February 3rd, 2010

Wednesday Dinner: Onion Mushroom Burgers with Mashed Potatoes

I love com­ing up with new recipes and new ways to try some old-time favorites with a new twist. If you have been fol­low­ing my weight loss jour­ney you know that I have a seri­ous prob­lem get­ting enough pro­tein in my diet.  So, I decided to add a lit­tle ground beef to my menu. The prob­lem is that I really don’t like the taste of meat. It makes me gag to think that I have to eat beef.

So tonight I tried to cre­ate a burger that was more like a Sal­is­bury steak and paired with some of my favorite veg­gies: mush­rooms, onions, and green peppers.

Burger Recipe

Mush­room Sauce:

• 1 pint Baby Bella Mushrooms
• 1 large onion
• 1 large bell pepper

Saute this mix­ture start­ing with the onions and then adding the green pep­pers and then the mush­rooms. Cook on medium until the green pep­pers and mush­rooms have released all of their liq­uids. ( I learned this tech­niques from the Iron Chef com­pe­ti­tions). Remove from pan.

Burger Sea­son­ings (I cook by smell so the mea­sure­ments are all palm –sized)

• Black pep­per
• Ground Thyme
• Paprika
• Gar­lic Powder
• Red Pep­per
• Cumin

In a bowl com­bine all of the dry ingre­di­ents and mix well. Mix half of the dry mix­ture into the ground beef. Form your burg­ers (4) and “flour” each burger patty with the remain­ing dry sea­son­ing  mix. Cook burg­ers in pan (8 min­utes on each side if you like yours well done).

For Sauce

• Mush­room, Onion, Pep­per mixture
• 1 cups of hot water with a beef bouil­lon cube dissolved
• .5 cup of Bal­samic Vinegar

Remove the burg­ers from the pan and add vine­gar and water/broth. With fire on medium scrap bot­tom of pan and mix well. Add MOP mix­ture and bring to a slight boil. Add burg­ers back to pan and cover. Turn fire to low and cook until the mid­dles of the burg­ers are as pink as you want (I like them well-done so it took about 13 min­utes to cook thor­oughly. This will dif­fer based on the thick­ness of your burger)

Serve with mashed pota­toes (I used instant mashed pota­toes and made them with Soy Milk) and a side salad (my salad had baby car­rots, 2 kinds of let­tuce, pep­pers, mush­rooms, and onions). Cover mashed pota­toes and burg­ers with sauce/MOP mixture.

The burger is about 215 calo­ries alone.

*The pic­ture fea­tures a very large burger that I cut in thirds.

December 29th, 2009

Exercise Any Way You Can

Intro­duc­ing Bucket the Wonderdog

Happy Hol­i­days every­one! If your Christ­mas (if you cel­e­brate it) was half as good as mine then you should be very happy! This year we decided to add a dog to the mix– a beau­ti­fully well-tempered dog named Bucket (my daugh­ter named him). Isn’t he adorable?! While we made this deci­sion so that my daugh­ter would have a play­mate, we did so also because of the exer­cis­ing benefits.

We live in as apart­ment and since mak­ing the deci­sion to work from home I have become some­what of a shut in. I home­school my daugh­ter and then work as a writer, web designer, Blog­ging Con­sul­tant, and am co-founder Moms of Hue and the We of Hue Net­work the rest of the time. I have very lit­tle rea­son to leave the house out­side of doctor’s appoint­ments and the occa­sional fam­ily out­ing. This has proven to be dis­as­trous to my health as I have gained weight which is in direct oppo­si­tion to what I need to do. So, the deci­sion to get the dog came from a need to force myself to brave NY win­ters and get my butt and my daughter’s butt outside.

And it has.

We live on the sec­ond floor but have to climb about 35 steps to actu­ally get there– 20 to get to the front door of the build­ing and then another 15 to get to my door. I have been climb­ing those steps twice daily at the least since bring­ing Bucket home. In addi­tion, my daugh­ter and I, along with buddy walk roughly .25 miles when we take him out for his after­noon walk. In addi­tion, in the morn­ing we have begun walk­ing an addi­tional .5 mile and plan to work our way up to 3 miles. As you can see, I have already begun to get more exer­cise since Christ­mas Eve than I have prob­a­bly done all year. All this walk­ing com­bined with my daily EA Active exer­cise (once I get the doctor’s approval to con­tinue) will help me reach my over­all goal.

It is so impor­tant to get up an move. I feel bet­ter than I have in a long time because I am forc­ing myself to exer­cise. Those trips up and down the stairs count. The brisk walks of the dog around the neigh­bor­hood count. It all counts and I plan to con­tinue get­ting exer­cise in any way that I can.

What do you do tho get more exer­cise in?

October 16th, 2009

Fun and Dairy Free

Went to the nutri­tion­ist. Another attempt to get my weight under con­trol. She believes that I am insulin resis­tant and sent me to the Endocri­nol­o­gist. I also have to have my thy­roid checked. Those appoint­ments are forth com­ing. After going over what I eat with her, she made me real­ize a few things:

1. I do not eat enough. I barely tak­ing in 1000 calo­ries a day and because of this my metab­o­lism is stalled.
2. I do not eat enough pro­tein. I really don’t like meat so I avoid it at all costs.
3. I need to work on build­ing mus­cle as opposed to car­dio only.

I was actu­ally relieved to hear these things as they seem fix­able. She put me on a diet– I have to eat tuna for break­fast and set an alarm clock to remind me to eat every 4 hours.  I am mak­ing a con­scious effort to fol­low her guide­lines in terms of eat­ing. As far as work­ing out goes, she wants me to build mus­cle. I am start­ing that tomor­row as I have not been feel­ing well all week.

My hus­band and I have decided to give up dairy too. My daugh­ter — 3 — suf­fers from bloat­ing and flat­u­lence every time she drinks milk of eats ice cream so rather than put her through this, we are giv­ing it up. I’m feel­ing really good about this deci­sions as the ben­e­fits of a diary-free diet extends far beyond just bloat­ing. We — both my daugh­ter and I — suf­fer from aller­gies and asthma and dairy is a known agi­ta­tor of both.

In other news, I also had my IUD removed and the GYN sug­gested that I wait until after I have Gas­tric Bypass (did I men­tion that I wanted to have that) to get preg­nant. I agree, but the IUD was mak­ing me freak out every month. I am going to focus on los­ing weight by mak­ing seri­ous lifestyle changes and if I get preg­nant, so be it. It will work out.