Happy Memorial Day!!!!

The unofficial start of summer is finally upon us! Can it be already? Where has this year gone???? What have you done this Spring that makes you proud? What new foods or behaviors have you added to your daily WW life?

This is National Vegetarian Week! May 19 – May 26th! Too bad this is a UK celebration and not in the US. Maybe someday! http://www.vegsoc.org/nvw/2008/facts.html Here are some veg facts in case you would like to learn a bit about vegetarianism. I’m not pushing, just proud to be one! And, I am in the process of going vegan. I have had a couple slips in the last 2 weeks, but I have virtually been vegan for 2 weeks. I feel great! I have also given up pop (diet) and I feel great as well. Am I insane? Nah!!!!

Top Ten Reasons To Go Vegetarian

Gone are the days when vegetarians were served up a plate of iceberg lettuce and a dull-as-dishwater baked potato. With the growing variety of vegetarian faux-meats like bacon and sausages and an ever-expanding variety of vegetarian cookbooks and restaurants, vegetarianism has taken the world by storm.

With World Vegetarian Week here, without further ado, are the Top 10 reasons to give vegetarian eating a try, starting now!

1.Helping Animals Also Helps the Global Poor
While there is ample and justified moral indignation about the diversion of 100 million tons of grain for biofuels, more than seven times as much (760 million tons) is fed to farmed animals so that people can eat meat. Is the diversion of crops to our cars a moral issue? Yes, but it's about one-eighth the issue that meat-eating is. Care about global poverty? Try vegetarianism.

2. Eating Meat Supports Cruelty to Animals The green pastures and idyllic barnyard scenes of years past are now distant memories. On today's factory farms, animals are crammed by the thousands into filthy windowless sheds, wire cages, gestation crates, and other confinement systems. These animals will never raise families, root in the soil, build nests, or do anything else that is natural and important to them. They won't even get to feel the warmth of the sun on their backs or breathe fresh air until the day they are loaded onto trucks bound for slaughter.

3. Eating Meat Is Bad for the Environment A recent United Nations report entitled Livestock's Long Shadow concludes that eating meat is "one of the ... most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." In just one example, eating meat causes almost 40 percent more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, and planes in the world combined. The report concludes that the meat industry "should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity."

4. Avoid Bird Flu
The World Health Organization says that if the avian flu virus mutates, it could be caught simply by eating undercooked chicken flesh or eggs, eating food prepared on the same cutting board as infected meat or eggs, or even touching eggshells contaminated with the disease. Other problems with factory farming -- from foot-and-mouth to SARS -- can be avoided with a general shift to a vegetarian diet.

5. If You Wouldn't Eat a Dog, You Shouldn't Eat a Chicken
Several recent studies have shown that chickens are bright animals who are able to solve complex problems, demonstrate self-control, and worry about the future. Chickens are smarter than cats and dogs and even do some things that have not yet been seen in mammals other than primates. Dr. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication at Macquarie University in Australia, says, "As a trick at conferences, I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens and people think I'm talking about monkeys."

6. Heart Disease: Our Number One Killer Healthy vegetarian diets support a lifetime of good health and provide protection against numerous diseases, including the United States' three biggest killers: heart disease, cancer, and strokes. Drs. Dean Ornish and Caldwell Esselstyn -- two doctors with 100 percent success in preventing and reversing heart disease -- have used a vegan diet to accomplish it, as chronicled most recently in Dr. Esselstyn's Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, which documents his 100 percent success rate for unclogging people's arteries and reversing heart disease.

7. Cancer: Our Number Two Killer Dr. T. Colin Campbell is one of the world's foremost epidemiological scientists and the director of what The New York Times called "the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease." Dr. Campbell's best-selling book, The China Study, is a must-read for anyone who is concerned about cancer. To summarize it, Dr. Campbell states, "No chemical carcinogen is nearly so important in causing human cancer as animal protein."

8. Fitting Into That Itty-Bitty Bikini Vegetarianism is also the ultimate weight-loss diet, since vegetarians are one-third as likely to be obese as meat-eaters are, and vegans are about one-tenth as likely to be obese. Of course, there are overweight vegans, just as there are skinny meat-eaters. But on average, vegans are 10 to 20 percent lighter than meat-eaters. A vegetarian diet is the only diet that has passed peer review and taken weight off and kept it off.

9. Global Peace
Leo Tolstoy claimed that "vegetarianism is the taproot of humanitarianism." His point? For people who wish to sow the seeds of peace, we should be eating as peaceful a diet as possible. Eating meat supports killing animals, for no reason other than humans' acquired taste for animals' flesh. Great humanitarians from Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi to Thich Nhat Hanh have argued that a vegetarian diet is the only diet for people who want to make the world a kinder place.

10. The Joy of Veggies
As the growing range of vegetarian cookbooks and restaurants shows, vegetarian foods rock. People report that when they adopt a vegetarian diet, their range of foods explodes from a center-of-the-plate meat item to a range of grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables that they didn't even know existed.

Sir Paul McCartney sums it all up, "If anyone wants to save the planet, all they have to do is just stop eating meat. That's the single most important thing you could do. It's staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty."
So are you ready to give it a try?

Check out VegCooking.com for recipes and meal plans and to take the World Vegetarian Week 7-Day Pledge.

Here is the website this article came from. http://www.alternet.org/environment/85828/?page=1 While vegetarianism is not for everyone, adopting it on a more regular basis will help your health. I challenge you to go veg maybe one whole day or even more this week!

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Okay, so Monday is Memorial Day. Here are some values for foods that you might run into at your party! I hope you have a wonderful weekend and enjoy a day off (if you get Monday off). Maybe work in your yard while listening to the 500 on the radio. Get some points and feel revved up to work by the race cars. Oh, and a pretty yard to boot! Go out for a nice walk in a park, have a picnic lunch after. Clean out the garage. Mow the lawn. Come down and walk the nice and clean downtown canal. Be active. Allow yourself to sleep in Monday if you like, but do things to keep busy. You will feel so good for having accomplished all you do and you will also improve the weigh-in results for next week. Pts can be high at cookouts, so just go in with knowledge and a plan. Again I will say, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Anonymous (Thanks to Leader Diane for compiling these values!)

*****Memorial Weekend and Graduation Celebrations*****
The following list provides estimated POINTS values. If the nutrition information is available, use it to calculate the actual POINTS value (it may be lower!). Plan ahead to enjoy a guilt-free holiday!
Beef
3 oz. cooked 75-85% lean ground beef burger (5)
3 oz. cooked 90% lean ground beef burger (4)
3 oz. cooked 95% lean ground beef burger (3)
Steak, regular, cooked 4 oz. (10) Steak, lean, trimmed and cooked round or loin 4 oz. (5)

Chicken Breast, fried with skin & bone 4.5 oz. (11)
Breast, cooked, with skin & bone 4.5 oz. (5) Breast, cooked, without skin & bone 3 oz. (3) Drumstick, fried, with skin (5)
Drumstick, cooked with skin (2)
Drumstick, cooked without skin (1)
Ground, cooked lean 3 oz. patty (4)
Ground, cooked lean breast 3 oz. patty (2)
Chicken Salad, 1/2 cup (6)

Spareribs Barbecued, four 4" long ribs (8)

Hot Dogs/Franks
Beef, pork, or turkey, fat-free (1)
Beef or pork, light (2)
Turkey, light (3)
Turkey, regular (3)
Beef or pork, regular (5)
Bratwurst, coooked 2 oz. (5)
Bratwurst, Boca (3)
Morningstar Farms Veggie Dogs are 1

Buns:
Hot Dog & Hamburger Regular (3)
Light (1)

Salads
Carrot and raisin, 1/2 c (7)
Coleslaw, 1/2 c (4)
Egg, 1/2 c (8)
Fruit, 1 c (2)
Macaroni, 1/2 c (6)
Pasta, 1/2 c (3)
Potato, 1/2 c (7)
Three bean salad, 1/2 c (4)
Tossed, no dressing (0)

Miscellaneous Corn on the cob, 1 medium (1)
Baked beans, 1/2 c (5)
Baked beans, canned 1/2 c (2) – Bush’s Vegetarian Baked Beans ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shish kebob, 2 small skewers (8)
Potato chips, 14 (4)
Potato chips, baked 11 (2)
Alcohol Wine, 4 oz (2)
Beer, regular 12 oz (3)
Beer, light 12 oz (2)
Liquor, 1 1/2 oz of brandy, gin, rum, scotch, tequila, vodka, or whiskey (2)
Margarita, 4 oz (5)
Pina Colada, 6 oz (7)
Daiquiri, 6 oz (6)
Desserts Cake, with icing, 1/12th of 9" layer cake or 3" square (12)
Angel food cake, 1/16th of a 10" tube (2)
Pound cake, 5"x3"x1" (8)
Brownie, one 2" square (5)
Cupcake, lowfat chocolate with frosting (2)
Pie, fruit, one-crust 1/8th (6)

Two Bean Salad with Tarragon Dressing - this is AWESOME!
3 Pts
Serves 8
30 minutes or fewer
161 cals; 4 prot; 9.5 fat; 4 fiber

½ lb green beans, trimmed and cut into 1” pieces (2 C)
15 oz can chickpeas, drained
1 C cherry tomatoes, halved
6. oz can artichoke hearts, drained and roughly chopped
½ C pitted kalamata olives, halved
¼ C sliced red onion
¼ C finely chopped Italian parsley

Dressing
¼ C balsamic vinegar
2 t Dijon mustard
1 t maple syrup
1 clove garlic
¼ t salt
1/8 t pepper
¼ C olive oil
1 T fresh tarragon

Salad:
Fill a large pot with 1” water and set steamer basket in pot. Cover and bring to a boil. Place green beans in steamer basket; cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and steam 2-3 minutes, or until crisp tender. Cool.

Toss beans with remaining salad ingredients in large serving bowl.

Dressing:
Blend all ingredients up to pepper until smooth. With blender running, slowly add oil and tarragon and blend until smooth. Pour dressing over salad and toss to coat. Serve at room temp.

This is great without the olives (I don't like them). You could probably even cut back on the oil.

Polenta with Baby Spinach

side dishes
POINTS® Value: 4
Servings: 4
Preparation Time: 8 min
Cooking Time: 12 min
Level of Difficulty: Easy

Celebrate spring with fresh baby greens. We paired them with creamy polenta and freshly grated parmesan cheese for a sure-fire winner.

Ingredients
· 3 1/2 cup fat-free chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
· 1 cup uncooked cornmeal, in the form of instant polenta
· 1/2 tsp table salt
· 1/4 tsp black pepper
· 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
· 2 cup spinach, baby leaves, stems removed, chopped
· 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese, Parmigiano Reggiano recommended
· 1/4 cup fat-free evaporated milk

Instructions
· Heat broth to boiling over high heat in a medium-size, heavy-bottomed pot. Gradually add polenta, stirring constantly to prevent lumps; stir in salt, pepper, nutmeg and spinach.

· Reduce heat to low and simmer until mixture is thick, stirring constantly, about 5 minutes; stir in cheese and milk. Simmer until cheese melts, about 1 minute; serve immediately. Yields about 3/4 cup per serving.

Notes
· Feel free to add more or less broth to this recipe depending on how thick you like your polenta. Serve the polenta as soon as it thickens to maintain its creaminess.Chopped, cooked and drained broccoli makes a delicious alternative to the spinach.

Recent WeightWatchers.com Recipes
Grilled Asian Burgers with Onion and PineapplePotato and Green Bean SaladGrilled Fruit with Rich Chocolate SauceGingered Pork, Pineapple and Pepper Skewers

Hungry Girl’s Memorial Day Survival Tips
http://www.hungry-girl.com/girls/biteoutdetails.php?isid=1120 –