New Kitchen Toys

My new kitchen toys might not sound that exciting, but I love them and use them all the time!

I got an electronic food scale for Christmas.  The thing that I love about it is that it has a tare feature... I turn on the scale, put a plate or bowl on the scale, and then tare it so that the scale evens back out to zero.  Then I know exactly how many ounces my food is without having to subtract out the weight of the dish.  It has kind of been an eye opener to see how much 4 oz. of meat is.  Four ounces of chicken seems to be plenty for me, but I could easily eat 8 or more ounces of salmon if I wasn't paying attention! :-)

My other fun new toy is my Magic Bullet.  My trainer wants me to have a protein shake every night, so I've been making smoothies with protein my protein powder.  They are completely delicious and it's like I get an ice cream dessert each night.  So here's where the Magic Bullet comes in handy.  I take one of the many Magic Bullet cups, put in my ingredients, attach the blade, and then blend everything on the Magic Bullet.  It's so nice because then the smoothie is in the cup I will drink it out of, and I don't have to wash my blender every night.  Here's my current favorite "recipe":

• 1 scoop vanilla ice cream protein powder (24 grams of protein!)
• 1/2 cup fat free milk
• handful of frozen fruit - the kind I'm using right now has peaches, mangoes, strawberries, and pineapple - yummy!