Losing and/or maintaining weight for those of us that are metabolically challenged is hard enough going solo, but trying to meet the nutritional needs of the rest of your family makes it even harder. But recently I discovered salad! Or shall I say rediscovered salad. I have always been one to enjoy the wild mixes of ingredients that restaurants call salad, but at home I was always a simpleton: Lettuce (not iceberg, at least), red onion, tomato, beets, maybe some chicken and tad bit of dressing tossed on. But my son needs to be eating everything and my husband wants it all but without saturated fat, so I decided to give them just that and put theirs over rice and mine on a salad. Last night, Curry Chicken with Peas. For Elliot, mixed with rice. For Dale, over rice with a side of Naan and yogurt sauce. For Me, over some greens with just a splash of creamy cilantro dressing and a couple of high-fiber tortillas to grab some tasty bites with. Brilliant! What will I think of next?

Labels: Eating, Flourishing, Thinking

There are two sure fire ways to Anglo-Americanize any ethnic food...a casserole or a salad! Seriously. I really can't think of any food more American then a casserole. Sure hamburger, hot dogs, apple pie, but that's what we want people to think. The truth is Americans love their casseroles and what better way to sample the fare of our neighbors then by way of a safe and comforting casserole. And in recent years salads have followed suit. Taco Casserole and Chinese Chicken Salad, enough said.

Labels: Eating, Thinking

Years ago when we were living in San Mateo I threw a surprise party for my husband's birthday (then boyfriend). I had been pretty last minute about the food and had planned to make a taco-spread - tortillas, guac, sour cream, beans, and chicken...luckily some friends were there to help me out! One friend quickly realized that I had no idea what to do with the chicken so she jumped in started throwing stuff in a pot and at the end was this delicious shredded chicken in a tomato sauce. I have never forgotten this chicken, it was amazing! It was reminiscent of this chicken they used to have at our college taqueria. I was never really able to replicate it, so I stopped trying and it has just lived in my fond-food memory bank ever since.

Recently when I was getting my hair cut (when I do all of my magazine reading) I stumbled upon this recipe in Cooking Light, Chicken Thighs with Olives and Tomato Sauce. Now this particular recipe does not dish up a fiesta, it's more of a Mediterranean dish, but it is saucy-shredded-goodness nonetheless. I used 1 1/2 lbs of chicken thighs and 1 1/2 lbs of breasts to reduce the fat (& 4 lbs seemed a bit much). I used some chicken broth instead of wine as I didn't have any white on hand. And go easy on the red pepper flakes if you have a little one around. We served it over rice and I even threw some in a high-fiber tortilla along with some spinach for a tasty lunch. This will be in our family recipe book for years to come, in fact we made it again yesterday!

Labels: Eating, Thinking

A long while ago I made a commitment to myself to have more (or some) hobbies. I even made a declaration on my blog. How am I doing? I don't often take these moments to assess, but lately it has become more crucial to acknowledge the little successes in my life. Though I haven't gone on any photography excursions like I would have liked, I have snapped a few that I have been proud of and even got around to hanging one on our wall. I have yet to find the perfect coffee photo for our kitchen wall, but I continue to snap away and am confident I will be satisfied with one of them someday.

My cookbook collection has suffered. I managed to jump-start with some favorites I found on a great site, but the joy in collecting is discovering them at a garage sale, estate sale or used bookstore...and there has not been time in my life for those excursions...somehow I feel like my dream of becoming a master at garage sales will have to wait for retirement.

Another declaration I made long ago was to make one new recipe a week. Some weeks cooking at all is a luxury, but other weeks I have managed two great recipes (both on Sundays - a workin' Mom strategy that I will go into another time).

We have been having a lot of fun in the kitchen these days and here are some of my favorites that are full of flavor and pretty fast too!:

Spicy Curry Beef not really that spicy & Elliot likes it! I don't seem to have a picture of it anywhere, but it really is a favorite in our house.

Asian Concoction - even Brussel haters will enjoy this! Using low sodium ingredients is crucial otherwise it's too salty, tastes great over jasmine rice.

Good Excuse for a Margarita Meal: Holy Mole Flank Steak (we threw it on the BBQ), Spicy Red Rice, & Garlicky Pinto Beans.



Not Your Mama's Italian Sandwich: make a quick tomato sauce (we recently tried the Quick Tomato Sauce from Cooks Illustrated and it was awesome!), marinate & grill some chicken (just used some lemon juice, olive oil & rosemary), toast your favorite roll with a slice of provolone, top with arugula and chow!

Labels: Creating, Eating, Flourishing, Thinking

with friends!

at home!

...with Dale's side of the family!

Labels: Eating, Feeling, Kid-ing

Labels: Eating, Feeling

No loss is a huge gain this week! I had so many social engagements this week...

Labels: Eating, Flourishing

Labels: Eating, Flourishing

Note: I am aware that 'Where's your fingers/hands?' is not gramatically correct, however when you start with 'Where's your nose, mouth, etc.' you are just on a roll and 'Where's your fingers' comes out. I had to caption it truthfully!

Labels: Eating, Feeling, Kid-ing

What I was up against:

Labels: Eating, Feeling

If I were born ten years later I likely would have wound up with an ADD diagnosis (Attention Deficit Disorder), not to be confused with ADHD which adds hyperactivity to the mix which was not at all my situation. In life I always seem to be racing the clock. Sometimes it is self imposed due to procrastination, but mostly it is just how I roll (I cannot resist the temptation to use some wannabe hip-hop slang and I mean no disrespect in doing so). Anway, the point is I tend to move from one thing to another so quickly that I sometimes miss things. Most often I get what I need out of the conversation/television show/book/magazine/fill in the blank. Sometimes I miss and miss BIG.

Recently at work I skimmed an e-mail (I get at least 40 relevent e-mails a day, so I do this for efficiency sake). The Executive Secretary to our Agency Director sent out an e-mail reminding staff of the upcoming Charitable Contributions Campaign where all employees have the opportunity to donate to a charity for a whole year and it's deducted from your pay, pre-tax sort of a thing. Each year there is apparently a kick-off celebration where you can eat donated pumpkin pie (my original interpretation), admire carved pumpkins and eat green things (in honor of "going green"). So when our Director sent a follow-up e-mail with a plea and then the Secretary sent yet another follow-up with yet another plea, I bit and said, "Hey if you haven't had any volunteers for the pie donation, count me in."

The next thing I got was a thank you for entering the upcoming Charitable Contributions Contest! WTF?! I didn't recall anything about a contest? I thought I was baking a pie to donate. Now I need to bake TWO pies, both identical (one for the judges and one for display!)? This is like a real contest (albeit for San Mateo County Employees only)! The fun didn't stop there. A day later an e-mail went out to all 850 Human Services Employees and said, "Come taste a sure to be award winning pie baked by Amy Kaiser..." And if that were not enough another one went out a couple days later saying "Also, just a friendly reminder to come taste a sure to be award winning pie baked by Amy Kaiser..." The pressure!!!

So here I was at 7:30 trying to make sure Elliot was asleep, cooking dinner so my dear husband and I can toast his Mom's 60th Birthday, and baking TWO pies for a contest tomorrow. I have never baked two pies - yikes! I encountered a bit of weight issue as I put both pies on a cookie sheet which caused the cookie sheet to dip in the center and the pie filling leaked and made ugly pie! They might taste OK, but they are not my finest works. Wish me luck!


P.S. I am too tired to even proof read this, so it is what it is.

Labels: Eating, Thinking

Tonight while I was at the gym my mind began wandering as it does when I exercise. I began thinking about canned peaches. First I began to wonder how canned peaches get to be that perfect solid color of yellow-orange (not peach) and are completely smooth and absent of any evidence that there was a giant pit in the center, strange and oddly unnatural. I then began to think about how common it was for us to eat canned fruit when I was a child - peaches, pears and fruit cocktail were the most common. How is it that a farmer would allow his family to each such things? One day we would eat fresh fruit straight from the orchard out of a crate that would sit atop our dryer in the laundry room and the next day it was canned peaches. I then remembered a more recent conversation with my Dad where I learned of his love of canned fruit (anything sugary, really) and then remembered seeing him eat peaches right out of the can. How could he like those sickly sweet versions of the real thing? Generation gap. When my dad was growing up his mother preserved jars and jars of fresh fruits so there would be fruit for the winter. It makes sense now, produce wasn't flying in at record speeds from around the globe all year round, so if you wanted peaches in the winter you'd preserve them in the summer. Somehow I feel like Grandma's peaches were probably a lot tastier then the "Del Monte" variety. This got me through about 10 minutes of my work out.

Labels: Eating, Thinking

When I was in New York a few years ago, I visited the famous Magnolia Bakery and had myself a few cupcakes. They were good, but not great. I felt like maybe I built them up too much or something. About a month ago a good friend used the Magnolia Vanilla recipe to bake some sweet lovely cupcakes for her daughters birthday. When I ate her cupcakes I was in such a happy place, these were what cupcakes should taste like. I have been mildly obsessed with these cupcakes ever since. When we got an invitation to a gathering with family this past Sunday I decided it was a perfect opportunity to try and master Magnolia's Cupcakes. The recipe was quite easy, it was the frosting that would be my battle for a great little cake. My friend used a cream-cheese frosting which I am generally partial to, but I wanted to see if I could make a great little cake with the butter-cream that Magnolia uses. As you can see from the picture of their cakes they use way too much sickly sugary frosting, and I was not going to make that same mistake. I pulled out a star-tip, slopped some vanilla frosting in a zip-lock bag and viola my magical cupcakes were born with just a thin layer of frosting. You tell me which cupcakes you'd rather eat. Mine or Theirs?

Labels: Eating

There were many years I spent eating Fat Free everything, and I mean everything. I would eat it every morsel and multiple portions, but tell myself it didn't matter because it was Fat Free. Later I learned (along with the rest of the world) that low-fat was just as "healthy" and low in calories as fat-free...and it tasted better too. That little bit of fat makes a huge difference in taste. From then I vowed to never eat Fat Free again (unless of course it naturally comes that way).


On April 3rd Elliot went to the doctor for his 9-month Well Exam and the doctor gave us the green-light for giving him dairy (cheese and yogurt). Well with little babes they like them to eat Whole Fat dairy products, so off to the store I went to research and purchase Whole Fat Milk products. We started with the inevitable Yo-Baby yogurt which I was against at first because I always tend to resist products designed for specific "markets" like this, but at the end of the day it is so much easier than buying a big container, portioning it out, etc., etc. Once I settled on the yogurt I moved to the cottage cheese section and picked up some small-curd 4% milk-fat cottage cheese (I wasn't sure 4% mean whole-milk, but I new that 2% was considered to be a "healthy" milk option - remember I am a soy girl so some of this was new to me).


When I got home I sampled the fare that I was about to give my child I was ... well, I cannot explain what I was, but it was the tastiest stuff I have had in a looong time! The yogurt was good, but I think I can go back to the low-fat stuff. But the cottage cheese was AMAZING! That little bit of extra fat was so delightful and creamy. Though I was a tad disappointed when Elliot didn't like the cottage cheese, it didn't take me long to finish it myself.


Treat yourself to some fat today, you won't regret it!


P.S. Thanks for your healthy well-wishes. Our little bear has clear lungs and is gaining some weight back.

Labels: Eating, Flourishing, Thinking

There aren't many diets I haven't tried, Nutra System, Jenny Craig, Weightwatchers, Southbeach, and I even got caught in the Susan Powder craze (ok, maybe craze is a little strong). I never tried DealAMeal, but I was found Sweatin' to the Oldies once or twice. This list doesn't even count the hundreds of "DIY" efforts where I followed (or tried to follow) "best practices" of the day (no-fat, low-carb, low-fat, no-carb - geez). Though I am not a proponent of those that want you to eat pre-packed "food", I do recognize that even those programs will work and have some value. Today I thought I would share my thoughts as an unofficial diet critic:


*Nutra System and Jenny Craig are all about convenience. If you don't like to cook or don't have time to cook, and are not overly particular about taste (not meant as a critisism no matter how it sounds), then these programs are meant for you. You select all your meals in advance and everything comes pre-packaged (ingredient control) & pre-measured in individual servings (portion control). It does tend to limit your ability to eat out, which is not always a bad thing. I have met a restaurant or two willing to nuke the food and bring it to you on a plate so you can enjoy yourself and not look like a fool eating out of a carton.


*Southbeach is the ultimate in learning about sugar addiction! The program is broken into Phases - Phase 1 you are essentially prohibited from eating ANY sugar (bread, fruit, etc.). Phase 2 you begin adding in complex sugars (i.e. high-fiber, low sugar foods) and by Phase 3 you are essentially just following a low-fat, portion controlled diet. There is really nothing Southbeach about where you end up, just where you begin. Phase 3 is just about living a healthy lifestyle, eating heart healthy foods, and so on. I think it is a great learning experience and everyone should try this once in their adult lives!


*WeightWatchers has had many iterations (as have the others I guess), some of which used to require that you eat Liver - ick! But the new generation of WeightWatchers is a fancy smancy way of counting calories...based primarily on the age old concept ...


If your daily caloric intake <> your daily calories burned ... Weight Gain


The upside to WW is that you can eat whatever you want, you just have to manage your daily points. You can use more than 1/2 your daily points on pizza or (if you are like me and it is all about volume) then you can make the most of EVERY point and enjoy many 1-point tasty treats like VitaTops! Points are centered around fiber, generally the more fiber the fewer the points. Fiber also makes a nice proxy because foods higer in fiber generally tend to just simply be more nutrituous. You need the Total Calories, Total Fat and Total Fiber to calculate the points value, so eating out can sometimes be tricky (if faster food is your thing, there are a lot of resources for obtaining those values). WW does offer some tricks to help you estimate - palm of your hand is about 4 ounces of meat, your thumb is about an ounce of cheese, and your fist is about a cup of rice/cereal or whatever. I do think this is the most flexible plan out there.


*Richard Simmons, Susan Powder and countless others are all about motivation. They are essetially selling very simmlar concepts to WW in that lowering your caloric intake and increasing your physical activity can result in weight loss.


What each of these plans (and countless others) are really selling are different tools and strategies (built around fewer calroies, no matter how it is worded) to achieve your desired weight loss goal. At the end of the day you just need to determine which strategy is a fit for you. There really is no cure, there is no easy answer....fewer calories, more exercise - that's it (you can skip the exercise, though I don't recomend it for overall health reasons and you'll have to eat even fewer calories)! I will be tempted to try out the next miracle diet and I will be sure to give you my 2-cents!

Labels: Eating, Flourishing, Thinking

I don't eat fast food! This has been my silent mantra for at least the last 7 years. Sure, I occasionally partake in a nibble when we are on the road (i.e. to Fresno, Tahoe or other trip where fine dining establishments are not part of the scenic route). But as a rule, it doesn't make our way into our regular daily diet. In my former life as a student of Sociology, I was a BIG fan of the concept of Ideal vs. Real. The concept was not a complicated one, but still it had the "a-ha" effect on me as it gave me words for something I saw around me (typical of what a lot of Soc concepts do). I would pride myself (secretly, of course) on being able to identify people who were blind to their reality because I did not suffer from this same blindness...I could see clearly, I was special somehow!


One day I was driving home from a party with a friend and her son wanted to go to McDonald's, so we went through the drive through and I ordered a shake and my friend was bewildered to find out that I hadn't been to McDonald's in well over 5 years. How is that possible, she exclaimed?!


I know, I though later, how is it possible?


I think it all starts with a love of food and a sprinkle of calorie watching. And then of course there are political reasons for this as well. But how have I really managed to avoid it all these years? After all, we live in a fast-paced society with a lot of demands on us and sometimes you need it - fast! I was pondering all of this just the other day as I was sipping my coffee and dreaming about dinner (that Dale was going bring home for us).


And then it hit me (like a ton of bricks)

I DO EAT FAST-FOOD!


I had this icky feeling in my stomach (similar to one experienced by Cher in Clueless after she flunked her driving test)


Everyday I drink my Double-Tall 1/2 Caff 2-pump Soy Mocha (now with an addition of 1 pump of honey - sooooo good)
And about once a week I eat my steak quesadilla (light on the queso & with a side of sour cream & corn salsa)


Starbucks and Chipotle - yikes!


How did this happen!?


In order to continue living in my ideal world I have decided to differentiate between good (or acceptable) and bad (or unacceptable) fast food choices.


Thank you for indulging me!


Good Fast Food:


Chipotle (no longer owned by McD)
Starbucks (let's face it, it is consistent and the friendly people are making my drink before I even get to the front of the line - genius training program!)
Anything else I might happen to eat


Bad Fast Food:


McDonald's
Burger King
Anything else I don't or won't eat

Labels: Eating, Flourishing, Thinking

I lost 2 pounds! Well, one of them was gained the week before...but that puts me at a total of 5 pounds. Not enough for a new wardrobe, but on my way! I am off to get a couple of last minute gifts and some grocery items for some Christmas baking I have yet to do. I'll be damned if I am going to get through this Christmas season without baking something! For certain I am going to be whipping up a Apple Spice Cake for Christmas Day with the in-laws...but I also want to try my luck at Grandma's Cookies all by myself...we'll see.

Elliot slept in his crib ALL NIGHT last night, brings tears to my eyes (he even took his morning nap there today). It took about 1/2 hour of crying (screaming really) and then he was out. He awoke at 11:00 to eat again but went right back to sleep without the pacifier! He awoke again at 2 for what I thought was a snack, but really he had just taken an enormous crap and was likely quite uncomfortable. After a quick change and a bit of a snack he was out until 6:45! Dad reported that I was actually snoring last night and that he hasn't seen me sleep so soundly in a long while. I know, if you do the math I was still up every few hours, but lately Elliot and I have been falling asleep while he eats (while in our bed) and it has been prolonging feeding and making for not so restful nights (sleeping upright is not exactly good sleep). So that fact that I got 3 and 4 hours of sleep, on my side/stomach was quite refreshing. I feel like a new woman! Though I must admit I felt a little sad that he didn't "need" me.

Thomas was not quite sure what to do with himself last night. Everytime I got up to go tend to the baby he would follow close behind and I could tell he was still 1/2 asleep because he would just sort of sit and stare in the low light not quite sure if he should stay or go back to his bed (eventually he chose his bed). What a sweet pug!

Well, off to fight the crowds (Mr. Graham is shopping with Daddy this morning - too cute!).

Labels: Eating, Feeling

OK, so this blog was never meant to be a place for me to write only about what I ate each day...but sorry, I am full bore into Christmas shopping, etc...so here is what I have been eating...

Tuesday:

~Cereal
~Soy Mocha
~2 HF tortillas with roasted chicken, BBQ sauce and melted cheese - I discovered that if you use the microplane on a block of LF cheese you can use even less cheese and still get the texture and taste PLUS you get a wonderful even distribution that takes even less time to melt in the micro
~Soy Mocha
~WW Eng Muffin with PB
~A few bites of a yummy brie puff pastry thingy that had preserves in it too - I could have eaten the whole damn thing!
~cheese crackers

Wednesday:

~Cereal
~Soy Mocha
~Spinach Salad from Specialties, some nibbles from some TASTY cookies (PB with Choc. Chunks & Ginger-Mollasis - yum!)
~Sushi (I think I did pretty well with some healthy choices - spicy tuna, BBQ eel & avocado, just 2 tiny gyozas)
~Snackimals Chocolate Chip "cookies"

Today:

~Cereal
~Spinach salad, lite dressing with grilled salmon
~Dbl Short 1/2 Caff 1-pump Soy Mocha, reduced-fat Pecan muffin
~HF tortillas, LF cheese, Mornigstar farms sausage patties (NOT LINKS)
~2 more sausage patties
~last little crumbs of the CC Snackimals

Labels: Eating, Flourishing, Thinking

~Cereal
~Soy Mocha
~WW Eng Muffin with Pumpkin Butter (yummy!)
~1/2 Roasted Veggie Pizzza from TJ's - REALLY yummy and calorie friendly!
~Soy Mocha and some crunchy-chewy almondinas
~Veggie burger split between two HF tortillas with LF cheddar and Arugula
~last scoop of Fully Loaded Peanut Butter Cup Frozen Dairy Dessert

Labels: Eating, Flourishing, Thinking

First I should say I was too tired to report out yesterday...you'll just have to trust me when I say I did fine yesterday. As for today, well I started out with my morning coffee and a small bowl of my cereal to tide me over because Dale's Aunt was making us breakfast. I knew as far as calories the day would be a bust, but that is alright because it would be one of those days worth celebrating. We arrived to yummy egg casserole, bannana chocolate chip bread, coffee cake, fruit, Panatone (what Italian feast doesn't have this!), sausage, coffee and juice - yum! Of course she is such a love that it was her company that made the day! From this point forward, the day went to hell. We got home and Dale took Elliot shopping, so I decided I was finally going to get lights on our tree and do a tad bit of decorating. I rummaged through ALL of our Christmas stuff and only one strand of lights could be found - hmm. I wasn't about to hit Target (what a zoo!), so I decided to hop on over to Michaels where they would have lights plus I could pick up the couple of paintings we just had framed.

On my way to M's I decided to treat myself to a SB. I got to M's with my SB in hand (sort of) and started shopping. I needed ink pads and maybe a couple of stamps because I was inspired to do a new theme for my gifts this year (thanks h!). I always wrap presents in some sort of matching fashion usually doing one style for my family, one style for Dale's and a third for friends (the practical use is so gifts don't get forgotten in the Christmas Eve/Day rush around). Anyway, I digress, as I was shopping for stamps to use for my gifts I realized my hair band was loose, so with my arm through the hand-held shopping basket I reattached my hair band. I could hear something while I was doing this but wasn't registering the sound until I looked down and saw my coffee spilling all over my basket and the floor. See, I had set my coffee inside the basket for safe keeping - so much for that. I alerted a staff person who got some paper towels, mop, etc. I grabbed my basket (after wiping my stuff down) and headed to the framing section to pick-up the paintings. And of course, they weren't done right, so why I waited for the woman to fix them I grabbed the lights and a few other items, went back for the paintings and headed for the checkout.

When I got home it was already 5:30 (3 hours after Dale & Elliot left me which means pump or feed soon) and Dale was on his way home. I wanted to make my "recipe of the week", so I got started chopping onions, bell peppers, garlic, boiling pasta, sautéing sausage and so on. I was almost done when they walked in the door. We gave Elliot the bottle and as I was sitting with Dale and Elliot I realized that I had left my dinner under the broiler (which was just to melt the cheese) and so I ran in the kitchen to find my dinner ruined! We microwaved ourselves some frozen TJ's pasta and called it dinner :( Elliot then screamed and cried for the next hour as I tried to get him to go to sleep and once he was asleep I decided to I would put up the lights. I was at the point that if I couldn't at least get the lights on the tree tonight then I was taking the whole damn tree out to the dumpster. One strand at a time, round and round the tree I went and finally we had lights...that didn't work. And as I was wrapping up this post, Elliot began screaming again...and after trying to get him back to sleep I have walked out of the room and uttered these words to my husband, "Let him cry, I'm don!". I am sure if it goes on much longer I'll get back in the game. I think I just need some sleep or a drink or both.

Labels: Eating, Flourishing, Thinking