Easy, Yummy Oven-Fried Chicken

Peapod failed to bring cod to my house so meals were shuffled around and, viola, oven-fried chicken on Wednesday. Yes. I'm all daring like that. I halved Betty Crocker's "Oven-Fried Ranch Chicken" recipe and it was pretty darn good for a recipe that had essentially four ingredients -- chicken, buttermilk, ranch dressing mix, and cornbread mix.

I only used drumsticks for this recipe as I wanted to make sure everything cooked evenly. Next time, I might use a combination of thighs and drumsticks. Generally, I prefer dark meat for recipes like this because the chicken seems harder to overcook but, if I get really comfortable with this recipe, I might try it with split breasts.

I also substituted 3 tablespoons of Penzeys Buttermilk Ranch dressing mix for the envelopes of mix. I'm pretty sure you could simplify this recipe and just cover your chicken with a bottle of commercially prepared buttermilk ranch if you didn't want to faff around with mix packets and buttermilk (or sour milk). Regardless of what you soak it in, I strongly recommend letting your chicken soak overnight. I know some chefs say there's no difference between long-term and short-term soaking, but I swear I taste the difference.

Anyway, this recipe is incredibly easy to put together, generates very little mess, and tastes pretty darn good. I will definitely be making it again -- especially when the farm stand down the road starts selling their Kandy Korn. Mmmm. Fried chicken, corn on the cob, and potato salad. A perfect supper.

(Of course, a supper of fried chicken, buttermilk smashed potatoes, and buttery parsleyed carrots isn't far from perfection!)

New Toys!

Because I'm a 17-week Weight Watchers subscriber rather than a monthly, I don't have "free" access to Weight Watchers' eTools. And, you know, that's okay with me. I don't want too get too wrapped up in Weight Watchers' bells and whistles, because I worry they will over complicate the program for me. As old school as it is, I'm happy to track my Points+ usage and activity in a composition book. The Complete Food Companion and calculator I bought at my first meeting are both veryvery handy, of course, but I haven't felt I needed any more Weight Watchers bling.

That was until this weekend when, monkeying around in the Android Market, I found a free app called WW ScanCalc. It was such a great find! I use my phone to scan the UPC barcode on a food item and the app automatically calculates its Points+ value. Suddenly my little blue Points+ calculator with its many tiny buttons seems too complicated when I can just point and scan. I've been going through my kitchen, rather obsessively scanning food and labeling each container with its Points+ value. (I'd always meant to do this with my calculator, but had been too lazy).

I haven't tried WW ScanCalc at the grocery store, but I'm guessing it will be a great time saver there, too!

I also installed another free app called WW Point Calculator which is a free Points+ calculator. It looks like there are a bunch of free Points calculators available at the Android Market, but many use the old Points math. While I haven't used this app much as I'm either at work with scannable processed snack food or at home with my "real" calculator, it seems to work fine.

How about you? Any nifty diet/exercise apps you like?

Menu Plan Monday, 27 June

This week continues along last week's path -- lots of grilled meats and tossed salads.  Am trying out a couple side dish recipes from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook which I brought home from the library last week.  Many of the recipes sound pretty tempting, but I've not delved too deep yet.  Perhaps next week I will try something like "Lamb Shanks with White Beans" in my slow cooker.

Monday

• Enormous tossed salad topped with oil packed tuna, diced pickled beets, garlicky croutons, and low fat balsamic vinaigrette.

Tuesday

• Grilled marinated pork tenderloin with tossed salad and spicy black-eyed peas. 

Wednesday

• Basil-roasted cod with tossed salad. Ingredients: cod (from freezer), garden basil, grape tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, olive oil.

Thursday

• Ham sammich on multigrain with garden greens, light Swiss, and blue cheese mustard. Plus low fat Greek yoghurt and low-sodium pretzels.

Friday

• Grilled marinated steaks with "Wild Mushrooms with Fresh Thyme" from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook and tossed salad.  Ingredients: small grass-fed beef steaks, red wine marinade, mushrooms, garlic, thyme, light soy sauce, garden parsley, black pepper.

Saturday/Sunday

• Oven-fried chicken with "All-American Potato Salad" from Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook and garden salad. Ingredients: small red potatoes, light mayonnaise, garden parsley, scallions, celery, cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt, black pepper. (Haven't quite figured out which oven-fried chicken recipe to use).

Weight Watchers Weigh In: Skipping Out

I did not go to Weight Watchers today. I woke up at seven, opened the curtains, saw another grey rainy day, thought "ehhhh ..." and went back to bed.

Brilliant.

Slurping Sorrel Soup

I used to buy glass jars of condensed sorrel soup from the Polish market down the street, but the market closed up a few years ago now and I've been unable to find a local supplier. Happily, when I took my mom to Salem Herbfarm on Mother's Day, I picked up a wee potted sorrel plant with the intention of making my own sorrel soup ... should my plant survive my cats and the weird weather we get up here on Death Mountain.

Well, whodathunkit, but my plant quite took to my garden and is enormous. Some of the gardening guides say that, like rhubarb, leaves shouldn't be harvested until the second year, but my plant is so big and lush that I can't help myself and must harvest leaves now. And eat them up, yum.

To make my soup, I used a recipe for "Sorrel and Potato Soup (Potage à L'oseille)." This recipe makes for a much smoother, creamier, richer soup than the tart brothy jarred soup I am used to, but it is so delicious I don't care. The day I made this soup, I seriously considered staying home from work and eating soup all day. I am actually quite pleased The Husband turned his nose up at it, because it means I don't have to share!

I followed the original recipe pretty closely except that I used a mixture of red onion and shallots (didn't have quite enough shallots on hand) and vegetable broth instead of chicken broth and wine. Rather than puree the soup, I diced the potatoes very small before I cooked them and then mashed them a bit with a spoon to create a slightly chunkier soup.

Out & About, So Help Me God

As I get older, one of the things I fear my fatness will bring on -- besides the many (probably) lifestyle related diseases which plague my family -- is isolation. I have family members who are so large they will not leave their homes if they can help it, because they find it so difficult to move around in unfat society and spaces.

I've always been body conscious and a tad shy. When I look at my homebound family members I wonder if that's how it started: you feel awkward squeezing yourself into spaces meant for unfat people, your awkwardness makes you sensitive to other people's (probably wholly innocent) looks, you imagine the terrible things they might be thinking (or saying), so you start avoiding those spaces ... jump forward twenty years, and you're homebound. I don't know that's how it worked for my family members, but I fear that's how it could happen to me and I'm trying hard to keep it from happening. While  I will probably never be as thin as some chart or societal standard says I "ought" to be,  I will be damned if I will let fear of awkwardness and other people's opinions isolate me.

This summer, I'm trying to get out more and mix with strangers. Every week or so this summer, I've registered to participate in a garden walk at a local park or talk at a local library. I've also pencilled in days to visit local museums to see different travelling exhibits. While all of these events are free or very cheap, they all require me to leave the house and mix with complete strangers -- many of whom will not be fat like me.

[My hope is that, after enough of these activities, fraternizing with strangers in a physical space will become old hat and I'll do it all the time. Right now, my life is a very limited (and entirely predictable) cycle of work-home-work. I used to go to the theater and shizzle, you know, but that fell by the wayside a few years ago (economics, wot) with a number of other things I enjoyed and I let work and home take over].

Tabouli(ish) Lentils

I planted a wee pot of sorrel in my vegetables garden about a month ago and the plant is now quite enormous. I had planned make soup with my sorrel Sunday afternoon, but it just didn't work out. I had the recipe all picked out -- "Sorrel and Potato Soup (Potage à L'oseille)" -- and was ready to go. Just needed to pick up potatoes and heavy cream at the market. Well, wouldn't you know, the market was out of heavy cream. Yes. Madness. The rest of my groceries couldn't stay in the hot car while I scouted other markets for heavy cream so I just went home and sulked a bit.

Then, I made a lentil-sorrel salad by modifying Robin Asbell's recipe for "Sorrel-Freekeh Tabouli." I used a 17.63 ounce package of cooked lentils instead of cracked freekeh, because I was in the mood for lentils. The mint and sorrel flavors work well together -- the mint mellows the sorrel's tartness while the sorrel keeps the mint from taking over.

I served this salad over lettuce greens from my garden and sprinkled it with some goat cheese crumbles. It makes for a filling lunch and I've found it will carry me through the afternoon without a three o'clock snack binge. Yay, for soluble fiber?

Menu Plan Monday, 20 June

Still more gardening to do this week, plus a shift swap, and some after work activities so ... a pretty basic menu plan of convenience foods paired with grilled protein of some kind or other and salad made with greens from my garden.

This week I will finish planting and mulching and next week I will cook proper meals using actual recipes from real cookbooks, so help me god.

Meatless Monday

• Whole Foods's falafel wrap with mango and low fat Greek yoghurt.

Tuesday

• Garden greens tossed with Whole Foods's Black Bean Salad Shaker.

Wednesday

• Grilled marinated boneless pork loin chops (from freezer) with garden salad and Seed's of Change's "Siena Tuscan-Style" whole grain rice and bean blend.

Thursday

• Garden salad topped with chopped leftover pork chop and crumbled goat cheese, with low fat Greek yoghurt and kiwi.

Friday

• Grilled marinated boneless skinless chicken breasts (from freezer) with steamed green beans and Seeds of Change's ready-to-heat "Tigris" grain blend.

Saturday/Sunday

• Grilled marinated beef steaks (from freezer) with "Chipotle Ranch" Suddenly Salad and garden salad.

Gardening My Butt Off

I stuck with my plan and engaged in activity every day this past week! Five days, I chugged along to the early tunes of Elton John and Madonna. There was a little Kelly Clarkson and Britney Spears mixed in there, too, which probably tells you I stopped paying attention to the music industry about five years ago.

The remaining two days, I gardened my butt off. Well ... I'd certainly like to think all that digging of holes, filling of holes, hauling of mulch, and spreading of mulch toned some muscles and, maybe, reduced the size of my butt. Surely, the regular activity I've been getting has been making some improvements because, while I was dog-tired after each day of gardening, I found I didn't hurt nearly as much as I expected to. And I earned another activity star toward the President's Challenge.

So, yay, for regular physical activity!

Have I lost any weight? Don't know. Have forbidden myself from stepping on a scale outside of Weight Watchers or a health care facility since I realized I was hopping on our bathroom scale every damned morning last week. Not a road I want to go down as I already have enough obsessions without adding new ones.

Frustratingly, my work schedule flip-flopped this week and I can't go to my usual Weight Watchers meeting. There are two other local meetings I could attend -- one meets during lunch on Friday and I could just about get there and back during my break, but I would be cutting it awfully close. The other one, the one I plan on going to, meets at 8 am on Saturday. Yes. Because I am such a happy morning person!

Easy Comfort Food: Sausages & Polenta

Friday, I came home from work craving something comforting and starchy for supper. There were no potatoes in the house, but I found a tube of refrigerated polenta in the back of the crisper drawer and, as I had already thawed a package of sun-dried tomato and basil chicken sausage, roasted sausages and polenta seemed to be the thing:

I roasted the sausages using Jamie Oliver's recipe for "Sweet Cherry Tomato and Sausage Bake" (Jamie at Home, Hyperion: 2008) but modified it somewhat to suit my ingredients -- I used a mix of grape tomatoes, red bell pepper, and red onion instead of just cherry tomatoes and dried bay as well as fresh oregano, rosemary, and thyme from my garden. Just roasted everything until, as Jamie says, the sausages were "golden and sticky."

To make the polenta, I ran the tube of polenta through my food processor with milk, garlic, and Parmigiano-Reggiano until it was smooth and then microwaved it for about 3 minutes (stirring halfway through). Seasoned it with a little black pepper and it was good to go.

This was a very easy, satisfying weeknight meal.

Birthday Cookies

My Dad likes root beer (once upon a time, he even worked at an A&W root beer stand) and I wanted to bake something root beer-y for his birthday, but that's not a flavor I often come across in cookbooks and I was kind-of stuck as to what to make. Happily, the Internet is full of recipes and I ended up baking up a lovely batch of cookies using Cook's recipe for "Root Beer White Chocolate Chip Cookies."

The root beer flavor wasn't very strong (Penzey's Mexican vanilla might have been too strong for this recipe), but there was definite whiff of root beer about them and the overall texture and spicy-sweet flavor combination was very pleasing.

Still, if I were to make these again, I might use 3 teaspoons of root beer extract and omit the vanilla altogether for a stronger root beer taste (Cook's root beer extract is made with bourbon vanilla extract, anyway).

Weight Watchers Weigh In: Going Backwards

So, I was right. I did gain weight last week. Gained 1.6 pounds back. Grr. Disappointed and a little angry with myself, but there's no point in that as anger and self-recrimination do no good. Last week is over. This is a new week. I will try again.

I'll carefully track my Weight Watchers Points+ this week, try to get at least thirty minutes of treadmill time in every day, and I'll lose the weight I regained.

I'm also stocking my desk at work with more friendly crunchy snack foods than the staff room snack machine provides so, if I have another crunchy food crisis, at least I won't blow all my Points+ on a bag of pizza-flavored Combos.

Menu Plan Monday, 13 June

Must do a lot of gardening this week -- 4 cubic yards of mulch won't shift itself and there's a buttload of weeding that needs to be done before it can be laid down -- so some very basic cookery going on here.

Monday

• Grilled tuna steaks with salad and beans. Ingredients: tuna steaks (from freezer), garlic, olive oil, black pepper, Penzeys Tuscan Sunset seasoning blend, salad fixings, beans.

Tuesday

• Tossed salad topped with chopped shrimp, black beans, and shredded Cabot 50% reduced-fat cheddar with low fat Greek yoghurt and cherries.

Wednesday

• Grilled steak with steamed green beans and rice. Ingredients: steak (from freezer), Penzeys Northwoods seasoning blend, frozen green beans, rice, low-sodium chicken broth, chopped parsley, unsalted butter.

Thursday

• Tossed salad topped with sliced leftover steak and feta cheese, with low fat Greek yoghurt and blueberries.

Friday

• Grilled pork chops with carrots and beans. Ingredients: boneless pork loin chops (from freezer), light Italian dressing (for marinade), tinned carrots, fresh dill, Heinz (tomato-based) baked beans.

Saturday/Sunday

• Grilled chicken breasts with salad and pickled beets. Ingredients: boneless skinless chicken breasts (from freezer), Penzeys Greek seasoning blend, olive oil, pressed garlic, salad fixings, low-sodium sliced tinned beets, red onion, white vinegar.

The Week That Never Happened

I'm pretty sure I gained weight this past week. Domestic unhappiness + work stress = me eating a lot of salty, crunchy, carbtastic things. I didn't mean to. Indeed, I initially thought I was doing pretty well not stress eating, but then I started scribbling in my tracker and it was so obvious what was going on. Did I say "hey, self, find another way to handle your stress?" No. Thursday afternoon, I just stopping tracking points!

So now it's Sunday night and I feel kind of awful, physically and emotionally. The issues that I faced this past week are following me into the next and my coping mechanism has to change, but when I think about these stupid, stupid issues that I just don't want to deal with ... I become angry and inarticulate and go eat a whole box of Parmesan & Basil Wheat Thins!

Agh. Can I pretend this week, diet-wise, never happened?

(At least I kept up with daily activity!)

Cookery Catch-Up or "When Gardening Gets in the Way"

Lots of gardening going on this time of year and not so much in the way of cooking. Oh, food gets on the table, but those pretty cookbooks I keep bringing home from the library are just languishing in a pile by my reading chair. Over the next week or so, I hope, the dirtiest and most complicated gardening tasks will be completed and I can get back to my cookbooks (and I'll need to, because I'm pretty sure I planted more vegetables than two people can reasonably hope to eat).

Some of the plain, simple cooking we've been eating:

Tuna steak brushed with a little olive oil then rubbed with Penzeys Tuscan Sunset seasoning blend & grilled until yummy. Served with steamed green beans and rice cooked in low-sodium chicken broth.

Lovely grass-fed steak rubbed with Penzeys Northwoods seasoning blend and grilled medium-rare. Served with garlicky mushrooms (mushrooms, tons of garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, Worcestershire, and more Northwoods seasoning blend) and Green Giant's Valley Fresh Steamers "Vegetables Garden Medley" (sugar snap Peas, potatoes, red bell peppers).

Boneless skinless chicken breasts rubbed with Penzeys Arizona Dreaming salt-free seasoning blend and grilled. Served with asparagus roasted with garlic, fresh thyme, and cherry tomatoes.

(These two recipes really do not go together and I hadn't meant to serve them together, but my menu plan got shuffled around and this is what was left at the end of the week).

Boneless skinless chicken breasts rubbed with salt-free lemon pepper seasoning & a little paprika (for color). Served with rice cooked in low-sodium chicken broth and Green Giant Steamers' "Healthy Colors" Nature's Blend (orange carrots, yellow carrots, green beans, red bell pepper).

Weight Watchers Weigh In: Slowly but Surely

So I weighed in at Weight Watchers today and I am down 1.8 pounds for a total loss of 7.8 pounds. This puts me quite squarely on track for my short-term September goal and tells me that tracking points+, eating more carefully, and increasing activity really is working.

To make it easier to stay on track at work, I've starting making salads ahead of time and tucking them into a drawer in the staff fridge with plenty of low fat Greek yogurt cups and a bowl of chopped watermelon. No-one else uses the drawers so I don't feel too bad about monopolizing one. And, this way, I always have something to eat at work even if I don't feel up to making lunch that morning. The melon satisfies my craving for something sweet and the yogurt is filling enough to get me through the late afternoon munchies when stress and tiredness drive me to the snack machine.

I've also been trying to process all my fruit and vegetable purchases as soon as I get home from the grocery store. I make a big bowl of salad to go with our suppers, then portion the remaining vegetables, berries, and melon into containers. I use clear containers so I can always immediately see what's where. This way, when I have the munchies at home, I can just grab a bowl of melon or containers of bell pepper strips and guacamole. If I have to think about what to snack on, I will become annoyed and just do the lazy thing -- finish off the open bag of chips my husband left next to the couch, nom some leftover Easter chocolate, etc.

Plan B for (Nearly) Best Burger Ever

Sunday, we hit Hartford for a little art, some Puerto Rican pride, and (of course) delicious food. Connecticut has a Burgers & Brews Trail [pdf] and, while we're not terribly keen on brews, we do love a good burger so were eager to try one of the Trail's many venues. Plan B Burger Bar in West Hartford seemed like a good start and we arrived just after opening (it's never too early for a good burger) with good appetite.

I ate the "Pretzel Burger" -- a beef burger on a pretzel bun with spicy mustard, lettuce, pickles, cheddar. Served with organic mixed greens and a half-sour pickle, it was definitely one of the best burgers I have ever eaten. The beef was tender and juicy with just a little pink and the soft buttery pretzel buns soaked up all the good juices. My only complaint was that the cheddar was too mild and waxy -- the spicy mustard and the burger's sheer beefiness overwhelmed it.

At the end of our meal, we shared a twee chocolate cake which looked rather like a certain snack cake, but tasted so much better:

Menu Plan Monday, 6 June

Another week, another menu plan. Ideally, I would like to stop throwing these menus together Sunday night, but that just seems to be the way my life is running  ...

Monday

• Grilled steaks with mushrooms and corn. Ingredients: steaks (from freezer), garlic, mushrooms, onion, red wine vinegar, olive oil, unsalted butter, fresh thyme, fresh parsley.

Tuesday

• Tossed salad topped with thin-sliced leftover steak, black beans, and shredded Cabot 50% reduced-fat cheddar with low fat Greek yoghurt and watermelon.

Wednesday

• Appointments and errands after work, so pick something "nutritious" up in between.

Thursday

• Tossed salad topped with chopped shrimp, crumbled goat cheese, and blueberries with low fat Greek yoghurt.

Friday

• Turkey burgers with tossed salad. 

Saturday/Sunday

• Salsa skillet pork chops with buttery, golden potatoes and steamed green beans. Ingredients: boneless pork chops (from freezer), black bean salsa, Penzeys salt-free Arizona Dreaming seasoning blend, canned potatoes, butter, Parmesan, parsley, black pepper, green beans.

No Gold Star For Me

Much to my chagrin, I am not going to earn a fourth star in the President's Challenge to earn a Presidential Active Lifestyle Award. I would have had to engage in at least 30 minutes of activity for 5 days in the past week and I did not. Friday and Saturday I was so exhausted when I came home from work that I just about managed to feed myself before falling in to bed. Seriously, Saturday night? I was asleep by 9:30.

And, when I woke up at 8 this morning, I really felt like I could have done with a couple more hours of sleep. I found myself doing this while waiting for the tea kettle to sing:

On a happier note, despite not earning a fourth star, I earned my best time ever on the treadmill this week -- 21.50 minute mile (with a level 5 incline at 2.8/mph). I've been averaging a 24 minute mile so this "best time" is incredibly pleasing. Can I do it again? I'll certainly try. Some day I'd like to do an 8 minute mile ...

Fat Girls On Bicycles

I must confess to you that there is a perfectly nice bike sitting in my garage which I have convinced myself I cannot ride because I am "too fat." Yes. It's a nice bike. Decent padded seat for my ample tushie. Nice handlebars. All painted up in bright, go-faster yellow. And it just sits in my garage. Unloved.

The Husband and I bought our bikes with our tax return and I am ashamed of what feels like, on my part, a huge waste of our money. I rode my bike around the bike shop's parking lot before I bought it, obviously, and did a brief trip to the end of our street when I brought it home, but haven't ridden it since.

I want to, but I really am afraid I'll embarrass myself in front of my neighbors. That they'll see me and laugh to themselves or, worse, pity me. I know it shouldn't matter what my neighbors think. I know my bike's manufacturer rates the frame safe for people even fatter than me. But I can't stop feeling anxious every time I look at my bike. (And I see it every day as I go to and from the garage).

So this is my new project: To build my body confidence up so that I will get on my bike and ride. And I stop giving a fig for what the neighbors might think or how I might look to them:

Slightly More Fit

I earned my third star in the President's Challenge to earn a Presidential Active Lifestyle Award. For three weeks in a row now I've managed at least thirty minutes of activity five days a week. Three weeks! Who'da thunk it? Only three more weeks to go!

I also borrowed Exercise Balls for Dummies from the library, because I'd like to start varying my activity a little but I don't really know what to do with my exercise ball (bought in a fit of well-meaning optimism six months ago, inflated, and then sadly neglected). While the book includes a bunch of exercises I'm not quite ready to try out yet, the chapter on exercises for senior citizens seems like a good start as it focuses on very basic ways to improve balance and coordination, strengthen abdominal muscles, and improve hip/pelvis flexibility.

(Borrowing fitness materials from the library is kind of awesome, really, as I can try out lots of different kinds of exercise without spending any money).