Class Numero Uno

I went to my first class tonight.  I was a smidge nervous but not too bad.  It was in a small classroom in the Jack Stephen's Spine Center at UAMS.  There was a variety of people in my class. I think I may have been close to the youngest person in it. Maybe this program is just too expensive for younger people?  I mean... we really honestly can't afford this program but I have to do something, so we'll make it work.
So the first class was about getting started on the program, and meal replacement cooking. Yup.  You can bake, microwave, waffle iron your meal replacements.  The replacement is just a package of powder.  To make a shake you add like 6 or so ounces of water and ice cubes and blend it.  We tried several things that Kristen our dietitian had made for us in advance.  One of the things was some type of cookie.  Here's how she made it:
2 packages of chocolate meal replacement
1 packet of splenda
2 tablespoons of PB2 (a peanut butter substitute-it's powder)
1/4 cup of water.
You mix it up and then drop teaspoonfuls onto a baking sheet and bake it at 325 for 10-12 mins.  It is supposed to make 12 cookies.

This was actually the tastiest of the things we tried tonight.  We also tried "Cinnamon rolls".  They are made from the vanilla meal replacement, cinnamon, butter buds, splenda, flour, and baking soda.  They were the most disgusting thing ever.  Okay maybe not ever, but let's just say I will NOT be making those in the future.  I took one bite of my little piece and then smoothly slid the uneaten portion into my purse.  HA!  gross.    Another thing we tried was just the plain chocolate meal replacement shake.  I didn't really like it, but I think maybe could get used to it??  Kristen says she drinks a chocolate meal replacement shake every morning and she adds 1 tablespoon of sugar free, fat free chocolate pudding powder to it.  She said it thickens it up and makes the texture better.    We also tried the "chips" which is just a potato soup flavored meal replacement with taco seasoning in it, baked into chips.  They are pretty okay.    The last thing we tried was called a "Razzleberry".  This is a shake made from a strawberry flavored meal replacement, diet 7-up, sugar free rasberry jell-o mix, sugar free vanilla pudding, and ice.   So this was way too sweet for me.  Or something.  I don't know if I liked it...  I may give it another try sometime down the line.  Not this week though because I got 3 boxes of meal replacements : 2 chocolate and 1 potato soup.   Next Wednesday I buy more and could buy the other flavors if I choose to.  There are only 4 flavors : chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and potato soup.

Okay so that was basically the whole class, just her telling us those recipes, us trying them.  No one really asked too many questions.  We were given a giant recipe packet (40 pages) of recipes to make stuff.   She said we can add up to 50 calories of like flavoring type stuff to each meal replacement.  No more than 50 to each one.  SO if you added 50 calories to 5 meal replacements (most people have 5 a day, I am on 6 for some reason), but that would add another 250 calories a day.  Seems crazy.
We have a list of all the things we can add - like bouillon, sugar free, fat free jell-o and pudding mixes, salsa, Pb2 (the PB2 has 45 calories per 2 tablespoons compared to regular stuff), the list is kinda long.  Not all of them have calories like the gazillion flavors of sugar free DaVinci syrups.

So that was that, and class was over 10 minutes early.  First thing I did was went to Drug Emporium.  We were referred there d/t their insane stock of these DaVinci syrups- apparently they have more flavors than anyone else.   And that was no joke.  I ended up getting the English Toffee one.  I'm not really sure why because I can't even think of what English toffee is or what i've ever had it in.  I think I like toffee though...  I also bought PB2, splenda, sugar free fat free chocolate pudding mixes, ground instant coffee, and some more crystal light (for my waters).   Good thing about the diet is you can have zero-calorie soda's but if it has caffeine in it, it doesn't count towards the 64+ oz of water you're supposed to be drinking every day.  You can also have black coffee.  No creamer though so coffee is out of the question for me.  I did buy some though, to add to my chocolate shakes.  I was thinking mocha.  Or something... lol.

When I got home, I started thinking about this.  I have to make 6 shakes, or 6 SOMETHING'S tomorrow.  You're suppose to spread your replacements out evenly throughout the day, and you can't eat more than 2 at a time, and you can only eat 2 at a time ONCE a day.  So in other words they really want you to eat 5 or 6 times a day or whatever.   OK so I could make a shake, or chips, or cookies... but I can't do it in the morning, b/c I leave at 5:45 and I can't be up cooking and blending when Ben is asleep in his room 3 feet away.  So I am going to have to fix my work meal replacements at home the night before.  Fun.

Tonight... I *attempted* to make the cookies I spoke of earlier.  Except I didn't use PB2 and I used chocolate pudding mix instead.  I am not really sure how they are supposed to look, but all I know is that I got that doughy mix ALL over my hands while I was trying to get it onto the baking sheet.  I mean ALL over my hands.  It was soooo sticky.  I probably washed 1/4 of one of those meal replacements down the sink.... so sad. so not funny!  Note to self- don't use your hands next time!   SO this is what they turned out like :

Scary, right??  HA!  I have no idea what they taste like either, but I do know I can't be wasting any of these dang meal replacement packages because they are too expensive!!  I divided these in half b/c I used 2 meal replacements in the recipe so I will have 1/2 for breakfast and the other 1/2 later.

Here's how my chips turned out:

Now these don't actually look *that* bad to me, yes some are a little on the crispier side, but hey they are chips.  I made the chips w/ cavenders seasoning instead of taco seasoning and again, I have no idea what they taste like.   I will update later w/ reviews of my creations.    I also went ahead and made a chocolate shake w/ added chocolate pudding mix and a little bit of coffee.  I mixed it, and stuck it in the fridge.  I am assuming the ice will melt over night and make it more watery.  I'll stick it in the freezer when I get up and then take it out when I leave so maybe it will thicken up some?????

Trial and error my friends.  I can't believe I'm doing this.  It's NUTS!  This stuff looks horrible!!
Please God, be with me.  I'm freaking out.

On a good note, my new running (walking) shoes came in today.  At least I'm excited about something, right?