Saturday, November 1, 2008

Halloween 2008

I finally got loads of candy! Ok, this is definitely not good for my weight loss, but at least I got my fix for the year :P

I started out the morning with a healthy breakfast: german flaxseed bread with whipped cream cheese and a little over an ounce of lox (all we had left) + some grape tomatoes.



This stuff was dense!!! I couldn't even fit a coffee in my stomach for hours. But there was room for some chocolate after a few hours :) There was a lot of candy wrapper sounds near me so I went to look at what was going on and they had candy corn packets. Not my idea of indulging in halloween candy. I went back to my desk and ate the rest of the 70% dark chocolate bar I had. I ate maybe a serving (220 calories). No picture, sorry. You've seen this chocolate before.

Together with the super filling breakfast I wasn't hungry for lunch for 8 hours! Crazy! When I did, though, it was so delicious!!!!



Spinach salad with leftover beef from last night, grape tomatoes, a handful of the dried berry mixture (cranberries, sour cherries, dried blueberries and raisins), some sliced almonds and crumbled goat cheese. I mixed it with a tablespoon of Annie's goddess dressing and it was divine. Absolutely the perfect salad! This was my first time trying the dressing. It's full fat and I never buy that but after seeing all the bloggers raving about it (not necessarily recently but somehow it keeps popping up here and there) I decided to give it a go but plan on using only 1T instead of the 2T serving. This stuff is rich! I didn't know what to expect. It had tahini as one of the ingredients so I thought it would maybe taste like hummus. It didn't, but it did taste nutty. Seriously it was the best dressing I've had in a really long time and maybe revived my love for salads when I thought I was "over them." Yay!

For dessert I had a simple yogurt, banana, granola combo. I bought a new kind of granola: Erin Baker's double chocolate chunk granola after reading this review. I bought the pb kind before and it was not bad. I still have some but I was excited to try the chocolate kind when I saw it in the store. My verdict? I had a tiny handful from the bag when I got home from the store and wasn't that impressed but it was really delicious in the yogurt combo. The banana really brought out all the chocolate goodness and I think letting it soak up some of the yogurt helped too:) It is a subtle chocolate (or pb in the other type) flavor so don't be scared if you try it. It's a healthy granola for sure.



I rushed home after work to make my appetizers. The hostess said she was making dessert so I decided to forgo making the cupcakes I originally planned on making. So I made 2 things (avocado yogurt dip and the requested spinach artichoke dip). Both came out really great!

I used this recipe from Cooking Light for the avocado dip, but of course omitted the onions and used parsley instead of cilantro... and I halved the recipe. It was basically a 3 step process... prep the ingredients:



Mix them in the food processor:



And the best part, eat:)



I love the halloween colors in this!



And then I made the spinach artichoke dip. I used the same recipe I always do from Cooking Light (shocker I know!) substituting reduced fat ingredients for the fat free ones (that's all our grocery stores carry here). I made it on 2 other occasions, including for this party. This was the best batch I think because I let the cream cheese sit on the counter while making the avocado dip so it was definitely soft enough to mix with the rest of the ingredients. The final product came out blurry, so here is a picture of it during the last step of prep (topping it with cheese):



And then we were off to the party. It was a no-costume party - super low key. Just how I like 'em. I did bring my devil horns and a tail for fun :)

Here is a picture of me with my first drink (there were 2 in total). This concoction was orange juice, soda water, brandy and limoncelo + chocolate licorish for stirrer. Soooo good! I look like a huge dork. Great...



The hostess of the party did a great job decorating her place and all the food was delicious! Here are some pics of the food spread (minus the spinach artichoke dip which went straight into the oven when we got to the party):




(pumpkin pudding dip with graham crackers and apples) - I only had one small dip because I didn't feel like sweet things with dinner and then never got to it for dessert because there was real dessert :)


(My avocado dip with some pita chips) - Had a few dips of this


(Mini fat free pigs in a blanket) - I had like 5 of these guys

I also had a tiny bit of the butternut squash soup (in the crock pot in the picture above) with 1/2 of blue corn bread and then A LOT of the spinach artichoke dip with chips. Basically 5 people devoured the whole pan and I think it's like 22 servings. Oops. Here is the after picture of the pan with me sporting the devil horns and tail:



For dessert I had 2 fun size Reese's pb cups and 1 fun size twix and then this awesome pumpkin cheesecake thing. Here is my plate (multiply it by 2 because I had seconds):



The hostess said it was fat free cream cheese mixed with canned pumpkin, ff cool whip and some spices (I feel like there was one more ff ingredient but I can't remember now). And there is obviously some graham cracker crumbles on top. This was more like a pudding and super delicious!!!! I topped mine with a few pieces of hazelnuts. Yum!

I was absolutely stuffed when we left and I'm still stuffed this morning. We woke up to the fire alarm going off in our building. Bleh! Not the best way to wake up (actually a really crappy way to wake up) so we decided to go to Panera for breakfast to wait it out. I was really proud of myself because despite wanting every delicious looking pastry in their shop, I just got coffee because I am seriously still full from last night. I'm going to make some food at some point but I'm going to listen to my body and eat when I'm hungry not just because you're supposed to eat when you wake up.

We're off to Maine for the weekend, so unfortunately I won't be able to blog from there, but I'll take pictures and will have an update on the weekend's eats tomorrow night :)

Have a great weekend!!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

you look cute in those pics

Elina said...

You are seriously too sweet! I think I look like a huge dork :(