Things That Start With 'S'

Unlike in college, where I did a humanities concentration in "Things that start with 'L'", tonight's dinner was composed of things that begin with 'S'. Soup, salad, and sandwiches. We had the trusty Fresh Express Asian Supreme salad again, and combined it with Harry's Organic Creamy Tomato Basil soup, which we found at Costco.

Nothing goes better with tomato soup than a grilled cheese sandwich. Fortunately, we had some bread I rescued from work last week, and some muenster cheese in the fridge. Muenster also happens to be the best cheese for grilled cheese.

I wouldn't be me if I didn't want to put tomatoes on everything, and grilled cheese is no exception. I sliced up a nice tomato, and ate everything I couldn't fit on the sandwich.

A little butter and some time on the griddle later, and I've got a tasty, colorful dinner. I ate the salad afterward.

Total calories were fewer than I expected:

• 180 for my half of the salad
• 333 for the bowl of soup
• 430 for the sandwich (2 x 100 bread, 180 for 1.5 slices of cheese, 50 for the butter)
• 25 for the tomato

All told, 968 calories.

A Quick But Satisfying Dinner

Tonight was supposed to be falafel night, but Costco didn't have any pita. I tried to pick up pita yesterday at Fred Meyer, but Keziah decided she wanted to scream the whole time, so I wound up having to hurry up and get out of the store. So, instead, we decided to give this tikka masala sauce from Costco a try. I got some pre-fried tofu (for the extremely lazy) at the Asian grocery yesterday, and decided to use that. First step, start some brown rice.
Next, bust open a Fresh Express Asian Supreme salad. These things are super handy when you are as lazy as I am. Pop 'em open, toss in a bowl, ready to eat. I haven't really tried any of the other varieties, because this one is clearly the best. Mmm, orange sesame dressing.
Grabbed some veggies from the fridge: 1 yellow bell pepper, a large onion, and half a tomato I had lying around. I only used about half the onion, though.
Have to say I was skeptical about the sauce - I've been burned by Indian-food-in-a-bottle before, especially the Patak's tikka masala sauce. It smells great, but when you go to eat it, there's just something missing. I sauteed the onion in a tablespoon of canola oil, followed shortly by the pepper, then threw in the tomato. After another minute or two, I added the tofu and about 3 cups of the sauce (3/4 of the container). Let it simmer for 15 minutes and voila!

The sauce came out tasting great, and the tofu really absorbed the flavors of the sauce and the veggies!

Now for the damage:

• Bag of salad with dressing: 360 calories
• Fried tofu: 1000 calories
• 1.75 cups (before preparation) of short-grain brown rice: 1260 calories
• 3 cups of tikka masala sauce: 840 calories
• 1 tbsp of canola oil: 116 calories
• 1 yellow bell pepper: 33 calories
• 1/2 large onion: 30 calories
• 1/2 tomato: 11 calories

Grand total: 3650 calories! Jeebus!

Oh wait, I didn't eat it all by myself. Let's see, I had half of the salad, so that's 180 calories. Then, a high-ball-park estimate is that I had 1/4 of the rest of the food (although probably not that much of the rice). So that's 822 calories. A total of about 1000 calories. Huh. I guess I'm going to have to work hard at not going back for seconds.

Kurt's Signature Morning Smoothie

Weighed in at 238.8 lbs this morning. Not as high as I expected, but naturally much higher than I'd like to be. At one point I was flirting with 210. I would be happy to be back there again. The last time I lost a bunch of weight, I did it by replacing my first meal of the day with a fruit smoothie. Even if I woke up at 11:30, my first meal always had to be this smoothie. I just happened to have the ingredients on hand, so that's what I made this morning.

• 1 cup plain soymilk
• 1 heaping cup frozen blueberries
• 1 ripe banana

1. Put everything in a blender with 1 cup of ice.
2. Host the most boring episode of "Will It Blend" ever.
   

As it was blending, I threw in a teaspoon of Fiber Sure because more fiber means you feel more full. It adds about 25 calories, though. By rough estimates, each of the other ingredients has about 100 calories, so all told this is a 325 calorie breakfast. But Kendra stole a little less than half of it (what's left in the blender), so this was a very low-calorie breakfast for me. Probably less than 200.