Recipe: Curry Popcorn

Here is a slight adaptation on an Aarti Sequeira recipe from her Youtube "Aarti Paarti" days, before she went to Food Network, and they renamed her show "Aarti Party". :)

Curry Popcorn

~serves two peepses

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp vegetable oil (I usually sub canola oil)

1/3 cup popcorn kernels

1 tsp salt, finely ground

1 tsp curry powder

1/4 tsp ginger powder

1/4 tsp garam masala (or you can sub cinnamon)

1) Put oil, along with 3 or 4 popcorn kernels, in a 3 quart pot on high heat, with lid on. Wait until all your tester kernels have popped.

2) Take the pot off the heat, then add the popcorn & all spices. Put the lid back on, shake to coat popcorn with oil and disperse spices. Wait 30 seconds.

3) Put the pot back on high heat, shaking periodically to prevent burning, until there are several seconds between popping sounds.

You're done! Remove from heat, toss in a bowl, and enjoy!

--Jay :)

Weigh-In: Week 7 & 8

Been a busy couple of weeks... We've been occupied with the impending opening of our current community theatre production, as well as auditions for the following show! :)

Anyway, we've still been plugging along on the reduced-carb & sugar front, but still haven't jumped back on the exercise bandwagon just yet. Here's how we rolled...

Weigh In Week Seven [2/14/2011-2/20-2011]
Jay: 334.5 (+0.5 pounds for the week; -27.5 for 2011)
Dee: 213.0 (-1.0 pounds for the week; -15.0 for 2011)

Weigh In Week Eight [2/21/2011-2/27-2011]
Jay: 329.5 (-5.0 pounds for the week; -32.5 for 2011)
Dee: 211.0 (-2.0 pounds for the week; -17.0 for 2011)

We've been playing around with all sorts of new snacking ideas too, just to keep things interesting. I've tried to add one piece of fruit back into my daily eating plan, but we've also stayed on some of the lower carb ideas, such as little pizzas made with the melba toast we got at Trader Joe's... nachos using our flaxseed chips from Trader Joe's... yay for Trader Joe's. :)

We plan to stay good for the next few weeks through the run of our current show, then relax a little on the caloric front on a brief family trip, and come back and kick back into gear.

--Jay :)

Weigh-In: Week 6

Eh, a bit of a stall on the blogging front, as well as the weight loss front this week. We've been plugging along, watching calories, carbs & sugar. One downside of the lower carb & sugar shift is that we seem to be bringing a little more fat back in, and we've eliminated fruit completely. We're still not going over the recommended 65g of fat per day by any means though. I'm thinking to adjust a little more over the next few weeks so that ALL my numbers are in a good balance. :)

Weigh In Week Six [2/7/2011-2/13/2011]
Jay: 334.0 (-2.0 pounds for the week; -28.0 for 2011)
Dee: 214.0 (+0.5 pounds for the week; -14.0 for 2011)

Not counting Friday the 11th when we had a decent, semi-health-conscious meal out at TGI Friday's, Dee's carbs ranged from 100.8-133.0 and sugars from 17.52-27.42 for the week. My carbs were 110.2-161.8 and sugars were 15.85-36.25, mostly because I'm trying to finish off some artificially sweetened nonfat yogurt that we still having hanging around the house.

Rock it!
--Jay :)

Weigh-In: Week 5

All we can say this week is, "Thank you, Jorge Cruise!" We're not following the Belly Fat Cure to the letter, but we've re-evaluated our sugar intake, making sure what we do take in is mostly of the natural variety. Dee had a remarkable showing this week, and I did better than I have the last couple of weeks. Let's peek at it...

Weigh In Week Five [1/31/2011-2/6/2011]
Jay: 336.0 (-3.5 pounds for the week; -26.0 for 2011)
Dee: 213.5 (-6.0 pounds for the week; -14.5 for 2011)

The funny thing is, we both weighed in Tuesday morning, and hadn't lost a thing for the week. Dee started reducing her sugar intake drastically on Wednesday, and I joined her on Thursday. So these results seem to come from only 3 or 4 days of this new eating plan!

Here's how our carb & sugar intake changed this week:

Mon. 1/31 - didn't count carbs & sugar

Tue. 2/1:
Jay - 247.2 g carbs; 104.6 g sugar
Dee - 236.7 g carbs; 96.5 g sugar

Wed. 2/2: (Dee went full-force onto the new plan)
Jay - 240.7 g carbs; 108.1 g sugar
Day - 132.1 g carbs; 33.2 g sugar

Thu. 2/3: (I made some small adjustments)
Jay - 176 g carbs; 62.1 g sugar
Dee - 106.3 g carbs; 21.8 g sugar

Fri. 2/4: (We went healthy shopping, so I joined full-on)
Jay - 145.5 g carbs; 33.3 g sugar
Dee - 108.3 g carbs; 21.1 g sugar

Sat. 2/5:
Jay - 135.2 g carbs; 27.0 g sugar
Dee - 112.9 g carbs; 22.8 g sugar

Dee had 4 strong days on this new way of thinking, and I had... call it 2 1/2 days. :)

Not bad... not bad a'tall...
--Jay :)

A Word With Two Zs

We decided to have a little fun with our mid-morning snack today, and tried out some Trader Joe's Tzatziki (a Greek yogurt, cucumber, garlic dip) with celery sticks. Dee said it was a little more watery than some she'd tried at a friend's house, but good nonetheless!

Why am I posting this at 6:30 pm, when we ate our snack around 11:00 am? I dunno. We've been running around like crazy today. :)

We also crafted a tuna melt wrap, similar to the one several months ago on this blog, using canned tuna, cheddar cheese, mustard, grated Parmesan, and lettuce on these mongo-wraps we found at Trader Joe's with 12 grams of fiber per wrap. Woo!

Weigh-in tomorrow morning!
--Jay :)

Exercise Recap: Week 5

Not much to report this week, as Dee injured her poor, poor shoulder/back muscles after last Sunday's attempt at being Super-Exercise-Girl!

Sunday 1/30/2011 [day off]
9:35 am - Dee - Gazelle Level 1 (20 min, 1.5 miles)

That be it! Other than some choreography rehearsals (which we have one to attend today as well), she's been resting and I've been lazy.

Awesomeness!
--Jay :)

It's The Great Pumpkin!

We're off and rolling with our watch-your-sugar-type plan this morning! We both had our normal 1/2 cup of oatmeal, now bolstered with 1/4 cup unsweetened canned pumpkin, cinnamon, and a dash of Stevia. Next be the new-found Trader Joe's fat-free Greek yogurt with a sprinkling of Uncle Sam cereal and a dusting of Stevia. Then, our old friend Egg Mates (our local, generic egg substitute) with a tablespoon of grated Parmesan cheese from the bright green can! Add some Folgers Chocolate Truffle coffee, and my morning is complete!

Dee accidentally over-Stevia-ed her yogurt to the point that she couldn't even palate it, so I adopted that as well, and still came out under my normal calories, and WAY under my typical carb & sugar level... wow... This might not hurt as badly as I'd thought...

--Jay :)

What A Haul!!!

We have officially hit up some healthy, organic-type food stores! We rolled to Virginia Beach today, stopping at Trader Joe's and The Fresh Market along the way, as well as our good ol' standard issue grocery store for the rest of our essentials. Check it out...



Look at this stuff! Isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think my collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm the dude... the dude who has everything? (Okay, enough of that...)

I mean, we've got unsweetened canned pumpkin, almond milk, veggie & flaxseed chips, arugula, smoked salmon, fibrous Uncle Sam cereal, melba toast, Wasa crackers, turkey pepperoni, low fat cottage cheese, hummus, guacamole, wraps with 12 grams of fiber, low carb pita pockets & bread, fat-free Greek yogurt, tzatziki, sunflower seeds, 72% dark chocolate, and that little baby bottle to the left is our potential new friend, pure Stevia extract powder. Wow.

We've made some definite plans for some of this stuff, and a few things will be tried out as Mega-Football-Game-With-Trademarked-Name snacks this Sunday. The rest... well, I'll let you know. This stuff should be a big help in lowering the sugar levels around the house, while still staying in balance. Man, this numbers game is evil... :)

--Jay :)

Recovery & New Ideas...

Good news! Dee has returned to nearly 100% of her former pain-free glory, but she's still laying off the exercise for now. We may get in some this weekend, but perhaps a scaled-down version with lots of precautionary stretching and warming up first. :)

I bought some raw honey a week or so ago, and we've been giving that a go in our morning oatmeal. That's been working out really well, except for the fact that I forgot I'm not supposed to have TWO fruit servings AND honey with my breakfast... oops! A slight caloric and sugar overload there...

Speaking of sugar, Dee had a lot of research time during her recovery, and she's come across a program called The Belly Fat Cure by Jorge Cruise. It's all about controlling your sugar intake, and there's some stuff in there that I like. There's also some stuff in there that I don't like, so I think we'll try out a modified version. We've already started a bit... We're looking into Stevia, which seems to be the most natural faux-sweetener... Dee has scrapped her morning yogurt, and we're looking into buying Greek yogurt and using berries and things to liven it up... We've also eliminated the raisins from our mid-morning snack, opting for more almonds... Dee has scrapped her afternoon fruit serving, replacing with almonds or perhaps string cheese... little changes.

The Belly Fat Cure program tries to get you to approximately 120 grams of carbs and no more than about 15 grams of sugar each day. A quick glance at the healthy eating plan we've been on had us hanging somewhere around 250 grams of carbs and 100 grams of sugar! Through some modification, Dee is down to about the right level of carbs, and I think we have her down to about 25 grams of sugar. We plan to hit up some specialty food shopping this weekend to see what other ideas we can come up with.

The only part of the Belly Fat Cure that's a little strange is the whole Adkins-esque "eat cheese, eat bacon, eat sausage" approach, but that seems to be there just for the sake of those folks who can't live without that sort of thing. I'm planning to combine our previous ideas, while cutting down as much as possible on sugar, and especially our "sugar-free" friends who rely on aspartame and the like. Dee intends to go a little more strict, just to see what happens. The testimonials have folks losing massive inches, and the guy's been all over Oprah and Ellen and junk. Could be interesting.

We'll see how this whole thing shakes out...
--Jay :)