Thanksgiving food ideas

It is that time of year again! Thanksgiving often kicks off the holiday binging. If raiding your kids' Halloween candy was not enough to push you over the edge, brown sugar and butter streusel-topped candied yams, turkey and sour cream mashed potatoes most certainly will.

Last year at Thanksgiving, I really managed to keep everything under control. I plan to use some of the same ideas that I incorporated then again this year. I figured I would share some of the recipes and techniques I used.

Once again, the biggest factor here is portion control. Even if you eat some of every dish available on Turkey Day, if you limit your portion size and do not go back for seconds, you can keep things in check. Get out your 1/2 and 1/4 cup ladles, scoops, and measuring cups.

One thing we did last year was everyone gathered and took a 30-minute walk at dusk, after we had eaten dinner but before dessert. This was actually really nice. We talked and visited during the walk. When we returned, we all felt refreshed; we'd added a few activity points to our day (to offset the large consumption this day); and we had gotten to spend more time talking and sharing.

Another important thing to do is to get rid of the leftovers. Have some disposable containers, such as ziploc plastic storage, and let everyone take the leftovers with them when they leave. If it is out of your house, you can't keep eating this heavy meal over the next few days.

Here are a few changes I made to some of the most common Thanksgiving dishes.

Green Bean Casserole

Here are the changes I made to this dish. You can have 1/2 cup for only 2 points as compared to 5 by making these changes:

• Substitute the Healthy Request Cream of Mushroom soup for the regular called for in the recipe.
• Use skim milk instead of regular
• Increase the green beans by 50% (so if you normally use 2 cans, use 3 instead)
• Do not mix the fried onions into the casserole. Instead, use 1 whole small can on top.

Basically what we're doing is increasing the bulk of the recipe by an additional 50% with the green beans. You can serve more people. The calorie-laden ingredients are stretched out among more portions, thus decreasing the overall calories and fat per serving.

Mashed Potatoes

The truth is, you really don't need a lot of butter and milk to get a good result. For every pound and a half of russet potatoes used, I use 2 tablespoons of REAL butter and 1/4 cup of skim milk. Salt and pepper and prepare as usual. 2 points per 1/2 cup serving.

Gravy

Use a fat-separating measuring cup. Separate all fat from the drippings and broth mixture. Use 3 tablespoons of the removed fat, and make a dark roux with that and 3 tb flour. Take another 1/2 cup broth and mix with a few teaspoons of cornstarch, set aside. Add 1 quart of skimmed or canned broth, and whisk into the roux until incorporated. Bring to a rapid simmer; simmer for 1 minute. Then add a little of the cornstarch mixture until you reach desired thickness. Salt and pepper to taste. 1/4 cup will have 1 point.

Stuffing

I make mine using Mrs. Cubbisons cornbread stuffin' mix. 2 boxes (4 bags). And I make it in the crock pot (4 hours on low).

I use the casserole recipe on the box, lite version, but I also add the meat pulled from the simmered turkey neck (or a small can of white meat chicken works). I use the amount of butter called for in the lite recipe, but I use that to saute the onions and celery; then I toss that mixture into the dry stuffing mix in a large bowl. Before adding the broth, mix into it 1/2 cup egg beaters, and 1 can Campbell's Healthy Request cream of celery soup. Whisk all this together and toss to coat the stuffing mixture. I also add an additional teaspoon of poultry seasoning (I like Penzey's). Put the mixture into the crockpot, and set it to low. Check on it periodically, adding more broth to achieve desired consistency. 1/2 cup has 4 points.

I plan to use all of these again this year. Here's the deal. You're going to eat more than you normally do. So make a few smart choices, add a little exercise, count it, and move on. The key is to not to extend the feast over several days.

Enjoy your family and friends this Thanksgiving. Enjoy your feast. Enjoy keeping things under control.

Things have been very difficult lately...

I don't suppose that anyone embarks on a major life-changing journey, such as losing a large amount of weight, without hitting some bumps in the road. I have recently hit such a bump. Clearly, I haven't been posting as many updates here to the blog. And I have alluded to the fact that I have recently experienced some difficult times.

This past summer was very difficult for me. And since then, fall hasn't been all that much easier too. It is just that there has been so much change in my life that I feel a little less in control. My son went off to college; he comes home on the weekends, but it is still a very major turning point in life. I recently had surgery, and the recovery period was a huge thwart to my weight-loss regime. Having been put out of working out for 4 weeks really threw off my groove. I have struggled getting back into things.

Around this same time, my Weight Watcher leader from my Monday morning meetings was relocated to another center, and we have had a new leader. I'm sure she's a perfectly lovely person, but I just can't get into the meetings she leads. Then if that wasn't enough, my aunt, who is also my WW buddy, has a schedule conflict, and those Monday meetings started to become difficult for her, so she is attending a different center at at different time. I have visited that center a few times now, and I can't seem to get into that one either. I don't like all this change.

And now, I'm facing another major life change, and this is probably a pretty big answer to the question of why I'm having trouble staying on program these days. My husband and I are divorcing. It is okay; you don't need to feel bad for us. It is a good thing, and it has been a long time coming, but even knowing that does not make the process any less tumultuous.

I'm sharing this because in the grand scheme of things, I do believe I will get back on track and make things work. And I think it is good to realize that life will throw us curve balls, and that we can work through them and be successful.

I really don't want to let all my hard work get away from me. I have come so far. I need to just do it. It is not difficult to stay on program. I just need a little ass-kicking to get me back into things.

Crazy week ahead...

So this week is proving to be one filled with many challenges. I have a lot of things to do, which will make fitting in my work-outs rather difficult. But on top of that, I am faced with several reservations for dining out.

Now before you sarcastically play the violins for me, you have to realize that it is so much more difficult to stick to my program when dining out. As much as it is nice to enjoy someone else doing the cooking, there are always many more fat grams and calories in restaurant food.

Tonight, I'll be dining with my husband at Morton's Steakhouse. I'll likely be tempted to add a cocktail or a glass of wine to my dinner, but even if I don't it already will include appetizers, sides, and dessert and will prove to be much more calorie-laden than any meals I can have at home.

Then tomorrow evening, my mother, sister, and I have plans to go to Souplantation. Despite the fact that it is a salad bar restaurant, it still has many options that add up to high points. I usually do not leave there without having consumed at least 14 points.

Then, this coming Friday, I'll be visiting with some friends from my yorkie meet-up group, as a friend from Michigan will be in town for a couple of days, and we do not want to miss her stop here in Southern California. We'll be ordering pizza in that evening.

Sunday, I have a meet-up with the full yorkie meet-up group. Thankfully, no potluck is planned for this visit, and I am hoping to keep lunch to a minimal sandwich and fruit, but the other several days are enough to make this a week where the potential for packing on the pounds is magnified several time over.

So, I found myself inspired in flash of brilliance! I decided to fix a pot of steaming Minestrone soup. After all, it is a gray, rainy day, and it is one that begs for a warm, vegetable-laden brew. The low calories and filling nature of soup is a great help on days when you'll be dining heavily during another meal. Problem solved! So I rummaged through my vegetable drawer and freezer, and I put together this one today.

1 cup has only 1 point. 2 cups has 3.5, and it remains the same with 1 tsp of shredded parmesan cheese sprinkled on the top (some of you may understand that due to the Weight Watchers point formula, 1+1 does not always equal two, hence the discrepancy.)

I got 14 cups out of this recipe. It is almost impossible to gauge, based on the rate of evaporation, the amount of liquid you will end up with, even if you follow the recipe exactly. Therefore, I suggest if you want to make it identically (which I don't think is entirely necessary) to measure it out and add additional water if need be.

Minestrone
Misty Simon
Yield 14 1-cup servings

1 tb olive oil
2 lg carrots, peeled and diced
2 celery ribs, sliced
1 md. onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 ts dried basil
1/4 ts ground black pepper
1/8 ts red pepper flakes
2 ts kosher salt
14.5 oz canned diced tomatoes
8 oz canned tomato sauce, no salt added
2 ts sugar
1 cup frozen Italian green beans
1/2 cup frozen corn kernals
1 quart water.
5 oz Ronzoni Smart Taste rotini (by weight)
1 md. zucchini, diced
14.5 oz canned kidney beans, drained
4 cups bagged fresh spinach leaves, stems removed

In a large stock pot, add olive oil, and saute celery, carrots, and onion until onion is translucent. Add garlic and spices. Saute for a minute. Add the tomatoes, sauce, sugar, green beans, corn, and water. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes. Add pasta, and boil on high for 8 minutes. Add remaining ingredients and cook for a final 4 minutes.

Then add 4 cups of ice cubes to halt the cooking and to replace evaporated liquid. Taste for salt.

This has been a heck of a summer!

...possibly the most tumultuous summer of my life!

Over the past month, I have been struggling with a few pounds. Those of you who know me, personally, know what is partly to blame for this. Let us just say that it has to do with dealing with some "health" issues. No one needs to worry, however; I am fine.

But my doctor did put me off of working out for several weeks. I have finally been cleared to workout as usual, but on my first day back I discovered that those weeks off really cut into my stamina. I was only able to workout at high intensity for 30 minutes, and I'm used to putting in 1 hour of high intensity cardio. So the plan is to start increasing that duration a couple of minutes each time until I am back to where I was.

I have had to deal with a lot of personal issues lately. I just sent my oldest son off to college. We moved him into the dorm a week ago today, and I cried when I left him. He's only 25 minutes away and will be coming home on the weekends. So it wasn't the separation or the distance, it was the acknowledgment of a change in life. My baby is growing up, and I am getting older.

Other than that, there have been some other things going on that have made life especially stressful over the past couple of months. But as I have said all along here, this kind of stuff will happen. Life is never a smooth and freshly paved road. Times like this prove to be the true test of our abilities to stay on track. If I can get through this and still stick to it, then all will be well. At this point, I am not worried.

So in the interest of full disclosure, I need to admit to being up 4.8 pounds over my lowest weight. I am back on track now with plans to visit the gym 3 days this week, and I should probably set a new goal for myself.

How about 10lbs in 8 weeks?

75.4 lbs gone...wow!

I recently got back from a mini vacation up to Portland to visit my dad. It was a lovely visit, and one that is very special to me, so I am really thankful that I had the opportunity to get away and dismiss my responsibilities for a week of relaxation, restoration, and catching up.

But being out of your element when you are dieting is very difficult. I suppose you can make it work and stay on program, but the reality is that life is simply fraught with little ups and downs, and somehow you just have to be able to indulge once in a while, and you need to be able to recover.

I feel like I have certainly gotten the recovery thing down pat. The little vacations I have experienced during my weight-loss journey have usually resulted in temporary gains. I was smart, and I did not get on the scale during my week away. But when I got home this past week, I did work hard to recover by visiting the gym an additional day, and I jumped right back into my on-program eating habits.

I am happy to report that at today's weigh-in, the scale gifted me with a 3.2lb loss since my last weigh in (3 weeks ago). This puts me at a total of 75.4 lbs lost thus far, and I am at 153.2!!

So I received my 75lb weight charm as a reward at today's Weight Watchers weigh-in. And I didn't cry this time. (I have a low tolerance for emotional moments, and I cry about everything, but that is a topic for another day!)

I am now at the final stretch with only 15.2 lbs to go until I reach my goal weight of 138. My waist is also looking very nicely trim these days. And when I flexed this morning, there was some very nice delt and bicep tone going on.

Things are good.

How do I eat great food and still lose weight?

As you know, I used to post my food pictures and recipes here, but after the appalling quality of my food-photography skills left much to be desired, I decided to stop that. Turns out, my new cell phone actually takes better food pictures than my camera! Go figure! So I have been posting many of my recipes and pictures of the food to Facebook.

I have been asked several times, and again just recently, how it is that I can make food that is so good and still lose weight. Well, there's a lot of give and take. Portion control is really the number one contributor to my success. I do tend to use lighter versions of many ingredients, such as lean meats, light breads, light sour cream and mayonnaise (to Hell with the fat free versions! I'd rather go without. But the light versions are usually pretty good.) Some ingredients, such as butter and oil there are no lowfat substitutes. Well, there's light margarine, but you're really only getting water added to it, and the final product is less than satisfactory. So in such cases, you must use those items sparingly.

Look at it this way: you could easily cut half the calories out of a food simply by cutting it in half and eating only that half. You could also use a reduced calorie version of something, or try to find a happy medium between the two. This is pretty much what I do.

Take any recipe that you love. What I do, is scan over the ingredients and decide what can be reduced without sacrificing flavor. Know your high calorie ingredients: meats, fats, sugars, and grain-products (bread, rice, flour, etc.). This is where you start. Also, pay attention to the number of servings.

Let us say that a particular recipe for a meat dish calls for 2lbs of meat, and say it says it serves 4. Well right there in your head, you can see that that works out to 8oz meat per person. That is absurd. A typical serving size is 4-6 ounces each. So start there, and reduce that down to 1.5lbs if you want to go with the larger size. Also make sure you're using lean cuts and lean ground meats. For ground beef, I always use 7% fat/93% lean. Any less than this and you sacrifice flavor and moisture. Any more than this, and you're just adding too much fat to the meal. Again, however, there is a trade off. Sometimes, you really want a juicy burger that has a higher fat content. If so, then you have to have a smaller portion. And I do this from time to time, but generally, I use the 93/7.

Next, look at the fats in the recipe: butter, oils, shortenings. Here's a little secret: there is no magic to the amount called-for in a recipe. Oil is primarily a cooking medium that adds body, richness, and flavor to the dish in addition to providing adequate lubrication to the cooking pan. I have discovered that for most seared items, I can get away with 1 teaspoon per portion. So if I'm cooking, say, 4 chicken breasts or 4 pork chops, I can get away with using as little as 4 teaspoons of oil. So look and see how that oil is being used and look how much is called-for and how many people the recipe serves. So it says 3 tablespoons and it serves 4?! You don't need that much; cut it down and move on.

Grain products: Again, pay attention to portion sizes. For something like rice, I use 1/4 raw (which equals 3/4c cooked) per person. That is actually a lot. Sometimes, I even use only 1/2 cup cooked, which is roughly 3T raw per person. What I usually end up doing in that case is making a cup of rice and dividing it by 5, putting one serving away for another meal (lunch for myself the next day).

Flours and bread crumbs and all that jazz: I have discovered that 2-3 tablespoons of these per portion is a good starting point.

And then, I like to give things a good dose of veggies. Does that recipe call for 1 carrot, 1/2 onion, a quarter cup of diced green pepper..? Again, there is no magic to what is called-for in the recipe. Double it up. I'll also add a cup of frozen peas and carrots to many simmered meals just for a little "sumpin-sumpin" extra.

Finally, portioning the final meal. This isn't always easy, I admit. If I make a big pot of stew or soup, how do I know how many servings I'm really getting out of it? I measure it, that's what I do. Yep. If I make a big pot, I'll take my 1-cup ladle, and I will transfer it to another pot, counting out the cups. Then I know how many 1 cup servings I get out of that. And for this, I only really need to know this for myself. In addition to my husband, I have to feed two teenage boys, and they can put away a lot of food. So in these cases, this lets me know how many servings the recipe made. Then I measure out my own portion and let them have at it.

Nutrition calculation. I use a recipe software called Mastercook. When you enter the ingredients and the amounts into it, it can compute the full nutritional profile based on its food database. Here's the trick: not every ingredient you use will be in its provided database; however, you can add ingredients. And I am religious about doing so. Once you have all that in there, and you know the number of servings, it will divide the whole meal up by the number of servings you entered (because remember you just got done counting out those ladles of soup) and return the per serving nutrition information.

Substitutions. As I mentioned before, you can usually use a light or reduced calorie version for some of the ingredients called-for without compromising the taste and texture of the finished product. There are also technique substitutions. For example, oven-frying instead of sauteing. I often will bread items, spray them with olive oil or canola oil spray and bake them. Usually 375 to 400* F is a good temperature for oven frying items. Thicker items, such as thick pieces of chicken, use the lower temperature so that it can have time to cook fully through before the breading becomes over-browned. Thinner items, such as eggplant slices (which makes an awesome lowfat eggplant parmigiana, btw) can bake at the higher temperature.

This reminds me of eggs, and I want to mention using these. For baked items, I really like using egg substitutes. These are also great for dipping items to be breaded. Don't be afraid of these. They are real egg product made from egg whites colored with beta-carotene. But on their own, they don't always taste so great. So for things like scrambled eggs, I like to use 1 whole egg plus 1 egg white per person. Spray the pan with butter flavor Pam and go to town! I swear you won't notice a difference over your regular full-yolked eggs.

Finally, write it down! If you've used the mastercook program, then you have accomplished this, but once you've gone through the trouble of crafting this recipe, you need to document the
changes you made so that the next time you make it, you don't have to go through it all again. I will often keep a notepad of the ingredients and amounts I'm using as I'm making the recipe. Then I go and mess with figuring it all out later.

This is all I can really think of right now. Remember, if you already know how to cook, these little changes really shouldn't be too difficult. If you don't know how to cook, well...I'm sorry, but that's more than I'm willing to take on with you at this time LOL...

Anyway, give it a try. Life is too short to eat bad food. You don't have to, even when you're trying to lose weight!

A year in review

Can you believe it?

Today is the 1 year anniversary of my joining Weight Watchers this time around! In 365 days, I lost 70.4 lbs, which averages to 1.35lbs per week! That is a hell of an average for a year's work! I started at 228.6 pounds, in the obese range, and I am now 158.2. And while my BMI still has me at overweight (I won't be considered in the "normal" range until I weigh 147 by BMI standards), I feel like I am "normal" now. I am not skinny by any means, but I no longer feel like the one that would stand out in a crowd as "the fat girl."

Where did I lose the weight? I have lost a total of 43 inches! 9.5" off my hips; 6 inches off each thigh; 9 inches off my waist; 7 inches off my bust...

...let us have a moment of silence for my dearly departed overflowing- C-cup...

...and 2.75 inches off each arm.

I started out wearing a size 20w pants. OMG, even looking at the number now still makes me cringe. As my weight had steadily increased, it was difficult for me to have to buy clothing with that "w" on the end of the number, as if the number itself was not bad enough.

I am now wearing size 10's and mediums. Next stop: single digits!! My Weight Watchers goal is 138. I have no doubt, whatsoever, that I will make that. I will see how it feels when I get to that weight, and if it seems I need to go beyond that, I will. But for now, that is the number I'm shooting for.

So on this day, last year, I had gotten up with a wild hair up there (as they say), and I actually called Lindora. Even though I had always done Weight Watchers, and I had always believed in the program, I still wanted to find out what their program was all about. Get this! They wanted something ridiculous like $1000 for 3 months, during which I would have to go to their center EVERY FREAKIN' DAY to get vitamin b12 injections. Plus the diet was a low-carb diet, supplemented by bars and shakes!

I knew that was not for me, and I found a nearby Weight Watchers center and was at the meeting by 9:00am.

I feel so good. I am proud of myself, of course, but I'm even more surprised. I have done this so many times in the past. I always gave up after about five months. I have no desire to quit. I think I may have finally made this part of my life.

I don't kid myself, however. I know the hard part will come when I get to maintenance. The process of losing weight provides weekly inspiration by seeing the number on the scale go down. When that weight will stay the same week after week, it will not have the same excitement. But I'm not going to worry about that now, since that time has not yet arrived.

For now, I want to enjoy this feeling of accomplishment!

Yay me!