Simple Measures

A little something pink to brighten the day…

So today I decided to take charge of my eating habits…well I decided to at least take a step in the right direction…portion control.  One major component of my losing and maintaining weight was being diligent about measuring my portions….which I completely stopped doing at some point.

Big shocker…I’ve been using twice as much milk & sugar in my coffee these days. 

This is one cup of strawberries and half a cup of cereal to mix with my yogurt.

For months now I’d say I’ve been doubling the cereal and halving the fruit.  Tsk tsk.

For lunchtime I made a bigass salad…but today I actually measured my “sploosh” of olive oil.  Trust me it’s not two teaspoons when you just splash it on out of the bottle.

I even measured my sunflower seeds and the Bacon Jam I put on a toasted English muffin half with half a wedge of light Laughing Cow.  That was deeeeeeelish by the way.  Especially with some egg yolk!

In keeping with the theme of keeping things under control I opted to skip a trip out for afternoon coffee and made tea instead.  I’ve been struggling with getting enough water for weeks now, and as some lovely Twitter supporters reminded me…herbal tea is a good way to sneak in the hydration.

Come dinner time I noted all I had written on my meal plan was “stir-fry”.  Nothing like leaving myself a vague note!

My friend Lisa gave me a Peanut Sauce recipe a while ago so I decided tonight would be a good night to test it out.

Mix together:  3 tbsp Hoisin sauce, 2 tbsp natural peanut butter, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp grated ginger, 1 tbsp lemon juice and 1 clove grated garlic.  Cilantro would be nice too, but I’m out.

My peanut butter was a bit stiff so I heated everything over very low heat to get it to combine. 

For my stir-fry I made sure to measure the cooking oil, the rice noodles (by weight) and the veggies…carrots in particular actually go up in calories, etc when they are cooked.

In addition to carrots my stir fry included red pepper, red onions, and spinach wilted in near the end of cooking.

I used 1.5 tbsp of the sauce, thinned with water to coat all of the veggies and noodles.  Topped everything with shrimp sautéed with garlic & red pepper flakes.

Quite delicious!!

While everyone else was watching the first game of the NHL Playoffs (Go Canucks!!!) my lack of cable and procrastination of work on my contract job left me home sulking at my computer.  Oddly, while I don’t get a local hockey game I do  get FOX so I was able to listen to American Idol while I worked.

I picked James from the very beginning because I’m in love with the show actually having a rocker on board…but Scotty and Casey are pretty cool and individual too.

That apple made me hungrier than I was before I ate it!  Do you ever find that?  Fresh fruits and veggies (and water) trigger something in my tummy that makes me feel ravenous.  Super duper annoying!

But my goal for tonight is no toast before bed (I usually have some sort of carby snack right before bed that never gets blogged about….bad girl!) so I can’t let that damn apple get the best of me.  Bad apple!