Fall Salad: Pomegranate, Goat Cheese, and Salmon Salad

Yum! This was so good. Check out that giant scoop of goat cheese. Totally brill.

Ingredients:

Gordon's frozen salmon lemon pepper filet (cooked in the oven, not the microwave) - 100 calories

1.33 oz goat cheese - 93 calories

Seeds from 1/2 a pomegranate - 52 calories

Mixed greens, about 2 cups - 15 calories

2 tbsp cranberry basalmic dressing - 20 calories

Fresh ground pepper, to taste

Nutrition:

Total calories: 280

Fat: 11

Carbs: 27

Protein: 24

Chicken Chicken Chicken!

You guys, I went to the gym Friday, yesterday, and today, and I've been tracking my calories. I have to make these last two weeks of October count before I gain like 5 pounds in New Orleans.

I've been working on cooking / planning meals for the next couple weeks - since I've been travelling so much I haven't had to cook for an extended period of time in a while. I did my turkey enchilada casserole (one of my favorite new recipes) and still have 2 pieces of that left that I hope to save for lunch this week. I had some chicken tenderloins that were going to spoil, so I needed to cook them all at the same time.

When I've mass-cooked chicken before, I always make the same type, whether it's all BBQ in the crockpot, all italian spices, or all mexican (for fajita salad). But I inevitably get tired of the same chicken after 2 meals and the rest ends up going to waste. Enter solution:

I am a secret genius. Lemon pepper and lemon juice, rosemary and olive oil, and soy sauce. Three different types of chicken ready to go for lunch, dinner, whatever. I used the soy sauce chicken in my chicken fried rice last night, and I think I'm going to do some kind of pasta tonight with another flavor. Delicious!

Teambuilding 2011 - Kansas City!

Back from the teambuilding event! Everyone had a lot of fun, and the organizers (including me) worked hard. I'm exhausted tonight but I did some arm exercises anyway. Woo!

My favorite picture from the event...scariest scarecrow EVER!

And here is a picture of the hailstorm we had at the corn maze. This was CRAZY. Colleen and I got stuck in the car while everyone else was huddled under the tent. I can't believe that everyone had a great attitude about it and after the storm stopped we just went on with the event as planned. GREAT team!

Back to June!

So partly thanks to me not eating whatever I want and partly (mostly?) thanks to me getting sick this Tuesday, I'm back to my low weight from June. Woo hoo! I went to work out last Sunday and Monday, and then was deathly ill on Tuesday so I didn't go back to the gym until Saturday.

We're having the teambuilding event in Kansas City this week, and I'm going to do my best to stay on track. I know I'll be eating out every meal, but I will also be running around trying to get everything together for the event, so I'm hoping it will even out.

I'm thinking about my halloween costume(s) and I've decided on being the tin man for one. Instead of buying a really cheap slutty one and looking something like this:

I'm going to try to make my own costume and see how it goes. Plenty of pictures will be posted I'm sure!

Off to bed now, it's going to be a long week...

Recipe: Baked Eggplant Parmesan

So I'm not really sure if this counts as eggplant parmesan even though there's no actual parmesan cheese, but let's go with it.

I've never cooked an eggplant before, but I picked one up at the store this weekend and since I'll be out of town at the teambuilding event in Kansas City this week, I figured I better go ahead and cook it. I will definitely make this again, especially when it gets a little colder. I didn't even miss the meat in this meal.

Yield: 3 servings


Ingredients:
1 eggplant
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup italian style breadcrumbs
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups of pasta sauce (I use Newman's Own Sockarooni - it's a little spicy!)
3/4 cups italian cheese blend
5-6 fresh basil leaves, sliced
salt and pepper to taste



Preparation:
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and place a sheet pan inside while the oven heats up.
2. Slice the eggplant lengthwise (long way) in half-inch thick pieces. You should get about 8 pieces out of one eggplant. Do not peel the eggplant!
3. Dip the eggplant slices into the egg and then into the breadcrumbs.
4. Coat the sheet pan in olive oil and place the eggplant slices on the pan. Bake for 15 minutes, flip the slices, and bake on the other side for 10 minutes.
5. In a small casserole dish (I used an 8x8 pan) sprayed with nonstick cooking spray, layer the pasta sauce, eggplant slices, and cheese (use 1/3 of the pasta sauce and 1/2 the cheese). Make another layer of pasta sauce and eggplant slices. Top with remaining pasta sauce and cheese. Lay the basil slices over the top and season with salt and pepper.
6. Bake for another 15 minutes at 475 degrees. Serve over spaghetti or with a salad (or both)!

Baked Eggplant Parmesan

Recipe to follow! Must eat first!

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My Birthday!

So...I didn't meet my birthday goal. Wonk wonk. I totally lost my mind the past month with lots of traveling to New York and Kansas City and Arkansas and basically did nothing but eat and sit around. I honestly thought I had gained about 10 pounds, but it only turned out to be like 3 pounds...phew.

My birthday was fabulous with a delicious lunch at Breadwinners, happy hour with a lot of work friends, dinner at Goodfellas with more work friends, and then Banditos on Saturday. Mom even sent me beautiful flowers!

Of course I went to the gym this week trying to be good, and I went to a kickboxing class for the first time. I walked in and the instructor girl asked if anyone was new. It was only me and one other girl, and the advice we got was "Just keep punching." Okay...apparently everyone else had been in the class since Week 32 and they were on Week 47. Yikes. I stayed through the whole hour, but around 45 minutes something was feeling off. Since then my back has been hurting - pretty sure I pulled something, and I had to stay home from work Thursday afternoon and just lie on the floor. I did go work out this afternoon (just on the elliptical) but I'm definitely still feeling some pain after being up and about all day.

So a lot happened in September. I went to the U.S. Open in New York while on a business trip and got to see my favorite tennis players (Nadal, Roddick, and Isner) and bought a bunch of presents for all my jealous family members.

I went home to Arkansas for a weekend, hung out with Rivka at her awesome new place and ate lots of delicious indian food, and watched football with the family.

I went to Kansas City for work, conducted a training class, and made some new friends at our teambuilding venue. (Also ate delicious apple cider and apple cider donuts...I may have ordered both a cider slush AND a hot cider. No guilt. And I traipsed around a corn maze for 45 minutes, so they were also well deserved.)

The cutest earless goat you will ever see. 

As far as goals...I'm pushing my ultimate goal out to December 31st. I haven't really lost anything since June, and I haven't tracked my calories or been to the gym (besides the kickboxing incident this week) so I'm rebooting. My only travel plans for October are the 11th-13th for our teambuilding event, and then at the end of the month I will be going to New Orleans for Halloween, woo!! I can't wait!

I revamped my goals/rewards sheet in case anyone is interested in reading the updated breakdown. November is going to be a lot of traveling (going to visit Meaghan, Alicia, and Johnny) so I'm pretty much hoping to break even over that month, and then go hardcore through December.

Hopefully more consistent updates now that I'm back in Dallas for a while!