The Healthy Tales

Good grief! I will admit that for the past month I have been fairly lazy. I think in the month of September I went to the gym all of 3 times which is translated to be approximately 10%. There was no real good reason I skipped the gym other than I was being lazy and had absolutely no drive to go.

I didn’t think skipping for a month would be a big deal. I mean look at this past summer, I skipped most of July due to the wedding and then exercised off and on between January and June. Each time I picked myself back up and went to the gym, it was fairly easy to get into the swing of things and there was no revolution from my body. Rather, everything felt good, the stress was going away, and I felt re-energized.

This time around has been a whole ‘nother story as I like to say. I am tense, achy, and quite tired these past two days from exercising. I thought possibly that I just overdid things yesterday by spending an hour on the elliptical machine after taking the month off so I turned things down a small notch tonight – 35 minutes on the treadmill. I hate to say but I’m still not feeling much better about this whole exercise thing. I’m hoping that once I start lifting weights and take some of the focus away from cardio workouts that I’ll start feeling better and re-energized.

I think I’m going to pop an IB Profin and then take a warm bath so I can rest up and do it all over again tomorrow. The results are worth it, it is just a battle to get there!

I waited until the last minute Sunday to try and meal plan. Mike came home and was ready to go to the grocery store as it was 6pm and he had spent the entire day at the Texans game. They won but he said it was a boring game but I am digressing. I was home the entire day but wasn’t in the mood to do anything as noted in this post on my other blog.  So I had all of 5 minutes to plan out our dinners and lunches for this week.  I think I did a decent job since we will have left overs from Sunday for Monday’s dinner.  I am going to try and do better next week though.  Plan more in advance.

So here is our menu.  I have 1 recipe posted and will post the others as I make the recipe.

Monday – Lunch: ham & cheese sandwich, grapes, yogurt, banana
Dinner: BBQ Shrimp and Pineapple, salad

Tuesday:Lunch: ham & cheese sandwich, grapes, yogurt, banana
Dinner: Pork tenderloin, salad, peas or corn

Wednesday: Lunch: ham & cheese sandwich, grapes, yogurt, banana
Dinner: Going out to Happy Hour. Will try to eat slow cooker Pork Chops before we go.

Thursday: Lunch: ham & cheese sandwich, grapes, yogurt, banana
Dinner: Slow cooker Pork Chops, salad

Friday: Lunch: ham & cheese sandwich, grapes, yogurt, banana or Lean Cuisine
Dinner: Pork chops & salad or Pizza & salad

Saturday: Lunch: open
Dinner: LSU vs. Florida at Big Woodrows here in Houston. Will be having some Boudin balls and Fried Alligator

A few weeks ago, Mike and I headed over to San Antonio to visit his family.  As we were heading back to Houston, Mike’s mom pulled out two pounds of frozen shrimp to send home with us.  I hated to tell her that I had two pounds already back in the freezer because I didn’t know how to cook it but I didn’t and took it gladly and decided I needed to find a recipe.  So off to Google I went looking for a recipe to use up at least two of these four pounds.

I found a great recipe to try out -> BBQ Shrimp and Pineapple Skewers.  The recipe comes from Razzle Dazzle Recipes.  The recipe did not call for a lot of ingredients and seemed easy enough to make at home so I decided to grab all of the ingredients today at the grocery store and give it a whirl.  What I found was that it really was a great and tasty recipe but the skewer part didn’t work out too well as the end of my skewers are thick and combining that with the thick chunks of pineapple raised the shrimp off the grill plate and they were not cooking.  Once I removed the skewers from the process everything went well.

We had this with my garlic and lime asparagus (recipe to follow) which went very well with the pineapple. I give this recipe two thumbs up and will make it again. I failed to point out the recipe for Weight Watchers but I would think that this would be no more than 5 WW points and the asparagus is about 2 or 3 WW points at the most. I’ll try to remember to do this next time.

Pineapple Barbecued Shrimp Skewers

1/4 cup barbecue sauce
1/2 cup pineapple juice
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons chopped, fresh cilantro leaves
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 – ripe pineapple, peeled, cored and sliced into 2-inch chunks
4 – metal or bamboo (soaked in water) skewers

In a mixing bowl, combine the barbecue sauce, pineapple juice, lime juice and cilantro. Pour half of the pineapple-barbecue sauce mixture into a resealable bag, add the shrimp and marinate for 15 to 30 minutes. (Reserve the remaining sauce mixture for basting and serving.)

Preheat the grill to medium-high.

Remove the shrimp from the marinade, discarding the leftover marinade. Skewer the shrimp and pineapple onto the skewers. Grill the skewers on both sides until the shrimp are just cooked through, about 3 to 4 minutes per side. While the skewers are cooking, brush them with some of the reserved sauce.

Serve the skewers with the extra pineapple-barbecue sauce for dipping.

This week is shaping up to be a lazy one so I’m hoping to turn that around before I get to work this morning.  Mike is in Beaumont again which leaves me home alone with no motivation.  I have a few mid-week deadlines for work as well which means by the time I get home I have a feeling I won’t want to do much.  I am going to set some mini goals though to try and combat that.

First goal: Go to the gym twice this week by myself.  I hate going to the gym and I hate even more going to the gym without Mike.  It is just lonely and boring.  I stepped on the scale this morning and didn’t like what I saw so I think I need to get over this attitude.

Second goal:  Eat healthy meals this week, do not give in to junk food at work and unplanned happy hours.  Do not create happy hours at home with the Magic Bullet (yup I have the As Seen on TV product) even though it creates great margaritas.  Sounds like a reasonable goal.

My menu for this week to help accomplish goal #2:

Monday – Lunch: shrimp alfredo lean cuisine, fresh fruit, yogurt,

Dinner: grilled chicken, asparagus, fresh pineapple

Tuesday – Lunch: tortilla crusted fish lean cuisine, fresh pineapple, yogurt

Dinner:  crawfish etouffee, asparagus, small salad

Wednesday – Lunch: jambalaya, fresh fruit, yogurt

Dinner: grilled chicken, small salad

Thursday: lunch: Chicken parmigiana lean pocket, fresh fruit, yogurt

Dinner: Grilled Chicken salad

Friday: lunch: Chicken parmigiana lean pocket, fresh fruit, yogurt

Dinner: Homemade pizza

Saturday: lunch: beef taquitos

Dinner: BBQ shrimp and pineapple skewers

Recipes and photos to follow. For more Menu Planning Monday visit I’m an Organizing Junkie.

So a few weeks ago, I was on a blog that promoted coupons and free samples. I love free samples because they are free and provide me a little mail to open each day. One of the samples posted was for 1 free Bear Naked grain-ola bar. I love Luna and Pria bars and thought this one would be the same so I filled out my information and selected the chocolate cherry variety to receive.

My granola bar came this week and I was excited to give it a try. I brought it to work with me as my mid-afternoon snack figuring it would be healthier than the Zapps chips we keep in the audit room. That thought held steady until I opened the bar and started eating it. I flipped the wrapper around and was shocked to see 230 calories, 10 grams of fat, and 33 grams of carbs – only 4 grams were fiber. I think I would have been better off sticking with those chips! 5 Weight Watcher points, gone!

On to taste, as I mentioned, I selected the chocolate cherry flavor. Unfortunately, the bar tasted more like banana bread and I don’t recall finding any chocolate or dried cherries mixed into this bar. This bar is nothing like the old Luna Chocolate over Cherries bar so if you were a fan, don’t waste your money on this as a replacement.

There was a variety of nuts and grains throughout the bar. I was happy to see bits of pecans as you don’t see those everyday in granola bars. The rest of the ingredients though, sigh. The bar might be natural but syrup, molasses, canola oil, sunflower oil, etc adds up and also makes for a bit of a sticky bar. Yes, this bar is soft unlike the other bars that I have mentioned before so while you could take it on the go and avoid crumbs, you have to keep it in the wrapper or risk it falling about or gumming up your fingers. That could be a plus or a minus depending on where you are running to.

Overall, while I thought the taste was fine, I would not buy a box of these bars at the grocery store. The nutritional ingredients are just way too high in calories and fat and with only 22 weight watcher points per day I can’t afford to spend 1/4 of them on this one product. Also, I want my chocolate and cherry flavors!