Losing momentum

I'm finding myself losing momentum with the diet (or, just thinking that I'm losing momentum because I've upped my daily consumption).

CH-ch-ch-chickUN!

The chicken was fabulous lastnight! Baked nuggety goodness on a baking sheet.

Batter:
2tbs wheat gluten
4tbs wheat germ (who knew it would be so yummy?!?!)
about 1/8th of a cup of plain bread crumbs (I'd rather use them up than throw them out).
Flavor to taste (onion powder, garlic powder, citric acid (for some tang), smoked black pepper, a touch of cumin, a touch of basil and 2 pinches of Herb-Ox sodium free chicken bouillon.
Preheat oven to 400F

Chicken was sliced into 2-bite-sized morsels, egg washed (egg whites only) and drenched in the dry batter mix.
A cookie sheet was oiled lightly with cooking spray. Chicken was placed on the tray and given a quick topcoat with cooking spray.

Bake for 22-24 minutes. The batter had a wonderful, delicate crispiness and a really rich flavor. I need to isolate which bit did the trick: bread crumbs, wheat gluten or wheat germ. The wheat germ lent a wonderful nutty flavor that went exceptionally well with the spicing. The bits were delicious dipped in tabasco sauce.

I also attempted another eggplant skin experiment. I just can't seem to reproduce the bacon effect. This time, I cut razor thin planks of almost nothing but the skin, greased them down and popped on a cookie sheet. The pieces were to rigid and sharp. I think I should try cooking them longer next time.

The last bit of accidental deliciousness came from my discovery of Bakey Bits™.
To make Bakey Bits™, pour the leftover egg whites into the leftover dry batter from above. Shake it all up and you'll get solid little nuggets. Bake for 20 minutes and you get Bakey Bits™!! The closest thing I can compare them to are hushpuppies, but without the fried parts. They bake up brown and crunchy which a soft, puffy center.

DInner was topped off with some steamed spinach and properly made fauxtatoes (I finally bought a potato masher, so no more chunks). 1tbs of wheat germ took care of the wetness issues.

Dessert: Lemon jello and yogurt.

I ate a bit too much, so I had a bunch of leftovers.

Total caloric intake: 1678 (dinner and dessert accounting for 900)

Sweet delight with vicious bite

Someone mentioned to me today that Julia Childs suggested placing a vanilla pod into a jar of sugar to make vanilla sugar.  I have some dried tsien tsien peppers; I'm going to place a couple in a jar of sugar, then using a mortar and pestle, grind up a tiny amount to sprinkle in making hot pepper sugar.  Oh my, such yumminess.

(Oooh...wasabi-sugar!  Must.hit.Penzey's on the way home)

Easter dinner....

I wanted something quick, so I made stuffed *balls, but changed it up:

Ground trukey
2 green onion
1 stalk of asparagus
1/4 cup fine sliced red pepper
wheat germ

All sliced fine and rolled up, stuffed with a mushroom (I wanted to stuff it with the asparagus - I may do that tonight).

I layered fresh spinach on top of the balls in the steamer - spinach matched perfectly.

Dessert was greek yogurt with vanilla and lime. (I'm going to try and make my own greek yogurt in the next few days (recipe here. It looks dead easy, and a hell of a lot cheaper than $5 for 2 cups).

Total consumption: 1800 calories. Right on target.

Happy Anniversary!

A year ago today was my first day without a cigarette in 18 years. Today marks one entire year without a cig. I really don't miss it. Well, there are some things I do miss: cloves being one. I wish I could smoke without inhaling, but I fear that may lead me down a dangerous path).

I may finally throw away the pack of smokes that has been sitting on my stove (or maybe not - I almost feel like it's a charm).

Go me.

Weekend recovery

I was worried about my eating over the weekend. A good friend was in town, and food options were limited, so I prepared as best as I could.

The Burger King lunch was the killer. I chose as best as I could from the menu, but still ended up with a fat-laden, 1000 calorie disaster.

Dinner was a few sandwiches of cold cuts; not bad, in and of itself, but the gracious host pushed his sweet, sweet wares on me, and I ate a canoli, a brownie and an eclair, which put consumption for the day at 3000 calories.

Sunday, I spent the day at work, went shopping and got back on track. I tried to get some exercise in: fast walk (according to my calculations, I'm getting up to 4.5mph. Not bad for having stubby legs) with medicine ball juggling (I'm really liking the tone my forearms are developing). The only problem with walking is that I'm not getting my heart rate where I want it to be. My doc says that 160 is perfect, but I'm not getting about 140. I'll need to intensify what I'm doing.

You've got to make better choices, man.

I didn't get home until 11 last night. Yesterday turned out to be a crisis day and I lost complete track of time and barely ate.

I missed breakfast (the moment I arrived at work, I was grabbed to put out fires) and only had a medium Dunkin Donuts coffee (with even less redeeming nutritional value: no sugar, no cream, no nuttin). I made an attempt at lunch (brought from home: an array of veggies and my to die for avocado tzatziki), but after a few mushrooms, I realized that I had no appetite.

The fires burned bright, and I started getting shaky, and my cow-orkers push upon me a girl scout cookie and some goldfish (which quelled the vibrations and allowed me to, you know, not pass out). A few hours later, dizziness ensued again, so I forced a finishing of the vegetables, tastysauce and a granny smith apple that I forgot I had.

After the flames had been successfully retarded, I packed up and headed home, knowing full well that 300 calories was not enough to sustain me, so I plotted a quick dinner (in retrospect, I think should have just gone to bed and stuffed my face this morning).

I made a strange concoction consisting of a chicken breast, 2 eggs and a can of corn, seasoned to some alien taste. While I can't say that it tasted good, it was extraordinarily satisfying. I followed it up with a cup of yogurt, ending the day with 1100 calories.

When I get to work today, I won't allow anyone to kep me from breakfast.
I have to runout of work during lunch today0, so0 I may pick up a can of smoked oysters or something similar. Lots of protein, and a reasonable amount of fat. I need to figure out some good carbs to go with it.

If the shoe fits, eat it

I'm not hungry. This is worrisome.

I'm officially an ad whore

I decided, on a whim, to sign up for AdSense. Come on my peep (I think there's only one, so far). Help me make a dollar this year!

Fat Man is sleepy

I simply not getting enough nutrition. A month ago, I was stuffing my face with anything and everything and today I have no appetite. Why must I only do things in the extreme?

I'm 120 calories in today. I was close to passing out when I got home last night and still only clocked the whole day in at around 1300. I have no appetite (I wasn't even hungry for the tzatziki). In my estimation, I've either borked my brain or I have stomach cancer.

I had some naked mirror time last night and realized that parts of me are starting to look like a Shar pei. Lovely. This will score points on the date, surely.

I really have no idea as to what my weight is right now. I've been estimating 330 (because that's how I feel).

FitDay disappointment

I started all of this three weeks ago when I started using FitDay, an online food diary/nutrition tracker. I really liked the ability to microtrack all of my nutrition, and I've been recording my intake religiously.

The website frequently shows an ad for purchasing the PC version, allowing for more detailed charts and whatnot. Today, I decided that it would be great to e able to do it, so I shelled out the $20 and installed it.

The single biggest problem I have is that it has NO hooks into the website. None. I read through the software description, and in my opinion, anyone would assume that it would. There's no way to import external data (and the website offers no way of exporting). I'm going to try and take apart the local database and see if I can write some pipe to spit data from the site into the proper db format. We'll see.

I haven't delved deeper into the software (I'll be damned if I reenter the last three weeks of data) as I have no data sets to work with.

I'll be shooting the FitDay folks a cranky email tomorrow; it's rather disingenuous to present this software package that is apparently advertised as a companion to the website when there is no connectivity.

Now, FAT MAN MUST SLEEP.

Dinner wound up being strange. I was a little high from lack of proper nutrition this evening, so my culinary attempt was a partial failure.

I mashed up some cauliflower with nutritional yeast, garlic, onion, salt and pepper and tried to stuff chicken *balls, but the chicken was too sticky, and I was too tired, so I had one ball with mashed cauliflower and the rest with no stuffing. The balls WERE tasty, just not what I expected. Served with steamed broccoli and extra mashed cauliflower.

Dessert: yogurt with vanilla

Speshul Sauce

I just whipped up a fresh batch of tzatziki - using avocado for a real green goddess flavor. I must say, I've impressed myself.

Fat Man is not pleased

Dinner was a disappointment, but not so much to completely ruin me.

Falafel Chicken
Falafel Eggplant
Steamed Broccoli
Cabbage
Oyster mushrooms

Steamed oyster mushrooms are gagalicious. Seriously nasty. And I'm getting really sick of cabbage.

Dessert (so sweet) was OK. I forgot to make Jello, so I had an orange, an apple, a chunk of coconut and a cup of yogurt with lime, vanilla and splenda.

It's the season for the reason

*ball template

Ground * (1/2lb is my standard)
1/2 cup of green peas
2tbs wheat gluten (binds everything well and imparts a chewier texture-yum!)(I want to try this with sweet rice flour as well)
Dehydrated onion (about 2 tbs) or fresh onion (1/4 med onion, minced or chopped fine)
1tbs garlic
1tbs coarse black pepper
1 egg white (optional - debatable - still experimenting)

Try to mush up the peas before adding to the meat.
Mush peas and meat together (I just squish the whole mess with my hands, squeezing bits between my fingers. Vinyl prep gloves reduce the gross factor.)

Add spices and mush again. Add egg and mush.
Roll the meat into a big ball and make a well in the center (like you're making biscuits). Pour wheat gluten in well, fold and mush until well mixed.

Divide meat into X balls and put in $cooking_implement(I use my rice cooker w/ steaming tray)
(Usually makes 6-8 good sized spheres)

Some ways I like to change it up:
Meat additions: sriracha, black bean paste, cilantro, jalapeno, nutritional yeast

One thing I tried a few weeks ago (which has now become the standard) is to stuff the meatball. I'll take a small amount of the meat mix and flatten it into a thin patty.
Next, place the stuffee (I typically use a whole white button mushroom) on top and press. Try to fold the meat over the entire mushroom (this can be delicate work).
If you can't get complete coverage, grab some more meat and close the holes.
Shape a little more and cook.

I don't put salt in the mix, but salting them lightly after cooking really brings out the flavor.

Last night's dinner

While I would not call it a failure, I wouldn't call it a complete success, but there were successful elements.

*balls (chicken variety) stuffed with shitake mushrooms and tomatoes. I modified my basic *ball recipe and tried tossing a chunk of tomato in the center. The end result was a tasty meatball filled with stewed tomato and mushroom. Stewed tomatoes rate very low on my list of tasty things. The rest of the meatball was great, though; the fermented black bean paste gave it a great savory flavor, and the sriracha gave it the perfect amount of kick.

Fauxtatoes: 3/4 head of cauliflower steamed and mashed with pepper, 2tbs of parmesan cheese and 2 tbs of nutritional yeast (not as nasty as it sounds - adds great umame!)

The success: eggplant crackers!! VERY thin sliced egglplant, sprayed w/ cooking spray, coated w/ garlic and onion powder, baked for 25 minutes and broiled for 5. YUM!

All greek to me

I just got a cow orker to try my homemade tzatziki sauce. She thought it was rather delicious (and I'm bouncy :).

Lunch:
Tzatziki
Cuke
Carrots
Shitake mushrooms (need to find out about the bleu cheese taste).

My tzatziki recipe:
plain non-fat yogurt
1/4 cuke grated
1tbs coarse ground black/white pepper
2tbs garlic powder (didn't have any minced handy)
1tbs onion powder
1tsp dill
3-4 big squirts of lime juice
1/4tsp olive oil

blend well and put in fridge covered for a few hours to let the flavors settle.

So hungry

I need to boost what I eat during the day. I've consumed roughly 300 calories today - not enough, really. While that does leave me more room, calorie-wise, for dinner, I really want to move the big meal to lunch at some point.

Tonight's menu:

Shitake stuffed chicken spheres
Eggplant planks experiment: trial 2
Br-Br-Br-Broccoli and/or Fautatoes.

Dessert shall be lemon jello with yogurty goodness.

Last night contained a somewhat successful experiment that led to an amazing revelation:

The goal was to make breaded, fried eggplant without breading or frying.  First, I took a few long and very thin cross-section slices (think sagittal view).  Then I coated the (eggwashed) eggplant in falafel mix (more about that later).  I spray olive oil flavored cooking spray onto a piece of tinfoil, and piled on the coated eggplant.  Then I seasoned with garlic and onion powder and gave a quick topcoat spray with the spray oil.  

Baked at 400F for 20 minutes, then set to broil for 5.

The "breading" was still a bit too bland..(I'll try again tonight by spicing it up a bit more), but overall, it was very tasty.  The very thin slices were crispy like crackers!!

Now, the revelation:  the broiled eggplant skin tasted JUST LIKE BACON!!!  *faint*

I need to try skinning a whole eggplant and attempt doing some vegan pork rind type things.

I need to come up with a good and easy way to extract data from FitDay.  I can grab a url that goes to my current day's states - I can even break down dates through the url.  The biggest challenge is parsing the data.  This may be my excuse to play with Yahoo...the Yahoo thingy that I'm blanking on. I could always do the parsing on my virt box, but I'm considering shutting it down.  We'll see.

(Yahoo tubes?  pipes?  PIpes!  Aha!  It is Pipes. Cool.

Let's get this thing on the hump

The terms are simple:

0) Monitor and record all nutritional intake and physical activity
b) Make up tasty and filling recipes that adhere to a very rough set of guidelines
III) Blog about it every single day

Good luck