Yet another quickie

Just a note to say that I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth lol. I’ve been staring at a computer for most of the weekend, and  frankly, I just want to enjoy the few remaining hours before yet another chaotic week begins.

I’ve been behaving (mostly) diet wise, but my water intake has been in the pooper so I def will be stepping that up tomorrow. I wonder if infusing water with fruit adds carbs? I want to start doing that again. Got in some exercise with a walk yesterday but it was short because I was working so…not that great.

Anyway, hope you all had a wonderful weekend…looking forward to the warmer, drier weather that is headed in our direction. Means I’ll get more quality time outside with the munchkin!

PS- I made tiramisu. Holy crap, it blew my mind! So I’ll have to be sure to post that recipe as well!

Life is chaos! But there’s always time for a danish!

Holy moly, spring is in full swing! It seems like everyone wants us to be here or there. Sheesh! I want a weekend at home to re-cooperate!

So weigh in day went ok…294.6! Can’t complain about that after such a big drop last week, and the fun weekend we had!

The last couple of days I’ve been well behaved; drinking all my water, eating clean and hovering around 1200 calories/25 grams of carbs or less, getting a walk in or moderate physical activity in. I feel like I should up my activity, maybe add some high intensity interval training to really maximize my workout time.

As I promised, here is the Cheese Danish recipe…trust me, and make this. It doesn’t taste like diet food at all. Creamy, cheesy, decadent breakfast pastry goodness that totally feels like a cheat and isn’t!

adapted from uplateanyway.com….such a great blog! This is a three step process that *looks* like hard work  but really, isn’t too bad and comes together super quickly.

Ingredients:

Dough

——-

1. 1 1/4 cup 2% mozzarella shredded cheese (140 grams) (this type of cheese is important; using other types of mozzarells alters the texture and adds starch, etc.)
2. 6 tbsp Almond Flour (42 grams) (I didn’t have almond flour, so I used soy flour instead…turned out just fine, but did alter the carb count from the original recipe)
3. 3 tbsp Coconut Flour (21 grams)
4. 4 tbsp sugar equivalent
5. 1/2 tsp baking powder
6. 1/2 tsp vanilla
7. 1 egg (large)

Filling

——

1. 6 oz cream cheese
2. 1 tsp lemon juice (I omitted this and it turned out fine)
3. 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4. 1/4 cup sugar equivalent
5. 1 egg yolk

Glaze

——-

1. 3 tbsp powdered sweetener (she ground hers up in a coffee grinder, I just used regular Splenda in the giant bag; it was very thick though)
2. 2 tbsp heavy cream
3. 2 oz cream cheese
4. 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Filling

1. Soften cream cheese and combine with lemon juice, vanilla, and sweetener and egg yolk using a whisk or electric mixer. Set aside in the fridge until you are ready with the dough.

Dough

1. Measure out almond flour, coconut flour, and baking powder. Combine well with a whisk.
2. Melt 4 tbsp butter and add vanilla and sweetener. Stir.
3. Melt 1 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese in the microwave, working in 1 minute increments.
4. Combine all the ingredients and add an egg.
5. Stir until batter is combined and the cheese and dough are completely mixed. Use your hands or a spatula to press and fold the cheese and the batter together. Reheat for 10 seconds in the microwave. Press and fold some more until 99% of the dough is all one color. (Tip-this gets sticky and if you wet your hands a little it helps tremendously. The water from your hands will stop the stickiness on the outside of the dough making it very easy to roll out.)
6. Reheat dough for 10 seconds and roll out into a square the approximate length of a rolling pin and slice into four quarters with a pizza slicer. You could also make 6 danishes to stretch the recipe a bit further and cut the carbs down even more! They won’t be huge, but they will still hit the spot.
7. Fold the corners into the center repeating with all four squares.
8. Spoon the filling into the center of each danish.
9. Bake for 10-12 minutes. (Check on this at 10 minutes and make sure to remove it from the oven as soon as it has a deep golden brown color!)

Frosting

1. Soften cream cheese in the microwave and add powdered sweetener, heavy cream and vanilla. Mix well with a whisk and pour into a ziploc bag. Cut a tiny hole in the corner and pipe onto each danish.

These are divine little bits of heaven!!!

Hope you enjoy the recipe!

KK

Busy, Busy.

Sorry for the radio silence yesterday; long story short, hubby and I booked a last minute vacay with some friends of ours so we were going back and forth deciding what to do and taking care of that last night. So yeah…in 19 days, we will be sailing off into the sunset! Can’t wait. We took a cruise together about a year after we started dating and it was heaven. I’m hoping we have the same experience! I’m pretty bummed that I’ll be spending all of Mother’s Day cooped up in the car for 20+ hours and away from my baby girl…still not sure how well I will handle being away from her for a week but I guess we will see!

So the past couple of days have been great. I’ve stayed on par with my carbs– 20 net yesterday, 30 net today. Calories yesterday were better than today. Yesterday was just barely 1200, today is nearly 1900….but that also includes a few beers lol. And I made a comfort food kind of dish for dinner that is heavier than we normally eat. I will def be posting the recipe for it because I am blown away by how awesome it turned out!! It was a shepherd’s pie, but instead of potatoes or cauliflower to make the mashed potatoes, I used a roasted butternut squash, seasoned up with some savory spices, butter, cream, etc. Then topped it all with a mozzarella/provolone blend and some bacon… and OH. MY. GOODNESS. lol! Yum! Plus I still owe you guys the recipe for the danishes, which are also fan-freaking-tastic!! So I’ll get that done this week.

Enough of that tangent lol. I’ve been drinking 3/4 gallon water the last couple days. Better than the weekend when I drank almost none! Workout….yeah, not so much. It’s turned cold again so I haven’t been getting out with the munchkin. Not a great excuse, I know. I need to make exercise a priority but it’s hard to get back into it after any amount of time off! I also know that drinking as much as we do is hampering our progress. We have a 4 beer max per day, but even drinking the low carb light beer, that ‘s 400 calories and 12.5 grams of carbs. Hello, empty calories AND carbs! 😦 but I just love beer so darn much haha!

Definitely worried about being on vacation for a week. Do i stick to as much low carb as I can? Do I just relax for a week and enjoy, but track religiously so I don’t go too crazy?? Have one splurge day and the rest strict low carb?? I’m at a loss. I don’t want to deprive myself; I’d rather enjoy our vacay and worry about it when I come back BUT…I don’t want to gain back everything I’ve lost, either. And our lives are going to be so chaotic the next few weeks. We will be away from home this weekend, celebrating our anniversary after that, and then vacay. When did my life get so busy?!

Worried about weigh in day tomorrow, too. I know I went a little crazy over the weekend on the caloric end. Ate a bunch of high fat no/low carb food to try to stay on track away from home. We will definitely have to plan that better in the future!

Enough whining I suppose. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods!

KK

Holy crap, holy crap, HOLY CRAP!!

295.8!!!!!! YYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

Haha can you tell I’m excited?! I’m back in the (terrible) 2’s!! I don’t think I’ve been under 300 since Bug’s birthday back in November! Ten more pounds, I’ll be to the lowest I got when I was calorie counting last fall; twenty pounds, I’ll be under my lowest since delivering my daughter; thirty pounds and I’ll be to my pre-pregnancy weight!! YAY! It sounds so doable breaking it down like that. And ironic that it’s in ten pound increments lol. So Ideally, I’ll get to 285 by Mother’s Day; 275 by Father’s day; and 265 by the time the State Fair rolls around in early August. Ok, obviously I’m hoping to do better than that, but a rough outline of goals never hurt anybody 🙂 That’s roughly ten pounds per month and totally within the realm of possible.

Today has been a great day lol. My excitement from the scale carried over into the rest of the day. I got in a good amount of exercise; a long walk with the hubs and kiddo, plus running around in the back yard with her during the afternoon. Carbs are at 15 net for the day, and calories are around 1200. Spot on! I also drank more than a half gallon of water–not quite as good as I’d like but definitely not too shabby!

I made some low carb chili for dinner. Not going to lie, I was convinced I’d miss my normal chili because let me tell you: I  LOVE CHILI lol. But I was surprisingly ok with the “just meat and veggies” version. I don’t think it will win any cooking competitions or anything, but I think it’s a perfectly acceptable replacement of “the real deal” in my low carb repertoire. That’s honestly one of my favorite things about this new way of eating– I love to cook, and switching to low carb has opened up a whole new arena of recipes just waiting to be tried! I’d probably never have even considered these recipes before.

So that’s it for today. I’m still so excited about such an awesome number this week, I hope this feeling doesn’t wear off! Hopefully you’re all achieving your goals as well! Thanks for sticking with me! (sorry for all the exclamation points LOL)

KK

Really starting to love low-carbing!

I asked hubby today if he felt deprived, missed carbs, had cravings, etc. Which led to a surprising discussion. We both are surprised by how much we enjoy this way of eating! I love how much more healthily we’re eating by incorporating more veggies. I have more energy, less tummy troubles, and just all around feel better, as does he. Hubby said he is only down 1 pound though since we started, which I think is odd…I guess everyone that has a “diet” that works for them, and maybe his isn’t low carbing. He really doesn’t need to lose much weight anyway, maybe 20 pounds tops. And YAY tomorrow is weigh-in day!

Anyway, enough of the tangent lol. Today was a great day. I’m at 25 net carbs and a smidge over 1000 calories…which means I get to have cheesecake tonight! LOL! I drank about a half gallon today…I need to keep my bottle by me at all times to make sure I get more water in. Exercise today was chasing baby girl around the backyard playing “soccer” haha. And a short walk this morning, but it was chilly so we only made it around the block once. I am thrilled that she loves being outside so much! …..Except when it’s time to come inside and she pitches a fit lol. Oh well.

So, about that recipe. This is one I’m way proud of. I was worried about the leftovers heating up well since there are so many veggies, and veggies tend to get…wet. Not an issue!! It tasted like I had just fried it up today! Color me surprised and wicked excited haha! So here ya go:

Chicken Fried Cauli-Rice

Ingredients

2 Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts, Trimmed of fat and cut into bite sized cubes

1 package frozen cut green beans (fresh would work too. Better probably!)

1 Small onion (I used red, it was what I had)

3 oz. baby carrots, shredded using the largest holes on a grater, or use a food processor

2 large eggs

1 medium-large head of Cauliflower “riced” using grater or food processor

6 Tablespoons low sodium Soy Sauce

2 Tablespoons sesame oil (butter or olive oil works just as well; sesame is just for the flavor)

Salt, Pepper, and Garlic powder to taste.

Directions

1) In a wok or *large* skillet, heat sesame oil over medium high heat. Add chicken and saute until lightly browned.

2) Add green beans and onion, and continue to saute until all the water added by the vegetables cooks out.

3) Add the eggs, break the yolks, then continue to saute the mixture until the eggs are scrambled.

4) Add the carrots and cauliflower, and saute for 2 minutes, stirring often.

5) Add the soy sauce, and continue to cook for 3-4 more minutes, allowing the “rice” to fry and any excess liquid to cook off.

Then Enjoy!! If you make it, let me know what you think! I welcome any feedback!

KK