Good Eats!

I tried a new recipe a couple of weeks ago, and it was so good I made it again this week. Its Biz’s Potato Crusted Quiche. She uses baked potatoes for the crust, and the recipe is so simple but so good, I love it!

Another thing I’ve been loving is my own homemade dark chocolate candy. I actually like it better than See’s candy! I buy 85% dark chocolate from the bins at Sprouts Grocery store, and melt about 4 ounces, and use 4 ounces of walnuts and 4 ounces of dried apricots, and mix it all together and make little candy clumps. Yummy and not too sweet!

This ‘n That

The chickens are starting to lay eggs! I’m having so much fun gathering them. So far they’re laying all different sizes. Even though all my chickens are standard sized, some of their eggs are still “banty sized.” The big ones are double-yolkers!!

Sometimes this is exactly how I feel:

“I just want to drink coffee, raise chickens, and take naps”

My knee is doing great. But the heel on that same leg hurts like heck. I went for my final checkup with the surgeon (for 9 months) and told him about it, and they did x-rays on it. No fracture. The physical therapist doesn’t think its plantar fasciitis (I don’t think so either) but they are having me do some stretching exercises and that seems to help a little. Its just discouraging to still have that same leg hurting to be walking. HOWEVER, after saying rather pitifully to my BF that I didn’t think I would walk too much any more because my arthritis was so bad, I decided that I was being a baby. So I have been challenging myself to take longer and more vigorous walks. It feels good mentally

I’ve been trying out some new recipes. Jill recommended this one, which says its pizza sauce, but its really just a marinara sauce recipe. Its easy to vary the recipe a bit using what you like/have on hand. I like chunks of tomatoes in my sauce, so I usually use  I am loving making this and freezing it in zip lock baggies and then using it for whatever. I made a low-cal chicken recipe using some chicken tenders. I mixed in some fresh spinach with the marinara sauce, used less than half a serving of penne pasta, and then topped it with some fresh mozzarella that was on sale. YUMM, and only 250 calories! Sorry, no picture.

Then, Biz recommended this pumpkin baked oatmeal. I looked the recipe over, and the stats on it were pretty high–400 calories for a serving. Then I realized that the serving size was huge, even for a volume eater like me. So I cut it into 8 pieces instead of 6, and voila! 300 calories per serving 🙂 I got up bright and early one morning, and made this recipe. Right before I put it in the oven, I had a brief thought that there was not much pumpkin pie spice in it, so I took a little taste, and it seemed okay. After it had been in the oven for 15 minutes, THAT’s when I realized that I actually left the pumpkin out of the recipe. Aaargh. I guess I wasn’t quite awake enough. Anyway, I adjusted the cooking time down, and it is still quite delicious. I can’t wait to make it with the pumpkin in it!

Thursday night we had a good rain storm, the first in months! Saturday I went out to see what was still looking good in the garden. Here are the petunias I planted by the studio door. I think I will always have some flowers growing in this–it mostly protects the plants from the deer, and its cheerful to see the flowers when I drive up.

The roses are loving our cooler temperatures. This is the “wild” rose. The branches hang down. I plan to put a little support for it for next spring, but I love how it is a prolific bloomer.

Other roses:

The tuberous begonia. I got a two for one in this pot!

The dwarf abutilon is loving the fall.

And the mandevillea vine is still going strong.

So, in other garden news, I have voles in my yard! I couldn’t figure out why the dirt was rising up in certain areas. MLG is here today, and pointed out the vole trails to me. I found these solar vole repellants on Amazon. Anyone have any experience using these things?

And that’s about all for now. Have a great week!

 

 

My Healthy Life

Hmmm. I said I’d write this post weeks ago. I have thought about it ever since then, but avoided putting it to paper. I remember when I started this blog. I couldn’t stop talking about healthy food, exercise, weight loss, weight maintenance. It was a relief to have an online group of friends who were interested in the same things. I didn’t have to worry about people rolling their eyes back in their heads as I prattled on enthusiastically about all this stuff. Well, its been twelve years since I first darkened the W.W. doorway, and ten years since I started “maintaining.” Yeah, that maintaining is in quotes, because for me maintaining has been a bit of a roller coaster. Up thirteen, back down to 100 lost. Up 25, back down to 100 lost. Now, currently, up 40. So that’s still a net loss of 60 pounds. And I tell myself that that is a lot better than almost every study I’ve read, which usually ends with the participants losing an average of 17 pounds over a year’s time. Most of those studies conclude after that one year period. Their information is basically useless for me.  If you only study what helps people to lose weight without studying what helps them to maintain that loss, you are providing false hope for so many people.

So…about what is working for me now in living the healthiest life possible at age 62. So many of the good practices and habits that I have learned about and applied over the years has stuck.

Food: From W.W. I learned about the evils of high fat foods (I don’t necessarily believe this any more.) But eating low fat is a way of life that has stuck. I enjoy the fresh taste of most foods without added fat.

From my personal trainer, Vickie, I learned about so many new healthful foods. I got a little more adventurous in my food choices. And I learned that good fats make food taste better 🙂

From friends, the internet, other bloggers, books, maybe even Dr. Phil(!) I learned lots of new ways of keeping fresh foods available, new recipes, new healthy food combos. I love to cook and experiment with food.

So now, I still shop the perimeter of the store (where all the whole foods are kept,) I almost always eat fresh vegetables and fruit. The meat I eat right now is salmon, chicken, and ground turkey. Just my current fav’s.

I try to listen to what my body is asking for. I’ve noticed that I am not as hungry in the morning as I used to be. So my breakfast is usually 2-300 calories, and that is enough to satisfy me until lunchtime.

I try to have a vegetable with every lunch. If I remember, I like roasting green beans, cauliflower, beets, rutabaga, or butternut squash. Lately, my favorite lunch is a simple strawberry smoothie. I get it ready and drink it on the way to the gym. 1 cup yogurt, 1 cup strawberries, spinach, splenda, cinnamon and vanilla. Very satisfying! Oh, that reminds me. That is one thing I have changed. For better or worse, I changed to using whole milk for my homemade yogurt. And I started using real butter sometimes. Do you want to know what I still do with that? When I put a new cube of butter in the butter dish, I mark the top in 8 even slices. That way I know how much a tablespoon is, and I can use 1/3 of that marked piece for a teaspoon.

I look forward to my afternoon coffee break every day, and I will admit that I still have a protein bar (Quest or Oh Yeah) with that coffee. These bars have 20 grams of protein in them. So that means dinner is usually simple and light. Most nights its meat and a vegetable. Most nights dinner is about 300 calories.  But who’s counting? 🙂 I am not logging my foods right now, but there is always a running total going on in my head. I am eating between 1400 and 1800 calories a day.

Lastly, I really enjoy having one diet Coke, a bowl of Skinny Pop popcorn and a small piece of chocolate after dinner.

So, you can see that although my food choices are not 100 per cent optimal, I eat a very healthy diet. I didn’t talk about grains, but I do have pasta very occasionally, granola on my yogurt sometimes, and of course, almost always breakfast includes some sort of whole grain. I don’t try to stay wheat free any more (wheat tastes good 🙂 ), and I do have sugar occasionally.

Cutting back to lose some weight would be great. But that is not happening right now. So continuing to make healthy choices every day is a good thing.

Exercise: as I’ve said before, exercise is very important to me. That said, I will admit that my knee REALLY hurts, and many other parts hurt as well. So I avoid walking, and my walks with my dogs have become shorter and shorter. All this is a good reminder to me that I really do need that knee surgery. Which is scheduled for July! I decided that I really wanted to get my baby chicks first, and they are coming in a week! I can hardly wait (for the chicks 🙂 ) This will probably turn into a chicken blog very soon.

When I take a walk and everything hurts so much, that makes me feel bad about myself. It makes me feel like I am a failure and that if I kept my weight down, I wouldn’t hurt and would be a more successful person. Intellectually I know that is not true. But that’s what it makes me feel like. So that is one reason I have had trouble writing this.

I love going to the gym and exercising hard. The bike doesn’t hurt, and running in the pool and swimming doesn’t hurt. The weight machines don’t hurt in a bad way, and I am working on increasing my upper body strength in preparation for my knee surgery. I go to the gym three days a week, and I’m thinking about increasing that to four days until I have the surgery. It just takes a big chunk of time out of the middle of my day, so that’s why I only go three days right now.

Sleep: Well, that is hit and miss. I know that my older friends (haha, I’m fast becoming one of them) cut out caffeine more and more. So far I’m not willing to give up my afternoon coffee and my evening diet Coke. But I go to bed at a normal time and wake up at a normal time. I rarely set an alarm. It seems like 7 hours is good for me. Sometimes a take a melatonin before bed if my mind is racing or I have not slept well for a few nights.

For a retired person, I think I have a fairly disciplined life. I start every day doing some sort of housework. And then I spend a large amount of time every day working on my art in my studio. When I am done in the studio, that is usually when I go to the gym or take the dogs for a walk. I spend most of the evening working on my quilted embroidery. Of course, I work a bit in the garden every day. I could do a lot more out there, but bending over… well, you know.

I hope this review is helpful for someone. I know it was helpful for me to think about all the healthy habits I have worked on and maintained over the years. I personally think that it is much healthier to eat well, exercise, and get a decent amount of sleep even if you never achieve your “ideal” weight.

Nine???

Recently, I googled “does eating sugar make my joints hurt?” I think this is often over-stated in blogs. I do not believe that if you eat a teaspoonful of sugar you will immediately be stricken with joint pain. But, my search led me to arthritis.org, where they did state that when you have arthritis, your body is in an inflammatory state. And sugar is a food that causes inflammation. There is enough information out there about this that I agree with that. Okay. Less sugar.

That search led to an article about “the ultimate arthritis diet.” Interesting. They say that a Mediterranean type diet helps stop pain and inflammation. Here are their recommendations:

• Fish–salmon type. 3-4 ounces two times a week. I can do that. I like salmon. So I’ve started buying a half pound piece of salmon and having it on Sunday and Wednesday. Approximately 🙂
• Nuts–especially walnuts. Oh my. I love walnuts more than almost any other food. But they are high in calories, so I usually measure out about 1/3 of an ounce. They recommend 1 1/2 ounces a day! That’s a lot of calories. But I have started having 1 1/2 ounces of walnuts in yogurt for my lunch almost every day. It feels very luxurious.
• Olive oil–especially EVVO. They recommend 2-3 Tablespoons per day. That’s not happening. I can’t even imagine eating that much oil. But, I could eat more salads, and I could use real dressings with olive oil instead of my low calorie dressings. I’m working on that one.
• Beans. Again, not happening. I DON’T LIKE BEANS.
• Whole grains. They are recommending 6 ounces. I know I won’t eat that many whole grains, but I do have oatmeal almost every day in some form or other.
• Fruits and veggies–all kinds, but especially the colorful ones. They recommend NINE servings a day! Now this is not a new number. Many diets recommend that many fruit and vegetable servings per day. I like fruits and vegetables. But I have yet to eat nine servings in a single day! I am being more cognizant of that. So far the most I’ve eaten in a day is seven. I mostly only like fresh fruits and vegetables, so you have to shop a little more often to keep stocked, or just remember to buy more when you’re at the store.

Notice there’s no mention of dairy or other animal meat sources. I guess Mediterranean’s don’t eat that stuff. I’m not stopping eating those things, because I enjoy them. But its fun to try a few changes in your diet. My arthritis pain seems to have decreased, but I’m not convinced its the dietary changes. It could just be the changes in the weather. Nevertheless, these are healthy changes, so they’re worth a try. I also think that some of the amounts are probably based on a “normal” 2400 calorie diet. If I ate that much, my arthritis pain might be decreased, but I’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe in a much larger size 🙂

A Simple Special Dinner

Most of the time I am cooking for one. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person in the whole world who does this, so I thought I’d share how I made a special dinner for myself without breaking the calorie bank. Yes, I know its just one meal. But of course, you do end up making enough for several meals, and so for me, its just a good thing to lighten up some of my favorite foods, and also to limit the number of foods I prepare. Don’t feel bad, I did have more than my fair share of sweet treats this Christmas 🙂

So here’s the two recipes I adapted from old favorites. The first was an old recipe in the Betty Crocker Cookbook. My copy is 40 years old! It still has a lot of great basic recipes and instructions, and I am very happy to have it. These are called Buffet Potatoes, and are kind of a simple version of potatoes au gratin. I looked at the recipe and there were a few simple obvious changes and substitutions to make, and still have a delicious side dish. I left out the butter (why do you need cheese AND butter,) and instead of half and half, I used whole milk. That made my version a very reasonable 130 calories per serving. I made a recipe that had 4 servings instead of the 8 in the original recipe.

Here’s how I did it:

I had an 8 oz block of cheese, so I just marked 1/4 of it with a knife, and then shredded that much of the block. I actually weighed out 12 oz of potatoes (I almost always use Yukon Gold because they have more natural flavor,) and I sliced 1/2 an onion as thinly as I could.

Assembled them in layers with salt and pepper, per the recipe.

Sprinkled the milk over all, and baked according to recipe, and here are my lightened up buffet potatoes. Perfect with ham!

I used to make jello with frozen raspberries in heavy syrup, and I used that syrup to make regular jello, and then added the raspberries, cream cheese and plenty of walnuts. For my lightened up version, I used SF raspberry jello, laughing cow lite wedges, and walnuts. I forgot to buy some fresh raspberries, so I used pears this time, which are also delicious in this combination. I have compared, and laughing cow lite has less calories that light cream cheese, and I think its delicious in this kind of preparation. When I had it all combined, I was very happy that I came up with the idea of portioning it out into serving dishes, saving me one more step when it came time to eat! Each serving has about 100 calories.

And here was my Christmas Eve dinner! The only thing that was missing was some kind of green vegetable. Just some broccoli or green beans would have been great.

 

Late to the Party

I know I’m the last person in America to discover the joys of potstickers! Before, they just seemed like a pain in the butt to prepare–trying to heat pasta in a pan with some oil, and they always STUCK TO THE POT. And then I discovered the toaster oven. I put them on a piece of foil sprayed with Pam and Bam! They cook up with just a bit of crispiness and not only do they NOT stick, they tend to slide around on their little aluminum foil sheet pan. Weird, but it works so well.

But I need to back up. I discovered these potstickers through Biz’s recipe recommendation for won ton soup. I love that soup. And then I got the giant economy bag of the mini potstickers at Costco, and I thought I might like to eat them without the soup. After all, they are only 100 calories for eight of them!! And THEN, I found the recipe for dipping sauce on the bag, and I adjusted it for my own purposes. And I had the makings for a quick and easy and very low calorie dinner, just like that.

Here’s what I had for dinner the day after Thanksgiving. The shrimp are good dipped in the sauce too!

The Feast and the Days After

Thanksgiving was quite tasty this year. My niece’s husband did one of those deep fried turkeys, and I swear, that was the best turkey I’ve ever had! I had seconds on turkey and mashed potatoes, and all the other stuff I just had mini-servings of, or skipped altogether.

It was a shame, but most of the folks present didn’t like nuts, so I left half of the pumpkin cake for my sister and mom to take home, and I took the other half home myself. I guess I didn’t need that little cake after all 🙂

Anyway, I did have one piece of the layer cake that night, and then I cut it into serving sizes, and put it safely in the freezer. And that was it. The next morning I got up and went right back to counting my calories on LoseIt. I didn’t really want to keep overeating. I guess I’m finally getting over that whole thing.

I ate carefully that day, and saved enough calories so I could have my mini-cake for dessert that night. I had my “leftover” turkey breast that I had cooked for myself, and so I had my salad with romaine lettuce, cranberry sauce, turkey, and laughing cow lite cheese–I love that combo! And I cut up that turkey breast and put it in a couple of containers in the freezer so I can have it whenever I want between now and Christmas.

Today I had an old favorite of mine. The original of this was at a wonderful restaurant that served gigantic mashed potatoes in all kinds of original combinations. One of my favorites was the italian potato, which of course was loaded with butter, sour cream, mozzarella cheese, italian spices, olives, and a bit of parmesan.

One day I realized I could have this same combination of flavors if I would just pare it down a little. I start with a small yukon gold potato, about 4 ounces, and I spray it with Pam and sprinkle garlic salt on it, then wrap it in foil and bake it for a long time. That makes it soft and extra flavorful. Then I spray some fake butter on top, put about 1/3 cup of cottage cheese, sprinkle some italian spices, and about a Tablespoon or so of chopped olives. So yummy! And probably one-tenth of the calories of that giant baked potato 🙂

Here’s how I had it for dinner–with a big helping of those baby green beans, baked in the oven with Pam and salt.

Fun With Strawberries!

I am so lucky! Usually, strawberries are grown in the valley, and little strawberry stands pop up along the highways this time of year.Trouble is, the valley is about an hour away from where I live. But last year, Mr. Lee, who regularly sold at our local farmer’s markets, bought a plot of land up here in the foothills, and put in his strawberry patch. So now I can get the best strawberries any day of the week, only about five miles from my house. And it just happens to be on the way to the gym, so strawberries are the fruit for me this time of year!

Here’s a couple of fun ways I’ve eaten them the past few days.

My own “fruit on the bottom” yogurt. When I have too many strawberries, I just mash them with my potato masher, and put them in the freezer, kind of like freezer jam. I thaw some out when I need it, spoon a little bit in my bowl, and plop half a cup of homemade yogurt on top, and then finish off with Shelley’s hippie granola. Yumm.

Yesterday for my afternoon snack, I made “stuffed strawberries.” Just hollowed out the big ones, and cut a wedge of Laughing Cow Lite in 4 chunks, stuffed them in the middle, and finished off with a sprinkle of Splenda. Yumm yumm 🙂