Let There Be Hot Sauce.

Ok...so Citracal Sugar Free Chocolate Calcium Chews are delicious. They taste exactly like a Tootsie Roll and I am not going to mind having 2 a day in the least. I daresay I'll even look forward to it! 30 calories well spent. I've updated my Daily Supplement total in My Fitness Pal to reflect it.

So let's start with breakfast shall we? Before I was banded, one of the foods that I hoped I would still be able to tolerate after surgery was eggs. Glorious eggs. I love them so. Every which way. Scrambled. Poached. Hard Boiled. Sunny Side Up. I even heard Nigella talk about "coddled" eggs one time. I have no idea what that is, but I'm sure I would totally dig it. I've been very careful not to overcook my scrambled eggs, because I've heard that the drier they are, the more likely they are to cause problems. I switched it up a bit this morning with some fresh mozzarella and a dash of my favorite Smoked Tabasco.

 

 

 

Lunch. I'd like to apologize in advance for what I'm about to show you. But get used to it because you might be seeing it a lot this week. Like maybe every day. Here's why: I'm a high school Spanish Teacher and for the rest of this week I'll be attending the Advanced Placement Summer Institute at a local university. From 8:00am until 4:45pm. Although we get passes to eat lunch in the cafeteria, I just don't feel like I'm ready to branch out like that yet. Enter my friend Charlie Tuna. Easy, tasty, no refrigeration required. And the best part is it has 210 calories and 20 grams of protein. That's about as good as it gets. So being the always-be-prepared Girl Scout that I am, I tried this out today. I'm not tryin' to have any kind of  "cracker incident" in front of my new teacher friends tomorrow. I'm happy to report that all went well.

 

I'm most excited to tell you about my dinner! It was amazing. As I already mentioned, one of the blogs that I read from start to finish was Lap Band Gal's. I picked an ABSURD amount of information from reading her posts. One book she recommended checking out was Before & After by Susan Leach.

 

Although Susan had gastric bypass, her recipes work for Bandsters too. The first one I made during my full liquids phase was her Vanilla Egg Custard cups. They were rich, satisfying, luscious, and had 9 grams of protein. I had one every evening.

So tonight I tried her Green Chile Cheese Puff and it was just beyond fantastic. My first thought after tasting it was "this is going into the regular rotation for sure." It tastes like a creamy, decadent Chile Relleno from your favorite authentic Mexican restaurant. I also added a little avocado on the side. This is LIVING, people! Here it is fresh out of the oven.

 

And here is my portion:

My husband loved it too. And of course, I had to add a little Hot Sauce. This time I used Ortega. It has a good flavor and, coincidentally, it is the closest thing you can find to Jack in the Box Hot Sauce packets. Don't pretend like you've never had their 2 for 99 cents tacos at 2AM :) I know I've had my share. It's a damn good thing the closest JITB is about 3 hours away from me! In Sulphur Springs, TX. Not that I've looked up that information or anything.

And here is my daily total. Good night, everyone!