2018

I'm fairly confident about all of these, it's just that last one that I can see giving me a struggle.  Any advice on how to learn to do things just for me? 

Baked Butternut Squash

I'm a big fan of any kind of squash so I get pretty darn excited to find a new squash recipe to try out.  This one turned out delicious and it looked so pretty and colorful on the dinner table!

A few of the ingredients

Most of the items I had in the house, which in my opinion makes for a good recipe.  The only thing I had to buy was some parsley because my plant outside has been waterlogged by the autumn rains.  

Peeling the squash

Cut the squash in half and clean out the seeds.  Cut each half into 1" thick slices and take the peel off. Arrange the slices in a 9 x 13 baking dish that's been sprayed with cooking spray, overlap the edges to get all the pieces to fit.

Arrange them so they all fit and will cook evenly

Preheat the oven to 375.

Melt 1/4 cup of butter along with 2 minced cloves of garlic in a saucepan and cook until the garlic is soft. Remove from heat. 

In a small bowl mix together 1/4 cup Panko breadcrumbs and 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, combine together then mix in 1 Tbsp of the melted butter. 

Brush the squash with the remaining melted butter/garlic mixture.

Sprinkle with the breadcrumb mixture.

Check out this action shot!

Bake uncovered for 35 - 40 minutes or until the squash is tender.  Raise the oven temperature to 425 and bake another 5 - 10 minutes until lightly browned.

Remove from the oven and sprinkle some fresh parsley on top before serving. 

Yum! 

Recipe serves 6 and is just 7 Weight Watcher points per serving.

Brined Pork Chops

I'm a good cook.  I know what goes well together, I love experimenting with new flavors and ingredients, I can follow a recipe or make up my own with great success.  One thing though I've never been able to do, no matter how often I try and how many different recipes I find, is to make moist, juicy pork chops.

Until now...

Success with bon appetit!

Locally farmed pork

Make the brine by bringing 2 cups of water to a boil then add 1/2 cup salt,  1/2 cup white sugar, 1 tsp juniper berries,  1/2 tsp whole black peppercorns, 5 halved cloves of garlic and 1 sprig of thyme.  Stir to dissolve the salt and sugar.  

Transfer to a bowl large enough to hold your pork chops and add 5 cups of ice cubes to the boiling brine. Stir until all the ice is melted then add your pork chops. Cover them and let sit in the fridge for 8 - 12 hours.

I didn't go into this recipe with high hopes, as evident by my blurry, quick snapped photos

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Remove chops from the brine and pat dry.  Heat 2 Tbsp oil in a large cast iron or any oven proof pan on medium-high heat.  Cook the chops on one side in the oil until they begin to brown  (3 - 4 minutes).  Turn them over and cook the other side until it begins to brown (2 - 3 minutes).  Continue to cook the chops in the pan, flipping them every 2 minutes until they are a deep golden brown.  The recipe says 10 - 12 minutes but depending on the thickness of your chops it may take less or more time, just watch they aren't getting over done.  

When your chops are nice and golden on both sides move your pan into the oven and roast them about 10 minutes.  Turn them every 2 minutes to prevent them from browning too quickly.  Remove them from the oven when they get to  135 degrees.  ( They will continue to cook during the next steps)

I didn't have a cast iron pan so I put them on a cookie sheet after they were browned in the frying pan

Drain the fat from your pan and place over medium heat.  Add 3 Tbsp butter, 2 minced garlic cloves, and another sprig of thyme.  Baste the chops as the butter cooks, cook until butter is foamy (2 - 3 minutes)  Remove from the heat and let the pork chops rest 15 minutes before serving.

• 
  

Next time I may omit the oven step and continue to cook them in the cast iron pan.  It seemed to be an extra step that you could do without.  On the other hand though, these chops pretty much melted in your mouth and had such an amazing flavor that I'm cautious to mess with a successful recipe!

Weight Watcher points per pork chop - 10 points

What a great few weeks I've been having!  I'm settling into my routine of good, healthy eating and tracking what I eat also.  I'm feeling really good and after my first month on Weight Watchers I'm down 15lbs!

May has brought beautiful sunny weather and Penelope and I have been having a great time together.

Penelope before one of my adventures last year

I just got back last night from a weekend away to Victoria for International Women's Ride Day (IFRD)
I love meeting other girls who ride!  This year I joined about 30 other women for a ride around Victoria.  The weather was gorgeous, the roads were curvy and smooth and I met some rad women.

Riding around the city 

photo from @BeckyGoebel

Eating on a mini vacation proved a bit challenging.  I made sure to watch my portion sizes and order veggies whenever I could.  Saying that though, one of the best meals of the weekend came from Foo Food where I had their Sweet & Sour Pork Belly.  The portion wasn't huge and there were green beans so I felt not too bad about it.

see...vegetables lol

After our ride we ended up at an after party where The Poor Choices and thepurrverts played some wicked music.

bikes and live music, excellent end to a perfect day

pretty sure the most epic burnout I've ever seen

video from @kristinebyers

Here's to a good week of healthy food, good choices and good workouts!

Sunny Days & New Habits

I have a friend who lives overseas who messaged me on the weekend to see how I was surviving our Canadian winter...

My backyard April 2016

I just sent her this picture and told her all was well haha!  What a beautiful Spring we've had here on the west coast.

Today marks my 4 weeks of following Weight Watchers and I'm down another 1.2lbs.  After 4 weeks that brings my total weight loss to 13.1 pounds!  My goal, at the beginning, was to work on the habit of tracking my meals and being more aware of what I was putting in my body for the first 4 weeks then slowly introduce more activity into my lifestyle.  I'm not yet the early morning workout person I hope to be so evening workouts are what I'll start with.  Good long walks with my dogs, yoga classes, setting up my home gym with my treadmill, elliptical and captains chair along with some cardio and body weight activites are where I will start.

I keep seeing this post pop up on my Facebook and Pinterest and thought I'd give it a try

I used to own a dehydrator but found it was one of those things I thought I'd use a lot more than I actually did and it was just taking up counter space.  Using a dehydrator would be much simpler but I did these 'old-school' in my oven.  

I bought a pound of strawberries, cut the stems off, sliced them in half and sprinkled a little bit of salt over them all.  I preheated the oven to 250 degrees and set my timer for an hour.  One of the posts I read said the oven door would need to be opened every 30 minutes to allow the air to circulate.  I thought propping the door open a bit would do the same thing and it saved me from having to set my timer for every 30 minutes. 

I remember seeing my Aunt do this years ago when she would make her Baked Alaska :)

After 1 hour

After 2 hours I flipped them  

After 3 hours 

They were almost done but I wanted them a little drier out so I put them back in for another 45 minutes

They tasted just like the berries in Special K Red Berries.  They were a good treat but for 4 hours work I felt a little ripped off.  I will do this again but I'm going to try frozen strawberries next time.  This was a lot of time spent to end up with just a little yogurt container full of berries.  Frozen berries will be cheaper and I'll try 4 trays in my convection oven to see how that works.  

Off to work on my meal plan for this week :)

Enjoy! 

  

Monday Morning Check In - Week 3

I love how a little sunshine and warm weather makes me quickly forget about the rainy, cold winter we had. So far, April has been a lovely month.  Some beautiful riding weather, our 6 month long house renos are almost done and Weight Watchers is going great!

A few weeks back I brought Penelope out of her winter storage, always one of my favorite things to do when Spring comes. Last year I put over 10,000 kms on her and I've been busy planning some good trips for this year already.  I think this year I'll stay in BC and explore where I live.  Besides, I'm still recovering from my 3 weeks in the US last year and that damn poor Canadian dollar!

Yesterday some friends and I had a quick little ride around town, I always have such a great time with the ladies I ride with!  Some days I wish we lived in a bigger city so there was more road to ride on.

Last week I picked up a sick bug and near the end of the week I started sounding like and old man who's been a heavy smoker for 60 years!  The frustrating thing is that I feel fine but I sound like I should be quarantined.  I laid low on the weekend and worked on getting better with the help of David's Tea and my doTERRA essential oils.  I was introduced to these fabulous essential oils a few months ago and I've been pleasantly surprised at how many uses I find for them.  At least 3 or 4 times a day I find myself using them, either to clean with, cook with, rub on sore muscles, help with cramps or adding to my diffuser.  You can get more info on them here.

I had been weighing in on Mondays but I've switched to Sundays now.  It's much easier for me to get to my mom's to weigh in on a Sunday rather than a Monday when I'm at work.  I find that doing the on-line Weight Watchers I miss being accountable to someone when I weigh in so I make sure to do it in front of someone. I have still been faithfully tracking my food on the Weight Watchers app I have and was very happy to find I was down another 4 pounds yesterday!  That bring my weight loss in the first three weeks up to 11.9 pounds!  Yay me!  

                        

I've been experimenting with dinner bowls this past week.  start with fresh greens then add a grain such as quinoa, brown rice or couscous.  Add a protein; chickpeas, tofu, chicken or nuts.  Then some veggies, my favorite so far was fried leeks, onions, bell peppers and swiss chard.  You can add a little kick with some chilli flakes, cayenne pepper or grated ginger.  Sprinkle some sesame seeds or feta cheese on top.  I like to add the dressing onto the greens before I add the rest of ingredients.  I simply mix some grainy mustard with cider vinegar and drizzle that on top.  

I just found a yummy looking Buddha Bowl recipe this morning with Roasted Garlic Tahini Dressing that I'm dying to try.  The dressing looks simple to make and having it made ready to go in the fridge will be a treat when I'm cooking dinner.  

Week 2 Done and I'm Still Smiling :)

I just had my weigh in for week 2 and I'm down 1.2 pounds.  I was of course hoping for a bigger number but what with me still struggling with my Vodka coolers I'm not surprised!

I'm using the new app to track all my meals and weight.  It's been relatively easy to remember to track, I even used it at the grocery store last night to scan UPS codes to choose foods with the least points.  I love that feature!  There was such a difference between bacon, the points ranged from 7 up to 12 for just 2 pieces (gone are the days of me eating 6 pieces of bacon for breakfast :o )  Now I can easily find out which is the better choice.

I picked up a new cookbook on the weekend and I'm so happy with the purchase.  'Weight Watchers Family Meals'.  I had a hard time decided what meal to cook from the book so in typical Jo-Al fashion, I cooked for 6 when it was just boyfriend and I eating lol.

I choose the Warm Spinach Salad with Bacon, Chicken and Feta (5 points) with a plate of Sweet & Spicy Drumettes (4 points) along with a side of Whole Roasted Cauliflower with Moroccan Spice (1 point).

Seriously, would you have been able to choose from those three? 

I've always wanted to try roasting a whole cauliflower and it couldn't have been easier!  I tried finding a recipe I can link here for you but they all had far too many steps.  Here's what I did...I just peeled the outer leaves off, cored it, and topped it with a mixture of 1/3 cup of greek yogurt and 2 TBSP Moroccan spice.  I baked it at 400 for just under an hour. Depending on the size of your cauliflower it may need longer to cook, just stick a knife in it to check if it's done.  I mixed the yogurt and spice together and spooned it on top.  You can actually use any spice you enjoy if you don't have Moroccan spice.  

It was so tasty I wanted to share the photo again.

This coming week I'm going to continue working on my water intake and keep up with my meal tracking.  I feel a good Week 3 is coming.