Noom Elephant Dialogues—Distraction

 🐘: "Let's do [something else]!"

🕵️‍♂️:  "Look at that: my elephant/brain is generating an urge"

🏇🏼: "We aren't going to stop the Elephant from having urges. But I can choose if I want to act in accordance with that urge."

🏇🏼: "Hey Observer, let's keep a look out for this Urge. Remember that Elephant can be sneaky and may switch it up with some other distraction next time."

🕵️‍♂️: "OK, I'll tap into how it feels and if it changes over time."

🏇🏼: "Hey Elephant, thanks for sharing that Urge, we are going to stay on task for a little while. But we do have a break planned for the top of the hour. Can you look forward to that?" 

🐘: "I like breaks! (grumbles) But I'd prefer to have it now..."

Noom Elephant Dialogues—But there’s still MORE PIZZA!?

 

More or leftover pizza

🏇🏼: Did you enjoy the Pizza? Wasn’t that a nice treat. 

🐘: I love pizza!

🏇🏼: Well, let’s freeze the leftovers so we can have some another day

🐘: But there’s still MORE PIZZA!?

🕵️‍♂️: There is wanting

🏇🏼: I know, we used to eat a lot of pizza but we learned that’s a lot of calories. 

🐘: But there’s still MORE PIZZA!?

🏇🏼: Before we had the pizza we had an orange, some crunchy carrots and celery, and a nice cup of tea. Aren’t you full? 

🕵️‍♂️: There is stomach fullness, yet there is wanting

🐘: You are stuck in the past, I live in the present. 

🐘: And now THERE IS MORE PIZZA! 

🏇🏼: Remember when we used to split a pizza with Dad?
🐘: That was nice. 

🏇🏼: The pizza was nice, but what made it really special was spending time with Dad. 

🏇🏼: Food isn’t love, it’s just food. 

🐘: Hmm, but after I eat pizza I am used to eating MORE PIZZA!

🕵️‍♂️: There is habit

🏇🏼: Let’s take a deep breath

🐘: <breathe in> 

🐘: <breathe out> 

🏇🏼: We can do this. This is us putting away pizza for later. 

🐘: I will like having more pizza later. 

Noom Elephant Dialogues—We JUST had lunch

🐘: I’M HUNGRY!

🏇🏼: But, we JUST had lunch!

🐘: So? I’m still hungry.

🕵️‍♂️: There is hunger

🏇🏼: I know, but we are losing weight, so we might be a little hungry sometimes. 

🐘: If we lose too much weight we’ll die. I don’t want to die. We should eat. 

🏇🏼: You’re trying to keep us safe, but I promise we won’t lose too much weight. We have a plan. 

🐘: I’d like the plan better if it was to eat more now. 

🏇🏼: We have a snack planned in a few hours.
🐘: I like snacks!  

Instant Pot Goulash

For lunch today, I made the Instant Pot Goulash from the Allrecipes website. We mostly followed the recipe, but I don't like mushrooms so I substituted sausage. Also, Jeff substituted Herbs de Provence for the Italian Seasoning. 

I didn't bother to do the high-pressure cooking step; I just set it on Slow Cook and let it cook for a couple hours. I did stir it once just to take a look at how the raw pasta was cooking.

It tasted quite good but Jeff's first comment was "it needs more vegetables."  Since the recipe made plenty of leftovers we'll probably add cooked vegetables when we reheat those.

Chicken Cacciatore for the Instant Pot

Tonight Jeff made the Chicken Cacciatore recipe from the allrecipes website. It was quite tasty. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo. It pretty much looked like the photo on the website.

He mostly followed the recipe, but he substituted a can of diced tomatoes and a can of tomato sauce instead of the extra-large can of tomato sauce. He also used a can of cider instead of wine because he didn't have an open bottle. It was delicious. 

We definitely wouldn't mind having this recipe again. I'm not sure we would change anything the next time around.

Lentil "Chili"

We decided to give a new recipe a try today: Lentil Chili. We mostly followed this recipe, but we used a large can of diced tomatoes, rather than cutting up whole tomatoes. We added three cups of broth and the juice from the tomatoes and it was definitely not enough.

We cooked it in the Instant Pot for at least three hours and the lentils were very slightly undercooked, I believe because there was not enough moisture remaining in the pot. It did taste reasonably good and was filling, but it was not the most attractive meal. I think we'll actually use the rest of it as burrito fillings.

If we make this again, I would definitely add at least four cups of broth, perhaps more.

Instant Pot Vegetable Beef Soup

We made a large pot of vegetable beef soup mostly following the crockpot recipe at Wellplated.  We used butternut squash, red potatoes and carrots; but we were out of celery. We also didn't put in peas. Otherwise, we mostly followed the ingredient list.

Jeff actually cooked the beef overnight in the Instant Pot on the sous vide setting. We cooked the onions, garlic and carrots on the Saute setting until the onions were soft. Then we added the broth, carrots and red potatoes and set them to Pressure Cook for 5 minutes before adding the rest of the ingredients. 

We added the canned tomatoes and roasted butternut squash and set the Instant Pot to Slow Cook for a couple of hours. It turned out quite tasty. 

When we make this one again, I don't know that we'd change anything.