Entertaining and The Plan

I realize I promised you a blog about good fats vs. bad fats.  Things have gotten busy around our house lately and some things have come up that have required some additional planning to enable us to stay on our plan and while I haven't had time to write the fat blog, I thought you might be interested in some of my recent planning.

First, my sister-in-law, my daughter-in-law and I are planning a baby shower for my daughter and we're working on a cupcake display the likes of which could probably win Cupcake Wars.  Okay, I'm not biased much.  Anyway, we came up with 4 cupcake flavors baked on my daughter's likes (carrot cake being her favorite) and the color scheme we've chosen for the shower.  My goal was to reinvent two of the cupcake flavors into low cal, low carb versions.  On Saturday we met at my daughter-in-law's mother's house to practice decorating them and sample the four flavors, which are: Carrot with cream cheese frosting, Key lime, pina colada and oreo.  The two I chose to reinvent were the key lime and the pina colada.

I wasn't happy with the filling for the key lime cupcakes and will go for more of a pudding consistency (this was more like frosting, and not much different from the frosting on top).  The pina colada were moist and delicious, containing crushed pineapple in the batter.  For both, I used Pillsbury's sugar free yellow cake mix, which made them very easy to put together.  I lightened them further by using egg beaters in place of the eggs in both batters.

I ordered some powdered sugar substitute on Amazon.com and I have some observations about it.  It is lumpy, but if sifted, it has an appropriate texture.  I cannot tell the difference in taste at ALL. 

Frosting will have fat in it.  There's no getting around that.  But I lightened it up a bit by cutting the butter in half, substituting 8 oz of fat free cream cheese for the other stick of butter.  For the pina colada cupcakes, I added some rum extract and coconut extract, and toasted coconut to go on top.  For the key lime, I added the zest from one lime and the juice from half a lime.  I LOVED the lime frosting and thought the pina colada was tasty and went well with the cupcakes.  Both are COMPLETELY sugar free, so that's a win.  I wanted my daughter-in-law and her mom to taste them because I admit my judgment is a little of, having been dieting for 10 weeks now, and I don't trust that I like the same things everyone else likes.  They both liked them, so I think we're good.  If you're friends with me on Facebook, I have posted pictures of the decorations we made for the cupcake tops in an album that is invisible to my daughter so she can't see all our secrets!  (Love you, sweetie!)

I'm also planning a dinner party for Saturday night and while I would prefer to have the menu remain a surprise for our dinner guests, I thought you might enjoy seeing the thought process that went into selecting the various components.

We still want to stick as closely as possible to our regular eating plan, having a snack in the afternoon, limiting our dinner carbs to under 60, and eating dessert 2 hours after we've started dinner for our evening snack.

I have been wanting to try a new dip recipe I found online recently: Creamy Buffalo Chicken dip, which uses canned chicken and traditional buffalo wing flavorings.  I was thinking that since Buffalo wings are served with celery, I could serve it with celery sticks to save carbs and calories.  I will also bake off some low-carb tortillas for chips so we have options.  I will serve this with "Mocktails" - our favorite before dinner treat: Half Welches diet peach/mango juice and half diet tonic water, chilled and served in a champagne flute.  Total values for this appetizer marvel, including 2 T of the dip, 4 celery sticks and one mocktails: 83 calories, 2 WW points and 1 carb.  Yes, ONE carb.  NICE!

In planning the dinner, I started with the main dish and looked through my cookbooks for something I thought would be tasty and elegant, and settled on Spinach Steak Roulade, from Prevention's Best Weight Loss Recipes cookbook; a rolled flank steak, stuffed with a stuffing of garlic, baby spinach, toasted pine nuts and crumbled low-fat feta cheese.  Can you say "Yum"?  The bonus:  I already have a flank steak in my freezer!  The values for this dish are: 320 calories, 2 WW points, 1 carb per serving.

I like to have a full 4 course dinner including soup, salad, main dish and dessert, so I started looking at appropriate soup recipes that were both company-worthy, appetizer type, and low enough in carbs and calories to make it fit the plan.  I settled on Roasted Garlic and Onion soup, a recipe I found online.  Values per 1 cup serving: 164 calories, 4 WW points, 22 carbs.  The recipe calls for red onions, but I'm using a combination of red onions, chipollini onions, shallots and leeks.  Bonus:  I can roast the vegetables ahead of time and have the soup in the pot, ready to reheat at the last minute.

My favorite all-time salad is the lettuce wedge with chopped tomatoes and blue cheese chunks.  I emailed my friend, Carol this  morning to make sure she and her husband both like blue cheese and assuming they do, I'm using this salad and topping it with a dressing I saw Sunny make on Food TV this week: Creamy Bacon Dressing.  I'm using fat free sour cream in half the amount she used, substituting buttermilk for the other half.  The values for the salad are: 77 calories, 2 WW points, 6 carbs.

As sides to go with the roulade, I went to Sam's this weekend looking for their yummy English peas and was going to cream them, using cream sauce made with Xanthan Gum I ordered on Amazon.com.  Thanks to Toby Brown for suggesting the Xanthan Gum, but I'll have to wait to try it out on company, because Sam's didn't have the yummy English peas.  I settled on what looked good:  baby carrots and snap peas, which I will glaze with a honey-substitute glaze.  Point values for a 1-cup serving of the veggies: 102 calories, 3 WW points and 0 carbs.

The starch will be Buttermilk mashed potatoes, to which I will add some roasted garlic, since I will be roasting it for the soup anyway.  I will probably heat up a jar of fat free gravy to serve with the meat and potatoes, in case anyone wants any, and will likely add some fresh herbs and a little dry sherry to enhance the flavor.

That's it for the main meal, and the values are as follows (minus the gravy, which I won't eat):  764 calories (a little high, but it's a dinner party for crying out loud!), 18 WW points and 54 carbs.  I'll try to remember to take pictures and add them to this blog after the party.

For dessert, which will happen 2 hours after we have started eating, and probably after a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit on Steroids, we're having Raspberry Lemon Bars (from the Splenda cookbook I bought in the Barnes and Noble discount bin last week), topped with  tiny scoop of raspberry sorbet.  Values: 134 calories, 3 WW points, 20 carbs.

I'm not sure if Carol reads my blog or not.  If she does, she won't be surprised by what she sees on her plate on Saturday, but hopefully her mouth will be watering in anticipation.

Some planning does go into a party like this, beyond just shopping, cleaning and cooking.  I tried various combinations of foods in order to limit the calories and carb counts and finally settled on the above after I realized Pioneer Woman's potato packets were just too high in calories.  Sorry, Pioneer Woman.  I love your potatoes but we can't have them with this meal.  My trusty spreadsheet now has a Dinner Party tab, and for the next dinner party I suppose I will copy it and plug in new foods until I find a number of acceptable menus. 

A little pre-planning will allow you to entertain, serving a nice, elegant meal without sacrificing your Plan for the sake of your company.  That planning will have to include altering breakfast and lunch so your total calories and WW points don't exceed your target.  I would be willing to bet that all of the selections I've chosen will be tasty enough that if I didn't tell them, or guests would never know they were eating diet food.  I have to stop using that word.  This really ISN'T a diet!!!

Happy Fat Tuesday; enjoy ...