Time to check in with Joe and see what he’s been up to. Plus you get a product review and a recipe out of the deal.
You’ll never guess what I had for breakfast this morning… oatmeal! Surprise!
Well, not just regular oatmeal though, I made a batch of steel cut oatmeal in the crockpot the other other night so been enjoying that the last few days. I don’t keep regular milk on hand though, so I basically just did 4 cups water and about a cup of powdered milk. The fruit was a mix of raisins and dried cranberries, just over a cup total. This morning I poured some soy milk on top before heating it and topped it with a dollop of “honey vanilla” yogurt.
A word about the yogurt, Yoplait has gotten in to the Greek yogurt game, and I found a 30-cent off coupon online so I figured I would try it… a 6oz serving has100-some calories and 12g of protein. It tasted fine, but it was by no means as thick as any of the other Greek style yogurts out there, in fact it wasn’t really any thicker than many regular yogurts I’ve had. It really is that creamy Yoplait consistency. Like I said, it tasted fine, but the only thing this has in common with what most of us consider to be a Greek yogurt is a higher protein count. I doubt I’ll bother with it again unless I get another really good deal on it.
Lunch was something I haven’t done before, fish tacos.
I was really in the mood for some fish this week, but I’m kinda broke so instead of a nice walleye or even tillapia fillet, I went with catfish. And not fillets, but chunks. Last night I coated some with lemon pepper and popped them in the toaster oven and had with some roasted cauliflower (a very bland looking, but tasty dinner). I took some more of the fish chunks and coated them with my own special spice blend and for lunch I had them in a whole wheat tortilla with some shredded romaine lettuce, cheese, onion, and the plan was to top it with some tzitki style sauce I made last night using the bulk of that Yoplait Greek style yogurt. Because I didn’t want it too sweet from the honey flavor, I mixed about 4ounces it with about the same amount of my plain yogurt.
For the tzitki sauce you basically take 1 cup plain or vanilla yogurt, 1/2 a cucumber, seeded and finely chopped and 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped or about 1tsp garlic powder. Mix them together and let the flavors mingle for awhile. The thicker the yogurt the better.
I say plan, cause, well, I forgot to bring it with me. Was still good stuffs… not sure what I’m gonna use the tzitki for now, but it’ll keep awhile.
On the way to the gym I had a snack of a banana and a piece of string cheese. I did four miles in about 51 minute at the gym tonight by the way.
Dinner was Boston Market – there aren’t many of them around here anymore, but there happened to be one sorta on my way home from work (just not my usual route), so I stopped to take advantage of a buy-one, get-one coupon I found online. It’s still good through Sunday if you have one near you.
I hadn’t been to a Boston Market in… a couple years I bet. I know they would have turkey and chicken and meatloaf. I can get chicken just bout any time, so I went with meatloaf and turkey as my entrees. Two sides each, I got green beans on both, mashed potatoes on one and sweet potatoes on the other.
For dinner tonight I’m having half of the meatloaf entree, bout 4oz of meatloaf with green beans and mashed potatoes. I don’t think I’ve had any mashed potatoes since Thanksgiving (I think I had a couple spoonfuls then…?). I think they must really mash them, cause there were some lumps. They were good. Not something I would do very often, but yea… went well with the meal overall.
Boston Market seems to be a place that could be fairly pouch friendly. The full meatloaf meal I had was maybe a bit under 800 calories. I ate maybe half of it, and got over 15g of protein. The killer though, like any “fast food” is the sodium. The chicken and meatloaf portions are all over 1000mg of sodium, but the turkey is only 500mg. Oh, the sweet potatoes aren’t really a better bet than the regular though, cause of all the sugar, butter, molasses and streusel topping (more sugar, marshmellow, etc). So turkey with green beans would likely be the best option there. (check out all the nutritional info.)
Anyways, I’m gonna get this tossed up even though the day’s not over. If I end up having a snack (protein shake or maybe some yogurt), I’ll throw it up in the comments, but wanted to get this online so you can grab that Boston Market coupon to use this weekend.
Have a good one!
