Meal Plan 4/12/15 to 4/18/15

Sun 4/12
Breakfast: Cottage cheese on wheat toast
Lunch: bulgogi with brown rice
Snack: low carb apple snack
Dinner: Waldorf salad

Mon 4/13
Breakfast: Eggs on toast
Lunch: spaghetti squash with "cream" sauce
Snack: cauliflower tater tots with ranch dressing
Dinner: spinach salad with nuts

Tue 4/14
Breakfast: cottage cheese on toast
Lunch: bacon, egg, and leek risotto (I have some leeks from last week to use up before they go bad! Also, I'll use brown rice)
Snack: pepperoni pizza tater tots
Dinner: waldorf salad

Wed 4/15
Breakfast: eggs on toast
Lunch: spaghetti squash chow mein 
Snack: low carb apple snack
Dinner: spinach salad

Thurs 4/16
Breakfast: cottage cheese and toast
Lunch: sweet potato mac and cheese 
Snack: creamy caulifower garlic rice
Dinner: waldorf salad

Fri 4/17
Breakfast: deviled eggs
Lunch: tuna melt on tomato slice
Snack: apple snack
Dinner: smoothie: yogurt, walnuts, water, honey, frozen fruit

Sat 4/18
Breakfast: deviled eggs
Lunch: leftovers
Snack: creamy caulifower garlic rice
Dinner: smoothie


Grocery List:
Eggs
Whole Wheat Bread (deal on Nature's Own bread next week at Weis plus coupons)
spaghetti squash (2)
big tomato
apples (for waldorf salad, apple snack)
provolone cheese
pepperoni slices
cauliflower (have some but not enough)
milk
short grain brown rice


Already Have:
cottage cheese (?) check pantry
walnuts (?)
yogurt
tuna
mayo
onion
pickles
brown rice
thin beef
parmesean
spinach (?) still good?
leek
bacon
white wine
parmesean
stock (can make from leftover turkey bones)
soy sauce (?)
cheddar cheese

Good Coupon Deal:
General Mills Cereal one box
Free Jiffy cornmeal mix on savingstar
Redpack tomato cans (buy $10 use coupon on three cans)
Gerber graduate grabbers? (baby food as grown up snacks)

Is It Working?

This is the big question.

I'm motivated to stick with this diet because of the hope it gives me that I might cure my pcos. The only indication I'll have that it's working is if I start getting my period more regularly. So I'm eating right as much as I can and I'm waiting and watching for my period.

I'm on day 41 of my cycle now. My last period was March 1st. I'm at the higher end of still a normal period if I were to get it today but my hope is fading fast. Normal cycles are usually between about 28 and 35 days. I saw some signs that it might be coming, like a lower than usual mood and some breaking out on my face. But it doesn't seem to be leading to anything.

Still, I've only been doing the diet a week so it will probably take more time to heal my body.

I have to keep at it for a few months and see the overall results.

I really hope this works. It helps me to feel like I'm doing something to help myself. I've gotten on medication for my low thyroid so the doctors are doing their part. And I pray, so the Gods are doing their part. But I want to be doing something too to move me in the right direction.

I have to keep at it even when I haven't seen any results yet.

Surviving Eating Out

We ate out a lot more this week then I expected to. We were visiting family and there were so many people to see. They all wanted to go out to lunch and dinner with us!

So I only ended up cooking two of my planned meals.

For the most part, though, I was able to make good choices!

Friday night we went to The Ninety-Nine, which I already told you about. I had grilled salmon with cole slaw and grilled asparagus.

Monday lunch we were at the mall and we got sushi. Pretty good choice, though there was white rice in it. I stayed away from my favorite deep fried rolls!

Monday night I had an epic fail. We went to my favorite Chinese restaurant from when I was a kid. I told myself I would get their shrimp with snow peas, which I love. But I was unable to resist the buffet and I loaded up on dumplings, lo mein, scallion pancakes, sweet and sour chicken, and then a sampling of all the desserts like puddings and brownies. Terrible.

I recovered Tuesday with a lunch cooked by my cousin: chickpea curry and aloo gobhi. There was potato but I ate mostly the cauliflower and curry. Also, she made brown rice instead of white just for me.

That evening we had snacks at a friend's house. She was supportive of my diet and put out apple, carrot sticks, and veggie chips.

After that we stopped for dinner on the ride home and we went to Applebees. I got a wedge salad and a cup of tomato soup. The dressing had plenty of fat but low on carbs! It had bacon pieces and roasted pecans. I was craving dessert so we shared a hot fudge sundae in a shot glass. That way I only ate a very little of the sugar.

Wednesday we went to lunch with my brother and his girlfriend. They took us to her favorite Mexican place. The tacos there could be ordered with a lettuce wrap instead of tortilla so I did that. They came with Mexican rice (which I love) but I asked if I could sub black beans for it. The waitress told me no and I resigned myself to eating the rice, but then when she brought the plates she had switched it for me! I was tempted to take a bite of my husband's rice but I resisted.

Then we got stuck in the rain in mid afternoon and ended up at a Starbucks. I almost told my husband to get me something bad for me like a cheesecake brownie, but I actually ended up getting the fruit and cheese box, which had apples, brie, nine-grain crackers, and a cranberry nut mixture. It was delicious and I felt good about my choices!

In the evening we had dinner with my sister- and brother-in-law. They took us to an Indian place. I got chicken tikka masala and instead of naan I got paratha, which is a whole wheat bread. I still had white rice and I wasn't supposed to have carbs at all for dinner, but I did what I could to stick with it.

Today, Thursday, we're heading home and back to an environment I can better control!

Reasons I Need a Dehydrator

• Garlic Salt
• Cucumber Chips
• Crispy Green Beans
• Healthy Chips
• Fruit leather
• can save and preserve food from my garden
• preserve herbs (my basil plants produce way too much!)
• Kale chips
• Crackers and granola bars from scratch
• fruit lollipops

Never before have I thought that a dehydrator would be useful in my life. Now I really want one. As soon as I can afford to replace my food processor the next thing I'll save up for is this dehydrator. Amazon reviewers say it's worth putting in a little more money and avoiding the super cheap ones.

I wonder if there's some way I can test one out before buying one.

Meals 4/5/2015

Sunday April 5th, 2015

For breakfast I made creamy grits with poached eggs and asparagus. It was very mild. Grits are mild, asparagus is mild, egg is mild. We had some leftover smoked salmon so I had some of that with it. I don't think I'd make this one again.

For lunch I ended up eating some of a dish my uncle makes called Lazy Lasagna. It is noodles and ricotta cheese and sour cream. It's one of my favorite things. I need to check what the noodles were because I think they may have been egg noodles, which wouldn't be as bad for my diet as regular simple carb noodles.

For dinner I cooked my family "mac" and cheese where the noodles were replaced with baked butternut squash.

The recipe calls for one of those vegetable spiralizers but I didn't have one so I just sliced it up into little squares.

It turned out delicious but I think it would have been better and tasted a lot more like mac and cheese if I had used a spiralizer/zoodle maker. Will be making this again for sure!

Good Choices Eating Out

Arriving at my parent's place, we decided to go out to eat that night. It was the first time for me going to a restaurant since I started this diet last week.

Usually the "health" options on the menu are not very appealing. Who wants grilled chicken with vegetables? Not me, anyway. It doesn't get more boring than grilled chicken in my opinion.

But this restaurant had a grilled salmon and that was a whole different story!

I happily ordered salmon with asparagus and grilled tomatoes and switched the broccoli side for cole slaw (I like broccoli but only cooked particular ways and I rarely like it at restaurants).

I avoided potato, breading, and we didn't have dessert. Though we did eat some dark chocolate cookies at home.

So that was a pretty good success!

The next day was a brunch and pot luck event. I didn't do quite as well there. Had some brownies. But for the most part I made good choices like wheat toast with almond butter and apricot jelly.

So far for this week we have the following meals planned that I'll cook for my family:

• Creamy grits with asparagus and poached egg
• Spaghetti squash with regular pasta sauce (my parents were curious to try the spaghetti squash)
• Butternut squash zoodle mac and cheese (I don't have a zoodle machine so I'll just be cutting small pieces of squash to be the macaroni noodles)
• sweet potato falafel (falafel is one of my dad's favorite foods)
• almond crusted chicken tenders (still need to get ingredients for this one)

Coupon Victory!

I started using coupons a couple of years ago because of the show Extreme Couponers. I saw it on TLC and was inspired. I had never used a coupon before. I hadn't seen my family ever use coupons. I didn't know the first thing about it!

But I got out my notebook and I took notes while I watched the show.

I can't do the crazy shopping trips they do with getting $600 of groceries for pennies or free. But I do have some great moments with coupons.

I started out by subscribing to The Grocery Game because she does a lot of the work for you. You just need to get a source of coupons (subscribing to the Sunday paper usually costs $1-2 a week and pays for itself). The Grocery Game costs money but also usually pays for itself. I used that as training wheels until I was ready to do it on my own.

This week I scored a couple of great deals and I wanted to share my excitement with you!

***

At my Weis store I saw Mucinex Allergy medication in the clearance rack. My husband takes allergy medicine every day and Mucinex is a brand he likes. Allergy medicine is super expensive so I knew I wanted those but I wondered if I could get them even cheaper.

I went home and googled for recent Muscinex coupon and found one for $2.00 off any one product through their Facebook page. We each have a Facebook account so I printed it twice.

Even though I only had coupons for two of them I still bought all the packages they had, which was six. Each box had ten pills in it, so this was 60 allergy pills.

The original regular cost would have been $68.94 (and my coworker who was ringing me up was shocked that I would spend so much on allergy medicine!)

As soon as my card was scanned the price dropped to the clearance price. Then I added my coupons and the end result was a cost of $30.47 for all six boxes. That made them $5 per box (usually $11.49) and just 50 cents per pill.

***

On top of that I also needed some hair dye. I went gray at 20 and I dye my hair back to its original black. I don't do it too often but it's looking really bad right now! 

I got a paper coupon for $2.00 off a Clariol hair dye product and I went ahead and loaded an identical coupon onto my Weis card at the ecoupon center. I wasn't sure if these coupons would stack but I thought it was worth a try.

They did and I bought a box that was also on sale. So I got a $7.49 box of hair dye for $2.99 

***

Next I took advantage of a Big G cereal sale. I can't eat my beloved Lucky Charms anymore because that's a lot of both white sugar and simple carbs. But my husband can eat them.

There was a special at Weis for an instant $6 off 4 boxes of Big G cereal. 

I downloaded a coupon from MyPoints.com for 50 cents off a box of Lucky Charms. It doubled at the register to a dollar and I'll get 20 points (usually ten but there's a special) to my My Points account that I can later cash out.

Then there's also a SavingStar.com coupon for 50 cents back on a box of Lucky Charms (I've found that when one site has a coupon for a product, most of the other sites have it too).

So we got 4 boxes of Lucky Charms that are usually $3.99 each and got $7.50 back. So $15.96 minus $7.50 is $8.46 for all four and that makes them $2.11 per box. (I usually try to get cereal under $2 before I buy it but this was not bad).

***

The last thing was Dole frozen treats. They've got frozen chocolate covered fruit and smoothie fruit mixes. They were on special at Weis for $5 off instantly when you bought $20 worth. 

At SavingStar they had save $4 when you spend $12. 

So we bought $23 worth and got $9 back.