Cooking - An Early Thanksgiving Meal

I wanted to make my fiance and I something delicious and comforting for dinner tonight so I made roasted turkey breast with gravy, green beans with bacon and onion, and baked potatoes with light sour cream and green onions.

I took some pictures to share how I made the green beans, something I'm always surprised to learn people have never tried!

First you dice up the bacon and cook all the way through.  Do not cook it with the onion or it wont get crispy.  I only used about 1 piece of bacon for two very large servings of fresh green beans.  You could obviously use more but a little goes a long way for flavor.

Next step is to take out all the bacon and bacon grease (essentially draining the bacon).  Then you're going to want to dice up the onion about the same size as the bacon.  I do about 1/2 an onion for every two people.  I also use vegetable broth to help cook the onions because one key step is that the onions cannot be crunchy in this recipe they need to be well cooked before you add the green beans back in.

Next you're going to add in your green beans.  You can use canned if you want/need.  I personally think fresh make a world of difference but its all availability and preference.  I used fresh (so obviously I boiled them first).

Season to taste with salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic powder. You definitely want to let this cook for 15-20 minutes to let the flavors meld.

The last step is to add the bacon just before serving.  If you add it earlier it will get soggy and chewy and look raw.

The last step....enjoy!

Product Review - Trader Joes Asian Spicy Peanut Vinaigrette

A few months ago I was in a salad rut.  I love salad, it is one of my all time top favorite foods.  That being said the dressing selection for healthy dressings sometimes gets monotonous.  I was eating Newman’s Own Light Balsamic almost every day.

Then I was in Trader Joes and I saw this dressing and decided to give it a go.  

Serving - 2 TBS

Calories - 70

If you love anything butter, with an Asian flair (and a subtle kick) then this is for you.  The dressing is spicy and sweet and the peanut butter.

Here is a salad I actually had for breakfast yesterday.  I chopped some lettuce with carrot and cabbage, topped with 2 TBS of dressing, a chopped up teriyaki chicken breast, thinly sliced zucchini and the last touch – some dry roasted slivered almonds and sesame seeds.  Delicious!

So I'm definitely on a kick with these lunches.  I don't know that you can truly call them Bento yet, but I'm practicing.  I was fairly pleased with the turn out today considering we were running out of everything and I had to scrape together enough stuff for the roll-up and used almost all our vegetables (thus why the symmetry isn't perfect, I didn't have much food options).

The one on the left is my mom's who requested a low-carb lunch so the top has some turkey pepperoni and block olive picks.  Diced pickles and chicken salad.  The bottom has sugar free jello (in the star mold), cauliflower, carrots and bell peppers.

The second is mine...another roll up on top.  Then I've got cauliflower, a few bell pepper strips, baby carrots, pickle skewer, olive and turkey pepperoni skewer and the ugly little container has yogurt kefir ranch.  I'm still on the hunt for a small condiment container so I had to use a tiny jelly jar.  It worked but lacked the cuteness factor.

Then tonight I was bored and wanted to prep a few things.  The other day at the craft store I picked up mini Christmas cookie cutters for my lunch and wanted to try them out.

Here is a plate of "Bento desserts" made out of protein bars.  A few slim fast bars, gluten free brownie bars and gluten free apple bars.  There wasn't too much left over scraps after using the cookie cutters but I ate them so they didn't go to waste! ;)  Each bar yielded about 3 pieces with a small amount of left over edges.

Then I was having so much fun with my little cookie cutters that I decided to use them on flat fruit leathers.  These were much harder to cut so my hands hurt a little but they are so cute!  There are about 3-4 shapes per fruit leather.

Not a long post today (12 hours of Christmas shopping wore me out!), but I used my nifty little bento box for lunch today again.  Same roll-up, different "side".

While Christmas shopping my mom came across an amazing insulated lunch bad with separated compartments (in the bag) as well as a great size BPA free plastic lunch container with, get this, separated compartments!  I've been looking high and low for one and haven't found anything and this one was an online order that had been returned so I got it 75% off.  I'll probably post pictures tomorrow or the next day with a review of the product.

Adventures in Bento

So I'd been looking up Bento boxes and accessories all over the internet but was a bit dismayed at cost or shipping, and was unable to find any stores around me that sold anything.  Then I realized that I didnt need to find stuff meant specifically for Bento.  I went to Cost Plus World Market and got several shapes and sizes of silicone baking cups (way more quantity and way less cost compared to the silicone cups you find for Bento anywhere else).  I also found a stainless steel "Tinder Box" in the Indian food section and fell in love since I'm tying not to buy any new plastic products unless they are BPA free (and almost all Bento boxes are NOT BPA free unfortunately).

Here is everything together, including some cute little tart pans.

The piece comes apart into two separate compartments for food with a very tight fitting lid.

I got these cute flowers, little stars and miniature green ones.  There are tons more too.

My very first Bento lunch!  Nothing super fancy but I was pretty proud of it.

I took this lunch to school with today and I was very impressed with the container.  Nothing really moved, the lid had a tight seal and the stainless steel really kept the wrap and apple so very fresh.

Musings on Mindless and Emotional Eating

I would never spend money if I didn’t know whether I had it.  

I do not charge things on my credit card unless I know I can pay them off in full.  I do not make large purchases unless I know I know I will be ok financially now and in the near future. I like to plan ahead and I’m pretty frugal...but more importantly responsible.

That being said, I’ve noticed a trend in my eating habits the lately (oh you know the last 6 months at least, the last few weeks for sure) that leans towards the exact mindset.  Sure I’m eating foods that great for me, dried cherries and blueberries, flax muffins, watermelon, etc... But too much of anything CAN be a bad thing.

Tonight, after ending the day in the red again I realized something.  I worked so hard to adjust my eating habits more towards a lifestyle change instead of a diet that I went too far the opposite.  I had counted obsessively and become too controlled and tried to loosen up, and in the process have now gotten way too lax.   I now eat healthfully of course, watch portions all day, but realized that I have been sabotaging myself in the afternoons and evenings by eating and tracking at the end or just hoping that once I’ve eaten something I won’t have gone over my daily caloric goal.

And then a light bulb occurred to me and I realized I would never go until the end of the month and then spend a bunch of money hoping I’d be ok until next month.  I would never charge something on my credit card without any idea of how it cost.

With money it makes sense – don’t spend more than you have and plan ahead…but doesn’t the same thing makes sense with food?  So why am I just hoping it will all end up ok at the end of the day instead of planning it all out?  It’s like they say, you can’t do the same thing over and over and expect different results.

I want so much to be able to eat however I want, when I want and not re-gain all the weight I spent years losing but the scale and my body say otherwise.  I'm doing what I've been doing, but hoping for new results without any new behaviors.  

I think its time for a change.

Product Review: Kefir Ranch

There is just no way I cannot rave about a new product when it is this good!

If you love Ranch you really must try this.  I adore ranch, but had mostly given up because most bottle ranch dressings aren’t as good as home-made and the light versions are never as good.  My fiancé loves ranch though and we’ve started buying it again and I knew I had to find something more calorie friendly for me (the kind he loves is 170 calories for 2 TBS! Ouch!)

So the other day at the store, with coupon in hand we picked up this new Yogurt line of dressings by Lighthouse called Kefir ranch.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with kefir it’s a thick yogurt beverage with tons of probiotics and this dressing even boasts live and active cultures (like you find in kefir and yogurt).  The cincher though was the nutritional stats:

2 Tbs

60 Calories

5 Grams of fat

The really funny thing is the dressing isn’t marked as lowfat or light.  But now what you guys really want to know…how did it taste?  SO GOOD.  I am officially hooked.  It’s got a slightly tangy kick but it’s thick and has all the flavor of full fat ranch.  I am absolutely in love and just had to share it!