Lobster Shorts cooking, thrifting, vegetarian, weight loss

Pope Mugs, Dirty Matcha Lattes, and Why I Feel Scammed By Hello Fresh (but still love it)

Disclaimer. I am not a medical professional, nutritionist, or anyone with any business giving diet/nutritional advice. This is my own personal journey. When it comes to yourself, seek the advice of a medical professional.

I found something out today and I’m annoyed. Hello Fresh comes packaged individually for each dinner and sometimes extra food items that need to stay extra cold are left out to be in contact with the ice everything is shipped in. Each bag has the number of calories per serving on it and I thought that the calorie count included everything in the whole dinner. I started making the sesame salad recipe for that evening’s dinner, I looked at the calorie count and it said 240 calories… What? I knew the Beyond Meat patty that was included in the dinner would have had around that many calories by itself. There was no way. I looked at the calories on the Beyond Meat package and it was around 300 calories per patty. There were two patties! LIES! So what I think is happening, is that Hello Fresh is only listing the calories in the bag and anything extra you need to add has its own separate calories. I’m so annoyed. The calories should be listed as the whole dinner. I get why they wouldn’t add the oil you use from your own kitchen into it because you can use whatever oil you choose and they wouldn’t have access to that info… but when it’s an included ingredient and it’s part of the recipe!? – Add it to the calorie count! Grrr. That means my calorie counts are under for the last two days, I never added oil either. Now I know and can adjust for the future. Don’t get me wrong, I love Hello Fresh and will continue to buy it, but that’s annoying. Also, no wonder I didn’t find the last two days very difficult.

As for what I ate today and the calories (this time the count is more correct), it started out with my usual egg on an English muffin and black coffee. I ran out of avocado so I had the sandwich with cheese. Pretty good, but I do love my avocado and missed it. Lunch was chili in a can, the same kind I’ve been having repeatedly for lunch, Sprague brand from Costco and really good.

On the way home I stopped at a thrift store hoping to find a teapot. Mine was broken over the weekend. I loved it and I’m so hopeful I can find another one. This one was special because you could heat it with a tea candle and your pot of tea would stay hot for hours. I really loved it. I did not find a replacement teapot, but I did find clothing items and these pope mugs! I did not buy the pope mugs, sorry.

Dinner was sesame salad from Hello Fresh, it was really good and I’m pretty sure I’ve got the calories right now. There were almost enough calories left for a dirty matcha latte. I knew I’d go over a bit but I wanted one.

I make my dirty matcha latte with a shot of Tia Maria Matcha, a cup of whole milk, and a teaspoon of matcha. It was pretty good. I prefer the latte sweetened with maple syrup and not Tia Maria, but sometimes I want the naughty version. I’ll post my daily calorie count in the chart below. I couldn’t find the calorie count for Tia Maria Matcha, so I used the calories for Tequila Rose, I figured they would be similar.

ThursdayCalories
english muffin140
egg78
cheese113
coffee0
tea0
goldfish crackers under 2045
chili400
apple sauce x290
granola bar160
hello fresh kit240
beyond meat patty300
tia maria matcha69
whole milk160
matcha10
Total1805
Lobster Shorts cooking, vegetarian, weight loss

What I Ate Today With Calorie Count Day 2 -July 13 2022

Disclaimer. I am not a medical professional, nutritionist, or anyone with any business giving diet/nutritional advice. This is my own personal journey. When it comes to yourself, seek the advice of a medical professional.

Before I go into what I ate today, I will give you a weight update. Unfortunately, I have gained the weight I lost for the wedding back. I was 169lbs on my wedding day and currently weighing 177lbs this morning. It’s disappointing to have lost all that headway. I did OMAD (one meal a day) to lose weight before the wedding. I don’t want to do that again. My history with fast weight loss and diets hasn’t done a lot for me. An 1800 daily calorie limit seems to be more sustainable. I’ve only done it for two days and even in these two days I wanted to do late-night snacking with binge foods, but it wasn’t a big deal not to have them. It’s been great for stopping from grabbing fizzy sweet drinks from the fridge – not soda, but it might as well be. Instead, I’ve been drinking sparkling unflavoured water. It’s not bad!

Breakfast and lunch were my go-to’s: English muffin with avocado and egg and a bowl of chili. As usual, I had coffee with breakfast and tea during the day. I got a latte on the way to work from The Snapping Turtle. I love it without any sweeteners or flavorings, while my spouse loves hazelnut. I do really like the flavor shots in a latte, but I only want a couple sips, while with a straight latte I love it right to the end. This is very strange to me because I have such a sweet tooth.

I did manage to skip the M&Ms today, but not the granola bar for the ride home. I also had some apple sauce as well. Dinner was paneer curry from Hello Fresh and it was really good. The calories were 560 per serving and although I had less than half, I was munching on the cheese bits and peppers while I was cooking it, so I used the full calorie count.

I did get hungry later in the evening and I munched on some cherries. The cherries were SO good. I was thinking of having chocolate, but I didn’t want to go over my calorie count for the day and 2 cups of cherries seemed better than one small piece of chocolate (I was snacky!), so I had that. I managed to stick to my calorie count for the day and feel pretty good about how things are going. I’ll post the calorie chart for the day below:

WednesdayCalories
english muffin140
egg78
Avocado 1/2160
black coffee0
latte w/whole milk136
tea0
chili400
apple sauce45
granola bar160
Hello Fresh paneer curry560
Cherries 2 cups100
Total Calories1779
Lobster Shorts cooking, Food, vegetarian, weight loss

The Monotony Of Counting Calories and What I Ate Today – July 12 2022

Disclaimer. I am not a medical professional, nutritionist, or anyone with any business giving diet/nutritional advice. This is my own personal journey. When it comes to yourself, seek the advice of a medical professional.

I’ve tried tons of diets. If they include a vegetarian lifestyle (even if they don’t I can usually adapt it to one), I’ve probably tried it. I’ve even tried Keto, which I did notice increased my libido. I’m taking a guess here and assuming that means my everyday diet includes too much sugar/carbs. Keto was not a diet I was able to stick with, even with the unexpected benefits. Like every other diet I’ve tried, it was quickly cast aside and any benefits I gained were quickly lost, or it just didn’t work. I’m sad to say, there is no miracle solution to weight loss for me.

I really dislike counting calories. It’s monotonous, tedious, and annoying, but I need to do it. For the last few weeks, I assumed I was eating pretty well with fewer calories, but I didn’t lose any weight. It was time to figure out where I was going wrong and have a better understanding of how much I was eating. I knew I was doing a couple things wrong. I was eating too much junk food and portioning out the same amount of food as my spouse, who is a male. I do not require the same amount of calories as a grown man, therefore I really shouldn’t be eating the same portion sizes as one. I cut my portion size down to about 75% of what he was eating, yet still didn’t notice any weight loss.

I started a spreadsheet chart and am aiming to eat around 1800 calories a day. Sundays I’ll be a little more lax. I’ll post the results of what I ate on July 11/2022.

MondayCalories
Avocado eggs benny563
coffee0
tea0
chilli400
m&ms100
granola bar160
apple sauce45
strawberries18
cola – a couple sips from my spouse10
curry680
Totals1976

As you can see I went over my 1800-calorie goal on my first day.

Tuesday I had an egg sandwich with avocado for breakfast.

For lunch, I had a can of vegetarian chili I got at Costco: Sprague. They are great for lunch – heat and eat. Although this photo does NOT look appetizing, the chili is actually really good, with a slight hint of heat. I really like it and plan on having it for lunch during the work week, until I eventually want something else.

Dinner I have been making Hello Fresh for a couple weeks now and I LOVE IT!!! They have about 6 vegetarian meals to choose from every week. I just noticed that they have the calories for each meal listed on the bag. SUPER helpful. Even though it’s pretty expensive it keeps me from getting takeout on the commute home. That was a huge problem for me. I have been having granola bars on the ride home which isn’t great, but I notice the dogs get a better walk when we get home if I’m not starving, as they are always walked before dinner. I tend to become a homebody after dinner and prefer to walk them beforehand. That usually means we eat really late at night, but so far that’s how it’s going for us.

Last night was fatoush salad from Hello Fresh and was one of the lower calorie items: only 480 calories per serving! I usually divide the dinner into three as Hello Fresh usually has generous portion sizes, giving my spouse lunch to take to work the next day, but because the calories were so low, I only divided it in two (I did not dole out a smaller portion size than my spouse this time lol). It was really good. I loved it. I’ll post the results of the calories I ate for the whole day:

TuesdayCalories
english muffin140
egg78
Avocado 1/2160
black coffee0
Lemondade 1 cup100
bite of a scone30
tea0
Chilli 1 can400
m&ms 1/8 cup100
tea0
apple sauce45
granola160
raspberries65
fatoush salad480
chocolate cracker30
Total1788

That chocolate cracker was had late at night and right before bed. It wasn’t necessary, but since I would stay within my allotted calorie count for the day, I ate it. Not exactly the precedence I want to set. These little things add up and could interfere with my goals.

Overall I think I did really good yesterday and hope to keep it up. My intentions usually fall apart and instead of picking myself up and continuing, I scrap the whole process. I’d like to stop doing that and figure out a way to stick with it carrying on with my goals. It’s something I need to work on in myself and learn to figure out.

Lobster Shorts cooking, Food, lifestyle, vegetarian

Birthdays and Baking Fails

It was my spouse’s birthday and I wanted to make his day all the better with a decadent breakfast and birthday cake. I made him eggs benny for breakfast and that turned out… pretty well. I did overcook the poached eggs so they were solid in the middle. That’s how I like my eggs. I would rather have eggs dryer than the Sahara Desert than have snotty eggs. My spouse on the other hand likes a runny center in his egg, so that’s the first cooking fail of the day. It was tasty and I used a hollandaise sauce packet so it was pretty easy. I did not put anywhere near the amount of butter they were asking for in the sauce. It was way too much butter. I used half the butter they were asking for and made the rest up in yogurt. It was still really good. I froze the rest. I’m not sure how that will work out, but I love eggs benny and looking forward to trying it.

My second failure was attempting a cake decoration. I saw a Youtube video of cake decorating hacks and one of the hacks used stamps for wax seals in chocolate to make really cool chocolate buttons.

I had a bunch of different seals to try and they all failed. The weight of the seal sank all the way through the chocolate.

Even when I froze them I couldn’t separate them the chocolate broke off. I have no idea how they managed to do it, but mine failed and I’m not going to try again.

My third fail of the day was this cheesecake, although delicious, developed huge cracks while cooking. I didn’t read the blog post (the irony of having a blog and skipping through the writing to get to the recipe. Blogger karma?) so the fault could have been mine in something I missed. I know sometimes you are supposed to add water to the oven while it bakes. Either way, it didn’t look pretty, but it tasted amazing.

Overall my spouse enjoyed his big day and although it didn’t look pretty, the cake was delicious.