This now leaves me with only enough time to get a quick update in while I enjoy my breakfast.
Our original breakfast menu was raspberry pistachio cereal but considering I wanted something that could sit and wait for me as I multitasked instead of turning to a soggy cereal goo, the following is my breakfast of choice:
Its relatively simple, 1 egg with sriracha sauce, whole grain toast with avocado and cajun seasonings.. and to round it all out, a cup of cherries. Perhaps not the best lighting for the cherries but all in all one of my favorite breakfasts.
If you haven't tried something as simple as avocado toast I definitely recommend it! (If you're a fan of avocado of course) Also I would implore that you make cajun seasoning a staple in your pantry just for the sake of this toast... seriously, I am hooked.
Between this and Peanut Butter Mulberry Toast, my heart and stomach get conflicted every morning on what they want to eat. Truth be told, today the mulberry toast was screaming my name until i remembered I had to save the remainder of our peanut butter for tonights dinner instead. (I can be quite the selfish peanut butter whore, you know..)
It took a few minutes to talk myself into just letting the PB be and saving it, but in the end when I thought about the Chicken Satay Pita we were going to be eating tonight I gladly tossed the jar back in the fridge. Of course since we are still continuing on our meatless month, we will be replacing the chicken with chickpeas. Should be fairly interesting!!
Speaking of our meatless month, we are going semi strong -- though if this were a confessional I would have to let you know Abel and I both ate meat this past weekend due to social protocols. Not that I am making excuses, we simply chose to break our little august vow for a day instead of having people feel like they had to cater to a meatless regimen.
No biggie.
I will say one thing though, after only 2 weeks of this change I am finding that my body is feeling much "lighter" and there has been a slight decrease in my love handle area. Its not exactly something I can see with the naked eye but definitely a difference I can feel when I put my hands at my waist (a'la "i'm a little tea-pot" pose)....
Since we are not stepping on the scale until the first of the month I really couldn't tell you if theres any actual pounds lost but I do find my pants have a little more wiggle room in them this month and I am taking that as a WIN... already and its only two weeks in :)
We are still incorporating our SASS Yourself Slim recipes but instead of using meat we have been subbing in a lot of different beans, some lentils and even a bit of seitan. For anyone unfamiliar with seitan, its basically a faux meat made up primarly of wheat gluten. Sometimes referred to as "wheat meat"...
I'm still dabbling with the right recipe to make it, but heres a snapshot of some seitan we prepared for "gyros" last week:
This particular recipe isn't in the SASS book but its one that we are tweaking to fit the 5 piece puzzle and has just a bit more experimenting to undergo before I feel its ready to share.
The seitan itself was quite interesting... tasty (very tasty) but I am still weirded out by the fact that its texture is very much like a meat only its not meat at all. Abel was quite taken back by just how much it actually tasted like gyro meat. Of course much of that was due to the seasonings but I am finding that the seitan is definitely oh so adaptable depending on what you may want to use it for.
I think "meatballs" may be in the near future for this recipe.
Last night our meal was Chilled Brown Rice and Vegetable Salad with Brazil Nut Dusted
Absolutely delicious! I do promise to come share the final seitan recipe when I finally get it to the proper consistency. The first time I made it for the gyros I used a recipe online that I suddenly can no longer find again.
This second time I followed a recipe from a recent downloaded book and it is entirely too "wet" for my likings. For the brazil nut seitan I had to squeeze a ton of the liquid out prior to baking it and Im not sure if that was an err on my part or just the recipe itself.
Usually when I test recipes I start by cutting them down to 1/2 or 1/4 of the original recipe because its only for "test" purposes and also because there are only two of us eating. Sometimes my math skills fail me and I'm left with the wrong measurements of ingredients leaving me to go back to the drawing board.
For now I have two servings left in the freezer but once that is gone I will document my next seitan experience step by step to share!!
I hope all is well for everyone in blog land. Before I go I would also like to make note we have a new member of the blogging community as Abel has decided to open a blog that coincides with his Flickr interests and groups. Its not necessarily weightloss nor food related, but lets face it, we all can use a little break from those types of blogs from time to time, right? ;)
Feel free to follow him over at A Marvelabelous Life. We promise to be your best friends in exchange for your support ;)
I'll be working behind the scenes on this blog for the majority of Friday morning so please don't give up on us just yet as we are still here and marching forward!
