This weekend, we were staying at our own place. I was attacking what Flylady calls Mount Washmore, namely, two weeks' worth of laundry that had backed up, DH had some paperwork to catch up on, and eating was good. Still, I'm up a pound. I don't know if it's due to TOM or the fact that I had a bit more rest than usual, but I'll take a variation of one pound up over one of four pounds up any day. At least I'm starting the week from a far better place than the last one.
As I have decided to go peanut-free for the next month, I did not restock these before the weekend. And DH, whom I have not informed about my decision, took a good share of the ones left, so they definitely will be out of the house by Wednesday. I'll get me some almonds and cashew nuts instead.
And I tried something new to me. Namely, I bought a big pack of raw spinach, which I used in a lasagna with salmon, onions, and a crumble of feta cheese on Friday, and on Saturday, I put part of the rest into a big bowl of salad.
Making that lasagna gave me another of those d'uh moments. What I used to do when preparing lasagna was, first of all, using four to five layers of noodles. The filling between them used to be the full contents of a pack of ground beef (500 g, that's over a pound). And on top went, regularly, a full 200 g bag of grated cheese. The whole thing, mind you, for two people. And there usually were no leftovers. While I did that recipe rarely, it was a caloric desaster every time.
Today, when I take home ground beef, I immediately divide the pack into two portions, one of which goes straight into the freezer. More than half of what goes into the new version of lasagna is vegetables. Onions, bell peppers, ratatouille mix. Two layers, at most. And I have found out that you can use pureed tomatoes to moisten up the whole thing enough that there is no need for a half-inch cheese crust, either. Which more than halves the calories. Those bags of grated cheese now last through one lasagna plus at least two salads or frittata.
While lasagna will never be something that makes regular appearances in our kitchen because it's rather time- and cleanup-demanding, just stopping throwing the whole package of an ingredient into it makes it a lot less damaging when I do make it.
The aha effect being that I had, at a time when I didn't own a freezer and had to do with a rickety mini refrigerator, gotten into the habit of using the whole content of a package of an ingredient if it was something that would not keep if stored at room temperature once opened.
Rather than throwing it away, I would use it up. What I literally never did was think about just how many servings there were in that pack.
Again and again, what it comes to is portion size. And daring to dispose of food that is too much for myself.
Which is actually a problem for me. There are still two dinner's worth of potatoes in the pantry, and I acually caught myself on a train(wreck) of thought that went like: I have to use these up before Wednesday, darn, if I eat that many potatoes I'll regain lots of weight and be thrown back in my weightloss effort- that was how far I got before stopping myself and realizing that there was absolutely no reason for me to eat those potatoes. If I want them out of the house, I can serve them to DH in small portions. I may even just throw them away.
What made my reluctance to dispose of the potatoes in any other way than by eating them myself even more stupid is that I actually don't even like to eat potatoes. If things were up to me, we would not even buy them at all. DH now, he likes some potatoes with his meat sometimes, so I buy them for him. Then why did I believe it was my responsibility to eat them, too?
And if anybody wants to chide me for having had lasagna at all, I had had nothing but two eggs and two strips of bacon all day because my workday was so darn busy that I didn't even get around to having a protein shake. So, in the toned-down version, it was well within my calorie allowance for the day.
And tonight, it will once more be big salad day.
Julia
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