Sunshine Day and BSI Ricotta Cheese!

Wow, thanks for all your nice comments on my pictures yesterday!  :D  Today was not a spooky morning at all – sunshine all the way!

And now you can see how pretty the river is!

Before taking Ed on our walk to the river, I put together a quick frittata.  My secret ingredient?  Canned potatoes!  Aldi carries there for like .79 cents a can.  I love using canned potatoes because they are already fully cooked.

I sliced four ounces of potatoes and shredded one medium sized zucchini.  I put the shredded zucchini in paper towels and squeezed out as much as I could, then layered that on top, sprinkled with crushed red pepper and put 1 cup of egg beaters.

As I was walking the dog I thought “I forgot to add the goat cheese!”  By the time I got back, it was practically done, so I put an ounce of herbed goat cheese on top and put it under the broiler to slightly melt and stay put.  I had a whole wheat mini bagel on the side 😀

It was so good!  I would have liked it a bit better if the goat cheese was incorporated, but I loved it – the potatoes were nice and tender and got a bit of a crisp on the bottom.  BTW this cooked for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

I was so excited when Jenna at Foodie in the City picked Ricotta Cheese as this weeks BSI ingredient!  I had already planned on making stuffed shells so it worked out great!  I don’t have an exact recipe though!  I cooked up about 6 ounces of ground sirloin.  Once the meat was cooked and drained, I added fresh spinach and then removed from heat and put a top on until the spinach wilted.

The ricotta mixture was 2 cups fat free ricotta, one egg, Italian seasonings and crushed red pepper.

Once the meat mixture was cool, I mixed the two together.  On the side I cooked 12 medium size shells.  Each shell got about two tablespoons of the mixture.

Into a square pan, I poured 1 cup of my homemade sauce over the top.

Then sprinkled with two ounces of 50% reduced fat cheese.

While I made this on Sunday, I brought it to work today for my friend and I – yes, this is two servings – each serving is 6 stuffed shells!

This was so filling!  I loved every bite of it.  When I got home from work, Hannah and I took a walk with the dog for 30 minutes.  I needed to burn some more calories because we went out to dinner together, just the two of us!

Hannah loves their chicken teriyaki bento boxes.  We were bummed to find out you could only order them for lunch!  So we went with plan B and just ordered different appetizers:

Tempura shrimp and vegetables.  I ate one shrimp, one sweet potato (even though I normally don’t like them!) and one red pepper.

We got an order of vegetable potstickers.  I ate two.

We split a small order of fried rice – this looked to be just over one cup.

And then we got sizzling shrimp.  While good, I don’t think this plate deserved the $9 price tag!  And sadly, too spicy for Hannah! :(  It had maybe four cut up shrimp on the plate?

Estimated calories of what I ate: 597 calories, 82 carbs, 23 fat and 14 protein.

I try to embarrass Hannah when we are out, as any good Mother would!  When she thanked me for dinner I told her “that’s okay, I am just going to transfer the money from your account to my account tomorrow anyway!”  This made her laugh!

I had to return some Almond Butter to Trader Joe’s – I accidentally got unsalted – yuck!  While there I just had to oogle at my favorite part of the store.  I actually walked out with no cheese – a first for me!

So thanks for the great date night Hannah!  And goodnight to my love Tony, who is out of town on business tonight – can’t wait to kiss your lips tomorrow! 😀

Stats for the Day:

• 1460 calories
• 45 fat
• 178 carbs (a tad over today)
• 80 protein
• 11 fiber (rats – not enough!)
• 20 minute walk before work
• 30 minute walk after work

It’s time for me to catch up on Glee!  Only one more day til the weekend, we can make it!  See you tomorrow night! 😀