Sunday, September 18, 2011
Back back...
Whew! I've been a travelling FOOL! I've been beeboppin' up and down the East Coast for work. I attended my companies Fall/Winter trade show and helped open a new store. Tons of FLOWERS, tons of fun. I'm so glad to be back home. I missed my bf and the kitties. I'm posting a blog soon of a peach and orange chicken with roasted peaches, potatoes and honey roasted asparagus. And biscuits, can't forget the biscuits. YUM! Doesn't sound too WW but I've been good all week long. We'll find when I weigh in on Wednesday and I'll be sure to post a blog about what worked or didn't while travelling for work, no kitchen!, and NO TRACKING! Bad girl! We'll see...
Monday, September 12, 2011
I want to have a spa party...
Have you ever seen something you want to make so badly that you want to make it even though you have no occasion. That's how I feel about this appetizer. Hungry Happening's Spa Party Appetizer.
Look at it! How adorable? Could it be odd enough for Halloween? Or should I reserve it for a future "shower"?? I'm so torn. If I thought I could eat an entire cheese ball I would totally go for it. But I can't.
A girl can dream can't she?
Look at it! How adorable? Could it be odd enough for Halloween? Or should I reserve it for a future "shower"?? I'm so torn. If I thought I could eat an entire cheese ball I would totally go for it. But I can't.
A girl can dream can't she?
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Watch out Liz!!
I know, I know... I'm a pop reference nightmare. Yesterday I referred to David Hasselhoff, who is not a Hasselback, and today Elizabeth Hasselbeck. But you can understand where I would jump to conclusions. But obnoxious reality stars (gag) aside today we are talking about Hasselback Potatoes! Okay, so I am thrilled to say that I made something that legit came out as pretty as the origional. Check it out.
The Original, sea salt with food's Hasselback Potatoes! 
And then... TA DA!!! Mine!
They came out delicious. The slices of potato were crispy and crunchy on the outside and soft and garlickly. So good. And of course you can make them a million different ways. I was thinking three different fingerling potatoes on a plate hasselbacked (is that how this hasselback thing works?) but my next expierement is sweet potatoes. Tomorrow look at some badass pictures of our spur of the moment broiled meatballs with spaghetti and homemade garlic bread. Carb city! Good thing I only eat fruit and veggies all day at work.
The only think that I can add is that we only cooked two potatoes and they took closer to 50-55 minutes than the 40 recomended on the original. But obviously it worked. Hopefully more hasselbacked food is in your future.
The Original, sea salt with food's Hasselback Potatoes!
And then... TA DA!!! Mine!
They came out delicious. The slices of potato were crispy and crunchy on the outside and soft and garlickly. So good. And of course you can make them a million different ways. I was thinking three different fingerling potatoes on a plate hasselbacked (is that how this hasselback thing works?) but my next expierement is sweet potatoes. Tomorrow look at some badass pictures of our spur of the moment broiled meatballs with spaghetti and homemade garlic bread. Carb city! Good thing I only eat fruit and veggies all day at work.
The only think that I can add is that we only cooked two potatoes and they took closer to 50-55 minutes than the 40 recomended on the original. But obviously it worked. Hopefully more hasselbacked food is in your future.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting RECIPE
Calling Fall Foodies! Are you ready for the only frosting you are going to need this entire season? This will taste fab with any fall dessert. Apple cakes, pumpkin muffins, pear tarts. Mmm! Fall is my favorite season for eating, and this frosting will be along for the duration. Here it is on a carrot-pumpkin cupcake made with the Hungry Girl Pumpkin & Cake Mix method.
We used a box of carrot cake mix and a can of pumpkin to bake cupcakes. They were really good, a little carrot-y and pumpkin-y at the same time but they really needed something. The logical idea was frosting and based on ingredients available and the nature of the goods it was decided. Cream cheese frosting! But without going too out of control with fat and calories and not too sweet. So we nixed the 10x sugar in favor of brown sugar. All of the measurements are best guesses as I did not expect it to turn out as good as it did. But that's the beauty of this frosting. You adjust it to your own taste. I would recommend playing with each ingredient... if you want it sweeter add more brown sugar, creamier add more cool whip. It's totally customizable! Okay, enough. Let's get to it.
Brown Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting
1 block 1/3 less fat cream cheese, softened
1/2 c. brown sugar (or more to taste)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice***
Approx. 3/4 a tub of fat free cool whip
Cinnamon Sugar (optional)
Mix all ingredients together. Sprinkle a little cinnamon sugar on top if it strikes your fancy. It's pretty too. Enjoy!
Yeah, it's that easy. Happy Fall!
***If you don't have pumpkin pie spice try to make your own! ...or just add complementary spices to whatever baked good your planning on using the frosting on. Additionally you may want to start out with maybe a single teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. We are intense lovers of the fall spice blend and can't seem to find a stopping point.
We used a box of carrot cake mix and a can of pumpkin to bake cupcakes. They were really good, a little carrot-y and pumpkin-y at the same time but they really needed something. The logical idea was frosting and based on ingredients available and the nature of the goods it was decided. Cream cheese frosting! But without going too out of control with fat and calories and not too sweet. So we nixed the 10x sugar in favor of brown sugar. All of the measurements are best guesses as I did not expect it to turn out as good as it did. But that's the beauty of this frosting. You adjust it to your own taste. I would recommend playing with each ingredient... if you want it sweeter add more brown sugar, creamier add more cool whip. It's totally customizable! Okay, enough. Let's get to it.
1 block 1/3 less fat cream cheese, softened
1/2 c. brown sugar (or more to taste)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice***
Approx. 3/4 a tub of fat free cool whip
Cinnamon Sugar (optional)
Mix all ingredients together. Sprinkle a little cinnamon sugar on top if it strikes your fancy. It's pretty too. Enjoy!
Yeah, it's that easy. Happy Fall!
***If you don't have pumpkin pie spice try to make your own! ...or just add complementary spices to whatever baked good your planning on using the frosting on. Additionally you may want to start out with maybe a single teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice. We are intense lovers of the fall spice blend and can't seem to find a stopping point.
Back to Blogging!
Okay so I'm going to take this blogging business seriously. Even if it's just as my own personal record of what I'm doing. I'm still going to focus on weight loss but it will also be some cooking and other stuff. Lot's of photo's I hope. So here goes nothing.
To update since my last post. I've been wildly successful with WW so far. At this point I've lost 33 pounds since May. And I think the true reason I've been so successful is that with the program there is no reason to give up any food ever. I mean it. I've lost 33 pounds in 5 months eating Pizza Hut, McDonald's and Five Guys... Just not all at once. And not everyday. Anymore. That was old me 5 months ago. Now if we go to Five Guys I eat nothing but fruits and vegetables before. Or if I get McDonald's I only get the 4 piece nuggets and go home and eat a salad.
Now let's get down to business... Pictures of food: I apologize in advance for the poor quality. I was feeling quite lazy and relied on my iPhone and not my SLR. I will try to avoid that in the future. To the food. So at WW people keep talking about cool things to do with banana's. Namely pancakes and ice cream. (More on ice cream in the near future.) But the banana pancakes intrigued me. Because I LOVE PANCAKES! And these ones are even good for you! They require merely two ingredients. Two banana's and one egg. Just mush banana's and mix in one beaten egg. Then you just pour onto a hot pan with pan and BOOM you've got PANCAKES.
Well not exactly. See things started out okay.. (I'll explain why just okay in a sec) So I threw four ripe bananas and two eggs into the KitchenAid and beat the hell out of them. See...
Then I put them on the pan, hot, and sprayed with Pam.
And unfortunately I only make it to step two before things go wrong. These pancakes refused to turn. I am no pancake master. That is my sister Kelly. She is the master of breakfast, especially pancakes. But I have cooked a few in my day, so I know when to turn a pancake. But these just kind of swirled around and never firmed up enough to flip. And then I realized it was my over zealous mixing, I should have never taken it up to speed 7. I cook too hard and too fast, that is truly my problem. I think everything will go faster and be better if you cook it hotter and mix it faster. I will never be a great cook if I don't slow it the f down! So that was my demise but we are far too broke to go wasting four bananas and two eggs. Plus I've been craving syrup and we also had this fab brown sugar & cream cheese frosting leftover from cupcakes and it seemed a little silly not to put a little on banana pancakes. So in order to save this bowl of goo and turn it into something edible we needed to think fast. So we went to our old standby, the muffin pan!
In the end they came out okay. We baked them at 350, for about 20-25 minutes. Maybe 5 minutes or so more. They puffed up a little but in the end came out like dense little almost silver dollar pancakes. You could really taste the banana. And you can see in the photo that if you stick a mini Reese's cup into one you are a lucky person. Cause what's better than banana's, chocolate and peanut butter? Banana's, chocolate, peanut butter, syrup and brown sugar cream cheese frosting.. Ugh I got a little sick reading that.
And once again, so sorry for the poor quality photo's. Fear not, I've dusted off the rebel and I took some pretty pics of my own Hasselback (Not David) Potatoes That I made for dinner tonight.
To update since my last post. I've been wildly successful with WW so far. At this point I've lost 33 pounds since May. And I think the true reason I've been so successful is that with the program there is no reason to give up any food ever. I mean it. I've lost 33 pounds in 5 months eating Pizza Hut, McDonald's and Five Guys... Just not all at once. And not everyday. Anymore. That was old me 5 months ago. Now if we go to Five Guys I eat nothing but fruits and vegetables before. Or if I get McDonald's I only get the 4 piece nuggets and go home and eat a salad.
Now let's get down to business... Pictures of food: I apologize in advance for the poor quality. I was feeling quite lazy and relied on my iPhone and not my SLR. I will try to avoid that in the future. To the food. So at WW people keep talking about cool things to do with banana's. Namely pancakes and ice cream. (More on ice cream in the near future.) But the banana pancakes intrigued me. Because I LOVE PANCAKES! And these ones are even good for you! They require merely two ingredients. Two banana's and one egg. Just mush banana's and mix in one beaten egg. Then you just pour onto a hot pan with pan and BOOM you've got PANCAKES.
Well not exactly. See things started out okay.. (I'll explain why just okay in a sec) So I threw four ripe bananas and two eggs into the KitchenAid and beat the hell out of them. See...
And unfortunately I only make it to step two before things go wrong. These pancakes refused to turn. I am no pancake master. That is my sister Kelly. She is the master of breakfast, especially pancakes. But I have cooked a few in my day, so I know when to turn a pancake. But these just kind of swirled around and never firmed up enough to flip. And then I realized it was my over zealous mixing, I should have never taken it up to speed 7. I cook too hard and too fast, that is truly my problem. I think everything will go faster and be better if you cook it hotter and mix it faster. I will never be a great cook if I don't slow it the f down! So that was my demise but we are far too broke to go wasting four bananas and two eggs. Plus I've been craving syrup and we also had this fab brown sugar & cream cheese frosting leftover from cupcakes and it seemed a little silly not to put a little on banana pancakes. So in order to save this bowl of goo and turn it into something edible we needed to think fast. So we went to our old standby, the muffin pan!
In the end they came out okay. We baked them at 350, for about 20-25 minutes. Maybe 5 minutes or so more. They puffed up a little but in the end came out like dense little almost silver dollar pancakes. You could really taste the banana. And you can see in the photo that if you stick a mini Reese's cup into one you are a lucky person. Cause what's better than banana's, chocolate and peanut butter? Banana's, chocolate, peanut butter, syrup and brown sugar cream cheese frosting.. Ugh I got a little sick reading that.
And once again, so sorry for the poor quality photo's. Fear not, I've dusted off the rebel and I took some pretty pics of my own Hasselback (Not David) Potatoes That I made for dinner tonight.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Here we go...
So I already suck at blogging. I think my last (first) post was almost a week ago. Whatevs... So on Wednesday at my Weight Watchers meeting I weighed in 1.8 pounds less. Whew! I finally got batteries for the scale so I don't spend the day of my weigh in surviving on 18 almonds, a cocopop (rice cake type thing)
and ice cubes. I get so nervous on weigh in days. I don't know why though. I am meticulous when it comes to tracking myself. Every single little bite gets recorded. And I've finally stopped hoarding my Weekly Points. When I was on WW (I am already sick of typing "Weight Watcher" THERE! That's the last one) anyways, the first few times I was on WW I used to never use any of my extra weekly points. I figured I would lose more weight if I never ever used them. And I never used any butter or oil, never ate any ice cream or fast food or candy. Seriously, I was a freak. So it's no wonder I could never stick to it. Now on the new program I have like double the points in conjunction with actually using the Weekly Points and actually tracking my Fitness. I'm actually exercising now... THAT'S another difference. More on that later. But I haven't changed any of my cooking, I still use butter and olive oil; I just measure now. I measure my portions for once, and it seems to be working. So I shouldn't worry so much when I go to weigh in. Especially a day early (another thing I hated. Like how much more weight could I really use in one day) So I never used to find a different meeting if I was going to miss one. But tomorrow I am going a meeting different from my regular one for the first time. We shall see tomorrow night. Okay. Bye bye.
and ice cubes. I get so nervous on weigh in days. I don't know why though. I am meticulous when it comes to tracking myself. Every single little bite gets recorded. And I've finally stopped hoarding my Weekly Points. When I was on WW (I am already sick of typing "Weight Watcher" THERE! That's the last one) anyways, the first few times I was on WW I used to never use any of my extra weekly points. I figured I would lose more weight if I never ever used them. And I never used any butter or oil, never ate any ice cream or fast food or candy. Seriously, I was a freak. So it's no wonder I could never stick to it. Now on the new program I have like double the points in conjunction with actually using the Weekly Points and actually tracking my Fitness. I'm actually exercising now... THAT'S another difference. More on that later. But I haven't changed any of my cooking, I still use butter and olive oil; I just measure now. I measure my portions for once, and it seems to be working. So I shouldn't worry so much when I go to weigh in. Especially a day early (another thing I hated. Like how much more weight could I really use in one day) So I never used to find a different meeting if I was going to miss one. But tomorrow I am going a meeting different from my regular one for the first time. We shall see tomorrow night. Okay. Bye bye.
Friday, May 27, 2011
First is worst...
First off I am going to warn you. This is a weight loss blog. Yup, another fat girl whining about how hard it is to lose weight. Sorry. Don't worry, I've got plenty of other stuff to bitch about... I also don't know if I am a very good writer (wow, I'm selling the hell out of this blog. It's cool because I know no one is reading ha!) So I've chosen Weight Watchers. The reason, honestly, because my job offered to pay for half if I attend 85% of meetings. Not just me (god! Could you imagine!?) but they opened it up to all employees and a group of us are going for it. Which I really have to say is the best thing to do, do it as a group. It's cool because we meet right at work; there's no excuse not to go to the meetings. Also since we work in a grocery store you will totally get busted if you try and buy junk food. That and Jennifer Hudson looks smokin! I wanna be a weight watchers success story.
Week one I lost 2.6 pounds, which is awesome but it's a teeny tiny start. There is still a long way to go. I have to change my entire lifestye. My goal is to look like hot shit at this wedding I am going to be next May... I worked as an assistant to a wedding photographer for seven years... I DON'T WANT TO BE THE FAT BRIDESMAID! That honestly is my 100% true reason. I will tell you a bunch of bullshit about being healthy but I have been fat forever! I am so ready to be at least less fat. I really feel different about it this time. I know I sound like a junkie trying to quit... So with my 2.6 lb head start I am off to my probably seventh "serious" attempt at weight loss. Likely my fourth attempt at weight watchers. My first (and hopefully only) attempt with the new points plus.
So that's that. Hopefully I will be diciplined enough to write everyday unlike every other blog/diary/journal I've written in the last eighteen years or so. Peace til then!
Week one I lost 2.6 pounds, which is awesome but it's a teeny tiny start. There is still a long way to go. I have to change my entire lifestye. My goal is to look like hot shit at this wedding I am going to be next May... I worked as an assistant to a wedding photographer for seven years... I DON'T WANT TO BE THE FAT BRIDESMAID! That honestly is my 100% true reason. I will tell you a bunch of bullshit about being healthy but I have been fat forever! I am so ready to be at least less fat. I really feel different about it this time. I know I sound like a junkie trying to quit... So with my 2.6 lb head start I am off to my probably seventh "serious" attempt at weight loss. Likely my fourth attempt at weight watchers. My first (and hopefully only) attempt with the new points plus.
So that's that. Hopefully I will be diciplined enough to write everyday unlike every other blog/diary/journal I've written in the last eighteen years or so. Peace til then!
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