A Day Off!

It had to happen sooner or later, but I refuse to beat myself up about it. Yes, I had a day off track. I actually started tracking - having not planned ahead - but gave it up when I decided that I was going to be Really Bad. I'm not sure it was even really that Bad, but it did involve eating nothing until the fried chicken and potato salad, macaroni salad, crisps, French onion dip, drinking Jim Beam and ginger ale and downing a shot of orange cream vodka.

Once we got home, I had a sandwich skinny with a couple of pieces of bacon. After that came an afternoon of more crisps and Cadbury's mini eggs - which I didn't count out to control my portion size, nor did I weigh the crisps. Dinner was six slices of buttered toast and four soft boiled eggs.

Ah well, as I say, I refuse to beat myself up about it. I can't say I've eaten healthily today, either, but I have stuck within my calorie limit and it's a new week tomorrow.

With that in mind, I already have a jar of overnight oats for breakfast in the fridge that was supposed to be Saturday's breakfast. I'll make up a couple more jars tomorrow afternoon when I get in from work. I have all that I need to make my usual lunch of a sandwich skinny with cheese and turkey, and plenty of healthy evening meal material.

This week's dinners will include:

turkey meatballs with a fat-free cream of mushroom soup and fat free yogurt sauce (seasoned with allspice and nutmeg for a Swedish meatball-style flavour) with spaghetti;

chilli made with lean minced pork and beef, onions, carrots, peppers and tomatoes and plenty of chilli pepper, chipotle chilli pepper, cumin and maybe a hint of roasted ground coriander, not forgetting smoked paprika, served with rice one night and used to fill large tacos to make baked burritos another night. The burritos are made with refried beans and a cheese sauce made with yogurt, milk and shredded cheddar. I had the thought that I might make a kind of Tex-Mex lasagne with the large tacos, layering the chilli, tacos, beans and sauce instead...;

turkey breast fillets cooked in the slow cooker in barbecue sauce with a couple of spoons of honey added to it, again with onions and peppers. Great shredded and served over rice or pasta, makes enough for two nights. (Could use that with the large tacos instead, actually, we'll see);

pork rib steaks - not sure whether to just cook them in a sort of casserole or make barbecue ribs.

Apart from all of that, there's a pizza in the freezer, a couple of chicken pot pies (individual chicken pies which can be cooked in the microwave), lots of fish fillets, a roll of refrigerated biscuits (the Southern-style sort which are kind of like savoury scones), frozen oven chips and frozen vegetables.

My knee is still bothering me, so the amount of exercise has been pretty much zero. We were at a 30th birthday party in the park yesterday morning and early afternoon, hence the fried chicken and sides and the alcohol; it was our nephew's party, and it is his two little boys who I look after during the week. I spent a little while following the one year old around and pushing him on the swings, but most of the time was spent sitting down and chatting with people. It was really good to see some of his extended family again, as his parents are both remarried and have younger children, and his grandmother was there too.

It's pretty cool to have married into a relatively large family, even if they are pretty far flung, which is why we're hoping to be able to make the trip up to Vermont and Rhode Island in June or July to see my husband's son and daughter and their children. I don't think we'll make it to New Orleans and then up to Texas as well, not this year, although his sister (who is in Louisiana) usually makes it to Florida once a year. Her two daughters are in Louisiana and Texas, one has two children and one has four.

In Florida we have my other sister-in-law, her four kids and two grandkids (two boys and a girl, all grown up, the oldest girl being the mother of the two boys I look after), her son-in-law (oldest niece's husband and in whose honour the birthday party was thrown), and his father, step-mother and two younger sisters. His mother, step-father and their eleven year old daughter are up to the north of Atlanta, in Georgia. His grandmother has a home in the north of Florida but also spends time on the road in her enormous RV. There's also my sister-in-law's ex-husband, who we see pretty seldom but is a fairly decent sort.

Anyway, here's to a new week! Lots of appointments coming up, so plenty of running around with two small boys and the husband. I will report in on how the tracking is going, of course.