HUMP DAY and some spicy sauage pasta YUM!

Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike. Guess what day it is Mike?

Love it. Puts a smile on my face every time!

It's HUMP DAY, WOOP WOOP!  Work week milestones don't mean anything to me now that I work weekends and nights and half the time I have no idea what day of the week it is. Like I said before, I'm spoiled and get 4 days off a week! But congrats to all y'all that made it to Wednesday.

First full week on WW is definitely going to be a success. I snuck on the scale for a sneak peek this am, and things are looking good! I'll save the number for Friday though. 

In the future I want to post pictures of what I'm cooking on here. I don't want this blog to be all about weight loss, but also about food and life in general. 

I get a fuck ton of recipes off Pinterest. About once a week I'll pick a new recipe to cook for me and the hubs. Sometimes they're winners, other times they're BIG losers. One of our joint goals for this fall/winter is to use our crock pot more often. We have this magical tool that lets us cook dinner while we're at work or sleeping or sitting on the couch marathon watching The Walking Dead, but hardly ever use it. So we decided that once a week we will be using the crock pot to make a meal.  Also, starting October 1 we will be making a new soup once a week until the beginning of Lent. I fully assume that most weeks we will combine the goals into one, but I'd like to be able to make 2 separate dishes. 

Last night I had well over 30 points left to eat for dinner. It wasn't intentional, I just didn't eat that much for breakfast and lunch. I'm having a hard time eating all 47 points. If I'm sticking to my vegan breakfast, vegetarian lunch (lean cuisine, veggies, and a fruit), and whatever for dinner plan I feel satisfied, and I tend to be way under point. I don't exactly know what to do about this. So to eat my remaining points I had a 16 point heath bar arctic swirl at Edwards. Probably not what WW had in mind when they said eat all your allotted points, but that's what I did anyway. Oops.

But for dinner I made something called Spicy Sausage Pasta 
(recipe found here: http://www.kevinandamanda.com/recipes/dinner/spicy-sausage-pasta.html#_a5y_p=668423)
I meant to take step by step pictures, but failed to remember. I'm putting the camera in the kitchen so I'll remember next time. My dish did end up looking like this.

The recipe calls for smoked sausage, heavy cream, and chicken broth. As substitutes I used Hillshire Farms Smoked Turkey Kielbasa, half and half, and fat-free low sodium chicken broth. With my subs, one serving is 8 points. I think there's easily room for more veggies in this dish. I would probably add red and green peppers next time. Mushrooms would even be good in here. Also I would use the campanelle pasta that they used here, not the penne the recipe called for. The delicious cheese sauce would better get in the nooks and crannies of the campanelle, rather than just kinda sit on the penne.

Even before doing WW I found that the Hillshire Farms Turkey Kielbasa is a great substitute for smoked sausage or polska kielbasa when using it in a dish. Sliced up I can't taste the difference. However, if I'm eating it by itself there is no substitute for a good hunk of smoked polska kielbasa.  I've been subbing half and half for heavy cream for years. There are probably a few recipes that I wouldn't do this sub, but in a pasta dish the swap is well worth the lower amount of fat and calories. Once again, I can't even taste the difference!