Taking Ownership

After having a mental breakdown a few nights ago, I've decided no more. Yeah...my last few blog posts have said that, but after stepping on the scale today for the first time in months, I have to be real. It's time to get healthy again.

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MyFitnessPal -Quelyn01
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Today is a new day.

Breakfast:

-Starbucks K-cup Vanilla Coffee, Great Value Vanilla Creamer, splenda
-2 Eggs scrambled with zuchinni

Turkey Meatball Squares

 

Skip the pasta and just eat the meat! Instead of making meatballs, I made them into squares (well, I guess they are actually rectangles...). 

What you need:

1 package of lean ground turkey (I believe it's 1.25lbs)

1 cup Italian bread crumbs

1 egg

Garlic Salt

Italian Seasoning

Parmesan Cheese

1 Cup Mozzarella Cheese

1 Cup Spaghetti Sauce

Beat the egg in a large mixing bowl with a fork. Add the turkey, bread crumbs, garlic salt, Parmesan, and Italian seasoning (to your taste preference), combine with your hands.

Using either a pan like the one pictured below, or a muffin pan, spray it with non stick cooking spray. Put your meat in each hole, but do not overfill.

Bake at 375 for 35 minutes. Once the time is up, put a spoonful sauce and sprinkle of mozzarella cheese on each "meatball." Cook for an additional 15 minutes or until turkey is fully cooked.

Pumpkin Pancakes, low carb!

These were so good! I was only able to eat one of these.

The recipe makes about 6 pancakes, medium-large in size. Based on the brands of products I used, one pancake has 100 calories, 3.3carbs, and 11g of protein!

What you need:

-1/2 cup pumpkin
-1/2 cup ricotta cheese
-4 eggs
-1/2 tsp cinnamon
-2 tsp vanilla extract
-1 tsp aluminim free baking powder
1/2 cup (or one scoop) of vanilla protein powder.

In a mixing bowl, beat the 4 eggs with a hand mixer to make them fluffy. Add all of the other ingredients, and mix with the mixer.

Scoop the mixture into a pan and cook like a "regular" pancake.

I dusted mine with a small amount of powdered sugar and a small amount of lite maple syrup, this is not included in the nutrition facts. (...neither is the sausage on the side!)

**Tip**
When I normally make pancakes out of the box mixture, I don't have to spray my pan with non-stick spray, with these I did. They were sticking when I went to turn them so if you lightly spray your pan in between each pancake they will not stick as much.

Chicken Salad Lettuce Wraps

Chicken Salad Lettuce Wraps

What you need:

-Canned Chicken Breast
-Chopped Celery
-Chopped Green Onion
-Spicy mustard
-Lettuce leaves, I like Romaine.

I don't measure my ingredients for this recipe since they don't really make a huge difference in the calorie count. I use as much as I like, or as little as I like.

Spoon the ingredients into your lettuce, making it like a taco, or a burrito, and eat!

Buns/Rolls that are only 2 Carbs!

This is not my recipe! You can find the original recipe at http://fluffychixcook.blogspot.com/2012/05/revolutionary-low-carb-hot-dog-buns.html.

The photos are also do not belong to me, they belong to the other blog :)

Mine did not come out as brown as hers. I think I will cook mine a little longer next time. They were like a really fluffy egg, but did have kind of a bread texture. I made a sandwich with one today, and it was really good! I will definitely make them again!





Revolutionary Wraps and Hot Dog Buns

Serves – 8-10 Hot Dog Buns or 12 Hamburger Buns
Difficulty – Easy
Prep Time – 15 Minutes
Cooking Time – 40 Minutes (Hot Dog Buns)

Any shape. Any size! Low Carb Bun shapes are versatile.

Ingredients
8 Large Eggs, separated
5/8c Cottage Cheese (any kind - recipe used Whole Milk)
1-1/8c Mozzarella Cheese, shredded
½ tsp Granulated Garlic
¼ tsp Granulated Onion Powder
¼ tsp Kosher Salt
1 scoop Protein Powder (about 30g or 1/4 to 1/3c, scoop comes with protein)
¼ tspCream of Tartar
1-1/2 tsp Country Dijon (optional)
2 tsp Baking Powder, Gluten Free, non-aluminum
Sesame Seeds or Poppy Seeds, optional (about ¼ tsp. per roll and 1Tbsp per Focaccia recipe)
Preheat oven to 325°. Line baking sheet and with parchment paper or aluminum foil and set aside.


Make bun molds from non-stick aluminum foil and
any shaped item in the house. Spice jars make great shapes!

Use a jar of capers or olives, or a spice bottle, anything you can think of, who said corners can’t be square? Pick a mold slightly larger than the size you want for the finished rolls. These rolls tend to shrink as they cool by about 20%.

(Note on shaping: Make sure to make 2 molds per sheet of aluminum foil so they don’t fall over. Two will create a more steady shape and will retain a curve easier. )
If using non-stick aluminum foil, no need to spray molds with cooking spray. If using regular aluminum foil, then spray molds with olive oil spray and set aside on baking sheets.  (But you should really use the non-stick aluminum foil…)

Yolk Mixture for Low Carb, Gluten Free
Revolutionary Buns and Wraps.

Grate mozzarella cheese.

Blend cottage cheese with a small food processor until smooth.
Grind pork rinds into crumbs with the knife blade of the food processor (if using them).

Measure coconut flour (if using) and sift into dry ingredients.

Measure out protein powder,
salt, garlic and onion powders and mix with dry ingredients to combine.

Separate egg yolks from whites and place into two very clean, oil free pans.

Add cheeses and dry ingredients to the bowl with the yolks and set aside. You will beat this after whipping the egg whites – unless you want to thoroughly wash your beaters in between! (Remember the beaters used for the egg white must be scrupulously clean and dry before beating the whites.)

Beat egg whites to the foamy stage and then add cream of tartar. Beat whites to a hard peak stage. Go look at the instructions in the Basic Rev Roll technique post if you have any doubts about whether you’ve whipped them enough. When they are ready, the whites will no longer move in the bowl. No slippin’ or slidin’ for those egg whites!

Blend egg yolk mixture for 2-3 minutes. The yolk mixture is ready when they change to a lemony color and when the lumps of shredded cheese are mostly gone. It doesn’t have to be perfect!

Fold the whites into the yolk in 3 additions. The first one loosens the yolk mixture and the other two are to add volume so don’t overwork!


Top low carb buns with sesame, poppy or chia seeds!

Spoon the mixture into bun molds. About 3 heaping soup spoons/tablespoons or a generous ¼-3/8 cup of batter will work.

Sprinkle buns with sesame or poppy seeds, or rehydrated minced onions – whatever you want, add fresh herbs or cracked pepper and coarse sea salt!

You’ll get about 8-10 good sized buns depending on how big you made your molds.

Bake rolls at 325° for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown and done throughout. If using two baking sheets, rotate the pans between the two racks of your oven at the 17minute mark!

Buns and wraps are best made hours before or even up to 4 days ahead. Store the buns and wraps in an air tight bag or container in your refrigerator. They become soft and sturdier with age, resisting tears and breaking.

Nutritional Information

Single Serving - 1 Bun or 1 Wrap

Full Recipe

Cheesy Asparagus

My friend, who also had the sleeve a few weeks after me, told me about this recipe she came up with, and it's so good!

This is great for use in the toaster oven!

I always boil my asparagus, because I'm afraid of under cooking them and them not tasting so great....but this works great in the toaster oven!

What you need:

Asparagus (whatever serving size you can eat. I do between 5-8 spears), snapped
String cheese
Parmesan Cheese

Preheat your toaster oven to 425. Spray your pan with non stick spray. Lay down the asparagus, pull apart your string cheese and lay across and all over your asparagus, and then sprinkle with a small amount of fresh grated Parmesan cheese! Cook for about 10 minutes and enjoy!

76 Calorie Crustless Pumpkin Cheesecake!

I have been craving pumpkin. It's really odd, and I don't know why. I'm thinking it's because this year I won't be chugging down any of Jack In The Box's Pumpkin Pie milk shakes....

After searching, and searching, and searching....I finally found a pumpkin flavored recipe that looked good, until I calculated the nutrition facts and oh boy...I shredded that recipe! It was a pumpkin whoopie pie recipe (with me substituting with low fat/ff ingredients and cutting all corners I could) was over 400 calories, 55+carbs, and an insane amount of fat! No way was I going to eat even half of a serving....so I continued to search.

I hadn't baked a cheese cake before, but I've heard it's basically just cream cheese...so I looked up the main ingredients needed, which were cream cheese and eggs. So I made up my own low carb, low fat, and low calorie crustless pumpkin cheesecake!

What you need:

1 15oz Can of Pumpkin (I used Great Value brand 100% pumpkin)
10oz Fat Free Cream Cheese, room temperature (Also used great value brand, this was one brick plus 2 oz of my leftover brick, making 10 oz)
3 eggs
1 cup splenda
Cinnamon
Ground Nutmeg
Ground Cloves

Preheat oven to 350.

In a mixing bowl, combine pumpkin and cream cheese, using a hand mixer until mixed well. Then add in the eggs. Sprinkle with cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. I did not measure these ingredients, it all depends on how much "spice" you want to taste.

I used my small square pyrex baking dish. Spray pan of your choice (smaller pan is better unless recipe is doubled). Pour mixture into pan, and even out as much as possible with a spatula or knife. Cook uncovered for about 40 minutes. I checked mine around the 30 minute mark with a tooth pick and extended the cooking time based on those results.

Once it's done cooking, put pan in refrigerator for 3-4 hours letting it cool completely and get chilled before eating.

Serving size is 9! 76 Calories, 1.7g fat, 6.5 Carbs, and 7.2g protein!

Teriyaki Chicken

This is such a quick meal!

You can use a boneless skinless breast or thigh for this meal. The thighs usually come out really good!

I take a pyrex pan, spray with non stick spray, pour teriyaki premade marinade over the chicken (Lawry's brand, great value brand, etc., found in the BBQ sauce aisle). Top with sesame seeds (optional). Cook at 375 for about 40 minutes.

Once it's done, I like to slice the chicken and spoon over extra marinade from the pan onto the chicken!

80 Calorie Southwest "taquitos"

These were delicious! About 80 calories each! (not including sour cream), nutrition facts are below.

What you need:

-20 Wonton Wrappers
-6oz cooked boneless skinless chicken breast, chopped in small peices
-2oz mild cheddar cheese, shredded
-2oz fat free cream cheese
1/2c salsa (I used Pace Picante Chunky)
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with foil and spray with non stick cooking spray.

Spoon filling into each wrapper, and roll like a taquito (both ends open). Place seem side down on cookie sheet. Spray a light layer of non stick spray on the wrappers once all laid down.

Cook for 20-25 minutes, turning once. until you can see some crispness on the wrappers.

Dip in guacamole or sour cream (not included in the nutrition facts). You can also add corn for even more of a southwest flavor, but since I cannot eat corn until I'm 6 months post op, I did not include it.

Nutrition facts were calculated with myfitnesspal app, imputing the exact ingredients I used. I suggest you do this as well to get a more accurate count since nutritional value varies by brand.

Greek Salad

Well, I ended up not making the zucchini pizza, but I did make a Greek Salad. YUM! It was only about 250 calories, using 4 oz of chicken breast & Ken's Greek dressing. I only ate about 1/3 of it, but I will finish the rest later!

Cucumber Sandwhiches & a photo of ME :)

Look! It's me :) 37lbs lighter. I'm starting to slowly see results with my stomach shrinking...and I like this picture of me haha.

I still have not had bread (other than the english muffin I tried to eat a few weeks ago and managed to throw it up right away....ugh, not fun!) but I wanted something that sort of resembeled a sandwhich, so I made "Cucumber Sandwhiches."

Two slices of cucumber as the "bread" and a peice of salami and cheese in the middle! I dipped them in spicy mustard, but the second time I had them I used a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese instead of the mustard.

That was the first time I tried that cheese and OH EM GEE. It was so good! :D That can be dangerous LOL

Carbless Crepes with Cream of mushroom & Chicken!

I came across this recipe on the forum on verticalsleevetalk.com, that redirected me to this site for the crepe recipe.

This is the first time I was able to make a successful crepe! I filled mine with bite size pieces of already cooked chicken thighs, mixed with cream of mushroom soup, and topped with reduced fat shredded cheese (fiesta blend).

I was thinking the cinamon and sugar used in the recipe would make it taste to sweet with the chicken but it was a nice combo.

I even had a small crepe left over that I filled with Ricotta cheese mixed with a splash of Almond Roca Torani sugar free syrup! Ahhhh heaven!!

I also served with a small side of brussel sprouts. I was only able to eat half of my crepe :( Guess I know what I'm brining to work tomorrow for lunch!

Tuna melt without bread!

I really wanted a tuna melt tonight, but of course I cannot have bread or all those carbs--and I didn't want my oven to heat up my entire house in this super hot 110 degree weather...

So I turned on my toaster oven instead and placed some foil on the cookie sheet, and sprayed it really good with olive oil flavored pam, placed down won ton wrappers, sprayed them with pam, and let them get crispy (about 5 minutes), turned them over, put my tuna fish on top (I made it earlier, just normal tuna in water, some light mayo and mustard and diced pickles) and topped with reduced fat cheese, cooked until the cheese was melted!

Blackened Lemon Pepper Tilapia

This was so good!

What you need:

• Tilapia (depending on your # of servings, adjust the # of tilapia, I usually do one per person, even though that is too much for me, I save my other half for leftovers!)
• Lemon Pepper
• Garlic Powder
• Season Salt
• Fresh Lemons or Lemon juice
• Olive Oil

I do not measure the seasonings, what you want to do is pour a good amount of the lemon pepper and garlic powder (enough to coat at least one side of each fish) and the season salt you do not want to over do it, because it will be extremely salty, so I use about 1/4 of what I used with the other seasonings. Coat the fish in the seasonings.

Using a frying pan, put a small amount of olive oil, and once hot, place the fish in the pan. If you only seasoned one side, put the seasoned side down. Cook for about 3-4 mins on each side.

Garnish with a lemon for extra lemon flavor, or lemon juice on the side. I served mine with a side of creamed spinach from Green Giant, the one in the frozen section!

Buried Chicken & Zucchini

Yesterday I made chicken & zucchini, which I suppose was perfect because I later found out it was national zucchini day!

The recipe is below.

By "burying" the chicken in the zucchini, it keeps the chicken moist! Moist meat is essential to me right now, it makes the food go down easier. I was able to eat the piece of chicken (about 4oz) and a few rings of zucchini.

Ingredients:

2 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (or more, depending on how many you are cooking for)
1 medium zucchini (if you are using a larger pan cooking for more people, cut up enough to cover the entire dish) sliced into to thin rings.
1/3c shredded mozzarella cheese
Seasonings for chicken (I use paprika, Mrs. Dash, and garlic salt)
Garlic salt & dried basil for topping the zucchini

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.

Using a pyrex or similar dish, spray it with non stick cooking spray. Place the chicken in the pan, top with seasonings.

Lay out the zucchini out to cover the chicken and the rest of the entire pan. This is what keeps the chicken extra moist. Sprinkle with garlic salt, mozzarella cheese, and dried basil.

Cook for 35 minutes.

Sugar free Torani Syrups!

I was very sketchy before I tried this! I like ricotta cheese, but with pasta....not sweet. Well, at least I thought I didn't like it when it tasted sweet!

If you take about 1/4c of ricotta cheese and a small splash of sugar free Torani syrup, it tastes like some kind of pastry like filling.

There are so many flavors to choose from too! I like English Toffee and Salted Caramel.

I've also mixed them with small curd fat free cottage cheese.

Better for you than ice cream, still sweet, and lots of protein.

Shelly's Baked Ricotta

Last night for dinner I made Shelly's Baked Ricotta! Wow it was so good! If my pouch weren't so small I'd be going for seconds! You can find the recipe in her blog.

When calculating one portion of the mixture, (Mine made 4 servings) It came out to 198 calories, 12.2g fat, 6g carbs, 17g protein.

I bought these small containers from Walmart to freeze the left over portions.

I also got this great pan from Walmart as well that made the portions! It was perfect!

This is the pan I bought! It will have many uses and it was only about $10 :)

Sausage, egg, & cheese with hollandaise sauce

Today I added some more flavor to my breakfast!

I'm in the pureed phase of my diet.

I cooked a small scoop of reduced fat ground sausage, and once it was cooked, I added an egg, scrambled it all together with some salt and pepper, then melted a small amount of shredded cheese in it. I then topped it with hollandaise sauce (I use Knorr brand), this way it was extra moist and easier to chew.

I was probably a little bit too full after eating this. Next time I will have to put less sausage!

First Post Op Check-up!

Day 13!

I had my first post-op visit today with my doctor. He's happy with my progress and has progressed me on to pretty much all foods that are soft. I'm so glad to be able to start cooking again and trying new recipes! Not to mention, being able to actually chew foods haha.

He removed the taps from my scars (well, still forming scars), there are no signs of an infection. He also cleared me for any physical activity and wants me to push myself on the treadmill. He says my stomach is about 80% healed and I won't be able to "hurt it" with exercise or other physical activity.

I did tell him that I was still feeling exhausted at times, especially while walking. He said it will probably last about another week.

I go back in two weeks, the day I go back to work. Boohoo! Work? Blah!

Last night I had Weight Watcher's Taco Soup (recipe is below) for dinner. I only had a little over 1/4 cup and 2 saltine crackers, it was so good!

The next big goal I'm setting for myself is to weigh 250lbs. That will be my pre-pregancy weight from nearly 8 years ago. That's 17lbs to go! Hoping to accomplish this by Sept 1!

Taco Soup Recipe:

1 15oz can tomato sauce
2 cans of turkey chili
1lb ground turkey, cooked
1 can black beans
1 sm can diced green chilies
2 cans diced tomatoes with green chilies
1 packet of hidden valley ranch
1 packet taco mix
1 1/2c water
1c frozen corn (I did not add corn because I cannot eat this yet)

Heat all contents and serve! Can top with diced onion and cheese as well.