Everyday Systems

What do you guys have on your s-days?

Chocolate orange wedges, butterfinger minis, about to have gratuitous amounts of popcorn rather than dinner...

Generally it's sweets, most often it's good cookies. Part of the reason for this is that if I want something like potato chips or corn chips or fries, they can be part of a meal -- without guilt. Maybe not the best choice, but a perfectly legal choice.

Example: last night I planned to have a bean dip and corn chips while watching the football game. It didn't happen. Tonight's dinner was the bean dip and chips.

Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Pepperidge Farm Cookies.

Funny, sometimes my favorite S of the week is being able to have seconds of a really good entre.

I had two treats each day this weekend. On Saturday I had chocolate-covered almonds (I had these about 1:15 AM when I was up late and realized I could legally eat them). Later that day I had a large spiced ginger cookie from a bakery near me. It was absolutely delicious, and I will be having more of those! Sunday I had a rustic apple tart (from the same bakery), and later some apple slices and caramel dip. On Saturday I also had a second bowl of some soup I made that day. I loved my treats this weekend.

WOW your treats sound great.

I'm still in diet mode I think because I haven't allowed myself to get that decadent yet without fear that I would go insane and eat everything but with each passing week this diet head is diminishing.

gettheweightoff wrote:WOW your treats sound great.

I'm still in diet mode I think because I haven't allowed myself to get that decadent yet without fear that I would go insane and eat everything but with each passing week this diet head is diminishing.

I think there are three tricks to not going insane and eating everything.

1. Only buy enough for one serving. If I make cookies, I portion them and freeze all but the portion I'll be eating.

2. Get high quality food. A really good homemade or bakery-made cookie is much better than any from the grocery.

3. When you eat it, pay attention to what you're eating. Sit at the table and enjoy it. Don't watch TV, read, drive or anything else EXCEPT talk with other people at the table. I've been known to tune them out when I'm really enjoying something.

osoniye wrote:Funny, sometimes my favorite S of the week is being able to have seconds of a really good entre.

I plan our meals so that dishes I really like are for my S day dinners.

Sometimes I will get some little mini moon cakes from a Chinese grocery near us for S days. I like the black bean and red bean ones. This week, I had some of my mom's divinity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divinity_% ... tionery%29

and powdered sugar Mexican wedding cookies.

I have a bag of Hershey miniatures, but haven't eaten any in a while. I keep them around because they are a way to get a small quantity of chocolate if I'm craving chocolate. They now have Special Dark Hershey's Kisses, so I may get some of those to keep around (my favorite way to eat the Miniatures is to have a Special Dark and a milk chocolate one). I just found out one Hershey Kiss has about half the calories of one Miniature.

The first bite or two of anything is almost always the best, and can assuage a craving. It's good to have a way to get a small quantity of what you're craving. Miniatures and Hershey Kisses are good, because each piece is small, and it's easy to serve yourself one or two individual pieces, without having to break them off a bigger piece or re-wrap what's left.

Chocolate. And home baking. And I agree with wosnes, good quality, and Nicest, small portions.

I have two rules for S day snacks:

1. Whatever it is has to go on a plate or in a bowl before I can eat it. No eating directly from the package. The package has to be closed up and put away before I can eat.

2. I have to sit down to eat. Not necessarily at the table, but no eating while standing up or lying down.

These rules make it easier to plan how much I want to eat, and stick to that plan. Putting it on a plate and sitting down to eat makes any snack seem just a little bit more special, too.

I've got a story from Brian Wansink to back this up. He did a study where a cafeteria gave people samples of brownies. All the brownies were the same, but some of them were served on napkins, some on paper plates, and some on china plates. The people who got the brownies on china plates rated them much higher than the people who got them on paper plates or napkins. Food tastes better on a plate than from the package.

I am totally in favor of pulling out the "Good China" for treats and such.

I think it's a good habit to make a treat a REAL treat by making it truly special.

Though to be honest, I think formal meals are a good idea, too. While I GET the idea of wanting to be... democratic about things, have a sense of occasion about a meal, and going to some trouble about it isn't a BAD thing when we have the time for it.

Pancakes!!!! (At least, that is what I'm planning on enjoying Saturday morning when I wake up).

I tend to have a few miscellaneous sweets scattered throughout each S day (M&Ms, chocolate almonds, that sort of thing), but my favourite "big ticket" items are: a Blizzard from Dairy Queen, or a home-baked treat (a cobbler, or chocolate chip cookies). Because these things involve either going somewhere to get them, or making them from scratch, they do a good job of making the treat feel sufficiently special.

Sometimes I also enjoy putting syrup on waffles or pancakes!

I usually enjoy dim sum or a multi-course sushi meal at some point over the weekend. I also like to choose a special sweet treat when I grocery shop on Friday evening. The sweet treat is generally good dark chocolate or black licorice. On occasion, I must indulge in some chocolate lava cake or panna cotta from Trader Joe's.

Lorelei wrote:On occasion, I must indulge in some chocolate lava cake or panna cotta from Trader Joe's.

I can pass on the chocolate lava cake and I haven't tried the panna cotta, but the creme brulee from Trader Joe's is very good!

This is my first lot of S-days, and I'm finding that the biggest treat is the freedom to snack, not what I'm snacking on.

So far have enjoyed an out-of-mealtime tangerine, a can of pop, a packet of crisps and a finger of dark chocolate. Planning to have some toast and honey with my afternoon coffee later, mmm.

Just passed my first round of S days too and I made a pan of brownies on Sunday morning and ate them for breakfast, lunch, and snacks all day. Very nice but I was indeed surprised to note that giving myself total permission to eat them made them somewhat less appealing after the second plateful. Weird.