The other day on my way home from work...ok it was my birthday...I decided I needed sugary goodness.
When I got home, I checked to see which would be the least offensive points-wise...Udi's chocolate chip cookies (which I vowed never to buy again after the last package that was $6 of yuckiness but the memories of past yumminess overruled that...and I'm not necessarily glad. They aren't as good as I remember them being - recipe change, perhaps? but I digress...) or Breyer's coffee ice cream.
3 points for a teeny tiny cookie (remember I'm only getting 22 points per day here) or 4 points for 1/2 cup of ice cream. I will always choose the ice cream in the future. 1 cookie is pitiful, 1/2 cup of ice cream in a small bowl looks filling. In my opinion :)
In other news, the cheese addict in me found out that 1 Tablespoon of shredded parmesean cheese = 0 points! If you have 2 Tablespoons it's 1 point though...so I guess you can only have 1 at a time!
a small hot chick salad is 0 points - that pretty much rocks!
Once in a while I cook...a lot of food...all at once...and freeze it. This happened with beef soup and meatballs in the Crock Pot.
My store had a BOGO deal on Laura's ground beef so I took full advantage of it and so thankful for my giant crock pot so I could cook all 4 pounds at once, and probably could have fit another 4 in it too! So I chopped up about 2 large onions and a couple cloves of garlic...
Got out my 4 pounds of meat...
Put on my gloves and my fancy cooking shoes (they get me up high enough to make mixing in the c.p. easier)...
Put it in the crock and mixed it all up with some salt & pepper. I was going for fairly plain here since I expect to use the leftovers as burgers, meat sauce, meat loaves etc.
Then I divided it in half again and again until I had 8 half pound balls - effectively 2 servings each...
Then I dumped in 3 cans of Contadina tomato sauce so the cooker would be full enough to work...
And after they were all done I put them in baggies in the freezer. I use baggies instead of my containers because of tomato sauce stains, and I'm going to reheat in glass anyway.
Nestled in with the containers of beef soup * I made the day before. That's like a month of dinners, right there! Woo Hoo!
So, do you do a big cooking day to stock the freezer? Any favorite recipes?
By the way, if you're curious, each 8 ounce meat ball is 8 WW points, including the sauce.
*Beef soup recipe: 2 pound roast, small baggie of baby carrots, 2 onions quartered, 1 tsp each rosemary, thyme, salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, couple dashes of red pepper flakes and water to fill the Crock Pot. It was too simple to blog alone :)
My curiosity continues around Weight Watchers. I Googled it to see if anyone gluten free does it and there are only about 12 results. So, I wondered...how would the points compare?
So of course, I went through my kitchen and wrote the points on everything, which lucky enough wasn't much!
compared to their plain (wheat) mac & cheese - same 9 pts
compared to a Tombstone pizza @8 points for same serving size...now I wonder how other gf items compare to non-gf - but that's a blog for another day.
Also, curious about regular foods I eat regularly, I did a quick chart...
The chocolate chip Larabar was less than the Cashew Cookie - interesting! And finally, I had to figure out exactly what size 1 ounce of cheese really is and much like onions, got a little crazy with the dicing...
I basically cut 8 oz chunks into 8 and this is what it looked like.
Also, they say 1 oz is about the size of your thumb - but I'm not so sure!
So, have you ever done Weight Watchers gluten freely? If so, I'd love to hear about your experience! Let me know :)
I was cleaning out a cupboard and found a dust covered Weight Watchers At Home Program circa 2004 and after my trip down memory lane subsided, I got curious.
I was remembering pre-celiac diagnosis how I would eat...and it wasn't necessarily pretty - in many ways! I happened to be one of the few who could maintain a certain level of weight despite the celiac (until it reached a critical point and I lost 20 pounds in a couple weeks, of course). So, in 2004 I was dating a guy who wanted me to diet with him so I chose Weight Watchers since it didn't require bizarre shakes, bars or excessive workouts (I had zero energy due to the CD) and got the at-home kit so we could share and be frugal...
Needless to say, it was only a short time later I found I couldn't follow it, because I discovered that I was eating about 2x as much as my points allowed just to keep upright and functioning. Yes, you read that right, just to maintain, I ate at least 2 times the amount of food a "normal" person should. I kind of freaked out about that...again.
So, back then, restaurants didn't publish nutrition info on the web as much as they do today so any points estimates were just loose guesses, unless I happened to eat at one of them in the Dining Out Companion.
Which brings me to today's little research project!
I decided to see how many Points a meal at a couple restaurants, where I still eat, would be. Here we go!
Outback (gluten free menu, of course - no croutons, no bread, no seasonings):
Outback Special steak = 1 pt per ounce (6 oz = 6 pts, 9 oz = 9)
House salad with tangy tomato dressing = 4
Baked potato w/everything but butter = 6
Garlic Mashed Potatoes = 7
Grilled Asparagus = 1
Steamed Broccoli = 2 (added fat!)
Sweet potato, plain = 6; add toppings = 10
Salmon = 10 (added fiber?)
Chocolate Thunder dessert = 9 per serving, serves 4
About 20 points for the meal! Wow. Considering pre-celiac diag. I may have also added bread & butter, 2 drinks and dessert to that...I can't think about that now!
Chipotle (also used to get a 6 pt tortilla too):
Burrito Bowl:
Cilantro Rice (white) = 3
Black Beans = 2
Barbacoa = 4
Salsa = 0
Cheese = 3
Sour Cream = 3
Guacamole = 3
Chips (sometimes!) = 13 for 4 ounces.
So an entire Burrito bowl ranges from 15 - 18 points.
To give you an idea of what points per day a person should eat, the scale goes by body weight:
Your Weight: Daily Points
below 150: 20
150-174: 22
175-199: 24
200-224: 26
225-249: 28
250-274: 30
275-299: 31
300-324: 32
325-349: 33
350+: 34
BTW, I heard they've changed the program - but I'm not curious enough, yet, to sign up and find out how. Anyone know?
I hate to admit this, but when I look back at an average day in my WW journal (pre-diagnosis), I easily ate 40+ points per day, literally 2-3 times my allotment and I didn't gain a single pound...
If you haven't seen this video yet...it's one of those tragically funny ones for me. Obvs I going gf isn't what makes you skinny...
