Cooking Outside The Bag

Lately, I've been relying on food in bags like Trader Joe's Marinated Chicken, Birds Eye Steamfresh vegetables and Alexia Oven Fries etc. for dinner.

I tired of cooking even though I'm constantly getting cookbooks from the library.

And, sometimes, by the time I get home from the gym, I don't even feel like warming anything up; I just make a sandwich and have some Wasa crackers and hummus on the side.

I saw No-Cheese Lasagna in Bob Greene's cookbook and finally decided to try it.

Bob Greene's No-Cheese Vegetable Lasagna

The most labor intensive part of this recipe was chopping the onions, garlic and tomatoes. Blending the basil,


almonds, walnuts and onions etc. was a bit messy but the flavor it produces is definitely worth the disorder. The basil mixture actually had a cheese-like consistency. I thought about sprinkling some Parmesan on the finished product but the No-Cheese situation held its own.

I would make this recipe again but I would add, at least, mushrooms to the mix.

Four Ounces

I keep track of the calories that I consume for the most part. Of course, with prepackaged food, it's easy to figure out how many calories you're consuming but with lunch meat etc., it's a little bit trickier.

I got curious this afternoon and remembered that an old mail scale was around.
So, I weighed my Trader Joe's marinated chicken. I was apprehensive about how much it would weigh and I thought that I might have gone for the head fake but it wasn't as bad as I imagined. My chicken weighed about four ounces.

I also had a baked potato with a teaspoon of olive oil and Birds Eye steamfresh mixed vegetables for a tasty little dinner that I, basically, just had to warm up.

Calm Before The Storm

Didn't know if I would be able to go swimming today since the sky looked menacing, ominous or whatever adjective is used to describe an impending storm and possible tornado.

I was so happy that the weather broke. I headed off to The Wreck Center hoping that the weather would remain calm.

When I got to the pool, there was no sign of the lifeguard but the security guard said that the pool was open.

There was only the front crawler and myself. It was so quiet that I felt as if I was doing yoga. Then, the sun came back out. Things could not have gone any better -- especially since I did not get to exercise yesterday. I went to my aunt's graduation instead. She has been plodding away at classes the way that I have been plodding away at the gym. Her three hour graduation trumps exercise since it was more exhausting.

After I left work yesterday, I had one of my almost ready-to-eat meals: green beans, Trader Joe's marinated chicken and Alexia Olive Oil and Sea Salt oven fries.


It's a good thing that I had my own food because my Aunt Girt orchestrated an impromptu party. When it comes to food, my aunt does not play. She brought her favorite Sam's pizza, tuna sandwiches, a foot long sub sandwich, watermelon, cantaloupe, chips etc.



It was a post-graduation feast and I was so glad that I had eaten before the graduation because I would have experienced untold guilt eating so late and so decadently. I did have some watermelon and it was worthy of an Al Green moan.