Beef!

I seriously do not know what I do when I sleep at night.  I may need to do a time-lapse to see if tiny people come in and mess with my hair while I am sleeping.

I sent that picture to my sister yesterday morning.  It just makes me laugh!  And yes, I made a cup of coffee right after I took that picture.  I had my second WI and WW:

I was up .8, which I consider to be a maintenance week.  I am okay with that for a couple reasons.  Had I not been on WW I would have probably gained 2 pounds, but I caught myself dozens of times wanting to throw food into my mouth.  I am not sure that habit will ever go away, but I was conscious of it 90% of the time last week.  I had a few extra glasses of wine, and I may not have poured an exact 5 oz. pour.  Wine is off the table this week, except for maybe one or two glasses with a Mother’s Day lunch on Saturday and dinner on Sunday.   And I know I get my 10k steps in every day, but I need to keep up my other exercise a notch.  When I got home I did an hour Tae Bo class on my ExerciseTV on U-Verse.  Holy balls, I forgot how hard that was!

I had only had a 3 point yogurt parfait while I was at WW, and then I was really hungry.  Being Cinco de Mayo you didn’t think I was going to let the day pass without having something delicious in honor of that?!

Shrimp nachos!  OMG, so good.  I made homemade blue corn tortilla chips (4 points for 12) and topped them with 4 ounces of grilled shrimp (2) , grilled yellow pepper, diced tomato, chopped romaine, red cabbage and 1/2 an ounce of hot habanero Cabot cheese (2).  Best 8 point plate of nachos evah! 

After lunch I went out on a walk – it was a glorious 65 degrees – blue skies with puffy white clouds.  Pretty much the perfect weather day in my book.  I even saw some boats on the river – a sure sign of summer to come!

I was bringing dinner over to my friend Whitney who decorated my house.  Should we take a look again at what a beautiful job she did?!

I still sometimes can’t wait believe it’s my living room.  Because of her, I am actually able to sit in my living room – something I didn’t do before the remodel because it was sad seeing Tony’s empty recliner.  We hadn’t seen each other in a while so I suggested bringing dinner over so she wouldn’t have to cook one night this week.  I have kind of half joking, because Whitney doesn’t cook all that often, yet she has one of the most beautiful kitchens I’ve ever seen.  I knew I wanted to bring steak, so I finally bit the bullet and did something I’ve talked about doing before, which is buying a primal cut of beef at The Fresh Market.  When I went on my last trip for the Beef, It’s What’s For Dinner people, I actually got to break down a while beef tenderloin.

I had him weigh out the sirloin before cutting it up, and asked him to portion out as many 6 ounce steaks as he could, and then grind the rest.

It took 30 minutes, but you could easily ask for this ahead of time and pick it up.  I wandered around the store, so it was fine.  I really love that grocery store.  So in the end, he was able to portion out 16 steaks and then grind the rest.  I guess I underestimated how much ground beef I’d get – my kitchen scale only goes up to 5 pounds, and it was more than that.  My guess is closer to 7 pounds?

I did end up weighing the steaks and they ranged from 5.5 to 6.5 ounces each.  Some of the “steaks” were not cut that well.  I don’t imagine I could have brought his cut over to my friends house for dinner last night!

I’ll probably end up cutting off the meat on that piece and using it in a stir fry. 

So while I was making my shrimp nachos, I took one ounce of that beef and cooked up a baby burger so I could taste the meat.  Holy cow, is it amazing!  But then I realized something.  Even though the beef I bought was lean sirloin – while my steaks are lean, I realized that the ground beef was all the fat/beef leftover – so my ground beef is probably more 70/30, not 90/10 like most ground sirloin.  No wonder it tasted so good!  I plan to make 4 ounce burgers and freeze them, and then 8 ounce packages for tacos, etc. for later.   I am not sure I’d do it again, because even though it’s more cost effective to buy in bulk like this, it’s still pricey, and I would have preferred more steaks vs. ground beef.

I marinated my steaks in my favorite beef marinade, except my friend has a low sodium restriction, so I didn’t add salt to anything, and left out the soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce from the marinade.  Luckily though, I realized that Cabot cheese is low sodium – 1/2 an ounce on top of the twice baked potato was only 80 mg! 

And the balsamic glaze only has 5 mg of sodium per tablespoon – score!  Dinner was delicious – I promise there is a steak under all those sauteed mushrooms

They have a giant dog Winston – a European Great Dane and he’s the biggest teddy bear of a dog you’ll ever meet.

He desperately wanted to sit on my lap, but he’s not allowed on the sofa, so he laid really close to me.

I am actually sitting in a chair and he’s almost as tall as me!   It was great catching up, and nice to get out of yoga pants, which is my main outfit of choice in my semi-retirement mode.

My Mom has plans on Mother’s Day, so my sister and I are taking her out to lunch tomorrow.  Jacky, I’ll be in Oak Park tomorrow afternoon if you are up for a visit?  I know it’s late notice and you might be busy because it’s Mother’s Day weekend, but thought I’d throw it out there.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend – see you on Monday!