Saturday 7/7/2012 - My Favorite Banana Pancakes (and They Are Only 1 PointsPlus Each)

I was up early to pick up our produce from the Bountiful Basket co-op at 6:00 a.m.  After I got back home I headed out for a long walk. I walked the canal again this morning, but changed my route to and from the canal in order to increase my mileage. I ended up walking for 90 minutes and covering almost 4.5 miles.

While I was walking I was thinking about making a big fruit salad for us to munch on over the weekend from the fruit that we didn’t eat up from last weeks produce basket.

When I got home, Mike had put away this week’s produce and had just thrown most of last week’s leftover fruit in the trash. WHAT!!!

I rescued most of the fruit washed it up and got chopping and conned Mike into making pancakes for breakfast.  We still had a bunch of strawberries, some grapes, cherries, a cantaloupe, a mango and some nectarines left from last week.

It turned into this beautiful salad that we could munch on all weekend.

I skipped syrup on my pancakes and ate them with the fruit instead. I didn’t even miss the syrup.

A few years ago we used to make a version of these pancakes that came from a recipe on the Bisquick box called Melt in Your Mouth Pancakes. Somehow we lost the recipe and couldn’t find the same one on the internet and it was no longer on the box. Mike made several different kinds of pancakes until we finally hit on this one (recipe below).

Last weekend I had vetoed pancakes because I was sure they would be too many points; and I wouldn’t be able to stop eating them when I should. But, this morning I decided that pancakes too must be able to fit into my plan, so I asked Mike to make them.  Then I went to put them into e-tools; we counted how many pancakes the recipe makes and I was so happy to find out they were only 1 point each!

Yippee!

I love when that happens!

[gmc_recipe 418]

Friday 7/6/2012 - Dining Out When the PointsPlus Value is Not Available

We have been on a “stay-cation” since the 4th. Even though we are not traveling, we have gone out to eat far more than normal. I have spent time the last couple of days figuring out how to enjoy our meals out and stay on plan. I have increased the exercise each day, but I don’t want exercise to be an excuse to eat more. Instead, I am taking this opportunity to learn how I can make better choices when going out to restaurants where the PointsPlus value is not easily available.

Even though I am off of work, the boys still had summer camp in the morning. Mike and I took advantage of this and went out to breakfast at the Good Egg on Thursday morning. This restaurant at least makes it easier to make better choices by listing the calories on the menu and identifying Dr. Oz approved meals.

After settling on the Krabby One Crepes I snapped a picture of the menu so I could figure out the points when I got home. This also seems like a good deterrent even if you are not following an eating plan. They list the calories for every entrée and menu choice, not just the healthy options.

My meal also came with 1 slice of toast and a fruit cup, so I snapped a picture of the sides menu too.

My meal came and it was yummy and satisfying.

When I got home I estimated the points by using CalorieCount.About.com to plug in the crepe ingredients and get as close as possible to the calorie count on the menu. Then I used the resulting fat, fiber, protein and carbs to calculate the PointsPlus value.  The entire meal was 7 points including 1 teaspoon of butter for the toast.

That afternoon we took the boys to see Madagascar 3. I meant to make my own popcorn before we went, but completely forgot until I was in the car. I looked up the points for movie popcorn using the Weight Watcher mobile app and figured I could use some of my weekly allowance points for popcorn. I ended up eating more than I probably should have and spent 13 points for 10 cups.

For dinner that evening we went to BJ’s Brewhouse. We eat at this restaurant a lot, so a couple of weeks ago I sent an e-mail through their website and requested the nutritional information. I had to request the nutritional information for a California restaurant, because BJ’s only provides nutritional information in certain states, Arizona is not one of them.  I figured that it would be a close enough guide to help me make better choices when we eat there. The nutritional information only provides calories, saturated fat, sodium and carbs so I still didn’t have enough information to calculate the PointsPlus value without extra work.

I knew from the menu I had received that the calories in a flatbread pizzas were 100ish calories a slice. I ordered the Grilled Chicken Pesto Flatbread which had 94 calories a slice.

The flatbread was cut in 8 pieces, of which I had 4. This picture is of half of the flatbread.

Again when I got home I had to use CalorieCount.About.com to estimate the points. The flatbread and pesto sauce were the biggest point grabbers. For half of the flatbread my estimated PointsPlus value was 12 points, which based on the calories and the ingredients, seemed like a reasonably close estimate. I also had a BJ’s LightSwitch Lager which their menu said was 135 calories. I used another beer that I knew was similar in calories and style to estimate the BJ’s light beer at 4 PointsPlus.

At the end of the day I had used 4 points from my weekly allowance. I was very pleased with my choices, although I should have eaten less popcorn. Next time I will make Jackson and his popcorn sit on Mike’s lap instead of mine. Maybe that will make me less tempted to graze on popcorn through most of the movie.

On Friday, Mike and I decided to go out to breakfast again after we dropped the kids off at summer camp. We went to Paradise Bakery, again another restaurant with no nutritional information and in this case no calorie information anywhere that I could find.

This meal was pulled off by choosing wisely and modifying my order a little. I did check out the menu before we went so I could formulate a plan.

I ordered the Vegetarian Omelette and a nonfat sugar free iced latte. The only modification I made was ordering the omelette with egg whites. Based on the size of the omelette I estimated that it had 6 egg whites; after determining all the other ingredients my estimate for my meal was 8 PointsPlus. I used a similar Starbucks iced latte to estimate my drink points and plugged all the ingredients for my omelette into e-tools to estimate the PointsPlus values.

Dining out can definitely be more of a challenge if the restaurant is not listed on e-tools or in the Weight Watchers dining companion guide and if the nutritional information is not available or incomplete.  In preparing to go out this often in a short period of time, I followed the tips I talked about in my post about eating at Baja Fresh (Monday – 7/2/2012 – Baja Fresh Do-Over – My First Meal Out on Weight Watchers).

I knew I needed to figure out how to make it work, because this isn’t a temporary plan I am on it is something I will need to sustain for the rest of my life. Going out to eat with my family is part of that life, so the extra effort is definitely worth it.

Monday - 7/2/2012 - Baja Fresh Do-Over - My First Meal Out on Weight Watchers

In one of my first posts I wrote about my lunch out with my co-workers at Baja Fresh – (One Day Before - 6/20/2012). Today was another birthday lunch and Baja Fresh was the birthday girl’s choice. My first inclination was to pass on going, but that’s silly. I should be able to find something to eat anywhere that fits in with my plan. I had already planned on getting lunch out that day so when the birthday lunch came up, I went. This time though I made sure I had a plan and stuck to it. I looked up the Baja Fresh nutritional information on their website.

The other thing I did this time was order first. Last time I got tripped up because I heard what someone else ordered and it sounded good so I followed suit. What did I order:

The Baja Ensalada Chicken Salad is 7 Weight Watchers PointsPlus with 0 points for the Fat Free Salsa Verde.

The salad was huge and I didn’t finish the entire thing. I forgot to take a picture until after I had started eating it and by then it wasn’t as pretty.  It was delicious and I certainly didn’t feel like I was deprived of anything. I also didn’t feel sick to my stomach later in the afternoon from eating a high fat and calorie meal.

Baja Fresh offers a 1.5 oz. tortilla chip serving complementary with each entrée.  At the store we were at they don’t put the chips on your plate automatically; they hand them to you when you are paying making it a little easier to turn down. But they are portion controlled for you and better than sharing a basket with your friends. Today I could fit in some chips and salsa today; at 5 Points Plus, I probably wouldn’t do this every time, but today I could swing it in my point budget.

All in all, a successful first time eating out since starting plan.

Here are my tips to staying on your plan when you go out to eat:

1. Have A Plan - Look at the menu (and nutritional information) before you go out and decide what you are going to order.
2. Stick To It - Order first to avoid the temptation of something else sounding better
3. Control Portions - If you are going to splurge on something with a higher PointsPlus value, figure out how to control the portion size (count the chips if not portion controlled in the serving provided).
4. Enjoy Your Dining Companions – That’s really why you are there, right?

Sunday- 7/1/12 - Grilled Chipotle Lime Salmon Fajitas Recipe and Exploring

After I ventured out on my walk yesterday and walked the canal along the park I decided to do some more exploring this morning. I was curious yesterday when I saw several people heading up the hill to the park. The park has been open a couple of years but I have never been there. I decided it was time to check it out. I walked the main trail of the park which loops almost the entire park. This is the canal I walked yesterday from above on the park trail.

What I am not really used to seeing by us is anything that really looks like the desert. Most places have lots of green and plenty of lush plants.  The areas not developed by us are mostly still farms and this time of year are still pretty green. Walking through the park trail I was on the lookout for snakes, not something I even think about normally so close to my house.

This is more what I am used to seeing around us. Green grass and lots of trees and green plants.

After I looped the park and headed back, I decided to stay on the canal for the full length of our sub-division and then loop our neighborhood walk the long way.

Results from my extra long walk:

Yesterday I had to trick MapMyWalk to recognize my route so I could figure out how far I had walked. I started looking for an app for my iPhone and found RunKeeper. It has a lot of options I haven’t even looked at. All I really wanted was to track the time and the mileage. It will post to Facebook and Twitter, let you set up a playlist, integrate with a heart monitor and more.

My plan is to take a self photo on the 1st of each month through this journey.  I had shown before photos here and here, but this one is just of me.

We made salmon this weekend. We like to grill our salmon on cedar planks. But we have had some trouble recently with one catching fire. I have another recipe I wanted to share. Again we were trying to use what we got in our produce basket and other things we already had and came up with salmon fajitas. This recipe was adapted from a recipe found here.

Grilled Chipotle Lime Grilled Salmon Fajitas

[gmc_recipe 296]

Day 10 - Saturday 6/30/12 - Grilled Vegetable Chipotle Slaw Recipe

This week I learned from my friend Jen that we have a local co-op that distributes produce baskets each week. I knew this was available other places but had never looked into what we had locally.  Sure enough, BountifulBaskets.org is available in 20 states, and when I went to look what was near me, I found one pick up location 1 mile from my house! My pick up time was at 6:00 a.m. Saturday morning and you have to pick up your basket within 20 minutes of that time. My plan was to get up at 5:00 take a short walk and go pick up my basket.  Then I woke up at 5:50 a.m.  I still made it by 6:03 and was happily surprised to find my basket was really two baskets, one filled with fruit and one filled with vegetables. I checked in and transferred the produce to my own bags and was on my way within a couple of minutes.

This is what I came home with…

• Veggies: Celery, romaine lettuce, 2 green bell peppers, 2 bags of carrots, grape tomatoes, and an onion.
• Fruits:  Grapes, cherries, bananas, cantaloupe and 3 mangos

All of that was $16.50 ($15 for the basket and $1.50 to cover processing fees).  The first week you also pay $3 to contribute for your basket to hold the produce at pick up. You bring your own basket/bag to bring it home. They ask that you volunteer 1 out of each 6 times you pick up your basket.

We planned our meals out for the next week trying to incorporate everything that we received. Later in the day I went to the grocery store and priced out the same items I received and it would have easily cost about $35 for the same amount of produce.

I dropped off my fruits and veggies and headed out for a walk. I had finally set up a playlist on my iPod. Since I had already done my morning errand I now had more time for a walk. I had been looking at this path that looked like it led to the canal and thought “what the heck”. I had time for a longer walk now.

I have lived in this area for 7 years, but have never walked the canal path, even though the canal borders one side of our neighborhood. North of us there is a farm to one side and a park on the other. The park was built on top of what used to be a landfill.  It was warm out but there were lots of other walkers, runners and bikers out on the trail.

I ended up covering 3.24 miles and earning 7 activity points for my efforts. Next time I better put on sunscreen if I am going to be out later in the morning.

I started Weight Watchers on June 21st and started exercising again 2 days later. In that short time I walked 290 minutes and covered almost 14 miles, earning 29 activity points.

I’m very proud of my first month-end activity check-in, because in the days and weeks before June 21st all of those numbers would have been a big fat 0.

Saturday night we started putting our veggies to use. I had picked up red cabbage and a red pepper at the store and wanted to make a slaw with grilled veggies.  I was inspired by a recipe in the July/August issue of Weight Watchers Magazine where they had grilled the vegetables for the slaw. I didn’t think I would like the dressing that was used in the magazine recipe, so I  came up with my own spin on a grilled slaw and used up some of those veggies we got this week (recipe below).

Grilled Vegetable Chipotle Slaw

Prepare the veggies for grilling by chopping the cabbage in quarters and removing the core, cutting the pepper in quarters and slicing the onion thick slices. Spray all sides with olive oil cooking spray.

Grill vegetables until tender.

Mix the ingredients for dressing in the bottom of a large bowl and shred carrots.

After grilled vegetables have cooled, chop and toss in bowl with dressing and shredded carrots. Serve and enjoy!

[gmc_recipe 246]

Day 7–Wednesday 6/27/2012 –Tomato Avocado Quinoa Salad

I finished my first week and weigh in day is tomorrow. I feel really good about my 1st week. I’ll break it down when I write about my first weigh-in tomorrow. Over the weekend we tried a couple of new recipes from the my new Cooking Light magazine.

I have always wanted to try quinoa and this month they had an article with several ways to turn 2/3 of a cup of quinoa into something enticing. One included 2 of my favorite ingredients, tomatoes and avocado.

Quinoa, Tomato, Avocado Salad from Cooking Light 2 servings – 7 Weight Watchers Points Plus 1 1/3 cups cooked quinoa, cooked according to package directions and chilled 1 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced in half 1/2 medium avocado, chopped 3 Tbsp. fresh cilantro leaves 1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil Toss cooked quinoa in olive oil. Serving size 2/3 cups of quinoa, topped with 1/2 cup tomatoes, 1/4 avocado and 1 1/2 Tbsp. cilantro.

We served this as a side dish and I ate only half of a serving and it was very filling. I am looking forward to finding new ways to try quinoa to incorporate this healthy grain into our meals.

What ways do you like to dress up whole grains?

 Technorati Tags: Quinoa Tomato Avocado Salad,Cooking Light

Day 6–Tuesday 6/26/2012–Weekend Breakfast Re-Do

Mike usually makes breakfast for us on Sunday mornings.  It’s something we look forward to. This past Sunday I did the cooking so I could calculate how many WW Points Plus the breakfast would be. I also wanted to figure out how I could modify it so that I could still enjoy the same basic meal.

This is the modified breakfast that I ate Sunday for 15 points. We usually eat a bit later on Sunday and almost always skip lunch. So the amount of points for breakfast and lunch combined would come pretty close to my normal day.

These are the modifications I made to our normal Sunday breakfast:

• We usually have a breakfast burrito, but we didn’t have whole wheat tortillas so I had toast instead with light whole wheat bread, spread with 2 teaspoons of light butter
• I measured the oil for our hash browns using only 1 teaspoon per person
• I only made enough bacon so I would only eat 2 slices instead of 3-4 we might have had before
• I added mushrooms to our eggs and used 1 teaspoon per person of light butter to sauté the mushrooms and scramble our eggs
• I weighted the cheese I added to my eggs

The only real changes I made was to weigh, measure and portion my food. By measuring the oil, butter and cheese I probably cut our original meal back a couple of points, since we never measured the amount we were adding.  I made less bacon than we normally do, controlling the portion size. That’s it. Easy!

I did not at all feel like I had sacrificed anything. I was full until the late afternoon and completely satisfied after breakfast and only had a small snack that got me through until dinner.

Day 2–Friday 6/22/2012 - Dodge the Brownies and Friday Night Pita Pepperoni Pizza Recipe

My good friend Jen is having her big 4-0 tomorrow and we celebrated with her at work today.  There was not just one, but two batches of brownies brought in for her. I was able to ignore them today. It is much easier now when you are in the first days of the program and starting fresh.  You are so gung-ho to stay on track. It is easy to pass up those gooey chocolaty treats.

A week ago I would have tried both kinds. A month from now I may work it into my day. But not today.

Tonight I am looking forward to our standard Friday night pizza and wine. At least I was looking forward to it until I put the recipe into e-Tools and saw how many points it was going to cost me.  Our homemade pizza with Boboli whole wheat thin crust, light sauce, part skim cheese, turkey pepperoni and mushrooms was going to be 15 points.  I usually eat half of it. It doesn’t seem like a lot, 4 small pieces. I am not even stuffed after eating it.

But there it was on the screen staring back at me, 15 points. That just isn’t going to work for me.  It isn’t worth starving myself all day.

Time for plan B.

Friday Night Pita Pepperoni Pizza

• 1 whole wheat pita pocket
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 1/4 cup Ragu Pizza Sauce
• 1 1/2 oz. part skim mozzarella cheese
• 7 slices of Hormel Turkey Pepperoni
• 1/4 c fresh mushrooms

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Brush pita with olive oil. Top with sauce, cheese, turkey pepperoni and mushrooms.  Bake on aluminum foil directly on oven rack for 8 minutes.  Slice and enjoy.

8 - 9 PointsPlus for entire pita pizza. You could forgo the olive oil (I did by accident) and/or cut the cheese back a bit to shave another point or two off.

Points can very based on which brand of pita pocket you use, for example the  Thomas Whole Wheat Pita I had on hand made the pizza 9 points, but the Sara Lee Mr. Pita 100% Whole Wheat that I bought over the weekend would have made it an 8 point pizza. You can probably guess which brand I will be buying now.

Mike still ate the original Boboli pizza we have been making every week. I cut the crust in half before baking and froze the rest for him next week. This is how the pizzas compare:

My pita pizza on the left is smaller, but it was just as filling and satisfying as the Boboli pizza and I saved 7 points.  I could enjoy my wine and pizza Friday nights. I did not feel like I sacrificed anything except an extra couple of minutes to make separate pizzas.

I may not have got myself out of bed to walk this morning.  But I did finish the day only using 2 points of my weekly allowance, which for me is not bad for a Friday.

Even the small victories feel good.

Technorati Tags: Friday Night Pita Pepperoni Pizza,Pizza,Easy Dinner