Author: Snoskred
Good News Protein
I do not “preach” about many things in life. Sure, I can suggest solutions on a myriad of subjects based on my personal experiences, and I do that here on my blog.. Travel. Eating out. How to avoid scammers. The importance of booking directly with a company rather than a via third party website. How to go from not running at all to running 5kms at a time without stopping – these are either already written posts or they are posts for another day.
I have struggled with my weight all my life. Guess what? It is no longer a struggle for me, and a big reason for it is my lunch time protein shake.
When I talk about protein shakes, I sometimes feel like I am trying to spread the good news and often folks just aren’t buying it. I want to be very clear about this.
Protein shakes changed my life forever
When I mention protein shakes to folks who ask me how I lost my 25kg (55 pounds), I will hear the same things over and over. They sound like this –
“I had a protein shake and it tasted terrible”
Yes, it probably did. I’m guessing you had a pre-flavoured protein shake. Those shakes contain artificial sweeteners and they all taste bad as a result. I do not know why flavoring must = sweetener, but apparently everyone involved in protein thinks it must be super sweet to make people drink it.
MY FIX – I buy raw protein without flavouring. I add my own flavour. I could serve my shake in a milkshake glass with whipped cream on top and you would have no idea that you were drinking a protein shake. You would think you are getting a frappe from Starbucks or Gloria Jean’s.
But unlike the frappe from Starbucks or Gloria Jeans which on average contains 30g of sugar, my shake has just 2 grams of sugar, which comes from the frozen banana. I do not add any sweetener to my shake because I feel the banana gives me all the sweetness I need, but if I did need to add some I would go with a touch of maple syrup.
Their shake might have between 6-10g of protein – mine will have 37g of protein. Their shake will have around whopping 30-40g of carbs, mine has just 13g. Their shake will be 300+ calories. Mine is 220.
“I can’t just have a shake for lunch”
Actually you can. I do it all the time. I tell you, if I drink the shake and wait 20 minutes, I will no longer be hungry and I will remain not hungry for at least 2-4 hours after I drink the shake, maybe even longer.
And you don’t have to just have a shake if you don’t want to. You can add healthy snacks on the side. My go-to snacks are usually olives, hommus with carrot sticks, or nuts of some kind. However all the nutrition you need is more than likely right there in that shake, and adding snacks adds extra calories.
“How can I do a shake at work?”
Preparation is key. If you are like me and you don’t mind taking a bag or box in with you, then you can take your Nutri-Ninja with you to work. I measure out my protein ahead of time and have that in small containers and I take a small freezer pack with my 1/2 frozen banana and frozen coffee ice cube. I drink my shake right out of the cup, rinse it in the sink when I am done, take everything home with me when I go, then wash the cup and blender attachment at home that night.
You could buy two Nutri-Ninjas and keep one at home and one at work, or you could invest in some kind of cheap second blender to keep at work.
“Shakes are so boring”
Shakes certainly do not have to be boring. I can drink a different flavoured shake every day of the week if I want to and I can get a little creative about it. Because my shake is so low in calories I do not mind adding something decadent to it once in a while.
I might throw in some dark chocolate to give an extra dimension. I like to add peanut butter powder for a bit of extra savory flavour and if I don’t have any PB2 on hand I might add in a scoop of peanut butter. I sometimes treat myself on weekends by adding a few teaspoons of whipped cream. Salted caramel sauce is a good way to add extra taste.
The bottom line is, I love how my shake tastes and I don’t see any need to change it. I am a big coffee lover, I love chocolate, I love cinnamon, put these things into my shake and I am happy.
I wrote back in 2016 about my adventures with protein. My current shake recipe looks like this –
40g RAW flavour WPI protein powder
1 teaspoon cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
35g-40g frozen banana – I break them into pieces and freeze.
100mls almond milk.
100mls brewed espresso coffee
1 frozen espresso coffee icecube.
(instant or filtered coffee will also work)
Things I Did Not Buy – January
It is a strange feeling to be out in the world and not want to buy anything. On the second day of the Year Of Buying Nothing, my parents took me to run some long put off errands. They both needed new mobile phones and haircuts. Apparently everyone else in the world also needed new mobile phones and my parents are not at all patient people.
After a couple of drop ins to the store in which the queue was too long, we finally got to speak to someone who sat us down and said they would send a consultant over. 11 minutes later – and I know because they counted every single minute and there was a robust discussion about whose watch was correct while we waited – we left the store with no mobile phones. While out I saw many things in many shops but all of them stayed there. Nothing especially tempted me.
Every morning I like to tune in and see what Today’s Special Offer is on TVSN. On the 5th of January it was a beautiful Katherine Kelly Lang kaftan at a great price. Even though it was cold shoulder it wasn’t much of a cold shoulder and the embellishment was gorgeous. But I did not buy it, because YOBN.
One thing that is DEFINITELY not tempting at all is the range at Rockmans this summer. I have never seen so much ugly clothing in one place. The prints that are semi-nice are cold shoulder in a big way, so heck no.
In our ensuite bathroom we have a plastic container full of water for the kitties. It is a large rectangular shallow container which they love to drink from. The sister container to it is our pizza leftovers container but sometimes it gets used for other things and is not available for pizza night, so I would like to reclaim the second container. I thought maybe this would be the first thing to break our no-buy deal.. but then I remembered we have a second spare Christmas Lights container and they love that one so much out in the Nirvana.
I could see about a million uses for these long “bath runner” mats in my house. We already make use of bath mats on the floor in the kitchen and in various places about the house. These are 1.4 metres long but a bit pricey at $19.99. Though that is a pretty decent price for a standard size bathmat when I think about it, let alone these which are massive. However, #YOBN, no deal.
I love mercury glass and this would be perfect for the nirvana, but no sale.
You know I love mixed media and Boo Radley. I saw this dress when it was first released and it is stunning. But, kthxno, #yobn! ;) You might want to take a look at the clearance rack though, because last I checked there were some great bargains. I usually click on lowest to highest price to see the best deals.
Friday Reflections 1
One Friday night we sat out in our delicate nirvana and watched a storm roll overhead. I took a number of photos of reflections I found while out here, and these photos will become Friday Reflections!
Freezing Mushrooms
As part of the No Spend Days I have added into my Year Of Buying Nothing challenge for this year, I wanted to give freezing mushrooms a try. I have never frozen mushrooms before, but I have become a lot more creative in the freezing things department since our deep freeze arrived.
I freeze a lot of fruit which gets used in protein shakes plus espresso coffee shots, most of our meat is purchased in bulk and frozen, sometimes for up to 6 months if the deal is a good one. I even freeze watermelon rinds for the chooks to enjoy on a hot day.
Sometimes these challenges can actually create super awesomeness. If I could manage to freeze the mushrooms, I could do a big bulk cook up every so often, whack them in the freezer, and every Thursday take out a packet for use on Friday. If I can do it in one hit, on a day that is not Friday, while listening to music or a podcast, and then have mushrooms for 2 months.. Wow that would be so great! Even greater would be if I can stock up when they are on special.
I have been pre-cooking my mushrooms for our weekly pizza for some years now, after one of my home made pizzas became very soggy and waterlogged due to mushroom moisture. There is a LOT of moisture in mushrooms.
How much moisture? I had two punnets of 375g bbq flat mushrooms from Aldi. I prepared them and cooked them in the oven. I then weighed them to find I now had 375g total of mushrooms – I had lost an entire 375g in the cooking process!
Mushroom preparation has been the annoying part of my Fridays for a long time now, and sometimes an annoying part of Thursday or Wednesday or whatever day I remembered that I needed to get fresh mushrooms for Friday and would head off to the supermarket *just* to get mushrooms. And while I was there, I would tend to buy other things – maybe things we did need like milk or vegetables, and sometimes things we did not need.
The part I least like is having to rinse them before chopping, but they do grow in soil and manure, so that is always going to be something I do, to satisfy my germophobic brain.
So I knew the moisture factor could be a problem when it came to freezing them. I did some reading and found that pre-cooking was recommended before freezing, so I just followed my normal steps –
rinse mushrooms, chop & lay them out on baking paper on a tray, cook for 12 minutes @ 200C (395F)
then blot with paper towel to remove excess moisture, and lay out on paper towel to drain.
Normally this is where the mushroom meets the pizza base. But not today. Today we have some new steps. Foodsave the mushrooms, then place them in the freezer. There is still quite a bit of moisture in these mushrooms even after cooking and draining, and that is the brown liquid you see in the next photo – which was taken after the mushrooms have been frozen.
The foodsaver is the best thing we ever bought, it saves us enormous amounts of money because I can buy food when it is on extreme special and when I freeze it I never have to worry about freezer burn.
Then on Thursday night, I take the mushrooms out of the freezer and place them in the fridge to defrost. On Friday when it is time to build the pizza, I open the packet and place them on some paper towel to drain – as there will still be some mushroom moisture trapped inside the packet.
This process is 100% a keeper for me. I tried two different types of mushroom – Aldi calls them “whole” and “bbq flat”. The next time mushrooms are on special, I will buy up and freeze. And now I am thinking of other things I can bulk prepare and freeze – capsicum is next on our list, just last night I froze some leeks.
Every week I make pizza and it is the best pizza I have ever made, since last week. This time was no exception to the rule. I use the Aldi pizza bases, topped with pizza sauce, pizza cheese, mushrooms, olives, pineapple, capsicum, feta cheese, ham, bacon, pepperoni, more cheese, then an egg is poured over the top.
It was just far easier, having done the mushroom preparation a couple of weeks beforehand.
Meal Planning Presently
At the end of 2016 The Other Half had a health scare which led to us completely re-vamping how we eat. Most everything is made from scratch in our house now and this is due to the large amount of sodium found in processed foods, whether it is tinned, frozen, jar sauces of most kinds or even things like bread can be incredibly salty.
Rather than draw up a meal plan each week, for the last year or so we have been sticking to a fairly regular 7 day rotation. It goes like this –
Monday – Cottage Pie
I make a very large tray of this – it is essentially my savory beef mince recipe doubled with low-sodium gravy instead of soy sauce and then topped with sweet potato mash and cheese. We now have massive stainless steel trays from IKEA. The 6 remaining serves become lunches for The Other Half for the remaining 4 days of the week.
Tuesday – Rotating Random Day
This will usually be some form of chicken with vegetables. It might be garlic parmesan chicken (pictured above) or sweet and sour chicken. It could be pepper steaks – chicken for me, beef for The Other Half – with vegetables. It could be chicken kievs with cheesy potatoes. It could be chicken and bacon pasta – though that is fairly rare for us these days.
Wednesday – Fish and Chips
We buy fish fillets already crumbed and frozen. We like Aldi crumbed fillets.. I do make the chips from scratch – sweet potato for me, normal potato for The Other Half – and I have created my own spice mix to go on them now without any salt but my chips get a generous coating of salt once they are cooked. I sometimes have a big bowl of baby peas with parmesan sprinkled over the top with mine, and the other half has carrots, corn and peas.
Thursday – Muffin Tin Meatballs
This is one of our most favourite meals of the week and it is incredibly simple to make. You just put carrots, a leek, baby spinach or brussel sprouts into a food processor, add in your meat, a couple of eggs, put it into a muffin tray, sprinkle some cheese on top and cook.
We also have made this into “Meatza” and we now alternate between the two because Meatza is even easier – just cut the mix in half, and then spread it out onto a baking tray with a spatula into a flat shape – square or circular, like you would a pizza sauce on your pizza base or even like if you were making a meringue. Top with a little pizza sauce and cheese. Cook it for 35 minutes and you are done.
Friday – Homemade Pizza Night
My pizza is awesome. I usually pre-cook my mushrooms in the oven for 12 minutes to take some of the moisture out otherwise you end up with a soggy pizza. Some of you may know I have been on a quest to try freezing mushrooms and I will tell you all about that on Wednesday.
My pizza has mushrooms, capsicum, ham, bacon, olives, feta cheese, pineapple, pepperoni, and right before it goes in the oven I pour an egg onto it smack bang in the middle of the pizza. If you have never had egg on a pizza, you need to try this the next time you make one. It slowly oozes through all the other toppings while the pizza cooks in the oven in a deliciously eggy way, fluffing up and holding everything together beautifully. In pizza houses they call this the “Australian” pizza but it usually just has ham, cheese, tomato sauce and egg.
This is the one night of the week where The Other Half might get close to his sodium limit because he likes everything meat on his pizza. But because we’ve done so well for the rest of the week, it does not cause many issues.
Saturday – Leftover Homemade Pizza Or Out
Our pizza makes 6 slices so we usually eat 3 the first night and 3 the second.
Sunday – Roast Or Random Things.
It might be a roast of some kind if we found one we like on special. It might be Hayden’s pies from the freezer heated up. It might be Vili’s pasties. If we went out on Saturday night, we might eat our leftover pizza.
Breakfast & Lunch
For breakfast The Other Half likes crumpets with cheese. I used to have a small bowl of cereal or a mini quiche but these days I am having a protein coffee for breakfast which lasts me until 2-3pm. Lunches for me before protein coffee were always my protein shake – it is gorgeously cool in summer – but now I just have a small snack, usually ham and avocado and/or egg on a cruskit.
In winter last year I did experiment with adding protein to our vegetable soups and I loved that just as much as the shakes, however since I found protein coffee that would just be too much for me. The Other Half has cottage pie, tuna pasta bake, fake lasagne or healthy chicken strips.
The Plan For 2018
This year I will be trying to add in even more vegetables to our meals. The big problem I have is – the other half has an allergy to cellulose. Certain vegetables and almost all fruits he cannot eat, and this is a great shame as he loves apples and watermelon but cannot have them. He can have pineapple cooked on a pizza or in sweet and sour chicken but usually not raw.
Some vegetables he can eat as long as they are cooked – these include carrots, zucchini, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, spinach, capsicum, tomatoes, swedes, turnips, parsnips, pumpkin, potato, sweet potato, leeks and onion. We do pretty well when winter vegetables are in season and he gets a big serving of at least two usually three or four vegetables in his cottage pie lunches. In autumn, winter and spring I often make a big pot of vegetable soup each fortnight from whatever is left in the fridge.
I also want to try and mix in some new recipes on our random Tuesdays, and I also want to focus in on making the meals I bulk prepare for lunches of The Other Half the best they can be. I will be looking for some new recipes to try out here, too.
One of our biggest problems has been finding oven baking trays which are reliable long term. Sure, they all start out nice, but before you know it the non-stick coating is peeling off and then the tray underneath begins to rust. Ceramic ones have never been that great for us, they eventually crack and break and they are not always easily available in Holy Sheeyit! Are You Really Cooking This Much At Once size. :)
I’m going to look into this some more, in particular the kinds of pans used in commercial cookery because that is essentially what this is, just on a slightly smaller scale, but if anyone has ideas I would love to hear them.
Updated Thursday 2nd August – Just to add in some other small changes we have made. We did find great stainless steel baking trays at IKEA for a very reasonable price. I will try to add a post about protein coffee next week on the blog and link to it here when I have done it.
Bread – we have found an excellent bread mix from Laucke that we can make ourselves and the sodium level is not too high. The Other Half could have a couple of slices of this but he usually just has one and cuts it in half if he wants a sandwich.
The Bookends
Year Of Buying Nothing Update #1
My main goal for 2018 when I began this challenge was to make it to the end of January without buying one thing that I consider a part of this challenge. Included items are things like clothes, shoes, homewares, that kind of stuff.
Over the month of January I saw various posts from other people which gave me some new ideas.. So I’ve added in a couple of extra goals to this challenge. Some parts of this post might be a little boring, other parts might inspire you to set yourself a new challenge.
No Spend Days
One of my great inspirations in life though she probably has no idea how much so – Frogdancer, without whom I would not own chickens – has a new blog about finances. I love what she did here with this intentional spending spreadsheet. I thought I might try something in Google Calendar to track my no-spend days. But then I remembered, I have The Other Half who is a spreadsheet master. He quickly created something pretty easy for me to use –
That does not look like much, but when you click on the tab at the bottom, it does this! MAGIC!
This will help me to set goals and also to streamline the way I do things. I would love it if I can get my spend day down to once a fortnight plus my occasional mani/pedi.
Just a note about the TVSN there – that is a part payment for my exercise equipment I bought in December. While I am not counting that in my buy nothing 2018 challenge, because I did not buy it in 2018, I *am* counting it as a spend day.
My current No Spend nemesis is mushrooms. Right now we usually do one shop a fortnight and a small top up the following week, usually just fresh beef mince and fresh mushrooms for my pizza. I can freeze the beef but I have never frozen mushrooms before. I’ll give this a try next grocery shop and then foodsave the mushrooms and freeze them. If that works, I might do a big mushroom prep once a month and freeze enough for pizzas that month.
No Spend – Sum It Up January
I managed a total of 21 no spend days in January, with one long streak of 8 days with nothing spent. I could have managed 12 days if not for the fact I needed to get a script at the chemist on the 18th. But, bonus, I figured I might as well stock up on things while there, so I would not have to go back for a while. I think I have enough vitamins to last until March now.
But wait, whoa, what is that big chunk o’money on the 14th there? That was grocery shopping plus a credit card charge for a hotel booking I made for a trip to Canberra in September. The price was too good to pass up and it is right in the middle of Floriade.
No Spend Goals for February –
February has 28 days. Why not try to make 23 of them no spend? I definitely will have two grocery shops this month, my TVSN will come out one day unknown ahead of time and I may need one manicure.
Grocery Spending
I will be tracking our grocery spend for 2018 mainly to see if there is anywhere I can do things more economically, thanks to An Exacting Life for the inspiration on that one. This spreadsheet took us longer to figure out and create. Did I want to enter in all the information from our grocery receipts to one spreadsheet? Turns out, yes I do.
And thankfully our Aldi Overlords have made this pretty simple for me. On every Aldi receipt there is a 4-6 digit number for each item. We buy the same items over and over, so I can have one spreadsheet with all those numbers and the item description.
Then when I go to enter in the fortnightly shop, I just type in the number from the receipt and all the info pops up, then I can put in the price I paid for it.
Coles did not make life quite so easy, but the good news there is, we really only buy about 30-40 items from Coles these days. So I will give those items their own item number, and print out a handy reference chart.
Already I see one thing we will be changing. See soy milk at Aldi and then soy milk protein plus at Coles? Notice the $1 extra per litre I am paying for soy milk with extra protein? I get plenty of protein already in my diet, so I will be buying the plain soy from Aldi from now on.
This week Aldi was out of Almond Milk, and I had to get it from Coles, where I discovered it is ALSO $1 more than I can buy it for at Aldi, as is the regular soy I normally get from Aldi!!. It is the exact same product. Why should Coles get an extra dollar per litre for almond and soy milk? I needed to buy it, but we have a large fridge and I can make sure to have a couple of backup containers with long useby dates in future.
Sometimes Aldi does not have things that we need for our fortnightly shop. Leeks is one example. They tend to run out of leeks fairly regularly and I never buy them from Coles because they are so Up Money there. Leeks are a staple food for us, we use them instead of onions which we both tend to have a bad reaction to. I might have to look into freezing them.
We also use a spreadsheet for our shopping list which you can see here, plus you can grab your very own copy all set up and ready to use. I will do a post on the grocery spreadsheet in March after I have been using it for a while, with instructions and a link to your very own copy. If you want a copy in the meantime comment here and I will email you one.
I will do a mini-shop at Coles today as I am trying to stock up on specials we usually buy *and* to earn bonus points. 2000 points = $10 off a future shop, so I found enough specials in the second week and I have planned it out to exactly $60.72 – I can gain $30 off future shops.
My plan for Coles this year is to stock up on the things we always buy that have long use by dates when they are on super special, eg cooking chocolate, cinnamon muffin mix, frozen fish fillets. That way I will not have to buy them when they are Up Money AKA not on special at all.
Grocery – Sum It Up January
Coles January – $165.70
Aldi January – $489.59
Bulk Meat – $23.24
Total grocery spend – $678.23
Grocery cost of 21.87/day
I used one $10 bonus for Coles this month, without which our spend would have been $175.70, pushing us up to 22.20 spend per day. That is one reason I am willing to sacrifice a no spend day in order to earn bonus points. It is not something I would do all the time, though.
Grocery Goals for February –
Bulk buy chicken breast if it is on special. Stock up freezer items if they are on special. Can we get grocery cost down to $20 a day? This might depend on specials available at Coles. If I can keep Coles to $120 this month that would leave me with $440 for Aldi – 28×20=560 -120=440.
Ahh, maths, my least favourite thing. But data, that is more interesting!
Delicate Nirvana – Chimes Akimbo
It has been a while since we checked in on the Delicate Nirvana. Don’t you worry though, we’ve been enjoying it just as much as ever.
Once we completed the pergola, we wanted to get some wind chimes. We are wacky like that. Some folks hate a wind chime, my Mother is one such person. This is likely one reason why I wanted one, being a wind chime deprived child. If you want to buy a wind chime on the South Coast of NSW, Mogo is a top location to pick. We had plenty of wind chimes to choose from here.
The plan was we could pick two wind chimes each. I chose a sparkly chicken wind chime.
The Other Half was looking for one perfect sounding wood and one perfect sounding large metal wind chime. He found this large wood wind chime.
I chose this rainbow seashell wind chime.
The Other Half was unable to find a perfect large metal wind chime. A couple of weeks later at the Berry Markets, he decided on this silent windchime instead.
I also chose three long seashell and mirror strings – one blue, one red, one dark grey. I wanted green but they did not have the right shade of green for our Nirvana and The Other Half loves all things black and grey, so I chose that instead.
While there we discovered this stunning mirror which contained all three of our theme colours – blue, green and red – so we chose it for the wall.
We had a good month of great wind chime time, then once we installed the shadecloth it cut down the wind so much we rarely hear a wind chime anymore.. even when a big storm blows through we do not seem to get any wind or breeze.
Public Holiday Friday
Australia has many public holidays throughout the year but the most hotly disputed of them all is “Australia Day“. For many years it was a celebration of Australia but then some people realised they were celebrating what some native Australians call “invasion day”. And now there is a big discussion about changing the date.
Of course there is opposition to changing the date. All these arguments will go on forever, and probably nothing will ever change. That tends to be how things roll in Australia. There is still discussion about becoming a republic which we had a vote about in 1999, that is nearly 20 years ago now!
For the most part it feels to me like Australia Day has become a day when “Aussie Pride” Australians drink far too much and make a mess of the place. Or they drive around in their Made in Korea vehicles with Made in China Australian flags flying from the windows – many of which end up littering our beautiful country.
Me personally I feel that I no longer wish to celebrate this day with other people. Even worse in a tourism area, the place will be packed. Beaches, walks and running will sadly not be on the agenda today. So we will Delicate Nirvana quietly at home instead.
If you do celebrate Australia Day, I wish you a happy one. :) If you do not, I wish you a happy public holiday. If you are not in Australia at all, happy Friday to you! ;)