Another Trip to Dinner Zen

In preparation for my Saturday trip to Dinner Zen, I have been rearranging and eating out of my freezer. Tonight, Micah and I will be sharing the final tilapia filet from my last trip, and after that I have 2 squash wraps left from that trip. They will be fine lunches next week, or maybe even a dinner.

For those of you who are going with me this time (we have a group of 8 and may become 9 soon), here are some freezer tips for getting your freezer ready for a DZ trip:

1) In the future, you'll realize that freezing liquids takes up a lot of room if you freeze them in hard tupperware/rubbermaid containers. Freeze soups, broths, stews, and sauces in freezer bags, packed flat. You can fit a lot more in the freezer that way. If it's too late, it's time to eat or use your soups, stews, and sauces to make room for your meals :)

2) If you have giant bags of frozen foods (like perogies, fish filets, etc), you can re-package them into freezer bags. Package by however many you need for a family meal, and then you can fit them into small spaces left over by your large meals. This is a good way to use the unused door space.

3) Suck the air out of stuff. If you don't have a vacuum sealer (I don't!) then just close your freezer bag nearly to sealed, stick in a straw, and suck out the remaining air before closing the seal. You'll save a lot of space that way.

4) Repackage if you have to. Dinner Zen and a lot of other places have meals prepared into a tin for baking. When you bring your food home, you can pack everything in to over-full, then take out the tins and repackage into freezer bags. Don't let your packaging take up valuable food space! When it's time to make some of these meals, you can get out a reusable/washable pan, and defrost it into that pan.

I'm really looking forward to this trip! They have Big Bleu Chops again, and based on our last experience with them, I ordered 2 full orders of them! Yum.

OK, off to check on dinner.

Orange Chicken with Singapore Seasoning

I've been branching out and trying my hand at mixing perhaps surprising ingredients. Today, it was a great success! I did use two specialty items, but I'm pretty sure you could replace them if you needed to (that is, I used the Pampered Chef Covered Baker and Penzey's Singapore Seasoning.

Orange Chicken with Singapore Seasoning (serves 2)

2 four-ounce boneless, skinless chicken breasts

one onion, sliced thinly

one navel orange, cleaned well, and sliced thinly

5 cloves garlic, sliced in half.

Penzey's Singapore Seasoning

salt

Pampered Chef Covered Baker

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Line the bottom of the Pampered Chef covered baker with oranges. Place chicken breasts on top of oranges, and sprinkle lightly with salt and liberally with Singapore Seasoning. Place remaining orange slices on top of chicken, top with onions garlic. Cover the baker, and bake for 45-50 minutes. (You can actually leave it in longer if you need to if you use the covered baker; we were in a conversation with a friend and it went over an hour and was still awesome).

Serve chicken breasts topped with oranges, onions, and garlic. We had this with some broccoli on the side and it was lovely.

Aaaaaand.... according to Weight Watchers' Recipe Builder, it's 5 points per serving!

Cranberry Cous-Cous fabulousness

WW has a recipe for Cranberry-Sage Cous Cous, and it is remarkably good. I was actually planning to make this for Thanksgiving but ended up making stuffing instead.

This is sweet and savory and tart all together, and it's 3 points per 1-cup serving, so I foresee making it again soon. We had it with cider-glazed pork chops and glazed apples. I changed a little bit from the original recipe and my changes are reflected here (they do not change the points values)

Cranberry Sage Couscous.

2 cups fresh cranberries

5 oz whole wheat couscous (Trader Joe's has this)

1 cup fat free chicken broth

3 sage leaves, chopped finely

1/2 an onion, chopped

2 ribs celery, chopped

salt & pepper

1T olive oil

Boil cranberries in water until several have popped, and drain. At the same time, boil the chicken broth and pour it over the couscous.

Saute onion, celery, sage, and salt/pepper in olive oil until onion softens. Add the cranberries and couscous, and mix well. Pour into a baker (spray with a little cooking spray first) and bake at 350 for 3o minutes.

WW says that a serving is a little more than a cup (think a heaping cupful!) It's a lot and it's filling and delicious!

Holidays and Weight Loss

I lost a pound the week of Thanksgiving, which is, frankly, amazing, as I went 18 points over my weekly allowance points, completely by accident, because I didn't go to a restaurant prepared beforehand.

That said, I did go to Thanksgiving dinners (both of them) prepared for just about anything, and I even offered to make the sweet potatoes and stuffing for the first one so that I could control the ingredients. The stuffing didn't come out so great (I mean, it still tasted great but I would do it differently next time) but here's the sweet potato recipe:

Maple Sweet Potatoes

3 sweet potatoes, scrubbed and cut into bite sized pieces (leave skin on)

1 large onion, sliced thinly

3 T maple syrup

2T olive oil

salt, pepper, and fresh thyme for seasoning

Mix all ingredients, place in a large baking dish, and bake for 1 hour, stirring around the potatoes at least once.

Serves 10 people, 2 points per serving (according to WW's recipe builder), and it's much more interesting than plain glazed sweet potatoes or ones with marshmallows on top!

There are, of course, more holidays coming, and I want to do a mix of enjoying myself while not gaining back all of the weight I lost up to now. We are going to my parents in Florida for Christmas, and that will also, of course, include Disney. Fortunately, there's a lot of walking there to help out on the eating front!

SO here's to the next month being as successful as the last one, and I'll be sharing food ideas as I have them!

WW Week 1 done! In which I eat a lot of food, but lose weight.

My weigh-in was great, and I was down 3.2 pounds the first week! That probably would have been more if I had not completely gorged myself at the Melting Pot last night. I saved up all 35 of my flex points and had a really light breakfast and no lunch in anticipation of the night out, too. But I did eat so much that I had weird dreams. Still, first night out without kids since the baby was born.

By the way, the Melting Pot is evil. Tasty Tasty Evil. I was trying to figure out WHICH course you could leave out, and Adam said "salad," but even the salad is so tasty that you wouldn't want to drop it out. Of course the least healthy is probably the cheese course. For pure price, you could leave out the main course and go for cheese fondue, salad, and chocolate fondue, but then you wouldn't have tasty tasty meats and sauces. Oh the Evil. Seriously.

Meanwhile, I saved up ALL of my flex points for that meal, and I was sure that I probably gained a ton, but I didn't! Most excellent.

I also found out this week that IHOP has a diet menu and it's pretty awesome if you're going to go out.

So anyway, I went to my meeting while Micah was in school today (since I have plans tonight). We talked about Thanksgiving. We all had to pick from a list of foods what we were planning to eat for Thanksgiving and then add up the points. Mine came to 35 so that sounds to me like just saving my flex points for Thursday next week, but other people talked about cutting back on stuff. I guess I could do that too. Also, I volunteered to make the stuffing so I can control what goes into it. Because I am clever. I shared this tip at the meeting too.

Liz (today's meeting leader) shared her recipe for Liz's Lazy Soup. This is what she does:

Saute onion and garlic in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (it's for a whole pot and so each individual serving will have less than a point of oil). When it gets clear, throw in 2 bags of broccoli wokkoli. When they turn really green, throw in 2-3 boxes of mushrooms. Add 2 or 3 boxes of vegetable broth. Thow in a whole bag of frozen spinach. Bring to a boil and then reduce and cook for 30 minutes.

Now, you have a lazy 0 point soup. Store it in the fridge. Sometime after you do this, cook up some whole wheat pasta and refrigerate. When you are ready to eat, weigh out 2 points of pasta, scoop on some soup, and microwave it for a 2 point meal.

I think I'll probably do this :) It sounds lazy and easy!

I can't eat this many points

So...yeah.

I started WW and did my calculations and it came to 24 points, but I'm exclusively breastfeeding, so that means an extra 10 points per day, which is 34 points. THIRTY FOUR POINTS!

I can't eat 34 points per day. I really can't. I mean, I'm sure that I was eating way more than that before joining WW, but now that I'm eating healthy foods, I just can't get enough points. I like too many things that have zero points.

I think it comes from having done Core WW before, because those are the foods I gravitate towards.

So anyway, I got to dinnertime tonight and had 19 points left. I had a 9 point dinner. I swear I started thinking of going to get some ice cream, but instead for dessert I had vanilla granola and a peach yogurt, all of which came to a WHOPPING 7 points.

I really don't want to eat anything else. I had a glass of Gatorade (1 pt) so I'm down to 2 for the day. I guess i could have a piece of cheese. But I really don't want to.

I'm going to be in a lot of trouble when I stop nursing and have to give up those extra 10 points.

Weight Loss Attempt + Acorn Squash

So I joined Weight Watchers. The baby is 3 months old, and even though I am still nursing, I get an extra 10 points per day while nursing, so it shouldn't be too bad. I suspect my husband won't start losing weight until I am cooking for far fewer points. I get to start with 34 per day! I had an 8 point breakfast and it's an hour later and I'm still full, so that's a really good thing.

I also started putting some of my recipes into WW's recipe builder online, and honestly it's not so bad. I made an acorn squash curry the other night and, without the rice, it was 4 points per serving. AND it was really filling.

Now I just have to stop making pies.

Here's the Acorn Squash Curry recipe:

1 Acorn Squash

1 large onion, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

2 large carrots, sliced

2 T sweet curry powder (I used Penzey's)

2T Crackpot Gourmet curry mix

small amount of beef, trimmed of fat, cubed very small

1c reduced fat sour cream

1 can chopped tomatoes

Microwave the whole squash for 5 minutes. Slice in half, scoop out seeds and discard, and scoop out flesh & chop. Set aside.

Saute onion & garlic in cooking spray until onion is clear. Add squash, carrots, tomatoes, and spices. Continue cooking on medium until carrots start to soften. Add meat and cook until meat looks cooked on the outside. Add sour cream and warm through. Serve with brown basmati rice.

Serves 4. (4 points per serving before rice)