Originally Posted by
Winchester 
Congrats, dragonmyst47, on your weight loss! That's really excellent!
Utopia, you have a really good mindset for weight loss! And Nanner, thanks for the Hungry Girl site! Cool!
And I am not a gourmet chef, not by a long shot. I'm just somebody who likes to cook. And I know that I'm the only one who can be responsible for my weight. It's not up to anybody else....it's just me. So I'm always looking for healthy recipes that taste good and, esp throughout the week, are easy and quick. I can't do it without my Sunday cooking. And I enjoy that afternoon, being in the kitchen and trying recipes. We cannot afford to go out all the time...we just can't do it. So I have to cook.
Thyme is an herb....you can grow it in your herb gardens, you can buy it fresh from the store and it will keep in the fridge for a few days. Or just buy it dried at the store. I love thyme. Next time you make frozen peas? Toss just a bit of thyme into the pot after you've drained the peas, put the lid back on the pot and toss the peas and thyme together a bit. It's really good and gives you a bit of an added taste. It's good with many vegetables, but we like it best with peas. And there's no recipe, I was trying it out one night and we really like it. Similarly, lemon-and-pepper is delicious on corn. I love bay leaves with potatoes and will throw in two leaves when simmering potatoes. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Our kitchen is very well stocked with spices and herbs.
Pork loin is usually the roast from the center area of the pig (I think....I'm not a butcher, so I'm not sure). It is leaner than some of the other cuts, so it can be a little expensive. You can either get a loin roast with the bones (ribs) or boneless.....I'll go with boneless most of the time. That's what's usually on sale around here. And I don't really buy it unless it's on sale. You can either roast it in the oven, do it in a crock pot, or slice it into "chops" and saute them or grill them. I love to marinate chops for a bit of extra flavor....which is good, too, because pork today is much leaner than it was years ago, and if you're not careful, it will dry out while cooking. I usually cook pork to about 145-150 degrees, then tent it with foil to let it get up to about 155 on its own. I think 160 is actually considered the "safe" temp for pork, but for me, it's too done at that point. It used to be that you almost had to cook pork to shoe-leather texture to make sure you killed all the "little beasties" inside, but pork today is very safe.
Stew is pretty much like a thicker soup. It is heartier than a soup and you feel fuller after a bowl of stew than you would soup....depending on what kind of soup it is, I guess. I love beef stew more so than beef vegetable soup, although both are delicious. Chicken stew, vegetable stew, bean stew, the possibilities are endless. Oh, and then there's chowder! I'd say chowder is kind of a cross between soup and stew....made with anything (vegetables, chicken, beef, seafood, etc.) and that is usually thickened with either milk, cream, half and half, etc. I love potato chowder or a good chicken chowder.....I wouldn't recommend freezing chowder, though, because of how it's thickened (the dairy ingredients). Many other people have frozen chowder with luck, but I've never tried it.
I buy my groceries, based partly on what is on sale at the store and what we're having for dinner the following week. I keep a list of items that we need throughout the week on the fridge. Usually a night or two before we hit the grocery store, I go through the store ad and add things to my list. Then I go through my cookbooks to see what appeals to me, how many meals I might get out of it (as for a roast or a whole chicken), and how easily I can make it. I check out the freezer list (also on the fridge door...it's called What's In The Freezer? and it has every single food in our big freezer in the basement) to see what I already have, and then take it from there. I'm on a grocery budget and I really try not to go over that amount....some weeks are harder than others. I have at least one meatless dish (sometimes two, if I think I can get away with it), one or two chicken/turkey dishes (one might be soup, the second boneless/skinless breasts for the grill or oven or a chicken stirfry), a dinner with pork, and then a dinner with either shrimp, salmon, or tilapia, depending on what's at the store...we really like salmon. Swordfish is wonderful as is tuna steak, but unless it's on sale, it's too expensive to eat all the time. I really try to have a variety of meals on hand and it's important that they're healthy.
I also make sure that I always have what I call staples: boxes of whole wheat pasta, cans of beans, dried beans, apple juice, pineapple juice, tomato juice (all great for marinades and sauces), cider vinegar, white vinegar, balsamic vinegar, cans of pureed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, tomatoes with chilis, tomato sauce, and tomato paste, mustard, ketchup, Worcestershire, all different kinds of mustards, things like that. When the store has canned/frozen veggies on sale, I stock up. Oh, and brown rice. Noodles. Panko (Japanese bread crumbs). Chicken, beef and vegetable broths. These are staples and I need them. All kinds of condiments (as Nanner said, you can switch them around to suit yourself).
Flour and cornmeal are stored in the freezer in freezer containers. My yeast is stored in the fridge. Barley and rices in the fridge. I love barley and you can add it to ground beef, not only to stretch the beef when making meatloaf or soup, but also to cut some of the fat from using all beef. It's a grain, so you should store it in your fridge, unless you're going to use it all quickly.
On Sundays, we'll usually have a roast either in the crock pot or in the oven (I don't know, I can't seem to get it out of my head about the "Sunday roast"!) and then I can use the leftovers throughout the week, too. The freezer is always stocked. Before our son got married (and even afterward a few times), he would come up to the house to go grocery shopping.....meaning he cleaned out the basement freezer on me. He still does it, but not as often as he used to.
Rick does not take sandwiches in his lunch....well, sometimes he does, but it's rare now. He still likes a good peanut butter sandwich, though, from time to time (not reduced-fat, though, as he just doesn't like it). He will take leftover soup or stew that he can nuke in the microwave. If we have spaghetti or lasagne, he'll take some of that....I swear he could eat spaghetti every day and be a happy man. He always takes a container of applesauce....he eats applesauce every single day. Sometimes, I'll make a low-fat dip and he'll take that with some sliced veggies for his morning break. He'll take a small container of low-fat cheese cubes; we both love cheese. (BTW, try Cabot's 50% reduced-fat cheeses.....very good and they melt beautifully. Not sure if they're OK with WW, but they should be.) A container of yogurt. Maybe some low-fat pudding that I've made. Things like that. His biggest weakness is sweets and he has to have something sweet. I still make cookies, although I haven't yet this month as we're pretty much cookied-out from Christmas.
It's easier for me because I'm not cooking just for myself. But even those times when Rick goes away for several days, I still cook.
(Doh.)
Not trying to lose weight, but just popped in to take a look and wanted to add my two cents to the value of home cooking.
But by planning what I'm going to eat that week, I can save myself a lot of money.
I am really discouraged...It was because I counted wrong, I counted 3 points * 6 servings= 18 points but really it was 20 points 
But the next day I started all over with my daily points, because I couldn't "undo" what was done, so why not move on.
