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.  

Who Thought up Mother's Day?

I try to be a positive person.  My husband is a negative nelly and generally I have a different view than him but IMO Mother's Day sucks!   It sucks the big one!

I'm a home body and Mother's Day just sets everyone up for failure.  It is hyped up and touted and everyone goes crazy promoting it and yet....it is just another day.

• Do I do what I want to do or do I do what my mom wants to do?   
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• Do I  do what I want to do or do I do what my kids want me to do?   
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• Do I do what I want to do or do I do what my husband wants me to do?   
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• Do I do what I want to do or do I do what society thinks I should do?

I like my life so frankly, I'd be happy to just hang around the house and knit or play the wii with the kids or watch a movie with the family while I'm knitting.  The pressure to make this day great really gets to me.  Today I woke up at 6:20 and hubby slept late so I'm already mad at him.  Unreasonably.

What do I do once I'm up?  I wait and wait and wait and no one can bring me breakfast in bed because I was the first one up and no one thinks to cook me breakfast.  So what do I do?   I cook bacon for an hour because I'm freaking Starving!  Can't just cook bacon for myself...I have to cook it for everyone.

Hubby gets up after sleeping in and sits at his computer playing video games....while I'm cooking bacon.  I'm in the process of cooking everyone breakfast and start the 7 loads of laundry I have to do today.  While the laundry is laundrying, I empty the dishwasher.  NOW he says "Oh, they are clean?  I'll get to them".

So I was up early, fed the cats, cooked everyone breakfast, did the laundry, emptied the dishwasher, prepared tonights dinner last night and did side dishes while my husband grilled.

Called my mom to wish her a great day and my grandmother answers.  I chat with her and say "I'd wish you a happy mother's day but you aren't my mother....but I hope you have a good day too" and then I get a lecture from her about how she created my mother ........

Just a regular day for me, however it is MOTHER'S DAY and I feel like I wasn't pampered like the ads say I should be.  Why should I be pampered for doing what I choose to do?   I love being a mom.  The reason is because Hallmark made this a *od Damed holiday to sell cards and now there is so much pressure that no one can live up to that!

My 7 year old harassed the shit out of my husband until he ordered me flowers.  She circled what she wanted to get me on a post card and she left him sticky notes all over the house...daily.  A beautiful bouquet of flowers showed up Friday because my husband was strong armed by the 7 year old!

I'm a crappy mother because I didn't go out to lunch with my family, I'm a crappy wife because...well I don't know...but I'm sure there is a reason and I'm a crappy daughter because I didn't go to my mom's house to deliver her presents.

Great holiday.  F U Hallmark or whoever invented this holiday.

Who taught her how to read?

The 7 year old has been sick for about a year.  She starts with the drip, then the cough and then the infection and ... and... and...

PED sent us to an ENT and she in turn sent us to an allergist.

We go to the allergist who does the skin test in her office and when she comes back to check my daughter's tiny back she says "the good news is that nothing popped...the bad news is that neither did the control".  :(    Not enough room to redo the test on her back...home we go.

Child gets sick a few days later so back to the ENT we go.  She prescribes a couple different meds including prevacid!?!?!?!?  I call the allergist and she bows to my craziness and says she'll do the bloodtest on her.

Hubby is in London and of course I make the executive decision that he should be the one to take her to get her blood drawn.   He's not pleased, but he's out of town 3 of the 5 weeks so he agrees.

I tell her that her Daddy is picking her up because she needs "further allergy testing".  Pretty general I thought and genius on my part.  yeah me!

He picks her up from school and they go to the office.  He not only acts *SHOCKED* that they are sticking a needle half way up her arm BUT he blames me!   He says that "mama didn't tell them that she was getting a blood test!"

Blames me!   Threw me under the freaking bus he did.

So when I see her I have no choice but to act *SHOCKED* that they took her blood.  I make over her and act surprised.

A few days later she's sitting on my lap while I'm looking at my calendar.  She pipes up with "YOU KNEW ABOUT THE BLOOD TEST??????"   What?   What?   No!   I thought it was a scratch test...I told you that.  She says:  "then why does your calendar say 3:00 Zoey's blood test"????

.............

Ummmm....remind me again why we thought it was a good idea that she learn to read?

Ugh...Bacon!

I eat a lot of bacon.  Generally speaking this is my breakfast.  I swap between microwave and stove top.  Here is the problem...the microwave makes it too crispy or not done enough and the stove top takes longer, needs constant supervision and makes a huge mess.  My dog actually prefers the stove top method because then he gets to lick the varnish off the floor trying to get to all the grease splatters.

Here is a different method of cooking it in the oven!   (I might add that my oven is self cleaning but I haven't noticed a large amount of grease in there.)

I line a cookie sheet with tin foil to make clean up a breeze!   (Y'all know I'm all about the easy)

Oven temps vary so this will be trial and error but start off with a cold oven, set to 400 degrees and try it for about 20 minutes.  Shorter if your bacon is thin.  

Now, blot on a paper towel and enjoy.  When breakfast is over, crumple up the tin foil and toss.  No more grease holding jars or spilling grease everywhere while you try to pour grease into said container.  

Easy Crispy Low Carb Chicken

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Checken thighs WITH skins
Butter
Your favorite seasoning
Rosemary

Layer chicken in 13 x 9 pan, cut up butter and place all over, sprinkle seasoning and rosemary.

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes or until juices run clear.  Always check with a thermometer and the done degree is 165.