Super Juicy Meatloaf

So...if you had absolutely no life, an abundant amount of time on your hands and no responsibilities and happened to have the interest in perusing the history of this blog...you would see that ground meat and I have a precarious relationship.

Which is funny because I have lots of recipes on this blog using ground meat (like my "Magic Meatballs"). But those are recipes I've only ever been able to take a few bites of before I feel like I swallowed a gold brick.

But yesterday I had a taste for meatloaf. And when you have a taste for meatloaf, it cannot be denied.

Wait...let me correct myself. I had a taste for my mother's meatloaf. Oh her meatloaf was the thing of iconic food dreams. It sliced perfectly yet was dripping with juices, it was so moist! Unfortunately, in her recipe that also meant it was also full of fat, which put together with ground meat is a sure-fire way to get me to pray at the temple of the porcelain gods.

When Mama Foodie passed away, I tried to play with her recipe and wasn't very successful. The meatloaves were "ok." But they didn't achieve that level of moisture she got with the high fat meats and bread soaked in milk and yadda, yadda.

But yesterday I decided to give it one more shot. And...I was successful! So I'm sharing the recipe (sorry, without process pics because I didn't start off making this for the blog). You can make this in a muffin tin, mini-loaf pan or whatever you want. I made a big loaf because I was feeding three non-ops.

Nik's Super Juicy Meatloaf

Ingredients:

• 1 lb. whatever ground meat you like (I used 85/15 fat percentage, I wouldn't recommend super lean meat)
• 1 c. diced onions
• 1 c. grated zucchini (grated zucchini = peel skin, bust out the good ol' fashioned grater and put in some arm work!)
• Any other chopped veggies you like. Red peppers would be nice for color variation!
• Your preferred seasonings (I used salt, pepper, a bit of garlic powder, a pinch of sage and a little bit of red pepper flakes)
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp. steak sauce (I prefer it over Worcestershire Sauce but if you like that better, use it!)
• 1 c. no-sugar added and/or low-sodium ketchup
• 1/4 c. steak sauce (yes, in addition to the tablespoon above)

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a bowl, combine meat with onions, zucchini, any other veggies you're using and seasonings and mix thoroughly. Add egg and the tablespoon of steak (or Worcestershire sauce) and mix again.

Bake for about 40 minutes for a whole loaf. Mini loaves should only take about 30 minutes. I baked it uncovered but if you are using a lower fat cut of meat, cover with foil to preserve as much moisture as you can.

My general (read: Old Wives) method of checking the done-ness of meat: Poke your finger in the thickest part of the loaf. If it feels soft under the surface it isn't done. If it feels firm when you press it, it's done. If after the allotted time you're not sure if it's done all the way, turn off the oven and let the loaf sit in the oven as it cools.

Remove loaf from oven to a cool surface for about 10 minutes before cutting. Meanwhile in a small bowl, combine ketchup and steak (or, again, Worcestershire sauce) in a bowl and whisk until thoroughly combined. I also include a bit of the extra pan juice from the meatloaf but that adds fat to the sauce so if you don't want it, don't use it!

Pour the sauce on top of the loaf and slice! If using mini loaves you can either put it on the individual loaves or set it on the table in a bowl for people to take what they like.

This is the world's simplest meatloaf recipe but so good and so JUICY!

Five Products Every Bariatric Patient Should Know About

One of the things I love about this blog, and our communities on Facebook and Twitter is that it’s constantly growing! As folks get their surgeries they are discovering Bariatric Foodie and joining in on the fun.

That’s great, but it occurs to me that sometimes I reference products I love like everyone knows what they are. So new Foodies, this one’s for you! Here are five products every Foodie should know about, with links to check them out!

PB2

What is it?

PB2 is a product made by Bell Plantation. It’s actually a by-product of peanut oil. When peanuts are pressed for oil, they leave behind a powder that, when added to foods, gives the flavor of peanuts with a fraction of the calories and nearly all the protein! Two tablespoons of peanut butter is roughly 200 calories, 17g fat, 7g protein. Two tablespoons of PB2 is 45 calories, 1.5g fat, 5g protein.

How do you use it?

I personally like to put it in yogurt, in my oatmeal, in protein shakes. But the possibilities really are endless! Here’s a link tocheck out PB2!

And here's my all-time favorite recipe using PB2.

Textured Vegetable Protein

What is it?

Textured Vegetable Protein (or TVP) is a soy-based product that is often used in foods in place of meat. If you’ve ever eaten imitation bacon bits (voluntarily or otherwise) you’ve eaten TVP. While there are debates about the benefits and drawbacks of soy, TVP packs a powerful protein punch in a small quantity. A quarter cup of TVP is 80 calories with 12g protein!

How do you use it?

I personally use it in a variety of ways. I add it to my oatmeal, I use it to make the “tuna burgers” my youngest daughter loves so much.  It can usually be found in your local grocery store in the health food or organic aisle. The most common shelf brand of TVP is called Bob’s Red Mill.

Here’s my tutorial on how to use TVP.

Sugar-free Syrups

What are they?

Sugar-free flavored syrups are most commonly used in coffee shops to flavor coffee. But us Foodies know there are many other uses! The two most popular brands are Torani and Davinci. Syrups come in a plethora of flavors with new ones coming out all the time.

The one drawback some Foodies have with these syrups is that they are made using either Splenda or sucralose (which is the main ingredient in Splenda). Some Foodies either don’t tolerate Splenda or sucralose well or don’t desire to use them. I’m currently checking out some syrups with natural sweeteners, so stay tuned for more information.

How do you use it?

The better question is how don’t you use it? You can use these syrups in protein shakes,yogurt, oatmeal, desserts and much, much more!

Here’s a link to my top 10 favorite syrups!

Quest Bars

What are they?

I have a well documented love for Quest bars! To me they are what every protein bar should be. They usually have between 190-200 calories and 20g of protein, most with fewer than 5 net grams of carbs. You can't beat that with a stick! I always give newer folks the advice to eat only half (or a quarter) of one to start and to microwave it about 12 seconds in the microwave. 

How do you use it?

I'm pretty straight up with my bars. I eat them as-is, although on the Quest Facebook Page they often share that other customers like to bake them and include them in different kinds of recipes.

Here are my reviews to date of Quest Bars flavors:

• Double Chocolate Chunk
• White Chocolate Raspberry
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
• Banana Nut Muffin
• Peanut Butter Supreme and Mixed Berry (Note it's a review of two different bars, same for the below links!)
• Apple Pie and Peanut Butter & Jelly 
• Vanilla Almond Crunch and Chocolate Brownie

Carbquik

What is it?

Although in recent times I had switched to now discontinued Atkins Baking Mix (which was low-carb and high-protein), Carbquik is definitely worth knowing about. 

It's a baking mix, which means  you can easily make baked goods with it (along with things like pancakes and waffles) because it already includes some baking powder. It also has a boatload of fiber, which is why it's low carb. (Educational Moment: Any starch claiming to be low-carb can only be low-carb by adding fiber, which the human body cannot digest, thus taking away from the carbs we absorb.) 

How do you use it?

I've used it a few things and interestingly enough the net carbs per serving always comes to 3g. Freaky. Anyway, here's a link to where you can get some and here's a few ideas on how to use it:

• Pancakes
• Single (us) serving pot pies

Thanksgiving Covert Cooking: Nik's Sweet Veggie Pie

Forgive the crust. It was a quick job!

When you all get your copies of the “Bariatric Foodie Holiday Survival Guide” you’ll read all about a concept I call “covert cooking. (Side note: For folks who snagged one of the now sold-out Survival Kits, your copy of the book is coming with your kit! Otherwise, I know the rest of you are planning on ordering it from Amazon, right???)

Long story short, covert cooking is taking a dish your family loves and making it healthier but doing so in a way where it looks, smells, tastes and feels like the original. And then not telling your family (at least not when they are eating it) that it’s healthier. I go into the topic in more length in the book (as well as why you have to be REALLY careful how you change holiday recipes!) But the bottom line is this: to successfully covert cooke, you have to make smart (and believable) swaps.

This pie is an example of covert cooking, although an accidental one. What I mean by accidental is that I didn’t go into this with the intention of withholding any information from my children. They know me. They know a pie is never just a pie.

The accidental part came in because they got to the pie before we had any conversation about it. They tasted it and decided maybe, for once, I just let a pie be a pie and made pumpkin pie (my kids have such discerning pallets that they can quickly and easily tell a pumpkin pie from a sweet potato pie from sight alone).

Little did they know, the pie was not made out of pumpkins but out of these:

Check out my Basset Hound, Benji, trying to photo bomb!!!

“What the HELL is that, Nik?”

I’m glad you asked. I have a friend. Her name is Margaret and she runs a blog called "Feed My Sleeve." Margaret is everything I want to be someday because she produces a lot of the food she and her hubby eat on her very own property! This year she had a bumper crop of round zucchini and earlier this summer she gave me some. One cool day I decided to roast them and noticed the insides of the larger ones were similar to butternut squash in color, texture and flavor. So when she gave me another boatload of them recently I decided to see if I could pass the flesh from the zucchini off as pie.

The above picture is the result.

For those of you who don’t happen to have access to a round zucchini, the same could be done with the yield of butternut or acorn squash. Just make sure it’s orange! Here’s the rest of the recipe, including an option to make a protein pie (although this one is not).

Nik’s Sweet Veggie Pie

Ingredients:

• 15 oz. of some sort of orange veggie (Veggies in the gourd family work best: butternut squash, acorn squash, etc.), cooked soft and pureed
• 1 c. no-calorie sweetener of your choice (I used Splenda)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• A “splick” (about 1/16 tsp.) salt
• 1 heaping tsp. pumpkin pie spice
• 1 egg
• OPTIONAL: 2 scoops (doesn’t matter the size) vanilla or unflavored protein powder
• 12 oz. fat-free evaporated milk
• 9-inch pie crust of your choice (Or you can go crustless. Since I made this mostly for the kids, I just got a storebought crust. If you choose a no-crust option be sure to spray your pie plate down well with nonstick cooking spray!) 

Directions:

Pre-heat your oven to 350. Make sure to pre-heat it for a while so that it is HOT when you are ready to put your pie in.

If you’re using a prepared pie crust, place it in your pie plate and pre-bake the pie crust for about 7 minutes. Remove to cool and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, combine pureed veggie, vanilla, salt and pie spice (and if you are using protein, add it at this stage) and mix well. (Tip: I usually use a hand mixer on low speed.)

Add egg and mix again until fully incorporated. Finally, add condensed milk and mix thoroughly. Mixture will look soupy.

Pour mixture into pie shell and place pie plate on a baking sheet and into the center rack of your oven.

Bake for 55-60 minutes or until fully set. Transfer to a cooling rack and allow it to cool one hour before cutting.

The verdict? The kids liked it!  I still haven’t told them it's squash. My youngest would not mind. My oldest would feel a DEEP sense of betrayal (she’s the proverbial “picky one”). I think I’ll keep it to myself. But this recipe is definitely a keeper for Thanksgiving. I’m going to make one (and probably use acorn squash unless Margaret’s zucchini plant yields anything else), put it on the table and walk away very fast!

Four Days Before Nik's Surgery

I just came across my old diary from before surgery. I thought I'd share with you the last entry before I had surgery.

Keep in mind that I was (still am) no different than any other post-op on this journey. I didn't know I'd start Bariatric Foodie. I didn't know I'd come to have this HUGE support network. I didn't know that I'd learn to accept love and that I'd learn to love myself!

Looking back at this is sort of unreal to me. I have a renewed appreciation for the person I was back then. She was BRAVE. She was STRONG. She was a FIGHTER. And she still is.

Pre-ops if you don't keep a diary, consider starting one. Because I promise you, a day will come when you NEED to read something like this to remind you just how far you have come.

January 4, 2008

This is really going to happen, isn't it?

Well all the tests are done. I must say I've never contemplated my internal organs so much as I have this month. I've seen my gall bladder (thankfully it's stone free!). I've been tested for high blood pressure, pregnancy (yeah right). I've had an EKG and a stress test. That last was a most jarring experience.

Somehow throughout this whole process I managed to keep thoughts of the dangers of this operation in the back of my mind. Mostly because I didn't really believe this operation was going to happen. But there is an acceptance that comes with having your heart chemically stimulated while you are hooked up to multiple gadgets that sort of begs thoughts of mortality. I don't think I'll die from this operation but I COULD. That though alone is too much to bear. I don't want to exist anywhere that my daughters do not. This is one of many reasons I pray for salvation of my soul. I want to share the next life with them as well.

So I choose to believe that by thinking positive thoughts, speaking positive affirmations, my desire to come out of this alive will materialize. Over the years I've learned that belief is a choice and it's one I don't take lightly. So as I choose to believe all will be well, so too do I choose to believe that I will be successful at my new lifestyle. I choose to believe that life will get better for me and I choose to believe that God has my perfect mate. He's grooming him and making him worth of me as He makes me worthy of [that man].

I also choose to believe I am doing the right thing. not everyone thinks so but I don't regret being open about my plans. I don't purport that RNY is for everybody. I just want people to respect the surgery as a choice. Some may want to consider it, some may not. but I'm tired of people calling hte surgery the easy way out or that it's not losing weight "the real way" (whatever that means). So that's my deal. 

It's a choice - a VALID one - that I happened to make. 

3 DAYS & COUNTING!!!

Foodie Review: Quest Double Chocolate Chunk Bars

FTC Disclaimer: Bariatric Foodie and its representatives (here referred to as "Foodie Reviewers" received complimentary product for the purposes of this review. Bariatric Foodie strives to provide fair and unbiased product reviews, as set forth in its Advertising and Product Reviews policies. Any products that are linked within this blog post will redirect you to website where you can purchase that product online. If you do purchase the project through the linked site, Bariatric Foodie receives a small portion of your purchase price. If you have any questions, please email bariatricfoodie@yahoo.com

Man...Quest is always coming out with new and yummy flavors! And the freaky thing is that they seem to be reading my mind. Such is the case with this bar. I am solidly on #TeamChocolate, so I was excited for the Quest Double Chocolate Chunk bar.

But I want you guys to get various perspectives, so I asked two Foodie Reviewers to try the product and let me know what they think. Just as a reminder, Foodie Reviewers are readers who have volunteered to do product reviews for you. While I have enough Foodie Reviewers for the time being, I plan to get more Foodies involved in the future, so stay tuned to Bariatric Foodie on Facebook and Twitter to respond the next time I call for volunteers.

Here's what your fellow Foodies had to say about this new protein bar!

What'd you think about the packaging?

Sherry: The packaging shows chocolate chip cookies, which was my downfall pre-op.  Lots of great information on the front such as 20g of protein, 3g net carbs, only 1g of sugar and no artificial sweeteners and no gluten containing ingredients. 

Monica: Very attractive package.  I liked that it clearly stated on the front: no artificial sweeteners and 20 grams of protein.  The list of ingredients on the back was easy to understand; the.only one that I didn't know, they explained with an *.

How are the "stats"?

Sherry: Stats are 160 calories, 6g of fat, cholesterol 5mg, sodium 250 mg, potassium 180mg, total carbs 25g, dietary fiber 16g, sugars 1g, erythritol 6g and protein 20g.  Stats are great for a meal replacement bar.

Monica: Good nutritional value for what you get.

What about the smell and texture?

Sherry: Upon opening the package, you immediately get a whiff of chocolate.  The bar looks like a brownie. There are no "chunks" of chocolate though.  A little deceiving.  The texture was like a very chewy brownie. Was surprised that the product was "crumby" when bitten.

Monica: Since I had never tried a Quest bar before, I expected the bar to look like the outside of the package (a chocolate chip cookie).  I was surprised to see that looked more like a brownie.  The smell was sweet and pleasant.  The texture was soft and malleable.

So how'd they taste?

Sherry: It tasted like a chocolate protein bar.  Smelled better than it tasted.  I was not jumping for joy at the taste.

Monica: If you like chocolate this is for you!  I tried a bar, two different times.  One time was right out of the package (flower plate picture).  Great to eat on the go, when you need to eat good, withoutalot of time.  I loved that it didn't have a gritty taste.  The other one, I flattened out, cooked it for 5 min at 380 degrees and topped it with a tiny bit of peanut butter (red plate picture).  Baked, it tasted almost like a peanut butter brownie.  Yum! I gave my eight year old daughter a small bite of the bar without peanut butter on it and asked her if she'd buy it again.  She said enthusiastically said, "Absolutely!"  There is a slight aftertaste, but it is not bothersome. 

Do you think this product has overall value?

Sherry: I would buy these as back up for the office, when I don't have time or forget to pack lunch.  Not a bad price for 20g of protein in a hurry.

Monica: I ate my bar for dinner.  It kept me full until bedtime (4 hours) and the sweetness of it satisfied my "sweet tooth" so I didn't go searching for something to snack on later in the evening.  I was worried that with so much fiber (16 g) and the Erythritol (6 g), that I would have stomach issues, as my body is extremely sensitive to sugar alcohols and large amounts of fiber.  I was pleasantly surprised that was NOT the case.  No problems with digestion - at all.  Based on the taste, the amount of nutritional info you get, the fact that it didn't upset my stomach and it kept me full until my next meal, I feel it's well worth the price.  Even better when you can get a coupon from a major retailer that carries it!  

(BF Note: Erythritol doesn’t work the same in the body as other sugar alcohols. In fact, most people don’t have any reaction to erythritol at all, so if you see it in a product, just keep that in mind!)

Final Verdict: (Should a Foodie “purchase” or “pass?”)

Sherry: Like a previously stated, I would purchase, but not as an everyday meal.  I prefer protein shakes. These would do in a pinch.  Best chocolate tasting protein bar that I have had though.  Good job Quest!

Monica: It's definitely a purchase!  A flavorful way to get in your protein.

Thanks Sherry and Monica! Foodies, did their review convince you? If so you can click here to order some Quest bars for yourself!