Soupy Sunday

Sunday's Goals
Exercise: Rest
Calories: 1500

Sunday's Accomplishments
Exercise: Rest
Calories: 1500

My goal was to do a workout today to make up for the missed workout on Friday (the day I overslept), but I was simply too busy today to squeeze it in - cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping PLUS my usual Sunday school work. The good news is, I was very active for a good chunk of the day, so I wasn't exactly slouching.

I did well with my calories today. For breakfast I had a vegetarian "sausage" and cheese sandwich on high-fiber bread, grilled in a smidgen of butter (523) - very yummy and a nice break from my weekday shakes. I had a bunch of ears of corn (8!) that were taking up the entire refrigerator so I decided to see if I could find a good recipe to utilize them. Well, I found the most delicious corn soup recipe in the Passionate Vegetarian Cookbook (one of my favorite cookbooks). In addition to corn, this soup is chock full of other veggies as well, like onions, peppers, tomatoes and carrots. The veggies are sauteed until almost carmelized and then pureed with half the corn. The rest of the corn kernels are then dumped into the soup whole (i.e. not pureed)...so essentially it's a pureed/cream-type soup with some corn kernels in it for texture. It was not a difficult recipe to make, but it was a bit tedious and messy with the pureeing and all. But oh, how delicious - definitely worth the effort!!! So for lunch I had 2 cups of the soup topped with a dallop of reduced fat sour cream and a generous sprinkling of cheddar (519). For dinner all I wanted was ice cream, so that's what I had (Turkey Hill lite ice cream - "Chocolate Nutty Moose Tracks" which is the most outrageously delicious ice cream on this planet), with a little whipped cream on top (460). If you are a chocolate lover and see this in your supermarket, GRAB IT!

I thought today I would mention how much I love my digital scale. It's similar to this one. It makes calorie counting soooo much easier. I used to rely heavily on measuring cups (and would dirty about 5-10 measuring cups and spoons a day doing my measuring) but I use the scale now almost exclusively (except for liquid things). I usually weigh in grams instead of ounces (although it can do both), since it is a smaller unit of measurement and therefore I can be more precise. Here's the great thing about it....say I want to have ice cream and whipped cream and I have 460 calories left. I look at the nutritional label on the ice cream carton to see how many servings (in grams) I can get for the calories. Then I simply put my bowl on the scale, hit "0" (it will deduct the weight of the bowl and re-set to zero) and then I add my ice cream until I get the number of grams I want. Then, with the bowl still on top of the scale, I again set the scale to "0" and add the whipped cream to the amount of grams I need. I love that "0" re-set feature! It's so clever and I don't have to dirty a bunch of measuring cups. I even build sandwiches on top of the scale by setting it to "0" after I add each component to the sandwich. And of course I am writing down everything in my notebook. That scale gets a lot of use! I just replaced the batteries today...they were out of juice.

Oh, and I lovvvve my Calorie King Book. This thing is the Bible of my calorie counting program. There isn't a single food missing from this book...it is so comprehensive and I keep it right on my kitchen counter. It really is an invaluable tool for me.