Days 6 and 7: Getting Derailed and Back on Track, Hopefully

If you were the fifth person to read this after I posted you were my 3,000th view on my blog. CONGRATULATIONS!!

Also a huge CONGRATULATIONS to all my friends who graduated from Valpo today! I wore my alumni shirt for the first time today as I can no longer be in denial that I've graduated since there is the next class graduated now. Time to admit to being a big kid!

So as you maybe noticed I did not blog about yesterday's food yet. That's because of a couple of factors. First, it was Friday and I didn't feel like doing anything all day until I got all fired up and pissed off at 1-800-Flowers to write that blog post. But once my steam ran out I was just dead weight for the rest of the day. Second, I reached a new low in terms of actually preparing/eating the food.

Day Six:

The day started off with the chia seed mango pudding which I had previously said I probably would not like and that I would be making the scallion/feta omelette that I had skipped to partake in bagel day. Good think I know me so well because the "pudding" was mega weird.

Somehow the mango got de-mangoed in whatever happened overnight in this cup and there was absolutely no flavor. There were supposed to be pistachios in this mixture as well but I am not made of money nor did I want to shell all those little buggers so I skipped them. However, I do not think they would have helped. This is yet another breakfast that only got one taste and went right into the "heck no" column and my trash can.

So instead I made my omelette and it was wonderful! This is something I will definitely be making again.

The little bits of cooked feta? Yeah they were amazing.

To make this lovely concoction you thinly slice the white parts of the scallion and put those in your skillet with some olive oil to cook for a bit. I happen to have olive oil Pam so I just used that instead of straight up olive oil so I could coat the pan evenly too. Then after the whites have cooked for a bit you add the green and let them soften up for a bit before dumping in the egg and omelette-ing it up. So yummy, everyone should try it and be happy forever.

Then for lunch I had a salad of arugula, leftover green beans from Thursday night's dinner and the salmon also leftover from Thursday. That had yet another homemade vinaigrette of lemon juice, dijon mustard, and olive oil. The salad was surprisingly good considering the salmon had been a little funky to be the previous day but I am guessing the dressing helped with that.

I tried to make it pretty but the salmon liked to hide

But while I was eating it, and enjoying it, all I could think about was how it wasn't chocolate and peanut butter ice cream. So after I had about half I went and got myself some ice cream from a nearby Baskin Robbins. Hey, it was Friday!

Since I was mega full from all the salad and ice cream I skipped the afternoon snack of carrot, "seedless" cucumber, and hummus. Whatevs, no big loss there.

When I got home from work in my Friday "I don't even want to move or do anything or open my eyes" attitude I knew dinner was not going to be cooked by me. I hemmed and hawed over this one for a good minute or two, I did already have all the ingredients I would need and I had said I wanted to try each meal. That was before I went through a week of cooking everything for each meal from scratch. It's a lot of work and I just wanted to be a couch potato. What sealed the deal for me not cooking was that I was to make myself chili. I'm not the biggest chili person. If the meal had been something that interested me I may have stuck with it but chili is not the way to my heart. It's actually probably the opposite of the way to my heart.

So I hemmed and hawed again and went with Panda Express and Krispy Kreme. I stopped at Krispy Kreme on the way to the panda, it was the right side of the street, and got two donuts. I ate one donut on the way to the panda and another after I had finished my food. I am not proud of it but it was so so so so so so tasty. I love donuts.

Can't stop, won't stop

So Day six was a huge bust for me but at least I had a good omelette. And a donut.

Day Seven: HALF WAY DONE!!

Yay! Today marks half way through this challenge dealio! I had a major decision to make today. Do I continue or do I give up and admit defeat and that I'll probably end up on My 600lb Life someday? This was a serious thought for about two minuets then I decided I liked not having to think about what to make for food more than I like being lazy. I chose to be mentally lazy over physically lazy. Since I'm going ahead with week two, today was also grocery shopping day.

But first breakfast. I don't know why but this inventor of this challenge HATES breakfast. They make it the worst meal of the day, by far. Today was to be steamed asparagus and two poached eggs. First problem, I don't like asparagus. The shaved stuff in the salad the first day was fine but I just don't like it when its in the stalk form. Not my thing. So I decided I wasn't going to have it. I'd have toast instead.

Next problem with this breakfast that I did not anticipate was how freakin hard it is to poach an egg. The challenge gives you very specific instructions on how to poach your eggs so I wasn't really worried when I should have been very worried.

Crack each egg into a separate small bowl or mug, then stir the water in a circle gently with a wooden spoon to create a whirlpool. Drop 1 egg into the center of the whirlpool. The white will wrap around the yolk and start to set. Let the egg poach in the water for 3 minutes, keeping the temperature steady. Remove the egg with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel-lined plate. Repeat with the other egg, again creating a whirlpool before dropping in the egg.

So I made this little whirlpool and watched in horror as the first egg just dissolved into the water. Almost immediately the pot of water gets cloudy and I've lost the yolk. I try to poke around with my slotted spoon and gather up what white I can but it's almost useless. I do eventually find the yolk and decide to keep it captive with my spoon while the poaching happens.

it was madness

I thought maybe the water wasn't hot enough so I turn it up just a bit and let the water reheat before attempting the next egg. This time I don't mess around with that whirlpool and just drop the egg right onto the spoon in the water. I was able to retain more of my egg this time but it was still sad looking when I finished.

pathetic

I broke the yolk and sopped that up with my toast. It wasn't too bad. But then I tried the egg white. Oh my gosh why do people like poached eggs? There was no flavor in the white and I can only take so much runny yolk. I had maybe two bites of the white and threw them away. This was the ultimate failed experiment in breakfasting.

So I made myself another scallion and feta omelette :) yum yum yum happy happy yum

When I read what I had to do to make my lunch my first thought was "are you kidding me". One of the steps involves massaging lime juice into kale leaves and that's where I said hell no. If I was not going to get a massage in return, that kale was not going to be massaged by me. Since lunch today was supposed to be a kale salad I ended up skipping the lunch for today. I scrounged in my cupboards and had a nutrigrain bar or something.

After lunch I went grocery shopping. Just a warning now, I will be skipping a few of the meals next week. Just by looking at the grocery list and not buying some of the ingredients I know this will be happening. For example, I did not buy the canned tuna. I refuse to eat canned tuna. Nasty stuff. So I'll either be making substitutions as I go or I'll be eating the occasional meal out or scrounged up.

Grocery shopping this week wasn't as expensive as last week as I bought some things last week that are still going to be used for this coming week. I did also get a few extra things to retain my sanity like cookie dough and strawberry shortcake ice cream bars. Can you resist the strawberry shortcake bars? I sure can't and am probably going to go get one from my freezer after I finish this post.

Since I had failed so spectacularly yesterday and again today with making all my meals I had to stick it out and make the dinner. I had to get back on track because this was a slippery slope I was on.

Dinner tonight was homemade (of course) turkey meatballs on a bed of collared greens topped off with a homemade tomato sauce. I had never had collared greens before so my curiosity was back in the game with me and motivation was restored!

The recipes are in the BuzzFeed article so I won't get into details of what all was in the meatballs or tomato sauce but they were both decent. The meatballs were actually quite good and I can definitely see myself making them another time. The tomato sauce was a bit acidic for me but this challenge is a no-sugar thing so I stuck with their recipe. The collared greens were okay. I had to chew them for longer than expected which was kinda weird. But the flavor from the sauce was pretty powerful so I can't really tell you what collared greens themselves taste like.

I forgot to take a picture before I added the sauce. I realized this immediately after adding the sauce.
Also, this may be my worst food picture so far

Dinner was good overall, I ate most of it before I got full. Something I have noticed about this challenge is that I fill up from these meals very quickly. I suppose it makes sense since I'm eating so many greens and other filling things but when I can't finish something I like it makes me sad.

Snack tonight I think is like a clementine or something? I haven't given it much thought since I'm definitely going for the strawberry shortcake bar. I may have popcorn too since I got some movies from Redbox while at the grocery store. I rented About Time and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, I haven't heard anything about About Time but I love Rachel McAdams and I've hard that the Mitty movie is enjoyable, but slow to start. We shall see!