recipe: lean, green, sour cream enchiladas

I am blessed with the BEST mother-in-law a girl could ask for.  Among her many great qualities are her mad cooking skillz.  Sometimes she makes these sour cream enchiladas that are so delicious they knock my own mom's enchiladas out of the park (shh, don't tell her).  They are super cheesy and creamy - the ultimate comfort food.  

I have lightened up her recipe (which I'm pretty sure she said she got from the back of the enchilada sauce can - ha!).   I used less creamy stuff and subbed some of the chicken with roasted veggies.  They're 9 points for 2 enchiladas, which might sound like a lot, but hey, this still-quite-fluffy girl gets 39 points a day.  You could probably adjust things a little to make them lower in points (omit the cream cheese, sub more veggies for the chicken, use fat free shredded cheese?)  They do have one serving of healthy oil per serving, which is great.

To make this more quickly, just use pre-cooked chicken.  You can also saute the veggies in a pan instead of cooking them in the oven; they won't have quite the same flavor, though.

Here's the recipe:

1 large zucchini, chopped

1 large yellow squash, chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

2 Tbsp olive oil

3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, thinned out (you will need 13 oz, cooked)

salt, pepper, salt free seasoning

4 oz can chopped green chilies

12 corn tortillas

1/2 cup (120 g) light sour cream

8 oz green chile enchilada sauce (I use "Frontera" brand - see pic above)

4 oz light cream cheese

4 oz part skim mozzarella

Step 1: roast the veggies and chicken

The veggies should be chopped into large-ish pieces.  You don't want it turning into mush! In a large bowl, toss the veggies with the olive oil and seasonings.  Spread out onto a cookie sheet covered in foil.  Use a second cookie sheet or dish to spread out the 3 chicken breasts and add seasonings.  Cook both things in the oven at 375 for 15 minutes (check your chicken with a thermometer).  After taking out the chicken, I add a few minutes under the broiler for the veggies.  I like 'em with a little char on the edges.

Step 2: chicken mixture and sauce mixture

Let chicken breasts cool for about 10-15 minutes, then chop up the chicken into very small pieces.  Weight out 13 ounces into your bowl (the same bowl from step 1, no need to wash.)  There will be some chicken left over; use for some other dish.  Into the bowl, add the roasted veggies, the green chilies, the cream cheese, and about 1/4 of the enchilada sauce.  Mix gently.  In a large measuring cup, weight out your 120 grams of sour cream, add the rest of the enchilada sauce and whisk with a fork.

Step 3: assemble and bake

Spray a 9x13 pan lightly with cooking spray.  Wrap the 12 tortillas in a few damp paper towels and microwave for about 1 and a half minutes.  You want them soft enough to roll up the enchiladas with out breaking.  Place a tortilla on a plate and place about a 1/3 cup of the chicken mixture in the middle.  (I used an ice cream scoop to try to get even portions.) Roll it closed and place in the pan seam-side-down.  Continue with the rest of the tortillas and chicken mixture.  (It's a bit difficult to portion the chicken mixture out perfectly, so if you have any left after rolling up all 12 enchiladas, just spread the mixture as evenly as you can over the top.)  Pour the sauce mixture over the enchiladas.  Sprinkle with the cheese.  Bake in the oven at 350 for 15-20 minutes.  Use the broiler for a few minutes at the end to get that great toasty look on the cheese.  

What would I do without you, my trusty food scale??

Step 4: enter the Enchilada Bliss Zone.  

I recommend serving with a side of salad and light vinaigrette. 

Chili is my supervisor.  He's depressed that he can't have any.  I gave him some chicken scraps though, so don't feel too bad for him :)

half-assed recipe time: chicken tostadas with guac

These tostadas are super healthy and fairly low in points.  If you like Mexican food, you will love these.



As pictured, they are 7 points for 2 tostadas.  I also drizzled a teaspoon of olive oil on top, so that made it 8 points.  Here's the breakdown:
-2 white corn tortillas, baked - 1 point each
-1/4 cup (64 grams) of canned fat-free refried beans - 1 point
-2 ounces of grilled chicken breast - 2 points
-1/4 of an avocado - 2 points

What makes them so delicious is the concoction on top, which is somewhere between guacamole and pico de gallo.  This is what I grew up eating with my carne asada and rice at our Mexican outdoor cook-outs.

Here's how you make it:
-finely dice 1/2 an onion and 2 tomatoes, put them into a bowl
-finely chop a handful of cilantro and toss it in
-finely dice an avocado and scoop it out on top of the other ingredients
-squeeze the juice of 1 lime onto the avocado pieces, add a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and mix gently
*Notice that there are no jalapeños in this recipe.  That is due to fact that I am a major wuss. Don't judge me, you sick, sick masochists! Obviously you can add them if you like them.*

I pat it all into a square shaped reusable container and then divide it into 4 servings (that's how I know I used 1/4 of an avocado, and the other ingredients are 0 points).

For the baked tortillas, just place 6 on a baking sheet and bake at 375 - about 5 minutes, flip them over, then another 5 minutes.  The baking time may vary, so keep an eye on them until they're lightly browned and crispy.  Let them cool and you can keep them in a large Ziploc bag for the week.



I'd also like to implore you, if you don't have one already, to get an electronic food scale.  It makes life sooooo much easier.  I keep it within easy reach on top of my microwave.



I just put my plate of tortillas on top of the scale, zero it out, and weight the 64 grams of beans (it tells you on the can that 1/2 cup is 128 grams).  SO much easier than putting it in a measuring cup.  Then I spread the beans, zero it out again and add the 2 ounces of chicken.  (I can flip back and forth between grams and ounces - not sure if all scales do this.)

I was very happy to find these refried beans that are only made with beans, water and salt.  I'm making a bit of an effort to find products that don't have a ton of weird chemically ingredients.



¡Buen provecho!

this is a fight to the death

Okay, I've been doing "Body Pump" classes at the Y and heard some lyrics from a song that really grabbed my attention.  I googled the lyrics and found out the song is "Conquistador" by 30 Seconds to Mars (mmm - Jared Leto).  I think this is going to become my anthem for the time being.



Here are the lyrics:

This is a fight to the death, our holy war
A new romance, a Trojan whore
We will, we will, we will rise again
This is a fight for the day, night, black and white
A victory dance, a burning riot
We will, we will, we will rise again

Hey, hey, say a prayer

I am the best she claimed and more
A battle scarred conquistador
We will, we will, we will rise again
This is a fight for our love, lust, hate, desire
We are the children of the great empire
We will, we will, we will rise again

Hey, hey, say a prayer
This is a fight to the death!
We will, we will, we will rise again
Hey, hey, say a prayer
This is a fight to the death!

My favorite line is "this is a fight to the death!"  That idea popped up in a Joel Osteen sermon I was listening to recently.  It stood out to me and I thought, "Yeah, I have to have that warrior-like tenacity - to not give up when it gets tough but to keep getting back up.  I will keep fighting for my dreams until the day I die.  I will fight to the death!"  I love that idea.  And then I came across this song.  Coincidence?  I think not :)

spending points wisely

Since starting Weight Watchers, I'm slowly learning that there's a right way to spend points and a wrong way.  Yeah, I could probably eat fast food all day and technically lose weight as long as I stay within  my points, but I'm trying to show my body some love.  Jack-in-the-Box and eating until I feel like I'm gonna pop is not love.  I have to be strategic in order to find that balance between fueling my body correctly and not depriving myself too drastically.  And I'm seeing it as a process.  Yeah, I still eat some junk food occasionally, but slowly  I will wean myself off of it.  I gotta say - I love that with Weight Watchers, you actually learn how to eat healthfully and you can do  it at your own pace.

Recently in an attempt to "use up the rest of my points", I went to Jason's Deli and got the salad bar and an ice cream cone for dessert.  Well within my points, and very healthy (the salad part anyway), but  it was just TOO MUCH food.  I felt so incredibly over-stuffed and miserable afterward.  Oddly enough  though, I still had a ton of points left and the day before my points re-set, I ate like, 4 skinny cow ice cream sandwiches in one day.  Again, within my points, but I'm realizing I'm still eating like an addict sometimes.  Cheap food is also an issue, like 50-cent hot dogs at Ikea.  I went a little overboard the other day.  I should not be eating that junk!  At least not without a good reason!  "Cheap" is not a good reason.

Some thoughts I had on how I should spend my points:

Worth it 
-Foods that make healthy stuff more appetizing, like full fat dressing on salad, chocolate on nuts  (plain nuts are so blech), or a tasty dip for fresh vegetables.
-Healthy fats like avocado, nuts, peanut butter, and the healthy oils I'm SUPPOSED to be having anyway.
-True indulgences like Godiva chocolate, Blue Bell ice cream (in small portions) or a cake pop or mocha  frappucino from Starbucks.
-Eating out for a special occasion at a nice restaurant.

Not worth it
-Stuffing myself just because I have the points, whether the food is healthy or not.
-Cheap or free junk food and fast food.
-Gross "healthy" foods that I have to force myself to eat, like fat free cottage cheese - *dry heave*.
-Alcohol, unless I am trying to get drunk, which I only do when I'm out dancing with a bunch of friends.
-Soda and juice. I've gotten very used to only drinking water.

I'm proud of myself for recognizing this problem and doing something about it.  About a week later I returned to Jason's deli but stayed away from the salad bar (something about buffets - ugh) - I got a grilled chicken wrap with fresh fruit on the side.  It left plenty of room for the ice cream cone that I still "had" to get.  Down the road I'll worry about consuming less sugar, but the fact that I acted out a strategy to not stuff myself at Jason's Deli was a big accomplishment. Go me!

the story of my life on a diet - part 2

So I guess I started "dieting" around age 11-12ish.  I remember my usual meal: chicken breast, white rice with spray "butter" and salad (with full fat ranch dressing of all things.)  I'm not sure where I got my ideas of what constitutes healthy eating.

Sad memory: when I was junior high age, during a dieting phase, I finally succumbed to the call of a bag of peanut m&m's.  I ate about half it and felt so remorseful that I threw the rest of it away in the trash.  I guess it kept calling me because I decided to spray it with roach spray (yeah, food addicts aren't above digging food out of the trash).  I remember crying a lot and really hating myself that day.

I think I was about 15ish when I was finally successful.  I read Oprah's story and followed the plan in her book "Make the Connection".  I had decided I'd had enough of my shitty life, of hating myself and feeling out of control. I counted fat grams, I ate lots of turkey-sandwich-and-pretzel lunches.  Every morning, I used my mom's stepper and invented my own step workout routines set to music on mix tapes I made myself (one of the songs I remember is "Come Out and Play" by the Offspring - heh)  I lost somewhere around 70 pounds.  I was so proud of myself.  The 2.5 pounds came off every week like clockwork.  I had a tremendous amount of motivation.  It was almost like I was on autopilot.  I eventually even took up jogging 5 miles a day.  I remember waking up at like, 4:30 in the morning to get my exercise in.

Eventually though, it became tough to maintain eating less than 20 grams of fat a day, and then I went and broke my foot (in a mosh pit, see a few paragraphs below).  I stopped exercising and slowly went back to my old habits.  Of course, the weight crept back up.

Since then my life's been a series of on and off dieting, though to my credit, I have usually done it "the healthy way".  I've never starved myself.  The worst was probably Suzanne Somer's low-carb plan.  I've gone vegetarian for a while.  Vegan for a while.  I joined a boot-camp program.  I did the "Abs Diet" (which I still like and refer to).  Between these attempts, my biggest food problem is bingeing. Something emotional will trigger me and I eat with the desperation of a wild beast - any food that is "bad" is stuffed down my throat to the point of wanting to vomit.  Sometimes I did vomit, not because I wanted to, but because physically my body couldn't handle the massive amounts of food I ingested.

I also did a lot of eating in secret.  Once I was able to drive I often got drive-thru fast food and ate it mindlessly in my car.  I remember having daily habits of stopping at Jack-in-the-Box after school.
Those were days that I felt utterly out of control and disgusted with myself.  I read self-help books.  I tried to get to the root of my problems.  I went to therapy.  And I'd keep having my ups and downs.

I've tried praying away my demons many times, which brings me to becoming a very religious person as a teenager.  At the same time, I enjoyed being "alternative" - I had body piercings, colored hair, I participated in mosh pits.... I was a punk for Jesus.  It was all pretty ridiculous, but I guess it gave me some semblance of "cool", enough to not hate 100% of myself.

This continued into college, 5 hours from home, where I was so lonely that I dropped out my first semester and went to community college.  Bouts of depression followed me.  Eventually I came to a point where I tried to accept my fatness.  In art school (I went back to my university after a couple of years), I painted a whole series of pin-up girls that were not just curvy, but FAT.  I even painted myself naked as a pin-up (the important bits were covered.)  I was trying to do my part to change the system that made me hate myself so much.  I think it was a necessary part of my journey because after that, I was able to be nicer to myself.  I stopped calling myself mean names, usually involving large animals like whales and cows.

I guess as I've gotten older, the health aspect looms larger and larger though.  H and I went through a time in our marriage where he was very angry that I didn't care whether I lived for very long.  I was basically killing myself slowly and expected him to be okay with it.  He didn't think it was fair to him.  And he's right.  It wasn't.

I estimate that I've had by now, maybe 50 times in my life where I've told myself, "Okay, this time it's for real.  I'm going to lose weight for good.  Enough is enough."  Sometimes it lasts a day, sometimes a few months.  I am scared to make any more declarations like that.  I feel strong right now, like I really can make it all the way to my goal weight.  But I have a nagging feeling - what if some big life change happens and I turn to food again?  That's what I'm struggling with right now - what if.  This is my current background on my phone.  It makes me feel a little better.  A little more in control.



I still do a lot of readings on food addiction.  I haven't binged in a while.  I know I will never be "cured", though.  It's kind of depressing, but I have to keep reminding myself that there is no finish line.  That I will probably - no, I WILL - keep falling but as long as I keep getting back up, I'll be good.  

the story of my life on a diet - part 1

The Early Years

I've been overweight my entire life.  When I was a baby, my mom called me her lechuga (lettuce) because I was "fresh and round" like a head of lettuce.  I weighed 10 pounds as a baby; I'm told the nurses were in disbelief upon learning that I was not, in fact, a 6-month-old. Obesity runs in my family from my mom's side; my mom, my sister and all of my aunts are overweight or have been at some point.  I grew up being constantly tormented by my then-thin sister.  I don't remember being made fun of that much at school but maybe I've just blocked those memories out.

Random weight and food related memories of my childhood:

-Being about 7 and my parents sitting me down and having a serious talk about my weight.  They went out and bought me a scale that night.  I don't remember what came of it but I do remember not having any kind of plan and feeling very scared.  They probably told me I was gonna die or something.  They're dramatic like that.

-Going to Mexico all the time as a kid during school breaks was so fun.  My aunt owned a little convenience store and of course I loved hanging out with my cousins, but that store was a big reason I loved visiting her.  My favorites were Pizzerolas (pizza flavored tortilla chips), Poffets (cheese-flavored popcorn), cajeta (a caramel-type spread) on bolillos (a chewy white bread roll), the sodas, the candy... all for free.  I was in fat-kid heaven.  Elsewhere in Mexico - street tacos, tamales, Mexican hot chocolate (way better than American) and of course, like typical grandmothers, mine were always insisting that I eat, eat, eat.  Who was I to argue?

-I used to love to come home from school and eat a couple of frozen mini cheeseburgers, pizza rolls or mini pizzas (like, the Totino's Party Pizza kind, which, to this day, I still eat when I feel like trashing my "diet".)

-I started cooking from a young age (maybe 10?) and I remember often making cupcakes and other treats for parties at school.  Of course, my mom cooked too, and I would happily eat everything she cooked.

-When I was 9, we moved into a house that was next door to an Exxon station.  I was constantly waddling over to buy Blue Bell ice cream (another present-day problem food), Cheetos and Snickers bars.  I bet if you checked their records, you'd see a huge jump in business once we came around.

Looking back, I don't understand why mom let me eat the way I did.  Recently, H (the husband) wanted to ask her but I couldn't.  I figured her feelings would be hurt.  I can only assume she was trying to make me happy.  Maybe she felt it was too mean to deprive me of the foods I loved.  Maybe in my tween years she felt she needed to make up for the stress her marital problems put on my sister and me.  I dunno.  I do know my mom loves me and tried her best.

I should mention here that I went through a few instances of sexual abuse as a kid.  I'm assuming that it was from this point that I went from enjoying food to abusing it.  It was strange though how I sort of blocked out those memories until I was an adult.  I believe on a subconscious level I was fattening myself as a method of protecting myself.  I often felt unloved.  But food loved me back, at least temporarily.  It numbed the bad feelings.  It brought me instant gratification.  To this day I have a huge problem identifying and talking about my feelings.  So many times H will ask me what I'm feeling and I truthfully cannot put a label on it.  I feel kind of broken in that respect.

I was a very introverted, quiet, kinda weird but generally well-behaved kid.  I didn't have very many friends.  I did, however, get good grades in school.  I loved to read (probably to escape) and to draw.  In some ways my childhood was typical.  In some ways it wasn't - being a 1st-generation American to Mexican-born parents was something that shaped who I am.  Though I grew up speaking Spanish, there was still a language barrier sometimes.  I love my mom very much, but I wish I had grown up closer to her.  A lot of my familial relationships were like this.  I think this is why I felt so lonely as a kid.  I would have been closer to my sister, but we apparently hated each other back then.

Yeah, loneliness.  I think this was one of the main contributors to my food problem.  In some ways I'm still lonely, but I am so thankful for my husband.

Well, next time I'll talk about where the dieting starts.

progress :)

This past Saturday was a weigh-in week for me.  (I only weigh every other week since the scale can drive me crazy.)  I'm happy to report that I lost 4.6 pounds over the last couple of weeks - woohoo!  I am so close to the 50 pound milestone I can almost taste it - I've lost 47.8 pounds!

Here is a picture of my progress.  The first one was taken about 2 months before I started Weight Watchers, so I weighed about 313, maybe a little less.



Sometimes I feel like I look very different and sometimes I feel like you can barely tell.  I haven't had anyone make a comment yet like, "Whoa, have you lost weight??".  Only a co-worker who I had told the previous day that I had started Weight Watchers, so that doesn't really count to me.  Well, what is important is that I've had lots of great non-looks-related changes happen: I apparently snore much less at night, my excessive sweating has lessened, and I feel more comfortable bending over.  One of the signs that I needed to go back to Weight Watchers was that I was having a hard time tying my shoes - I felt so humiliated and gross.

I had gone to a new doctor about a week or two after getting back on track and I remember being disgusted with myself after listing the things that were wrong with me, probably all of which were related to my weight: back problems, frequent headaches, mood problems, carpel tunnel pain, and more that I don't even want to get into.  The whole reason I was there was to get back on birth control pills, but I couldn't because I had high blood pressure.

I'm happy that I'm doing much better and that I am still feeling motivated.  My usual pattern is to lose about 30 pounds and then go back to my old ways.  I am realizing and am trying to constantly remind myself that I am the one in control here.  I choose what I make of my life.  

they see me bloggin'... they hatin'

Well, it's now July 2014.  Back in November of 2013, I decided to go back to Weight Watchers for my 3rd time.  I've been going strong for a little over 7 months now.  I've lost about 43 pounds.  I work out 3 times a week (2 hour long workouts and 1 cleaning session that's usually about 2-2.5 hours.)

Blegh.  I have so many thoughts swirling around in my mind right now.  I feel like I could write for two days straight. I have been reading blogs of other fellow weight watchers and I found my old Diaryland journals on the net this morning.  I read about what my life was like in 2002.  Strange, the things that stressed me out at that age.

Hmm.. I am wrestling with whether or not I should take up blogging again.  I'd love to have a space to let it all out, chronicle my journey, and hopefully inspire and help others in the same boat.  At the same time, I'm scared that it will become too much of a commitment.

I'll play it by ear.