I just made the best little afternoon snack! I combined 4 ounces 1% cottage cheese with 1/4 cup of Nature’s Path Organic Flax Plus granola with pumpkin seeds! SO good and about 150 calories! I have tried all of Nature’s Path granola (the peanut butter is my favorite!) and really like their product. They are much healthier than the competition granola and it tastes so good sprinkled on yogurt, cottage cheese, fruit….it adds the perfect crunch! I tried to take a picture of my little snack and while I was at it my camera died so I had to plug it in for awhile. My snack perfectly fueled me for the gym, which is where I am heading right now!

Forgot to add that I did have my almond + fiber-one snack this morning at school. It did its job of being tasty, portable and holding me over til lunch!

We had seafood extravaganza day at school today!

Oysters, clams, scallops, shrimp, fish, squid, lobster….the whole 9 yards. Unfortunately it was all either deep fried or drenched in a butter sauce! So….I decided to forgo the saturated fat and finish up my soup at home. I’m so glad I did because it was so good—this was the type of soup that actually gets better when it sits in the fridge because then the flavors have a chance to all mingle and today it was the best yet! I also had a serving (14 pieces) of Stacey’s Whole Wheat Bagel Chips (my new addiction) and a sliced apple sprinkled with cinnamon. Yum! It hit the spot! I have to run a couple errands this afternoon and study because tomorrow is my last day of class and my final practical that basically determines my grade….I’m really nervous…I’m just not that good at cutting meat and tomorrow I have to perfectly produce a boneless skinless chicken AND boneless fish fillets to end up getting a good grade in that class….eek! I am all set to make a really good dinner tonight though–one that I’m excited about so check back later!

This lunch was about 548 calories and totally hit the spot

My dessert tonight is kind of boring…the same thing I had last night—a 6 ounce cup of hot cocoa (1 tsp cocoa powder, 6 ounces skim, 1 splenda simmered on the stove) along with two of the tiny cookies I baked last night. I really didn’t need the cookies but just wanted something to nibble on while I wrote my recipes and studied for my quiz tomorrow. I should just throw away the other two so I won’t eat any more because right now they just look so tempting! My calories were lower today than normal (I think about 1750…I strive for 1850-1950 a day) because of my light lunch, which was more like a tasting than anything else.

Tomorrow for breakfast I have the steel cut oats I made tonight that I’m going to mix with 2 ounces skim milk in the morning and toss in the microwave with a banana to heat up and make creamy again. I also laid out the peanut butter and toasted up some walnuts to throw in their as well. If I eat what I have planned the calories for my breakfast will be about 376, lower because I’m using steel cut oats instead of regular ones.

Thanks for your questions/comments–keep them coming, I love to answer them!

A note on steel cut oats vs regular old fashioned oats:  one serving of steel cut oats = 1/4 cup dry (140 calories) versus a 1/2 cup as a serving for regular dry oats (150 calories). I much prefer the taste and the nuttiness of steel cut oats but only make them whenever I have time because they take longer to simmer on the stove. Tonight though I discovered they really don’t take as long as I thought because I put 2 servings on the stove with some water and it only took about 15 minutes for them to be done! I think when you make them in larger quantities they take more like 40 minutes to cook but its very easy to just make a couple servings at night, package them up in individual tupperware and toss them into the fridge where they can serve as a couple day’s worth of breakfasts. I usually add a splash of milk in the morning before heating them up in the microwave to increase their creaminess. Try them sometime; they are addicting!

So, I have been looking forward all day long to having a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner tonight with a cup of my chunky lentil soup from last night. I have a ziplock bag with some leftover slices of provolone in the fridge that I was going to use. THEN, I had a revelation…and listen close because I’m going to tell you about the best grilled cheese sandwich of my entire life. Yesterday I bought 3 ounces of Taleggio cheese from Whole Foods. Taleggio is to Italy what Brie is to France. It’s a triple cream soft ripened cheese that you can spread, melt, eat with crackers…anything really. It’s very specialty though so you will probably only be able to find it at the Fresh Market, Whole Foods, or an imported foods shop. Well, for tomorrow’s recipe (which is still a secret, you will have to wait and see!), I only need 1 ounce……so tonight, I took the other ounce, combined it with 2 tbsp of freshly grated parmesan cheese and layered it between 2 slices of sprouted grain bread. Set on the griddle and weighted down with a big pot on top to get a crusty feel to it. It.was.amazing. Totally melted to absolute perfection and tasted divine! Like a gourmet grilled cheese…SO much better (and about the same calories) as just using regular old provolone. So, if you are at a specialty grocery store and see Taleggio cheese, GRAB IT! It’s so good!

Besides my amazing grilled cheese I also had a small bowl of lentil soup and a 4 ounce glass of red wine. I would pretty much classify this as the perfect dinner. It was easy to make, tasted like heaven, and left me satisfied and happy! The total calories was about 555, including my glass of wine.

Now, I have steel cut oats simmering on the stove for the next couple day’s breakfasts and I’m about to take a bubble bath before starting on my recipe copying for school tomorrow. I’m going to eat a little treat in about an hour so I’ll let you know what that will be (I don’t know what I feel like yet!)

My ashtanga yoga class was really good once again today…yoga always seems to give me exactly what I need. Too bad my finger is still throbbing from earlier

Mm…I just made a snack that I haven’t made from college and forgot how much I liked it! Oatmeal with yogurt and fruit! I heated up 1/4 cup oats in the microwave with 4 ounces water and 1/2 sliced pear. When it was done I mixed in 2 ounces of plain, nonfat yogurt, a teaspoon of jam and ate with the remaining pear slices! So good but a little runny so next time I may make the oats with only 2 ounces water instead of 4 ounces. In college I used to heat up those little kashi go lean oatmeal packets and eat them in the afternoon but this was better!

about 200 calories

Happy Tuesday!

Today was fish day at school and we blackened snapper fillets and pan seared salmon…so I ate! I love seafood as many of you know! I also ate because I prepared everything myself…all the way from filleting the snapper when it looked like it was straight out of the water! We used a really good homemade blackening spice that Chef had prepared and I brought in the rest of my cornbread rolls from last night for everyone to try. The bad thing was that while I was filleting the snapper I cut my finger pretty bad through the gloves I had one. Now it’s all wrapped up :(. I’m doing some cleaning around here this afternoon then heading off to a 4:00 ashtanga yoga class. Then back here to make dinner and do homework–only two days of school left!

My lunch was incredibly light today because we were only given 3 ounces of salmon to sear and I only took about 1 1/2-2 ounces of blackened snapper on my plate. Those, with a cornbread roll, and an orange I ate when I got home only added up to be about 300 calories, which is much less than I like to eat at lunchtime.

This little guy right here turned into my lunch! (cutting my finger in the process)

So…I will be having a big snack before yoga in a few hours and I’m already a little hungry now! I’m not trying to skimp on any calories right now–I’m mindful of them of course—but I’m not lowering them or anything like that because for some odd reason my scale says that last week I lost 4 pounds! I’m not trying to lose weight and like to keep my weight up around 120-123 pounds…I think 116 is too low for me, which is what the scale said yesterday. Weird because I really have not been doing anything different with my eating and exercise! Maybe something was amiss with the scale. Very odd.

Just popped in some sugar cookie dough I bought yesterday at Whole Foods and ate two of them with a cup of hot cocoa I made with 6 ounces skim milk, 1 tsp organic cocoa powder and 1 splenda. Hit the spot! I was just going to have one of the cookies so my total dessert would be 150 calories…but they were just soo good, so hot and so tiny (!)  that I had another, bringing my dessert calories to 223. It was very worth it though and I like to eat smaller snacks during the day so I don’t feel guilty at night having a cookie and a cup of hot chocolate or a small slice of homemade cake or something. For me, having a treat at the end of everyday is worth it!

Tomorrow I’m having steel cut oats instead of my usual Scottish ones. I’m making them tonight with 1/2 cup skim and 2 ounces water and bringing them to a boil on the stove before taking them off an popping them in the fridge for the night to set. Tomorrow I’ll mix 1 tbsp peanut butter and a banana in them and reheat!

Wow!

Dinner proved to be a little more work than expected tonight…it ended up turning out really good though and exactly what I was craving on a “cold” winter tonight! First of all, I really wanted to try out this new cornbread recipe that I found on www.101cookbooks.com (heidi swanson’s website—last night’s dinner was from her cookbook Super Natural Cooking). The cornbread recipe looked pretty simple. Hmm…note to jenna: thoroughly read all recipes before ever attempting! The recipe calls for a kitchen aid with a dough paddle attachment to knead the dough. I decided to do that by hand because I don’t have one of those. Well, the dough was incredibly sticky and very very very hard to manage—my entire kitchen was covered with dough by the end of it! The recipe said it made 18 rolls but I made 36 out of them to make them a bit smaller and cut back on the calories of each roll, which was originally was almost 200! When you make 36 rolls instead of 18 each roll is about 92 calories—much more reasonable!  After two rises, tons of dishwashing and scrubbing bits of dough off of every surface in the kitchen, I had 36 cute little rolls that were chock full of whole wheat flour, corn, chives and cornmeal. They turned out pretty well but unlike any other cornbread I have ever had. Maybe because I am used to a sweeter cornbread, or maybe I just haven’t tried one that uses whole wheat flour instead of regular white before.  Regardless, I slathered mine with promise light that I mixed with honey and it was perfect with the soup.

Here’s the recipe I followed:  http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/yeastraised-cornbread-recipe.html

Cornbread rolls hot out of the oven (in my messy kitchen!)

Mmm…speaking of the soup–it was amazing!!! I don’t know about you guys, but when it gets chilly outside I start craving hot, one dish meals that really comfort me. This Chunky Lentil Soup was much more like a stew actually and was full of yummy lentils, tomatoes and butternut squash. It was very easy to make and probably only took about 45 minutes, start to finish. A good recipe if you are craving soup but don’t want to stand around all day in the kitchen waiting for it to be ready. I modified the original recipe a bit (it was also from Heidi Swanson’s cookbook) to include a little more vegetable broth and a pinch of cayenne pepper for some heat. I have a bunch of soup leftover in the fridge and I froze some also so looks like this will probably be lunch tomorrow.

Soup and roll with honey/promise light. I topped my soup with about a teaspoon of parmesan cheese.

I enjoyed a 4 ounce glass of red wine with dinner, which made my entire meal about 541 calories, 12.5 grams of fat. Now, what should I have for dessert?

But first…here’s the recipe for the soup with the modifications I made

Chunky Lentil Soup 

Makes 5 servings

1 1/4 cup dry lentils

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 yellow onion, chopped

2 cups butternut squash, cut up into tiny (1/4th inch) dice

1 1/2 cups vegetable broth

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes

1 tsp sea salt

pinch of chile powder

pinch of cayenne pepper

parmesan cheese for topping

1. Bring 5 cups of water to a boil then add the lentils and simmer for about 25 minutes or until tender. Drain.

2. Meanwhile, heat the oil and saute the onion until soft, about 4 minutes or so. Stir in the squash, tomatoes and broth and simmer for about 10-15 minutes or until the squash is tender.

3. Add the lentils and bring to a simmer. Season with salt, chile powder and cayenne pepper to taste.

4. Serve with a tsp of grated parmesan cheese on each bowl.

346 calories, 10 grams fat per serving.

Just had a quick snack before hitting the gym for a short & sweet cardio session today…I ate 10 kashi crackers before I went and once I was there I alternated between the elliptical machine and the treadmill for 25 minutes while watching Oprah. I didn’t work out hard today because 1.) I ran my butt off at school today and scrubbed the entire kitchen floor until my arms were quite sore! also, lifting heavy pots, washing dishes…it all burns calories! 2.) my leg hurts and I’m really supposed to be resting it this week because I overstressed it running. Its not my shin because its on the side of my lower leg..more like my ankle? Are there any other runners reading this that can help?? It hurts when I run so I don’t know yet if I will still be able to continue training for my half-marathon in february.

I’ve got some homework to do, some cornbread to bake (it’s still rising right now–more on that later!) and some soup to make yet! See you in a little bit!

Well, today was wild game day at school!!

Carving the fat off an oxtail!!

That’s right…we cooked up some alligator, frog legs, pheasant, duck, quail, oxtails, rabbit…..not really my cup of tea but it was interesting! My team was in charge of the oxtails, which we braised and then cooked in the oven like short ribs. Rumor was that we also had to cook bear, but then Chef whipped out some bear-shaped christmas cookies instead! That had everyone laughing. I decided to fogo the cookie though because I plan to bake some here later and instead had my usual snack of fiber one + almonds around 9:30. My oatmeal from this morning held me over very well too—I just had the usual with banana, walnuts and natural peanut butter mixed in.

Quail wrapped in proscuitto

Needless to say, I did not eat at school today. Instead I came home and made a very filling and tasty lunch of a gardenburger with one slice of provolone cheese and some honey mustard between two slices of sprouted grain bread. On the side I had one tablespoon of hummus and 5 baby carrots to dip into it. I also had 4 ounces of plain nonfat yogurt with a little jam and some apple slices to dip into that! And if all that weren’t enough, I finished the meal with a small bite of dark chocolate. All for about 525 calories!

It was delicious and I feel a lot better! I’m doing a lot of cooking/baking this afternoon…its freezing here-well, freezing for Orlando, that is…its in the 50’s! So I’m going to test out a new cornbread recipe along with cooking up a big bowl of homemade comforting soup for dinner tonight.