My Weight Loss Toolbox: Meal Calendar (Part 3)

Food/Calorie Journal
Scale
Walking App
Meal Calendar
Digital Food Scale that Weighs in Grams
Weekly, Detailed, Shopping List
Walking Buddy (My Daughter & My Dogs)
Yeti 36oz Rambler
Walking Shoes and Walking Socks

Let’s explore these one at a time.

FYI: There are a lot of calendar pictures in this post.  Plus it is long, so I will be splitting it up in to several parts. This is Part 3. Parts 1 & 2 contain all of 2018. If you are interested in another year of meals, take a look at those two previous posts.

January 2019 started our family dinner nights, which were held every Monday.  We would invite family over for a meal at 18:00 with dessert afterwards. After food, we would play a small fun tabletop game Catawba-Lynn could participate in, many times being Left Center Right (LCR) or a Cthulhu dice game similar to LCR.

Sushi Simplicity was amazing!  I purchased Lucas a sushi making class that the two of us could attend at the local community college.  We learned about sushi and then made quite a bit of our own sushi rolls.  A lot.  A LOT.  We ended up making like 12 sushi rolls and bringing home six or seven pealed/skinned avocados.  (The chef bought too many and gave them to us because he felt bad for me, being a vegetarian).  I needed to use the avocados up and I already had something like eight of them at home, as avocados were close to $0.39 a piece at Aldi and I was buying them like crazy…I needed to use them.  I found an avocado muffin recipe – which was amazing!  However, I tried to stir the chunked avocado mixture with my $5 hand mixer and the mixer exploded.  Exploded.  The avocado gummed up the mixer so bad that sparks flew from the hand mixer.  I screamed and turned it off, yanked the plug out of the wall and stared at it.  Lucas, figuring I was overreacting, plugged it in and tried it.  It made weird noises, popped, and started smoking.  Lucas calmly unplugged it and said “Yep.  It’s dead.  The magic smoke that makes it work escaped.”  And we threw it out.  And I do not have a new one.  I have no mixer.  Not the big $300 one, not a $5 hand mixer, not a dicer or a chopper…I do have a blender and a Nutribullet thing – but no mixers.  I have a spoon and a wire whisk, and I have been making do since the avocado incident.

*Explanation of food: “Hotdogs”.  Vegetarian hotdogs.  Nothing special.  Giant hotdogs that are only 100 calories a piece, that I purchase from Aldi.  Man, do they taste great!  Put all the toppings on (ketchup, mustard, avocado, onion, bell pepper, mushroom, pickle, and cheese) and this is a great treat!

Untidy Josephs = Sloppy Josephs.  “There isn’t any sloppy Joes in my house, we have untidy Josephs.”  Something my mother always said.  So that is what I call mine.  However, I make a vegetarian version by sauteing onions, mushrooms, and bell peppers, then adding four cans of rinsed and mashed beans (I mash with a fork), and a can of sauce.  I warm it up and serve it on hotdog buns instead of hamburger buns.  Hotdog buns hold the “meat” so well and there is less mess compared to putting the slop in hamburger buns or on bread!  I do not care that the name is “sloppy”, I do not want half my food splattered down my shirt.

Why does the 7^th say “Domes?”  Glad you asked!  Remember way way back at the beginning of this post I said I take in to account important days so I can plan my meals around them?  December, 2018 – for a Yule present for the family and our game night crew – Lucas and I made the scarves, (he helped pick the colors) gave specialized baskets of food, (my brother got a basket filled with different nuts and nut butters which he used after his work outs and loved it.  Lucas’s cousin got a basket with three packs of cigarettes and two 2-liter bottles of Mountain Dew and loved his basket just as much as my brother loved his.) and we also gave everyone a calendar with special events on it.  Lucas and I decided to fund taking the family out to special events, such as going to zoos, botanical gardens, historical sites, camping, the Domes, and other things.  We aimed for one big event each month.  We would then also pack and present a lunch with the activity.  It was all paid for – so the family could get together and enjoy the place, company, and day.  Did the Domes have anything to do with the meal?  No.  But it would maybe impede my prep abilities, so I listed it as I was planning.

There was a lot of travel in March.  We were promised good weather in Colorado, and a visit felt right, so we drove out to Colorado – in what turned out to be THE WORST DRIVING WEATHER I have ever had to drive through.  The trip is its own story, but the shortened version is that it was cold, there was so much snow, and it was so so so windy – that I was for sure we were going to crash – but luckily did not.  Again, our Colorado visit was great, filled with excellent family cooking, Sprouts visits and two afternoons of hiking.  We made it back home in time to take Catawba-Lynn to the behind the scenes tour at the zoo because she loved the zoo (we went weekly) and at the tiny age of two, thought zoologists were the most amazing people.  (I still think they are).  Just trying to support her interests.

Two weeks later we spent a week in Chicago.  Look – I was done with going out to eat while staying in hotels.  Last time we were in Chicago we wound up spending $60 on a pizza – and I was not happy at all about it.  I was done with high calorie, expensive food.  I said we should eat “cold foods” in the room, such as cereals/granola, protein bars, sandwiches, and salads.  Lucas said he refused to eat cold foods for a week so I “snuck” a slow cooker into the vehicle (you could hear it rattling in the back seat the whole 2+ hour trip) with canned foods and prepped ingredients.  We ate like kings while staying in Chicago for little to no cost.  And I found the best “hotel meal” recipe ever – Mexican Chili:
-Can of mashed chickpeas (drain and rinse before mashing)
-Can of cream corn
-1 jar of salsa (16 oz)
-Can of pinto beans, drained, rinsed
-Can of black beans, drained, rinsed
-Envelop of taco seasoning
-Can of diced tomatoes (used for Mexican dishes, the one with the green chilis in it.)
-Diced onion
-Diced bell pepper
-Handful of diced mushrooms
Throw it all in the slow cooker, cook on low for four hours.
Serve over corn chips and lettuce.  (I prefer lettuce for the lower calories, Luke prefers corn chips for the taste).
Have shredded cheese and sour cream (if you would like) as accompaniments.  Very easy.
I can tell you that when I got off the elevator on our floor after walking along the river walk in Chicago, I could smell that the Mexican Chili was just about done!

As a family, we had a chance to go to the Shedd Aquarium.  The Shedd Aquarium is an amazing place – I had taken Catawba-Lynn there before, just her and I (we walked there from our hotel – so we made an entire day of it).  This time we drove, parked the car for an insane price, and enjoyed the aquarium.  We were hungry as we were leaving and poked our heads into one of the lunch areas.  There we found Farmers Fridge which is a health food vending machine company founded in Chicago.  At the time, FF was only in Chicago.  I was immediately attracted to the vending machine, as I wanted something EXACTLY like the vending machine when I was running the miniature golf course.  I wanted a healthy, quick, no kitchen, food option that we could run and profit off of in our golf course.  (I was also trying to design our at home, personal fridge to work similar to a healthy vending machine.  I would cut up mass quantities of produce, make healthy snacks ahead of time and package them in the spare containers I had, making sure I had snacks for the family throughout the week.  But my containers were cheap and flawed and the food deteriorated quicker than expected, so I went back to prepping foods more often).  FF took this idea (much farther than I thought of) and made amazing, great tasting, adventurous, inexpensive (for what you are getting), healthy, vending machine food.  Most food comes in clear plastic containers with a green top which can be deposited back to be cleansed and reused – or you can keep them.  I chose to keep mine and use it for foods when we are our hiking, as the containers seal well.  Every time I go to Chicago, I try to find one of these vending machines and give them business.  They are taking off and branching to new areas.  There is now one (per my mother) in the Milwaukee VA Medical Center – and if it was not for COVID, I would stop into my old place of employment to go to that vending machine.  And then I would promptly leave.  If you see a Farmers Fridge vending machine, at least check it out – if not try something.  The food is great!

We got back from Chicago and the next day I took Catawba-Lynn up to Minnesota so that I could visit a friend of mine who was battling cancer.  Lucas had a tray of sushi and plenty of hotel leftovers and I was not picky at all when it came to meals that weekend.

In April, my family day tripped to La Crosse, Wisconsin to see my mother’s side of the family.  I again, brought my slow cooker so I could put together a meal and cook as we visited.  Meatless, meatball stew was done in a few hours.  We were all able to have dinner together before we had to go back home.  It was nice because it was cost effective, we had three young children with us, so this was less hassle over going out somewhere, and it worked within our time constraints – no one had to miss out on conversation while they were cooking.  Here are the directions:
-2 pounds of meatballs (I use vegetarian).  I warm them up in the microwave before tossing them in the slow cooker.
-Can of tomato soup
-Handful of sliced carrots
-Potatoes – I do a little less than 2lbs, which is what it calls for.  Calorie reasons.
-Large onion (if not two), diced
-Bell pepper, diced
-Handful of mushrooms, diced
Cook on low for 7.5 hours.
Tastes great!

We went to Vermont again!  Gosh, I love Vermont.  I made a lot of finger foods for the trip, such as vegetables and hummus, fruit salads, cheese and crackers – those kinds of things.  Lucas was going to be very busy and out most nights, so I was just prepping for Catawba-Lynn and me.  No one was going to complain if I decided yogurt and granola were on the menu for dinner – Lucas was out having burgers and pizzas having a great time!  Catawba-Lynn and I were climbing mountains and exploring.  Protein bar for me for lunch – kids protein bar for Catawba-Lynn for lunch.  Everyone was happy!  We would make it back to the hotel for complementary coffee and teatime, complete with a cookie, and then relax until dinner.  Amazing week.  So much kicking ass on trails and mountains.  So proud of Catawba-Lynn for keeping up.

May is also the month when I finally lost more than half my body weight.  I went from 303 pounds the day before I had Catawba-Lynn, to 151 pounds before she turned three years old.  Lucas paid for my blog and handed me my computer – with the website name “Half A Human” – exactly what I had been talking about as my driving mantra “I want to be half a human before she is three” – as the website I owned while we were in Vermont.

I decided I would finally put in an arborvitae fence line in my front yard.  Except, the area which I wanted to put the arborvitaes in was overgrown with weeds.  I did not want to just dig four holes, put four trees in and hope for the best and have the weeds choke out the trees.  I spent hours hand tilling the ground, removing the stubborn roots and rocks and finally getting the ground in order.  The yardwork kicked my ass.  And I forgot I had a Friend’s of the Hartford Library meeting I was supposed to be attending…so I ran out of time to make tacos and we ate Subway quick on the 4^th.  So sad to miss out on Taco Tuesday.

That is the first half of 2019! Some of these months look like chaos but a plan, even one that you are changing on the fly, can help. I will be posting the rest of 2019 soon. Take care. Stay well. And I hope 2021 is moving along smoothly for you.