Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Metabolic Efficiency - Day 15 - Kitchen Nightmares

Well, maybe it isn't as bad as the title suggests, but I did make quite a mess in the kitchen tonight!
Let's start with my weigh-in, as it is Wednesday. I weigh myself in the morning right before I shower.
My weight was 135.5lbs, Down 0.1 lb from last week. Well within normal day-to-day changes. My body fat came in at 23.6%, which is actually 0.2% higher than last week, but I think that's well within the normal error of the base-model body fat scales. The real test will come next week when Kelly from the UCCS Peak Nutrition Clinic does another ISAK skin fold test. But weight is relative, so even though we might have ball park numbers for weight targets, body composition should be more of a goal than specific weight due to the contribution of muscle mass!

Today was a "rest" day when it came to working out. I really wanted to go for a run over lunch, but if I don't get out in time, I can't go because I have a 1pm meeting every Wednesday, and I didn't make it out today.

On to the nutrition!
My breakfast was similar to yesterday, except I had strawberries and blueberries (microwaved to thaw from frozen) instead of the raspberries. This held me for over 4 hours - including a PT session! At 11am I had a can of Muir Glen organic tomato basil soup, most of the rest of the green and red peppers from yesterday and   an egg/egg white scramble I made before work. I actually mixed the eggs into the tomato soup and that was really good!

soup is great during the winter months!
Once 2:30 rolled around, after my meeting, I had this carrot-pear-apple-raisin salad with greek yogurt and cinnamon. This was really filling, especially paired with 1/2 c. of edamame (no photo).

shredded carrot, apple, pear with raisin, greek yogurt and cinnamon
I also snacked on some kale chips that I made the other day. emptied this out.
kale chips are gooooood.
I got home and was a little hungry so I had a small bit of my "survival mix" before taking care of some dishes and getting tonight's dinner cooked. So what's for dinner?
I had chicken tenders and swiss chard I wanted to use so I googled 'swiss chard chicken' and many recipes came up. I never really follow them exactly, so here's what I did:
Cooked the chicken in the frying pan with some olive oil and once cooked, took the chicken out of the pan. To the hot pan (it still had enough oil in it) I added 1/2 yellow onion, chopped. Sauted for a couple minutes then added garlic. Then I added a can of diced tomatoes with green chiles, a drained can of kidney beans and the swiss chard. Once the chard was wilted down I added the chicken back in and seasoned with black pepper and the juice from 1/2 a lemon. Here's what it looked like:


For my meal I had a spinach salad topped with beets I had sliced and sort of roasted (I say sort of because I didn't know what I was doing - I just put the sliced beets in the oven for a while). The chicken/swiss chard mix got topped with a slice of smoked gouda cheese. I loved the kick the green chilis gave, and the smoked gouda made for a nice flavor combination! I wasn't terribly hungry, which is why the plate isn't full, but it was enough to satisfy me for tonight!


But where is the nightmare, you ask? That comes in because I actually made spaghetti for my husband. The pot boiled over, and I got a dry strand of pasta on a burner, which, you guessed it, burns. The spaghetti sauce got a little messy on the stove as well. But my meal tasted great (and I'm guessing so did the spaghetti), which made up for any mess I may have made. And don't worry, he's getting the swiss chard chicken dish for lunch tomorrow.

3 comments:

Leslie said...

Roasting beets - 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. YUM. How do you do the kale chips??

Nicole said...

Thanks Leslie! here's a link to a kale chip recipe that works:
http://lavamagazine.com/training/recipe-kale-chips#axzz18FCbiJ73

D Nyce said...

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE kale chips!