That's funny that all three gals in the group have now plugged Cooking Light. Do you read the magazine? I tried some issues but they were more about fitness than cooking. I get my fitness info elsewhere. I use the CL web site forums, though.

My dinners have been dull by design-- grilled orange roughy with veggies, big hearty salads, soups, chicken. I've been enjoying something called "Coach's Oats" that I found at Costco. It's the taste, texture and fiber content of steel cut Irish oats but microwaves in minutes. I sometimes make steel cut oats in a small crockpot, but then I'm committed to eating it all week. This is a nice product to have around.

Has anyone used pandora.com? I'm really enjoying it for while I'm working at my desk. I recently cancelled my XM radio subscription so it's a great find. You basically build your own music stations, and it's (audio) commercial-free and no charge.

The Sunday birthday party resulted in my brother-in-law, sister-in-law and I making a Biggest Loser type bet, to see who can lose the highest percentage of their weight by Thanksgiving. I'm going on a cruise the following week, so it'd be nice to get into swimsuit shape (or at least closer to it). So Monday morning I rode my bike to Weight Watchers and re-joined. I lost 50 lbs. on a program of theirs in 04-05 and as much as I'm opposed to 'dieting' my portions & choices could use a reality check.

Soooo... if anyone's got any favorite light recipes, please post them on the wiki or in comments here!

Last night was chicken and a lot of pan-stir-fried veggies. The veggies were delicious with just some salt and soy sauce. Costco sells a giant bag of frozen mixed stir-fry vegetables.

I got past my 'all I want to eat is pizza' thing and the last few days it's been Mexican food instead. After a 3 hour paper-writing session for another class, I headed for the grocery store and then spent about 1.5 hours in the kitchen. I poached 3 large, bone-in chicken breasts ($2.75 on sale!), and shredded the meat. I made half into a yummy chicken enchilada dip with cream cheese which I'll bring to a party tomorrow afternoon. The other half of the shredded chicken went into chicken/spinach enchiladas for tonight's dinner. I also had some other chicken I'd thawed out before going to the store that needed cooked so that became chicken scampi and was put straight in the fridge for later days. My daughter's been on a kick with turkey bacon so while I was cooking all that, I also baked a pound of bacon to have around all week. She'll eat it cold out of the fridge, as an afterschool snack! I'll post all three of these chicken recipes on the wiki.

Any other parents in the group?

I think the leftover pizza is FINALLY gone! Last night's dinner was brown rice made in the rice cooker and an ahi tuna steak seared in the cast iron skillet. Mixed together with some thai chili garlic paste in a bowl-- not bad. I still have a ton of roasted veggies to get rid of. This has been enlightening. My diet is really not as good as I thought.

April- I'm jealous about your graduating this semester.

Mike- I think they're saying now that one glass of red wine (which is like 4-5 oz., I think) is supposed to have health benefits. Who knows.

So what have we learned from blogging so far? Anything paper-worthy?

Ugh- I spent almost TWO HOURS this afternoon looking for some interesting articles to do this week's paper on. Crazy. I could've read them and written the paper in that time, if I wasn't so picky. Did anyone have Atkinson for Research Methods? I had that this summer, and he seemed to grade all our papers based on how suitable our choice of article was for each assignment. I'm really not great with the UA library article searches, I guess, either. I have to weed through hundreds of ridiculous articles to find one appropriate one each time.

DINNER! Well, I still am lacking motivation to cook but at least tonight I sliced up an onion, a yellow pepper, two zucchini, and a bunch of sweet potatoes and roasted them. I toss them in some olive oil first with some kosher salt and cayenne (optional) and spread on a cookie sheet (I use a silpat on it) and bake at 400 for 20-30 minutes, stirring once. I stuck some roasted veggies in my daughters leftover cheese crisp and that was my dinner.

Do you guys have google accounts? You can sign in with those to post comments.

We wound up doing just pizza and wings for the big party yesterday. We finally got rid of all the chicken fried steak leftovers and now we've got a ton of these left over. I could use something light and healthy tonight. Maybe I'll make a nice lentil soup or a veggie stir fry tonight.

My employer offered this free 'executive health exam' which then offered a free 'personal health coach', whom I talked to last week for the first time. My health is excellent but my BMI could go down a few points. She and I made a goal for a certain number of minutes of exercise 5 days a week and for me to keep the nightly wine down to 3 times a week. She'll check back on my progress Thurs. So I'm off to rack up my daily minutes now.

What are you guys doing for dinner? What do you do for exercise?

Testing, testing! Today is Sat., Sept. 15th.

Does anyone make their own dog food? I'm going to start supplementing my dog's dry dog food diet with some healthy 'real' foods. My sister's been feeding her four large dogs food she prepares them for years. I actually could use more healthy grains, veggies and lean proteins in my own diet, so if I can eventually find some nice concoction to keep a big pot of in the frig, we might share it!

Last night was S.O.'s birthday dinner and he picked TexAZ Grill, a hole-in-the-wall joint he loves, on 16th St. and Bethany Home. Our chicken fried steaks were literally as big as the platters (and then there was another slab under the one!), so we brought home most of our three dinners. That'll be tonights' dinners. And maybe a few more. If I can face the deep-fried wall of meat again, that is.

Tomorrow I'm having about 25 inlaws over (ack) and haven't decided if I'm cooking or ordering out. Maybe I should serve them our leftovers. (kidding!)