Tunafish and More Tunafish

Happy Friday!!!! Boy, am I glad it's finally the weekend. This week was ROUGH. And for some reason I got both Saturday and Sunday off, so I'm super happy :) Sorry that I didn't post yesterday... I forgot my camera and didn't really eat anything interesting anyway. Although I was kind of disappointed that I didn't have my Coolpix on me when Brent's cat was curled up SO cute on a chair. 

Today, I got up early to go to class and take a test for my Animal Science class. The class is kind of interesting, but the test was pretty hard. The first test of the semester is always harder because you don't know what to expect out of the professor. I'll definitely know what to study more for next time. 

After class, I headed down to Narragansett to meet with the owner of an apartment I was looking to rent for the rest of the semester. And after some paperwork, phone calls, and going to check the place out... I got it!! I'm officially have my very own adorable beach house apartment! :) It's so cute, I love it. Once I move in the beginning of next week, I'll take some pictures to show you. 

When I got back from seeing the apartment, I was definitely ready for lunch. I couldn't find my camera, so the picture's a little fuzzy, but I had a tunafish sandwich on whole wheat bread with a side of blackberries. And then before I went to work, I had a snack of a whole wheat english muffin with peanut butter and banana slices. Yummm!

At work, I had my shrimp and orzo pasta leftovers. I actually liked the leftovers better than the actual meal. I guess I didn't stir in the shrimp as well as I thought I did, because I had way too many shrimp in the first serving and the right amount in the leftovers. Tonight I came home to Woonsocket to visit my parents and pick up my new car (yay!!!). By the time I got all the way home, I was hungry again. So I had another tunafish sandwich with a side of avocado. Something new I did with this sandwich was I added avocado along with the tomato and lettuce. It was pretty good! 

I know that you're really not supposed to have two servings of tunafish in one day, because even though it's good for you, having a lot of it in a small amount of time isn't. But I figured that since I won't be having one tomorrow or Sunday, it would be okay.

Avoado Oatmeal & Sautéed Chicken Salad

Sorry I didn't post yesterday! I accidentally left my laptop at work so I couldn't upload my pictures from yesterday's breakfast.

Monday
I know you've all been on the edge of your seats waiting to find out what happened with the leftover 1/4 of my avocado from lunch the other day... and here it is!! Thanks to my favorite blog Carrots 'n' Cake, I got this great idea to add avocados to my oatmeal!

People usually make oatmeal when they're about to eat it, but I simply don't have time to make myself breakfast in the morning... which is why I usually opt for a Zone Perfect bar and a Slim-Fast shake. So for my oatmeal, I'll make it at night, pop it in some tupperware in the fridge, and simply microwave for about two minutes when I'm ready to eat it. This actually works and although it doesn't taste 100% as great as fresh oatmeal does, it's a great substitute when I don't have a lot of time.

Weirdly, you don't even taste the avocado! It adds something nice and healthy to your breakfast, you don't notice it, and it makes your oatmeal this awesome fluffy texture that you don't normally get. Personally, I love adding frozen strawberries to my oatmeal, along with a teaspoon of vanilla extract and just a little bit of maple syrup (usually I add the syrup right before I microwave it... you can taste it more and it helps revive the meal a lot). You can find my original recipe for it here.


Tuesday
For breakfast, I quickly chowed down on a Zone Perfect Fudge Graham bar and a Slim-Fast shake on my way to school. After school, I went grocery shopping. Usually I try to go earlier in the week than Tuesday, but my day off from school/work was Sunday and I worked 8 hours on Monday after physical therapy and classes. I found some really great tips to plan my shopping and save more money while doing it... and it really worked!

Before I went shopping, I looked at Stop&Shop's circular and planned my meals for the week around what was on sale. Besides the grapes and lettuce that I needed to get, I ended up buying some grapefruit, bananas, and blackberries that were on sale, when normally I don't buy fresh produce because it's so expensive. Usually for dinner, I eat a Lean Cuisine at work or eat a turkey sandwich or whatever Brent's mom makes at his house. But one night a week I cook for myself. Usually I make some kind of a chicken and pasta dish because I don't like meat that much except for chicken, and I need protein in my diet. This week, because I looked at the circular, I was able to buy a huge bag of shrimp on sale for $7.99! Normally I spend about $6 on chicken, so I think it was worth the splurge to be able to try something new :)

For lunch, I had a grapefruit with just a little bit of sugar sprinkled on top.

And I had a chicken salad with garbanzo and cannelini beans, with Ken's Lite Ranch dressing. I sautéed the leftover chicken from the chicken and pasta I had last week and ripped the chicken into little pieces after it had cooled.

Since I've been SO bad lately... I definitely needed to finish out the day healthy. For dinner, I whipped up a quick Tuna Fish Sandwich with a side of avocado which was sooooo yummy!! After that, I was still not quite full, so I grabbed a Strawberry Special K bar for the road on my way to Brent's house for the night.

Tuna Fish Sandwich With a Side of Avocado

Yummm! I just finished my favorite lunch in the world. A tuna fish sandwich! Lately I've been having tuna sandwiches at least once every other day. I love sandwiches for lunch and tuna is so good for you. Since I don't love meat, I need to find other ways to get my protein and tuna is a great way for me to do that. If you want to try a delicious Miranda Tuna Fish Sandwich, the recipe for it is here. Today I also gave myself 3/4 of an avocado on the side. Avocados are one of the 30 Healthiest Foods as compiled by the world's leading dietitians and nutritionists. You'll find out what I did with the other 1/4 in tomorrow's breakfast post!

A New Year, A New Healthy Me :)

Lately, my boyfriend and I have been very focused on losing weight. As he's an ex-football player, he has to work very hard to shed the pounds and break his unhealthy eating habits. I'm slightly slimmer but still not at a super healthy weight or my goal weight. I'm not sure what his specific goal is, but I'm hoping to be a size 10 by the summer - right now I'm a 14. I'm hoping this is a realistic goal because over the fall I wasn't trying very hard and lost about 15 lbs and one pant size. I'm very excited to continue my diet this spring and can't wait to see my results in June.

Brent and I have very different ways of going about losing weight. For him, it's all about exercise and sticking to a strict high-protein and low-calorie diet. He nicknames it the "Nazi" diet and sometimes goes to the gym more than once a day. Basically... there is nothing I wouldn't do instead of going to the gym. I hate exercising and it's a pain in the butt to drag myself out of the house all the way down to the gym at URI. If it were more convenient I would do it more because personally I LOVE to swim. The way I'm going out my weight loss is going to be all about having a healthy balance. Inspired by my new favorite blog Carrots 'N' Cake, I want to focus on not completely limiting myself to calorie-counting like Brent but eating healthier in general. This will include smaller portion sizes, more fiber, more green vegetables, more protein, and less carbs.

Already I think I've had a good start. I've found these Zone Perfect Fudge Graham protein bars that I have been eating for breakfast along with a SlimFast Milk Chocolate shake mixed with organic skim milk. (Side note: My gynecologist actually told me that drinking organic milk is tons better for you than regular milk, especially since I have high levels of testosterone in my body). For lunch I've been eating tuna sandwiches.

Miranda's Tuna Sandwich:

- 1 can of tuna in water

- 2 tablespoons Cain's Lite mayonnaise

- 15 red seedless grapes

- tomato

- lettuce

- whole grain bread

- celery salt

- salt

I open and drain the tuna, then stir with mayonnaise until it gets to the consistency that I like. Then I wash some grapes and cut each into half twice and add them to the mixture. Then I mix just a dash of celery salt and a dash of regular salt into the tuna. I add just a little bit of mayonnaise to both slices of bread, because otherwise it's sometimes too hard to swallow, and then add the tuna to the bread. Then I will place 1-2 slices of fresh vine-ripened tomato on top of the tuna and finish with a generous leaf of romaine lettuce. Cut diagonally and enjoy!! :)

Usually for dinner I'll just have whatever I normally would've eaten, just a little bit less. Lately I've had hamburgers, lean cuisines, a tuna sandwich (if I didn't have one for lunch - don't want to overload on the tuna), pasta and meatballs, etc. If I'm still hungry while sitting in front of the TV after dinner (I'm always guilty of this) I'll have a couple miniature Butterfingers or some Rold Gold Honey Wheat Braided Twists pretzels. Brent and I both made a pledge to seriously cut down on ice cream. I don't even like ice cream that much and I was eating it just because of my sweet tooth! Since we're in this together hopefully we'll be successful since we'd definitely end up dragging the other one down with us if we relapsed.

Lastly, something I've also started doing that I've never really done before is take vitamin supplements. I want to make sure that I'm getting enough of certain things, so along with my prescriptions, at night I take Vitamin C, Potassium, and Cinnamon (claims to help metabolism)

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Mmmm yummy! Just looking at this picture I can almost taste it in my mouth. This chicken soup was SO good! I got this from TasteOfHome.com and it boasted that it only took 30 minutes to cook - and it really did. It was so easy and fast, I am definitely going to cook this all the time now. It was perfect because I got a killer cold last weekend and have still been kind of sick all week and everybody knows the best cure for a cold is a nice big bowl of steaming homemade chicken noodle soup!

The recipe called for parsley flakes and bullion granules, but I didn't put either in. I didn't put the parsley in because (if you have been reading my blog, you know full well that) I really don't like any kind of herbs/spices so I always just skip over those parts when a recipe asks for it. I didn't put the bullion granules in... because I forgot to buy them haha. But I guess they weren't all that important because it was super tasty even without them.

One thing I really liked about this recipe is that it was a really good size. Usually when I make recipes (like the pumpkin soup), since I'm only one person, I end up with enough leftovers to feed a small African country after I'm done eating my one serving and end up with soooo much food in my tiny fridge. I had one bowl of this soup and then the rest I could fit in one average-size tupperware container so it'll be great for like one or two more servings and then it's done :) This was especially good because I ended up making another broccoli-chicken casserole (click HERE for the post I wrote about it and the recipe) to eat next week because I remembered how awesome it was last time I made it - so I couldn't take up a lot of room in my fridge with chicken soup leftovers.

Something I learned... Well something I tried new with this recipe is that usually I cube my chicken pretty large (not sure why, I just do) and then end up not liking that aspect of the recipe, so this time I diced the chicken breast pretty small and I definitely liked that, especially for a soup. I'll probably do that for all my recipes now. Since I don't like meat, I guess I should have figured I'd like the one kind of meat I do cook with in as small bites as possible :P

30-MINUTE CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP
(TasteOfHome.com)

Ingredients

• 4 cups water
• 1 can (14-1/2 ounces) chicken broth
• 1-1/2 cups cubed cooked chicken breast
• 1 can (10-3/4 ounces) condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted
• 3/4 cup sliced celery
• 3/4 cup sliced fresh carrots
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1-1/2 teaspoons dried parsley flakes
• 1 teaspoon reduced-sodium chicken bouillon granules
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 3 cups uncooked egg noodles

Directions

• In a Dutch oven, combine the first 10 ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 10 minutes or until vegetables are crisp-tender. Stir in noodles; cook 5-7 minutes longer or until noodles and vegetables are tender.

Pumpkin Soup

Hi everybody! :) It's been a pretty long time since I've posted something, sorry about that. Mostly because I've just been kinda lazy haha. You know, it's midterms and I basically lived off my grandparents, ramen, and easy mac for a few days :P

Anyway, last night I made a recipe that sounded good, but I wasn't really sure I was going to like. I kind of thought I might like pumpkin, but I wasn't really sure. I'd never had pumpkin soup before or really anything pumpkin. I've had squash pie and I kinda like it... So I just decided to try it out. It ended up being AMAZING. I actually got my mom to let me make it for a course of our Thanksgiving dinner this year! That's a first, definitely.

The recipe had really simple ingredients, didn't take long, and was very easy. I was surprised. I was even more surprising that the recipe called for coconut milk - and PriceRite HAD IT!

One thing that I didn't like about this recipe was that after the ingredients cooked on the stove, you had to put it in the blender to purée it. That was kind of annoying, but I guess that's kind of a common thing for soups? I'm just guessing because my roommate Katie offered to let me use her soup purée-er that her mom got her for her birthday haha. And my house's blender is probably from the 70s so it just had two speeds and smelled like burnt rubber if you used it for more than 10 seconds :P

Pumpkin Soup

All You Magazine October 2010

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 small onion, finely chopped (about 1 cup)
• 2 medium Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored, finely chopped (about 2 1/2 cups)
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 15-oz. cans pumpkin
• 1 13.6-oz. can light unsweetened cocounut milk
• Salt and pepper

Directions:

• Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Add onion and apples, and sauté until tender (about 8 minutes). Sprinkle flour over onion mixture and stir for 1 minute (mixture will be dry).
• Gradually whisk in broth and cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture begins to thicken, about 6 minutes. Whisk in pumpkin and coconut milk. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a low boil and cook for 5 minutes, stirring often. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
• Working in batches, pour soup into blender and lend until smooth. Return to pot to rewarm. Serve hot.

Nutrition Facts (per serving):

• Calories - 261
• Fat - 17g
• Fiber - 8 g
• Protein - 8g
• Carb - 25g
• Sodium - 584 mg

Turkey, Mandarin Orange, and Walnut Salad

Since I've decided that I definitely want to be a little bit healthier, I decided to just do a simple salad that only took about five minutes to throw together. On the way home from class I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some turkey, mandarin oranges, and walnuts, and then just mixed them in with some romaine lettuce I already had washed and chopped from a salad I made for yesterday's lunch. I also put some shredded Monteray Jack cheese on top that was left over from the casserole I made the other night and drizzled some Italian dressing on top.

I got Hillshire Farm packaged thin-sliced oven roasted turkey breast that was 2/$4 at Stop&Shop. I only picked it up because I was desperate and broke otherwise I probably would've tried to get something with a little less sodium, as that's one of the things I'm trying to watch in my diet. The mandarin oranges were canned Del Monte and I was really pleased with them because I managed to get ones really low in calories and fat with only 6 grams of sugar per serving (I got No Sugar Added whereas the regular kind had 22 grams!!). Sugar is another thing that I'm focusing heavily on because I'm worried my blood sugar has been too high recently. The only bad part of the salad was the walnuts I got. I went to the grocery store with every intention of just getting plane walnuts to top my salad with (nuts are really good for you in small amounts as well as contributing some protein to my diet - which I don't normally get enough of since I'm not a huge fan of meat), but for some reason I could only find glazed walnuts and was really disappointed. I got them anyway because I was having a big craving for walnuts (they're the only kind of nuts I like) and really wanted the specific flavor of them in my salad. So since I knew they were pretty bad for me I only put a very small amount in the salad as you can see from the picture (maybe about seven half-size pieces). The lettuce and celery I used in the salad I got from PriceRite (where I get all of my produce). For the dressing I used was Ken's Steak House Lite Italian.