delighting in the little [calorie] things

Normally when I cook, I sort of have this lunch lady slop style of plating food- maybe because the portions are generally so big there's really no room for pretty on the plate.  Since I've been cooking for myself on this diet, though, the smaller amount of food leaves me free to garnish.

the small amount of food doesn't make me a better photographer.

Really, it looks like (size of meal-wise) anything you'd see on a restaurant show/anything with Gordon Ramsay and it looks like the pictures in Cooking Light or other healthy food publications.  Three days ago, I would have said "that's not enough food for anyone" but now it's more than filling.

One trick, I don't do anything but look at my food while I eat it.  No munch and type.  They, whoever those people are, say that this enhances the taste of the food and in turn makes you more satisfied.  I just think it's incredibly boring and it makes me want to stop eating so I can do something else.

The other trick is this Trader Joe's jalapeno hot sauce... it's CRAZY GOOD and I'm not a hot sauce fan in general.  It's not that I don't like spicy things (though generally I don't) but hot sauce just has a weird flavor, maybe from the vinegar.  This stuff tastes good though.  I want to drink it out of the bottle.  It has made the perfect replacement for cocktail sauce in my shrimp and it's sugar-free and zero calories- GET YOU SOME!

Between meals I was munching on Trader Joe's sesame melba rounds.  You can have ONE round twice a day on this diet AND they're like the size of silver dollars AND mine were stale AND they had fat in them which the melba on protocol is not supposed to.  So I switched to these Wasa crackers, they're pretty big and one is both servings for the day so I ate half at lunch today and it was so satisfying.  I'm into that "whole grain" flavor (hamburger buns being the exception) so these are right up my alley.  They have no fat, though they have slightly more carbs than the TJ's sesame melba.  I don't know if I'll eat the other half tonight, I didn't need the melba last night- we shall see.

I bet these taste like cardboard to everyone else.

The people on the HCG boards say that some use it but it is NOT ON PROTOCOL.

Well guess what?  Neither is melba toast because I'm sure you cannot find any melba toast that is exactly the same as it was in the 50s when Simeon's wrote the manuscript and a lot of people use Old London melba toast and that has sugar in it.

I'm good at following policy literally but sometimes you gotta look at the spirit of the policy and sometimes you gotta just throw shit out.