Buffalo Zucchini Fries

I am doing the happy dance today!  I have a half day today.  My brother Charlie and his wife Laura and flying into Chicago today!   Their daughter is in a Color Guard National tournament in Indianapolis this weekend.  So while Rachel has to travel with the school, they are flying in, and then my Mom is driving them down to Indi tonight and they are spending the weekend there.

So while the visit will be short, I’ll take it!  My twin sister can’t get off of work, so we are meeting her near her office for a late lunch, then we’ll drive to my Mom’s house since my brother hasn’t seen her new house yet.  I am not sure what their holiday plans are yet, so this might be the only time I’ll see him until the end of the year.

So I’ve decided when I make my breakfast parfaits (or in this case a yogurt bowl!) I have to stick with plain Chobani.  That way it doesn’t end up getting too sweet on me with the toppings. I ended up sautéing one apple in one pat of butter and a teaspoon of dark brown sugar.  For my topping, I broke half of one of my granola bars.  So frickin good!This bowl of goodness comes in at 399 calories, 11 fat, 53 carbs, 5.6 fiber and 22 protein.

I ate this right at 9:00, so my run at lunch felt much better.  I ended up running/walking 1:30 faster than yesterday!  I think a lot of it has to do that I did my 30 minute stretch before work, so my legs felt a lot better.

I love, love, loved my lunch yesterday.  I really had no idea what I was going to put together until I realized I bought shrimp over the weekend and forgot to do anything with it!   It smelled fine, and that’s when I decided to make what I call a “tasting plate.”

New readers might not have seen my post on how to make perfect shrimp cocktail.  Now that the holidays are almost upon us, this is a great appetizer because you can make it ahead, and I’ve made it with really good shrimp, or as I did yesterday with $5 dollar a pound shrimp. 

So here’s how I roll.  I put my shrimp in the pot with the temperature probe in, then put my apples on to sauté in another pan and then . . . I jumped in the shower!  By the time I got out, the shrimp were at 150 degrees, and I was there to pull them to put them in an ice bath when the water temperature reached 165 degrees.  I am the queen of multi-tasking! 

I left the can of hummus at my office, but it is amazing, and only 35 calories for those 2 tablespoons.  And this took me nearly an hour to eat, I would just work, take a few bites, etc.  The only problem with this type of lunch is that I never know how much insulin to take because it takes me so long to eat, so I ended up testing my blood sugar 30 minutes after I ate and adjusted it then.

Best part?  This whole plate was 298 calories, 11.4 fat, 23 carbs, 2.5 fiber and 27 protein.

I had burgers on the menu but decided to mix in 1/2 a cup of hot chili beans into my 2 ounces of ground sirloin.  OMG, these beans are so spicy delicious!

The only thing I’d do differently would be to make the bean/beef patty and then freeze it for about 15 or 20 minutes so it holds it shape, it ended up being more like a sloppy joe bean burger, but the flavor was amazeballs.

I realized I only had one serving left of frozen french fries so I made those for Tony.  I realized I had zucchini so I decided to make myself some zucchini fries – but not any old zucchini fries . . .

Buffalo Zucchini Fries

• 1 serving = 175 calories, 1.99 fat, 27 carbs, 3 protein and 10 protein

Now I deep fried mine, so the calories above don’t reflect that.  They are not greasy, but I added 1/2 teaspoon of oil to my calories for dinner.  You could easily bake these at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes.  Just be sure to spray them with Pam to keep them crunchy.

Ingredients:

• 1 medium zucchini, cut into strips
• 2 tablespoons egg white
• 2 tablespoons Frank’s hot sauce
• 1/4 cup of seasoned Italian bread crumbs

Mix the egg white and hot sauce together and soak the zucchini for about 5 minutes.  Put the bread crumbs in a ziploc bag and toss to coat.  Mine only took about 3 minutes to cook in the fryer.

In the cup is 1 tablespoon of fat free ranch dressing for dipping my fries.  Can you see the burger start to fall apart – I didn’t care, because it tasted so good.  This plate comes in at 587 calories, 13 fat, 76 carbs, 14 fiber (thank you beans!) and 34 protein.

Stats for the Day:

• 1343 calories, 39 fat, 165 carbs, 22 fiber and 84 protein
• 30 minute classical stretch before work
• 5k at lunch
• average blood sugar 147
• no alcohol!

Yesterday was my perfect work day.  Are you like me that you go into the office having a list of things to get done, and then you get stuff thrown at you and it just gets shoved to the side?  Well yesterday I had no bosses until 2 in the afternoon.  I got all my filing done while listening to Pandora.  I may or may not have been singing at my desk yesterday.

Make it a great day!