Day ? - blogging absence

Hello fellow foodies!

I've been sticking to my program (promise!) but haven't been blogging about it much.  It was a busy weekend and week.  I can hardly believe tomorrow is Friday!

On the weekend, I was sewing with my friends at Church in the morning and can't remember a thing I made on Saturday.  I just know I stayed the course of reducing bulk in the freezer/fridge/pantry...with no cheats!  I spent the majority of the afternoon and evening doing bookkeeping so that I could sew again on Sunday.

As you know, it was the Superbowl on Sunday and I joined an online Superbowl Mystery Quilt day on Sunday, skipping out of church. My friend Pam came over and we sewed together from 10 a.m. to approx. 10 p.m.  Talk about a marathon.  We both finished quilt tops and had a great time together.  Busy hands mean you aren't snacking!

She brought us some muffins and I made lunch (turkey soup from the freezer together with some foccacia bread from Cobb's Bakery which was in the freezer).  My friend raved about my soup and secretly inside I was patting myself on the back...even with company I managed to share a fine meal without shopping.  I'm loving this challenge more and more every day!  Since we sewed until about 10 pm we also had to think about dinner.  She wanted to order a pizza to share but my conscience was wincing!  We ended up making a salad and baking a frozen pizza from the deep freeze.  It was excellent and we sewed on until we were finished our quilt tops.  Phew!

Monday night I made one of my favourite recipes...Pasta with Feta Cheese.  It has so much more in it than just pasta and feta cheese but that is the official name.  Actually, I think I will share the recipe here because everyone who has this at my house always asks for the recipe:

Pasta With Feta Cheese
Linguine to serve your number of family members (I've used both fresh and dried linguine and both are good). Of course you can use spaghetti or fettucine if that's what you've got and want to use up!  Heck...we even had fettuguine!  We had a little fettucine and a little linguine so we combined them!

While you are boiling the water and cooking the pasta, prepare the Al Fresco (served fresh, ie not cooked):

In a large bowl: (this serves 4 people so you will have to adjust for larger crowds)

3-4 chopped tomatoes (I prefer Roma but will use whatever we have.  I have also used canned tomatoes - drained, but it's better with fresh tomatoes)
3-4 chopped green onions
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese (I use lite)
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
3-4 cloves of minced garlic (or to taste)
1/4 cup (or to the consistency you like) olive oil
1 tsp dried basil (really good with fresh basil too)
Salt & Pepper.

Stir all these ingredients together.  It should be kind of like the consistency of egg salad. It should stick together and not be runny.

You can either toss it with the hot linguine or place a spoonful of the sauce over top of your pasta on each bowl.  I prefer the second way because that way everyone gets some of the veggies and cheese.  I find with the first way of tossing, that some of the stuff falls to the bottom of the bowl or gets taken by the first served and then the last guy is left with noodles only. 

One warning ~ because the sauce is al fresco and at room temperature, this cools off fast.  Cooking the sauce totally changes it, so in my opinion, timing it just right produces the best results.  You will never burn your mouth on this pasta.  And guaranteed you'll make it more than once!

It is one of my kids' all time favourites.  Try adding black olives!  It's yummy too!

So that was Monday.

On Tuesday, I had to take my son to the hospital on the mainland for a monthly treatment.  Rather than eat the ferry food, I took my home made granola (from Michael Smith's cookbook) and some yogurt and ate it inthe lineup waiting for the ferry.  I also brought my coffee from home. Mike always looks forward to the Belgian waffles so I indulged him and bought myself another cup of coffee on the ferry.

For lunch I took from home some egg-salad sandwiches but bought coffee at Second Cup at the hospital.  Since we missed the 5 pm ferry home, we went to White Spot and had dinner before heading out to the ferry.  So I guess on Tuesday, we really cheated half the day but I think I should get extra points for taking my brekky and lunch with me.

Wednesday ~ hmmmm ~  Oh yes...it was my Weight Watchers meeting.  My husband made dinner and at my suggestion we had tuna casserole made with the tri-colour rice pasta we had in the pantry, the tuna and cream of mushroom soup also from the pantry, an onion, and the rest of the celery.  It was amazing.  We topped it with the Panko crumbs and some parmesan cheese that we had on hand.  So, for dinner, no cheats!

And Today - Thursday - Would you believe we had the courage to combine some salmon from the freezer with some Tandoori curry paste?  Along with that we cooked up some brown rice and some frozen peas.  It wasn't one of my better ideas as the curry paste kind of overpowered the salmon.  But hey ~! we emptied that jar of curry paste from the fridge so I think that's worth some points right there!

I'm beginning to see bare shelf space in the fridge.  Very promising.  The pantry doesn't look emptier but we're getting there.  I expect for Saturday we will need some fresh veggies, fruit and some milk and maybe some more protein.  I'll have to check the freezer.

And...as for the Weight Watchers...I am still managing to come down in numbers.  This 'eating from the pantry' sounds very 'carb' rich but I lost another .6 lbs this week for a total weight loss of 15 lbs.  Lovin' it!!

Until tomorrow friends,
Mavis