Friday, February 29, 2008

Home Sweet Home

I still haven't unpacked all the goodies I bought in Omaha, but I only have one suitcase and a living room floor to deal with....and the business on the kitchen island will be dealt with while waiting for the kettle to boil, or the toast to pop tomorrow morning! Rick was thrilled to find a container for his precious honey...we buy it in the humungous size from Costco, and now he can decant a small amount for his morning toast. Simple things make us happiest.

The bad news is, that I have gained so much weight from this trip. Try as you may, it is difficult when you are away from your own kitchen. So, today is a new beginning. I rejoined WW Online, and am officially back in the saddle. Having the program calculate the food choices I make is so much easier than figuring it out myself. If you go through Great Canadian Rebates, you get a good percentage back from your fees. Since I was rejoining, it was only sixty dollars for three months. I need the "planning" part and it is so easy with the program. I am hoping the majority of the gained poundage will disappear due to water retention. I was eating soup a lot and at one restaurant, I actually felt the liquid burning my throat...not from heat, but from the salt. I am so glad to be back to my little kosher salt pot!

While we were away, I developed a real taste for blue cheese. I was surrounded by it when I was growing up, and never indulged, but lately? It just tastes so good to me in a salad. Speaking of which, I have been buying bagged salad, and does that ever make mealtime easy. Crack the bag and broil some protein and dinner is done. Tonight we had a grilled pork chop with a side salad, and it was delish.

Now, back to the shopping. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and spoiled myself rotten with good shoes and boots. When you find a sale, buy it all! I also did a fair amount of clothes shopping. It was a little easier than before, and I found clothes that I will actually wear....pants, long sweaters...that sort of thing. I even broke down and bought a couple of velour track suits, even though they did remind me of the early seventies, I was cold, they were there, and I fell in love. The nice thing is that they have a modern waist that rides a bit lower, and they are very comfy... there is something about a hoody that just feels so cozy...sort of a built in scarf that is so necessary in our frigid climate.

So there you have it. My life in a nutshell.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Omaha, I love you.

We have been here since Friday, and I must say this place is a well kept secret. Friendly, clean and best of all? Home to the best sales I have ever found. The count so far is three pairs of high leather boots and six pairs of shoes, four nighties, four bras, three, a pair of black leggings, three pairs of dress pants, three sweaters, two velour track suits, two new winter coats and fifty new hangers for storage at home! Rick bought a few little things as well, but nothing as exciting as leather goods! As if finding boots that slip on like a glove weren't enough, they were on sale for 75% off. Seems that I have gone down a full size so far, and there is more of a difference between the larger sizes than there is between the smaller sizes, so hopefully next fall I can do this all again! Even my shoes are one size smaller. Yep. Omaha!I love you.

So, today the man is working the trade show at the Qwest cennter accross the street, and I am resting up for another shopping day tomorrow. Breakfast is MY meal of the day, and since it is complimentary here, it suits me just fine to load up in the morning and go on half rations the rest of the day. That saves both energy and funds for shopping. Yesterday we had tilapia filets. The portions are so big here that you only need one meal for two people, so I order salad and soup, and we share it all! Think Lady and the Tramp when we have dinner! However, I really am not expecting to lose while we are travelling, but I hope not to gain either! It is going up to 45 degrees F so we feel as if we are in the tropics. We left Winnipeg in a deep freeze...so cold! But I hear it is warming up a bit there now too...one can only hope. It is February, so it isn't over yet! Just hope that the weather is good for the trip back. Mind you, we will have extra traction with the way the Freestyle is loadin' up!

Thursday, February 14, 2008

What is for dinner this week....

Friday: Pork Pie with mixed salad ... 9 points for 1/6 of a pie. But soooooo tasty and filling! You just have to find someone to dump the leftovers on, QUICK!

Saturday: Chicken Florentine with Garden Salad ....haven't figured out this one yet, but it doesn't look too bad. It has only 1/2 cup of mayo and 1/2 cup of sour cream, 1 cup of cheddar for 9 portions. I would rather have a little of the real deal that a ton of unsatisfying "almost" flavours. If you load up on the "freebie" side dishes, a little goes a long way. This one will freeze well though, and provide another meal later in the month. It will be good to come home to something ready to just pop into the oven at the end of our trip.

Sunday: Cod Fillets with onions and julienned veggies in Parchment paper, with cream sauce and steamed potatoes.....very low but has a real "wow" factor when you present it to your guests.

Monday: Bison Barbecue Sauced Meat Balls with Rice...Sobey's carries ground bison now, that is great for cutting down the points! And I prefer the taste over beef. So lean! This is the standard ketchup, brown sugar, vinegar mix that wins you brownie points with all the fellas!

Tuesday: Pork Tenderloin with Mashed Potatoes & Green Giant Creamed corn .... comfort food at it's best.

Wednesday: Beef & Pepper stir fry .... loaded with veggies, and with the steak sliced as thin as your mother-in-law's appreciation of her son's choice in women! If you put the rice on top of the stir fry, it won't dissappear, and it seems more generous.

Thursday: Sausage with Red Cabbage, onions & apples, roasted Baby Potatoes (yep. Sausage. They have great turkey sausage at Costco now that I just love! And you can even have TWO!!!)

Green Tea

My latest "lifestyle change" has been a switch to green tea. Glenda has been on to this one for a long time, but all of a sudden, I just enjoy the flavour. According to somebody on daytime TV last week, you can lose ten pounds a year by changing your coffee to green tea. I don't think it has any particularly magical properties, but not having cream and sugar in every cup could be the trick in those stats! At any rate, I am giving it a try, and I am quite enjoying it.

Otherwise? I am still slugging away. Today, I wrote up a menu plan, complete with grocery list for the coming week. Too many episodes of "Fixing Dinner". As if I have a harried lifestyle these days! But, I do need to keep on the straight and narrow with the intake. Amazing how you can pare down recipes that you have been making for years, and make them a little more "friendly". Cooking is appealing to me again, as I have had a rather interesting menu while Rick was in Florida...one day, I ate bananas for two meals. Original fast food. Just had a craving for them, and it didn't seem to affect the blood sugars adversly at all....but I won't make a habit of it! I did dip them into the sugar bowl though, and forgot to clean it out before Rick came home...there were sighs and banana "flicks" in the kitchen this morning. I didn't have the courage to tell him to just throw the sugar away, and start fresh. Anyone out there married to a Scot? LOL

Anyway, another day, I hit the oranges and pretzels. I am still "hovering" with my weight, going up, going down. It has been so cold here, that likely the pounds have frozen right where they are, and won't budge till spring! I envy those that only have a few pounds to lose. I am down
38 pounds from my highest weight, and it has been such slow going. But the days will pass if you do one thing or the other, so the thing I want to do, is keep up the healthy munching. At this rate, though, it will take until I get my first pension check to lose it all! God willing that I can achieve both!

Back to reality. We are off to a convention in Nebraska next week, so I am trying to eat up the pantry, and not leave any fresh food to spoil while we are away. I have even adjusted our grocery list to include the amounts of veg, etc. that I recquire for the week, so I won't have tons of potatoes when I really only need to have two for our meals. The only problem is, that I don't want to over organize, because that is a recipe for failure, if you ask me. But the fact remains that food is needed for breakfast and lunches too....not to mention the snacks. It seems to me that we should have a big sack of food available and just have people kibble for those two meals. Right. They call it SlimFast, don't they? Yuck! Back to the drawing board!

Hope you are all surviving this bitter cold. I haven't found the plug in for the block heater on my new car yet, but haven't had any troubles starting the engine...so far, that is! Any trials and tribulations out there with your menus? Any suggestions for good lunch foods, breakfasts that don't recquire brain power to fix first thing in the morning?

Thursday, February 7, 2008

An uneventful day...

spent with my poor sick hubby. Turns out he had to get a prescription for an inhaler deally to deal with the chest issues of this cold bug. We have been hit particularly hard this year, and I just want to go on record as saying IT ISN'T FAIR!!!!My poor man is going to Florida tomorrow morning for five days...the annual sales meeting. He looks like death warmed over, but hopefully the sunshine will do him good. Speaking of which, it was nice to get out on such a nice bright day. Dare we hope for spring? I had an eye appointment, but the doctor was too sick to do the "drops" thing, so I have been resheduled for March 26. Great. Another date to worry about forgetting!

On an up note, we had a very good, easy supper tonight. Spinach (the whole huge bag!)done in a little garlic and olive oil - mashed potatos, sliced carrots and codfish in batter, from Costco, of course.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

In the name of glamour....

I went to a cosmetic "spa" party today. There are two things I should never do. One. Put foreign substances on my face. Two. Put foreign substances on my face. As I type I can hear the eruptions. POP! POP! POP! Oh, the horror. I wonder how long I will have to wear the evidence of this, my latest indescretion? I was lured by the promise of lower monthly maintenance costs for this old mug of mine, and now, for this attempt at false economy, I will glow like a lightbulb for the next week or two....POP! POP! POP! Awwww rats....

Monday, February 4, 2008

Back to the land of the living...

After fighting with this cold thing for so long, I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see the outside world again! It was all I could do to keep myself relatively clean and fed...nicities were left by the wayside weeks ago. But, today? I actually got out of the house and to the grocery store - I was desperate for oranges. Being the discriminating shopper I am, I just grabbed the first bag that looked "right" and was so surprised at these beauties when I got them home. (Rick is away, so supper tonight was two oranges and some pretzel sticks...eaten together in alternating bites, it just does it for me!) In the interest of providing you with this information, I just cut up another one for a snack, so I could take a picture ...so sweet and good! But I digress. I have been trying to make good choices on a meal by meal basis, but with all the laying around, I feel as if I have gained fifty pounds.
When I was having a good hour the other day, I made a tourtiere....thank goodness for the internet, because I found the most wonderful recipe! When our supper was done, I immediately sent the leftovers to a pie-of-any-kind loving friend! Turns out, that it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and was it filling! Didn't have any desire to eat a single bite after supper, which was a good thing, since I didn't have a single point left to spend on a snack! Sometimes you just need something a little decadant to get you on your feet - and cheering! Out of consideration for your efforts to stay on the straight and narrow, I won't post the recipe, as I don't want to be responsible for your demise. But, should you have a dinner party, with five friends to share, let me know! Every once in awhile, I stumble on a recipe that is so good it tastes and looks like I didn't make it! This is one of those recipes. With a side salad, this savoury pie made a wonderfully elegant supper.
So, there you have it. My life in a nutshell. Or should I say a nuthatch?