Tomato-Tuna-Green Bean Salad

IMAGE: Tomato and tuna salad atop a bed of green beans

Ingredients

1 bag SteamFresh cut green beans
1 can light tuna in water
2 T light mayonnaise
2 tsp mustard
dash onion salt
1 c cherry tomatoes

Instructions

Steam the green beans in the microwave.

Mix tuna, mayo, mustard, and salt in medium bowl. Slice cherry tomatoes in half and fold into tuna mixture.

Rinse green beans in ice water. Drain.

Put half the green beans on one plate and half on another. Top each with half the tuna mixture.


According to Weight Watchers Online, all this food is only 2.5 Points. Enjoy!

Note: This recipe is not for finicky eaters. My husband took one bite and refused to continue. Meanwhile, I found it absolutely delicious. It’s all a matter of whether or not you can stand cold green beans.

(Sorry about the picture…the tuna fish is a little flat due to being saran-wrapped in the fridge.)

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Fat-Free Blueberry Smoothie

At-home smoothies are ridiculously easy. We had strawberry-banana smoothies at work recently, with a 1-1-1 ratio recipe of strawberries, bananas, and skim milk. Today I decided to try it with yogurt.

I used one cup frozen blueberries,

one cup Activia Fat-Free Vanilla Yogurt,

and one quite ripe banana.

Put everything into the blender (or Magic Bullet, as the case may be).

Blend.

Enjoy!

Here’s the nutritional info.

WW Points

Item Calories Fat Carbs Fiber
Blueberries 106 0 25 7 1.5
Yogurt 150 0 27 6 2
Banana 121 0.4 31.1 3.5 2
TOTAL 366 0 81 17 7

As you can see, this wouldn’t be great for someone on Atkins. Even though it’s almost completely fat-free, it’s high enough in calories and carbs that the points are a little higher than I usually like to have for breakfast. I’d suggest halving the recipe, or making one recipe for two people.

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Lifestyle changes

My attitude towards health and weight loss changed drastically after I was encouraged to get an ICD. Part of it was that I hadn’t yet found the right tools, but I also don’t think I had been taking my health nearly as seriously as I should.

It’s been over a month since I committed myself to a healthier lifestyle. I joined Weight Watchers, I bought exercise videos that I actually enjoy doing, and I started forming better habits.

Here, in list format, are some of my achievements.

Good Things I’ve Been Doing

  • Following a morning routine.
  • Working out each and every day.
  • Not splurging on food, but not denying myself what I want, either.
  • Eating out less.
  • Packing lunches more.
  • Weighing myself every day.
  • Going to bed at the same time every night.

Things I Refuse to Allow Myself to Do

  • Give up on my quest for better health.
  • Lose the ability to squat.
  • Eat whatever I want, whenever I want.
  • Not work out because I don’t “feel like it”.
  • Have to size up my wedding ring.
  • Lose flexibility.
  • Be down on myself.
  • Focus more on the past than on my current achievements.

I have a long way to go, but I am going to get there. I am not going to shoot myself in the foot. I am going to stay focused on my goals and I am going to do everything I can to reach them.

My most immediate goal is to avoid the ICD. I’m hoping by the end of August my heart will have recovered enough that my doctor won’t think it’s necessary anymore. This may not be possible. If I have to have an ICD, I have to have an ICD. But I’m going to do whatever I can do to avoid it before I have to make that decision.

My long-term goal is, of course, to get down to a healthy weight. I’m not ruling out any options. Obesity runs in my family, and it may very well be that I can’t beat this without surgical assistance. But I am not going to have my intestines rerouted without doing everything I can do first.

This month has been a great start. It’s going to get harder from here, and down the road. But I refuse to give up.

It’s not “I’m not giving up this time”. There hasn’t actually been a time when I have been this motivated. In the past when I’ve tried to lose weight I’ve always lacked a true commitment, always let either my eating habits or my exercise–or both!–slide. So this is really the first time I’ve ever made a concerted effort to be healthy.

It’s going to be the last time, too, because I’m going to stay this way for the rest of my life.

Casserole Spaghetti

The other night I made this recipe from my 501 Delicious Heart Healthy Recipes cookbook. It took a very long time–after mixing the ingredients on the stove I had to let them simmer for an hour, then mix in more ingredients, put it all in a casserole dish, and bake. So this recipe maybe isn’t something you do on a weeknight…but Sean says it’s definitely worth the wait. He had three helpings. “You have to make this more often,” he said.

1 1/2 pounds ground round
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 (10 3/4 ounce) can reduced-fat, reduced-sodium cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
3/4 cup water
1 (14.5 ounce) can no-salt-added whole tomatoes, undrained and chopped
2 tablespoons chili powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 (8 ounce) package spaghetti
2 ounces reduced-fat sharp Cheddar cheese, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
2 tablespoons chopped pimiento-stuffed olives Cooking spray
1/2 cup (2 ounces) shredded reduced-fat sharp Cheddar cheese

1. Cook first five ingredients in a Dutch oven, stirring until meat crumbles; drain well, and return to Dutch oven. Stir in soup and next 5 ingredients. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

3. Cook spaghetti according to package directions, omitting salt and fat; drain.

4. Stir spaghetti, cheese cubes, and olives into meat sauce. Spoon mixture into a 13×9-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Cover and bake at 325 for 20 minutes or until thoroughly heated. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup shredded cheese, and bake, uncovered, 10 additional minutes. Yield: 8 servings.

Notes: I didn’t use lean beef; I used ground chuck. I did not use olives at all. Also, I didn’t have any shredded cheddar cheese, so I didn’t do the last part. And finally, I used minced garlic from a jar rather than fresh. Regardless of all this, the casserole still tasted great.

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Recent NOM NOM NOM


Teriyaki flounder, stir-fry veggies and rice


Salmon croquettes and grits, Boll Weevil


Fried grouper sandwich and fries, Palmetto House at Seven Gables


Vegetable quiche and curry noodle soup, New Moon Cafe


Eggs over easy with hash browns, sausage and toast, Waffle House (Atlanta)


Kari (curry) Pop at the best restaurant on Earth, Penang in Chamblee (Atlanta)


Spaghetti at Sbarro (Atlanta)


Spicy beef, Zyka (Atlanta)


Chicken salad sandwich and fries, Cotton Patch


SuperSonic Breakfast Burrito, at my desk


Leftover spaghetti, salad, fruit, and yogurt, at Riverwalk


Seared ahi tuna appetizer, PF Chang’s


Dali chicken, PF Chang’s

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My freezer is ridiculous

So today I went and bought a zillion frozen dinners. Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine, and Smart Ones. If it looked remotely appealing, it went in the cart. I tried to keep them below 600 grams of sodium, but that was impossible in some cases. I also got some frozen Indian dinners…chicken tikka masala, etc. I was pretty much out of luck with those in terms of sodium, but right next to them were some vegetarian dinners that had 350 grams…so I got both.

I also picked up a bag of frozen chicken, because I had the niggling feeling that I hadn’t been able to find any lately.

When I got home, I took everything out of the freezer in order to make things fit. I stacked the frozen dinners in the back and juggled most of the frozen veggies into the door. Then I started trying to fit all the meat back in.

I discovered during the course of all this that I already had three bags of frozen chicken in there.

One bag only had one chicken breast left, and it looked pretty crystallized so I threw it away. I also tossed a mostly-empty carton of ice cream and a mostly-empty tub of Cool Whip. Then I rearranged and rearranged and rearranged, trying to make it work. But no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the door to close.

Finally I gave up and I threw away the oldest bag of chicken. It looked pretty crystallized anyway. As for the rest…well, let’s just say that tonight’s dinner will consist of:

  • Hella frozen french fries
  • Hella steamed veggies
hella fries
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Brookie’s here!

And here she is.

She and David and I met for lunch at the Boll Weevil. I ordered the exact same thing I had a week or so ago with a group from work: chicken salad sandwich (they make it with honey mustard and horseradish!) and potato soup. Then, of course, I had to have dessert…a piece of chocolate raspberry rhapsody cake. (This was different from the other day, when I had the 7th Heaven chocolate cake…)

Anyway, enough about the food. It is so great to have Brooke back in town. Now I just need to make sure I spend as much time with her as possible! She has already dedicated next Wednesday to me, and hopefully we’ll do all sorts of fun things and maybe even take a half-day trip somewhere…but one day is not enough! I still miss the days when I could call her after work and say “What’s up?” and just go to her place to hang out. My evenings are very quiet these days, except for those occasions when I get to go out with work peeps.

They’re making plans to move back to the States someday, maybe in two years, so by the time our next lease is up at this apartment, I might have my best friend back ;>

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Stop taking pictures of food. Seriously.

Sorry, Brandon. Not gonna happen:


Sushi from Fujiyama, 2/10


Tuna fish on honey yeast bread with pasta salad, from the ever-wonderful Boll Weevil, 2/11


Coconut creme cake from Boll Weevil. It was soooo good.


Garden burrito with beans and rice from Nacho Mama’s, 2/12

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Happy Thanksgiving :)

I hope you all had a lovely day. We did!


Our table


Grandma Flo


Sean (right) and his dad, Reid

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Well, maybe

Me (9:35:31 PM): I had the BEST curry at an Indian restaurant in Fukuoka
Me (9:35:51 PM): I guess I just need to go back there and get some more someday
Me (9:35:59 PM): because MY GOD MAN THAT WAS GOOD CURRY
Charles (9:36:40 PM): So, you liked it? ‘Cause I’m getting mixed signals here.
Me (9:36:58 PM): XD

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The most annoying kind of limbo

I’m having kind of a rough day, for reasons, annoyingly enough, I cannot explain to you! I will explain them eventually, though, so don’t worry.

My mood made me want to be anywhere but work for most of my shift, which is not a fun feeling to have when you’re trying to get things done.

One good point was that I went to Boll Weevil with Brooke and had the Curious George sandwich and potato soup, which was yummy. Also, their tea was good today. As a further bonus, Brooke is coming over a little later to hang out. Maybe we’ll watch the Detective Conan movie. I understand lime sherbet will be involved as well.

Right now I’m just going to veg out on the couch, read some manga, eat some cottage cheese, and try to relax.

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R. Gabriel’s is gone :(

Not long ago, I met up with Mari and Jeannie at a little cafe on Davis Road for lunch. We had sandwiches and desserts, and I tried a smoothie.

“It’s all right,” I told my friends, “but next time I want a smoothie, it’ll be R. Gabriel’s. Best smoothies in the CSRA.”

It’s true. I have never found anything to match the smoothies at R. Gabriel’s. Not too runny, not too thick, great flavors…I can hardly think about them without wanting one.

Little did I know the next time I wanted a smoothie I would look in the window expecting the cheerful coffeehouse ambiance I’ve grown to love and instead see…racks of clothes.

What?

It’s been awhile since that perplexing day. I kept meaning to call them and find out what happened, but I kept forgetting. Today I got a smoothie at Sonic, and…well, it’s just not an R. Gabriel’s smoothie :/ But having it with me at least reminded me to make the call today when I got to work.

“Your call cannot be completed at this time,” said an odd recording, which told me nothing. Their website still exists, too, with no mention of a closure or move.

Finally I decided to email the guy who does the business segment on our morning show, and he confirmed my fears: R. Gabriel’s was forced to shut down due to the ridiculous construction on Davis Road. He doesn’t know if the other two locations are still open, but the main one is gone. Not moved…just gone.

Life just isn’t fair ;_;

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4 o’clock fluke

On Wednesday I woke up at 4 o’clock. I was able to cook breakfast and dinner, as well as get in a workout and do some freelance work as I’d done the day before.

I tried to do the same yesterday, because I planned to go to my freelance job earlier and I wanted to get some sort of workout in before that, but I ended up getting up at 5:30, which didn’t seem like enough time to work out properly and still manage to feed Sean. I did go to the grocery store instead, though, and on my way back I got Sean a couple of breakfast biscuits from McDonald’s. But I barely had time to put anything away, I didn’t cook that night’s dinner, I was only able to pack a lunch because there were still some leftovers from Wednesday, and the kitchen was a mess.

This morning I woke up even later, at 6:30. I called the guy I’m doing freelance for and told him I couldn’t make it today. The purpose of getting up early was to get in a workout, get my meals prepared, and spend time with Sean, not to have time for a second job. While I will appreciate the extra income, the other things take priority. I’m still easing into this, as evidenced by my inability to get up ridiculously early on a consistent basis, but I don’t want to let the important things slide.

Disenhearteningly (which is apparently not a word), I awoke with that same raspiness (also not a word) in my chest and throat. Lovely.

(I’m enjoying Firefox’s spell-checker. But come on, I think it’s past time for spellchecker to be all one word.)

I’ve been feeling pretty good this week, overall.

I did get the lab results back from the doctor, and I’ll go and talk with him about them on Tuesday. My cholesterol is high. My thyroid is borderline. The endocrinologist called me back to ask that I add a complete metabolic profile to the labs she requested, which I will be having drawn sometime next month (I have to start the progesterone on the 1st, and then have the labs done on day 2 or 3 of my period).

In response to the cholesterol I am trying to figure out ways to include more veggies in my diet, and less meats. It turns out I can steam frozen veggies in the microwave at work pretty easily, so if nothing else I can always grab a bag from the freezer to put in my lunch. I’d love to eat more salad, but it seems like when I buy bagged salads they go bad before I eat them. Now I’m considering the tried and true head of lettuce method.

Today’s lunch is going to be a BLT, I think, because I have leftover bacon from Wednesday and I just bought tomatoes. No lettuce though…

As far as my productivity, I feel that it’s up, but there are still things I need to deal with, like getting the desk in the second bedroom disassembled so a work friend can take it, dealing with the weird smell in that room, finding a smaller desk to put in there, and assembling our second media cabinet for the living room. I’m also planning to rearrange my office at work soon, which has kept me thinking. It’s really an awkward space with awkward furniture; hopefully the idea I have in mind will work out.

Speaking of working out (har), I’d better get outside for my walk before it gets too much hotter.

New schedule

I woke up this morning at around 4 o’clock. Due to a combination of not really feeling tired and Sean’s talking and laughing floating through the door, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I’d set the alarm for 6, thinking that if I woke up earlier I’d go ahead and get up, but when I thought “earlier” I was thinking 5 or 5:30, so this seemed a little ridiculous at first.

Still, I got up, and went ahead and put on my workout clothes and put up my hair. (It’s long enough now that I can do those goofy pigtails on either side of my head, which I do in order to lessen the sweatosity. Sure, sweatosity’s a word.)

Then I cleaned the kitchen, which just involved getting everything in the sink into the dishwasher.

I asked Sean if he was hungry and if he wanted breakfast or dinner. Even though for him this would be his last meal of the day, he always wants to have breakfast in the Circadian morning. So that’s what he asked for. This sort of put a crimp in my plans to make a dinner and then pack up my half for lunch, but I improvised and cooked breakfast and dinner at the same time.

Breakfast consisted of eggs, bacon, and pancakes made from the batter I’d made a couple days ago. I thinned the batter out with some milk and the pancakes seemed to turn out better. Does my batter need to be left in the fridge for awhile and then thinned, or is this just due to the Bisquick being a little old? In any case, I also considered grits, but I decided the preceding was plenty of food.

Breakfast

For dinner, I found a recipe in my Taste of Home cookbook for meatloaf, so I whipped that up, even chopping an onion for it. I used part of the onion in the eggs and put the rest in a Ziploc bag in the fridge. Unfortunately I don’t have a loaf pan so the meatloaf went into a cake pan…hope it’s not too dry.

I also made some sour cream and chive scalloped potatoes a la Betty Crocker, starting them later than the meatloaf (they take less time to cook–though I guess I don’t really need to have everything come out at the same time when I’m cooking in advance. Habit, I suppose).

I’ll top all that off with broccoli. Sean says he doesn’t want to take his dinner to work, so I’m taking frozen veggies with me to steam in the work microwave, and I’ll make his veggies tonight when I get home so he’ll have them when he gets here at 11:45.

As soon as the sun came up I went on my walk. It was longer than I thought it was; I got back at 7:30, which meant either I would have to leave things unfinished or go to my freelance work late. Freelance took the hit because I wanted to have time to dress, pack lunches, and finish this post.

After the freelance work I’ll head to regular work, just like yesterday.

This seems like a pretty decent schedule. The rush towards the end isn’t great, but I’m trapped by the time the sun comes up and the time the freelance place opens. Then again, I won’t be doing freelance work every morning, so I suppose it’ll be okay every once in awhile. Weather.com says the sun rose at 6:55, which is later than the 6:45 I was assuming, so that explains the rush a little. I don’t guess this is going to work as well once fall gets here.

Another issue is that I’m really not all that hungry in the morning, so most of my lovely breakfast remained uneaten. Then again, I suppose that’s good for my diet ;> I think I’ll shift to cooking breakfast just for Sean tomorrow (it’ll be good to ensure he’s getting at least two square meals) and grab a bowl of cereal or Slim-Fast for myself.

A ringing endorsement

Brooke (11:35:36 AM): NOTHING COMPARES
Brooke (11:35:38 AM): TO YOU
Brooke (11:35:40 AM): r curry
Me (11:35:41 AM): LOL

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