Birthday Blues

Yesterday was my birthday. The blues started the night before when I realized we really didn't have the funds to do what we had planned (uber to dinner with a friend, have drinks, get food for hubby and uber back). I went back and forth on cancelling so many times and eventually we decided we would go anyways and she offered to treat, taking some stress off me.

I woke up on my birthday (number 30 by the way!), having had a dream about a friend from BC (we moved to NY over a year ago and I miss everyone so much that I've been in tears quite a bit lately). I didn't get any messages from any of my BC friends, no facebook posts, no shout out in a small group that I'm still in of a lot of friends, none of my friends liked my birthday post from my mom. Just clearly, I wasn't on any of their minds. They were all on my mind so much as I wished I could be going out with a large group of friends to celebrate my birthday. I know everyone is a parent and busy and I miss birthdays all the time on facebook, but it just hurts so much that not even one of them said anything yesterday.

I'm proud to announce, however, that I did not even think once of sitting down with food and drowning my sorrows.

My local friend and I went out to a new restaurant, that opened yesterday and was owned by the realtor that helped both of us find our homes. He even made a reservation for just us and refused all other reservations. Frustratingly, there wasn't a low point option in the starter menu that he was using for the weekend :( I got a burger and tracked it as best as I could. I didn't finish my kettle chips that came with it and I tried 2 of the risotto bites that we got as an appetizer. I drank water and an apple martini because apparently "you have to drink on your 30th birthday" lol. Not worth the points. I don't enjoy drinking but I finished the one. After that, we went across the street for dessert where I got peanut butter pie and it was delicious but huge. I had about half of it and brought the rest home. I plan to feed it to my kids but I'm not sure when.

Crisis Averted

I made it through two birthdays and only went into my weeklies by 6 PP on my birthday (and only because ice cream cake is so dang high in PP). Now the next test of how well I ACTUALLY did, is on Tuesday, but I'm not worrying about that.

One down, one to go!

Well I ate well today, had some cake at snack for 5 PP, skipped a 5 PP PB&J sandwich at lunch because I didn't really need it. I was content with fruit, veggies and jello. I only had to dip into my weekly points by 6 PP today. I'm proud of myself.

Recipe: Boxed Cakes (Josh's Birthday Cake)

Josh decided he wanted a rainbow bit cake. I made it today, sub egg beaters for eggs and applesauce for oil. The portion they suggest (1/10th of the cake) is only 4.7 PP, so with icing on it, I'd call it 6 maybe! :) It smells SOOOO good.

Rough Week Ahead

Tomorrow ends my first week back on Weight Watchers.

This week includes my birthday and Josh's birthday and the cakes that come with it as well as the cake I'm taking to work.

I have decided that I want an ice cream cake for a few reasons.

1. I just love it.
2. I can pick a blizzard flavour to have in it.
3. We can eat 1 pc each every Tuesday night after weigh-in and it will keep as long as we need it to. A normal cake would be stale or moldy :)

My work cake is the low fat banana cake with low fat cream cheese frosting on it. I'm going to calculate the points and decide what I'm eating before I go to work on Wednesday.

Josh wants a rainbow bit cake with cream cheese frosting so I decided that I'm going to make my own low fat frosting and ice it like that and use applesauce instead of oil for the box mix.

Now as far as dinner goes, I've already decided between two things that I might want to eat. We're going to Macaroni Grill and I think I might have chicken cannelloni, or else the kids spaghetti and meatballs with broccoli on the side. I have good memories from Chili's kids menus.

Josh's birthday dinner will be rougher to figure points out but at the same time it might be easier... He wants to have broccoli in garlic olive oil, with homemade chicken cordon bleus and other things. He can't even remember what. Shhh don't tell him but I'm planning on having one pc. of his broccoli and having the rest steamed xD

Oh Weight Watchers, how happy I am to be back!

Recipe: Banana Cake

This is a repost of a tumblr post I made in summer 2010. I baked this cake to take to work for my birthday.

BANANA CAKE WITH CREAM CHEESE ICING

Mmmmm this cake was so good. It all started last year when my neighbour brought a banana cake with cream cheese icing to work. It was so good and she gave me a HUGE piece. Luckily it was on a Wednesday so I didn’t have to answer to the WW scale for another 6 days.

Since that time, I’ve been obsessed with it and I was lazy in trying to find a recipe. This recipe is my neighbour’s changed-up recipe that was already WW friendly but I changed it a tiny bit more. I changed the oil for applesauce and changed the time to put it in a cake pan instead.

I served it for an early birthday cake for my mom and then took it to my WW meeting last week and shared little pieces with the WW members there. I heard NOTHING but compliments on how moist it was and how yummy, etc. It was amazing and totally made me feel better about my cooking skills… Josh always mocks them lol.
I got the frosting recipe from a WW cookbook we bought this summer.

BANANA CAKE:
INGREDIENTS:

• 1 1/2; cups whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 c. Splenda
• 2 medium bananas, mashed (about 1 ½ cups)
• 1/2 c. egg beaters
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 c. applesauce
• 3/4 c. fat-free yogurt (I used greek yogurt)

DIRECTIONS:
Mash bananas and dump in mixing bowl. Add in the eggs, vanilla, applesauce and yogurt and mix with a fork until well blended. Add sugar, flour and soda on top and mix it all together. Grease loaf pan (I used calorie free margarine spray). Be sure to grease the sides of the pan as well. Bake at 350 degrees for 55-60 minutes in a loaf pan or about 30 minutes in a cake pan. I doubled the recipe (2011) and cooked in a lasagna pan. It’s done when a knife poked in comes out clean.

FROSTING:
INGREDIENTS:

• 1 8 oz. package fat-free cream cheese, at room temperature
• 1 1/4 c. confectioner’s sugar
• 1/2 c. fat-free Greek yogurt
• 3/4 tsp. vanilla extract

INSTRUCTIONS:
Using an electric mixer on high speed beat cream cheese, confectioner’s sugar, yogurt and vanilla in a medium bowl until smooth, about 1 minute.