Oh Zucchini Parmesan, how I love you... or at least I will once you're done baking. I'm starving here.
I've actually been pretty good this weekend all told. I baked a cake, but even with that I was relatively saintly because we all just had one piece, and then I took the remainder (1/2 an 8" diameter single-layer round cake) to my mother's house so she could give it to her bridge ladies. It was an amazing cake: dark chocolate, with white chocolate glaze, and a red raspberry coulis, all made from scratch.
Oh drool. I'm amazed the second half of it made it out of the house, quite frankly.
------------------------
Outside of that little blip, I finally tried
quinoa, which is pronounced
KEEN-wa, and not
qwin-OH-a, if you're pronunciationally challenged like I am. And it's good stuff! I've linked to the Wikipedia entry on it, but the short version is that quinoa is treated like a grain, like rice, barley, and so forth, but it's actually a seed and as a seed its protein punch and fat content (therefore its caloric hit) are all higher. All that said, it ends up being reasonable considering the nutritional value.
I opted for a savory preparation although I saw several recipes for more sweet dishes as well. I cooked it in chicken stock, along with a diced onion, 4 pressed garlic cloves, 1/4 cup fresh chopped basil, and about 2 tbsp julienned sun-dried tomatoes. It ended up tasting like a pomodoro pasta dish, if you're a fan of that sort of thing.
I am, for the record. And it was good.
-----------------------
In addition to the successful quinoa experiment and the cake fest, I also did a pork tenderloin in the slow cooker. Now it's not like pork tenderloin
needs the slow cooker for purposes of tenderization or anything, but holy cow it was good. The recipe I found had me cooking it in onion soup with wine (I used sherry), soy sauce, freshly ground pepper, and minced garlic. After only 4 hours on low it was done.
There's barely any left, and poor Choreboy hasn't even come home for dinner yet!
-----------------------
Well, we'll see what the scale brings this week. I'm mixing it up a bit on my caloric distribution and trying to knock off this plateau-ish place where I've been hanging out for the past few weeks. If all else fails, there's always exercise. I'm just weighing my fear of re-injury on the one hand (hello, stress fractures!) and fear of complete boredom on the other (NO running, NO incline... holy cow, am I eighty?)... and between the two of them I'm what-iffing my exercise plan to death.
I need to cut that out.