vegetarian – Page 2 – Lobster Shorts

July 17, 2022 Lobster Shorts cooking, Food, The Great Outdoors, vegetarian, weight loss

Saturday – Calorie Overload And Fun At The Beach

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.

Saturday morning, my spouse and took the pups in for a weigh-in. The puppy is now 75lbs and his older brother, Otis is 82lbs. After five months, Otis is at a really good weight. He doesn’t need to gain anymore. Both the dogs are healthy and doing well.

As per usual, Saturday morning Jay and I went to The Stonetown Cafe for breakfast. Sometimes we bring the doggos, but the two of them can be a handful, so we went ourselves. I was a little hungover from Friday and had orange juice instead of coffee. I had an egg sandwich on a bagel with a slice of cheddar cheese. I really like their iced coffee in the summer, but I was too thirsty.

Jay and I headed to the beach at noon and I got the Harvest Sandwich at Tim Hortons for lunch. I seem to be having a lot of these lately. Jay wanted one too, but there was only one left. Being the sweetheart he is he let me have it and opted for something else. He’s such a gentleman.

We had a super fun day at the beach. The water was warm bath water. I loved it. I brought a little underwater metal detector that I found on Aliexpress with us. I didn’t have much hope for it, but it actually worked! It takes a 9-volt battery and it’s really small and discreet. I don’t know why, but I feel really silly using a metal detector around people. This thing definitely flew under the radar and guess what… It’s waterproof! We went snorkeling with it and I’m in love with this little thing. Jay even found something in the water!

Aaaand we found a dog shock collar. No, we will not be keeping it or using it. I wish we had found something a little less… shocking. The summer is just starting there will be a lot more fun beach days with this gadget. I’m so excited to use it again.

Jay made us dinner with Hello Fresh. It was absolutely delicious, but the calorie count was HUGE. The bag was 810 calories per serving, but the tortellini noodles were separate. The noodles were around 400 calories. Knowing the last time, they didn’t include the items separate from the bag into the meal calories, this meant this was massively high in calories. Even though I ate less than the serving size, I still had quite a lot of it. I adjusted the calories so they would more reflect what I ate. I also had popcorn and snacks this day, bringing my calorie count for the day to a whopping 2789 calories! YIKES.

Saturday	Calories
bagel	250
egg	78
slice of cheese	113
orange juice	111
Strawberries 3	18
latte	160
harvest sandwich – Tims	391
granula bar	160
apple sauce	45
tortelini pasta	400
hello fresh pasta bag	790
popcorn	213
chococrackers x2	60

Total Calories	2789

July 17, 2022July 17, 2022 Lobster Shorts Food, vegetarian, weight loss

Friday Fun Day

Friday starts with “Epic Breakfast”. Epic breakfast has lattes from the Snapping Turtle and Harvest Sandwiches from Tim Hortons.

I was going out for dinner with friends this evening. Knowing that I had the option to take a train or walk home earlier that afternoon. It was a pretty hot day and I wanted to burn some extra calories before dinner. For the same reason, I wanted to have a light lunch.

I stopped off at the grocery store and you can see what I bought in the photo above. The strawberries smelled so wonderful I had to get them. I was pretty thirsty, so I also got watermelon. There were two slices of watermelon, but one of them didn’t make it home. It was SO GOOD! It got all over me it was juicy and delicious. YUM! I had half the garden salad for lunch with avocado and balsamic dressing. I forgot to take a photo of it. I got really hungry before I went out for dinner and had a chocolate cracker.

Dinner started with a cocktail at the Braai House in Stratford. I’ve been there a few times now and always enjoy the food.

I didn’t order appetizers. I rarely do. I don’t think I’ve ever had a problem with being hungry with just the entree, so I skip it. I ordered a pizza to share with my spouse.

I had two slices of pizza and two cocktails. I will stick with one drink next time. Two drinks hit me like a brick and I left that restaurant pretty tipsy. I’m pretty sure I was still tipsy when I went to bed that night. One is enough lol.

Friday	Calories
Tim’s Harvest Sandwich	391
latte	160
Apple sauce	45
M&Ms	100
Watermelon 2” slice	87
Strawberries 1/2 cup	25
garden salad	130
Avocado 1/2	160
Dressing 1/8 cup	90
Watermelon 2” slice	87
chococracker	30
2 cocktails	500
Pizza 2 slices	740

Total Calories	2545

I was trying to keep the calories down at lunch to come closer to 1800 calories, but as you can see, I went WAY over. I should have stayed away from those M&Ms at least. I didn’t have a calorie count on the pizza, so I used the same as it would be for a pizza chain for a large pizza and used that. I also used a tequila sunrise to guess how many calories were in the cocktails I had. I’m hoping there were less in what I had! I went over and it’s going to happen sometimes. I still want to be able to enjoy restaurants with friends and I’m not going to beat myself up about it and move on.

July 15, 2022July 14, 2022 Lobster Shorts cooking, thrifting, vegetarian, weight loss

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

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.

Thursday	Calories
english muffin	140
egg	78
cheese	113
coffee	0
tea	0
goldfish crackers under 20	45
chili	400
apple sauce x2	90
granola bar	160
hello fresh kit	240
beyond meat patty	300
tia maria matcha	69
whole milk	160
matcha	10

Total	1805

July 14, 2022 Lobster Shorts cooking, vegetarian, weight loss

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

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:

Wednesday	Calories
english muffin	140
egg	78
Avocado 1/2	160
black coffee	0
latte w/whole milk	136
tea	0
chili	400
apple sauce	45
granola bar	160
Hello Fresh paneer curry	560
Cherries 2 cups	100

Total Calories	1779

July 13, 2022July 13, 2022 Lobster Shorts cooking, Food, vegetarian, weight loss

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

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.

Monday	Calories
Avocado eggs benny	563
coffee	0
tea	0
chilli	400
m&ms	100
granola bar	160
apple sauce	45
strawberries	18
cola – a couple sips from my spouse	10
curry	680

Totals	1976

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:

Tuesday	Calories
english muffin	140
egg	78
Avocado 1/2	160
black coffee	0
Lemondade 1 cup	100
bite of a scone	30
tea	0
Chilli 1 can	400
m&ms 1/8 cup	100
tea	0
apple sauce	45
granola	160
raspberries	65
fatoush salad	480
chocolate cracker	30

Total	1788

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.

July 11, 2022July 11, 2022 Lobster Shorts Food, lifestyle, vegetarian

Lackadaisical Breakfasts And A Dad’s Memorial To His Daughter

It was a rare weekday morning that my spouse and I got to enjoy a slower pace in the morning. Mornings are usually rushed between dogs, cooking breakfast, and getting ready for the commute to work. This particular morning was a different experience, one I would even describe as serene.

While I was picking up lattes from The Snapping Turtle (I love them so much!), my handsome fella was picking up breakfast sandwiches from Tim Hortons. We love the Harvest Sandwich made with vegetarian sausage. It’s one of my favourite things from Tim Hortons, I hope they keep making them.

It was a beautiful day and we wanted to be outside. We picked “The Nicole Bench”. This bench was set up recently in my town and I was curious what the “N” or “Z” meant. A man was tending the spot while we were out walking, we stopped and chatted for a bit. It was a memorial for his daughter, taken too soon. She loved to sit out there and watch the water. He made this tranquil spot in her honor and faced the bench in her favourite direction. It was heartbreaking really.

We enjoyed the view that morning while we sat and ate our breakfast, enjoying each other’s company, loving that we had this quiet peaceful morning together. Very rare and so much appreciated. These small moments mean so much because you just never know.

July 9, 2022 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.

May 22, 2022May 22, 2022 Lobster Shorts Food, thrifting, vegetarian, weight loss

Thrifting and Ravioli

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpXaEXzELd4&t=40s

I’ve been thrifting and I’ve found things I love. I found fabric, kitchen gadgets, a wooden box for a future project, and, thread. For this post I’m going to focus on the two pasta gadgets I found and if you want to see the rest of the items, you can see them in the video I posted above.

I’ve had pasta on the brain lately. The last week I’ve been eating a lot healthier and I wanted to indulge this weekend. One of my favourite finds was this ravioli maker. It was five dollars and was a two-piece set.

I put it through the dish washer and it came out discoloured, but I’m sure it’s still fine.

There is a recipe on the back of the box, but I went with one I found online. I made sweet potato ravioli from Whitney Bond. I used both her pasta recipe and the sweet potato filling. It was SO GOOD!!!! 100% make again for us.

I didn’t read the instructions on the maker and didn’t realize I had to oil the ravioli maker plates first. You can see by the ravioli on the left how important that step was. I was super frustrated after the first batch. Everything stuck and I couldn’t get them off without mangling them. Lol, I remember saying to my spouse “No wonder this was in the thrift store. It sucks”. It didn’t suck. It was fantastic (once you oil it). After I applied oil to the plates and tried again it made a huge difference. The ravioli popped out so much easier. I still have to use scissors to separate the raviolis, but they came off the plate wonderfully.

To flavour the ravioli, I toasted walnuts in the pan and then heated up butter and tossed the ravioli with the butter sauce. I think the recipe site used the same ingredients for the sauce, but I just tossed this stuff into the pan and guessed at the measurements. I added a couple dollops of goat cheese to the top of it, but the goat cheese really wasn’t necessary. I’ll probably leave it off next time.

The spouse and I had a lovely lunch date. I even lit up the newly polished candelabra for the first time. It would definitely be more romantic for evenings in the dark, but I was too excited to wait. There will be many more romantic candlelight dinners in the future for this candelabra.

There was some dough left to try in the other pasta maker. This one was four dollars and I was really excited to try the macaroni plate. This thing sucked. It sucked bad. The pasta didn’t go through the plates very well because it kept getting sucked back up into the tube and not extruding. It could be as simple a case of the recipe I used was not meant for this extruder, but I’m not going to try again. It’s going back to the thrift store. And hey, they don’t even need to retag it!

March 2, 2022 Lobster Shorts Food, vegetarian, weight loss

I cooked!

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I cooked a few times this week and what I made turned out really good! The photo above is the Black Bean Mole and Salsa from the Speedy Bosh! cookbook. It was a really unique recipe with some ingedients I didn’t expect (like chocolate and oranges). It was good too! The recipes in the book look really interesting and not so typical. I’m really looking forward to trying more of them.

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This next dish, I used a sesame sauce recipe from The Complete Book of Sauces with broccoli, zucchini and rice. It was also a success! It was also a quick make and that is something I can use in my life. Our routines are all upturned after expanding our family with the two dogs and quick and easy is what I’m looking for.

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For this egg and sweet potato dish, I went off roading. I based this creation roughly off this recipe here. I left the bacon out and used different veggies. I cooked everything in my air fryer except for the egg, which I did in a pan. It was also good. I loved the ease of “set it and forget it” using the airfryer. I love that appliance.

Three successes! I’m still terrible about getting takeout instead of cooking during the work week. It’s my planning that’s causing me problems. I need to set aside the time to know what I want to cook, get the ingredients and prepare it. Otherwise, I’m going to keep eating unhealthy. These three dishes I was super proud of. If I could keep cooking this way, I think I would be doing myself a huge favour.

February 23, 2022 Lobster Shorts books, Food, happy mail, vegetarian, weight loss

Cookbook Haul!

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I went on a tear at bookoutlet.ca shopping for cookbooks. I love this store. I heard about it from Shannon’s Bookish Musings on YouTube. It’s a lovely store that sells books at discounted prices. I’ve ordered from there several times and each time the shipping was fast and the books in perfect condition. I love it.

This time it was a cookbook spree (I keep hoping From A Buick 8 by Stephen King, will pop up in there one day. I lost my copy in a move and I want to read it again. Stephen King is one of those authors I love to reread. What happened to that book??). Anyway, cookbooks. It was all about cookbooks. I’m not sure where that came from, I don’t buy them super often.

I’m not sure what exactly I was looking for, mostly quick and easy by the looks of it (and clearly cheesecake too. I love cheesecake). I’ve gotten back into bad habits of not cooking and getting takeout all the time. The new rescue dog is home from Turkey now and we’ve been focusing all our time and energy on the dogs. This is probably going to continue until we get our routines established and puppers has settled a little more. I’m feeling a little shell shocked (probably not as much as the dog!). I need to start cooking. For awhile I was making really fantastic, healthy breakfasts. That stopped after the second dog came home. I don’t recall cooking at all except once in the last week. All takeout! It’s terrible..

Something I’m really guilty for when buying cookbooks, is spending hours browsing through them… and then never making anything. What IS that all about? A lot of these cookbooks are hopefully going to check all the boxes, quick and light on dishes. I’ve got a recipe picked out for the sauce recipe book, tonight. I was going to chuck some veggies into the airfryer, add some pumpkin seeds and soba noodles and the top it with one of the sauce recipes. That sounds pretty easy.

This last recipe book Speedy Bosh, has fantastic sounding recipes. I hope they are as quick as it implies. I’m looking forward to trying them (possibly the cheesecake book will come in handy this weekend). I’ll post an unboxing video below, if you are into that sort of thing

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