LA Farmers Market

Food is very social thing for me. I'm not on the "live to eat, not eat to live" mantra the way my husband is but being on Weight Watchers has made me appreciate food in a new way. Almost like a compromise of my former self and my husband.


I've lived near LA for 30 odd years but I've never been to the LA Farmers Market off of 3rd and Fairfax. There is something VERY wrong with that picture. So today I rectified that travesty. And it was delicious for the eyes and taste buds.

The LA Farmers market is a little hard to describe. It's not a typical farmers market that you think of with stands of vegetables and fruits as far as the eye can see. It reminds me more of Reading Terminal Market in Philly where there are permanent stands for each merchant. But the LA Farmers Market is an outdoor venue vs Reading Terminal Market that is enclosed in a huge building.

Right when I walked in (there are various entrances depending on where you park) I was accosted by the Magic Nut and Candy Company. It took all my willpower to enjoy the sight and smells (0 points!) but walk away from the free samples.




As I was trying to get away from the intoxicating smells, I ran smack into the Ice Cream Shop and Crepe Company. Oy! I really wanted a crepe but...




instead I headed over to the fresh fruits and veggie stand. It was so crowded I couldn't get very close to anything except for the pummelos and tomatoes. I've never had a pummelo but I'm told it's like a sweeter grapefruit. I bought a couple so I'll let you know.




The meat and seafood counters were amazing. I wanted to buy every cut of beef and fish that I saw. Can raw meat smell good? B/c it smelled good to me. Maybe it's the tiger's blood. It flows strong in me! <-- Sorry! I had to get my Charlie Sheen rub in. It was bound to happen.




My absolute favorite place in the whole Farmers Market was the Monsieur Marcel Gourmet Market. It reminded me of a mini Surfas in Culver City.

I loved the cheese counter.



Yes, that's my husband's a$$ bending over the cheese counter. I swear I didn't know it was there when I took the picture. *looking innocent*






There was a variety of salad dressings and mustards.




So many different salts: fleur de sel, sea salt, Himalayan salt (it's the pretty pink one on the top shelf) etc etc.




Yummy honey. Oh... I even found a 0 point caramel dip! How is that even possible? I don't know but I had to buy one. Maybe it's astronaut food. If it gives me a caramel fix then it could be extraterritorial for all I care.




Husband was infatuated with the olive bar. I'm not an olive fan myself but T loves olives. Whatever floats your boat, husband. While Husband was gawking over the 20 varieties of olives I went next door to the Light My Fire hot sauce shop.




I literally spent 10 minutes cackling at all the bottles.




I had to buy a few bottles for my little brother. He's CRAZY about hot sauce and Tabasco. He uses it on everything. I like spicy but not like that. I kinda like my taste buds thank you very much.

I will admit that the only sample I did try was the chocolate pasta at Pappardelle's Pasta Shop.




They were handing out little pieces of uncooked chocolate pasta so you could get a taste for it. They make the pasta fresh and add cocoa powder to the dough. It was yummy. I bet a whole plate of al dente chocolate pasta would be amazing. I didn't buy any for that reason but I did buy some whole wheat orzo. I've never had orzo so I'll have to make it next week for dinner.

About this time, Husband and I were ready for lunch.



There were so many different places to eat but eventually T wanted to eat tapas at Little Spain Restaurant. The wine bar is never ending but unfortunately alcohol is way too many points for it to be worth it for me. My wino friends everywhere are so sad.



Tapas are like appetizers. I figured small plates would probably be better for me portion (and points) wise so I agreed.






We got 4 tapas: (1) Calamari and bell peppers, (2) Croquettes, (3) I can't remember the name of the 3 little bread ones and (4) Fried Egg w fries and ham. (That's not the official Spanish name but again I can't remember the real one.) Don't worry! I made T eat most of the fries.

Because I had to save room (and points) for Pinkberry for dessert!






As long as you get the mini original flavor w fruit (no candy or syrups!), it's 3 points. I got raspberries, kiwi and pineapple. <-- Thanks for googling points for me, Nikki.

All in all an awesome day.

If you ever find yourself in LA, it's definitely a place you wanna check out. And being so close to The Grove is a bonus. I won't tell you how much I spent at Sur La Table, Anthropologie, Crate And Barrel, Nordstroms and Pottery Barn Kids.

That's just between me and my credit card.

1000 Hits in 3 weeks **GIVEAWAY**

Hi ya'll!

Even though sometimes Nikki and I feel like we're talking to each other, we know you all are out there. Don't be shy. Come out of lurkdom. We won't bite.  CB won't, I make no promises ... what?  Hippos like to chomp things.

You know how we know you're out there? We see the stats. And we are AMAZED at the response to our little ol blog.  She's being nice, we go to bed crying every night because no one comments and tells us they love us. To show our appreciation we want to do something for you.



If you are a current or hopeful Weight Watcher-er then you definitely know what's in the picture (above). Yup. The New Points Plus calculator. And we want to give it to one of you lovely readers out there. Yes! REALLY?! You!

I can't believe they are going for $85+shipping on Amazon! Pshh I can! WW is awesome and these things are more popular than the new ipad ... Check it out, the resale mark up is a higher percentage folks. That's outrageous. We want to give you one for FREE. Who doesn't love free? 

Here's how to win.

1. You must be a US resident.
- Sorry international readers!
2. Make sure you leave a valid email so we can contact you if you win.
- No email then you are SOL. We're not mind readers!
3. Leave a comment and tell us "Why did you join Weight Watchers?"
- I joined WW because I was tired of looking at myself in the mirror knowing I could be healthier, skinnier and happier. After Nikki joined, I decided it was time to stop talking about it and as Nike say: Just do it. 3 weeks later... here I am. I'm down 6lbs and it feels great! ~CB
- I joined WW because two friends that knew each other through me bugged and harassed me to join with them, I held out until I was ready to go full force and here I am. ~Nikki

Easy peasy.

Want an extra entry? Leave a comment on any other post on our blog and come back to this post to tell us which one you left it on. A little more work but that's why you get extra credit.

DEADLINE: April 8th 2011 @ 11:59pm EST

Winner to be picked by Mr. Random Generator on April 9th 2011.

Good luck!

Chicken Cutlets with Fontina and Fresh Blueberry Sauce (5 WW+ Points)

I've been on a bit of a WW cookbook bender lately.  I tend to really like the recipes they put out and lets be honest, if you can make something without having to plug a bunch of ingredients into your tracker it's a win?  Am I right or am I right?  That's why you come here isn't it?

Last night I got the 5 Ingredients in 15 minutes magazine-y cookbook.  You know what I'm talking about right?  Those magazines that they play off as cookbooks by using nicer paper and cutting out the adds and charging you 3 times as much for.  G brought it up from the mail when he took the dog out for her pre bedtime walk and I quickly flipped through and within 3 pages knew what I was making for dinner.  It looked so yummy and 15 mins sounded good to me.  As a quick side note, they lie lie lie, there is not a single recipe in this thing that is only 5 ingredients.  Maybe it's because I only needed to go get 5 of the ingredients at the store?  I don't know, but it's not 5 ingredients.

I got my 5 ingredients that weren't in my pantry and came home wanting to die, lets just say I had stomach issues and leave it at that.  I was not in the mood to cook and enlisted the help of G because I was just out of it.  G is a good little sous chef.  He washes pans I need (why wash them right after you use them when you can wash them right before you use them right? ), grabs ingredients and occasionally stirs things for me, while I chop or prepare other things.  Well, tonight I started the chicken and had G take care of finishing it while I got the blueberry sauce ready.  Only 2 pieces of chicken fit in the pan so once he thought they were done, I stuck them in a warm oven with the cheese on top while we finished the third piece.  Um ya, we pulled them out and they were still a little pink.  ARRRRGH I love G, but he sucks at cooking meat.  He's always trying to kill me.  I would take it as a hint if he didn't try to kill himself too.  What's worse is that he has a nasty run in with e-coli as a child and is terrified of eating things that aren't properly cooked.

So, we pulled the damn cheese off, stuck them back on the pan until I determined they were cooked.  Loaded them back up with cheese and stuck them back in the oven for a few minutes so we could achieve maximum meltage. And we were ready to go.  I served it with some steamed broccoli with salt, pepper and a little bit of red pepper.

Stay tuned folks ... there's an AWESOME giveaway coming your way tomorrow.  Be excited.

Chicken Cutlets with Fontina and Fresh Blueberry Sauce (5 WW+ Points)
Adapted from Weight Watchers 5 Ingredients in 15 Minutes - Winter 2011


Ingredients (do you count 5 ... me neither)


1 tbsp butter, divided
3/4 of a pound of chicken cutlets (about 4 cutlets .... so says WW, for me it was 3)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup (2oz) shredded fontina cheese (I just ripped it up, it's soft)
3 tbsp apple juice
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 cup fresh blueberries
1/2 tsp minced fresh thyme


Directions


-Melt 1 tsp of butter in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat ok I don't use non stick ... do you see non stick pans on Top Chef, no, non stick sucks, I have stainless steel All Clad  pans and I'm not going to use a crap nonstick pan just because WW tells me to, even if that means I had to add some extra virgin olive oil to the mix .. so ya, I used extra oil, no idea how much because G just dumped some in, but I always have points to waste so it was fine.
- Salt and pepper the chicken and cook it in the butter, about 3 minutes per side
- Once cooked, remove chicken from the pan and sprinkle with Fontina cheese and keep warm I put it in a low heat oven
- Combine apple juice, vinegar and mustard in a sauce pan and wisk together.  Put it on the stove and simmer for about 1 minute.  Add the blueberries and thyme and simmer for another 2ish minutes.  Add the other 2 tsp of butter.
- Plate the chicken and spoon blueberry sauce over the chicken



WW says the serving size is approximately 1 chicken cutlet for 5 points.  For me 12 oz of chicken was only 3 cutlets, so that turned it into a 7 point dish plus whatever oil was used.

Weigh Day Fun Tip

I haven't weighted in yet, but I want to post now, so I'll tell you how I did later ... maybe I'll just add it to this post here, I'm lazy like that.

***

My fun tip was going to be that little weight loss chart someone *cough* CB *cough* posted yesterday, but it's ok I there are more fun tips to be had.

Over the course of the past few years, I've tried to remove more and more processed foods from my diet.  They're just not good for you no matter what the fat, fiber, carbs and protein on the side say.  It's not always the nutrition specifics that are the problem, its the actual ingredients that are less than appealing.   I get giddy when I read food labels and I actually know what everything is.  And I don't mean know, like I know this random scientific word, I mean know like I have it in my pantry.  I think it's sad that it's exciting to see familiar foods in the ingredients list.  That should be the norm, not the exception.

I don't have huge hang ups about my weight, for me, it's all about being healthier I need to lose weight to be healthier, but a huge part of that is fueling my body with things that are good for me.  So ... I bring to you the greatest iphone app of all time ... Fooducate (an android app is coming in the near future).  This is seriously the coolest app ever.  You can just scan the barcodes of the food you're looking to nosh on and it will pop up with all sorts of wonderful information.  First off, it gives the food a letter grade based on how good it is for you, then it tells you all the reasons good and bad why it got that grade ... so cool, and last, but certainly not least, it gives you the "foodpoints" score aka the points plus value.  They use fractions of a point, so just round up and you have your points.  Everything I've tried it on has been right on with the points.

They also have an amazing blog where you can take a look at the 37 ingredients that make up a twinkie, a happy meal that just won't decompose or you can try to figure out what this is (I totally knew because I'm so freaking smart).

Baked Peanut Butter Oatmeal (4 WW+ Points)

As you may or may not know, I am a terrible breakfast eater.  I haven't eaten breakfast on a regular basis since 6th grade ... I'm 28 now.  Long long time.  I blame my school for serving me lunch at 10:09 every day.  I managed to end up with the first lunch 6 years in a row.  For anyone that didn't graduate in 2001 that would not possible, but because of changes in the school I ended up in the one year where it was even possible.  I ended up "lucky" and was one of the few to manage to end up in the same lunch every year.  So ya, adjusting to eating breakfast has been hard, I've been grabbing a piece of fruit and considering it a win since something is better than nothing.  I'd also rather cut off my right arm than wake up 10 minutes earlier.

So, when I saw this baked peanut butter oatmeal I thought to myself, score!  I can bake this up and just grab and go.  Perfect!  This is stupid easy to make.  Throw everything in a bowl, mix it and bake.  It seriously doesn't get easier.  The original recipe recommended eating it in milk with some fruit.  G and I both agreed that the milk was no good.  It made it soggy central and just was not tasty.  We both tried a bite sans milk with some banana and agreed it was delicious.   It kind of tastes like a peanut butter oatmeal cookie.  Yum!

Baked Peanut Butter Oatmeal
Adapted from Tidy Mom

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
3/4 cup skim milk
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 tsp salt
cooking spray

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray a 9 x13 baking dish.  Mix all ingredients (minus the cooking spray obviously) in a bowl then spread out in the baking dish.  Bake 20-25 until the edges are golden brown.  Makes 15 servings.

Weight Watchers Kitchen Companion for Ipad

I've had an ipad for awhile, but couldn't find Water for Elephants at the used book store and was impatient and decided to DL it to my ipad.  Since then I've been playing around with it more than usual.  Sadly, it usually just doesn't get much use unless I'm on a long drive with G because I prefer browsing on my laptop. 

So, as I was browsing apps, I decided to check out the WW Kitchen Companion app.  OMG I'm in love.  This thing rocks my socks.  To be honest, I'm not a huge fan on browsing recipes in etools.  It's just not smooth and loveable like I expect websites to be.  Frankly, it's a pain in the ass unless I know what I'm looking for.  The ipad app on the other hand is to.die.for.  Seriously, it's amazing.    You can view screen shots here, I may post some of my own later, but it's 2am and I'm just not feeling it right now.

 For starters, the home page is pretty much a foodie orgasm.  It's a gorgeous array of delicious looking food with the points clearly displayed.  Freaking awesome.  Made me drool.

From there you can click into a recipe to check it out.  At this point you can either add to your  favorites, your recipe box, email it, post it to facebook etc.  You can also add to your shopping list, which makes weekly meal planning easy for the shopping list types. There's also a little make this recipe button in the middle. When you click "make this recipe" it brings you to an easy to read recipe copy that you take into the kitchen and you can check your ingredients off as you use them.  This is kind of amazing for someone like me that has been known to oopsie daisy forget an ingredient or two when there's a long list.

It also saves all the recipes you're "making" to a little icon at the top so you can quickly access them.  I see this being really helpful for weekly planning because once I pick out what I want to eat I don't have to search through my recipe box for the ones I'm going to need for the week, I just need to click on that little icon at the top and my recipes are there and waiting for me.

You can also browse featured recipes, your favorites and your recipe box and you can add new recipes When you want do do these things the ipad needs to be horizontal ... I accidentally turned it vertically and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get back to them as I was writing this. 

Did I hear you say your kitchen timer broke? Well, this app has a timer  err  multiple timers, as many as you want to add.  I don't really use timers for cooking or baking for that matter, but it's still fun that it's there.

And last but, certainly not least.  There's a guide section with videos and cooking basics and such.  There's officially no excuse to not know how to cook, this app will teach you.  I'm sure these are probably online, but I already know how to cook so I don't really need them.

Of course, you can also search for recipes in the same fashion as you can online through etools and you can add the things you cook to your tracker. It seems as though you can't do traditional tracking on it unless you enter all of the recipes, but that's what the regular iphone app is for (it can also be downloaded to the ipad).

As a final note, mainly to CB since she's totally swayed by pretty things and we were just discussing how pretty she thought the new ipad was.  If you don't have an ipad this is not amazing enough to buy an ipad for, but if you already have one then get this app.  It's free to download and even if you don't use etools you can use it in a limited form, if you have etools then you can just go to town with this bad boy.

Buffalo Chicken Sandwich (10 Points+)

What's that you say?  How can one possibly eat a buffalo chicken sandwich and be within their points?  And there was blue cheese spread on the bread?  Oh yes folks, for a mere 10 points you can eat a buffalo chicken sandwich.  Score.   Do you want to know how it gets even better?  Of course you do.  It was so easy G was able to make it!

Ok, I'm not really sure how easy it was, but he's not exactly a master in the kitchen beyond making eggs and toast, but I came home with a killer head ache and handed off a recipe and he produced a delicious sammich. It had to have been easy because he made it and it turned out tasty.  He did totally screw up the whole cut up the chicken into small pieces thing, but close enough, one slab-o-chicken works too.

 Buffalo Chicken Panini
Adapted from Cooking Light

Ingredients
1/4 cup hot pepper sauce, divided
1lb chicken breast tenders
 Cooking Spray
1/2 cup (2oz) Crumbled Blue cheese
6 tbsp canola mayonnaise
8 1oz slices of white our sourdough bread

Instructions
-Preheat broiler (yes that's right folks G figured out how to broil chicken without help)
- Cut the chicken into bite size pieces
-Combine 2tbsp of the sauce and the chicken in a bowl.
-Place the chicken on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray.  Broil 4 minutes on each side until it's cooked through.
-Put the chicken in a new bowl (you don't want to tango with salmonella) and combine with the remaining sauce
-Combine the cheese and mayo in yet another bowl (I know I know lots of dishes to do here, but it's buffalo chicken we're talking about it's worth it)
-Put 3tbsp of the cheese on 4 of the slices of bread and put 1/4th of the chicken (note here .... 3tbsp is probably WAY too much.  G definitely put less and the blue cheese was more than present) and top with the other slices of bread
- Heat a grill pan on medium.  Stick as many of the sandwiches as you can on it and cover with a cast iron or other heavy skillet.   Cook for 3 mins on each side.

Nutrition Info (because I have it)
Calories 402, Fat 16.2g, Protein 32.4g, Carbs 29.1g, Fiber 3, Chol 75mg, Iron .8mg, Sodium 724mg, Calc 100mg

Weigh Day Fun Tip

It's that time again.  Time for me to weigh in and share something fun with you.  Weigh day was not my best, only down 1lb, BUT I have pre period bloat going on so I'm totally not worried about it.  Now for the fun tip.

Salads are a great low point meal/snack/whatever.  They're usually zero points until you get to the dressing.  Dressing is such a killer.   If you get the regular ones they're full of fat and points, if you get the light ones they leave you feeling like you're eating the light version.   So, I bring you the greatest low point dressing on the planet. 

Photo from Healthful Sense

Trader Joe's Cranberry Walnut Gorgonzola Dressing.  Even the name makes my mouth water.  The best part, it's delicious and one serving (2 tablespoons) is only 2 points!  I usually only need 1tbsp for a non massive salad which means it only costs me a point.  Score!

You can have your burger...

... And eat it too!

The key is moderation and portions. I get that now. It only took 32 years.

I woke up this morning and was honestly scared. Maybe that's why I slept in until 830am. For those that don't know me. I'm a morning person. Waking up on Saturday at 6am is normal for me. But today was Weigh In (WI) #2 for me. That means I've been on Weight Watchers for 2 weeks now.

I knew it would be hard to make a lifestyle change. I knew I'd have some withdrawals. I mean. I'm a carb FA-REAK so telling me to cut down the carbs was gonna be a struggle. I won't lie. The first week WAS hard. I was cranky and moody. I also felt like I was a drug addict coming down from a high and trying to find my next hit. Just ask my husband. Poor thing got yelled at one night when he didn't put the batteries in the Wii remote fast enough. Oy. I feel bad about that. But we got past the first week with minimal battle scars. Second week was easier but the reason why I was nervous about WI #2 was Saturday.

Saturday... I was bad.

Remember I mentioned in the last post that we were in Palm Springs for the weekend? That set me back 15 points. That's over the Activity and Weekly points. Oy vey!

Needless to say, I was scared to step on the scale this morning.

But to my SUPREME surprise I went down 1 lb! w00t!

So I guess you CAN eat a burger+fries. Isn't that what is so great about Weight Watchers? Just don't do it every day. Because just think of the weight I could have lost if I had stayed within my points. <-- motivation!

Taco Salad (8 WW+)

Tonight was set to be taco night.  We needed to use up the ground turkey I had in the fridge and tacos seemed like a good option for that.   Half way through the day I decided to change it up and make taco salad in tortilla bowls.  Yum who doesn't love tortilla bowls?

So, obviously, I was going for a lighter bowl.  In the past I've used flour tortillas, but when Greg and I make our own chips we always use corn so I figured I'd give it a shot with the corn knowing that making them into a bowl shape might be "interesting" because they're so much more rigid.

Trader Joes only had small corn tortillas so i went with that, I definitely cracked every single one while putting them in small glass bowls to bake in.  Oops.  It was ok though because they were still shaped like bowls and baked that way.    This was a fun change up for taco night and they look so damn cute what's not to love about them?

Taco Salad (8 WW+)


Ingredients
(these sizes are for 1 serving since there's not much of a recipe, more just what I put in my bowl)
2 small corn tortilla bowls
1/2 cup fat free refried beans
4 oz ground turkey taco meat
Lettuce
Salsa
1tbsp fat free cheese

Instructions

Place corn tortillas in bowls so they can bake in a bowl shape.   Put the bowls on a cookie tray and put in a 400 degree oven for umm crap I didn't time it, maybe 15 minutes.  Then take them out of the bowls and let them bake for about another 5ish minutes until the bottoms are fully baked.  Basically, you need to make sure they hold their shape before you take them out of the bowls and for the second part you just want to be sure they're fully baked and not still chewy.

Once the bowls are cooked toss everything into the bowls an eat