Protein Review - Matrix Mint Cookie

I just got a delivery of Matrix Mint Cookie Protein Powder per the reccomendation of my fellow NC bandster Stephanee. Did the price searching online and still ended up buying it from www.mybariatricpantry.com

Although Syntrax Nectar Protein Powder is nutritionally superior, Matrix is also made by Syntrax so it has the wonderful flavor and spacks 24 grams of protein/140 calories per scoop.


So, how does it taste? OMG. Have you ever had a Shamrock Shake from McDonalds? This is better. You don't even have to mix in sugar free syrups and get fancy with this. Mix it with a cup of Milk, Almond Milk, or Soy Milk and little bit of ice and pass out from the goodness.

Super Bowl Sundae

Do ya'll follow The World According To Eggface? I learned about her blog at my first WLS support group meeting. One of the doctor's mentioned that the blog featured amazing protein shake recipes.I love checking in on the blog weekly.

I love that she has millions of recipes for snacks that would normally be shunned, like donuts  and ice cream.

Lately I've been craving chocolate and/or ice cream something fierce. The other day I grabbed one of those tiny Hershey's Dark Chocolate bars at work. No big deal right? It's smaller than my pinky finger. 40 calories. When I'm eating 800 calories a day, 40 calories is too much. Especially for something that offers me about 30 seconds of enjoyment. So I decided to give the protein ice cream a whirl.

I whisked 2 cups of Hood Chocolate Milk with 4 scoops of Body Fortress Chocolate Peanut Butter and threw it in my ice cream maker.We took a few extra large spoonfuls to taste test just now and it was great.

I can't wait to have some later. I'm going to top it with a bit of whip cream later and have a little sundae. When I get a chance to go to the store I'll try some of eggface's ice cream recipes because they all sound delish.

My Super Secret Hummus Recipe

I was going to keep this recipe a secret because I've never done that before. But what fun is having a recipe that no one else gets to try. Last year I started making my own hummus and people always go crazy over it. A few weeks ago one of my co-workers said, "Oh your hummus is legendary." The funny thing was she had never even had it before!

I prefer it to the pre-made stuff because it actually goes bad. You can buy a package of hummus at any store and throw it in your fridge for months and it never gets moldy. After 2 to 3 days, my homemade hummus gets great big fluffy green mold all over it.

Don't get me wrong I'm not a mold enthusiast, I'm allergic to the stuff. But when I saw that I kept thinking what the hell are we eating? How in the heck does hummus that has been made, packaged, shipped around the country, stocked on shelves and then purchased days later not get moldy after a month in my fridge? If cancer is literally cells that are supposed to die off but don't ... then maybe the chemical preservatives in our food have something to do with that.

Anyways, I digress. Here's the recipe, I made it up on a whim and it is CRAZY good. It packs some heat, so if spicy food bothers you sit this one out.

1 can chick peas (reserve juice from can)
3 cloves garlic Juice from 1 lemon
2 heaping tablespoons Tahini
About 2 tablespoons of Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
Parsley -or any mix of green spices you have on hand
(Everything above this line is my base recipe you can stop here and skip to the directions if you'd like)
2 tablespoons of adobo sauce from a can of chipotle peppers
Cumin
Dried Cilantro
2 teaspoons of dark brown sugar

Start by spooning the chick peas and some liquid from the can into the food processor. You'll end up with a little less than 1/2 a can of juice left over. Set the can and remaining juice to the side, you'll need that for texture later. Pile the rest in the food processor. Throw the lid on and let it process for quite a while until it looks smooth. If the texture is too thick add more juice or olive oil until you get a nice smooth consistency. Taste it right away to see if there is anything missing and add spices as you see fit. You can eat it right away, but it's so much better if you cover and refrigerate for a few hours before serving.

Blueberry-Spinach Protein Shake

I have been dying to try a shake with some fresh spinach in it because quite frankly I haven't had very many greens lately. When you're eating such a small amount it's hard to fit it all in. And quite frankly, my intestines are screaming for a little extra fiber if you know what I mean. So,try this, it's delicious.
1 oz of baby spinach
1 oz of blueberries (I used fresh, but read my notes below, frozen may be better)
1 cup of your favorite % milk
2 scoops of Vanilla Protein Powder
2 packets of splenda Blend until smooth.

I didn't have enough room in my little blender cup to put ice in this one, but I definitely wanted it colder. I put my fresh blueberries in the freezer to help with that and making milk ice cubes might even been another good option. Either way this was super delicious and had 45 grams of protein!

Do Yourself a Favor

People - This whole meatless thing is blowing my mind. WTF!? Tonight we had Meatless Buffalo Wings. I mean, they didn't taste like chicken wings, but they were a great tasting soft protein and the calories are ridiculous.
The normal serving size is 4 wings, but I was craving some broccoli so I only had three wings.

Look at the calories & Protein!

These meatless products are definitely making it into our weekly rotation. This is the brand we had tonight. The website shows quite a few different varieties.

Chicken Stack and 2 Types of Chicken Salad

 Tonight I picked up a rotisserie chicken at the store and premade 4 different meals with it 6.5 total servings!  (I use my foodsaver like it's going out of style. The cool thing is we have plenty of pre-portioned meals for lunches or quick dinners)

I learned how to throw together tomato sauce from my beautiful Italian mother. She used to start with tomato paste and go from there but when they came out with Ragu Robusto sauce, she would start with that as the base and add all the goodness. I love making my version of that sauce, but I'm just not there yet. I can't make it first, because it makes WAY too much sauce, but that's one thing I like to taste and taste and taste as I make it. Not worth it right now.

Well, recently I found this little jar of Wolfgang Puck Vodka Sauce that is really wonderful. It comes in a smaller bottle and I still doctor it up with garlic, onion, mushrooms, and a bunch of seasonings. But I have to admit, there is nothing wrong with that sauce right out of the bottle.

Tonight i just threw a plate on the foodscale and stacked the following on it:

2 oz of shredded rotisserie chicken
2 oz of vodka sauce - warmed up with a couple of chopped mushrooms and garlic
Topped with freshly grated Parmesan cheese
(spend the 5 bucks on a big hunk of parm, keep it wrapped tightly in your fridge - it's so worth it)

I pulled the rest of the chicken and divided it up. I didn't want the chicken to dry out too much, so I decided to dress it up a bit. Here are 2 different chicken salad recipes that I came up with:

Mexican Chicken Salad:
4 oz shredded Chicken
2 tablespoons of plain Greek Yogurt
Tablespoon of Taco Seasoning (more to taste)

Mix up the yogurt and taco seasoning to make a paste and mix with chicken until coated.
Tomorrow, I plan on serving 2 oz of this salad with cubed avocado and some of my favorite tamed jalapenos. Maybe even a touch of salsa.

Black Bean & Corn Salsa Chicken Salad:
2 heaping tablespoons of Black Bean & Corn Salsa
1 tablespoon of plain Greek Yogurt
Dash of Chili Powder
2 oz of rotisserie Chicken

Mix the salsa, yogurt and seasoning, pour over chunks of chicken and lightly toss (I just put the lid on the container and shook it up) This is what is pictured. 1.5oz of avocado, 2 oz of chicken and just a touch of sour cream, cheese and jalapenos

Nectar Chocolate Truffle Review

Two Words:

AHH MAZING

Mexican Beefless Strips

MS and I are meat eaters. The atkins diet has always been a little heavenly for us because we both love all types of proteins. So when our nutritionist mentioned Tofu as a good protein source I just kind of brushed it off... no thanks. I'm not against it, it just has never been appetizing to me.

Well, MS has been researching foods with the most protein and today he stopped by the meatless section at trader joes to check out the nutrition labels. He found these beefless strips that have 20 grams of protein per serving. I was reluctant, but agreed to try them. For dinner tonight I dressed them up with taco seasoning, cheese, sour cream and tamed jalapenos and I must say, I think they were outstanding.

I'll definitely try the other meatless varieties they offer. At this stage of our diet, we would not be able to eat strips of steak like that. The beefless strips were softer and easy to chew.

Check them out for sure, I was truly the biggest skeptic.

1/3 package beefless strips
Cumin
Taco Seasoning
small amount Olive Oil or Butter
Tamed Jalapenos
Shredded Cheddar
Sour Cream
Salsa

by the way, these are pretty amazing too!

Saute the strips in heated pan and oil or butter. Generously coat the strips with taco seasoning and cumin. Just heat up the strips, do not overcook. Plate the strips and garnish with cheese, jalapenos and sour cream or salsa. Guacamole would be great too!


For meals like this I just put the plate on my food scale and layer ingredients until I reach 4 oz.

Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Turkey Meatballs

Man we ate a lot of great food today. Even though I made 10 servings of pulled pork yesterday, I didn't feel like eating it today. Since MS and I had to go grab him some smaller pants at the mall, we stopped at Trader Joe's on the way home.

I've read a lot about their frozen Turkey Meatballs so I knew  I definitely wanted to try them. Today they were giving out samples of Tomato Red Pepper soup so MS grabbed one. Neither of us really care that much for tomato soup, but holy crap, you need to try this soup.

It doesn't have enough protein to have by itself, so you could add protein powder. Or... duh... put some pre-cooked meatballs in it.

This is going to be one of my favorite go-to easy meals for a while. In fact, I don't think I'll go very long without having these two ingredients on hand for the next year.




For 1 serving, Place 3 Turkey Meatballs in a deep bowl and cover with Tomato & Roasted Red Pepper Soup. Cover and microwave for 3-5 minutes until it reaches the desired temp.

3 meatballs has 18 grams of protein and 150 calories.

Single Servings

In the past I would actually scoff at the high price of these single serving foods. The price was entirely too high for 2  people who could easily eat 2 or 3 of these in one setting.

Well, not anymore. These little pre-portioned gems bring happiness to my new life.

We are at the point where we can try some crackers to see how they go down! Another perfect lunch.

This is perfect for 1 lunch - The whole package has 25 grams of protein!

I don't know how I feel about the premixed chicken salad, but I'll try it once.

30 Grams of Protein Per Can

Add a little protein powder - I get 6 servings out of this cup! Ridiculous.

Crock Pot Pulled Pork

I found a pretty simple recipe for Crock Pot Pulled Pork Sandwiches on Pinterest and tried it yesterday. We obviously skipped the bread on this one, but I did serve 3 oz of the pork with 1 oz of mashed potatoes

Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce is my absolute favorite out of a bottle, but I normally make homemade BBQ sauce to lower the sugar for MS. This recipe was great, but I did  doctor it up at the end and make a thicker more flavorful sauce out of the juice.

Here's the recipe inspired from Sweetandsavoryfood.com:

Boneless Pork Butt
Can of Diet Coke
1/2 Bottle of Sweet Baby Rays
Seasoning Salt (I only had Tony Chachere's Creole so I used that)
Cook on low all day, pull the meat with a fork, remove pieces of fat and return to the sauce for a bit.

If you want a thicker sauce:
take a cup or two of sauce out of the crock pot and place in a large bowl. Wisk in Mustard, Ketchup, brown sugar, garlic salt and pepper. Return to the pot or just pour over pork and serve.

We liked it, the meat was very juicy and easy to chew up. This whole recipe cost about $11 and I was able to get 10 - 4 oz servings from it.  I wrapped up most of the servings in my foodsaver so we'll have pre-portioned lunches and dinners that can be heated in the microwave.

Fast Foods For Bandsters!

Check this out! I just saw on the news that Chick Fil A is offering a healthier kids meal option and it looks like a really fabulous option for anyone with bariatric surgery. Yay!

Even in our soft food stage all of this food would be acceptable. Heck if the chicken is too dry, even a half container of chick fil a sauce would be fine.. I looked on the website and can't access the nutritional information yet. But I did see that you can order this meal with a lot of other options.

Of course there is White Milk and Chocolate Milk, you can choose from 6 grilled nuggets or 4 along with . The healthy  sides are Buddy fruits or a Fresh Fruit Cup.

While I was looking at the Chick Fil A website, I noticed a few other great options for us if ever caught in a bad situation.  Or heck, if we just want to go out for lunch with our friends.

Chicken Tortilla soup looks amazing, just skip the tortilla strips if you can't have those yet. I don't know how many ounces are in the medium cup, but we can probably get two meals out of it. There are 230 calories and 19 grams of protein in a medium serving. Looks like this one is a limited time offering.

There's also chicken salad that is available in a cup. The whole cup has 28 grams of protein! It is a bit high in calories (350) because of the mayo... but if you split it into two meals, it's a great option.

I'll make sure to update this post when I know what the serving sizes of the soup and chicken salad are.

I'm guessing both are 1 cup, which would be 2 meals for us now, but after a year or so that would be a perfectly portioned lunch packed with protein.

This is great if you're busy shopping and realize you really need to eat something. Or you just feel like going out to eat with your family or friends.

Special Delivery

I'm so excited!!!! Remember how I was saying I was sick of chocolate protein powder? The other day at the store I saw 2 lb jars of  a brand of  protein powder called Nectar but it was close to $40! Now i don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for packaging. This is what the description says on the back of the jar:

"Gone are the days of low quality whey protein. Gone are the days of those blah-tasting protein drinks that promise much but deliver little. Nectar once-and-for-all breaks the mold by combining Promina, the highest quality whey protein isolate ever developed, with a flavoring system that is so fruitilicious that you will never drink another whey protein shake ever again. If you like the refreshing taste of fruit juice, you'll love Nectar! With its mouthwatering fruit juice flavors, Nectar is truly a protein drink you will look forward to drinking each and every day. Whether it be Chocolate Truffle, Roadside Lemonade, Caribbean Cooler, Strawberry Kiwi, Lemon Tea, Fuzzy Navel, Strawberry Mousse, Vanilla Bean Torte, Twisted Cherry, Apple Ecstasy, or Cappuccino Latte. Nectar will keep you coming back for more. What's more? Well, Syntrax did something totally amazing by engineering Nectar to be so delicious that you can eat it right out of the container. Imagine putting a protein powder in your mouth and it tasting like candy. Imagine this protein powder having zero carbs and zero fat."

Are you kidding me? Is that not the best sales pitch for protein powder you've ever heard in your life? I wanted to buy one so bad but my inner cheap skate kept telling me it was a rip off. So instead I bought something I didn't want for less. boo. (that's getting returned of course)

I've come to realize that you should price shop protein powder. Like I said in an earlier post, we paid $26 for the same 2lb container of body fortress powder at kroger that was $14.99 at wal mart.

When I got home I searched for Nectar online and not only found 2 lb jars for $26 but I found this fab little variety pack for $16!!!! Reviews on a few Bariatric websites were all excellent, so I ordered my variety pack.

The package arrived today and it was like christmas all over again. I can't wait to try them

Look at all these flavors!

Just as I was typing this, I searched for that packaging message, and found this sample pack for $3 less than what I paid. Go figure! Here's the cheaper link:

http://www.mybariatricpantry.com/SYNTRAX_NECTAR_PROTEIN_POWDER_SAMPLES_p/nectar-sample.htm

Listening to My Body - Protein

At our pre-op appointment on December 8th, the nurse went over how we were to drink our protein and hydration fluids after the surgery. She explained to us that Protein was the most important thing for us to get down post-op because it would be the only thing giving us energy and helping us heal.

Since the surgery, each of us has consumed the proper amount of protein we were told to and some days we've had more. This past week I settled into a nice routine. Every day I'll drink about 58 grams of protein in my morning shake. I'll go for a 1.5 - 2 mile walk at 11:30 and I don't even feel hungry until about 3:00 pm. I'll eat something then (with more protein, because I don't want a repeat of that super hungry day) and then I'll eat dinner around 6:00 with another walk somewhere in there.

Well, yesterday I deviated from that routine and I paid for it dearly. Since we are transitioning to soft foods now, MS and decided to just have a slim fast shake (20 grams of protein) and then go to the gym. I felt pretty tired after the gym and decided to eat some salmon salad for lunch. I mixed 2 oz of salmon with a touch of mayo, dill and lemon. I started by eating too fast, and I knew it was happening. I told myself to slow down and when i didn't, I just got up and walked away from the table for a while. That really screwed me up because I was full and had only eaten less than 1 oz of salmon which is only 8.5 grams of protein. It was close to 1:00 at that point and I had only consumed 28.5 grams of protein and 178 calories for the whole day. Needless to say, I started to feel pretty icky.

We went on a little shopping trip until about 5:00 or so. It felt like 8:00. Just as I was about to say, "I think I'm going to go to bed." I asked MS what time it was, and he said 6:00. What the heck? I continued to feel worse. As I sat there I started to get agitated and actually a little angry.  I didn't have the brain power to read anything let alone blog about anything. I knew that wasn't like me at all. That scene from Steel Magnolias where Julia Roberts flips shit because of her blood sugar flashed in my head and I definitely knew I needed to do something. MS got up and made me a full protein shake and very quickly after I drank that I started to feel a lot better. Within an hour I felt good enough to write 3 or 4 posts and we stayed up past midnight. How crazy!

When you only have so much room in that little pouch above your stomach you have to put the right things in your body and you have to eat very slowly. I can see why people have issues with this surgery if they are not getting enough protein. I don't want to feel the way I did yesterday ever again. So if you are getting banded and you take anything from this blog, please let it be that you get enough protein every single day!

Soft Food Phase 1

Like I mentioned, we met with our nutritionist on Friday. She was very pleased with our progress and mentioned that we were doing so well because of our protein intake. She said people really struggle with that.  I have to say, if we would have followed the protein instructions they gave us to the tee pre-op, we would have spent a lot more money and probably wouldn't have gotten all of our protein in either. MS told her that adding protein powder to already pre-mixed shakes was what made us successful.

For this soft food phase, we will still have a protein shake for breakfast. It's the easiest thing for us, and honestly, we drank those EASAdvantEdge shakes for breakfast during the week for a couple of years prior to this surgery. Although we'll be drinking the shakes, the nutritionist wants us to try to keep gettting more and more protein from actual food.

So over the next two weeks we are still aiming to get 50-70 grams of protein. All of the following foods are recommended:

Eggs
Shredded  or Soft Cheese
Flakey Whitefish or Tuna
Tender cooked Beef, pork or poultry
Canned Lentils or Beans
Fat Free Refried Beans
Low Fat Deli Meat
Low fat yogurt, cottage cheese or ricotta
Tofu
Imitation Crab Meat

We'll start by eating 2-4 oz of protein per meal. After we try proteins one at a time, then we can start adding soft veggies and soft canned fruits. For example I'll have 2 oz of protein and 2 oz of soft veggies. When we start eating veggies, it is imperative that we eat our protein first.

To give you an idea of what 2 ounces looks like:


Yep, a salad dressing cup! I used to ask for like 3 of those things full of ranch dressing for salads I ate in restaurants!