I actually started writing about food back in October of 2009. This was after my divorce. After I quit Weight Watchers for the first time. When I lived in my first apartment all by myself and found that I'd do awesome things like walk to the grocery store and actually exercise. I was somewhere under 190 pounds back then, trying my best to make it happen on my first bought of alone-living.
I started doing Weight Watchers online which was a new thing at the time considering when I first started WW they did everything by hand and you couldn't pay with a credit card. Now your weight tracker can follow you across the country. Very swanky. And it keeps unintelligent people from doing mathematical errors on your weight loss.
WW online had (has) this tool where you can enter your food and create a recipe. Of course, I do that with MyFitnessPal now and it works great, but at the time this is what I had to work with. I think every day that I couldn't have lost all of this weight and kept it off without my iPhone.
Back in October of 2009 I started posting little blog-like posts on Facebook called "Tasty Recipes" where I would just put up stuff that I tried out that I thought was yummy. Essentially what I do now except from a much more novice perspective. I thought it would be fun to do a series of transfers, bring the Tasty Recipes over to Autonomous Eats and revisiting them to see both how I've changed and if there's something in here that I want to cook again!
Tonight we'll start with Tasty Recipe #1-3.
Tasty Recipe #1: Veggie Stir Fry with Angel Hair Pasta
October 6, 2009
Okay. So wow. Today I decided to start up with Weight Watcher's again, this time trying it out online instead of doing the weekly meeting thing... honestly, I think that this is the best program for me so long as I don't get lazy. And if you could SEE the fun I'm having on the website, you would know that I will not be getting lazy anytime soon. This website has made it FUN to track your points. Wow.
So tonight I made up this stir-fry and used the recipe builder on the WW site... it was so fantastic that I had to share. And since they made it easy for me to build all my ingredients together, I know that it's 4 points per serving (it makes 2 servings) and I can even save it on my thing so that if I make it again, I just go bloop bloop, there it is back in my tracker for today! yay! So here's the recipe. Of course, you can substitute any of your 0 point veggies for the ones I have in here. I used the Barilla Plus pasta, which has all the extras in it. Anyway. Give it a try!
2 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp olive oil
2 cups bok choy
1 cup cooked brussel sprouts
1/2 cup cooked asparagus
1 cup mushrooms
1 oz Barilla Plus Angel hair, cooked
1 Tbsp soy sauce
Put the sesame oil and olive oil in a pan, heating over medium to medium high heat. Add veggies and pan fry until they are done to satisfaction. Stir in the cooked pasta and service. Add soy sauce to taste.
Look at me. Even back then I wrote my recipes with "cook that ingredient like you like it" caveats!
Tasty Recipe #2: Too-Lazy-to-Cook Quesadilla
October 8, 2009
By Thursday, I've usually exhausted the contents of my fridge to next to nothing... since I normally grocery shop either Friday night or Saturday afternoon. This week I had the remnant of a few dinners that I had this past week, one before I started back on Weight Watchers (mmmm Fish Tacos...) and then the veggies that didn't go into my stir fry a couple days ago. On Thursdays I go to the laundramat, so by the time I get down there, get my clothes washed, and drag myself and my newly cleaned clothes back home, it's nearly 6:30 and this starvin' marvin is... well, starving. I prefer my dinner at 5:15. :P
It was also an interesting day because due to my food choices today, I ended the day with nearly half my points left. I had 13 to eat dinner with! ah! I could have had 4 white castles! But instead, I thought I'd make something a little better and get the most for my points. Thus came the fast Thursday night meal.
My quesadilla tonight came out to 9 points, which I could have
totally lowered, but I had the 13 points to spare and I wanted to enjoy
some cheesy goodness. I could have went with less cheese and double
tortillas, but that was 10... and cheese beats tortilla.
Here's what went down: I cut up about a half a cup of asparagas and mushrooms pretty small, since I was planning to microwave this bad boy since my stomach was about to fold in on itself like a dying star. I got out my Pace hot salsa (the salsa that could rip holes in sheet metal, i kid you not) and made myself a thin layer on a single tortilla. Then used one serving of shredded cheese as the base. Then, added my vegetables in an appealing configuration, topping it all of with, yes, ANOTHER serving of cheese. I know, right? Gluttony. But, you know, I wanted the cheesy cheese. So my tortilla was 3 points, and my 2 servings of cheese came out to 6, so 9 total. Of course, all my tasty veggies and my salsa were free.
Dinners like this are good because you can add and replace with what you like as well as change it up to meet the needs of the points that you have left at the end of the day. If I hadn't had so many, I could have just went with one serving of cheese and had a 6 point dinner! better yet... had 2% milk fat cheese (i don't do fat free... oh no) and probably skimmed some more points off the top there. Excellent.
I realize why I was so successful at Weight Watchers (you know, until I got cocky with my 35 pounds lost and my abundance of LAZY)... this is FUN! I have some really great ideas for next week that I can't wait to share. I guess this is the next best thing to writing a "guess how much this restaurant rocks" segment for my FB. I suppose I can do that when I find something very low in points. Though I'm always around if you have a craving. I can name a restaurant in Louisville to satisfy it. :D
Here's what went down: I cut up about a half a cup of asparagas and mushrooms pretty small, since I was planning to microwave this bad boy since my stomach was about to fold in on itself like a dying star. I got out my Pace hot salsa (the salsa that could rip holes in sheet metal, i kid you not) and made myself a thin layer on a single tortilla. Then used one serving of shredded cheese as the base. Then, added my vegetables in an appealing configuration, topping it all of with, yes, ANOTHER serving of cheese. I know, right? Gluttony. But, you know, I wanted the cheesy cheese. So my tortilla was 3 points, and my 2 servings of cheese came out to 6, so 9 total. Of course, all my tasty veggies and my salsa were free.
Dinners like this are good because you can add and replace with what you like as well as change it up to meet the needs of the points that you have left at the end of the day. If I hadn't had so many, I could have just went with one serving of cheese and had a 6 point dinner! better yet... had 2% milk fat cheese (i don't do fat free... oh no) and probably skimmed some more points off the top there. Excellent.
I realize why I was so successful at Weight Watchers (you know, until I got cocky with my 35 pounds lost and my abundance of LAZY)... this is FUN! I have some really great ideas for next week that I can't wait to share. I guess this is the next best thing to writing a "guess how much this restaurant rocks" segment for my FB. I suppose I can do that when I find something very low in points. Though I'm always around if you have a craving. I can name a restaurant in Louisville to satisfy it. :D
Had my Fiestaware back then too...
Tasty Recipe #3: Hungry Katie vs. Hungry Girl
October 11, 2009
If you want to check out the Hungry Girl version of these, it's the recipe from January 15, 2008 (my birthday one year ago :D). I do not enjoy the taste of artificially flavored BBQ flavored chips... So here's how Katie did it:
So here we go. Preheat your oven to 375. And you'll need the following:
1/2 c. Original Fiber One Cereal
8oz (or two thinly sliced halves of breast) Chicken Breast, cut into 10 pieces
3 Tbsp Frank's Red Hot or your fav hot sauce
Spices: Salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic powder
Sauce of choice
8oz (or two thinly sliced halves of breast) Chicken Breast, cut into 10 pieces
3 Tbsp Frank's Red Hot or your fav hot sauce
Spices: Salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic powder
Sauce of choice
First,
take your Fiber One and grind it up however you choose. I like to take
out my frustrations on it and beat it with a meat tenderizer (in a
baggie, of course). Place your Fiber One bits in a shallow dish. In
another dish, put down your hot sauce. Next, take your chicken pieces,
coat them in the hot sauce (it is very important to knock off the excess
or they get soggy in the oven) and then coat them in the Fiber One. I
used more Fiber One because I took the Pringles out of the original
recipe.
From here it couldn't be any easier... just pop them on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, flip, then bake an additional 10 minutes. Then top them off with your favorite wing sauce!
Word of caution though, I had never tried the Fiber One bran cereal before this, and to the person who much prefers salt and bitter to sweet... they are kind of sweet on their own. So... when you plop them in a sweet bbq sauce, yea... they're pretty sweet. Kind of turned me off on saucing them. This recipe makes 2 servings, so my second serving I cut up into bits to put in a wrap for lunch tomorrow at work. Of course, if you don't put bbq sauce on them, that knocks them down to 3 points! holy smokes! seriously... there's more fiber in these things than you can shake chicken at.
As pictured, I paired this up with a romaine salad with mushrooms (zero points) and added some lite salad dressing... making the contents of that plate 5 points... :P And I was still a little hungry... so I enjoyed a serving of something I found the other day at the grocery...
From here it couldn't be any easier... just pop them on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes, flip, then bake an additional 10 minutes. Then top them off with your favorite wing sauce!
Word of caution though, I had never tried the Fiber One bran cereal before this, and to the person who much prefers salt and bitter to sweet... they are kind of sweet on their own. So... when you plop them in a sweet bbq sauce, yea... they're pretty sweet. Kind of turned me off on saucing them. This recipe makes 2 servings, so my second serving I cut up into bits to put in a wrap for lunch tomorrow at work. Of course, if you don't put bbq sauce on them, that knocks them down to 3 points! holy smokes! seriously... there's more fiber in these things than you can shake chicken at.
As pictured, I paired this up with a romaine salad with mushrooms (zero points) and added some lite salad dressing... making the contents of that plate 5 points... :P And I was still a little hungry... so I enjoyed a serving of something I found the other day at the grocery...
These chips are really tasty... and you can eat 1/4 of the bag for
2 points!!! oy! :P When I brought them home I went ahead and put
them in 4 sandwich bags, that way I don't have to worry about portions
when I'm having a salt craving.
I just wanted to make it clear that since then, I've come to love reading Hungry Girl's posts, reading her daily e-mails and getting a lot of food ideas from her. Of course, not everything is for everyone which can be the same with what I post here, but I'll still try to make her recipes less calories when I get the chance.
Hope you enjoyed this little blast from the past! I'll keep switching over the posts periodically when I have free time. I was working on a project with my recipe book and while flipping through the blog and my little book that I write my recipes in, I noticed that the recipe for my Butternut Squash and Bacon Pasta wasn't in this blog... it's because it was there...
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