therese
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Posts posted by therese
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Interesting, I'll have to try almond. Splenda has a horrid aftertaste to me - just as bad as saccherine and aspartame.
The more complicated the remainder of the flavoring the less I notice the Splenda. I use it to sweeten iced tea, for instance, but prefer it in tea that I've made with tea masala (pre-made finely ground mix that typically includes cinnamon and cardamom and pepper). You can also add it to home-made cocoa, or just use cinnamon straight in cocoa.
I also vastly prefer "real" sugars, so try to rely on the sugar already present in fruit when I make sweets.
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You could do tandoor-style turkey breasts: slash them deeply (or cut into chunks) and marinate in plain low fat yogurt/tandoori spice (I've got a tin, don't know the source) and then broil. Traditional accompaniments of raw onion and tomato use up no additional points.
I also use them to make scallopini: slice across the grain and pound thin. Dredge in world's smallest amount of flour and then saute in minimal olive oil. Deglaze pan with white wine and lemon juice, adding some capers at the end.
You could also do a marsala version of the scallopini.
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I miss bread terribly on this WOE but I'm sure WW folks miss their steaks too.
Well, on the one hand we do miss our steaks, but then we also miss our bread, because (depending on where a person is point-wise) we can't have much of either one.
But then we don't really miss either one entirely, because we can have anything so long as we take the points into account.
This was my first time using Splenda and found that I don't mind the taste. Suprising.I don't find the taste of Splenda off-putting so long as I've got other flavors in the item, a mixture if possible. So the combined lemon (juice and zest to boot) and blueberries makes the Splenda less noticeable.
Almond goes well with Splenda, as do mint flavors.
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I've never been to a WW meeting, so can't comment directly on personal experience there. I'm a middle-aged professional mom who works full-time, so I'd have various things in common with many of the people at various different sorts of meetings.
But what I almost certainly would not have in common with very many of them is an interest in great food. For all that many of them are overweight, my impression so far (based on forum chat, which I can just barely bring myself to read) is that they did not get that way by eating or preparing great food. Nobody is posting queries about whether you can successfully sub Splenda for sugar in a Grand Marnier souffle (and would I have to count the alcohol in it?), or if there's a point difference for seared foie gras vs torchon.
Instead, somebody posted a complaint today re her job and the fact that she has to entertain clients out at meals. Her complaint is that her clients don't want to go to Applebee's (which does offer portion-controlled/points assigned items), but instead insist on going to fish restaurants and fancy restaurants where she cannot order the exact same item every time she dines.
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Glad to hear you're not having to camp out, at least.
I'm sort of in withdrawal, so do please post a progress report.
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Looks great, Jensen, and thanks for taking the time. Maybe now I'll have an excuse to start taking pictures of food.
What's particularly nice about that sort of meal is that you have a great deal of leeway when it comes to assembling your own meal, going lighter (or taking none) of the noodles if you eschew carbs, taking mostly vegetables if you've already used most of your WW points, etc.
Using up my points has recently become an issue for me, as I've dropped to 20 points. So I aim for meals that average 5 points, with 5 points left for incidentals (like wine, which is not so much an incidental for me as it is a food group).
So lunch today was a total of 5.5 points, used for...
1 1/2 oz pork tenderloin
1 cup sauteed summer squash and onions
1/2 cup quinoa
1 cup fresh tomatoes
1/2 cup fat-free ricotta cheese with a couple of chopped fresh cherries (ricotta sweetened with Splenda and flavored with vanilla)
The first three items were leftovers from family dinner last night.
The ricotta cheese dessert is actually quite good, and gets me some much-needed dairy.
With this few points I have to be careful to make sure that I'm not wasting them on nutritionally empty crap. But I'm not hungry, and not tired, and don't particularly feel as if I'm being deprived in any way.
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Any other healthy snack ideas? Especially for starving teen boys...who grow and get hungry, but who belong to computer club at school and live practically next door to school anyway -- and get no exercise at all. I've taken to having part of dinner ready early so I can put it in front of him, but it isn't easy when I'm home late from work and fielding phone calls from clients too.
Cheese, nuts, dried fruit (neither likes fresh fruit very much, very odd), raw vegetables (like carrots and cucumbers), edamame, and yogurt are the primary snack options for kids in our household. Neither soft drinks nor juice are typically in the house.
I work full-time (and not in a food-related industry), so it's very easy to fall into the convenience food trap. Occasionally my husband ends up doing the marketing (if I'm really slammed at work, or sick, or traveling), and then our pantry looks as if Homer Simpson's been helping out around the house: salty fried snacks, cookies, sweet breakfast cereal, muffins, Pop Tarts, pudding, ice cream, Wonder Bread. I've gone so far as to throw some of this stuff away or bring it to work.
It's not that he doesn't understand my reasoning, but he seems to feel deep down that I'm depriving the children of some very crucial experience. He comes from a not very affluent background where junk food was pretty much never available, and so at some level equates Doritos with affluence. He's thin, too, the SOB.
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Great points re keeping our kids' diets healthy, helen. Mine would kill for a piece of white bread at this point, and starchy snacks and sweet cereal aren't even possibilities. But weaning them entirely of starches in the morning has been problematic, particularly as my husband is unwilling to endorse this plan. Seems like it would be a bit easier with a Japanese spouse, presumably not as wed to the idea of pancakes and syrup for breakfast.
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If Southerners find the presence of sweet tea so stereotypical, then why, of why is it just about everywhere you go, in Waffle Houses, restaurants, parties, homes, BBQ pits, fast food chains, just about everywhere a person can eat in the south?
It's not, actually, or at least it didn't used to be. I was born in the south, spent much of my youth in the south, and virtually my entire adult life in the south, and yet the first time I was ever offered sweet tea in a restaurant I was already in my 20's. I think that sweet tea has spread the same way pizza and crap chinese food has spread across the U.S.
Pretty soon you'll see it being served in New York and Boston and San Francisco, and then we'll get to talk about how it was never really southern in the first place and was actually invented by German immigrants and so it really is okay to serve it because otherwise it would mean everybody'd adopted something southern and therefore carried a racist taint...
More twee crap.
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WW doesn't discriminate among fats, but I certainly do, and any recipe that calls for margarine will immediately turn into butter or olive oil as appropriate.
And at least at the moment the points aren't just based on calories, but also on fat and fiber. So if you're using the points calculator to figure out something from it's nutrient label thingy you'll find that higher fiber (within limits) will drive the point value down.
One issue for me is that some of the really weird things that I like are not listed. For instance, I like basil seed drink, and make my own iced milk tea version. But not only are basil seeds not listed on the U.S. site, but I can't find good nutritional information for this item anywhere. So I just count them as poppyseeds and keep going.
There are some hysterically funny things that are listed on the WW site. Bear, for instance. Did you know that 3 and 3/4 ounces of polar bear meat is 3 points, whereas 3 and 3/4 ounces of brown, grizzly, or black bear meat is 4 points? This seems counterintuitive to me, as the polar bear seems like it should have more fat. Maybe it depends on the time of year.
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The Italian site was also just a phone number. But the French site did have a nice recipe for tiramisu.
I think that people that are interested in food actually have an advantage when it comes to WW, as it's generally easier for us to figure out how to re-work a recipe to make it healthier, so we don't need to rely on pre-packaged items and meals.
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Sounds like a great trip, Maeve. Thanks for the feedback, and let us know next time you're headed our way.
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Any info helpful, nikko. I've got a colleague who went to university in Thessaloniki but that's now too long ago to be of much help. The English language web sites out there that I've found don't have much to offer, so info from Greek print or electronic media would be much appreciated.
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Pokeweed's widely known to be troublesome, and I'm surprised that somebody would sell it at a farmers market. The younger plants may be less of an issue.
Pokeweed contains saponins (and it can be used as a soap substitute), so eating it without first leaching them out (by boiling in several changes of clean water) can rip up your gut and give you diarrhea.
Pokeweed also contains mitogens (something called pokeweed mitogen is used in vitro to stimulate cell division for certain sorts of laboratory testing), and may be either mutagenic or teratogenic, particularly with chronic exposure. It's one of the many plants from which chemotherapeutic agents have been prepared.
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I'd also be interested in any dining suggestions for Thessaloniki. I'll be there for a conference (in the center of town so far as I can tell) in September.
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Thanks for helping me remember, maf. Yes, Court Square does sound like it. I wasn't eating much there, maybe a ploughman's lunch or soup, but then it was a pub sort of place. I once ate a very stuffy sort of dinner with an emeritus professor and his wife in the hotel dining room. Very old school.
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Zyka in Atlanta's very good and quite popular. It's located in a heavily Indian area with lots of different Indian dining and shopping options.
We pretty much always get takeaway, and favorites include butter chicken and ground chicken kebabs. Their raita is made with mint, tomatoes, onions, and potatoes.
It tends to be too greasy, so I skim extra fat off the top of the containers before serving at home. They also recently stopped serving ras malai, too bad is it was some of the best in town.
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Particularly enjoyable article.
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I can get huge (you could put one of Varmint's pigs in one of these things) cast iron/porcelain single sinks. Salvage places in New Orleans have them(literally) by the hundreds and there are a ton to choose from.
Get one. Do note that you don't want it disproportionately deep, as you'll be reaching to the bottom of it.
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I love my big sink. Everything from big vases to cookie sheets to the ice cream maker fits in it, no problem. It's also great if I'm entertaining in the kitchen, as I can fit lots of dishes in the sink rather leaving them on the counter (possible with split sinks, of course, but the space is not as flexible, plus the divider takes up a fair amount of space).
I've got a garbarge disposal that's offset to one side of the same big sink. Easier than having it in a separate sink, IMO, as I'd then have to move said item over to the separate sink to rinse food off of it (and probably ding it on that stupid divider en route). Or I could scoop the ick from one side of the sink to the other, or I could...never mind, I think I'll keep this arrangement.
Sinks are expensive. Mine's a Shaw's Original fire clay (I think)---I chose this particular model in part for its looks.
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Was it just an off night? I’m definitely not one that can make that determination after eating there only once. I’d love to hear from other Seeger’s diners and find out how they felt about their experience.
Unfortunately, jeffj, it was not just an off night, but business as usual (in recent memory, anyway) at Seeger's. But it's very good news that the manager contacted you, so perhaps things will improve, and Seeger's will become the very hot ticket that it should be.
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"Spirited Away" is a cartoon, right?
Anyway, if you haven't yet posted on the Japan forum I would once again suggest doing so. Use the scene in the movie as a reference point.
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Haven't been. Word is it's a bar (appropriate for the locale) with a limited tapas menu and "rum bar". At least I think that was what they said. Anyway, Blais no longer works there.
If you want to get food from Blais you need to go to Bazzaar, on Peachtree next to The Fox Theater.
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Yes, gyoza are pot stickers.
I'm having some trouble envisioning exactly what you're talking about. You're sure it's Japanese? Try describing the shape, the contents, the type of wrapper (starch used and thickness and cooking prep).
You could try asking on the Japan forum, and once you've nailed down the item we can tell if we've seen it around.
Weight Watchers (Part 1)
in Food Traditions & Culture
Posted
I've found Stevia pretty much intolerable. I'll try mixing it with Splenda. And I must have some aspartame around here someplace.
I've been much better about planning all my meals, entering my points before I eat (or as I eat, in the case of breakfast) since I'm taking lunch and snack to work. I find that I'm generally not hungry enough to eat all that I've packed, and end up subtracting those points when I get home.
I don't plan meals before I shop, but put together ideas while I'm at the market and then write them down when I get home.