Weekly Menu + Before and Now Pics

I had the best of all weekends, lazy + organized + worked at my happy place – the Chopping Block!

Friday started out great because I got to have lunch with my sister and her son who was helping at her work.  My nephew is vegan and gluten free, so our lunch options were a bit limited, but then I remembered that when my friend Aimee (hi Aimee!) came for the Chicago marathon we met at Native Foods for dinner, and while I knew it was vegan for Aimee, I remembered seeing gluten free options as well on the menu. As luck would have it, it’s pretty much an equal walk from my office and my sisters office to meet there.

I didn’t bother looking at the menu for my entrée because I knew I was going to get the chicken fingers again with the sweet potato fries.  I already calculated the points going in, and if I ate everything it was going to be 13 points.  I also saw that they had lemon steamed broccoli so got that on the side as well.  So good!  My sister isn’t a fan of broccoli all that much and liked it.   I finally looked it up to see what the “chicken” part of the chicken wings are, and it’s textured tofu.  All I know is that it is delicious, especially when dipped on buffalo sauce and ranch dressing.

I still have my cough, but I have to say I am more than 50% better than last week.  The kadults were working during the day on Saturday and I took advantage of a quiet house.  I did some laundry, made granola for the week, and finally around 2:00 p.m. thought it might be a nice idea to actually take a shower and get out of my pajamas.  I grabbed my new Oprah Cookbook that Weight Watchers sent me and my journal to meal plan and headed to the coffee shop to have some soup for a late lunch. Yes, I know it’s ironic that when I have the house to myself, I go and visit the kadults at their place of business

Their soups are delicious and I thought they were provided by the catering company down the row from them.  Nope, it’s Chicago based Bistro Soups that makes the soup – and I realized they are sold in most Jewel grocery stores!  Hannah and Jacob love the garden vegetable, but when Hannah mentioned they had tomato soup, I couldn’t decide, so Hannah brought me a taste of both.  This was the perfect lunch.  I finished it off with a sugar free mocha cappuccino, so lunch came in at 9 points on Saturday.

I spent $48 at the store this week.

This included dinner on Saturday and Sunday night:

Saturday I made:  Steak au Poive (I’ll post the recipe later this week!)  This plate came in at 11 smart points and worth every single one.

Last night I made grilled BBQ chicken breasts, topped with a zero point mango pineapple salsa, with a side of cauliflower mac n cheese (the salsa and mac n cheese recipe will be posted later this week as well).  Sunday dinner came in at 10 smart points.

For the rest of the week – not sure what will fall where, but here is the “plan”

Breakfasts:

• Steelcut Oats with Banana/Blueberries/Toasted Oats (from Oprah’s cookbook) x 2
• Egg white and spinach breakfast sandwich with fruit
• Breakfast Tacos
• Blueberry Cranberry Chobani Parfait with Granola

Lunches:

• Tomato and Guajillo Chile soup (from Oprah’s cookbook) that I am going to add cheese tortellini to make it a meal x 2
• Leftover Steak Picky Plate
• Freezer Turkey Chili Mac
• Leftover cauliflower Mac with smoked sausage

Dinners:

• Sirloin Burgers, Mushrooms, cauliflower mac
• Italian meatballs with zoodles and marinara sauce
• pork chop with garlic green beans
• leftover night
• party Pizza Friday!

Since I worked all day yesterday, I haven’t made the tomato soup yet, so we’ll see how it goes this week.  I have a general idea though, and any plan is better than no plan, am I right?

I had to leave for work by 7:30 yesterday morning.  I never know how traffic is going to be, but as it turned out, it was smooth sailing, and I was actually early.  I wasn’t hungry at all when I first woke up, but I brought a 6 point banana granola parfait for my drive to work and about half way through my drive, I ate it.

Yep, it was overcast and a bit snowy on my way to work.  If the weather app is accurate, we will finally have sun on Wednesday.  You never know how much you miss the sun until you haven’t seen it for nearly two weeks!

I worked in the demo kitchen with the giant mirrors because I was working a Knife Skills Plus class with Chef Rachel.  This is a great class to take, especially if you are thinking of upgrading to a really good knife for your home kitchen.  We routinely carry about six brands of knives for our guests to use in our kitchen (Shun, Global, and F. Dick to name a few – an no, I am not making up that last brand name up!) so it’s a great way to get a feel for a knife before forking over a decent amount of money for one.  And if you are going to buy knives for your kitchen, don’t buy a knife set – or “block” of knives.  You truly only need three knives in your home kitchen – a good 8” chef knife, a paring knife and a bread knife (serrated) knife.  That’s it.

We had a full class and it was a lot of fun.  I put together the mis en place for the pineapple mango salsa, which I was able to bring Chef Rachel’s demo home for my BBQ chicken above.  The students learned how to cut different things like pineapple, mango, how to julienne cut and the like.  I love pineapple and mango, and I didn’t even mind that there was chopped scallion!

My shift was a weird time – from 9-3:30.   I ate my breakfast probably around 8:15 in the car ride to work, but other than tasting some of the salsa and a bit of the pasta salad we made, didn’t really have much to eat.  I dropped one of the Chef’s off at her house on my way home – it’s a bit out of my way, but her Sunday public transportation is not that great, so I told her if we were both working, I’d always give her a ride home.

So it was nearing 4:15 – I still had another 45 minute drive home, and I was really getting hungry and I wanted a cup of coffee, so stopped at an oasis on the expressway home.  It’s a 7-11 attached to a Mobil gas station, but it has all different kinds of ready to eat foods – hot dogs, chicken wings, pizza.  Not to mention always hot cinnamon buns as big as my head, and the smell of cinnamon smacked my face as soon as I walked in.  This is the slippery slope I fall down.  I am driving alone.  No one will know what I eat.  I can throw out the wrappers before I even get home.  Some of you out there may know this scenario.

But that’s what I got!  A cheese stick and a banana for $1.60!  It was just enough so I didn’t come home and want to eat all of the food within a ten foot radius of me.  NSV!

I recommitted to WW on December 26, so I took a picture on December 26 and again on Saturday for a comparison.  The weight on the left is 175.6 and the right picture is at 163.  I see a bit of a difference, but seeing is that I am short (5.2) and the top end of my healthy range is 131 pounds, I’ve still got some obvious work to do.  And I haven’t been able to work out the last two weeks with this cough, but hope by the middle of the week to get back in the gym.

I also didn’t know that I had a timer on my iPhone to take pictures, and was using an app on my phone to take these – still not sure why the first one is so hazy?!   In any case, these might be great before pictures when I finally got to my AFTER.

I have to give a shout out to two of my blog readers Jamie and Allyson who both joined WW and Jamie lost 3.2 and Allyson lost 6.4 their first week!   Great job guys!

I still have a discount link if anyone is interested in joining:

Alright, time to get this show on the road – Monday again!  Here’s some Monday Motivation though to help get you through the day!