Broccoli and Mushroom Stir-Fry

It is time for another healthy recipe.  And believe it or not, I am going to be cooking up another recipe that is predominantly mushroom based.  Why is that so shocking?  I don't really like mushrooms!  This is the third recipe that I have made with mushrooms that I really like!  I have made this recipe twice now in the last few weeks....it is that good! 

Broccoli and Mushroom Stir-Fry

Ingredients
2 cups broccoli, cut into small florets
3 cloves garlic
2 cups mushrooms, sliced
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper (optional)
2 tsp ginger
1/4 cup broth (more may be needed to keep vegetables from sticking during cooking)
1/2 cup carrots, shredded
1/4 cup cashews (optional...can add water chesnuts)
2 tbs rice wine vinegar
2 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs sesame seeds

Directions:
1.  In a large skillet on high heat add  broccoli, garlic, mushrooms, red pepper, ginger and broth.  Cook, stirring often until broccoli is soft.  Add more broth as needed to prevent the vegetables from sticking.
2. Stir in the carrots, cashews, vinegar and soy sauce.  Stir well and simmer for about 2 minutes.
3. Sprinkle with Sesame Seeds.
4.  Serve alone or on top of quinoa or brown rice.

This recipe takes a few minutes of prep time to slice the vegetables but is super quick to cook!  It is one of our new favorites!

Cauliflower Buffalo Bites

We love our hot and spicy foods....buffalo wings included.   In fact, buffalo wings were one of the food items that we were concerned about missing when we talked about going to a more meatless diet.  However, a conversation that I had with a coworker kept coming to my mind.  She had talked to me about the  most delicious cauliflower recipe.  I was skeptical, but willing to give it a try.  Why not.  I began to search the internet and somehow I stumbled upon this recipe. 

Oh my word!  When I tasted this recipe for the first time, my eyes widened in surprise. They were actually quite tasty!  I was hooked!
Cauliflower Buffalo Bites

Ingredients

• 1 large head Cauliflower
• 2 tsp Garlic powder

• 1/2 cup Hot sauce
• 1/2 tbsp Lemon juice
•  1 tbs butter, melted

• 1/2 cup Flour
• 1 tsp Paprika

• 1/2 cup Water

1.  Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Grease a baking sheet with cooking spray.
2  In a large bowl whisk flour, water, garlic powder and paprika in a bowl until batter is smooth.  Add the cauliflower and toss to coat.
3. Spread the cauliflower on a baking sheet in a single layer and bake for 20-25 minutes, flipping the cauliflower halfway through.
4.  In a small bowl, whisk together the hot sauce, melted butter and lemon juice until well combined.
5.  After the 25 minutes bake time, brush the cauliflower with the hot sauce mixture and return the cauliflower to the oven for an additional 15 minutes
6.  Serve with blue cheese or ranch dressing and celery sticks.

I am telling you, you will be scratching your head and wondering where the meat is in this recipe.  They taste that much like buffalo wings!   This recipe is a winner.  It is so good, that within two or three days of making this for the first time, Jason was asking for it again!

For more recipes visit my recipe page!

Vegetarian??

It is definitely part of life to change and adjust, but there is one thing that for some reason just keeps coming back to me. It's like my North Star!   What in the world an I talking about?  Why I'm talking about the consumption of meat!   I am talking about going to a more vegetarian lifestyle.

When I was young, still in school and living with my parents young, I went through a stage where I didn't eat a whole lot of meat.  It just wasn't something I liked.  I can remember eating steak, sitting at the kitchen table at the house my parents owned in Johnstown, PA and chewing a piece of steak and thinking, "This really doesn't taste like anything I want to eat".    At that point I became extremely picky about the meat that I would eat.   I remember many meals where I would have the jar of peanut butter beside my plate.   But, eventually I grew out of it. (ok, maybe college and cafeteria eating had something to do with that....).    I was still never a huge proponent of a lot of meat, but no one around me picked up on any alteration in my diet.

Fast forward to my early to mid 30's and I was driving down the interstate and happened to be riding alongside a cattle truck.  I looked over and those cows on that truck looked out at me and they had such gentle sad eyes.  It broke my heart as I knew that they were going to the slaughter house for their death.  And that was the day that I stopped eating beef.    A while later I read a story about how pigs are actually quite intelligent and how they are raised make them literally go crazy.  Crazy enough that they bite off their own tails.  What????   Oh heck no...I can't eat pork was my next sentence!  Bye bye pork!   On a rare occasion I would indulge in either pork or beef, but the longer I went without, the less I liked it!   I went quite a few years in that manner.....either eating no meat with a meal or defaulting to chicken or turkey.  (As a side note, someone once asked me why I could still eat chicken and/or turkey and my response was "they have beady eyes"   So I guess it's the eyes and intelligence that get me!) 

When I met Jason I was eating meat about once or twice a week. He jokingly made the comment "Give it six months with me and you will be eating meat again."   His comment was made as a joke, but it was so true!   I started eating meat...regularly!

But about midway through last year we started to talk about our health and what changes we need to make and Jason started talking about eating less meat.  Yes, Jason!   I started to talk about incorporating more vegetarian meals into our weekly menus.  And I tried.  I really tried!  But it was so much easier to default to the tried and true recipes......which almost always were meat laden.  One vegetarian meal a week was a struggle most weeks.  But we kept talking about the benefits.

I talked to a coworker who mentioned that she gave up meat when a personal trainer told her that her love handles would disappear if the meat disappeared from her diet.  So she gave up meat  And guess what?  The love handles were gone in a month!  REALLLY?   I sat up and took notice!  For sure!

In December Jason and I had a serious conversation.  Ok it was a random conversation that was serious.   We decided to just dive into eating more vegetarian.  Jason was all for diving all in 100%...but from my experiences, I fought for less than 100%.  I told him that I would be happy with eating 5-6 days of vegetarian existence.  I reasoned that starting that way would allow us to still have the foods that we do love and would definitely miss.  (I know from experience that the ONE beef item that I would occasionally crave was a burger......and the pork item would be bacon!)  I also reasoned that we could go 100% at a later date if we wanted.   

So on January first we started.  Thus far it is going well.  The first weekend in the new year I broke the vege-fast with a Jimmy John's turkey sub.  And the second weekend I broke the vegetarian fast with some homemade ham salad.  (We had some ham left in the freezer.)    I'm really not missing meat at all though and we have been eating lots of fun unique meals.

If you have any awesome vegetarian meal ideas...pass them along!

So what goes around comes around is so very true in terms of eating meat....at least for me!   I don't know how long this will last for us....but I'm enjoying it for sure!   The question is this....how is this going to affect my weight loss efforts?  Will eating a more vegetarian diet help the weight fall off? (I can only hope!)

Don't mess with the cheese!

Well, it took me almost two months for the knee pain to rear it's ugly head.  It's arthritis.  I'm not injured.  I'm just dealing with one of the fallouts from having at one time weighing over 300 pounds. I'm dealing with the fallout of currently being in the obese category in terms of my weight.  I know that the more weight I lose the less pain I'll feel in that knee.  I also know that the more I build up the muscles around that knee the less I'll struggle.   Experience tells me that the pain drifts away to almost nothing the more weight I lose.  So I'm just working around it.  I'm not on this journey to push myself toward inhat this pain is....and I know that I'm not hurting myself further by pushing through that pain.  So out comes the knee brace.  I'm prepared and ready to face this!!!! 

The alarm went off the crack of dawn this morning. Todd's first words were "Do you still want to go to the gym?"  As badly as I wanted to say no, I sucked it in and said "why of course!"  Life may be crazy, it may have been early, my knee may have hurt, my bed was so toasty....but when it boils down to it.  If I want to live this lifestyle with any success, I have to learn how to work around those issues and obstacles!!!   Yes, we went to the gym.  Bring on another day of my week 4 on C25K!   I did that.  It was rough....my legs were heavy, but I pushed through it.  My breathing did well!  woo hoo!   After my run, I moved to the elliptical and dang if that half hour wasn't a killer.   I have a day of rest upcoming...and while I'm on a roll and WANT to continue on my mission, I'm on the other hand looking forward to my day of rest!

The last two days I have eaten breakfast at home about about 7:30 or 8 AM.  I get to work and by 11 AM I am ravenous.  On Tuesday I was just hungry.  On Wednesday my stomach actually hurt with the hunger.  Yeah, I'm kinda shocked too that my body gets to that point that it's hurting with hunger. Once again, I pulled out the 'emergency' pretzels.  Luckily for me they were already counted out and portion controlled (from Tuesday's snack) so it was easy to stay within my budget.  And actually I had enough calories in my day once again to accommodate eating the pretzels.  So all was well.
I'm ok with eating a snack.  If I have the points there is nothing wrong with having a  extra snack.  My question though is this?  Why am I getting so hungry so very soon after breakfast. (hmmm could it be the fact that I restarted taking some vitamins each day?  (drat, I forgot it this morning) The last two days I've had toast for breakfast ...I've paired it each day with a serving of fruit.  I love toast and I've never had a problem with toast not holding me over.  I've had problems with cold cereal not holding me over....but never toast.  Before I go further..... Eggs disgust me...I can't stand the taste.  I don't like meat.......I don't like milk......I don't.....    Holy hell, I'm a darn picky eater!  Breakfast is the worst meal for me in terms of what I will eat.

 Actually I would be happy going with a vegan lifestyle except for a few small issues. (ok pretty big ones)
Surprisingly, it's not the milk.  While I don't like the taste, I do cook with it all the time.  However, we already have our refrigerator stocked with Almond Milk (husband has digestive issues...milk is a no no and soy doesn't digest easily...almond is the way to go). I have no problem cooking with Almond milk.  I've not come up with a recipe that doesn't work with the almond milk.   My issues with veganism....
*eggs-  I cook with eggs all the time. I have no problem eating them if they are an ingredient in something.
* cheese-  I can't even fathom giving up cheese.  NO NO NO.  I love my cheese!  I've tried the soy cheeses nothing even comes close in comparison!
*  soy-tofu-mushrooms-  ewww ewww ewww  They are the generally accepted substitutes and I can't stand them....hurl-o-rama.

So for now I will just continue with my quasi/half vegan lifestyle.....Don't mess with the cheese!

The day after report

Had a great meal out. It is sometimes fun to go out dressed nicely. I had dressed up yesterday for work, in anticipation for going out to eat. When I got home from work, my husband was wearing his good clothes also. I ate yummy food at the restaurant. We did indulge in the chips and salsa on the table (I love really thin tortilla chips...and the salsa/dip at this place is incredible). Todd got a margarita, which I did take a couple of sips from...however I stuck to my water. We each got a papusa for an appetizer. And for my meal I got the Lomo Saltado. It is a beef dish which marks probably the 4th time I've had beef in the last 7 of 8 months. The dish was quite tasty. (more on the beef discovery later). Todd and I declined dessert at the restaurant and instead decided to go home and have our dessert. NO NO NO....that came out wrong, let me rephrase. We declined dessert at the restaurant and instead decided to go home and make mudslides at home. One of the main reasons...at home we can control the type of ice cream used. Because you can guarantee that if you get a mudslide out, that they are not using fat free or even low fat ice cream! :-) So we stopped at the store on the way home and I picked up some fat free ice cream and voila, we had a nice treat at home (with the addition of the vodka and Kahlua).

Beef. When I first gave it up I never really missed it...but occasionally I'd break ranks and eat a little beef. At first when I did eat it, it was like rapture. It would taste soooo good. But the longer I have gone without, when I do eat beef it has become less and less tasty when I do get it. My meal was great last night, the veggies and sauce and all that stuff in the lomo was really really good...but I found the meat to be lackluster. I can only wonder, is this normal?????

Sooooo, this morning I really debated....weigh or not? I know that I ate a little more food than I probably should have. But I did it knowingly and freely acknowledging that I may gain from that choice. So I stepped onto the scale this morning and...... 203.0. So yep, up about a pound and a half. I can handle that. Plus, is it possible to gain a pound and a half in one day? I don't really think so. The chips and the mudslide were what pushed me over my points...but were they really worth a pound and a half.....5250 calories????? No worries...I'm back on track today and it will go down! :-)