Sunday, January 30, 2011

Week 2, Saturday (Day 13)

Breakfast: 1/2  cup 5-minute uncooked oats mixed with 3/4 cup 1% cottage cheese and 1/2 cup sliced strawberries
Just when the oatmeal starts to bubble over in the microwave, I realize the meal plan says UNCOOKED.  What? You want me to eat uncooked oatmeal?  Will I get salmonella?  Then you want me to mix the uncooked oatmeal with a cheese clumpy mixture?  No thank you.  Plus, I've already cooked my oatmeal and cleaned the microwave and now I'm late.  And I'm tired.  100 calorie starbucks drink?  That sounds way better than cottage cheese.  Maybe next time.


Snack 1: 1 handful unsalted almonds, 1 grapefruit
I literally brought a grapefruit in a bag with me to a meeting I had today.  How the heck do you eat a grapefruit?  I really should have bought the pre-cut kind from the grocery store, even though it was more expensive.  I google "how do you eat a grapefruit?"  They suggest using a knife and a spoon.  Shoot.  I don't have either of those, so I eat my strawberries from breakfast and the almonds.  Except I really brought the cocoa almonds instead of the plain almonds.  Raise your hand if you're surprised.  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  That's what I thought.


Lunch: Citrus Protein Salad (2 cups romaine lettuce, 1 hardboiled egg whites, 1/2 cup chickpeas, 2 tablespoons unsalted sunflower seeds, 1 clementines with 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp dijon mustard, 1/2 tsp olive oil); 1 pear
Only upon typing up this blog entry did I realize I was supposed to eat a pear today.  Whoops.  When I went to throw together this salad, approximately 3 minutes before I had to leave, I saw that it called for hardboiled eggs.  Whoops again.  When was I supposed to make those?  How about a little heads up here, editors?  I'm already 0/3 on getting the meals right today.  The rest of the salad is mediocre.  There was too much dressing.  The sunflower seeds and the chickpeas were the only parts I liked.  Salad fail.


Snack 2: 2 low-fat string cheeses, 10 red grapes
Super easy snack for a day on the go, but mark me down as 0/4 today because I never packed the red grapes.  All 10 of them stayed sitting in my fridge (with seeds).  How did I manage to skip all my fruit today?  Maybe I'll be able to open this grapefruit....  Does anyone have a knife?


Dinner: Roasted Eggplant & Kale Penne with Pine Nuts and Feta; 4 oz grilled chicken
Alright, meal plan.  You're telling me to make this fancy meal and there's no corresponding recipe.  What gives?  I do some grunt work and figure out that this meal is really on page 88 of the cookbook.  Thanks for the help, guys.  Perhaps you should consider having an editor edit your work?  I'd be happy to do so for you, for a small fee.  Also, this meal serves 6.  Again, there are two of us.  I cut the pasta serving in half and leave all the remaining ingredients as they are so MJ will have leftovers for lunch tomorrow.  The recipe calls for 1 bunch kale.  But how much is a bunch?  At the grocery story they are sold in individual stalks.  How many stalks make a bunch?  I guesstimate and pick 3 big stalks.  Once again, I wish the editors gave some portion guidance.
Besides the standard editing glitch, dinner was one of my favorites so far, which is ironic because my family has a distinct negative opinion about kale generally.  My only complaint was that I had to be doing 300 things at once to make sure everything was ready for dinner on time:
(1) roast the pine nuts (don't let them burn)
(2) bake the eggplant, stirring halfway
(3) cook the pasta
(4) sauté the kale
(5) grill the chicken
No one particular task was difficult, but together I felt like I was Speedy Gonzalez (with my assistant Slowpoke MJ Rodriguez).


We put the chicken on the George Forman and that came out pretty cruddy.  Luckily the pasta salad really didn't need any additions.  Without the chicken, this meal is only 215 calories.  But that's for a 2 ounce serving.  Hmm.  I whip out my new fancy-shmancy food scale and weigh my second helping of dinner.  3.25 ounces.  @#%&! I guess I had more like a 500+ calorie dinner.  Considering how many things I accidentally skipped today, I think my bonus calories are okay.  Better than eating a bonus 500 calorie cookie.  Or candy bar.  Or ice cream sundae.  Ahh I have to stop myself before I eat my foot. 

3 comments:

  1. Does your oven have a broil function? Sometimes when a recipe calls for grilling I use the broiler in the oven - you just have to be careful not to put food to close to the top as the broiler is basically a fire from the top of your oven - so you want to make sure to keep food a good 6-8 inches from top. You may also want to check out seasoning like Mrs. Dash - they have different flavor combos and it would help to give the meat some extra flavor without the calories. Couldn't you peel the grapefruit like an orange? I'm personally not a fan for grapefruit but I thought you could peel them.

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  2. Be thankful you can eat anything you want! Many people have dietary restrictions where they have no choice but to eat the things that you are snubbing. Never have I read such negativity! If you don't want to commit yourself to such a drastic lifestyle change, then don't. If you do, I urge you to keep trying and stay positive about what the editors of the book suggest. However, I (being someone with a restricted diet who had to teach myself everything I know about eating...no, my diet didn't come with a book to help me) think it's much easier to learn about good nutrition and put it into practice than try to follow what someone else has written in a book and deems acceptable. Do what's right for your body.

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  3. Thanks for your feedback. This was very early in following the meal plan. If you keep reading, you'll see that I did make the meal plan my own and used the editors' ideas as suggestions. This meal plan actually has worked for me and I'm sorry my sarcasm and humor is coming across as negativity.

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