Marinated Grilled Flank Steak

I’ve been kind of going through the motions with Weight Watchers.  I know the smart point meals I make are on point.  That’s not the problem.  The problem is all those little “extras” that never seem to get added to my WW app.  The hazelnut creamer in my coffee x 4+ times a day.  The extra glasses of wine while away.  The bites of Cheetos that might be in the pantry that I just happen to open and pop a few in my mouth while reaching for something I was looking for.

So I decided to go back to meetings.  I love how easy the online program is and the app, but I know I can skip a weigh in and not really deal with how I really ate the week before like I do at a weigh in at a meeting.  I weighed myself when I first got up – no clothes – and I weighed in at 169.1.  My meeting wasn’t until 10:00 and I was up at 7:30.  I knew there was no way I could wait until then to eat something, so I made a quick egg white, shredded zucchini, 1/2 ounce cheese scramble and 3 slices of Canadian bacon on the side for 4 points.

I ended up making a quick strawberry banana parfait for the road to eat after I weighed in.  I made a cup of strawberry sauce with 1 tsp. sugar and 1/2 tsp. corn starch with 1/2 cup of water for 1 point, then used a 5.3 ounce container of Chobani and banana sliced in between.  It filled a whole big mason jar for 3 additional points.  I forgot to take a picture of it, but it was similar to this, except without the granola.

I forgot that there could be a line for the weigh in, so I was standing in line with my mason jar parfait and the woman next to me asked what it was.  I told her it was a 3 point parfait and her first reaction was “you can eat all that for only 3 points?”  Yep!  I know some people on Weight Watchers think of it as a diet vs. a lifestyle change.  You can eat anything – even bread like Oprah says in the commercial!  So I am thinking I am going to put together a flyer of all my eats for the week to show people at the meeting the variety of food you can eat and still eat 30 points a day.

I had to go back and see where I was in 2011 when I went back to WW.  On April 16, 2011 I was down 11.2 pounds, which meant my starting weight would have been 173.4.  So basically for all the ups and downs I’ve had over the last 5 years, I am down .6 pounds in five years.   Let’s just call myself the queen of maintaining!

So 163.8 is my first goal – or 5%.  I have no excuse because I have time to kill it at the gym and make healthy meals – but I just have to cut out all the in between stuff.  Easy to do, right?!

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I am proud to say that while I was gone, Hannah and Jacob ate all their meals at home and made healthy ones to boot!  It was so nice to get texts from Hannah showing me her delicious meals.  But I know Jacob loves when I cook beef, because that’s outside of Hannah’s wheel house.  She doesn’t normally even like to touch it, let alone cook it!  Flank steak was on sale for $7.99 a pound.  I think it’s funny but when I watch cooking shows on t.v. and they talk about flank steak, they’ll typically say “it’s a super economical meat.”  Um, no it isn’t.  Right next to it my store had ribeyes on sale for $4.99, and next to that was N.Y. strip steaks for $5.99.  But I love flank steak, and knew I’d be morphing the leftovers into another meal for me to justify the cost.  I always remind myself that if I were at a restaurant, I’d probably pay at least $12 for flank steak, and that would be for just one portion!

This marinade is better when done overnight, but it was delicious in the three hours I marinated it:

I ended up making grilled flank steak salads.  I found a recipe from Gina’s site, Skinny Taste, for a cilantro, avocado and buttermilk dressing.  Holy balls.  Make this asap.  It’s creamy, tangy and spicy.  So good.  Oh, and I used Tapatio Doritos (3 for 1 point!) as croutons for the top of my salad.  You totally need that extra kick of spice and crunch.  Just have your family members hide the bag so you can’t help yourself when opening the pantry door.

Six ounces flank steak (6) 3 tablespoons of the dressing (2) 1/4 cup grilled corn (1), romaine/tomato/cucumber/red cabbage (0) and the Doritos croutons (1).  A delicious 10 point dinner.

I had leftover salad fixings and beef, so after my WI and hitting up the gym for an hour, I came home and decided tacos were a good idea.  I had three big mushrooms and cooked that up with 3 ounces of the leftover flank steak – I love how the meatiness of the mushrooms really gave these tacos a zip of flavor.  I pan fried them in 1 tsp. of coconut oil and Pam (1), with three extra thin Mission corn tortillas (4), with the beef (3) and a drizzle of the buttermilk dressing over the top and more Tapatio for (1).   9 smart points for all three tacos – winning!  Leftovers never tasted so delicious.

I’d like to point out the difference between my iPhone photo for the salad at dusk vs. my DSLR during the day.  I love being able to spend just a little bit more time food styling and photographing my food. 

I recently found an old SD card that had 2100 pictures on it – dating back to summer of 2008!  I had to laugh at some of my early food photography from fall of 2008.  Case in point:

I even have Tony being my hand model.  Even if that photo was in focus, I have no idea how I thought that would be a way to tempt people to make any of my food!  It was bittersweet to go through some of the pictures though.  I felt tears welling up in my eyes when I saw some of these pictures.  It’s hard to believe that just six years after these pictures were taken, he’d be gone.   I thought I would be with him a life time.

And Bonnie (my MIL), not sure you’ve ever seen this picture of Sean – perfect for your wall!

I have SO many photos that I need to spend just 30 minutes a day getting them in some sort of order – they are all over the place.  10,000+ are just old food pics I can delete.  Um, turns out I have 9,917 photos on my iPhone right now

I’ll leave you with this cute picture of Rummy and Roman – look how cute their paws are together!  So tired!

I have new windows being installed this morning – my bedroom window had been caulked so many times because Tony always felt a draft in our bedroom.  Once I took off all the caulk, there was really nothing holding the window in place anymore, and it’s been taped up for a few weeks so that I didn’t lose the window completely into the yard.  I’ll show some before and after pictures on Monday – while I was at it, I decided to replace Hannah and Jacob’s bedroom window and two other windows that weren’t replaced in the living room with the remodel.  Just kind of spacing out the home improvement projects this year, and this will likely be the only project I do this year.  That’s where half of my tax return is going to!

I hope you have a nice weekend!  I am meeting my Mom up for church and lunch on Sunday – I was able to squeeze into her busy schedule!  See you on Monday!