Hey fat boy! the gym is that way!

Hey fat boy! the gym is that way!

low calorie eggplant parmesan recipe Weight Loss

Plugging right along with this whole weight loss gig, this weekend has not afforded me the chance to write you fine folks or myself a blog post but fear not! I hath return from my long weekend away! My mother is here visiting from California and that's added to the lack of time to myself but my plan stands, full forward until I get to my goal of 267 pounds which will be 50% of my highest weight. My return to the gym has been great! having the kids back to school is great on more than one level because I am getting all kinds of home projects done in addition to the being able to have a normal gym schedule again. Friday I did miss the gym because I hyper extended my left elbow somehow and woke up Friday morning with some pain and discomfort so I skipped going, the good news is that by Sunday it felt 100% again so onward we go.

Thursday I mentioned that AOL and Thatsfit.com was doing an article on me and if you read regularly You probably noticed that I never posted a link! The email that I received from the writer doing the article said "Just wanted to let you know that we're featuring your story this Thursday at 3pm ET (that time could change at the last minute, but that's the plan right now.) Here's the link" BUT the link was dated 2010/07/09 and that is today so I am thinking that the "Thursday" was a typo in the email and that perhaps since its dated for today that the article will be up some time today? we shall see!

Sold! to the lady with the crisp twenties!

This week will be my getting on a roll with the gym again week, I am also planning on taking advantage to the September weather and my bike because today is a Winnie the pooh kind of day out there and not taking a ride around the lake would be a shame on me. I did something that I thought would be harder than it was concerning one of my bikes this weekend too, I sold one. It was a Craigslist find bike that I got a while ago and put some time and effort into cleaning her up with all intentions on keeping and riding it myself and I did! but my brother in laws girlfriend was looking for a bicycle and when faced with five crisp twenty dollar bills I folded and gave it to her. I put an old bike back on the road, helped someone out with a quality bike for a good price and made a little green all at the same time so I am happy with the transaction. Perhaps I will make bike flipping an alternate means of a little extra income if I can convince myself that letting go of a bike is ok!

Today I will be making my Calorie conscious eggplant Parmesan recipe because of the 17 eggplants that I currently have growing in my garden, they really have taken off within the last couple weeks. I get a lot of emails asking about my menus for each day so I will very likely start posting them daily again because it really does help me when I post them and it seems that some you guys that follow along are interested too so look for those to start popping up again. I mentioned earlier that I have 10 months before the kids are back out of school and the plan is to see if that original goal weight is obtainable in that time, I think that as long as I stay on task that getting there should happen.

Today the plan is to stay within my caloric range, drink at least 2 gallons of fluid of course my fluids of choice are green tea and straight up H2O and as soon as I hit publish I will pull the bike out and go for a quick ride around the lake before I head to the gym. Today is My day, You have a today that is yours too, what will you do with it that is for you?

That's all I got for today.

As Ever
Me

Eggplant parmesan recipe for the calorie conscious.

Eggplant parmesan recipe for the calorie conscious.

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Today we have a recipe, this is something that I have been missing since I started down this road to better health and that thing is eggplant parmesan. The way that I was shown how to make this dish is to thinly slice the eggplant, dip it in egg followed by seasoned white flour fry the be'jesus out of it, layer it between mozzarella, parmesan cheese and sauce which was always followed by greasy smiling faces and full bellies. Since I had some eggplant growing out in the garden I thought I would try a lighter version of this all time favorite for us calorie conscious folks and I have to admit that it turned out pretty amazing if I do say so myself.

Fresh from the garden.

Here are the ingredients.
21oz fresh eggplant
2oz low fat mozzarella cheese
3 T parmesan cheese
1.5 cups spaghetti sauce
1 cup Panko bread crumbs
2 egg whites
Less than 1/4 cup 1% milk
Garlic powder
Black pepper
Goya Adobo
Olive oil cooking spray

1.) Preheat your oven to 375 then start off by separating two egg whites into a bowl and add the milk, beat that up and set it to the side. put the panko bread crumbs into a second bowl and season them with the Adobo, black pepper and garlic powder to taste, I like a lot of garlic so I went heavy on that, now place that to the side.

2.) Next thinly slice the eggplant into about 1/4 inch thick pieces, I cut them at an angle as I had thin eggplant and wanted to give them some area for the crumbs to stick to. Dip the slices into the egg/milk mixture and bread them with the seasoned panko. Spray a cookie sheet with the olive oil cooking spray and lay the breaded eggplant slices in a single layer on the pan (I used 2 pans) then spray the tops of the layered eggplant with a light coat of the cooking spray, I find that spraying the panko before it goes into the oven results in a crispy golden brown finished product compared to not spraying. Place the eggplant into the oven for 25 to 30 minutes until the eggplant is tender time will depend on how thick your slices are.

3.) Measure out your cheeses and sauce while the eggplant cooks in the oven, when the eggplant is done baking it should be crispy and starting to brown. Start the first layer of sauce in your baking pan and when the eggplant is done baking make a layer of the eggplant on top of the sauce.

Straight from the oven

Here is the first layer in the pan after baking the breaded eggplant.

4.) Keep layering eggplant, sauce, and the two cheeses in the pan until it is full, top it with the rest of the two cheeses and loosely cover the pan with foil. Place the pan into the 375 preheated oven for 15 minutes then take it out and uncover it, put it back in for an additional 15 minutes uncovered. The cheese will be starting to brown at that point and the delicious smell of your eggplant parmesan should be filling the air.

Ready for the oven.

The completed dish.

5.) After letting it sit for 5 minutes, make a plate and enjoy the work! eggplant is one of those dishes that I don't make too often because of having to bread each individual slice of this magnificent vegetable not to mention the high calorie count in the fried version but all of that breading is worth it on this one.

The entire pan had a total of 1040 calories in it which translates to 260 calories per serving if split in 4 equal parts which was a very good size portion as you can see from the photo above. If the pan was cut into sixths the calorie cost per serving would be right at 175 per piece and as a side dish going off of what I got with my quarter pan piece a sixth would probably be a decent portion considering that the plate above is a full size dinner plate. The calorie counts are based on the measured ingredients and the final product I did have slightly less calories that that total, I did have some panko and the egg wash left over when all was said and done but for the sake of simplicity I divided all measured ingredients and used that number for my calorie count. The dish was incredibly tasty for being baked instead of fried and I can honestly say that everyone loved it! I will be making it again.

If you try this recipe I hope you enjoy it as much as my family did and please leave me a comment to let me know that you tried it!

Roses are red violets are blue this eggplant recipe today is all I got for you!

As Ever
Me