Dream Dinners

I had a wonderful night last night! I decided to go to a Dream Dinners session. I'm always struggling with cooking meals for two people. I find all these wonderful meals I want to cook so I go out and buy all the ingredients needed and make a great meal. Inevitably, I always end up throwing out half a bottle of this and half a jar of that after a few weeks of not using the ingredient again.
Dream Dinners is a Godsend! This place is fantastic. You go to their website, pick out 36 portions on their menu. I chose 6 meals of 6 portions. They offer nutritional information for all of the meals. I chose mostly the heart healthy options since I am a lifetime Weight Watchers member and need to keep track of my points.

When I arrived at Dream Dinners I was greeted by a very friendly employee who welcomed me and explained the process. There is a station set up for each meal they offer. I went to my first session and she explained that I place a gallon Ziploc bag inside of a canister. From there you fill bag according to the recipe in front of you with the ingredients in front of you. Everything is prepared, chopped, minced, grated etc. Easy as pie. I made all six meals in under 1 hour. I placed them all in freezer safe packages along with the defrosting and assembly/cooking instructions. I brought them home ready to serve as soon as we are ready to eat them.

I'm hoping they'll taste as good as they appear to taste. I will need to remember to place each meal in the fridge 24 hours before cooking.

My only complaint would be the lack of sides accompaniments. When I signed up I assumed there would be something to accompany the dishes, but no luck. They did have frozen sides available for an additional cost but I decided not to purchase those.

Overall, I feel it was worth the $172.00 I spent. This comes out to about $28.00 a meal. This sounds like a lot but when I factor in all the food I throw out, time spent at the grocery store, time spent cutting, chopping, CLEANING up, etc. It is totally worth it.

I plan to share the meals and my satisfaction here on the blog for anyone that's interested. I chose the following meals for my first Dream Dinners experience:

Baked Fish and Chips with Tarter Sauce
Toasted Pecan Chicken
Beef Pasta Bolognese
Savory Honey Grilled Chicken with Sesame Honey Butter
Steak Gorgonzola
Slow Cooked BBQ Beef with Rustic Country Rolls

I Won An Award....

Thank you so much to Lost Mitten for giving me the Honest Scrap Award!

There are a few requirements and they are as follows:
- I must thank the person who gave me the award and list their blog and link it
- I must list 10 honest things about myself
- I must put a copy of The Honest Scrap Logo on my blog.
- I must select at least 7 other worthy bloggers & list their links
- I must notify the bloggers of the award and hopefully they will follow the above requirements.

10 Honest Things About Me:
1. I'd secretly love to leave it all and move to Bora Bora.

2. I haven't made any pottery in six months because I am obsessed with my hypnosis business.

3. I never want to be married! No matter how many people say "are you sure?"

4. I am determined to figure out a way to make enough money to travel all over the world.

5. My guilty pleasure is postsecret.blogspot.com. I love that blog!!

6. I watch reality TV. Most recently Tori and Dean and America's Next Top Model.

7. I love playing video games. I spent 14 hours recently playing Fall Out 3 on xbox.

8. I am a Life Time Weight Watchers member since 2000.

9. I'm planning to go to Nicaragua for Thanksgiving this year.

10. I am totally in love with my one year old nephew.

Here are the blogs I'll be passing this award to:

1. BizzieLizzie
2. Weighless and Weightless
3. Weight by the Seashore
4. http://ll-n-l.blogspot.com/
5. Not a Stupid Blog
6. Simple Sayings of a Meddlesome Mind
7. Heathen's Hearth

Weight Watchers, The gift that keeps on giving....

Back in 2000 I decided to get healthy. I chose to start exercising and to lose weight. I joined Weight Watchers at Work back then and it really changed my life. I learned how to change my relationship with food. I learned that I was eating to cope with my emotions. I learned that if I keep track of what I'm putting in my mouth I will lose weight and stay thin.

It took me about nine months to become a life-time member. I am currently five pounds up from my life time weight goal. The past few years the 5 pounds has become quite annoying. (I know you're probably thinking wah...5 pounds) but somewhere in my mind I am supposed to be at that life-time goal from 2000. And I know that five can lead to ten to fifteen.

So... back in November I decided to sign back up for my monthly pass and to get back into meetings. I actually altered my weight loss hypnosis CD to encourage me to keep going to meetings. lol. All the while, thinking I need to get back down to my life-time goal. Well, I think maybe nine years later my body has just decided to stay at this weight! Since November I'm down three... then up three... then down then up. It's becoming annoying. I'm wondering if I should just change my life-time weight goal and be happy with where I am.

With all that said, I'm really enjoying going to the meetings. They keep my goals fresh in my mind. I'm going to keep going just to keep on track. Who knows maybe I'll get back to that old weight again...maybe not.

One very cool thing about my meeting is that they give away prizes each week. Last week I won a Weight Watchers cookbook called "Hit the Spot, 140 Savory, Crispy, Spicy and Sweet Recipes You'll Love". If we win something at the meeting we have to try out the recipes or products and come back and tell the group about it. I thought I would share mine here.

I made an awesome recipe:

Overstuffed Avocado-BLT Pizza

1 18 oz prebaked thin whole-wheat pizza crust
3 tablespoons reduced-fat mayonnaise
3 cups lightly packed mixed baby salad greens
1 tomato diced
1 avocado, halved, pitted, peeled and diced
4 Slices of turkey bacon, crisp and cooked and coarsely crumbled.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees
Place the pizza crust on a baking sheet. Bake until crisp about 10 minutes. Transfer the crust to a wire rack and let cool slightly.
Spread the mayonnaise evenly over the crust. Top with the remaining ingredients and cut into 8 wedges.

3 points a piece.

It was soooo yummy!!