posted by Jennifer on a day in the life of me!, dieting, Dinner Idea, recipe make over, salad

Salad club was spectacular this week! I had spinach, carrots, edamame, black beans, sunflower seeds, grapes, peppers, onion, some croutons, red and green cabbage. It took me almost my whole lunch to eat this!

For those of you who don’t know, I started a salad club at my office. Anyone who wants to come brings a green (spinach, romaine, etc.) and a veggie or fruit to share. We lay it all out, and you can build it however you want.

I brought in some salad dressings I bought a few weeks ago at Caputo’s store in Elmwood Park, IL. There was a whole bin of the same brand of dressings.. all for only a dollar. Of course I had to check out the nutritional info and guess what? All of them are between 20 and 40 calories for TWO tablespoons! I bought 3. Ranch, thousand island and italian and I really liked all three!

This is the brand and what the bottle looks like. Check out their website HERE

So I’m eating stir fries again! I go through a bout where I make them all the time for lunches, and then I’ll go months without making it. This is what I had for lunch today:

It was leftovers from dinner the night before. I started out with frozen green beans from Trader Joe’s, frozen fried rice from Trader Joe’s, and frozen edamame from Trader Joe’s. The only thing I did was add more veggies (carrots, onion, water chestnuts, etc..). And since the one bag of fried rice from Trader Joe’s wouldn’t feed my whole family, I made brown rice to mix in with it. AND, I only added one large chicken breast for the whole stir fry (I just cut it into small pieces!). I also added a tablespoon of peanuts and what a nice addition that was! And I added House of Tsang brand Thai peanut sauce. It’s SO good!

I haven’t talked about Biggest Loser yet! How about Moses losing 100 pounds in 6 weeks?!?!?!?! Isn’t that insane? I don’t know how that is possible.

I want Courtney to win. She’s the daughter (team AQUA) who lost 100 pounds before she even got on the show. Once she got below 300 pounds, Allison asked her when was the last time she weighed that little and she said 6th grade! Can you imagine being over 300 pounds in 6th grade. My son is in 7th grade and weighs 85 pounds! How would she find a desk to fit into? She has the drive to go all the way and I totally would love to see her win!

I also have a few new food blogs I am reading:

One is Vegan for $3.33 a day. After losing her job and living on unemployment, her food budget was $100.00 per month, or $3.33 a day. She is a trained chef and has some great ideas! Check out her site.

The other blog I am loving right now is Skinny Kitchen. Nancy Fox owns Mrs. Beasley’s gift baskets, she opened Nancy’s Healthy Kitchen Restaurant in 1994 in California which became a destination for Hollywood Stars. 2 recipes I want to try: Skinnier California Pizza Kitchen Chopped salad and her skinnier homemade ranch dressing.

Have a great day everyone!