The streak continues

Streak day 4, 7 days 'till NYC...

Another excellent day today. Sorry if I keep starting these last few posts the same way, but I'm just always so excited about my good food choices and I feel great! Work is busy, but it doesn't matter because I just feel good about myself which translates into feeling good about everything else. Ok, onto food... :D

Breakfast



'Nuff said? Jk! This breakfast is not only extremely photogenic but is also extremely delicious! In this cup was about 3/4 cups of nonfat yogurt, 1/2 banana, a serving of TJ's american trek mix, some kashi golean and Erin's double chocolate granola. I definitely wanted more when I finished, but that's because there was chocolate involved and I always want more chocolate :D This breakfast was slightly more calories than my typical breakfasts (the addition of granola was the extra) because I was planning on doing an 8 mile run during lunch and wanted to increase my calorie intake a little bit to fuel this workout.

Pre-workout Snack
Again, this one was a little bit on the larger size for a snack for me. Last night I made this little sandwich and photographed it before packing it up...



Whole wheat "british muffin" (from TJ's) with a tablespoon of spreadable fruit and a little over 1/2 tablespoon of natural pb (mix of chunky and smooth). The spreadable fruit made the muffin slightly soggy, but it was still pretty yummy and was definitely good fuel for later :)

Workout
I've been meaning to do this 8 mile run since last Friday, but things just kept coming up. I've never run longer than 7 miles before, but the 7 miles didn't feel like my limit, so I figured I should be able to do the 8. I still get nervous almost every time before I run. I don't know why. I always do well. In fact, let me fastward to my workout today... I kicked butt! At mile 7 I kept on increasing speed at which point I actually had to slow down on purpose so as to not injure myself. I didn't want to regret this run, but yeah, I definitely could have done this faster or run longer. Awesome! I actually forgot to look at the clock on the treadmill (yes I ran 8 miles on the treadmill! It was no problem for me, I was just watching tv the entire time)... but I averaged 6.4 mph, so maybe it took like 73 minutes or so?? I also did 0.15 mile walk for warmup and 0.15 mile walk for a cooldown... and I stretched after my run. I really wanted to make sure I wake up tomorrow and am able to walk :D

Do you ever slow down on purpose or do you just give it your all?

LunchLunch today was leftovers from last night: hamburger stroganoff. It was still super delicious!!!



I also had a pear for "dessert." It was super juicy and delicious!



Afternoon snack
I had a hair appointment after work so I decided to have a quick snack so I wouldn't be starving when I finally got home. I tried a new kind of KIND bar: walnut & date.



OMG, I am seriously in love with kind bars!!!! This is the second kind I've had one (well actually I tried another kind at a little tasting they had at Whole Foods and loved it too) and I love love loved it! Here is the picture of the bar up-close:



See how there are huge chunks of dates?! You can actually taste the ingredients, which are basically dates, walnuts and honey (there are a few others in there but these are the main ones). Awesome! I can't wait to dig into my next one (I kind of bought every kind they had in the store :P )

Dinner
My husband went out while I was getting my hair done so I was on my own for dinner. He doesn't really like salads and I seriously crave them, so this was definitely a salad night! I put the salad together but then realized it was too low-cal, so I made little polenta stacks, inspired by Caitlin. For the salad dressing I wanted a nice balsamic vinegrette (I think it goes perfect with spinach) but we didn't have any at home because I can't stand any of the low fat kinds and I never bought the full fat version until my recent goddess dressing purchase. I brought the goddess dressing to work, so I couldn't use it tonight, but it actually inspired me to make my own. I remembered the tahini in it and thought that's maybe the ingredient that makes the balsamic vinegrettes that I've liked before cloudy. I started putting a bunch of stuff together and it came out really well! I was super inpressed with myself :)

So here is dinner altogether:



The salad had spinach, some grape tomatoes, 1/3 oz of dried cranberries, 1/4 oz of pecans, and 1/2 oz of goat cheese. This is a really great combo!



My dressing consisted of (I think):
- 1 teaspoon of EVOO
- 1 teaspoon of tahini
- 1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
- 1 teaspoon of lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon of honey
- S&P to taste

And then the polenta stacks... I cut up 1/4 of a polenta log into 4 circles, baked them in the toaster oven for about 8 minutes at 350 degrees, topped them with 1/2 oz of cheddar cheese (I was going to use fresh mozzarella but it went bad :( ) and broiled it for a few more minutes. Here they are out of the oven:



And put together, on the side of my large salad:



And ouf course I couldn't end the meal without dessert so I had 1/4 serving of TJ's chocolate covered edamames. Yum!



And that brought me to 1650 calories exactly for the day. Funny how that worked out!

So here are my goal results for today:

NYC streaking challenge - day 4:
Calories (1200 - 1650) - DONE - 1650 exactly
Fitness - DONE- 8 mile run + 0.3 mile walk
Water - DONE - 8 cups
F/V - DONE - banana, mushrooms, pear, kind bar (dates), spinach, grape tomatoes, slices tomato, cranberries

And that's it for today. Do you like the new format (breaking it up into sections)?

Leftovers aren't boring

Streak day 3, 8 days to go 'till NYC! Still doing great on my mini-challenge! :D

I got a craving for a breakfast I made last week: smoked salmon sandwiches, so yesterday I stopped by TJ's to pick up some lox. This breakfast did not disappoint! It looks kind of messy (sorry the bread is very fragile and broke apart on it's "commute to work") but it was super rich and delicious!



The bread I used is The Baker wholegrain flaxseed bread. It is so nutty and addicting. My husband would hate it, so I know it's not for everyone, but I absolutely cannot get enough of this stuff! Here is a picture of the package if you're interested...



So breakfast was 2 slices of the bread, about 1 1/2 ounces of lox and 1 tablespoon of whipped cream cheese. I also had a cup of hazelnut coffee with half and half and a tsp of agave nectar. The usual stuff. I wanted more food after this breakfast but remembered that last time it kept me really full for a long time. I decided to wait it out a bit, which worked! I probably would've had a massive stomachache if I ate more like I instinctively wanted to.

About 3 hours later I snacked on this apple. It was my pre-workout snack. I wasn't even that hungry, but I knew I needed fuel for my abs + spinning classes.



Both classes were soooo good and so tough today. I was super excited for them for some reason. I think it's because I'm feeling like my old self. I love eating healthy and working out! It's so good to know I'm taking care of myself! The abs class is the toughest one they offer at my gym, just basic stuff but you feel the burn after 15 minutes of straight crunching. And spinning... once again today was my favorite instructor and I haven't been to his class in months. It was excellent. I was dripping sweat like crazy and loved it! He turned the lights on at the end of the class and I was super shiny, but looked so buff!!! My arms looked so toned. Maybe it was that boxercise class last night? Hmm, doubt one class did the trick. Anyways, I felt good!

Moving on to lunch, which is boring for blog purposes because it was leftovers from last night's dinner. It was still absolutely delicious! In fact when I got back from the gym I had an email from my husband saying how good lunch was (he had the leftovers too). It's pretty cool to get 2 meals for both of us in the same amount of effort. The flip side of course is when something doesn't come out incredibly good and you're stuck eating it the next day. Luckily I haven't had any mishaps in a while :)



Afternoon snack, one of my absolute favorites. I've blogged about this snack before. It's the perfect thing to take care of my sweet tooth! 1/2 banana, packet of Barney Butter inside a TJ's low carb tortilla wrap. Best.snack.ever!



Speaking of Barney Butter, I found out today on Kath's blog that Barney Butter is giving free shipping for orders over $14. This is your chance to stock up on their goodies (like the single serving almond butters) before they start selling their products at Whole Foods next year. Just type ship4free when you check out. I definitely took advantage of this today :)

Oh another little victory today was this: I was walking by a bowl with halloween candy at work and grabbed a york chocolate mint patty. I know this stuff isn't that many calories comparatively to some of the other chocolate goodies so I felt it was a pretty good choice. I ran into a co-worker of mine on the way to my desk and we ended up talking about a transaction for about 10 minutes. Well, when I was done talking to her I realized I really didn't need this candy at all. Just because it's a healthier choice out of the bad stuff, doesn't mean it's a good one. I had my banana/almond butter wrap waiting for me, so I was good :) I put the candy back and made some tea and the wrap. It felt pretty cool. Small victories...

When I got home I remembered that I got some pumpkin butter at TJ's yesterday. I decided to have a tiny snack featuring it! I had a little over 1/4 cup of TJ's European style nonfat yogurt, with a little less than a tablespoon of the pumpking butter and a little less than 1/3 serving of Erin's pb granola.



Pumpkin butter was pretty interesting. For those of you who haven't tried it, imagine a pretty sweet pumpkin flavored jelly. Not sure why they are calling it "butter." It was pretty intense so I would use it with causion. But it was quite nice and definitely very pumpkin-y, and since I'm recently a little obsessed with pumpkin and other fall veggies (like squash) I liked it.

For dinner tonight I made another 20 minute meal from Cooking Light November issue: hamburger stroganoff. My husband was super apprehensive about this one (I guess he hasn't had the best experience with stroganoffs) but I already bought the ingredients (not realizing he didn't really want it) and reminded him that all the other 20 minute meals from Cooking Light have been awesome. Fastforward 20 minutes or so, here is my plate:



And yeah, it was awesome!!!!! My husband loved it too and we're both having it for lunch again tomorrow. Sorry to be boring, but when it's good, I actually really look forward to having it again. I followed the recipe pretty much to the T, except omitted the onions, used about 30% more mushrooms and served it over egg-white-only egg noodles. Another winner! I love it.

And today's tally is...

Calories (1200-1650) - DONE - 1464
Fitness - DONE - abs + spinning (60 minutes total)
Water - DONE- 9 cups
F/Vs - DONE- apple, banana, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, mushrooms

Good night!

I voted!!!

Streak day 2, 9 days until NYC :D I'm kicking butt and taking names :) This is the healthy lifestyle that makes me happy!

I woke up extra early this morning so I could vote before going to work. The first thing I did was turn on the coffee maker! The coffee went with me to the voting place in my to-go cup :) It took a little under an hour to do the voting (there was a huge line outside before the place even opened!) but I was so happy I did it!!!

By the time I got to work, I was starving! I grabbed breakfast on the go, so it was the same old combo: 2 kashi golean waffles with a Barney Butter packet + 1/2 banana. I couldn't wait to bite into it :D


Yesterday at the gym they were trying to have people sign up for a Boxercise class. It was at 5:30 pm today so I swapped my usual lunch workout for the evening one to try this new class out. This meant lunch first, then 2 snacks later (or three...).

Lunch was a simple turkey, dijon mustard, tomato, avocado sandwich on 2 slices of Arnold double fiber bread... with some baby carrots on the side.



Good stuff!



Instead of working out, I did some serious farmers market shopping during lunch. I bought so much stuff I couldn't carry it home :) I left it in the fridge at work to bring it all back tomorrow, when my husband picks me up in the car.

First snack of the day: the rest of the larabar from yesterday (chocolate hazelnut kind) with some tea.



I decided that you really can't taste the hazelnuts and that it tastes just like the regular chocolate larabar. Still good though, just the name is more exciting than the product. Sorry larabar! I still love you!

Second snack: about 2 tablespoons of Sabra original hummus, 1/2 serving of Back to Nature crispy wheats (just like reduced fat wheat thins, but I think they may be more natural... I loooove these) and a pretty large apple. A pretty good combo!



And then a little before the boxing class I was craving almonds, so I had a 100 calorie pack of raw almonds. These are an excellent grab 'n go snack, because the nuts are already pre-portioned for you. You can of course buy a bag of almonds and pre-portion them yourself, but this is just something that's already been done for you. 100 calories worth of almonds is about 15-20 almonds, depending on the size.



And at 5:30pm I got to the Boxercise class... basically a (contact) boxing class. It was ok. It was quite introductory. Only 2 other people showed up; the guy was trying to actually get a paid class going and this was his introduction course to get people to sign up (I didn't know this until the end of class so he wasn't pushing this or anything). Anyways, because it was pretty basic stuff (I'm not a boxer, but I've taken cardio kickboxing classes before so I know "the moves"). I kind of had to work myself extra hard because it was pretty easy to slack off. I basically jump roped in between all the segments (probably did about 15 minutes of solid jump rope overall) and kicked as much as I could. I know I'll be sore tomorrow (in fact I'm sore already) but I won't be back to this class, and certainly won't pay to go. The guy was really nice though (definitely a boxer!) and told me I had a future in boxing. Haha!

On to dinner... I actually wasn't that hungry. Most of the time after a workout I'm not very hungry for a little while (unless I haven't eaten for hours in which case of course I'm starving but that's not because of the workout) but when I got home my husband really wanted me to cook dinner asap. Good thing I planned another "20 minute meal" from Cooking Light. On the menu for the night was "pork vindaloo"... you can find the recipe here. I of course omitted the onions, but otherwise basically followed the recipe. Garam Masala is such an awesome spice. I love indian food, and garam masala is definitely the spice in indian dishes. Yum!

My serving (about 1/4 less rice than was suggested) + some sauteed spinach with garlic:



I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again: those 20 minute meals in Cooking Light (there are 6 of them in every issue) are the best!!!! I've never had a bad one (in fact every one was super delicious!) and they are really easy! When I asked my husband how many smiley faces this recipe earned (that's how we rate them), he said: "Fill the page!" Hehe, yup, he loved it! And so did I!

Onto today's goal accomplishments:
-Calories (1200-1650)- DONE- 1576, including 4 oz of champagne I will have when Obama wins :)
- Exercise - DONE- Boxercise class (about 55 minutes) + walked home (25 minutes)
- Water - DONE - 8 cups and counting...
- F&V (min 5 servings) - DONE - banana, tomato, avocado, baby carrots, 1/2 larabar, apple, spinach, diced tomatoes

Another awesome day! Healthy AND Sane... that's how I like 'em! :D

**edited to add** Go Obama!!!!!



+ I had a handful of pecans:

No cooking today

I feel good, nanananana....

Day 1 of my streak went well! I'm so happy to be back on track!!!! I had to deal with one little challenge at night but overall today went quite smoothly. I wasn't very hungry (probably because I consumed enough calories over the weekend to last me for a week) so that, combined with my newly renewed motivation made staying on track quite easy. Yay!

Let's start with breakfast. I prepared breakfast, snacks and lunch last night, on a full stomach. That always makes it challenging because thinking of food when it's the last thing you want to think about is not easy. I kept it simple. No chocolate or nuts again, because I ate too many of both over the weekend. Here is breakfast:



3/4 of nonfat plain yogurt, 1/2 banana, ~ 1/2 serving of Erin's double chocolate chunk granola and ~ 1/4 serving of kashi golean cereal. I decided that I really like this granola!

A few hours later I had my pre-workout snack: Ellie Krieger's energy bar + a pear and a coffee with half and half + tsp of agave nectar. These bars are really great. I forget if I mentioned this before on this blog, but I made them a while back and keep them individually wrapped in the freezer. They are ready for me when I'm ready for them :D I took one out of the freezer last night when I was preparing meals for today. Good stuff!



At 12:30 pm I met up with a personal trainer for a session I won a few weeks ago. I was really pumped about this PT session last week but today when I saw it on the schedule I almost emailed her about rescheduling. I haven't been to the gym in 3 days so I felt super out of shape. I know it's a little crazy, so yeah, that's why I kept the session. It kicked butt, as expected :D This woman does not hold back!!! It was fun too; once I got there I was totally into it. The only thing is that it was only about 35 minutes or so, which does not make a complete workout in my book (as tough as it was) so I jumped on the elliptical for another 25 minutes. Then I was done!

By the time I was done showering and finally got back to the office I was starving. Good thing my lunch was simple and delicious! I remembered how much I like Annie's goddess dressing last Friday, so I was looking forward to a big salad again. Today's salad was spinach, shredded carrots, grape tomatoes, 1/4 avocado + 1 tablespoon of the dressing. On the side, I had an Oscar Myer's hot dog on a light whole wheat bun with some pickles. I need to look into the ingredients of those dogs. They are only 40 calories and 0.5 grams of fat. The first ingredient is turkey but there are a few others I can't really pronounce. That probably means I shouldn't eat it, but it was in our fridge last night and I needed something else except for the salad. It was yummy though :)







The avocado looked kind of gross (I cut it up last night so it browned) but it still tasted great!

And for "dessert" I had an orange I grabbed on my way out of the door at the gym. I love it when they have a fruit basket at the front desk!



The orange wasn't very sweet, but oh well, it was free :)

And then a few hours later I got a slight stomachache. I wasn't sure if I overate (unlikely) or was hungry so I made some tea and grabbed a snack.



Chocolate and hazelnuts are definitely in my top 5 of favorite foods so I was really excited to try this flavor. I actually found 2 of these in my drawer... I guess I bought one on 2 different occasions without remembering. Funny.



I ate only 1/2 of this guy saving the rest for later (I never ate the other half... it's still sitting in my purse). It was pretty good. The flavor was pretty mild. It didn't taste too chocolaty or hazelnutty. I thought I even tasted a subtle banana flavor but I obviously was making it up because banana is not one of the ingredients (and there are only 5 ingredients). I'm not in love, but I did like it, so I probably would still buy it again. I love how natural larabars are!

All right so on to my dinner challenge. My parents got a new tv which they asked my husband to set up. My mom wanted to make dinner for us (no, she was dying to make dinner for us) because she found this new recipe for something that she was quite proud of and wanted to show off. As you know, I plan on sticking to my calorie budget until I go to NY, so it was a bit of a tough situation. My plan was to come home after grocery shopping after work, make a quick dinner and then have just one bite of her meal. Instead, my husband wanted to drive to my mom's (since we were already in the car) after our grocery trip, so I was quite hungry when she started cooking. I was on a mission though, so I grabbed her recipe and input it into SparkPeople to calculate the calories for it. I estimated each one of these pancake type things to be around 300 calories. My dinners are usually in the high 300's - low 400's (before dessert) but I had a low calorie day so far, so I had 1.5 of these babies. It was hard to say no to more, but I feel good about my decision. I'm not hungry or stuffed so I know I ate the right amount.



This is basically pan fried dough, filled with mashed potatoes and mushrooms. My mom learned this recipe on her recent trip to Russia. It was really really good. Seriously I give myself mad props for stopping at just 1.5 :D

See the filling? Mmm, mashed potatoes with wild mushrooms...



So yeah, needless to say this was my dinner. I didn't end up cooking when we got home. It's ok... there is always tomorrow for a delicious home cooked (by me) meal.

Oh, while we waited for my mom to get to her house (we got to her place before she did) I had 2 of these clusters. Soooo good!



All right, so today was a success. Here are my goals and results:

- Stay within calorie range (1200-1650) - DONE ~ 1505
- Drink min 8 cups of water - DONE - 8 cups
- Work out min 6 times/week - DONE ~ 35 min personal training session + 25 min elliptical + walked home (30 minutes)
- Min 5 servings of fruits and vegetables - DONE - banana, pear, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, avocado, 1/2 larabar

So far so good... I'm off to prepare tomorrow's meals and relax :)

New plan

Just got back from Maine and let me tell you I was definitely in "vacation mode" the second I stepped foot in my in-laws' house. They had halloween candy (and we also brought some) and I had a field day with them. I didn't eat very much "real food" but more than made up for it with the candy, hazelnuts and cheese they had. I took a bunch of pics, but they are boring so I'll spare you with them.

Anywayzzzzzzzzz, looking back at the last week I don't like how unhealthy I was and this blog is supposed to be about healthy eating and living. This week has not been representative at all of my life and how I want to live it, so starting tomorrow I am going to do better. I hate being scared of stepping on the scale and I have to do the work in order to prevent that from happening. So tonight I am going to plan my meals for the week so I am more excited about the food I eat. Eating healthy is not hard. This is the point of my blog. I want to show people that eating healthy is fun and delicious, and this week I made it seem like a chore (not just on this blog but in my own mind more times than not). Tonight I am having one last "splurge meal" - pizza. I've been craving real pizza for a really long time. We make pizza sometimes and it's ok. It's even delicious on some occasions, but let's be honest, it's not the same as a nice greasy slice I really want once in awhile. So yeah, in attempt to keep this whole "sane" thing going, I am going to Uno's tonight and ordering my favorite deep dish mushroom pizza. I'm sure it's like a billion calories, but I don't care. I know that tomorrow I will start over for real and I am excited about. I really am. I hope that starting tomorrow on I can not only work towards achieving my weight loss goal but also inspire some of you to cook more delicious healthy foods. Also, I am going to NY to visit my sister Inna in 2 weeks. I know that for me to truly enjoy this trip (and all the foods, i.e. cookies and brownies, we plan to consume) I need to be healthy before hand so I don't feel guilty. I have no problem with indulging in fatty foods I truly crave as long as I balance it out and "deserve it" somewhat.

So, let's get to the "new plan"... to ease back into this a little I am going to set a shorter timeline for now. This means that I am creating a countdown to the NYC trip until which time I plan on being on my best behavior :) So, here are some rules:
- I will count calories every day. This will insure that I don't mindlessly eat - no foods with a mystery # of calories and no candy in unlimited quantities. I will stick to 1200-1650 calories every day. **edited to add** I will allow myself 1 day this week to go over the limit by 100 calories (this is the day when I usually go crazy and eat everything in sight. The 100 calories will allow me slightly more room for an indulgence just this one day)
- No getting on the scale this week. I like to weigh myself every day. It's part of my morning routine and I think is quite healthy. There was actually some research done that concluded that people that weighted themselves every day lost more weight on average than people that only weigh themselves once a week. If I eat healthy and exercise, small daily fluctuations in weight don't upset me. I know it's just water weight or food from the day before still sitting in my stomach. However if I'm being bad or I'm "behaving" and my weight doesn't move in the "right direction" then I think daily weigh-ins help me with re-evaluating the situation. With that said, I think this past week has been very bad, food wise, and seeing that number on the scale will just upset me too much. That's not productive, so I will NOT do this to myself this week and will resume the daily weigh-ins next week when hopefully things re-stabilize.
- I will exercise 6 times/week
- I will drink at least 8 cups of water every day
- I will eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables
- I will post my results on this blog with the countdown to the trip to NYC :)

Wish me luck!

Ok, enough with the rules. Tomorrow I promise to dazzle you with something delicious and healthy. Ok, I can't promise that, but I promise to try :D

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!!!