I was inspired by seeing Fl0wer’s post the other day that contained her food for the day. As a daily blog subject it’s not the most exciting, but as weight-loss bloggers it is our, um.. ‘bread and butter’ and it adds a note of reality to what we’re doing.

I obviously have biased the selection by choosing to report on a day where I did well (had you seen LAST Friday it wouldn’t be so great).

I also had spent some time this week looking up recipes and playing w menu planning (thanks DonnaLynn!) so I was very excited to cook dinner. I should give you some background in that I usually cook NOTHING, and when I do, it’s one dish, not a whole dinner. That whole thing of thinking of different things to go together and getting the timings down has always seemed out of my reach, but today I did it anyway.

So what is a food day for Round in Low Stress Weight Loss ?

  • 8:00 am : home alone in office
    • double espresso w 1/4 c of milk
  • 9:30 am : home alone at dining room table
    • one bowl full of : 1/2 cup muesli, 1/4 grated apple, 125 grams whole milk plain yogurt
  • 11:00 am : office w my MIL
    • green tea w mint (unsweetened)\
  • 1:00 pm : lunch - at restaurant w colleagues - fixed menu
    • French bread roll. Left 1/2 uneaten.
    • appetizer of sauteed mushrooms in a light crepe. Left 1/4 uneaten.
    • main dish of pan fried fish in an garlic-lemon-oil sauce. Left 1/4 uneaten.
    • dessert of fruit salad. Left about 3 bites uneaten.
    • chocolate that came w the coffee. I meant to leave a bit uneaten, but I didn’t… I didn’t drink the coffee, does that count?
  • 7:00 pm : come home and begin COOKING DINNER. Yes me, cooking! From scratch! Here’s what I made
    • Fava beans which I soaked last night. I had never HAD a fava bean, and saw them dried in the store so decided to buy them & found a recipe that looked interesting. The recipe had me bake them in the oven w onion and tomato, but I had to cook the suckers first and even in a pressure cooker that took over an hour and then they needed to be taken out of their outer skins. A lot of work, frankly. I still have half the package left but don’t know that I’d buy them again, because I could do the same recipe with easier beans. The taste was interesting, however.
    • Roasted pork tenderloin. I ran out of time this morning and didn’t get the marinade done, so it was the first thing I did coming home tonight (the meat marinated an hour, but all day would have been much better). My DH (which means Dear Husband, for the person who asked that recently in the comments) had recently bought this weird pomegranate sauce which apparently is to be used in place of balsamic vinegar, and it’s taking up space in our small European refrigerator, so I did my recipe search based on balsamic vinegar to find this recipe (which also had maple syrup and tomato juice and spices). Whipping up the marinade was pretty easy - gotta love those hand blenders!
    • I had bought these great pears about a week ago, but had 3 starting to get too old on the table that I threw in the fridge & also looked up recipes for light pear desserts - I made a pear crumble but forgot to put the sugar in the topping so ended up serving it drizzled with honey.
    • That’s right, THREE recipes for ONE meal from the woman who never cooks. There was also one convenience food, a packet of whole-wheat organic bulgur as a side dish.
  • 8:30 pm : dinner is served! At home, w my DH & DSS (7 years old)
    • The pork tenderloin was good, sauce a bit spicy and only mildly sweet, probably too much rosemary. I had about 4 ounces and left about 2 bites.
    • The fava beans were much better in the recipe than they had been on their own when I tasted them for done-ness. If I ever make the recipe again, I’d cover it in foil before putting it in the oven. I took about half a cup and I left a bite uneaten.
    • The bulgur was bulgur - plain, unseasoned, slightly nutty tasting, not terribly interesting. I didn’t take much and it was no problem to leave some uneaten.
    • My pear crisp was quite good, and because I forgot the sugar very healthy (topping had 1/4 cup flour and 2 T butter, plus oatmeal & some spices, so not very bad when divided in 6). I had a large half cup. I tried to leave one bite uneaten, but threw it in my mouth when clearing the table :-(
  • 11:00 While watching a movie w my DH I decided I wanted chocolate. I had 3 pieces of dark chocolate w fillings of some kind (we had received a small box as a gift). I stopped at 3 and really would have preferred a few squares of a really good dark chocolate bar (but I’m out at the moment).

No exercise for the day - a pretty busy work day, plus my MIL stopping by before I had to run to a meeting (which got out late) and come home to relieve her in babysitting.

I was pretty happy to do so well in the “think-while-you-eat” department, it gives me a lot of confidence going into next week.

And the cooking was fun and very appreciated by my DH. We were left with a few extra servings which I immediately froze for lunches or dinners on the run.