My Challenge this week

It's been a while hasn't it? I've been pretty busy lately, and didn't have much time to think about myself and what I'm doing. It shows too! So, I've decided to get myself going again. On of the things I've decided to do to get me going is to give myself a challenge. I'm very competitive, so usually it's a good booster for me!

This week my challenge is to use a different cookbook every day. My main meal, and if possible my side dishes are all coming from the same cookbook.

For my first day I decided to use Weight Watcher's New Complete Cookbook. I bought it at Costco actually and have been looking at it without ever using it so there!

Wisely or not, I decided to start by having a Mediterranean/Middle Eastern meal. Here's what it looked like:


The grain dish is a Tabbouleh. It was very tasty! The only think is that the recipe calls for it to sit and chill for 3 hours, but I didn't have time to do that. I'm sure that the texture would have been better if it had sat longer.

It's not an innovative Tabbouleh recipe by any stretch of the imagination, but something to do again!

With that I made Middle Eastern Beef Kebabs. Those turned out very good! I did forget the bay leaf (DUH!) but it still turned out very tasty and filling. The recipe makes 4 generous servings! I used my curly metal skewers, and switched the pepper for yellow squash, made it look pretty!

We cooked it on broil, but I think it'd be even better on the grill! One thing I'll do differently is to process the marinade more, it was a little too chunky.

Finally I made a Baba Ghanouj to eat with cucumbers while the meat cooked, and also we used it with the main meal to dip the meat and veggies into. It was good, a little too liquidy to my taste though. I would drain the eggplant well before I mash it to "dry it out" a little.

I have those little measuring spoon that are "a pinch" and "a dash" etc. I use the "a dash" one for the dash of cayenne called for in the recipe... Ooooofaaaahhhh! That's a big dash! Still good though, just surprising at first!

There you have it, the first day of my challenge! You can find the recipes by clicking on their title in the text above.

Activity-wise, well... see you at the gym in the morning!

Tomorrow it's the Shortcut Cookbook, another one form Weight Watchers!

Be good n stuff!