Before we get into today’s blog post, can we find out who the winner is of the Oprah Cookbook?!
Darlene
Hi Biz!
Thanks for the giveaway. I enjoy reading your posts every day. Wishing you lots of success on your WW journey. Louisiana
Congrats Darlene! Shoot me an email at mybizzykitchen@gmail.com and I’ll get your copy in the mail.
I had a very busy weekend. So much so that I am ill prepared for today’s blog post, but I will be doing a short recap of my culinary judging at Kendall College on Friday. It was a lot of fun!
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Every Thursday Oprah does a video on the WW Connect app, and I just listened to her video yesterday morning and it really spoke to me. The topic was Accountability. Not only to have friends and family in and around your life who can hold you accountable to your goals, but having accountability with yourself.
When I first started this blog (wow – 8 1/2 years ago!) I literally thought if I just “put myself out there” that I would somehow guilty myself into losing weight. I was 168 pounds when I started this blog, and I thought if everyone knew that number, and knew I was trying to lose weight, that it would force me to make better choices because “people were watching me.” Ha! I can laugh about that now, but at the time, I thought it would be just the thing to get me to that magic number on the scale.
I may as well have written the script Oprah was talking about. About how I “knew” what the points of stuff were so I didn’t need to actually track my food, because I know what I am doing. Or saying I won’t start tracking until after such and such event, or waiting until the following Monday to get “back on track.” Eating great for a few days and telling yourself you “deserve a weekend off” only to wash away any progress you had made the previous few days.
She said that it wasn’t until she held HERSELF accountable, and no one else, was when the scale started to move. I couldn’t agree more. As of yesterday, I have tracked everything I’ve put in my mouth for the last 41 days. I don’t think I ever tracked all my food for four days STRAIGHT in all of 2016. And I realize that tracking has made all the difference. No more guessing about how much I was eating (or drinking!), because I know even if I eat Popeye’s for dinner like I did in Friday night, it was within my point range and I still got a blue dot for the day for being within my healthy point range.
Saturday was my only day off this last week, and as I was doing stuff around the house, I felt this overwhelming sensation to “get it all done.” The meal planning, prepping food, laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping. And then for some reason I just stopped. I sat down and thought to myself “is anyone going to care if I clean the bathroom today or next Tuesday?” And suddenly I thought why am I putting so much pressure on myself when I can space out all the things that need to get done (and some I delegated to the kadults) later in the week.
So I went to the coffee shop. They were having an artists exhibit, and I brought my journal and a couple cooking magazines, and looked at the photography, talked to one of the artists, and found a seat and grabbed a cup of coffee.
It was wonderful. No distractions like I would have had I been home (laundry, etc.) and I spent nearly an hour reading my magazines, doing my meal plan and enjoying a skim cappuccino with cinnamon on top.
I will say, that since the kadults and I are doing our own meal planning, my grocery bill has gone down immensely. I jotted down a few things I knew I had in my pantry/fridge/freezer before I left the house, and came up with the following ideas for meals this week. Last week I hardly followed my meal plan at all, so this week we’ll see!
Breakfasts:
- steak, hard boiled egg and fruit
- egg white and spinach breakfast tacos
- Chobani parfait with blueberry/cranberry sauce and PB granola*
- waffle breakfast sandwich
- steel cut oats with blueberries and toasted walnuts*
Lunches:
- out to lunch today with a co-worker
- leftover sopa azteca (a new recipe for my next Chopping Block blog post)
- leftover frozen turkey chili mac
- buffalo chicken salad
- leftovers on Friday
Dinners:
- buffalo chicken and cashew milk waffles*
- chickpeas and potato curry with steamed broccoli*
- pork chops, mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy*
- Cooking Club!
- Party Pizza Friday
So this was all I needed to fill in the gaps for my weekly meal plan. The two giant bags of green beans is going to be part of my side dish for Cooking Club. My steal of the day?
$1 for 1.27 pounds of pork chops! There are three chops in the package, so one will be for a dinner one night, and the other two will be for another meal. Gotta love the Discount Meat Bin at Jewel! So I ended up spending:
Yes, you read that correctly – I spent $25.81! Granted, I am going out to lunch today and to Cooking Club on Thursday, but that’s not too bad in my book! The meal plan items with an asterisk are recipes I hope to share with you later this week.
But the first recipe I have to share is my latest 3 smart point biscuit. When the Wal-mart near my office went out of business a few weeks ago, I bought twenty packages of sausage gravy mix because they were only .50 cents each. I wasn’t even thinking about how many points it was, but actually without the added breakfast sausage, is only 2 points per 1/4 cup of prepared gravy mix. But if you have gravy mix, you have to have biscuits, right?!
So I came up with these simple drop biscuits. They come together in a matter of minutes, and take only 14 minutes to bake.
Since I worked yesterday, I knew I wanted a big breakfast to carry me for a long time. Two biscuits (6), egg white and spinach scramble in the middle (1) then topped with 1/2 cup gravy (4) with fruit on the side. This was so delicious! Tasted so sinful, but not bad at 11 smart points. And this kept me full for hours.
It’s time to finish getting myself ready for work. I hope you all had a great weekend! I saw this sign at my work last night, and I love it – hope you can make someone happy today!
Ok, I have to ask, the kiwi look really pretty for the photo but how do you eat them when they are cut like that? Do you have to then peel them after the photo? I don’t consider myself lazy but if I had to finish cooking my eggs, peeling my fruit, or reheat my food after a “photo shoot” I don’t think I would bother eating at that point. I guess that is what makes you a great food blogger!
What a great find on the pork chops. You always have such great deals at your stores. My Publix never has meat marked down like that. Do you shop at a certain time of day to get the deals? I notice if I go in to shop about an hour or so before closing they do mark down certain bakery items.
Hannah actually cut the kiwi, and after she gave it to me to plate, once the photo was taken it was near impossible to eat!
The discount meat bin always has something in it – sometimes more than others – I’ve never know when the “right” time to hit it up, I just go by it every time I am at that store.