Dinner Plan for Week

This is my dinner plan for the coming week. It helps me to have it planned out ahead of time.

Monday: Potato Leek Soup, Salad with Cucumbers and Chickpeas
Tuesday: Bean and Rice Microwave Casserole
Wednesday: Veggie Burger (Amy's Quarter Pounder), Cucumber, Baked Potato
Thursday: Chicken Enchilada Casserole, Green beans
Friday: Leftovers from Thursday
Saturday: Dinner at Pasta Primavera for hubby's bday

Working Mother Magazine

I receive Working Mother Magazine in the mail. I didn't subscribe to it, I don't know where they got my address. It is definitely not a magazine I would ever choose to buy, even though I do work, and do plan to be a mother.

But seriously, now they just have to stop sending me this hateful garbage. Here are my three favorites from the current issue:

An advice column with the headline "Slave-at-Home Mom". Uh oh. A woman wrote in because her neighbor stays at home, and often helps out with the working mother's kids. How can she repay her? The answer begins with "Ah, the ongoing exploitation of the slave-at-home mom." Stop saying that! It finally suggests that you can help stay at home mom have a date night with her husband. This implies that A) Stay at home mom is married, B) She is heterosexual, and C) It is not ok for parents to have arrangements where they help each other out with child-rearing.

An article in the "Ages 3 - 5" section called "When Parents Fib". Ok, great, don't teach your kids to lie, I'm all for that. But it also tells parents that they shouldn't always tell it like it is. For example, "If a child does messy artwork, for example, a parent shouldn't tell him he has no talent." Wow! No they shouldn't, but that's because 3 to 5 years olds MAKE MESSY ARTWORK. Don't they?

Finally, my favorite. This is in an article about educational family vacations. "Judge a Witch Trial" in Salem. "Give kids a feeling for the era's hysteria by joining them as 'jury members' in the first defendant's trial." Oh what fun! This magazine seems to be geared towards upper-middle-class parents, so maybe they have plenty of money to take little Janie to the therapy she may need when she wakes up in the night screaming about women being tortured and drowned and hanged. Family fun! This one's got a fun photo of a woman being dragged through the street. More fun! (I apologize for the extreme blurriness.)

Tomorrow is Henna Day!

I have a goopy bowl of henna and lemon juice marinating on the counter as we speak. Tomorrow I am going to use my henna from .

Over the next several months, my goals are to get my body in good shape, and to try to put natural things in and on my body. I weigh 375 as of last Sunday (down from a high of 381!) After a refreshingly and startlingly frank talk with my ob/gyn last week, I have chosen 240 as my goal wait for pre-pregnancy. This should put me in a much less risky BMI range.

I had been using Feria hair dye, which is gorgeous, but not very natural. I had wanted to try something different to keep my hair red (it's naturally a dullish red), and one day I happened to see the lovely Pure Jeevan post about mehandi.com henna. I will post before and after pictures!

Tomorrow is also weigh-in day. I have been working pretty hard, and I hope the scale is still headed in the right direction. I have some mixed feelings about weight loss, but I need to be healthy for my family, and I do not feel healthy now. I am using the Weight Watchers Simply Filling Technique, which focuses on fresh, healthy food, and small amounts of healthy oils. And I'm using the treadmill and recumbent bike.

Salty Success!

I am not a great veggie eater. I like some veggies very much, others not at all. Kale and I had lately made friends by way of the green smoothie (kale, frozen mango, water, blend, delicious!). But cooked greens? Hate them.

Late last year, I was lucky enough to be invited to a small, excellent raw foods potluck. The hostess had made kale chips in her dehydrator. I had heard of these, lots of people make them, and you can even buy them packaged. They sounded horrible. They tasted great! A salty snack with no bad ingredients, based on a green veggie??

I had wanted to make some myself, but I was afraid I would mess them up. And my dehydrator is not very good. Today I finally made some of my own, and baked them in the oven. I consulted several online recipes, then did this variation of my own.

Soak four big curly kale leaves in a bowl of water. Kale can be super dirty. Rinse and dry them. Tear leaves away from the stem, and tear them in to bite size pieces. Put them in a bowl with one teaspoon olive oil, juice of half a lemon, a sprinkle of salt (I like hawaiian red salt), and a generous sprinkle of spice of your choice. I love Raw Parma Chipotle. Spread on a baking dish. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Check them and realize they have started to burn. Turn oven down to warm, cook for five more minutes. Eat them and be delighted that they seem to fit the potato chip sized hole in your brain.

This makes one big serving.

Weekly Round Up

I had a bad weigh-in last week, I was up four pounds, which is about all I had lost in the last three weeks. I was frustrated, but determined not to give up, like I had before. I talked to my awesome leader about the filling foods technique. Because really I can eat a lot of bad stuff and still be within my 42 daily points. He thought it was a good idea and suggested that I try it for a week.

So I was still thinking about that. Then yesterday I went to the ob/gyn, new doctor. We are trying to conceive, the previous doctor just wanted to give me prescriptions and sent me away. I am 41, and don't have any time to waste at all. New doctor was good but frank. She advised me that (TMI ALERT!) my cycles are irregular because of my size, and she would not recommend I conceive before getting to a BMI of about 40. But, she also examined me and we talked about a lot of questions I had, so I like her.

Then I got back into the car with hubby and melted down. Just sobbed. Very dramatic.

The upside is that we went home, looked at all my materials, and we are doing the Simply Filling plan together. I am hoping like crazy that I will lose the weight in time to get pregnant, but if I don't, I'll be healthier and will be around longer for my hubby.

And I like the SFT plan a lot so far. It makes me eat lots of fruit and veggies. And I can't spend 25 points on chinese food two days before weigh in.

It is Sunday now, and I've been eating this way since Monday evening. I am really looking forward to my weigh-in tomorrow.

Here are some lunch photos of the turkey taco salad we had for lunch.

Sunday Menu Plannning

I'm going to start blogging my dinner menu plans here. It keeps me organized and inspired.

Sunday Night - Coconut Curry Red Lentil Soup (from La Dolce Vegan http://www.amazon.com/Dolce-Vegan-Livin-Made-Easy/dp/1551521873/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267998848&sr=8-1 ) Sarah Kramer's cookbooks are my go-to cookbooks, since I have almost NEVER had a bad recipe from her wonderful books!

Monday Night - Sarah's Hot and Sour Ginger Soup (from Garden of Vegan
) Baked Veggie Egg Roll from Trader Joe's

Tuesday Night - Late night, I have Statistics class until 9:30, get home at about 10:30. Leftover Hot and Sour Soup.

Wednesday Night - Taco Night

Thursday Night - Leftover Taco Night! or Tortilla Soup

Friday Night - Hopefully we are going to a board game night, so we might have to grab dinner out!

The Weight Loss Thing

So, Weight Watchers and I have reconciled. I broke up with them last year, because I was going in and weighing, tracking my points in a half-ass way, and not losing.
And being generally pissy about it.

Now I'm back. What's different? It's dovetailing with a twelve-step program. So far so good. I've lost a couple of pounds so far. A couple a week would be fine with me!

This, then, is my before picture, at 381 pounds (plus one chihuahua).