Veggie Muffins

I leave my house at 7 each morning, and I don't get back until about 7:30 at night. I don't have time to start cooking dinner at that hour, and on a diet (and budget!) takeout isn't an option.

Enter the freezer. I know it's not ideal. Every time I watch an episode of Gordon Ramsay's kitchen nightmares and he curses out the chefs for freezing things, I cringe. I freeze everything. I comfort myself by reminding myself that when I cook for company it's always fresh, and for my own tired self a defrosted meal is perfectly fine.

And so, Sunday is my day to cook for the week. I generally make two or three different dishes (in large quantities), eat some for dinner, pack some for lunch, and freeze the rest. That way, my freezer is stocked with a bunch of different dishes, so I don't have the same things every night.

This Sunday was unusual, in that I couldn't go to the store. Instead, I went on a "use up what's in the house" spree.

In the morning I defrosted a bag of frozen broccoli, and a package of raw meatball mix. (Well, in the interest of accuracy, it was turkeyball mix. Much lower fat!) I scavenged in the fridge until I found some sliced portobello mushrooms and a very tired looking red pepper. I also dug up a zucchini, some onions, some carrots and some garlic.

The wheels in my brain started turning, and I came up with these delicious vegetable muffins. I won't say they were perfect, I will definitely be tweaking the recipe, but they were so good as is, I decided to share.

Here's what I used:
2 onions
2 cloves of garlic
1 large zucchini - peeled
1 large carrot -peeled
(about) 2 portobello mushrooms
1 red pepper
1 bag frozen broccoli (16 oz, defrosted.)
4 egg whites
2 whole eggs
Whole wheat bread crumbs
Salt
Pepper
Parsley flakes
Cayenne pepper

(I didn't measure the last 5 ingredients, sorry!)

Here's what I did:

In the food processor I chopped all of the veggies until they were very fine. (A little bit at a time, otherwise they won't get processed properly.) Then I mixed them all together in a big mixing bowl, added the eggs and enough breadcrumbs to get a good texture. I mixed in the spices, and the batter was complete.

Next I sprayed muffin pans and filled the cups to the top with the batter. I baked them at 375 for about 45 minutes, and took them out to enjoy the most delicious treat I've had in a while. And really healthy!

I know, I know, not the best picture. I need to work on food photography, huh?

(In case you were wondering what happened to the chopped turkey, that's coming in another post.)

When Life Gives You Lemons

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's an old drill. You make lemonade. That's all very nice for a skinny gal with an awesome metabolism. She can scoop as much sugar as she wants into that lemonade, sweetening up the lemons of life.

But it all seems really unfair in their advantage. What about the fat people? What are we supposed to do with life's little lemons? Drink unsweetened lemonade? (Eww.)

I'm not talking in general terms here. I'm talking about the words of caution we constantly hear, about the negative effects that stress has on weight loss.

But what is one to do? Yeah I could pop some pills, see a shrink, do some yoga. But at the end of the day, there's no magic potion to get rid of stress, any more than there's a magic pill for weight loss. Sometimes life throws stress in your direction, and all you can do is work through it, bide your time until the tide turns.

And that leaves me right back where we started.

What is a person to do with the stress? How can I prevent it from holding my weight loss up?

That's just the physiological aspect of stress and weight loss. Don't get me started on stress eating. I know that some folks see it as a disease, something that only the super obese people do, but that's not true and I think we all know it.

My friend is the biggest stress eater I've ever encountered, and she's a size zero at the biggest. I'm not much of a stress eater. Not to say I never get into a rotten mood and pig out on food that I later regret. Sure I do. I also rationalize it, telling myself that I deserve the extra food because of my mood.

Right now, however, I'm more concerned with not letting stress affect my weight loss. And I know it does. Take sleep for example. I have a hard time sleeping lately. All of the studies show that lack of sleep has a detrimental effect on weight loss, but what should I do? I go to bed, I lie awake.

On a good day I take it all in stride. The stress is just an obstacle I face in my journey. We all have them, don't we?

But then I have days like today when I can't handle it anymore. I'm angry. I'm sad. I'm confused. I'm stressed. And the one really positive thing in my life is losing weight. If that goes, what will I have?