Zunnion Dip

Whenever you find yourself on a diet, you start noticing the things that you do out of habit. The evening snack of chips or popcorn, the veggies with dip or the ice cream. While surfin some food sites, I found a recipe for Zunnion on VegWeb.com and thought I would give it a try.


I assembled all the ingredients:

Then I chopped the 3 inch piece of zucchini into a small dice and about half the shown onion, which in total is about 1/4 of a large sweet onion. I did not peel the zucchini. I added in 5 small cloves of minced garlic. Put them all in a pot to sauté in their own juices. I added water as the liquid evaporated. Towards the end, I added 2 teaspoons of olive oil to help bind the dip together.

When it became soft enough, I put it in the blender to purée.

The finished product. I cooled it and took it to the class with me and had many requests for the recipe, so it was a success! It is good with celery sticks and other crudités.



The recipe can be found at http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=8186.0 .

Day 7

Wednesday ends the first week of this diet. I'm a third of the way there! It was strength training rest day so I only had cardio to do. I guess this was what got me thinking more about trying something new. For breakfast I had some apple chips. I've been having problems trying to figure out what to have for lunch usually reverting to the combined brunch thing and eating lots of fruit. Today however, I took some large leaf lettuce leaves and used them as a wrap for a sandwich. I topped them with a bit less than a teaspoon of the Chelton House Raspberry Vinaigrette. http://www.cheltenhouse.com/content.cfm?mode=ch_products It was fat free and contains only 7 calories for a tablespoon, so about 2 calories on each of my sandwiches.


The ingredients for my sandwiches:

The final product. One is wrapped and the other is ready to be wrapped.

They turned out pretty good and were quite tasty. They are a little messier than the traditional wrap, but knowing this in advance took care of any problems. They were also filling. I had trouble finishing the second one.

We had our cleanse class this evening. With music lessons prior, it put dinner off until later. When I got home I had baked sweet potato fries and finished off the celery and zunnion dip ( in a separate blog post ) that I had made earlier and taken to the class along with the rest of the pear chips to get more opinions about the results. All in all it was a good day.

Day 6 Eats

After my morning chauffeuring duties, I decided it was a day to go back to bed. When I got up and got myself moving for the day, I came across the apple and pear chips recipe and delayed my going to the gym so I could make them. To keep me from stealing from the chips, I started by slicing myself a plate of apples and pears and celery for breakfast/lunch.


I did manage to get to the gym, but not until late afternoon. In addition to cardio, this was my lower body day. So I had leg extensions, leg curls, leg presses, calf raises and hip abduction/adduction to do. In addition I was so fortunate to be able to do mat work today, supermans, bridges and hydrant combos. I also did worked my abs and did my shoulder raises. What a lucky girl I am! :-)



When I came home and cut a sweet potato into chunks and half a sweet onion. I sprayed them with olive oil and placed them in a 425 oven for 35 mins. Then I prepared some green bean almondine. I had a quarter of a chicken breast from my Sunday smoker still and had that for protein. All in all it turned out quite well!

Day 6 - Apple and Pear Chips

Today while looking around the computer for something for a friend, I found a Martha Stewart recipe for Apple and Pear Chips.

I turned the oven to 200 degrees and assembled what I needed. I used a Royal Gala apple and a Bartlett pear.

I prepared the pan with parchment.

Then I sliced the apple and pear and put the slices on the pan. I ended up with 2 pans of apples and 1 of pear slices. The instructions ask you to dip the fruit slices in sugar and place them on the pan. As I cannot have sugar, I used a little bit of stevia between my fingers to drop on one tray of the apple slices.

Into the oven for 1 hour. Then they needed to be turned and baked for another hour. I really need to stop trying to turn this oven into a convection one. I needed to do each pan separately. The apples got a little over done, but the pears were fine. On tasting, I liked the apples without the sweetener better. These are a promising snack as long as I remember to be patient and do one tray at a time!

The finished apple chips.

The recipe can be found here http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/apple-and-pear-chips

Day 5 - Blue Monday

Blue perhaps, but what a fine day. A sunny 11 degree Celsius with Spring Blooms in the gardens help to ameliorate any negativity there may be. I did the test with the Secrets of the Valley Juice. I had one cup for breakfast. My blood sugar dropped by 1.4 mmol/L. Maybe it is the evening late night snacking. I have been trying to avoid considering that as I do like an evening snack! Today was errand day, so the morning was spent doing those chores. I had originally thought that a nice piece of toasted brown rice bread with tahini would hit the spot before heading to the gym but the bread had gone blue moldy. I don't think I will be buying it again. I can't eat it fast enough and I never remember to get it out from the freezer in time to thaw. Lunch turned into a snack of beet and sweet potato chips.

On to the gym. I did the cardio thing for 30 mins and burned some good calories. Today was upper body day. I always find this one a challenge with my herniated discs and arthritis, but I take my time and usually get through it. I do 3 sets of 15 for most of my exercises. Lat pulldowns have 30 pounds of weight, the chest press 20 and the Row/Rear Deltoid also 30. I put 25 pounds of weight on the tricep pulldown and 20 pounds on the woodchop. The rest of my exercises are done with free or body weight. Bicep curls are with 5 pounds and dumbell side leans are done with 8 pounds. I use 3 pounds and do 0nly 1 set of the front and side shoulder raises. I end with 3 sets of 15 wall pushups and stretches. Normally when I go to the gym it is relatively quiet or an older crowd is present. Not today. Today I got to exercise along side all these young bucks! I think there was a group training session going on. So here I was pulling down with 25 pounds of weight and the guy next to me was pulling 110 pounds. The showoff! ;-) I did get through them all though and lived to tell about it so all is good.

For dinner, I made a mixed green salad with cukes, onions, carrots and topped with slices of half an apple and half a pair. I sliced a quarter of a smoked chicken breast and put it along side the salad with green onions and celery sticks. I used a fat free raspberry salad dressing on the salad. I know it had some dextrose, salt and corn sweetener in it, all of which are on my not to eat list. However, the quantities are low, and it has to be healthier than all the olive oil I have been consuming.




I seem to be having trouble finding interesting foods for lunch. I don't want to eat just because the time says I should. I want to eat interesting, tasty, and well prepared food. I still have 16 days to come up with something. Fruit for breakfast is good and I suppose if worse comes to worse I could add fruit to lunch.

New Garden Pics

Facebook seems to be having some issues, so I am going to post my new garden pics here.

Sweet Potato Chips Attempt #1

To buy Sweet Potato Chips, I have to ingest some canola oil and soy product that is not on my list of acceptable foods. Olive Oil is the only acceptable one. So I set out to try to make some baked ones.


I used my Kitchen Aid #4 slicer and sliced up a Peeled Sweet Potato. I put them on parchment in a single layer and sprayed with aq light coating of olive oil.

Into the oven at 425 F. In about 10 minutes I turned them and resprayed with a light coating of olive oil. I turned down the heat as it they were browning up too quickly. I had to take them out before they could be crisped up as some were already burning. I added some sea salt to the finished product.

Overall the experiment was successful. However, my next attempt will be at a lower temperature to try to gain some further crispness. Even with the problems I noted, they disappeared rather quickly.