Jensen

For dinner, I tend to weigh the ingredients individually and then divide by the number of servings made. I think my points calculations tend to err on the "plus" side though. For example, all meat points values in the guide book are given as cooked weights. There's no way I could weigh just the beef in tonight's dinner so I weighed it raw and used that weight to look up the points. Both the Spouse and the Spawn tracked points for a while, back when I first started. They haven't kept it up though. Despite that, the Spouse has lost around 35 lbs and the Spawn has lost 30 lbs. I'm pretty sure that the Spawn is well within her correct weight range for her height now. She's very tall (5'9" or so) and never really looked like she had 30 pounds to lose but, now that it's gone, she's absolutely gorgeous.

Dinner was fab. The flavour from the ham and the cheese added an incredible depth and richness to the sauce. So rich, in fact, that I could only eat 1.5 of the rolls...

Dinner is almost ready. Tonight I used the "carne asada" in the freezer to make my spin on braciole. The meat for carne asada is already sliced so less work there. On top of the beef, I put 1/2 oz. of the Old World Portuguese cheese and one slice of serrano ham. Because Wayde had made the comment about our serving sizes, I weighed everything before assembly. In each roll, the beef was 4 points, the cheese was 0.5 points (which I am counting as one, just in case), and the serrano ham was 1 point. On top of that, I poured half a bottle of Trader Joe's roasted red pepper pasta sauce. That added 3 points to the pot. So, each serving will be 2 rolls and sauce and the pointage will be 13 points. Here it is, ready for the oven: I'll serve it with steamed broccoli (0 points): and pasta. Pasta and cheese are both things that always weigh. For me, they're items that I tend to get a little heavy-handed with so weighing them keeps me on the straight and narrow. For three of us, the pasta should weigh 168g. I was really surprised the first time I weighed it out to cook it. It actually makes a fair bit more than what I had thought it would.

Lunch was a few slices of turkey and some cottage cheese. I got the camera out and then looked at the plate again. "That looks way too much like diet food. I'm not taking a picture of that!" Wayde had mentioned this morning that he thought our portion sizes were creeping up so I took the time to weigh the turkey (3 oz.) and measure the cottage cheese (1/2 cup). Those two items were 5 points (3 for the turkey and 2 for the cottage cheese). So what exactly are these "points" that I keep talking about? Well, for those of you not familiar with Weight Watchers, they've assigned point values to all the food. The values are calculated based on caloric content, fat content, and dietary fiber. Depending on your weight, you are "allowed" a certain number of points per day. This goes down in 25 pound increments. When I started, I could have 24 points per day. Now I can have 22 and, very soon, that will drop to 20 points. You never drop below 20 points and the idea is to eat ALL of your daily points. In addition to your daily points, you have 35 weekly points, called "flex points". Generally, I use my flex points for things that I consider "treats". So, if I want avocado on a sandwich or something like that, I'll count the avocado points as flex points and count the rest of the meal as regular daily points. You can also earn "Activity Points". These are extra points for exercise and are calculated based on your weight, the exercise intensity, and the exercise duration. There are a couple of different ways of figuring out your points. When you first join, you are given a small handbook with the points values of common foods in it. I purchased their "Complete Food Guide" which also contains specific values for brand name foods. I don't think I've ever used that section of it though since I don't seem to buy the big brand stuff! Along with the handbook, you are given a little sliderule thingie called a "Points Finder". To calculate points using the Points Finder, you start by looking at the nutritional information on the side of the food package. Here's the data from the cottage cheese I had: Then, you use the Points Finder by lining up the fiber content and the caloric content: With those two values lined up, you then find the fat content on the right. The points for that food will be in the window to the right of it. So, my cottage cheese had no fiber and 100 calories. With the 0 and the 100 lined up, I then check against the fat content...2.5g. And, I see that there were 2 points in the serving that I had. Simple, eh? And, in case one feels that losing weight isn't its own reward, Weight Watchers does have some "incentives" to mark your weight loss. When you lose 5 pounds, you get a "I lost 5 pounds!" bookmark. For every five pounds you lose after that, you get a gold star with a "5" on it. When you've lost 25 pounds, you get the fridge magnet. Woo-hoo!

I love that Italian shop! Apparently, their meatball sandwich is to die for. Once the weather is nicer, I'll have to see about stopping at the co-op. We are sometimes out that way on the bike and it's a lot easier to find parking for a VTX than it is for a Ford one ton! Today's plans were initially to include attending a fun match with Rogie. With all the weather systems coming in and the warnings about flooding in the Delta (which we'd have to drive through to get to the match), we decided to gun the match. So, that meant I could go to the farmer's market downtown! Yippee! I got there a little later than I normally would have so I wasn't able to find any cauliflower that I liked. I didn't buy too much as I have quite a bit of produce in the fridges already. I also forgot to take the camera (bad Jen!). Here's what I got today: Starting at 9:00, there's broccoli, green cabbage (couldn't find any savoy, which I prefer), leeks, sorrel, leaf lettuce, acorn squash, Crimini mushrooms (in the bag), and, out front, a small piece of Old World Portuguese cheese from Spring Hill Dairy in Petaluma. I like to buy something new to try at the market and today it was the sorrel. I have no idea what I'll do with it but it will be fun looking! The sign specified that it was "French sorrel". Does that mean anything special? On this thread, Pan posted a link to a diet quiz that identifies what type of eater you are. It said I was a "meal skipper" and, sure enough, I haven't eaten yet today! So, I'm off to get a little something in me before I start foraging through the fridges!

I'm quite sure I'm not a good enough cook to have a signature dish. The Spouse has one though...he roasts a rib roast on the Weber and smokes it with trimmings from our fruit and/or nut trees. Between the seasonings he puts on the roast and the pecan smoke, it is truly wonderful!

Dinner is done and it was pretty good. Here's what I ended up putting in the oven: I rethought my plans to have sauce, since it would really just add points to the meal and I probably should be a little circumspect with points after that book club breakfast. So, when I took the lamb out of the oven to rest, I transferred the potatoes to the roasting pan and put them back in the oven. Even though they were only in the oven that way for ten minutes or so, they picked up the flavour of the onions. Yum! I wish I could take credit for the idea but it was Wayde who suggested it. The meal on the counter... and on the plate... I cooked the lamb a little bit more than I like but not quite as much as Wayde would like. It was a compromise situation. I wish I'd put the beans in the oven earlier as they could have used a little bit more cooking. Even still, they were wonderful. Even the Spawn ate hers! And now I need to calculate the points! The beans are 0 but I spritzed them with some olive oil. It wasn't too much (less than a teaspoon, I'd guess) but I'll count them as 1 point, just in case. The potatoes themselves were worth 9 points but the tablespoon of beef fat added 3 points to the pot. So, one serving was 4 points. And, 3 oz. of lamb (regular, not lean) is 6 points. I guess I did not too badly. I went over my daily allotment by only 6 points and I am absolutely stuffed! And I still have 20 flex points for the rest of the week. Oh, btw, I weigh in on Thursday so we'll see if I'm able to blog and lose weight at the same time

"I, Claudius" is the book for next month. Peeled grapes, anyone?

Thanks for teaching me something about my religion. ← Just another eGullet service, I think... I just wing it with the beans. This is how I used to make it (pre-Weight Watchers): clickie One thing I didn't do last night but will often do if I have fresh Roma tomatoes is roast them in the oven and then stir them into the beans. It adds a nice depth of flavour to them. That is too funny! I've only ever been in that TJ's once. I'm in Fair Oaks and the shoppers at the one on Sunrise are quite pleasant. (Well, except for me maybe...) I'd be happy to! I didn't want to overwhelm the non-WW crowd with esoterica like that but, what the hell! For breakfast, I ate far more points than I normally would have. Thank god for flex points! I counted the lemon cheese as jam and, as I only had about a tablespoon, that was one point. The scone was 3 points. Two puff pastry thingies were 8 points. I also ate 1/2 an apple for 0 points. So breakfast, usually a three or four point meal for me, was 12 points...over half of my daily allowance! I don't expect that to be a problem though. I'll just dip into my flex points. (I used up 10 of them last night on a bottle of wine...me'n'Therese know how to spend our flex points wisely--on booze!) For the leftover beans, there was one cup of beans and only a sliver or two of ham. The beans were 4 points so I counted 5 points, for any fat that the ham shank would have contributed. So, I've got 5 points left before I have to hit the flex point page. I think I'll make it worthwhile... Since my attempt at interactive blogging didn't succeed too well ( ), I made up my own mind about how to cook the lamb. It was "unrolled" because I'd hacked it in half already so I cut some slots on the inside of the roast and inserted slivers of garlic. Then I sprinkled it with tarragon and freshly ground pepper and then rolled it up and tied it. So, all the seasonings are on the inside. It's currently roasting in the oven on a bed of chopped onions. Our storm continues so I thought an entire meal of roasted things would make me feel good. So, I melted a tablespoon of beef fat and coated some peeled and quartered potatoes with it. They're also in the oven roasting. When I take the lamb out to make a sauce, I'll pop the green in the oven...roasted green beans. I've never done them before so I hope they turn out! I'll post all the pictures once dinner is finished.

Lunch for me was just leftovers: The Spawn made herself a grilled sandwich in the electric grill. Well, she made two. The first one was cheese and she didn't leave it in long enough to do more than just warm it up a bit. The second one involved a Dr. Praeger's Tex-Mex veggie burger and this one was left in long enough: Thanks to eGullet, I was able to appear to be much more knowledgable than I actually am at book club this morning. In the Kosher Cassoulet thread, Swiss Kaese mentioned that leg of lamb is not kosher because the sciatic nerve cannot be removed. Our book last month was "The Red Tent" and someone brought up the passage from the bible in which Jacob wrestles with god and injured his hip. I was able to say (quite nonchalantly), "Oh, that would be why the sciatic nerve must be removed in kosher meats." Thank you, eGullet! And speaking of lamb, I've taken half a leg out of the freezer for tonight's dinner. What do you all think I should do with it? The first half of it was braised (I know, not the best cut for it but it was still very good) with fresh onions in white wine and tarragon. I've thought about perhaps trying to make something Moroccan so that I can use my preserved lemons. Alternatively, I thought about making thisEpicurious recipe, substituting lamb for the beef. Or, I could just roast it.

Okay, I'm home from book club! Katy had done a lot of baking for today's meeting...puff pastry with apricots and cheese and scones. I had taken her a jar of my lemon cheese, only to learn that she had quarts of the stuff herself. So we had a "lemon cheese taste-off". I split my scone in half and put hers on one half and mine on the other half. I thought mine tasted a little more lemony and they also had different consistencies. Mine was firmer while hers was more syrupy. During the course of discussion, I learned that her recipe used icing sugar and only egg yolks. (Mine uses granulated sugar and whole eggs.) She refilled my jar with some of her lemon cheese and sent it home with me Oh, Gretch...I asked my native Sacramentan friend, Marge, about kitchen shops. She reminded me of William Glen. It's in the Town and Country shopping centre. (I think that's at Fulton and Marconi but, being a non-driver, I'm not entirely sure.)

There's a kitchen shop in Lodi... Seriously, the only shop I know of is a restaurant supply store in the same complex as Shun Fat, the Asian market at 65th and Stockton. There might be something out towards Folsom or Eldorado Hills. Have you looked out that way?

I forgot to say but, yes, the Spawn consumes that abomination that is "instant flavoured oatmeal" every morning. I guess I should count my blessings that she's not eating something like Cap'n Crunch!

Oh, Ed. You've outed me. I carry low-class Cockney blood and we have always called it lemon cheese. <Shhhh>Only the posh folk call it lemon curd.</Shhhh> Seriously, what can I say? I grew up on an island that, until my generation, was fairly isolated. That meant that all things were referenced to whatever the "founding" families called them. My great-grandmother was an honest-to-God (or is that honest-to-whatever-saint's-bells-were-important) Cockney. We called it lemon cheese. When I was much younger, I undertook a project to copy down all the old family recipes that I liked. One of them was for "Apple Cheesecake". I'd never actually had it but the recipe looked interesting. And, bloody hell, but when I made it, it was bloody good! This recipe belonged to the above-mentioned great-granny; she died at over 100 years of age when I was around five or six. Gad, I just went hunting and found the recipe. Here it is.... It doesn't look like much, does it? I do recall that a friend made some cracks about the "stir one way" direction. Her comment was "What? So the apples don't get dizzy?" When I undertook this project, my plan was to test all the recipes and adjust them to my own taste. (I know, I know...it sounds like a good excuse to make a lot of treats!). My notes at the bottom of this recipe are: 1/4 cup butter 1/2 cup icing sugar (that would be powdered sugar for you Yanks) Well after testing this recipe, I discovered that I could use berry sugar for the castor sugar. As an aside, I have the cast iron griddle (or planc) of Great-Granny sitting in my cupboard!

I wish you all could have smelled the beans while they were cooking. Mmmmm Here's the dish, just out of the oven: And what we sat down to: It was really steaming so it looks a little "foggy" in the picture. For the WWers among us, I had two cups of beans (yes, I went back for seconds...8 pts) and about 2 oz. of ham (3 pts) for a total of 11 pts. I had 14 points for dinner so I've still got 3 points left. Bob and Marge are coming over in a wee bit and I'll be drinking those points in the form of wine!

Before attacking the lemon cheese, I started on tonight's dinner. I have some cranberry beans from the market in the cupboard but, since neither Wayde nor Kathleen like beans all that much, I decided to use navy beans instead. They're a little more approachable for the two non-bean lovers. First, I weigh out my beans: Usually, I use 250g of beans but there seemed to be only a few left in the bag after that so I just added them all in. They weighed 350g in total. I put the beans in a pot with a bunch of water, bring it to a boil, and then turn the heat off and let them soak. While they were soaking, I made the lemon cheese and then came back to them once it was done. I sweated some onions and garlic in a little bit of olive oil: You can see my seasonings in the little custard cup to the left. I like using Herbes de Provence and a little bit extra thyme. The onions, herbs, and beans were all mixed together and then added to the ham shanks in a casserole dish: I poured in chicken broth until I could just see it around the beans and then covered it up. It's now in the oven, where it will stay for the next several hours.

I've been there once and thought it was really expensive. It's tough for me to get there on my own (I don't drive) and, if Wayde drives me, the parking is very difficult (we have a truck). Gee, couldn't have been all that Southern food, could it have been? That was an amazing blog! I've entered Rogie in a fun match on Sunday so he will be part of the lunch party. I'm sure he'd be happy to pose for a shot of him sharing my food. Back to today's food... Here's a peek at this year's lemon crop: I picked a few for the lemon cheese: This is the recipe I use: Last year, the racing club in Texas put together a cookbook as a fundraiser for the big national race meet. They wanted recipes of foods that had made an appearance at a race meet and so I sent in my lemon cheese recipe. I made it, along with scones and Scotch eggs, for our January race meet last year (it fell on Robbie Burns' Day). I've got everything ready for cooking: Once it's in the pot, you have to stand there and stir and stir and stir until it's all done. I had run a few jars through the dishwasher last night in anticipation of making lemon cheese today. The lids still had an odour of their last inhabitants (kim chee in one and curry sauce in the other) so I put plastic wrap over the jars before putting the lid on. They're all in the fridge now, chilling.

And on to lunch! Even though the Spouse now works out of a home office, we don't usually eat lunch together. So, it was just me for lunch. I micro-nuked a couple of bao: On the side is a little dish of sambal olek mixed with tamari sauce. These are leek bao. I love them but the others in the house prefer char sui bao. (I'll tell you a secret. That's why I bought the leek ones. If I'd bought char cui bao, they'd all be gone when I wanted to eat them! Shhhhh...) To finish off, I ate an orange: My friends, Marge and Bob, brought a bag of oranges back from their trip south over Christmas. Apparently, the bags were being sold by a mentally-challenged fellow and so they bought a couple from him. It's a mixed bag--some navel oranges and some tangerines. The navel oranges have got to be the best oranges I've had in years! Too bad there's only one left now! I'll have to go back to the mandarin oranges I bought at the market... Up next, I'm going to make some lemon cheese and also start getting ready for dinner. We're having quite a storm here so I thought something really hearty would be just the thing. After consulting my fridge door, I've decided to make beans for dinner. What? No one else consults their fridge doors? Here's what I've been doing for the last couple of months. I have two magnetic whiteboard thingies on one of my fridges. On one of them, I write down what vegetables I have and in which fridge they are currently residing: As you can see, I cross out the vegetables as they are used. That way, I always know what I've got and I can't forget about anything, only to have it sprout legs and crawl out of the fridge on its own one day. That was quite successful for me so I started doing the same for meat in the freezer: Usually, I have way more vegetables than that but, due to the holidays, I haven't been able to make it to the market lately. I've had to buy my vegetables <gasp> at the grocery store. (Believe me, I miss my market produce!) Saturday morning is market day here but I'll miss it tomorrow as well because I'll be going to book club instead. The book club I belong to meets on the morning of the second Saturday of every month for a breakfast meeting. Tomorrow, the meeting is at Katy's house...I'll take my camera.

Wow! That makes at least three of us who had the Bunnykins porringers! Have you got a digital camera? Can you post a picture of the bottom of the bowl? Wait...I just started a new topic for Bunnykins bowls.

Do other people call those bowls "porringers"? My grandmother and mum always called it that but still I wondered if it was a real word or not. Before I used it publicly, I did check it out. Apparently, it is a real word but porringers usually have a handle. The shape of the bowl appears to be similar to the Bunnykins one though so I feel at least somewhat justified in calling it that. As for the journal, when you go to meetings, you get a free little paper one every week. I like the coil-bound ones better though and so I fork over an extra four bucks every 12 weeks for one. Yes, loving good food can definitely make it hard to lose weight. This is actually only the second time in my life I've ever tried to lose weight and I went into the whole thing thinking that I wanted to change how I was eating. I think having that as my primary goal has made the experience more successful. The steel cut oats from TJ's are not a Trader Joe brand (yet! ha ha). The brand name is "Country Choice" and is right next to the McCann's on the shelf. I did think that butter would be a very good addition to the porridge...that's exactly how I like to eat grits--with salt, pepper, and butter. Mmmmmm. The butter will likely have to wait until I'm onto my "maintenance phase" rather than in the "weight loss phase" though. I still use butter for some things but adding it to porridge would definitely be a luxury at this point. Hmmmm. "Local organic grocery"... did you miss the part where I said I lived in Sacramento? Seriously, I'll take a look at the organic food section of my local Raley's next time I'm there. It's quite small but they do sell some good stuff. I've bought organic Giusto's flour (did I spell that right?) there and also nutritional yeast. So, they might have the steel cut oats too. The Country Choice oatmeal costs $2.19 for 30 oz. I bought the McCann's tin at Cost Plus for around $5.00, I think. It's a slightly smaller amount--28 oz. So, let's see...Raley's would have to sell their bulk oatmeal for less than $1.16/pound to make it cheaper than the CC brand. Oh, that brings to mind one other big change since my last blogging experience...I'm on a budget now. The Spouse changed jobs early in the fall and the pay structure is quite different. Eventually, I think we'll be at the same level we were before but, right now, I need to keep an eye on the spending. No more trips to the spa for a while!

Unlike my first blogging experience, this one will include breakfast! I've been eating porridge most mornings and, according to this thread, I'm not alone in my love of it. Interestingly enough, both the NY Times and the SF Chronicle had articles this week on porridge. And, as if that wasn't enough press coverage for the lowly dish, Saveur had a brief piece in the December issue (No. 80) on the Benevolent Knights of the Fraternal Brotherhood of Anglo-Afro-Italo-American Society of Porridge Aficionados (AKA Bonnie Raitt's band). I like steel cut oats for my porridge and I also like it plain, with just salt. Here are the ingredients for today's brekkie: I have two containers of oats there because, when I first started eating porridge this winter, I first bought the tin of McCann's. Then I saw the other brand at Trader Joe's for about half the price. So now I buy the cheaper one and use the McCann's tin to hold it. They taste the same ... It took some doing but I also figured out how to make porridge exciting! (Well, for the purposes of the blog, at any rate.) I dug out my daughter's porridge bowl from when she was a baby and ate my porridge out of that this morning. My sisters and I also had a Bunnykins porridge bowl when we were very small. We were always told to eat up our porridge so that we could see the picture on the bottom of the bowl. And it worked! (At least for me ) I still remember waiting to see the "Tea for Two" picture on the bottom of that bowl. Kathleen's bowl is a new one (my eldest sister has the one we ate out of as kids), bought for her by my grandmother when Kitty was a baby. And the picture in the bottom of the Bunnykins porringer, circa 1989? The Bunnykins family watching TV!!! And, after finishing my breakfast, all that was left to do was to fill in my food journal:

For the next week, I invite you to join me for meals at my house...nothing quite so exotic as eating in SE Asia (not by a long shot!) but, based on some of the threads popping up lately (e.g., January Detox and New Years Resolution - Lose Weight), it might be of some interest. As a quick introduction, I am Jen Jensen and I live in Sacramento. This is my second turn at blogging; the first blog is here. I won't go into too much personal detail, since it's all there and I'd just be repeating myself. Back then, I wrote "In the coming week, I'll be eating at home, eating out, and (most exciting of all) eating at Tigh-na-Mara, a spa/resort on Vancouver Island in BC." Well, I definitely ate a lot! A few months later, I stepped on the bathroom scale and realised that, if I didn't do something, I was just going to keep putting on weight until I popped like that fellow in the Monty Python skit. And so I joined Weight Watchers. My primary goal was to relearn my better eating habits. I reckoned if I did that, then I would also lose weight. So far, it's worked quite well. As of yesterday, I've lost exactly 27 pounds. And, thanks to eGullet for inspiration (and the Weight Watchers thread in particular), I've been able to eat some pretty damn good food while losing that weight! And now...I'm off to make my breakfast!

Thanks for the ideas! It's probably heresy but I did pick up a new Trader Joe's simmer sauce today...Moroccan something-or-other. I suppose, if nothing else, I could liven it up with my preserved lemons.

I made some about a year ago when I had a lemon glut. I still haven't used them. I kept them in the fridge though and they are "preserved" lemons, so I'm hoping they'll be okay. I suppose I'll know soon enough when I open a jar. However, I'm still not sure what to do with them.

I'm pretty sure the article addressed this issue, didn't it? So, while the study may not have been perfect in that respect, I think it does show that it can be done. It's all well and good for us to sit here and criticise the specifics of Mr. Waldrop's pantry but, if you go and read the article and look around a bit at both websites listed, you will see that this is something he is living with and working with on a daily basis, year in and year out. I say "Good for him" for conducting the study and for trying to get the message out.