Down another couple pounds / Captain America

Weighed in at 367.5 this morning.  Only a couple of pounds in about a week.  I have been snacking heavily between meals this week.  There is this powder that I was supposed to be putting in the shakes and I misplaced it, couldn't find it and it stops the hunger cravings.  It works, 'cause all this week I have been soooo hungry between meals and I wasn't last week when I was using it.  I found it last night so hopefully this week goes better.

Went and saw Captain America last night.  What a fun ride!  Two thumbs up from Logan and Heepard! 

7.2 pounds lost

Had a shake for breakfast, an apple for a snack, a shake for lunch and rice with butter and salt and pepper (not a diet thing, I love it like that) and veggies (corn and green beans) for supper.  I had a second helping and a single sandwich in the middle of the day as well.  I am at 369.8 lbs this morning.  That's 7.2 lbs. since I started last Monday.  Well, Tuesday technically.  Monday I weighed and took pictures and Tuesday morning I started the shakes.

Almost 6 Pounds in 1 week.

That's not bad, is it?  A pound a day, more or less?  I weighed myself and was 371.2 this morning after a disastrous weekend.  I have good friends up and we went out to Boston Pizza and I had the Boston Brute with meat sauce on the side with french fries.  Even on Sunday I didn't quite stick with things like I should have and I'm still down a pound from Friday.  Maybe this Body by Vi shake thing is working.

It's a multi-level marketing thing, which totally puts me off.  But the stuff is made with soy instead of milk products so I can have it whereas I can't do Boost, Ensure, or Slim-Fast.  They give you the metabolism boosters, appetite suppressants and multivitamins for much less money than some of those herbal places.  So use me as your guinea pig, see if this works before signing up.

But it seems to be working so far.  Considering I keep loosing weight even though I can't seem to stick to the diet.  Mr. HaveNoWillpower here.

Pepper Beef Jerky

My best friend called me last night on his way over and asked if I had a recipe for pepper jerky.  He’d just bought a dehydrator and wanted to try it out.  I did some research on the net and came up with the recipe below.  I got some of my ingredients from this site and it has some great tips listed as well.  I would also recommend reading through this page on food safety for making jerky.  We used a package of outside round steaks.  We also tried a package of cheaper blade steak but ended up cutting nearly half of the weight of the package off in fat and gristle, so the outside round was way cheaper per pound, in the end.

Ingredients

3 lbs flank steak, round steak or brisket, cut ½” thick

1½  Tbsp salt

½ cup warm water

½ cup soya sauce

¼ cup Worcestershire sauce

2 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp coarse ground pepper

2 tsp onion powder

2 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp Tabasco sauce

1 tsp liquid smoke

 

Directions

Cut meat in 1½” wide strips with grain. Trim as much fat as possible, as it is the fat that makes it go rancid down the road.  Partially freezing the meat makes slicing it thin easier.
Dissolve salt in warm water and then add remaining ingredients.  Add the meat strips to the marinade mix.

Divide the meat and marinate in two big Ziploc freezer bags.  Refrigerate marinade bags for 24 hours occasionally shaking the bags to coat and mix. 
Place strips of meat on paper towels for a few minutes to drain.
Then place strips of meat on cooling racks in a jellyroll pan or cookie sheet lined with tinfoil. (or on the dehydrator racks)
Turn heat on to 160 degrees (needs to be at least 160 to kill any bacteria) and cook at this temperature for 5 to 6 hours with oven door slightly cracked open.  (We used both the new dehydrator and my convection oven)
After cooking, turn off heat, open oven door and let air dry for 8 hours more.
Package jerky in bags or jars. Jerky can be kept 1 to 2 months, more if refrigerated.

The final result was delicious and tender jerky that tasted to me just like Oberto's or Jack Link's peppered beef jerky at your local Kwik-E-Mart.  Only we didn't pay $8 for a hundred grams.  Less than $10 for 1.2 kg of meat which works out to nearly 2 pounds of jerky by the time it's dried.  Cheap like borscht.
My friend likes his jerky with lots of pepper, so he said this was perfect.  For my taste, I'm going to make another batch and only put half the amount of pepper in.

My first brush with lentils

Black, Red and Green Lentils

Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy lentils... they're cheap!  Since reading an article in the newspaper a few months ago about 5 foods that we ought to eat more of, I have been trying to find some way of enjoying lentils.  I haven’t been able to find the original article but here is a similar article that has 4 of the 5 foods in it from the one I read.

“Lentils:  This legume is quick and easy to prepare, and it absorbs the flavors of the components around it- making lentils great for soups, salads, or even on their own.  Like other beans, lentils are rich in fiber (twice your %DV, to be exact).  Soluble fibers found in lentils expand upon digestion, making you feel full longer, as well as absorbing some of the excess fatty acids for excretion.  They also stabilize blood sugar levels, degrading at a steady pace.  Lentils are also a great source of folate, which is absolutely essential in the diet as it scavenges homocysteine, a product of the methylation cycle which damages arterial walls.”

And of course we can't forget the famous quote from Patrick Henry: "Give me Lentils or give me death."

They are high in protein, iron, folate, vitamin B1 and have tons of dietary fibre.  They store extremely well for long periods and are extremely inexpensive.  Now I'm not completely sure, but from what I gather, Indian dal is about the same things, except some dal are lentils but some dal are the inner part of various beans ranging from kidney beans, mung beans, chickpeas, etc. There are green, French green (both are recommended), red (some prefer this one), yellow, orange, pink (also highly recommended), black (has a nutty flavor), white (very mild, almost tasteless).  Lentils have been found in the tombs of ancient Egyptians and were thought to be an aphrodisiac.  Which explains a lot about why the ancient Egyptians died out!

The problem is, they taste like crap!  I’ve had them a few times and can barely choke them down (sorry, Aunt Jan).  But they are one of these “wonder foods” and so I am trying to find a way to enjoy them.  I went online and selected several recipes that sounded promising.  But several asked for black or French green lentils and Safeway and Superstore don’t carry them, so I settled on trying this one using green lentils.  I’m not listing it here as it was absolutely terrible.  It was so bad, I refused to serve it at supper.  Good thing we had cheese biscuits and potatoes and gravy for the main meal.

So I split the lentils into 3 pots and tried out a few things.  I added brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves and allspice to the first and it made it barely palatable.  Next I made a curried lentil and it was a bit better.  But not by much.

Sweet and Sour Lentils 

The final try, was a fair success. 

1 cup lentils

3 cups water

2/3 cup ketchup

2/3 cup brown sugar

1 Tablespoon vinegar

2 Tablespoons maple syrup

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

Boil the lentils for 1 hour.  Then add ketchup, sugar, vinegar, maple syrup and mustard and let simmer for 10 minutes to flavour.  Season with salt to taste (as adding salt or vinegar before the lentils are cooked will cause them to stay tough, like any of the bean family) and serve.

Upon further contemplation, I think if I did it again, I would add bacon or sausage slices to further flavor, or perhaps diced apple and craisins.
All in all, I’m not completely satisfied, as it felt to me as if I was just covering up the earthy flavor of the lentils with sweet and sour sauce.  So I’m going to keep trying.
Which reminds me of one last lentil joke.  A Priest, a Lawyer and a Lentil walk into a bar...

Mulligan Time

I'm restarting.

Last year at this time I had a plan and it went astray.  My doctor suggested a diet that hinged on drinking those bottles of Boost or Ensure, and it worked... at first.  I lost 15 pounds in a week or so, but it turns out I was allergic to the milk solids in the Boost and I got hives all over my arms.  So I quit.

So I am restarting, this time I'm doing a 90 day challenge and I want to lose 77 pounds in 90 days.

I started Monday, I weighed 377 pounds.  My waist is 64", hips are 58", chest is 59", thighs are 30", neck is 25" and bicep is 21".  I figured out that my Body Mass Index is 51.8.  I have to say, the body mass index thing is kind of bogus.  According to several websites anything over 40 is morbidly obese.  Apparently I'm dead and no one told me yet.  The funny thing is when I punch in the numbers for when I was in high school when I was practically anorexic at 165 pounds, I'm close to being overweight.  When I was my perfect weight when I got married (I was was skinny!) at 190 pounds I was overweight and my goal weight of 220 pounds I will still be obese.  Give me a break!
 So I took these "Before" pictures on Monday and started the program yesterday.  I have a milk shake in the morning (with 8 oz. of goat milk - 150 cal + 90 cal for the powder) with 2 Vi-Slim metabolism booster pills and the Vi-Pak vitamin pills and another shake and metabolism pills at lunch and a couple of snack (an

apple or some edible pea pods, or a banana) and then eat whatever I want for supper.  Last night I had rice and lemon chicken and I had a salad with Mandarin Orange Dressing with my shake at lunch.

I'm down to 372.6 pounds this morning.  Whoo Hoo! 4.4 pounds so far. So here goes nothing.  Let's see if I can sustain it this time.