As to Eight Bites and my thinking and status, this is where I am. I have retained my weight loss at about 140 pounds and weight 160-165 right now. I have been able to stay at this weight for a year and a half now and feel that it is unlikely that I will allow myself to put weight back on. At times I do want something more than I should eat, but I have found that with the gastrectomy, I feel uncomfortable when I eat a couple of bites too much. It is an auto-regulating mechanism. It hurts if I overeat and since I am not a big fan of pain, I have learned to stop eating before I reach that point. Calories are automatically restricted and I don’t have to do anything austere or drastic to prevent my weight from going up. It is why I feel so confident that I will not regain that weight so dearly lost. Besides what would I do with all the clothes I have purchased that fit me so nicely now?
Party food or how to have a good time at a party and not over eat. The menu for the party was pretty extensive but was focused on small individual bites of things. The Eight Bites component of the food for the birthday party was:
• Crostini with turkey spread, crisp bacon, and chipotle cranberry sauce
• Deviled eggs
• Barbecued chicken crepe stack
• Stuffed peppers with sausage
• Crostini with mushroom pate
• Crostini with black beans, chipotle orange sauce
• Cheese plate with Gouda, Havarti and provolone
• Brie with spiced walnuts
• Salami and smoked Gouda
• Vegetable plate with grape tomatoes, celery and bocconcini
• Rigatoni with vegetable sauce
• Squash ravioli with a white herb sauce
• Tortellini gorgonzola
• Flourless chocolate cake with ganache
• Lemon tart
• Chocolate truffles
The following description of four of these dishes shows how you can have a number of different tastes, and enjoy the party without eating too much. As the cook, I tasted everything to be sure that the food items were what I wanted them to be, but these four items are what I had as my dinner. The balance of the dinner was designed for guests who had not had weight loss surgery. The dishes included pastas and desserts.
Crostini with turkey spread, crisp bacon, and chipotle cranberry sauce
For all the crostini, I sliced French bread baguettes into ½ slices, brushed them with olive oil and a light sprinkle of salt and toasted them in the oven at 350 degrees until they were barely crisp.
I used a ½ pound of a good quality of smoked turkey breast from the deli, put it in the food processor with a couple of tablespoons of sweet, hot mustard, a tablespoon of the chipotle sauce, and a couple of tablespoons of softened butter and processed it into a smooth puree. I cooked the thick sliced bacon in the oven with a small amount of brown sugar on each slice and a few drops of the chipotle cranberry sauce then cut each slice into 1” long pieces. To make the crostini, put a little of the chipotle sauce on the bread, spread a layer of the turkey spread and top with a piece of crisp bacon and a few drops of the chipotle sauce. These antipasti provide a fair amount of protein from the turkey and bacon, and a single piece can be a nice addition to your Eight Bites plate. Nutritionally, a 1 ounce serving of the smoked turkey breast is approximately 8 grams of protein.
Deviled eggs
Just make your favorite deviled egg recipe. One or two halves provide a nice amount of protein and pleasant change from the bread crostini. One egg consists of 6 grams of protein content and at least 9 amino acids. Proteins constitute nearly 13% of the weight of an egg. Eating an egg as part of the Eight Bites meal will give you almost 10 percent of the protein required for post-bariatric surgery patients and is also a very high quality protein source.
Barbecued chicken crepe stack
These antipasti are easily made using simple crepes and chopped barbequed chicken and some cheddar cheese. Make crepes from your favorite recipe and add couple of teaspoons of dried chives to the batter before cooking. To create the stack, place a crepe on a baking sheet, top with ¼ cup of chopped chicken mixed with barbecue sauce, then top with cou[ple of tablespoons of grated cheddar cheese. Put another crepe on top of the first, and repeat until you have about 7 or eight crepes in the stack. Finish with a layer of chicken and cheese. Bake in the oven until the cheese is melted and serve hot in wedges. A serving wedge should have about an ounce of chicken and 7 grams of protein.
Stuffed peppers with sausage
This dish is simply made using mild sweet peppers, available fresh in most grocery stores. Slit the peppers in half lengthwise and remove the seeds, rinse and allow to drain and ry. Make the stuffing from 12 ounces of sausage (use your favorite type of hot, or sage, or Italian), a medium chopped onion and a cup of grated Parmigiano=Reggiano cheese. Cook the sausage with the onions until the meat is no longer pink. Put the meat in a food processor and add the cheese. Process using pulses to obtain a coarse mix. Stuff the mixture into the pepper halves and place on a baking sheet. Heat under the broiler until the top is bubbly and golden. Serve warm or hot. The amount of sausage in each pepper is approximately ½ ounce and provides about 6-8 grams of protein per serving.
From the perspective of Eight Bites, having a single piece of the smoked turkey crostini, two deviled egg halves, a wedge of barbecue chicken crepe stack and two stuffed peppers was enough to give me approximately 35 grams of protein or about 50% of the protein required for the day and I didn’t have to eat a lot. And happily, I also have the opportunity to taste a lot of different dishes.
Think Eight Bites, think interesting flavors, think positively about your weight loss and think positively about your new life. Enjoy the day. So, Happy Birthday to me. May there be many more in my healthy new life. There is no good alternative to another birthday.
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