Despite considerable back sliding - involving crisps, cake, chocolate, nuts and general snacking morning, noon and night - plus multiple visits to restaurants (last Wednesday I had meetings involving coffee, lunch, coffee and dinner) - I came out this morning at 149.4 lbs, which is just about the same as I have been for the past month. Must admit that's quite a surprise! I was fully expecting to have broken back through the 150lbs barrier.
It has also been raining pretty much continuously for the past two weeks, which means that I have only done a couple of long walks with Ruby. We were at Arasteradero yesterday for an hour but it was quite the mud bath. Today the rain has set in again.
Today I am at a conference all day, which will involve food at multiple opportunities. I plan to arrive this morning near the end of the "breakfast and networking" session so I don't eat anything. Well, anything much.
Showing posts with label snacks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snacks. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
More Sinned Against Than Sinning
Little Starlet and I went up to the city today to the Sundance Kabuki Theatre see the National Theatre live broadcast of the Donmar Warehouse production "King Lear" with Derek Jacobi. He was outstanding. In fact the whole play was fabulous, there wasn't a block of wood attempting to act on the stage at all. A fine avoidance of teapot Shakespeare. Little Starlet more or less followed the play - I had forgotten, and so didn't explain, the Gloucester/Edgar/Edmund sub-plot - though she thought that Derek Jacobi had been replaced by another actor in the final scene. Quite why, I have no idea. There you are, the mind of a 9 year old.
The relevance of all this to this blog is that it meant I had a rather odd eating day. I began with a bowl of granola. We headed out at 9am. The play/broadcast started at 12:30pm and ended at 4pm, which meant that lunch would not be happening. So we stopped at the Fillmore Street Cafe for a breakfast bagel at 10:30am. I had a latte and the 49ers, consisting of ham, egg, and cheddar cheese on a plain bagel. Little Starlet had the Fillmore Special, with sausage, egg and cheese. Very hot and tasty.
We then headed up to the Japantown shopping area. It was freezing cold, icy wind blasting poor Little Starlet's uncovered legs (she never will listen when I tell her to put more clothes on), so we went inside to look at the stores. After walking though the Japanese language bookstore and admiring the plastic dolls with penises, we found ourselves at the Anderson Bakery. Little Starlet had a slice of chocolate ganache cake, while I toyed with a light, fluffy, delicious slice of coffee creme cake. As I always say to the girls, if you MUST eat food that's bad for you, at least make sure it is high quality. This certainly was worth every calorie.
We went into the theatre food-free, but once the intermission came along, it was clear that Little Starlet required yet more sustenance. So we went to the Peet's Coffee concession in the theatre and bought bags of popcorn (and yet another latte for me).
Hubby and Deep Thought have spent the week in Bear Valley. They got back this afternoon just before Little Starlet and I returned from the city. We were all exhausted and lacking imagination, so we tucked into Whole Foods' frozen pizza for dinner: pepperoni, hawaiian, and chicken quesadilla (note, three pizzas between four of us, so a small concession to thinness there).
All in all, a very fun day, but a bit peculiar on the dietary front.
The relevance of all this to this blog is that it meant I had a rather odd eating day. I began with a bowl of granola. We headed out at 9am. The play/broadcast started at 12:30pm and ended at 4pm, which meant that lunch would not be happening. So we stopped at the Fillmore Street Cafe for a breakfast bagel at 10:30am. I had a latte and the 49ers, consisting of ham, egg, and cheddar cheese on a plain bagel. Little Starlet had the Fillmore Special, with sausage, egg and cheese. Very hot and tasty.
We then headed up to the Japantown shopping area. It was freezing cold, icy wind blasting poor Little Starlet's uncovered legs (she never will listen when I tell her to put more clothes on), so we went inside to look at the stores. After walking though the Japanese language bookstore and admiring the plastic dolls with penises, we found ourselves at the Anderson Bakery. Little Starlet had a slice of chocolate ganache cake, while I toyed with a light, fluffy, delicious slice of coffee creme cake. As I always say to the girls, if you MUST eat food that's bad for you, at least make sure it is high quality. This certainly was worth every calorie.
We went into the theatre food-free, but once the intermission came along, it was clear that Little Starlet required yet more sustenance. So we went to the Peet's Coffee concession in the theatre and bought bags of popcorn (and yet another latte for me).
Hubby and Deep Thought have spent the week in Bear Valley. They got back this afternoon just before Little Starlet and I returned from the city. We were all exhausted and lacking imagination, so we tucked into Whole Foods' frozen pizza for dinner: pepperoni, hawaiian, and chicken quesadilla (note, three pizzas between four of us, so a small concession to thinness there).
All in all, a very fun day, but a bit peculiar on the dietary front.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Marked Up, In All Senses
This morning I took Ruby for a 50 minute walk at Windy Hill which is, as the name suggests, a hill and thus pretty good exercise. After I took her home, I went shopping. Of course, I hadn't taken the precaution of eating anything at home after my walk, so by the time I got to the pet food store I was feeling hungry. Ah, I think, I can feel a coffee at that Starbucks right there coming on. So I buy my nonfat decaf latte (nicknamed the "Why Bother?" by the staff in our local Starbucks) and add to it a Fruit, Nut and Cheese Platter (460 calories) as that is the only thing available to eat that isn't cake.
It consists of half an apple, a small wedge of brie, a little cube of gouda, and a slice of cheddar, accompanied by two wholewheat crackers and what appears to be a quarter cup of unsalted almonds with dried cranberries. It was actually pretty tasty and filling, and generally just what the doctor ordered.
The breakdown of nutrition reveals 29g fat, 34g carbs, 6g fiber, and 19g protein. I'm not really sure where all that carbohydrate is coming from, but there you are. Plug it into the WeightWatchers calculator and get out 12 points spent. Yikes! I guess I can see where it is coming from now I reflect upon it... The apple would count as zero points. The almonds and cranberries can't be more than 4 points, and the crackers surely no more than 2. So the cheese must be the remaining 6 points, which makes sense when you consider that one ounce of brie is 3 points all by itself.
The other thing I wanted to comment on was the price. It cost $4.95. I reckon that, even on a generous calculation - given that Starbucks can buy everything wholesale - the contents can't cost more than around $2.50 (cheese $1, apple $0.50, crackers $0.25, almonds and cranberries $0.50, packaging $0.30). So the markup is around 100%. Not a bad way to make a profit, eh?
It consists of half an apple, a small wedge of brie, a little cube of gouda, and a slice of cheddar, accompanied by two wholewheat crackers and what appears to be a quarter cup of unsalted almonds with dried cranberries. It was actually pretty tasty and filling, and generally just what the doctor ordered.
The breakdown of nutrition reveals 29g fat, 34g carbs, 6g fiber, and 19g protein. I'm not really sure where all that carbohydrate is coming from, but there you are. Plug it into the WeightWatchers calculator and get out 12 points spent. Yikes! I guess I can see where it is coming from now I reflect upon it... The apple would count as zero points. The almonds and cranberries can't be more than 4 points, and the crackers surely no more than 2. So the cheese must be the remaining 6 points, which makes sense when you consider that one ounce of brie is 3 points all by itself.
The other thing I wanted to comment on was the price. It cost $4.95. I reckon that, even on a generous calculation - given that Starbucks can buy everything wholesale - the contents can't cost more than around $2.50 (cheese $1, apple $0.50, crackers $0.25, almonds and cranberries $0.50, packaging $0.30). So the markup is around 100%. Not a bad way to make a profit, eh?
Sunday, January 9, 2011
I Like Weightwatchers' Recipes
Weekends are definitely harder. I've only managed 30 minutes out with the dog today, because this morning I had to supervise Little Starlet and two friends organizing themselves for a bake sale (the torture - I have to bake cake for it) on Friday in support of Pennies for Peace (www.penniesforpeace,org), so Hubby took Ruby and himself out without me.
Then Deep Thought arrived back from her soccer practice bearing chocolate chip cookies from Peet's Coffee. She had, for the very first time, taken herself off to Peet's after practice to buy a hot chocolate - how the babies grow - and her altruistic impulses insisted that she not return empty handed. Cookies were duly stowed for dessert after lunch.
For lunch we had tilapia with boiled potatoes, asparagus (which the children pretty much refused to eat) and home made hollandaise sauce, courtesy of the Weightwatchers website. I have always avoided making hollandaise sauce, despite it being a critical ingredient of Eggs Benedict, which is one of my favorite meals, as the story goes that it is very hard to make. Poppycock, I say, it turned out to be very easy. The Weightwatchers recipe was: 1/3 cup butter, 2 egg yolks, 2 tbsp water, dash of salt, lemon juice to taste. Whisk the egg and water together till frothy. Then put over a double burner and continue whisking. As the mixture begins to firm up, pour in the butter (already melted in the microwave) and whisk some more. Remove from the heat and whisk in the lemon juice and salt to taste. It worked really well and was worth only one point.
Then we had half a cookie each, which was five points. Yikes.
I think the main thing about the points system is the way it makes you size up your food choices. Will I get as much satisfaction from the 4oz pot of yoghurt for four points or the seven crisps (yes, I mean individual crisps)? For five points I can have two boiled eggs and a slice of toast - or half a cookie. Of course, you don't always want to be eating egg etc, and sometimes the craving for sweet is almost overwhelming. Tonight's experiment in snack food is going to be cottage cheese with strawberries, in a 100 calorie pot courtesy of Kraft.
Now all I have to decide is what's for dinner: cottage pie or baked potatoes?
Then Deep Thought arrived back from her soccer practice bearing chocolate chip cookies from Peet's Coffee. She had, for the very first time, taken herself off to Peet's after practice to buy a hot chocolate - how the babies grow - and her altruistic impulses insisted that she not return empty handed. Cookies were duly stowed for dessert after lunch.
For lunch we had tilapia with boiled potatoes, asparagus (which the children pretty much refused to eat) and home made hollandaise sauce, courtesy of the Weightwatchers website. I have always avoided making hollandaise sauce, despite it being a critical ingredient of Eggs Benedict, which is one of my favorite meals, as the story goes that it is very hard to make. Poppycock, I say, it turned out to be very easy. The Weightwatchers recipe was: 1/3 cup butter, 2 egg yolks, 2 tbsp water, dash of salt, lemon juice to taste. Whisk the egg and water together till frothy. Then put over a double burner and continue whisking. As the mixture begins to firm up, pour in the butter (already melted in the microwave) and whisk some more. Remove from the heat and whisk in the lemon juice and salt to taste. It worked really well and was worth only one point.
Then we had half a cookie each, which was five points. Yikes.
I think the main thing about the points system is the way it makes you size up your food choices. Will I get as much satisfaction from the 4oz pot of yoghurt for four points or the seven crisps (yes, I mean individual crisps)? For five points I can have two boiled eggs and a slice of toast - or half a cookie. Of course, you don't always want to be eating egg etc, and sometimes the craving for sweet is almost overwhelming. Tonight's experiment in snack food is going to be cottage cheese with strawberries, in a 100 calorie pot courtesy of Kraft.
Now all I have to decide is what's for dinner: cottage pie or baked potatoes?
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
And Doggy Makes Five
Little Starlet returned to school today. Deep Thought started her new school last Thursday. My house has returned to child-free blissfulness. Of course, since last blog entry we have acquired a new dog, so there is really another child to deal with. Dog is called Ruby. She is a rather petite English Cocker Spaniel, currently wearing a very un-spanielly short hair cut, courtesy of Doggy Protective Services (the nonprofit from which we adopted her). See photo to assess general cuteness.
The good thing is that I am now walking Ruby a couple of times a day. She does have quite little legs, and it is rather hot just now in the Bay Area, so our walks are of limited duration - about 45 minutes is the most she can manage, though at a fairly brisk trot. I guess that counts as exercise, though not as much exercise as I was managing pre-dog!
The bad thing is that I feel the need to hang out at home more to keep her company, so I'm nibbling. Mind you, the evenings are the worst and I can hardly blame that on Ruby. Last night it was some chocolate, a yoghurt and a few crisps.
The good thing is that her presence is preventing me taking in quite so many coffee shops - I'm not quite ready yet to tie her up outside while I go in to make my order, though there are many coffee shops with patio areas so, when I have overcome said reticence, I am sure that we shall be contributing to the local eatery economy in the usual way.
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