lavash – Fervent Foodie

Early bird catches the corn dog

June 19, 2010 1 Comment

It’s Saturday, and you know what that means. Yard work!

You’d think for as much time as I devote to my yard, it’d be in pristine shape…. Oh what a pain in the ass homeownership is the joys of home ownership 🙂

There is one specific area of the yard that I leave completely untouched. You can see I have quite the crop of poison ivy growing:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA — area of infestation

I hit up the Home Depot this morning to pick up some spray to (hopefully) help with my poison ivy. Did you know Home Depot opens at 6am??? I leaned this little nugget of information when I called them at 7am to see when they opened. 6am? Those customers must be hard-core home improvers.

Before I got to work in the back yard, I cooked up my favorite egg breakfast: 1 dippy egg & 3 egg white scramble with S&P, Red Pepper Flakes, and Frank’s Red Hot. I always add a splash of liquid (usually skim milk or water) to the egg whites to help them stay fluffy. Also, toasted up a Thomas’ multi grain english muffin on the side.

Stats on breakfast: 218 calories, 28g carbs, 6g fat, 22g protien, 8g fiber

After chowing down, I headed to the yard.

Until last summer, I was one of those people who thought I wasn’t allergic to poison ivy. Well, that is until I accidently weed wacked some of it. I really didn’t know what poison ivy even looked like, so I was unaware of the horrible mistake I had made and basically let myself marinate in the poison ivy juices all day while I worked away in the yard. This resulted in what I will call a immobilizing infestation of poison ivy all over my legs. Since then I will not go near the stuff.

Today, I put on pants and long sleeves (despite temps in the mid 80’s) just so that I could approach the “infested area.” My luck, I’ll get poison ivy on the only part that was left exposed: my face 🙁 I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about that tonight!

I’ll have to post some before and after shots once I get it all finished (which will be never sometime soon).

After all the yard work, I was starving!

Sometimes I just get cravings for weird foods. Case in point, today I had a sudden craving for a corn dog! I can’t remember the last time I had one, but something triggered the corn dog eating machine deep inside me. So, I decided to try and make a healthified version of a corn dog. Even typing “healthified corn dog” makes me scoff. How ridiculous sounding is that?

I had some frozen Jennie-O turkey sausages in the freezer and also some Joseph’s Lavash bread, so I pulled them out to defrost before hitting up the yard early this morning.

I cooked up 2 turkey sausages – 1 for the “corn dog” and 1 for a healthified jambalaya recipe I’m going to try later in the week. Once cooked, I wrapped 1 turkey sausage in 1/2 a Joseph’s Low-Carb lavash bread, stuck in on a skewer, and threw it back on the grill.

Ridiculous, I know…

Once the lavash was crispy, I pulled it off the grill and served it up with a big squirt of mustard.

Ok – so it’s not exactly a corn dog, but eating it off a stick sure made it seem like one and it definitely hit the spot 🙂 I’m a BIG fan of Jennie-O’s hot turkey sausage.

Corn dog stats: 210 calories, 7g carbs, 12g fat, 22g protien, 3g fiber

BTW – yesterday while volunteering I had a Smores Luna Bar – and I wasn’t a big fan. It wasn’t bad tasting — just didn’t remind me of a smore AT ALL. Definitely the least favorite of all the flavors I have tried to date. I also had a few bites of a Chocolate Cherry Bear Naked Grain-ola Bar. It was OK – but again, I wasn’t super impressed. Apparently I was hard to please yesterday…

What did hit the spot, however, was the Gioniono’s pizza we had for dinner:

Still trying to decide what to cook up for dinner tonight… Suffering from foodie’s block.

Ramblings, What I ate

Saturday = QT with the yard

June 12, 2010 1 Comment

Happy Saturday!

Early this morning I got a call from my dad saying he was on his way over to help me trim my trees in my backyard. So I quickly dove into the breakfast cookie I made yesterday. I think if you approach eating a breakfast cookie with the expectation that it will have the texture of an actual cookie you will be disappointed. I took two bites and put it back in the fridge–the moist texture just wasn’t doing it for me.

I quickly threw together an eggwich (1 egg (yolk poked), multi grain english muffin, squirt o’ ketchup). As the eggwich was wrapping up, I decided to give the breakfast cookie a second go. I cleared my head of thoughts of chocolately cookies and approached it with an open mind. This actually worked! The breakfast cookie is moist and slightly chewy–and I think you could really play around with the things you mix in to make it an A+ breakfast. I think I might actually pop the rest of the cookie into the oven later — just to see if it would get me the texture of an actual cookie 😉

Breakfast sammy:

Eggwich Stats:185 calories, 29g carbs, 6g fat, 10g protein, 5g fiber

Breakfast cookie stats (stats are for whole cookie — I only ate 1/3): 303 calories, 31g carbs, 12g fat, 22g protien 8g fiber

Back to the yard — I don’t know what happened this year, but my yard hit a major growth spurt. It seemed over the course of one weekend all the plants and trees in my yard just exploded with new growth. The trees in the backyard were so overgrown that they were actually laying on the house. I couldn’t even see out the kitchen window! Slowly but surely, I’m getting the yard into shape for cookout season.

After a couple of hours of work in the yard I was famished. My doctor tells me I am hypoglycemic, which basically means I have low blood sugar. There really isn’t anything you can do for low blood sugar–other than regulate your food intake and make sure you eat frequent nutritious meals.

Up until this year, I never really took the time to plan out my meals and snacks for the day. I would hardly eat anything in the mornings so that I could over indulge at lunch. If I hit a lull where my blood sugar bottomed out, I’d chug a can of coke to get it to spike back up quickly. Obviously, this is not the right approach and it was not good for my body.

Now I make sure to take the time to plan out what I am going to eat each day. I usually sit down the night before and enter everything into MyFitnessPal to make sure I’m not over or underdoing anything. Though I don’t always stick to the plan to a T, I at least have healthy foods on hand to keep me energized and my blood sugar stable throughout the day.

I don’t always do as good of a job eating regularly on the weekends. When I’m out and about, food sometimes gets pushed to the wayside. This is especially true when I am working on the yard.

By the time I stopped to eat today I was shaking so bad I could barely hold the camera! I quickly threw together a wrap using some leftover turkey and ham, tomato, onion, banana peppers, hot sauce, and 1/2 a Joseph’s lavash bread.

Yes, I even had to take a bite before taking the picture!

I think I’ll try out the turkey burger recipe I posted earlier in the week for dinner. I’m really craving a big juicy burger and some fries right now. We’ll see what I can whip up 🙂

Ramblings

Who doesn’t love a big package?

June 10, 2010 No Comments

Netrition order arrived!!! Yay for flat-rate UPS shipping!!!

Breakdown of the goods:

Mama Lupe’s Low-Carb Tortillas
Dixie Diner Carb Counters Soy Rocks plus Flax Bars (1 Crunchy Apple, 1 Crunchy Caramel Chocolate, 1 Crunchy Chocolate)
Nutritious Living Hi-Lo Cereal, Maple Pecan
Joseph’s Middle East Bakery Reduced Carb/Flax, Oat Bran & Whole Wheat Pita Bread
Joseph’s Middle East Bakery Reduced Carb/Flax, Oat Bran & Whole Wheat Lavash Bread
Bell Plantation Chocolate PB2 Powdered Peanut Butter

Can’t wait to try out all these goodies!

The Jewelry Party went really well! I always feel really happy and empowered when I get together with a group of women. Through my job, I get the opportunity to work with Akron’s Knowledgeable Network of Women, but outside of work I don’t have a ton of women-only time these days. While the Jewelry party was fun, I wish there was something I could do to get a group of women together without the enticement of having to buy a product.

Here’s some pics of the grub:

Separately, it may sound odd but I felt kinda guilty for getting free jewelry based on my friends’ purchases. Yes it offset the cost of the food and drinks, but that’s the sort of thing I like doing for friends without expecting anything in return. Maybe I’m just weird — but regardless I don’t think I’ll have any sort of jewelry/tupperware/purse/candle etc parties in the future, but I’ll definitely have to think of another type of get together for my lady friends.

I was so exhausted from the party that I didn’t spend a ton of time on my meals today. At least I’m going to get to try out a new recipe for dinner tonight 😀

B1 – After my success with the Luna Bar earlier this week, I was pumped to try a new breakfast bar so I decided to go with the Dixie Diner Carb Counters Soy Rocks plus Flax Bars in Crunchy Chocolate….

I took approximately 1.5 bites before tossing the rest in the trash! I felt like I was eating a chocolate scented tire.

🙁 Two thumbs down Dixie Diner… Two thumbs down.

B2 = Oats and fruits!

L: I decided to use up some of the party leftovers and make a lavash sandwich with the new lavash bread I ordered from netrition– a lavawich if you will 😉 . You may be asking, what the heck is lavash? Well my friends, It’s basically a really thin flat bread. I loaded it up with some turkey/ham, and a ton of sprouts, tomatoes, onions, and half a laughing cow french onion wedge.

Check out the height on this sucker:

The bread doesn’t have much taste to it (which is actually good–most low carb products have a funky after taste). I think what I like most about this bread is the sheer size of it. My sandwich was on half of the lavash–but I think I’ll try making a monster flat bread pizza with it this weekend.

Stats on the Lavash: 1/2 of one lavash has 50 calories, 7g carbs, 3g dietary fiber, 5g protein

Man… can’t wait for the weekend to get here! Goal this weekend is to not spend any money — which is good because I could really use a low-key R&R couple of days!

Dinner plan this evening is to try out the stuffed peppers I posted earlier in the week and make some roasted broccoli. I’m really getting sick of frozen steamed veggies, that is for darn sure!