Thai-ish Salmon

Last week, I made a brilliant discovery. A website called Dinner, A Love Story. This woman not only believes in the importance of family meals together, but also loves cooking healthy things and trying to find innovative ways to keep great ingredients in family dinners - that kids will actually eat. You can tell she loves the challenge of it, and feels good when her family likes it. But she's not crazy and doesn't make you feel guilty at all - which I appreciate!

If you know anything about me, you'll know my favorite things when it comes to food are: fresh fish, shrimp and seafood of any sort, avocados, mangoes, papayas, plantains, very dark chocolate, chilis or any spicy peppers, red wine, limes and good tequila. Not necessarily in that order. Knowing this, you would not be alone in wondering why I'm overweight!

Despite my love of pretty much all fish, salmon has always been one I have struggled to find a good relationship with. It's hit or miss for me. Growing up in Florida, and now living in Singapore, there is so much fresh ocean fish, that I rarely eat salmon. However, I try to have it once a month as it is simply so good for you, and I would like my little one to learn to like it too.

So I made this recipe on Saturday, originally adopted from that great blog - although of course, I can't follow directions and had to change almost everything about it. It was still delicious, and even better, is my 3 year old ate all her salmon. I'm still patting myself on the back.

Note - I removed my daughter's salmon before adding the curry paste, as she doesn't like anything spicy yet.

Thai-ish Salmon

• Salt and pepper a 1 1/2-pound salmon filet.
  
• Heat skillet to medium-high heat and add a little canola oil. Place salmon in skillet flesh side down and cook for about 3 or 4 minutes until nicely browned. Remove from skillet.
  
• Reduce heat to medium-low. Add 1 tablespoon finely minced lemongrass (from the white part of the stalk) and 1 tablespoon chopped scallions and stir around for one minute. Then add 1 can of light coconut milk a generous squeeze of lime, and 1 to 1 1/2 teaspoons Thai red curry paste (to taste). Whisk together and let simmer for five minutes.
  
• Add salmon back in, skin-side down, nestle into the sauce. Bring to a simmer, then add a handful of each of the following: chopped green peas, chopped broccoli, chopped white button mushrooms, 1 chopped tomato. Simmer another 7 to 8 minutes. Stir in 1/4 cup chopped cilantro, 1/4 cup chopped basil. (I think you can use whatever vegies you like, she used green beans, yellow peppers and shitake mushrooms).
  
• Serve with jasmine or long grain rice, more cilantro, scallions, and a squeeze of lime.

(one word of advice, was when making Thai-inspired dishes, include a dash or two of brown sugar. I didn't have any, but I think it would have improved the flavor slightly)

Image via Dinner, A Love Story. Mine was so delicious, I forgot to photograph it! Oops.

about to cross the line

Over the last two weeks, I've been pretty quiet on this blog. My in-laws have been in town, and I've just been maintaining - not continuing to make progress, but not doing damage. At first, I considered this a success of sorts. But then my Dad, who is also my virtual weight-loss buddy, had this simple line in his email, "everyone supports you losing weight. It's great that you are maintaining, but we've got work to do!"

Simple as that, and as true as the day is long. (I know that's not the saying, but I've made a change, ok?)

So I've been trying to make progress again the last few days, really hard, to get downward movement on the scale. Otherwise, all this running I'm doing is being wasted on simply maintaining my weight with the extra indulgences I've been having. There will be times where I have genuine plateaus, but this is not one of them.

While my next 'goal' is of course my next 5 lbs goal, a little unofficial, but nonetheless exciting goal for me is breaking into the 160s. Over the past two years, I've occasionally lost 5-8 lbs or so on various diets, but I never got into the 160s. I got into them before my wedding on weight watchers, but gained it all back after.


Needless to say, crossing this line will be hugely exciting for me, even if its not one of my weight goals.

Over the last week, I gained a lb, then lost it, then dropped to 170.8. Then today, my official weigh in day, I was 170.2... That's just so close it hurts! I'm still happy with more downward movement, but any day now, I expect to break that barrier.

You will know when I do, you'll probably hear me jumping up and down and dancing naked in my bathroom, halfway around the world.

Monday weigh in

Monday, February 14, 2011

Today I was 170.2 - which means I'm down another 1.2 lbs.

Total lost to date, - 11.4 lbs.

sometimes, life gives you chocolate peanut butter cake

I love the saying "if life gives you lemons, make lemonade." But even better, in my opinion, is "if live gives you lemons, ask for tequila and salt."

Yesterday, life gave me a huge slice of chocolate peanut butter cake. No joke. We went to a restaurant for lunch, had a burger with a side salad (w/o cheese, etc) and had a couple of my hubby's fries instead of having my own order. I was allowing myself to indulge without going overboard, completely in control, or so I thought.

Then, as we waited for our bill, the waiter brought over a HUGE slice of chocolate peanut butter cake, on the house. Proving that, no matter how good you are, sometimes things are just out of your control.

I mean, who would even think something like that would ever happen? But it did.


I allowed myself to have one bite, which turned into two small bites as the cake was so tall. Then, I deployed a dieting trick that I only use in desperate circumstances.

I put my fork on the table, so it was dirty, and couldn't be used again.

I used to do this in China, when we were eating Chinese food which is always served family style. Each person has a small bowl or plate and you eat directly from the communal dishes. It is very hard to keep track of how much you eat this way, as you don't have a visual measure of it. Also, it is rude for them to 'clear the table' while you are still sitting there, so in China they leave the dishes in front of you for the remainder of the time you are there. Which leads to excessive picking in my case, another little piece here, a small pinch of that there and so on. So I used to put my chopsticks on the table. As dirty as some Chinese restaurants are, using them again would likely result in instant death or violent diarrhea. Either way, a risk not worth taking.

However, Singapore is nothing if not clean. So this move didn't have the same affect and I had to fight the urge to have just one more bite.

But I was successful, and lost a half lb to boot!

out on the town

Last night a friend from Beijing was visiting, and it was so fun to see her. I had the best friends in Beijing, that were like family. Even better was a girls dinner that I went to monthly, and it was like free therapy. We would meet at a restaurant, have drinks and dinner, and dish. We called ourself the fab five - and all of us were varying degrees of working moms, career women and expats.

Having said friend in town was such a treat for me, and of course, we went out to dinner!

We went to a fab restaurant and I had looked up the menu online and planned what fish I was going to have in advance. I knew we would likely have an appetizer and drinks, so I was super cautious about calories during the day so I had some to spare for dinner. In fact, by dinner time I had only had about 435 calories.

She picked the starter and it was crab and artichoke dip, not healthy but this is life. And we have to control ourselves in it instead of avoiding it all together. So I had about 2T, plus some chips. Well that works out to about 300 calories right there! Add in the wine and my calorie count got pretty high, but not too bad. Planning for it the rest of the day really helped, and I'm pleased to say I didn't gain...

Here is what yesterday looked like.

Monday weigh in

Monday January 21, 2011

Today I was 171.4 - which means I'm down 3 more lbs, and even better, have made my next goal!!!

Total lost to date, 10lbs.

I am ecstatic to have made my second goal, now I am off to celebrate with my mani/pedi. Except I went to the salon and they told me its an EXTRA $10 charge because of Chinese New Year. I told them that they should be doing PROMOTIONS for cny instead of charging us extra. As you can imagine, I then had to tell them they'd lost my business and I left. I'm going to Malaysia this weekend and will get it done there.

Sometimes, I even amuse myself!

why business class isn't vacation

When I first took on the regional role at my company, I was based in Beijing and covering Asia Pacific. The first six to nine months were filled with travel, as I made my way to different offices in the region meeting people and press. Going from a network where the blessing of God could hardly grant you travel approval, this was a whole new culture to me.

At first it was exciting, business class, five-star hotels, corporate credit cards, etc. While I've always been very careful and never taken advantage of this, what it means is that you are pampered the entire time. Your hotel has complimentary happy hour, breakfast buffets, you're in a business class lounge at the airport with food and free-flow drinks and your hotel room often comes with complimentary wine.

a Westin Hotel buffet

Let me be clear, business trips are a LOT of work. You tend to work longer hours than you do at home, you are running around meeting clients or in my case, press. You are also trying to squeeze in as much as you can - so there is a reason that companies try to make it as comfortable as possible - you are exhausted!

Despite an ability to wake up early, I almost never have the chance to enjoy the hotel pool or gym, or even go out to eat outside the hotel. But I have taken my blackberry to the hotel breakfast buffet and my laptop to the free happy hour (if I'm not in the office still).

After the first few business trips, I learned an important lesson. Business trips are NOT vacation. And you shouldn't act like they are. Mentally, something happens when you're in a nice hotel and flying business class, you start to feel like you're allowed to indulge. But this is not a holiday, its a Tuesday and you're working.

Luckily, most hotel buffets offer the same spread, and I know what I'm having before I arrive. I'm not tempted by all the options anymore. There are plenty of healthy things, from fresh fruit, salad bars, sashimi and fresh steamed seafood.

The reason you haven't heard from me in a week is not because I've fallen off the wagon, its because I was on a business trip in Dubai last week, and was averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night. Despite promising myself that I would soak in the bathtub (we don't have one at home), I didn't even have time to do that!

But don't worry, I wasn't vacationing, so my healthy living continued on (save for one night where I had a few too many! But who's perfect all the time?)