A place to showcase my health journey.
Seventeen years ago, my husband and I made the best decision of our lives. We decided to move to Keswick and have been thankful every day since. Sometimes when I describe my neighbours to others that I know, the most common reaction is “must be nice”. A lot of my stories involve food, like this tasty dish here:
Eating low carb can be a challenge but I’ve found that with a little creativity, I’m not missing the carb options so much. In fact, I searched for alternatives to corn tacos and found these delicious morsels.
To learn new recipes and techniques. These are great reasons. But it’s more than that for me. The first time I went, it was to learn new appetizer recipes for the Christmas season. It was a great experience. But ultimately it was lonely. I wanted to share with my friends. It would have been great to turn to someone you know and say “We’ve got to make these the next time we get together”. So the next time I went, it was with a friend. Thank you Jean for signing us up for the Mexican interactive cooking class (circa 2017).
It started the day I went for lunch with a co-worker, we’ll call her Nicole (since that’s her name) to a little restaurant that serves fresh soups, salads and sandwiches. The day we went they were advertising a Curried Carrot soup and we both wanted to try it. That got me thinking …. I could make soup.
One of the quickest meals to make in my family are sandwiches. We love them. Fresh bread, butter, mayo, deli meat and cheese. Just to name one. But in our house, we do it differently. We can never leave it at just that. Often playing with different breads, spices, cheeses and adding onions, roasted peppers or sauteed mushrooms.
Today I made a sandwich for my husband and I had fun with it. A grilled provolone cheese with crispy bacon, tomatoes, caramelized onions and harvest bread. (Sorry no pics, it was eaten pretty quickly). BUT, I wanted to eat too and unfortunately, I am cutting down on my carbs. So I made this:
On May 25th, I decided to go all in with Keto. Up until now I’ve tried recipes that are Keto friendly but I was apprehensive to go full out. But that day, I got on the scale, glanced at the numbers as they resolved on the display and started researching. One thing I’ve learned the last 7 weeks is to change my wording from “I can’t eat … ” to “I don’t eat …”. It makes difference. For instance, I don’t eat flour but that doesn’t mean I don’t eat pizza!!!
Continue reading “I eat pizza”I’ve seen these mason jar omelettes but I’ve been hesitant to try them. The idea of putting the jars in the oven just seemed odd to me. But this weekend, while researching some recipes for Keto, I found one and had to try it.
I was reading a post on Humanthology by Ashley McCormack about eating with your eyes. When talking to her father about why he spent so much time making the food look nice on the plate, he replied, “Because first, you taste with your eyes.”
I’m not sure about you, but I’ve heard this before and it so true. Just last week, I made a Fish Pie and while it tasted great, it didn’t look very good. My family only ate about half. But wait, that’s not all the story. So, I may get the plating of the food nailed down, but what about that next step? Taking the food photo. For the most part I’ve focused on the actual dishes, but lately I’ve wanted to just be able to take a better picture. Then it happened. I got advice that I actually took. Thanks to my friend Angie (one of my ESO guild-mates, who lives in NC) who recommended that I purchase a photo box.
Continue reading “Eat with your eyes, not really, but in theory”I wanted to try a new salad this week, something less complicated, which is hard since I feel like you need to have a lot of ingredients to really get all the health benefits. But after some searching I found Autumn, over at It’s Autumns Life. I did a basic search for: Chicken Keto and up came this delicious looking salad. So, I had to try it.
The ingredients go into the jar, but the soup, when ready, goes into a bowl. At least for me it does. But maybe next time I’ll try eating it out of the jar, it will make drinking up the last of the broth so much simpler.
So is lunch, dinner and snacks. I cannot even tell you how much time I spend thinking about every meal and what impact certain food has to my journey. I scour websites looking for recipes, usually I look at the images first because if it doesn’t look good, chances are it doesn’t taste good. I test those out that make the short list. Here’s a breakfast that looks great and taste amazing.
I’m sure that I’m not the only one that says this. Let me set the scene, you’re out at a restaurant, eating a great meal and you say to (yourself) or the people that you’re with “I could make this”. My kids are so used to me saying this that they now offer up the suggestion. Often starting a conversation with ” hey mom, you could make this into a salad jar right?” Well, challenge accepted. I SUPER love East Side Mario’s (ESM) Garden Salad. We don’t have an ESM near us (but hey, we have four, count’em – Mary Browns, Swiss Chalet, KFC and Popeye’s, chicken restaurants in town). Here is a picture of my most favourite restaurant salad.
Things are pretty much the same, well, the food is always changing as I find what works and what doesn’t. But my path hasn’t diverted. I’m still working towards improving my overall health, that involves increased physical activity and paying attention to what I’m eating. I find, with me anyways, I eat great, completely on plan then, I slip a little. With that slip, I tend to fall into some old patterns, this year, I’ve noticed that while I do slip, I don’t fall. Instead, I acknowledge that the spoonful of Reeses Peanut Butter spread is FREAKIN’ delicious, but it’s not worth it to finish the entire jar in one sitting. Believe me, I could do it.
Continue reading “Stumble, but catch yourself and prevent the fall”
I normally name my post before even typing it. I’ve checked out other bloggers how to guides and many suggest typing your post before applying a title. The reason I do it this way, is because my posts start with a random thought and I want to make sure that I stay true to that idea as I type. Case in point, I was going through my phone and saw a picture of a salad that I made last week and thought “wow, the Greek salad I make is good, but I really made it great when I changed it up”. Hence my post title.
A cloud bread that is. Have you tried this? What a great way to get the “bready” feel in an appetizer without all the carbs. I’ve heard about the bread but never really gave it much consideration. Until today.
Not everyone gets excited about sitting down and making a plan. BUT I love this part of my journey. It’s scary to think that I used to not know what I was having for a meal until it was dinner time or until I felt hungry. Using a very simple meal plan template, like the one I found in Excel, pictured here:
Continue reading “Weekend Meal Planning, something to get excited about”
What a fabulous weekend! Candy store visits, movies, food and mason jar salads.
I am now in month two of the metabolic doctor supervised plan. If I don’t include last Thursday, as that was February 2, then I have lost a total of 12lb for the month of January. I keep getting asked about the plan, so I decided to put together a document that highlights what I’ve been doing this past month.
I woke up yesterday morning expecting to get on the scale and either go up (a bit) or little to no change. This wasn’t because of some misguided, “I expect to see something disappointing, but hope that I don’t” kind of feeling. This was based on a mid-week scale check (I know, it’s an addiction) and a silent run-down of my week. Was I ever surprised.
