What's Cookin'?

I'm having a hard time getting back into the swing of things at the gym after being out for a week.  Things went haywire on Friday and I wasn't able to make it there, so Saturday was my first day back.  My left elbow is still screwed up, so my plan was to just do cardio and ease back into things.  I only did 8 minutes on the elliptical because my quads felt like lead bricks.  I jumped on the treadmill and ended up carrying some hand weights for part of the time.  I've figured out that if I keep my arms engaged (bent at the elbow) while holding the weights on the treadmill, then the elbow doesn't hurt as bad.  I did 22 minutes on the treadmill, 15 of those minutes were with 7.5 lb weights in each hand. 

Since the exercise is slow going I decided I better make sure I get the food REALLY right this week.  I've got some food pics to show you.  The first one is a dish I made the week of St. Patrick's Day.  I normally make the traditional corned beef and cabbage, but decided not to this year because the corned beef tends to be WAY too salty and I'm trying to cut most of the salt out of my diet.  So this year I used some lowfat turkey kielbasa sausage, cabbage, onions and red potatoes.  I added the cabbage and red potatoes to the pot first, then mixed in the sausage and onions that I sauteed first:

Next is a pic of some chicken breast that I sprinkled with onion powder, garlic and rosemary and sauteed with some Pam olive oil spray....I used the chicken in an egg white scramble the next morning:

I made some chicken chowder this weekend that was pretty tasty.  I've never even attempted to make chowder before and didn't think I'd be able to pull it off.  Granted, it would have been thicker and creamier if I would have used more fattening ingredients or added more calories, but it was still good.  The recipe called for milk and 2 cans of creamed corn.  I used 50% less sodium creamed corn, and only 1 can instead of 2.  I also skipped the milk and used 3 tbsp of cornstarch to thicken it, along with the instant mashed potato flakes that it called for.  The recipe called for you to stir in some full fat cheddar cheese after it was done cooking.  I skipped that step and used 2 tbsp of reduced fat cream cheese just to make it a little creamier.  It made 4 servings, each serving being 2 1/4 cups.  Each serving has 348 calories, and has cubes of boneless chicken breast, shredded carrots, creamed corn and cubed potatoes.  Yum.:

I roasted some radishes with some Pam olive oil cooking spray, reduced fat parmesan cheese, and black pepper:

Steamed some broccoli w/ Mrs. Dash garlic & herb:

Sauteed some zucchini & mushrooms w/ Mrs. Dash tomato and herb blend:

And I grilled some asparagus on the Foreman grill:

Well that's all for now....I'm off to the gym.  Gotta' keep going and get back in the habit again.  Hope everyone's having a Super Sunday!!  :)