Abra

Cusina - try some evaporated skim milk on your oatmeal with blueberries. The milk is sweet by nature, and I was able to enjoy the oatmeal with no other sweetener than berries and milk, which was very surprising to me. Half a cup, which is actually quite a lot, has as much calcium as a cup of skim milk, and counts as a dairy. The unthinkable happened this morning - I didn't finish my breakfast! It was about a 7 point bowl of leftover congee (the last, finally!) with tofu, plus some leftover veggies from last night. Ok, I know, but I like to eat dinner food for breakfast, especially with some sort of hot sauce. It just gets me in gear. When I looked at the bowl I thought "too much", but then, I always eat 6 points for breakfast, and often 7, so I thought I'd end up eating it all. I was actually full after about 5-6 points' worth. A miracle has occurred. It will be a challenge today to go out to lunch. The place I'm going is supposed to have several vegetarian options, so that'll possibly include some all-core foods. It occurs to me that any vegan dish is all-core, which gives me a sort of handle for restaurant-going.

Thanks for a really fun blog, Laksa and Ms. Congee. Next time I go over to our Asian supermarket I'll look for some of the products you pictured. I don't think we have a lot of Malaysian stuff here, but we do have the very popular Malay Satay Hut, so there's gotta be some.

I'm still trying to figure out when I'll have a whole day to try that recipe, and who I can invite over to help eat it all up. It was way too good to have around the house.

Sorry, nanuq, I misread a comma into your post between fruit and yogurt - mea culpa! This is my third core day, and I'm liking it very much. I find it easier to do than flex, I feel more full although I'm eating about the same number of points (but about the equivalent of eating all my flex points each day), and it feels more "correct" to me. Now to see whether I'll lose this week or not. Initially I had the portion size anxiety thing too, but let's take last night as an example. I put a chicken leg (drumstick and thigh, no skin), a roasted sweet potato, and some cauliflower puree on my plate. I ate it all up, but didn't go and have more chicken, even though I was certainly "allowed" to. I think that as long as you use your head and give yourself a balanced plateful of food, overeating by much is very unlikely. Of course, had I just sat down with the chicken, I would have eaten much more of it. And the restriction on number of times per day for cereal and pasta or rice really is meaningful to me. Yesterday I had leftover congee for breakfast, but there was more than I wanted in the morning in the bowl. I left it, and though "I'll eat that later for a snack." But no, it's only once a day, so that was that. And because I'd had that instead of cereal for breakfast, that meant no cereal all day. It's very interesting to see how it works in practice. I am slowly aware of a feeling growing that perhaps I can actually trust myself to do it right, which is very cool if it's true.

If that article says that fruit is not core, it's wrong. All fruit is core, including bananas. Plain nonfat yogurt is also core, so yogurt with fruit is a core food, just not sweetened. I think that all whole grain hot cereals are also core, but I'll check. There's an amazing amount of misinformation out there - I think WW did a crappy job of explaining the new program from the outset. However, I like the program itself a lot, so far. This is my third day.

Yum, red wine congee, now why didn't I think of that? Actually, red wine risotto is good, but congee sounds pretty icky, even to me. You only count the non-Core food items. WW is telling people that when eating out, if the food isn't obviously all core, to count the whole thing since you don't know what's in it, but I think those of us here are sharp enough to dissect a dish accurately. I had that congee for breakfast today. I was planning blueberries and oatmeal, but it's raining and I didn't feel like going out to pick blueberries in the rain. It's perfect weather for roasting a chicken, though, so that's what I'm going to do.

I think I just should have made less! I used 1 cup (8 oz, not a rice cup) of brown basmati and 1/2 cup of wild rice, which needed about 3 quarts of liquid and was still very thick. My poor little Zojirushi just couldn't handle all that. Not to mention that I'll be eating it for days.

For dinner I made a 100% core lentil soup For dessert I had some plain yogurt with Fiber 1 stirred in - not bad at all. So I ended the day having eaten 32.5 points, all core foods, but with one extra teaspoon of oil, so 1 flex point used up. That's often what I eat in a higher-end day, but I really feel full from dinner. It definitely feels like I ate a lot today, more than usual, even though I'm normally a pretty whole foods person. This is interesting. Hey, do you guys like seeing the food, or are the pictures just cluttering up your download?

Too funny, Jen. I just posted the details of my congee in Laksa's blog, and the last thing I said was that I'm looking forward to eating it for breakfast. Here's mine It's brown rice, wild rice, tofu, and seasonings -100% core foods, except for 2 tsp of sesame oil. But that'll go into my oil allowance for the day, and it was spread out among three bowls like the one above, so I won't count it. This bowlful is 9.5 points, and was pretty yummy.

Ok, I tried ricecooker congee. Although I have to say that I made a WW version using brown basmati and wild rice, as opposed to white rice, and smoked, pressed tofu instead of pork, so it's really only a riff on your recipe. Here it is I added Sarawak white pepper and ginger, cooked it partly in chicken broth, partly water, with the reconstituted shiitakes, and also stirred in a little black sesame oil, green onions and cilantro, as well as a little soy sauce. That's Sriracha chili sauce on top. It was pretty tasty, although the different rice really changed the consistency a lot. My ricecooker wasn't big enough for the amount I made, so my counter also got the benefit of a good scrubbing. I'm looking forward to having a bowl for breakfast tomorrow. That's just the sort of breakfast food I love. Thanks for the inspiration!

Sandra - I did see on the Lifetimers board (where I don't deserve to be but often go to look for accurate info) that on maintenance you are supposed to add 28 points to the 35 allotted otherwise. Sounds a bit generic to me, but that's what I saw. I'm still journaling this week, just for my own information, but I'm trying not to even mentally count up the points until the end of the day, so I can see what I do when eating Core foods but not restricting anything. I'm saving my extra points for a lunch with heyjude on Thursday, at a place I've never been so I don't know how core-friendly it'll be. I'm actually trying a ricecooker congee at the moment, a la Laksa's blog, but using brown basmati and wild rice, and smoked tofu instead of pork. It'll be cooking for at least another hour and a half, but I'll let you all know how it turns out.

It's recommended not to eat tuna or swordfish more than once a week, if you're pregnant. I figure that's a good limit for me too, since I think I'm also a sentitive little organism. Salmon isn't a source of mercury, although farmed salmon can be contaminated with PCBs and other nasty stuff. Try to eat wild caught salmon - not that it's entirely free of junk, but it's generally a lot better. Fish isn't the clean food source it used to be before we started polluting the ocean into extinction. I ate some Canadian bacon this morning because it's in the Core program, and I haven't had any in I don't know how many years. Gack, now there's a chemical-tasting food! I'm tossing the rest of it.

Now if I could only make it be open on Sunday. This would be a perfect day for a little trip to Seattle. What's with that Sunday closure stuff, anyway?

Thanks for the great tips, folks! I'll check 'em out.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Irwin, but actually I'm "just" a personal chef, meaning that I do all my cooking onsite at the client's home, or their venue with a kitchen. I don't have a commercial kitchen from which to deliver food, as a true caterer does.

Damn, I love sesame candy, and don't have any! Ms. Congeeniality (great name!) thanks so much for the recipe. It's looks so easy and delicious, especially with some chili oil. It's fun, having two bloggers in one.

Thanks, tighe, I do know about product search (I think I actually learned about it here, maybe from you), but I was wondering if someone just knows of a good store to get everything I want. Just being lazy, I guess. It always amazes me how hard it is to find good liquor in this state, compared to other places I've lived.

It's so interesting, reading through this thread, to note how many of the best meals were in foreign countries, or at least far from home. What is is about being cut loose from everyday reality that makes food taste so good? And then the other category seems to be nostalgia meals, those that remind us of how things used to be, before they got so complicated. It's fascinating.

In one of my first posts at WW online I said "Whoever says nothing tastes as good as being thin feels doesn't eat at my house!" I got a lot of razzing for it, and I've slightly moderated my view in the two years since then. Sometimes being thinner feels best, and sometimes eating feels best. That's an improvement for me, and probably a more balanced approach to life. Being a total foodie, I doubt that I'll ever be a WW poster girl. What I'd like to be is a healthy and reasonably slim foodie. One radical change I've made is that I no longer drink my points. If I'm going to drink anything that has points, it's going to be alcohol! No milk, juice, pop with calories (never liked those much anyway), no Silk, no latte, no chai, and so on. In a trade-off between eating and drinking, eating wins every time. However, I will admit that one of the best days of my WW life was when I learned that a whole bottle of wine has only 10 points. That's for me! Does anyone have any new info about the new program?

We have a really inferior liquor store here on Bainbridge. I'm out of stuff like Armagnac, Calvados, Grappa, Pastis, and Cachaca. Where would you go to get the broadest selection of exotica possible? Ok, I don't use Cachaca in cooking.

I was just being a tourist in Banjarmasin, back when touristing in Indonesia was more feasible. I remember the early morning floating market best. All the food was sold and traded from one boat to another. It was wild. As one who loves congee, I'm interested in learrning how to make it in the rice cooker. Would Mrs. Laksa provide a little more detail?

Oh, thank you JGarner - I actually do sometimes eat that chili sauce with a spoon. I think it's an irresistable combination of flavors, and I'm so glad to know what to call it! It's the secret ingredient in the most amazing Thai lemongrass soup I've ever had. Wow, a Thai culinary tour led by a real expert sounds really fun!

Yep, I knew you were going to be a good choice! I've actually been to Borneo, well, Kalimantan, and just in Banjarmasin, but still. Oh, and I use pepper from Sarawak sometimes, too. I love the food from that part of the world, including durian and blachan, so this will be especially fun for me. I'm really looking forward to this week!

I have to admit, I'm having blog-withdrawal. You mean I can cook and eat without taking pictures? I found blogging to be such an interesting process, causing me to be so much more conscious about everything to do with food than I already am, something I would have thought to be impossible. Also, I feel that a disclaimer is in order. What you didn't see is sinks full of dishes (thanks to my dear husband the dishwasher), piles of laundry, unswept floors. Blogging is so selective, and makes one's life look so much prettier that it really is. We live a normal life, full of normal messes. And remember, I have been known to eat peanut butter on rye, with red wine.

Well, I'll be brave and start this off. I'd say it was at West, in Vancouver, last summer. Sitting at the chef's table and getting a little extra attention because of that, excellent wine pairings, getting to watch their calm and controlled kitchen work, and out of sight deliciousness of the food, that's what made the experience.