Normalcy

To say I've felt good this week would be the understatement of the century. I feel great. I feel fantastic. I feel like for the first time in a couple months my body feels normal. I'm eating well. I'm exercising regularly. Life feels good. Honestly, it's about damn time.

Last week wasn't terribly shabby, but I was still getting over the exhaustion of the weekend prior to that, so all I wanted to do was sleep and sit on the couch and then fall asleep on the couch. I'm finally caught up on my rest and back to cooking!!!!

So let's talk about food!!!

I've taken a liking to Barber Fit andFlavorful chicken breasts. They're great because they are frozen raw so it's not that same rubbery chicken meat you get in a lot of frozen meals from over cooking something already cooked (I usually stick with vegetarian frozen dinners when I have them). What's great is I can preheat the oven, get ready to work out, then when the oven is ready, pop this in and I have 30 minutes until dinner is ready. I've been rocking out the Jillian Michael's Ripped in 30 and it only takes 20 minutes. I finish just in time to whip up some side dishes.

Speaking of sides, I read in Eating Well magazine recently different ways to make “perfect corn on the cob” and I had to share this technique. Seriously tasty corn super fast! No waiting for water to boil. It also works great when you're like me and only cooking one cob at a time.

-Trim the silks at the top of the ear. Don't remove the husks!

-Place the husk-covered corn cob on a microwave safe dish (I just used a plate).

-Microwave for 4 ½ to 5 minutes. 5 minutes left the surface that was touching the plate a tad scorched. 4 ½ seemed fine. It probably depends on your microwave.

-Peel off the husk. The silks will come off easily.

Then, enjoy!!! It's so fast and easy and literally every piece of silks comes off in one swoop. Awesome.

The recipes I tried this week were pulled right off of Pinterest. Sort of. I'm angered by the unnecessarily high calories of some things. But I “Pin” so much food that I felt like I needed to try a couple of them! I'll show you the original and then show you what I did... a lot of it just has to do with personal taste.

So first there was the Tortellini-Alfredo Casserole. The awesome thing about this is the lack of real cooking involved. You just sort of throw things in a casserole dish for this one and leave it at that. Here's what I used for mine:

¾ cup Ragu light alfredo sauce

About 1 cup of water

1 10oz container of tri-colored refrigerated tortellini (the kind of the deli case at the market)

2 cups frozen broccoli, thawed and trained

6 Tbsp parmesan cheese

Mix alfredo and water until well combined. Add any spices you want here. Salt and pepper. Anything you like.

And now you layer. In a casserole dish, start with sauce, layer of pasta, layer of broccoli, sauce, pasta, broccoli until everything is used up. Cover with aluminum foil. Bake for 45 minutes at 375 degrees. Once finished, top with parm and enjoy!

I made this for lunch and it was great left over. I didn't try any fresh. But the nice part is, no need to boil the tortellini! Yay!!!

Next up, I tried Prosciutto, Asparagus and Parmesan Spaghetti that I found on Pinterest but it's from a blog, not a recipe site. This was decadent. Even my lower calorie rendition was decadent. It was awesome fresh. It was awesome reheated. This was just awesome! Here's my slimmed down version:

2 cloves of garlic (I shred mine on a little grater)

1 small onion, diced

1 pkg sliced mushrooms

1 lb asparagus, ends removed and cut into bite sized pieces

a heaping 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese (leave the “heaped” part for topping)

4 slices of prosciutto, cut into strips

1 ¼ c. light cream

1 tbsp olive oil

7 oz pasta (I used linguine, pictured here)

salt/pepper

red pepper flakes

Cook your pasta to package directions.

While you do that, add oil to pan. Cook onion, mushrooms and garlic together until nearly done. Add prosciutto and asparagus. Cook until asparagus is to your liking. Add cream, 1/3 c. parmesan and spices.

Cook for just a few minutes, enough time to drain your pasta. Don't worry about shaking off every drop of water. The starchy water will help thicken the sauce.

Pour drained pasta into the cream/cheese and veggie mixture. Mix well and let set for 5 minutes or so, enough to let the sauce thicken. Patience really is the key here. In all of the alfredo sauces I've ever made, I've found that if I'm hungry and impatient, I will have runny sauce until I go back for seconds. Let it rest!

This went over really well with my co-worker that I sometimes share lunch with. She liked it.

Both of these recipes make 4 servings. The tortellini casserole came to about 280 calories per serving. The alfredo came out to 463. Fabulous.

Weight loss? I has it! I had 7.5 pounds of extra weight after that crazy working weekend. Now I'm up about a half pound. It fell off. It was probably all water weight from all of the bad choices (and tasty choices, to say the least) and all of the beer. I haven't had a beer or soda since Sunday and it shows. I've tried hard to get my water in.

So this morning I weighed 151.1. I thought that I was going to see 149ish this week, but by the time I grabbed my camera and stepped on the scale again, I found that it was off balance... but I'm still hopeful. I'll get there. Slow and steady wins the race. And eventually I'll get to that 145 and then I'll get to... work every single day to stay there? Yep.