Monday, 3 March 2008

Sunday's brunch

First, a bit on the direction that my blog is currently taking. I've been a Weight Watcher's member, on and off, for many years. I think that the first meeting I ever went to, was back home in New Zealand in the late 70's. In between the WW attempts, I tried other diets . The Cabbage Diet, The Grapefruit Diet, The Nutritionist's Diet At My Local Hospital, Etc, Etc, Etc. They'd work for a little while, but then the weight would come back, along with a little bit more. It has taken me a long time to really get why this was happening, which is something I will go into in another post.

About 2 years ago, I rejoined Weight Watchers. here in Reno, NV. I lost 50 lbs. Unfortunately life got the best of me again and I gained about 40 lb of that back. Now I'm back at Weight Watchers, back on track and intent on succeeding this time. This blog is my way of chronicling this journey and also a tool to help keep me on track. I'm sure that there will be stumbles along the way, but intend to pick myself up, dust myself off and keep going. I WILL make it this time. :-) I invite you to come along with me on this journey. Feel free to leave a comment.


On to Sunday's brunch.

At least once a week, usually on Sunday, I treat myself to a home cooked Sunday brunch. One of my favourite sites to visit, is 'eggbaconchipsandbeans'. A link to this can be found in the blogs list on the left hand side of my blog. So this Sunday I decided to do my, WW friendly, version of beans, eggs, chips, bacon and toast. This is a meal, eaten any time of the day, that you can find in countries such as England, NZ, Australia, etc.

Two pieces of bacon, one egg, 3 oz cold cooked potato cut into chunky chips, 2 tsps olive oil, 1/2 cup of beans in tomato sauce, 1 tbsp butter & canola spread and two slices of lite wholewheat bread, came to 10 points. Sounds a lot, but this was a combined breakfast and lunch. You can lighten the points value by using 1/3 less fat bacon or turkey bacon, eggbeaters and cutting out the bread or potatoes. BTW, the potato chips are not served cold. Use the 2 tsps of olive oil to fry them.

Very tasty and just as I remembered :-)




Beans in tomato sauce or baked beans, as we call them in NZ, are different than the US version of baked beans. They're beans in a tomato sauce. Occasionally I've been able to find the Watties brand, which I bought back in NZ, in one of the International stores here. However, I can usually find the Heinz brand, which is a British brand.


World Market, here in Reno, carries a selection of the Heinz range. They are a little expensive, the can of beans is US$1.79. However 1/2 a cup is only 1 point and they don't contain that nasty high fructose corn syrup, which many US packaged foods are sweetened with.


The Heinz brand does contain glucose syrup. However glucose syrup is not as sweet as HFCS, and does not have the adverse effects that HFCS does. Both Heinz and Watties also have spaghetti in tomato sauce, which in IMO is a lot nicer than the US brands like Chef Boyardee, etc. Again they're not as sweet, don't contain as much additives, are lower in calorie and don't contain the dreaded HFCS ! If you can find either brand, try them, you might be pleasantly surprised. :-)

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