Lousy with Leftovers Recap & A Short Discussion on Body Image

The whole leftover thing sort of owned me. Sort of. It's hard to keep on track with this whole “feeding oneself” thing when nice people keep wanting to eat with you! But somehow, I manage. If this is as hard as my life gets on a daily basis, I'm a fairly lucky lady.

So last time the experiment revolved around cooking full meals that would later serve as leftover meals. It worked well. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're looking at my $40 a week grocery budget) I did not end up making one of my meals. I've got all of the goods to make the Bacon & Corn Chowder this week. Here's how the week was broken down as far as leftovers went.

Monday: Lunch was leftover Rotini dish (recipe can be found in last week's post). For dinner I made the big batch of Broccoli and Cheese soup (and enjoyed a free slice of pizza since the first Monday of the month is Free Pizza Night at my gym. I won't go into how very, very wrong that is).

Tuesday: Lunch was leftover Broccoli and Cheese soup. I didn't cook that night since I wasn't eating alone that night... which of course led to not cooking the third thing I planned on. But good company trumps good intentions :)

Wednesday: Went out to lunch! Dinner was leftovers from the dinner the prior evening. I didn't track any of my food on Wednesday.

Thursday: Yea. I didn't track my food that day either. I know I went to Chipotle for dinner.

Friday: Ate out for lunch again. Ate out for dinner again. This week was pretty awesome in the sense that I barely had to cook! Ha!

I did finish off the Broccoli and Cheese soup tonight with a sandwich. I was within 50 calories of my daily goal, so not bad at all. Also went to the gym and boogied down.

The Broccoli and Cheese soup was great and it kept really well in the fridge for leftovers. It originated as a Cooking Light recipe but I didn't exactly follow it so closely. Here's how to make it:

1large bag frozen “chopped” broccoli

4 slices of bacon, chopped

½ tsp crushed red pepper

2 garlic cloves, minced (or grated, as I covered last week)

1 ½ cups fat free, lower-sodium chicken broth

1 ½ cups water

1.5 oz all-purpose flour (get out your scale!)

2 ½ c fat free milk

8 oz Velveeta, cubed.

This really was easy to make and fairly quick to come together. Start by placing frozen broccoli in a pan to thaw as close to package directions as possible. Add crushed red pepper and minced garlic to the broccoli once thawing has begun. Lastly, add the bacon pieces.

Once the broccoli is completely thawed and the ingredients incorporated, add the broccoli mixture, the chicken broth and the water into a large saucepan. Bring it to boil over medium-high heat.

While this comes to a boil, weigh your flour and combine it with ½ cup of the milk, stirring with a whisk until well blended. Once the contents of the saucepan has come to a boil, pour the flour mixture in. Add the remaining 2 cups of milk and stir this constantly for 5 minutes or until thick.

Slowly add the Velveeta, letting it melt and incorporate into the soup. Remove the soup from heat and get out your handy immersion blender (you can also do this by putting half of the mixture into a regular blender... or you could buy yourself an immersion blender because you deserve one). Hit the soup just for about 30 seconds with your immersion blender. If you used the chopped broccoli you're really not looking to make this a puree... just enough to break up some larger pieces and take care of any cheese reluctant to incorporate.

I split the soup into 5 servings. The original recipe called for 6 servings, but it's soup. And I'm hungry. I also used skim milk instead of 2% so I figure I get the benefit of the doubt. A serving is about 1 1/3 cup... maybe a little more. Again, let food cool for about 30 minutes, at least, before covering it. I had zero problems with nasty leftover condensation this week. It was glorious.

So can cooking a whole meal and then breaking it up be useful? Well, if we use my week as any indicator it just gives you more excuses to go out to eat! But that's not really true. It helped me this week because I could have the flexibility of going out without worrying the the stuff in my fridge was going bad without me. I appreciated that. It was also great to not eat a frozen dinner at all this week. I'll probably try to work this into my life here shortly... with the holidays coming up and being out of work I know I'll be screwed up a little.

Looking at my weight loss this week, I lost .2 lbs. This is fabulous. Seriously. I ate out a ton... I drank a bottle of wine (okay, maybe I shouldn't have admitted to that)... I had ice cream twice! But I went to the gym and I, not once, was over full. Came very close a couple of times, but focusing on your body's signals (all the ones that aren't in your mouth, anyway) can be instrumental to at least maintaining during a time of culinary indulgence. Any loss is quality. And that's the equivalent of approximately a third-stick of butter worth of fat, gone. Yea. You needed that mental image.

I'd like to take just a moment to digress and discuss something I've recently been striving hard to come to terms with. I have a very skewed body image:

When I was 12 years old I took a sewing class at a fabric store downtown. It was a week camp where we ended the week making an article of clothing based on our own dimensions. I distinctly remember my measurements because I was quite taken with the fact that my “bust” (or whatever that was considered at 12) and my “hips” were both the same measurement. My waist was 2 inches smaller. I have that same waist measurement today that I had when I was 12. I can't decide if that's a triumph or if it's simply more discord for poor 12-year-old Katie.

It's hard work to get the weight off. It's harder work to get the sight of the fat girl out of the mirror in front of you. It's hard to take the right size to the dressing room. Up until this last year I wanted to hang myself in most dressing rooms. I've really started to enjoy trying on clothes and seeing just what I can fit into.

This weekend a good friend and I went shopping. I put on a size 12 pair of jeans. All of my size 12 dress pants are starting to get too big. I put on a size medium sweater. MEDIUM. I get so stuck in a rut over what size I really wear. I've convinced myself that nothing smaller than a large will fit me. It was such a true statement for so long it's a terribly hard habit to break. I'm afraid to wear anything that isn't baggy because I'm afraid of people seeing things that aren't there anymore. My back is smooth for the most part. Sure, I have nothing closely resembling a flat stomach, but it could definitely be worse.

In my career of attending Weight Watcher's meetings I know I'm not alone. It's so hard to believe when you achieve such a change. And acceptance doesn't come quickly, either. I think that might be a good thing, though. I have gained the weight back before. I know it's a possibility that I could do it again, though I'm trying with everything I have not to let that happen to me again. Maybe my eyes are trying to help me. If I remember how things used to be it will keep me focused. But sometimes I wish I could enjoy looking in the mirror, seeing what's really there.