacks. I am a big snacker. And snacking made me big! Being aware that I love my snacks, I stock the house with relatively healthy things that I don't feel bad about having in small quantities.

Of course, there's Tuesday, the aforementioned poker night with the guys. I have to be conscious of my portions and limit myself to a couple of small handfuls. This is typical: Chips!
Poppycock (caramel corn with cashews)!Pringles! (note they are reduced fat - I bought those)

And finally:Thanks, Tony, for always bringing some yummy grapes.

I do eat lots of fruit as snacks: Asian pears, strawberries, grapes, pomegranates (they're in season right now), but I do like a variety. This is what I ate this week:
I ate a lot more nuts than that - I usually have about 6 almonds, cashews and walnuts a day. Throw in a Babybel Light cheese here, some Lindt dark chili chocolate there, a handful of Crisy Minis rice cakes, some Guiltless Gourmet Mucho Nacho Chips, and of course, my old friend:

Popcorn! I eat a bowl like that about twice a week. That's 1/2 real butter and 1/2 olive oil.

I do eat my snacks in moderation, but a night doesn't go by that I don't have something.

A couple of notes: This menu works for me and my lifestyle. I'm not trying to tell you how to eat, just showing what I eat. I also do a lot of exercise in a week. In addition to my walking four days a week, I walk 8K to my WW meeting, play a 2 hour game of Ultimate, and do a 1 hour speed walk. I also often shop for 4-5 hours (that counts as exercise!). I'm also maintaining my weight - not trying to lose. When I need to drop a couple of pounds, I eat more fruit and popcorn when I snack, and try to avoid processed food. I very much try to eat as much plain food as I possibly can. It's worked for me.

I learned: I don't like recording my snacks! That's the area that always comes back to bite me...what a surprise.

Whew! Well, there you have it. That's a typical week for me. I hope it was as illuminating for you as it was for me.