Good Clean Fun

This is good clean fun!  That’s what I thought as I made some pumpkins scones (thanks for the recipe, Suzi!)  The original recipe for these scones was only 87 calories each.  By the time I changed up the recipe and the portion size a bit, they came out to be 135 calories, which is still pretty good for a treat.  And as I thought about what would make them ‘perfect,’ I remembered that a little Fage greek yogurt was a pretty good substitute for the traditional clotted cream served with most scones.  Fun!

I’ve been on quite a cooking/assembling jag lately.  Probably the reaction to being away from my kitchen for a week.

I ran out of the wonderful Justin’s Cocoa Almond Butter, and I thought I could probably recreate it.  Here’s the recipe.  Pretty easy to make yourself, especially if you start with the slivered almonds.  It’s kinda hard to get a nice shot of chocolate almond butter, so here’s a pic of my favorite way to enjoy it–on a nice crisp apple.

After I got home from my trip I had quite a hankering for Mexican food.  Here’s the simplest way I know how to solve that one.  I picked up some tortillas at TJ’s that were only 60 calories each.  Added one ounce of cheese, some salsa and chopped romaine lettuce.  Very satisfying.

I also picked up a bag of TJ’s broccoli slaw.  I followed their recipe ALMOST exactly.  They said to use 1 cup of your favorite dressing.  Wowza.  That could be a lot of calories.  I made this dressing to put on it:  1/2 cup plain low fat yogurt, 1 Tbsp Honey, 1 Tbsp oil, 1 Tbsp honey mustard, and 1/2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar.  JACKPOT!!  This was so very tasty, and it was good for a few days.  (Main recipe:  1 pkg broccoli slaw, 1/4 cup dried cranberries, 1/4 cup walnuts, and 1 apple chopped.)  For 6 servings it is 130 calories.

 THEN, I had bookmarked this recipe for pumpkin butter quite a while ago.  I thought the stats were pretty good (47 calories for 2 Tbsp) and when I compared it to TJ’s commercial pumpkin butter, I was right–theirs is 45 calories for ONE Tbsp.  So I finally set out to make it.  I followed that recipe almost exactly.  Very tasty, and a little goes a long way.  Oh. When I made those pumpkin scones, I didn’t have any canned pumpkin in my cupboard, so I sub’d a smaller amount of the pumpkin butter.

I got a cold or something this week.  Just feeling under the weather, but not bad enough to stop eating evidently.  I was so glad I had stocked up on fresh fruits and veggies, because that is what I crave when I get a cold.  Now that’s a change for the better, isn’t it?  The asian pears and fuji apples that I brought home are just so delicious.  I had a head of cauliflower in there, and that Cauliflower Potato Bake just does the trick for some healthy ‘comfort style’ food for me.

Trader Joe’s was featuring a few new foods, and I succumbed to both of them.  One is frozen sweet potatoes.  I believe they are sweet potato cubes LOL.  And the other was some BBQ pulled chicken breast.  So yummy, and only 140 calories for a 5 ounce serving.   Yummy, but quite zesty, I have to admit.  It would be great over something bland, like a baked potato.  Or like they served it at TJ’s, with the mashed sweet potatoes.

So another thing I’ve been thinking about is how I learned in W.W. that the little changes you make really do count.  Suzi’s pumpkin scone recipe is definitely a lesson in that.  It is a very low fat recipe, which is why the original recipe was only 87 calories (and it was a modest portion size.)  When you start adding a ‘bit of this,’ and a ‘little of that’ for a treat or for extra flavor, that is when the calories start creeping up.  Do that enough times, and you won’t be on a diet any more.

Which brings me to my last point.  I didn’t write a final thought on The Hunger Game.  As I said before, I kind of stopped waiting until I was hungry to eat.  Which points out that there are a lot of reasons I eat besides just to ‘fuel’ my body.  Still, I did learn that it was unnecessary for me to have those little snacks or bits that I would indulge in between meals.  And it is a tool that I plan to continue to use and to strive towards.  I just checked out Georgie’s blog this afternoon, and there was an EXCELLENT article about calorie counting, and her suggestion that you just wait until you are hungry, and then wait 30-60 minutes to eat!  How about that!  Georgie is a registered dietician, and everything she’s ever written has made sense to me.  I hope you’ll check it out if you don’t know her.  She is also a wealth of excellent healthy, low-calorie recipes.  Lately she’s been experimenting with more grain free recipes.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print around here.  Hope you all have a wonderful weekend.  I plan to stay inside with the doggies on my lap.  Very comforting, even if it is a bit difficult to stitch with 45 pounds of dog on your lap.  (I just figured that out!  No wonder I get tired after a while with all three of them on there!)