This is a protein-fortified version of one of my favorite Asian snacks: the Chinese steamed bun filled with red bean paste. It uses vanilla gemma (pea) protein isolate (available at a very reasonable price from TrueProtein.com) to boost the protein content of this low-fat, satisfying post-workout snack. Gemma protein forms a fluffy, non-stick paste when mixed with water, and it has a natural bean-like flavor that is very similar to traditional sweetened Chinese red bean paste.

Preparation takes around 4 hours, but you can mass produce several batches of these in one marathon session on a Sunday afternoon and freeze all of your extra buns for future use. They will keep in a sealed plastic bag for several months, and restore very well with re-steaming or microwaving in a damp paper towel for 1 minute per bun.

The dough recipe can be safely doubled without adding any additional yeast, and also tastes great all by itself with no filling as a carb portion. You can also add savory fillings like BBQ pork, chicken, vegetables, etc.

Red Bean + Protein Paste

INGREDIENTS

* 3/4 cup Beans, adzuki, dry (small red beans– hoong dul)
* 5 scoops Protein powder, gemma isolate
* 1/4 cup Sugar, brown, packed, 7.8 oz per cup
* 1 cup Water

DIRECTIONS

1. Wash the beans, cover with cold water, and soak overnight. Drain beans and discard water. Place beans in a 1 1/2-quart saucepan, add 3 cups cold water, and bring to a boil over high heat. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer 1 hour, or until very soft. Monitor the pan to make sure water doesn’t dry up. Drain and discard the water.

2. Place the beans in a food processor and process until smooth. Add brown sugar, water, and gemma protein powder and process until just combined. (If you don’t have a food processor, a potato masher or a blender can be used. Extra water might be needed with a blender.)

3. Divide bean mixture into 10 portions.

Chinese Steamed Bun Dough

INGREDIENTS

* 1 package Yeast, baker’s, dry, active, 1/4 oz per package
* 1/4 cup Flour, wheat, white, all-purpose, enriched
* 1 tsp. Sugar, white, granulated, 1/7 oz per teaspoon
* 1/4 cup Water

* 2 cups Flour, wheat, white, all-purpose, enriched
* 8 packets Splenda (or 3 T. Sugar, white, granulated)
* 1/4 tsp Salt, table, 1/5 oz per teaspoon
* 1/2 tsp baking soda
* 1 tbsp Oil, vegetable
* 1/2 cup Water
* 1/2 tsp Baking powder, double-acting, straight phosphate, 1/6 oz per teaspoon

DIRECTIONS

1. Mix together yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar, 1/4 cup flour, and 1/4 cup warm water. Allow to stand for 30 minutes.
2. Mix in 1/2 cup warm water, flour, salt, baking soda, 6 packets of Splenda (or 2 tablespoons sugar), and vegetable oil. Knead until dough surface is smooth and elastic. Roll over in a greased bowl, and let stand until triple in size, about 2 1/2 to 3 hours.
3. Punch down dough, and spread out on a floured board. Sprinkle baking powder evenly on surface, and knead for 5 minutes. Divide dough into 2 parts, and place the piece you are not working with in a covered bowl. Divide each half into 5 parts. Shape each part into a ball with smooth surface up and flatten into a round patty about 4.5″ in diameter and 1/2″ thick.
4. Spoon one portion of the bean mixture into the center of each dough circle, then bring up the edges of the dough to the top of the ball of bean paste and pinch them together, leaving a small 1/2″ hole to allow the steam to escape. Put each ball on a wax paper square. Let stand covered until double, about 30 minutes.
5. Bring water to a boil in steamer pot, and reduce heat to medium; the water should still be boiling. Place steam-plate or a dampened cheesecloth or broadcloth on the steamer section of the pot. Transfer as many buns on wax paper as will comfortably fit onto steam-plate leaving 1 to 2 inches between the buns. Cover steamer with lid. Steam buns over boiling water for 15 minutes.
6. REMOVE LID BEFORE you turn off heat, or else water will drip back onto bun surface and produce yellowish “blisters” on bun surfaces. Continue steaming batches of buns until all are cooked.

Servings: 10 buns

Calories: 232 calories
Carbohydrate: 35.8 g
- Fiber: 2.59 g
- Sugar: 8.23 g
Protein: 17.7 g
Fat: 1.9 g

I’ve been using this method for preparing cheap, roasted whole chicken for the past few months. I vary the seasonings depending on my mood that day, but I *always* brine the chicken ahead of time. It really makes a difference in whether your protein-packed clucker tastes more like a gourmet restaurant entree or a flavorless failure.

1. BRINE the raw chicken (3.5-5 lbs) in a solution of 1/4 c. salt dissolved in enough cold tap water to cover the bird in a covered container. I usually just do this in a pot with lid. Place in the refrigerator and allow to soak for 3-8 hours.

   (If I’m feeling really lazy, I’ll do this first thing in the morning and tell my husband to throw the bird in the oven when he gets home at 5 PM.)

2. DRAIN the brining solution away.
3. PREHEAT your oven to 350 degrees F.
4. RUB your choice of seasonings over the entire surface of the chicken’s skin. Lemon pepper, salt & pepper, chives, rosemary, cilantro, garlic & red pepper, and commercial steak seasoning are all good choices. Pry up the skin over the breast and work some seasonings in there as well.
5. PLACE the chicken in a roasting pan or baking dish and bake at 350 degrees F for 25 minutes per pound.

Voila! Oven-roasted, superbly-seasoned chicken that will rival anything you can order at a restaurant…all for under $1.00/pound.

This spreadsheet includes a nutrition calculator based on the NROLFW nutrition plan by Cassandra Forsythe. Enter your age, weight, and height, and it will calculate your body mass index, resting metabolic rate, NROLFW activity multipliers, and the NROLFW suggested calories and macronutrient targets for both maintenance and fat loss at a deficit of 300 calories per day.

Also included are printable workout log sheets for all seven stages of workouts in NROLFW with exercises, page number references, sets, reps, and rest intervals already pre-populated for your convenience. I’ve also included tables to log your interval cardio sessions and bodyweight matrix workouts in the appropriate stages.

Save yourself a lot of tedious pen and paper calculations and confusing blank workout log filling and just download and print my spreadsheet instead.

Hey, you might as well take advantage of my OCD tendencies, right?

Enjoy!

It’s come to my attention that one of the authors of the book has objected to the posting of the full NROLFW workout logs in the past since the workouts are one of the main reasons to purchase the book. Because of this, I have moved the spreadsheet to a password-protected directory on my server that will allow access only to folks who own the book and can look up the following in their copy of New Rules of Lifting for Women:

• User Name: Fourth word in paragraph two of the “A Decent Interval” section on page 26
• Password: Seventh word in paragraph three on page 121

Download: New Rules of Lifting for Women Diet Calculator and Workout Logs

A final note: Bear in mind that attempting to perform the NROLFW workouts in these log sheets without the actual exercise descriptions from the book which include photos, proper form, and tempo information could result in sub-optimal results and/or actual injury.

Buy the book, ladies! It’s only $17.13 from Amazon.com, and it’s WELL WORTH IT.

This weekend was pretty productive for me. I did a LOT of cooking Saturday and Sunday, trying out two new recipes and one new vegetable and generally bulk-cooking about five days’ worth of food. I had a sort of epiphany while watching Top Chef last week: Why the hell am I wasting my time watching OTHER people cook on TV when I could be making all kinds of mouth-watering food for myself in the same amount of time?

So I pulled out the Wei-Chuan Taiwanese cuisine cookbook I’ve owned for over three years (and from which I had yet to make a single entree), my Weight Watcher’s Take-Out Tonight, and a steamed bread recipe from the Internet and got to work using ingredients I had on hand from last week’s grocery run.

I made:
- Honey-glazed pork (first recipe tried from my Taiwanese cookbook)
- Chinese BBQ roast pork
- Stir-fried garlic turnip greens
- Stir-fried string beans and carrots
- Kashi 7-grain pilaf
- Red pepper and garlic roast chicken
- Chinese steamed buns filled with red bean paste and gemma protein (PWO-compliant recipe modification!)

The steamed buns were time-consuming, but OMG…they are so worth it. WAY better than a PWO shake or processed protein bar from the store. DH and two co-workers all loved them. I’ve wanted to try this since I received my TrueProtein.com gemma protein order a few months ago, and it is great to see that my initial reaction to the stuff (”Hmm…tastes like a sweetened Chinese bean paste dessert…”) was right.

Anyway, I am on a mission to try one new recipe each week for the rest of the year. I’ve gotten into a good groove with food prep now, brining, seasoning, and roasting one 4 lb chicken every weekend for easy protein (salads, quesadillas, basic protein portion, pita pizzas, etc.) and making two other protein entrees to round out the remaining 2-3 lbs of protein DH and I go through for lunches and dinners the rest of the week. Since whole chicken is still one of the cheapest meats available per pound, this gives us a good baseline for the week while providing the opportunity to spend just a little more on the other protein types besides chicken. (I still go for what’s on sale, though, and decide what to cook based on that.)

Our grocery bill has gone up noticeably over the past year from an average of $45 or so for two of us per week to $60-$65 now, and honestly, I buy almost exactly the stuff every week, very little of it processed or packaged - fresh produce, WW pita bread, around 5-7 lbs of lean meat, 36-54 large eggs, cheese, soy milk, 0.5 lb roast beef, 2 cans of cat food, 2 bottles of juice for DH, one box of cereal, raisins, oats, salsa, and condiments and cooking staples as they are used up.

Besides geeking out over food, I also got nerdy with some spreadsheets this weekend. I start NROLFW Stage 2 this week, and as I mentioned earlier, I went ahead and made an Excel spreadsheet with logs for all of the workouts for the entire book plus a new diet calculator based on the nutrition chapters. The blank workout log that you have to fill out by hand was just not working for me, and I also wanted to come up with an easier way to calculate caloric needs for maintenance and fat loss than slogging through the book’s tables and equations by hand.

I’m going to work on a version of the spreadsheet for the original NROL book this week for the 12-week workout-a-long at my office that I am trying to start up. The last challenge was fun (especially since my team won), but a lot of the other guys just gave up and fell off the wagon because they didn’t have a real plan to follow. This time around, it will be non-competitive, and everyone will be using either the free TT bodyweight program or NROL for 3 months.

I use this easy, lean pulled pork recipe from Oxygen at least once a month and plan to bring it to all of the cook outs I attend this summer so I’ll have a healthy option that won’t scare away the “normals” at the party. Since it’s slow cooked in a crock pot, you can even prepare it in the evening before bed or in the morning before work, let it cook for 8 hours on low, and wake up or come home to piping hot, freshly-cooked barbecue nirvana.

Pulled pork…. **drool***

=============================================================

Pulled Pork Sandwiches (Crock Pot)
(From the December 2007 issue of Oxygen Magazine, p. 161)

* Ready in 8 hours and 30 minutes *
* Makes 6 servings *

INGREDIENTS:
* 2 tsp. barbecue spice seasonings
* 1 lb lean pork tenderloin
* 2 tsp canola oil
* 1 small onion, halved and sliced
* 1/2 cup canned nonfat chicken broth, reduced sodium
* 1 can diced tomatoes, drained
* 1/2 cup commercial Kansas City-style barbecue sauce
* Salt and pepper to season
* 6 whole grain rolls

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Rub barbecue spice over meat.

2. Over medium-high heat, heat 1 tsp oil in a fry pan. Brown meat on all sides for about 2 minutes per side and place in slow cooker.

3. Pour grease off pan and add remaining oil. Add onions and saute’ until soft, approximately 5 minutes, turning often. Add chicken broth to pan and using wooden spoon, scrape up bits from bottom of pan.

4. Pour broth over pork in the crock pot. Add tomatoes and barbecue sauce over pork. Cook for 8 hours on a low setting.

5. Remove pork from crock. Let cool for several minutes. Using two forks, begin pulling pork apart into shreds. Return shreds of meat to sauce. Stir. Season with salt and pepper if needed.

6. Cut rolls in half and fill with meat mixture.

NUTRIENTS PER SERVING:
Calories: 285

Total fat: 7g
- Saturated fat: 1g
- Trans fat: 0g
- Cholesterol: 60mg

Sodium 1190 mg

Total Carbohydrates: 32g
- Fiber: 3g
- Sugars: 13g

Protein: 27g

As our first wedding anniversary approaches in July and the official summer wedding season kicks off down here in central Florida, I’ve been reflecting back on our wedding last year and looking over the budget spreadsheet to see if there was anything I regretted on it.

Chris and I were married last year for just under $9000 (including the rehearsal dinner, rings, clothing, marriage license, all vendor fees, decorations, and food) for a wedding with around 120 guests. We fully planned on paying for the entire wedding ourselves with a budget of $5000-$7000 and a guest list of around 80 people, but our parents surprised us by contributing lump sum gifts ($5000 from my parents, and $1800 from DH’s parents) for us to use as we chose and by picking up the costs of the cakes ($175 from my parents) and rehearsal dinner (~$800 from DH’s parents). I know that a lot of people would simply add the parental contributions to their original budget and up the total for the wedding to $11800-$13800, but we opted instead to stay as close to our original amount as possible while squeezing in the 40 additional guests that our parents more or less made us invite, LOL. Between the unexpected help from our parents and the monetary gifts received from our guests, our out of pocket cost for the wedding was only $704. We are definitely not one of those couples who will still be paying off the wedding 10 years down the road.

Since I have more of a frugal male geek’s attitude toward most things, including weddings, I would have been perfectly happy with a rented dress (bridal gown rentals are pretty popular in my birth country of Taiwan–my mother wore a rental on her wedding day) for myself, origami flowers, 30 guests from my side, a reception dinner held at my favorite Asian fusion buffet at $16.99/person, and a DJ that could also provide karaoke services. Alas, DH is apparently more romantic and traditional about this sort of thing than I am, and I ended up buying a dress after all ($99 David’s Bridal clearance with free minor alterations from my younger sister; it pays to be a stock size 6), paying for flowers (I almost threw up when I placed the order at the florist 2 weeks before the ceremony–I will NEVER spend that much on plant material that I can’t plant in the ground and eat later again), extra required guests, and a reception and ceremony at our local country club that was $25 per guest plus beer, wine, and appetizers.

Well, at least I did get my karaoke DJ.

We did a lot of things ourselves and shopped around for the best bargains on venue (a friend of the family was a member of the country club and got us the $25 per guest rate; the regular price was $30 per guest), favors, decorations, jewelry, and apparel. We used friends for photography and videography, designed and printed our own invitations, ordered many supplies online with coupon codes and free shipping, ordered half a dozen delicious, regular-sized cakes in different flavors from the local Asian bakery and Publix grocery store instead of paying hundreds for an overpriced tower of dry cake coated with fondant, and generally tried to make things nice without paying inflated wedding industry prices.

The only thing I’d change if I could do it all again is to allot some time to learn how to do flower arrangements myself. And maybe to have the wait staff set aside some of those yummy cakes for us. The desserts must have been great, because there was absolutely none left by the time Chris and I finished talking to all of the tables and had a chance to look for some, LOL.

I plan to do what my parents did and contribute a lump sum amount of around $5000 (adjusted for inflation) to the weddings of any children DH and I may have, but we won’t be paying for a $20k extravaganza even if we have a daughter and our finances allow for it. I like the idea of letting the kids know early that they need to foot most of the bill for the extras in their lives and at least half of the bill for grown up things like college and weddings as well. If we do have more to give beyond $5000, we would prefer to earmark that as a gift to help the couple get a start on a downpayment on their home.

Oh, and I will teach myself how to do flowers WAY ahead of time so I can handle that portion of the wedding for my kids and spare them the nauseating “OMG, I just squandered $823 on flowers that will die in 3 days. ARGH!” feeling that I had last July! I may even take up cake decorating.

How much did you pay for your wedding, and is there anything you regret purchasing for it? Did you receive any help from your family and/or friends (monetary or service)? Do you plan on helping your children out with their wedding expenses?

UPDATE: As of 12:30 PM Friday, 5/2/08, size 34B in black AND white are back in stock on the site!

Okay ladies, I thought that the $19.99 Champion sports bra sale last month was a good deal, but oh my…this one is even better!

Onehanesplace.com has my favorite
Sport Shape t-back bra on clearance for $9.99. These are the high motion control rated sports bras with the wicking fabric and shaped seam design that won’t squash you flat like most compression bras. They normally run $33 or so retail.

The sizes are a bit limited if you are lacking in the cup department, but when I checked, 34C and 36B were still in stock. Alas, no 34A/34B for yours truly, though the back-order notice said that they would be back in stock around May 19. I was also kind of bummed that the cute light blue color shown in the pictures was not available in the lower size ranges, but hey, the black and white options that ARE offered are perfectly serviceable, too.

And to make the deal even better, here are some non-stackable coupon codes you can use:

15% off entire order (Expires 5/2/08): 611080
Free shipping on orders $60 and up (Expires 5/2/08): 611081
$3 flat rate shipping (Expires 5/2/08): 611082
10% off $50+, 15% off $75+, or 20% off $100+ (Expires 7/31/08): 470802
Free shipping (Expiration unknown, but still good 5/11/08): 608910

Good luck! I hope some of you get in on this deal.

I’m going to go back to my corner now and sulk about the shortage of sizes for rack-deficient chicas like me.

It’s been four months since Chris and I began our slightly modified Total Money Makeover plan, and despite our lack of what author Dave Ramsey dubs “gazelle intensity,” we’ve made some decent progress toward eliminating out non-mortgage debt. If you count the $4200 home equity line of credit we knocked out from September 2007-January 2008 for our new air conditioner, we have paid off $17,830 in non-primary mortgage debt so far.

I say that we aren’t gazelle intense because we haven’t done most of the things that Ramsey’s less fortunate listeners often have to do in order to dig themselves out of debt:

- Work a second or third part-time job
- Sell off leveraged big ticket items
- Cut off ALL entertainment and travel
- Eat a lot of rice and beans

Because our debt was largely comprised of low-interest rate student, auto, and home loans, not credit card balances, and we are fortunate enough to have a dual income household that brings in enough to cover basic living expenses, retirement funding, a reasonable amount of entertainment spending, and debt payments on those loans without ever being at risk of falling behind, we have been able to throw a lot of money at our debt snowball without changing our lifestyle very much. Granted, I have had tightwad impulses since early childhood, and Chris has been pretty responsible with his finances since an ex-girlfriend set him straight years ago, so you could say that the only thing holding us back from paying my car and his student loan off early was complacency. It was easy to just keep on making those minimum payments according to the bank’s schedule, especially since we were doing all the right things in terms of retirement savings and budgeting.

We also had no big ticket toys like boats or over-priced new cars to sell off, but we’ve done pretty well just by doing the following:

- Temporarily reduced retirement savings to just 4% of our gross income (down from 15% for Chris and 20% for me)
- Cut back on movie theater outings and used the 12 free Blockbuster rental coupons I earned via e-Rewards instead
- Cut back on dining out
- Chris started making his own sandwiches for lunch at least 2-3 days per week and brews his own coffee at home instead of buying some on the road
- Reduced untracked spending on hobbies, clothing, electronics, games, and other non-essentials.
- Put any bonus income (tax refunds, sales commissions, mileage bonuses, gifts, etc.) toward the snowball

Here’s where we failed to be gazelles: Some of the extra things that we did spend on probably could save us several months on the debt snowball, but we made the choice to budget for these items and deal with the extra 2 months it would cost us.

- Chris built a new desktop computer system with $1200 from our 2007 tax refund.
- I set aside $800 for the Pink Dumbbells/John Stone Fitness Bahamas cruise in August.
- I threw in $400 for a new mattress and box spring set in February. (The old mattress was sagging badly and made my back hurt every day. I consider this preventive health care. Chris’s mother threw in another $300 toward this as a gift.)
- Chris paid for the roundtrip airfare for us to visit his father in Alabama (~$400) and for his friends’ out of town wedding in June (another $400).
- Chris spent $350 or so on the materials needed to re-pave our small walled courtyard.

Reducing our retirement contributions for 2008 has probably made the biggest difference in our progress, followed by our unspoken agreement to control impulse spending on both lattes and gazingus pins. Although we both budget around $50/month for fun money, neither of us has spent much of our allowances. We’ve decided to really take advantage of the forgotten entertainment and hobby materials we have on hand instead of accumulating more. Chris has been geeking out with D&D and cards (World of Warcraft collectible card game, not poker) at his friends’ houses instead of going out and spending money on movies and dining out. I’ve been outfitting myself and Chris with home-sewn clothes made strictly from my existing stash of fabric, patterns, notions, and oversized free t-shirts. We both check out books and audio books from the library instead of purchasing them from Amazon.com.

I haven’t bought a Wii yet, and Chris hasn’t acquired a new car stereo system. No new fitness gear has appeared in the house since I the Cardio Coach New Year’s deal in January.

And you know what? We haven’t been bored at all.

$31,782 more until financial freedom!