The Blonde Diaries

Can a “McRib” fit into your diet?

Its no lie- I love the McDonald’s McRib sandwich. I hate the fact that it’s only available during certain months of the year. It makes no sense to me. I mean you aren’t using any special ingredients - just a bun, some BBQ sauce, onions, and ground meat to form a patty. Just seems odd to me that of all things McDonald’s would consider this to be seasonal but no other items. Just a fabulous marketing ploy by the giants of fast food. With as great as the McRib is, there is still the calories and fat to consider before going hog wild and eating it as much as possible while it is “in-season”. Lets face it, its not a salad unfortunately.

I’m often left wondering. Can a tasty McRib fit into my diet? Well in the world of alternatives: Yes it can! You see Garden burger has come up with their own version of a McRiblet. You just defrost the baby in the microwave and either eat it plain or on a piece of bread. Now for those that are skeptical of Garden Burger, I don’t blame you. I mean I was skeptical at first too with them, Boca, and Morningstar Farms. I mean how real/good can this stuff be? I also am not a huge fan of seeing chunky veggies in my meat (real or soy) so I was afraid my riblet would be chalk full of onions, peppers, and mushrooms. The good news is that it is not. The even better news: its on store shelves year round and tastes exactly like a McRib. The sauce is perfect and the appearance of the “meat” is just like a riblet. You can’t even tell by appearance or taste its not real meat. So give it a whirl next time you are craving a McRib or just something different for lunch. Its pretty tasty and not so high on the points scale.

Weight Watchers: End of Week 3 update

I just completed week 3 of my new Weight Watchers life style. I like to think that I did pretty well with my eating out choices. You see I went home for Easter and my family loves to eat out on the weekends. So I decided instead of fighting to eat at home I would just start learning to make smarter choices while eating out because it is something I must tackle at some point in my journey so why not now?

So Friday afternoon (got off of work early)- went to the local favorite spot here in Houston: Berryhill’s which is known for its fish and shrimp tacos. I went with a seafood enchilada, a grilled fish taco, queso, chips, and just one margarita. (Note: the enchilada was tiny and the grilled fish taco actually makes 2 tacos so I ate just one). Notes: Good choice on the grilled fish taco and on just one margarita as well as 1/2 the rice and no beans. Need to work on the queso/chips thing. Not too bad.

Friday night: Well by the time I finished my 4 hour drive and met up with my family I was starving. Tried to hold out till I went to bed but that wasn’t working so I stopped in at McDonald’s. Under normal circumstances I would just go with a burger or cheeseburger (5/6 points) but since it was 11:30 they had neither -shocker- so I had to go with the quarter pounder with cheese. Well Friday quickly went downhill.

I decided not to let Saturday do me in. So I woke up and had some cereal with berries and skim milk like normal. Went out a bit with my mom then hit up walmart and got a lean cuisine and yogurt to hold me till dinner. I knew dinner out would be coming so I didn’t suggest eating out for lunch as well. We went to a fabulous little Italian restaurant that is known for their calzones but since I was trying to retrain myself I went with grilled chicken ceasar salad with dressing on the side. Score for me!

Sunday was another challenge as it was Easter Sunday and the day before my brother’s birthday. So that meant lunch out before I left to go home. This time it was Cheesecake Bistro (a knockoff of Cheesecake Factory). Once again I decided to stop at the salad and soup section of the menu instead of going on and settled for some awesome chicken and sausage gumbo and a ceasar salad. Score for me again!

So I’m happy to say that my training is going well for eating out and making smart choices. I also did pretty darn good at staying within my points during the week and saving flex points for Thursday night and Friday afternoon. What I did slack up on was exercising which is not good. So this week I’ll be heading back to the gym and making it a habit to go daily.

Final results for the week: -2 pounds!! So I’m officially -4 pounds in 3 weeks.

The results are in (for Disney ADRs)…

Well yesterday was THE day. My 180 day mark that I have been anxiously awaiting. I’m sure you are curious of the outcome but I’m going to drag it out just a little Once again I set my alarm clocks for 5:50am and 5:55am and attempted to go to bed early. Wasn’t too sleepy so I stayed up finishing my book of the week: Shopaholic Takes Manhattan and went to bed around 1ish. Feel into a nice deep sleep and was woken up by both alarms. It wasn’t too hard to get up because I had a reason to listen to my alarms rather than snoozing for another 45 minutes like I do each morning when I have to get up for work.

So I quickly turned the alarms off so I didn’t wake my family up, made sure the door was tightly closed, and searched in my contacts listing for the entry for Disney Dining (a tip I picked up online). I dialed a few minutes before 6 and got the recording that they were closed. Darn! Can’t get through the prompts early. So I hung up and right as the clock hit 6 dialed again and got thru! I quickly made it through the prompts and got put on hold - I guess until the CMs got their computers going - and then got a live CM in under 2 minutes. Yes!

So I quickly went to the date I had wanted for Cindy’s Round Table which was mid-week by the way and crossed my fingers and asked and lo and behold wide open! So I picked my preferred time and was able to relax after that and chit chat with my CM a little more until we were done with the rest of my picks. All in all I thought we did well and I was glad everything was open and at a reasonable time for dinner. Here is what we got in order:

• Crystal Palace (MK)
• Rose & Crown (EPCOT)
• 190 Park Fare (Grand Floridian)
• Sci Fi (MGM)
• Cindy’s Round Table (MK)
• Garden Grill (EPCOT)
• Liberty Tree Tavern (MK)
• Biergarten (EPCOT)
• ‘Ohana (Polynesian - breakfast)

Now the fun will begin as we sit here and double think our reservations, make changes to them, and then decide if we should go with our originals! There is also the whole what counter services to eat at and where to eat our first night there and possibly the day we leave for lunch. So just making the initial ADRs is the tip of the iceberg. I still have lots of time to play around with them.

Oh and I did find out through my friendly CM that dates for Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party will be released May 1 so that will add another thing for me to book as well as changing dinner times for that night.

Email Forwards

Ahh yes. Those lovely chain email forwards. You are either in one of two camps: the forwarder who sends to everyone on their email list or you are the receiver who kills the chain by not forwarding. I am the latter. I have a friend who is the former. I don’t fault her for it. I actually appreciate that she sends them my way as most are pretty darn funny/cute/makes me smile. I think I don’t forward them on most of the time because we have the same circle of friends so why torture my friends with the same email twice (plus I don’t want them to start doing it to me as well).

The other day I got a pretty funny one about Easter and the Easter bunny. There are too many pictures to share but I did want to share my favorite. It brought back fond memories of living with one of my roommates in college who adored peeps and my overusage of calling all my friends my “peeps”. So happy Easter to those that observe.

Losing sleep over ADRs.

If you have been following my recent blog posts you probably recall that my 180 day ADR mark for Disney dining is here this weekend! If you have no idea what I’d referring to I’ll give a brief update until you can find the WDW ADR post from a few days ago Mike and I are going to Walt Disney World in September. When you reach 180 days prior to your arrival you are allowed to make your dining reservations for any restaurant during your stay. Mike and I like character meals so those tend to fill up with reservation people so calling ahead of time is a must for us. We also go during the September “Free Dining” promotion which is great if you don’t mind paying full price for hotel rooms on site and are not afraid of a hurricane disrupting your vacation. I’m use to hurricanes hitting so its not a big deal for me.

This year is extremely important for me to call in right at the opening of my 180 day mark because I want to have dinner at the most popular place at WDW: Cinderella’s Royal Table (in the Castle). It is notorious for being difficult to book in every planning book and every online forum you visit. So I’m very stressed and anxious to call and book it. Unfortunately, that mean I miss calculated my 180 day mark and thinking it was this morning I was so worried I wouldn’t get up in time that I never actually went to sleep last night and I know I’m going to do the same tonight. Ugh! I hate that I had decided that I definitely wanted to eat her this time around because no matter what I try and convience myself with it isn’t going to work.

So my words of advice if you are planning a trip - forget that there is even a restaurant in Cindy’s castle and enjoy one of the other restaurants on property. Losing sleep is not the way to go!