"Drop a Jeans Size" Meal Plan: Day 2

Breakfast

Honey-Coconut Oatmeal (6 PPV): Mix 1/2 c rolled oats with 1/2 c skim or almond milk and microwave 1 min. Top with 2 tsp. honey and 1 T shredded coconut and serve with 1/2 c berries.

I am in love with this breakfast!! It was SO surprisingly good, so easy and just overall a great experience. I am a die-hard oatmeal-with-brown-sugar-and-raisins girl. I recently changed that to brown-sugar-and-blueberries because fruit is PPV-free but raisins aren't. But, man! HONEY in oatmeal? Fantastic! Coconut? Adds a perfect little subtle crunch with just a touch of necessary fat. I mixed my full cup of raspberries into it all and it was like eating a warm, satisfying, comforting raspberry-coconut muffin. (FYI, there's no real coconut flavor - you really just get the texture, which is nice. If you want coconut flavor, add a drop of coconut extract.) DH doesn't really do coconut, so I substituted 1 T sliced almonds for him so he could get his crunchy fat too. Mmmmmm....crunchy fat.

Lunch

Pizza Portobello (8 ppv): Turn 2 portobello mushroom caps (stems removed) upside down, spread each with 3 T spaghetti sauce, and top each with 1/2 oz. shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese. Place on a baking sheet and broil for 10 mins. Sprinkle each with 1/2 tsp. oregano. Cut 1 whole-grain roll in half and toast it. Drizzle each half with 1/2 tsp. olive oil.

Unfortunately, my schedule today required a late breakfast and early lunch.  I was in such a good place from this morning's Honey-Coconut Oatmeal, that I wasn't even hungry when I ate lunch. Had this been a different week, I would have popped an apple and a Kashi bar into my purse and gone on my way till I was hungry.

This meal was a little...odd. I'm normally a big fan of portobello mushrooms and also a big fan of pizza. However, a spooning a little spaghetti sauce and few shreds of cheese on a mushroom cap does not a pizza make. It really was just a mushroom with some sauce and cheese on it. Instead of a roll, I just toasted a slice of 3 PPV whole-grain bread. It was odd to drizzle olive oil on a slice of bread. Now, granted, this was the regular, every day EVOO from my pantry, not the oil of delicately-pressed olives from some small, exotic Italian village. But still...it was odd. Bread is to be dipped in flavored oil, so you might want to forgo this if A) you don't splurge on EVOO or B) you think 1 tsp is enough oil to dip bread in! I ended up sprinkling the EVOO-drizzled toast with garlic powder to add some flavor.

 By late-afternoon, I was trolling the kitchen, but that may have been partly because of when I ate this lunch (too early). I had a few servings of fruit...a few whole wheat crackers...a string cheese...my new standby of the half toasted English muffin, Better 'n' PB, and 1/4 sliced pear...and even tried something new and baked up a batch of "radish chips." (Don't ask - it's sadly not even worth repeating the recipe I found on-line.) This resulted in a 3 PPV dip into my Weekly Points Allowance. I'm okay with that I guess but wish the circumstances would have been different.


Dinner

Turkey Burger & Oven Fries (11 PPV): Cut 1 medium potato into slices; toss with 1 T chili powder, S&P. Mist a baking sheet with tops of potatoes with cooking spray. Broil potatoes and 1 lean 4 oz. turkey burger on sheet for 20 mins, turning once. (The burger should reach 165*.) Put burger on a whole-grain hamburger bun and top with 2 tsp. ketchup, lettuce and tomato. Serve with fries.

Turkey burgers, ho hum. Been there, done that. No big whooptie-do. I normally add a bunch of flavor to them but did not tonight so I could give an accurate review. (I did use 1 PPV for a piece of cheese because there's no reason to eat a burger - turkey or otherwise - if it doesn't have cheese.) I made the burgers on the grill and would have also cooked the potatoes that way as well. However, I wanted to see if they'd get crispy in the oven. They didn't. However, the generous 1 T of chili powder did give a robust flavor, so I'll repeat that. In the future, I'd put them in a foil packet, spritz with spray butter, seal up and throw on the grill.

Interesting note: Unlike the US Government, I do not consider the ketchup, lettuce and tomato that accessorize my burger to be a complete vegetable serving like they do in our schools. So I just HAD to throw a bunch of my gorgeous Costco and CSA veggies on the grill as well. I don't know how to eat dinner without a serious serving of vegetables anymore. Plus, I figured, a burger and some potato slices would simply not be enough.

While I'm glad I had the veggies, here's the thing with the potato: I typically choose the smallest potato available. After all, a SMALL potato is 3 PPV, a MEDIUM potato is 4 PPV and a LARGE potato is 5 PPVs. That's a wide spread. However, since tonight's recipe specifically designated a MEDIUM potato, I weighed several until I found one in my bin that came closest to Weight Watchers' definition of a MEDIUM potato: 213 g. And guess what? That's a lot of potato! It's certainly not mutant-restaurant-size, but most things in our home kitchens aren't. So, again, while I'm glad I had the nutrients the veggies provided, I probably would not have needed that bulk to feel satisfied, given the quantity of potato. This is just another one of those little discoveries I would never had made without a project like this: when it comes to potatoes, size does matter.

On that note, I'm off to bed. It's another 5 a.m. wake-up call tomorrow for a 5 mile run before the day's heat grips us all.