Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Still going!

Sorry for the radio silence the past few weeks - can you believe there's only one week left in March?  Time is flying.  Things are still going well over here.  I'm still working out 4-6 times a week, and I'm still (slowly) losing weight.  I need to be careful to not overdo with the cardio exercise - I feel my age is catching up with me and I end up sore afterwards some days. ;)

I am struggling with menu planning lately.  I just haven't had a ton of motivation to cook, and I am often going to the gym around dinner time.  This means I either end up cooking something delicious and running out the door while husband and kiddo eat (and having cold leftovers when I get home), or husband has to make something simple for dinner (and I still have cold leftovers when I get home).    So things are a bit blah on that front, but hopefully I can get some motivation on this soon!  Would love to hear any of your favorite recipes! :)

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Turkey and Quinoa meatloaf

Yay!  Made a new recipe tonight - Turkey and Quinoa meatloaf!  I forgot to take a photo of the dish, but it's definitely a hit!

I love this recipe - it's a healthy spin on meatloaf, with quinoa replacing the breadcrumbs.  No sugar-laden ketchup either - only some tomato paste.  There is a "paste" of brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce, but it wasn't a paste at all - it was a runny fluid.  Husband said he liked the "paste", but I think it wasn't necessary.  He is curious if we could add diced carrots to the recipe, but we're unsure of how to par-cook them first.  The onions were definitely not cooked enough, even though I cooked them for twice as long.  I will definitely make this recipe again!

Here's the recipe, with my changes and comments in italics:

Turkey and Quinoa Meatloaf
Recipe By: Andrew Benoit 

Ingredients

1/4 cup quinoa
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, chopped (I used 2 teaspoons garlic powder)
1 (20 ounce) package ground turkey (I used 16 ounces)
1 tablespoon tomato paste (I used 2 tablespoons)
1 tablespoon hot pepper sauce (I omitted)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 egg (I used 2 eggs as suggested in the comments for this recipe)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon water

Directions

  1. Bring the quinoa and water to a boil in a saucepan over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the quinoa is tender, and the water has been absorbed, about 15 to 20 minutes. Set aside to cool.
  2. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
  3. Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Stir in the onion; cook and stir until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute; remove from heat to cool.  (I cooked the onion for 10 minutes, and it wasn't softened enough sadly.  Since I didn't have fresh garlic, I added the garlic powder to the mixture in the next step.)
  4. Stir the turkey, cooked quinoa, onions, tomato paste, hot sauce (omitted), 2 tablespoons Worcestershire, egg, salt, and pepper in a large bowl until well combined. The mixture will be very moist. Shape into a loaf on a foil lined baking sheet. Combine the brown sugar, 2 teaspoons Worcestershire, and 1 teaspoon water in a small bowl. Rub the paste over the top of the meatloaf. (this was not a paste - perhaps skip the water?  It ran all over the baking sheet)
  5. Bake in the preheated oven until no longer pink in the center, about 50 minutes. An instant-read thermometer inserted into the center should read at least 160 degrees F (70 degrees C). Let the meatloaf cool for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Goals - February report

February is done! Let's review the goals:
  1. Lose an average of one pound a week - met!  Well, technically. ;)  By the scale, yes, I'm down 4.4 pounds for the month (9.6 pounds for the year).  Yippee!  However, February was a very challenging month weight-wise with my birthday, so the scale did not move as much as it should have, given the workouts.  Trend isn't the greatest, but at least now it is trending downward again.  The dots on the graph (provided from the Happy Scale app) are the actual weight each day, the blue line is the overall trend, and the green shading is the trends from 30 days prior.  Yes, that means that one day last week, I weighed in higher than I did 30 days before that.  Ouch.  That lowest weight is so baffling to me - but that was the morning of my birthday!  Thanks for the nice gift, scale! ;)  I'm still using the old school Hacker's Diet web site to analyze the trends, and for the past month, I lost 0.77 pounds per week (as compared to 1.1 pounds in January).  I have again met that big weight loss goal that I had for my birthday. :)
  2. Work out at least 20 times a month - met!  25 workouts this month, including two 90 minute classes.  Four days with no workouts and only one day with two workouts.  Thankfully, none of the no workout days were back-to-back.  Intellectually, I know that even though the scale was unkind this month (due to the birthday indulgences), I have to believe that the workouts kept it from being a terrible month weight-wise.  
  3. Cook one new (and healthy!) recipe a month - nope.  I did cook a bunch, and frankly ate out too much due to extended birthdaying, but no brand new recipe this month.  I did print out several that I want to try! ;)
  4. Make an effort to eat clean and healthy the majority of the time - nope.  I'm going to give that a honest fail.  I did well when I could, but honestly, I didn't make the best decisions overall.  Hence more than half of those weigh-ins this month dragging the trend upwards.  But honestly, I didn't eat a lot of fast food (I think maybe twice?) but there were more baked goods and more restaurant meals than usual.  I enjoyed it, and won't beat myself up about it, and will move on.  
Looking forward to a March filled with success (and lots of new recipes!), and continued progress on all of these goals!