New Tricks, Old Tricks....week 6 and cottage cheese smoothies

I love my cottage cheese smoothies so much I could probably live off of them...seriously! It may seem that I came up with the idea of using cottage cheese instead of yogurt after reading 4HB, but I started using cottage cheese instead of yogurt before I read 4HB, and this is how it actually happened. I always put a pinch of salt in my yogurt smoothies, so I thought, hey, if I use cottage cheese then I don't have to add salt....but I will have to add sugar! That's OK, because vanilla, or any other flavored yogurt has sugar added, this way I add my own sweetner, whatever I chose...maple syrup, honey, brown sugar, etc., I chose! Besides that, cottage cheese has way more protein.

I looked at my new smoothies as "cheesecake"! What kind of cheesecake flavors would I like? My first "recipe" I posted a while back using butternut squash and brown sugar, kinda like pumpkin cheese cake. This last week I started to use lemon and blueberries, and yesterday I needed to use some leftover coffee, so surprisingly I happen to have had a banana in my freezer...cafe' banana smoothie. (*see note about bananas)

I'm not done playing around with flavors, maybe chocolate, strawberry (in summer), I've even thought about a "guacamole" smoothie using avocado and tomato. But for now I don't want to play around with too much choice, instead chosing routine.

Speaking of routine....

week 6

I like the addition of coffee to my smoothie, as long as it's my first meal of the day, between 9:30-11:30am.

Cabbage salad....I love my cabbage salads, and it's easy to pre shred and lasts 5-7 days in the fridge! If I get to add raisins or grapes to my salad depends on whether or not I eat my "fruit allotment" somewhere else (I love raisins in my lentils!)

My meat protieins this week are lamb, chicken and canned tuna. I've been making alot of Indian inspired dal and I was missing lamb badly with those flavors. I bought some shoulder chops (bone in) to cook in the PC this morning along with some ground lamb for some kind of soup or chili. I was looking for more affordable cuts.

I always have my "live trail mix", almonds in the freezer, carrot, celery and broccoli sticks with pnb and raisins for snacks, or preportioned lentils or dal with rasins.

I bought a couple of apples, and lately I can't help but buy red grapes.

I may add 1 serving of oats as a small meal.

I think that's it. Do I need anything else? Nope....I have everything I need except maybe a few pieces of candy! Lucky me.

*note about bananas I have, for a long time, discouraged bananas as a "dieters" fruit of choice because of it's dense sugar content and because it's a startchy fruit, much like a potato is a startchy veg. It's a fruit easy to overeat and doesn't have the water and fiber of other fruits. I haven't purposely bought bananas in years! The only reason I had one in the freezer was beause my son, Gabe, bought some months ago and the last one sat on the counter turning brown. I was going to throw it out, but instead I peeled it and threw it in the freezer, where it's been sitting since.

When I was trying to think of something that would give my smoothie more "weight", I remembered this banana. So, yesterday Mark was at Girya while I was teaching classes and he asked me what I wanted form the store. I said, "Believe it or not I need a couple of bananas!". One of my students overheard me and she questioned me...."Bananas?". She knew by reading my blogposts that I don't advocate bananas.....so I wrote this as an explaination!

I still don't think anyone that has a habit of overeating should include bananas on their shopping list....but I don't fall into that category, lol!