Monthly(!) Construction Update

I must apologize to my many readers (all one of you) for not writing for so long.  I got caught up with studying for the finance certification test I took the first week in June and then I was caught up in celebrating my new-found post-test freedom.  You may have been worried that the radio silence was indicative of me tumbling off the wagon into a box of cookies, but fear not - though I did gain a bit following the post-test celebrations, I have since taken off that weight and I am down 10.6 pounds overall.

There are a few things that helped me be successful over the past month despite the test madness:

• When I gained the 2 pounds after the test, I did not freak out.  This was a huge accomplishment because typically I would melt down and decide that it was entirely impossible for me to lose weight and give up.  Instead, this time I just about what I had been doing differently from what I was doing when I was losing steadily, and it was pretty easy: I was eating a lot of take-out instead of cooking.  So, I took the simple step of restarting my pursuit of the title of Weight Watchers Casserole Queen by cooking a casserole once a week on the weekends.  That way I always have something healthy at home to eat.
• I also got back into the swing of working out, including doing lots of fun summer activities.  I've attended a several outdoor yoga events with my friends and I've also been riding my bike a good bit, in addition to my regular yoga and running.  Here's a photo of yoga in Times Square on the Summer Solstice:

At times, we were heckled, but what would New York outdoor yoga be without some heckling?

When I refocused on my weight loss this winter/spring, I set a goal for myself to lose 15 pounds by the time of my first wedding dress fitting.  My first fitting should be in about 4 weeks, so over the next 4 weeks I need to lose on average 1.1 pounds a week to reach my goal.  Since I began going to meetings I've lost about 0.6 pounds a week on average so this would require me to up my pace of loss slightly.  That worries me a little bit but I am cautiously optimistic that I will make it as I'm now able to spend more time working out/cooking than I could over the past few months.  I'm also preparing myself for the possibility that I might come close to my goal but not reach it exactly.  If I lose 13 or 14 pounds, I will still be very happy with that.

Finally, I have decided that once I do lose 15 pounds, I am going to buy myself a new bike!  My current bike is the 15-speed mountain bike I got when I turned 12 years old.  It gets the job done but it's not that fun.  I'd love to have a city bike that is a little more relaxed to ride and looks stylish.  These are my current loves:

The Linus Dutchie 3

The Biria Citibike

So here's hoping that tomorrow's weigh-in goes well bringing me one step closer to my near-term weight goal and my new wheels!

Kitchen Construction: Baked Pasta with Butternut Squash and Ricotta

In my efforts to cook every casserole on Weight Watchers website on my road to becoming the Casserole Queen, a few weeks ago I made Weight Watcher's Baked Pasta with Butternut Squash and Ricotta, and it was a smash.  I've done a lot of cooking from the Weight Watchers recipes over the past few months and while most have been very tasty, not only did I find this recipe delicious, my fiance loved it even though it was made with wheat pasta, which he calls "dirt pasta" and generally avoids.  The only downside to this recipe is that it took me forever to make this: it took me around 2 hours (maybe more?) to make this while the recipe says that preparation time is 25 minutes (haha!) and baking time is 60 minutes (ha!).  However, it doesn't bother me too much when my casseroles take a long time as I only cook one a week on the weekends.

To start the recipe calls for you to roast pre-cubed butternut squash on a baking sheet.  Fresh Direct (my online grocery) did not have pre-cubed butternut squash, so I ended up just roasting it whole and scooping the squash out of its skin.

Doing it this way made it a bit more labor intensive as I had to scoop the squash out and avoid the seeds, but I doubt it added too much time (to what was already a very time intensive dish!).  Here's my gratuitous cooking-blogger-displays-all-her-ingredients photo:

If I was an organized cooking blogger, this would actually be a photo of all my ingredients, but as I'm a disorganized cook (see previous posts) this is missing the squash, the pasta, and the walnuts.

After I smushed up all the squash and made the squash-milk sauce, I combined that with the pasta and put it in the casserole dish to bake.  After baking for 15-20 minutes (ha! try 25) I took it out and here's what it looked like:

Tasty!  As is usual, I paired my serving with a side salad.  My fiance paired his serving with a side of another serving.

It was really tasty and extremely filling for 7 points.  Some of the recipe reviewers on Weight Watchers said that the thyme was overpowering, but I found it to be the extra addition that made this more than a boring pasta dish.  

Here are my ratings:

Ease of Preparation: B-

Cook Time: B

Taste: A+

Fiance Rating: A

Despite the time it took to put it together, this recipe was a resounding success and I highly recommend it.