Day 6

Breakfast (11:15 a.m.):
1 1/4 c. Special K Red Berries
1 c. skim milk

Lunch (1:30 p.m.):
Chicken Salad Sandwich
    1 whole wheat English muffin
    2/3 c. homemade curried chicken salad
    A few spinach leaves

Snack (4:15 p.m.):
Special K snack

Snack (4:30 p.m.):
1 1/2 c. lentil soup
1 c. Minute Maid Pommegranate Blueberry juice

Tonight I cooked a nice dinner for myself - beer braised roast beef and "crash hot potatoes" (crispy oven roasted potatoes) using a recipe from the Pioneer Woman blog. According to the nutrient tracker, everything I consumed before dinner (breakfast, lunch and both snacks) only came up to about 850 calories. Not nearly enough. So I went ahead and ate a big dinner. Although I am now stuffed, I am at about 2100 calories for the day.

Dinner (6:45 p.m.)
6 oz beer braised roast beef
1/4 cup brown gravy
1/4 cup mushrooms and onions (cooked with the beef)
2 small red potatoes, cooked "crash hot" style (lots of olive oil)
1 O'Dell brewery 90 Shilling Ale
(Yes, I know that this meal is seriously lacking in vegetables)

About the beer braised roast beef:
I like roast beef. I have a variety of different ways that I cook it. From time to time, the local grocery store will put good roasting cuts on sale: buy-one-get-one-free. So, whenever I see this deal, I always buy two, which means that I almost always have a beef roast in the freezer. These roasts are usually 2-3 pounds, so I usually save them for dinner parties. However, I've had a roast beef craving lately - probably something to do with the cooler weather.

The inspiration for this recipe came from this chow.com recipe. The version I made tonight was pared down, but very tasty.

I used 1 8-ounce package of sliced mushrooms (normally I would slice whole mushrooms myself, but these were on sale) and 1/2 yellow onion, sliced thin. I placed these in the bottom of a cassarole dish along with 3 crushed and peeled garlic cloves.

Then I put a liberal amount of fresh ground black pepper and sea salt on both sides of the roast, then seared it for about 6 minutes on each side. I put the roast in the cassarole dish, then poured in a bottle of the 90 Shilling Ale (any ale will do, but lighter beers won't impart as much flavor). I then placed the roast in a 350 degree oven for 2 1/2 hours (another half hour or hour would have made it more tender, I think).

When the roast was done, I removed it from the oven, then removed the meat from the cassarole dish and put it on a plate to rest. I strained the liquid to seperate the mushrooms and onions from the juice. Then I heated about 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat and added 3-4 tablespoons of flour, stirring to incorporate it into the oil. I let it brown for a minute, then slowly added the reserved juices/beer from the roast and slowly added it to the flour mixture, stirring constantly to incorporate it without lumps. I then added salt and pepper to taste. I added the mushrooms and onions back to the gravy, and served it over sliced beef and the crash hot potatoes.

I ate more than I would have - 1 potato and about half the beef would have been okay, but I probably would have been hungry later. In all, dinner was about a 1100 calorie affair. I should have eaten more earlier in the day.