Diet Coke Poke Cake 232 Calories

Admittedly, I don't spend much time on pinterest.  However(!) several of my good friends do and they post most of their pins to facebook.  While I'm quickly scrolling down my news feed to find out what's going on in the realm of my facebook friends, I see all these delicious things that grab my eye.  One of them happened to be a poke cake.  The original recipe wasn't appetizing to me as it called for banana jello.  Blech!   But an idea was born.

Chocolate Diet Coke with Butterscotch Pudding Poke Cake

Ingredients:

• Diet coke (or diet sprite if you're using yellow or white cake mix)
• Cake Mix
• Instant Pudding (careful they aren't kidding!)
• Cool Whip

Now you can play around with different variations in as far as flavors but you can also check nutrition labels and have this for way less calories than you might think.

My cake part is a diet coke cake (DCC), so I used no eggs and no oil.  If you are unfamiliar with a diet coke cake, it is just cake mix and a can of diet coke mixed together.  I know you will be skeptical but trust me.  Just dry cake mix and diet coke.  (Those who are already familiar with the DCC are shaking their heads in agreement)

Pour into a baking pan and follow the baking directions on the box based on your pan.   I used a 13 x 9 pan and instead of greasing it as suggested, I just sprayed some non calorie spray.  

Once your cake is done (toothpick comes out clean) then it is time to take it out and poke some holes.  You can use anything the size of a wooden spoon, ie you want your holes to be rather large so the pudding can get in there.  I used the end of a Sharpie.  (Yes, I did wash it before I did this)

The DCC is amazing by itself but let's take it a step further and add pudding after it is baked!  Now here is where I messed up by my messup will be a learning experience for you.   I made the instant pudding and waited 2 minutes for it to set.  Now, the box says 5 minutes so I figured I was safe with 2.5 minutes but after 1 minute I turned around and had PUDDING!  So here is my hint to you, use a little more milk or watch that sucker like a hawk.  You don't want to pour it on while it is just pure liquid but full fledge pudding won't drip into the holes so you want a nice middle ground.

Spread the pudding around evenly and refrigerate until set.  Then just top with cool whip and wallah!

Here is the nutritional breakdown and how I got it down to 232 calories per slice.  The cake is so moist and delicious and really hits the spot for a sweet craving.  Also, as you can see, it is extremely easy to make.

Tea-Smoked Chicken and Fish

Smoked meat with tea?   Come on!   I saw this recipe with smoked shrimp and thought more about it.  We have plenty of tea in my house so the girls and I set to work with a little help from Kitten.

We decided on Organic Golden Sunrise by Heavenly Tea.  The loose tea leaves are beautiful colors and smell slightly sweet and definite hints of floral tones.  (I know...I sound like once of those wine people!)

The smoking pouch.  1/4 Cup of each:   raw rice, brown sugar (I used a brown sugar blend because that's all I had in the house) and the loose tea of course.  Double the tin foil and dump it all in the middle and mix it up with your hands.  My kids LOVED this part.   :)   Then just lightly fold it.  Remember you want the smoke to come out.

Here is our packet (prior to mixing):

The packet goes directly on the fire, underneath the grate whether you are using a gas grill or a charcoal grill.  Put the items to be smoked off to the other side as you want them infused with the delicate smoke flavor and not right above the burning packet.

We did chicken thighs and fish.   There was a definite smoke flavor but it was delicate and had a flavor that you couldn't quite place.  Both kids and the Hubby loved it.  The plated version:

This whole meal with the broccoli was 260 calories.  I think this is a great way to infuse some extra flavor into chicken or fish without the added calories of a marinade or sauce.

We'll be Tea-Smoking much more in the future.

Feast Day - Lime Pickle and Sriracha Butter OH MY!

Today is a feast day for me, so I ate something that I've been wanting to eat.  Popcorn with butter.  Now, I do generally have a bowl of air popped popcorn (4 tbsp for 160 calories) on fast days, but I popped this batch in OIL and I made a bowl of melted butter so I could dip each individual piece of popcorn.  Divine!

My family says that my taste buds are broken as I can't taste spiciness from sriracha unfortunately.  I have googled this phenomenon and it seems that I have just sort of built up my tolerance.  Unfortunate for me.  Getting back to my popcorn butter...today I added some lime pickle and some sriracha to the butter.

This was FABULOUS!  Alas, I still couldn't taste the heat.

CauliFried Rice - 106 without chicken or 176 with chicken

While doing Atkins I made a lot of CauliFried rice.  My kids LOVE it which is a plus.  Surprisingly, if I keep the meat to a minimum this recipe works well for the 5:2 as well.

Start with some riced cauliflower (you can grate it or throw it in the chopper then toss it in the  microwave for a few minutes)
green onion
soy sauce
garlic
eggbeaters (optional)

You can add meat or other veggies as you like.  I also add a little cilantro.

Chop up the garlic and green onion.  I use several cloves (around 6) and several stalks of green onion (4).  Normally I'd saute' this with olive oil but since I'm keeping calories to a minimum I just put a tbsp of soy sauce in the hot pan and used that to saute'.

Once the onion and garlic have cooked a bit I add in 3 tbsp of eggbeaters.  Once the egg is cooked, I add the riced cauliflower and a few more tbsp of soy sauce.  Saute' everything for a few minutes stirring often so that the cauliflower doesn't steam and get mushy.

You can add in chicken or pork or shrimp or whatever protein you want.  Just be sure to count your calories.

I saved half the riced cauliflower (before putting in the microwave) for a different meal and made the caulifried rice with half a head of cauliflower.  I ate half of that...so a forth of a head of cauliflower. Here is the calorie breakdown as taken from myfitnesspal.  Note:  image above includes chicken which was 70 calories in addition to the ingredients below.

Getting back with it

I've been away from blogging (at least out in the open) for a while.  I was turned off when my shrimp recipe started making the rounds on facebook but all the people trying to get likes and shares.  They were sharing my shrimp recipe as their own!   Now I don't get anything from posting on this blog and it annoyed me that they didn't give credit so I just made all my posts after that "private".

What have I been up to in the mean time?   You didn't ask but I'll tell you anyway.  After traveling a lot during the first half of the year I seemed to have put on about 10 lbs.  YIKES!   Also, in Jan I was put on Synthroid for a thyroid deficiency and a side effect of that is weight gain.  Between the Synthroid and the traveling (ie not doing low-carb when not home) I put on 10 lbs.

Another problem I was having was that when I would go off of Atkins I'd swell something fierce.  To me, I looked almost unrecognizable.  It was awful.  Not like running over a kitten awful, but proportionally awful for me.   The carbs were shocking my system and I wasn't sure how to get around it as for me personally, being away from home made low-carbing way harder.

In July we traveled to London where I read about the 5:2 diet   We got back and I figured I'd give it a try.  The premise is that you fast for two days and eat normally for 5 days.  The two days do not have to be consecutive.    The fast days are not truly fasting as you are allowed 500 calories.  So, I could eat carbs and potentially loose weight?   Would this stop my swelling?   Would the change in diet shock my system and could I see the scale go down?  

What I was doing wasn't working so I thought I'd give it a try.  Told Hubby about it and he thought I was nuts, but he had gained 20 lbs since the end of last year so he was game to try too.

I'm only telling you all of this in case you follow my blog looking for low-carb recipes.  I'm now watching calories only.

Having been doing 5:2 way of eating since August 8th 2013, I have done 6 fasts over 2.5 weeks and have lost about 3 lbs.  I'm ok with slowly loosing as long as the scale is moving in the downward direction.