7 Days of Celery

My 7 Days of Cheesecake was a great success, but after a rather indulgent few weeks, all but three or so pounds have found their way back to me. In our fridge is a rather large jar of Adams no-sugar-added peanut butter. I was inspired. 7 Days of Celery. I would eat celery for seven days, troweling in all the peanut butter I could manage.

So, without further ado, here are the details

Day 1 - Starting weight: 176 lbs
    Breakfast: Celery with peanut butter
    Lunch: Celery with peanut butter
    Dinner: Celery with peanut butter, celery with cream cheese, celery with hot Thai peanut sauce (mmm!)

Day 2 - Starting weight: 174.6 lbs
    Breakfast: Celery with peanut butter
    Lunch: Celery with peanut butter
    Dinner: I decided that eating such a stark diet could subject me to scurvy, which often palgued sailors of days gone by. As a safety precaution, I decided it was in my best interests to eat whatever there was to eat at our weekly Bible study, which often has a fairl amount of not-low-carb goodies. True enough, our pastor and his wife had a wonderful casserole consisting of chicken, rice and water chestnuts, baked with cheese on top. I was happy to hear that it contained cream of celery soup, so I did indeed have celery for dinner. Perhaps I had a bit too much, and perhaps it wasn't actually on a stick of celery, but there was celery in it, right? Right.

Day 3 - Starting weight: 174.4 lbs
    Breakfast: Celery with peanut butter
    Lunch: Cleery with peanut butter
    Dinner: Celery with peanut butter, celery with cream cheese, celery with hot Thai peanut sauce. At the hockey game tonight (Alaska Aces over Fresno Falcons, 3-1) I was concerned about the debilitating effects of Rickets, possibly brought on by a celery diet. In an effort to stave off the dread condition, I sacrificed and ate a cheeseburger. I did remove one of the buns, so I'd call it a low-carb cheeseburger.

Day 4 - Starting weight: 173.6 lbs
    Breakfast: Celery with peanut butter
    Lunch: Did up a stir fry with plenty of celery, and a cheese bratwurst. Used a touch of Chinese five spice and powdered star anise. Very Chinese, except for the bratwurst, of course.
    Dinner: Celery with peanut butter, celery with cream cheese, celery with hot Thai peanut sauce; same dinner as before.

Day 4 - Starting weight: 173.4 lbs
    Breakfast: Skipped breakfast, had a breve instead.
    Lunch: Celery bratwurst stir fry again, this time I added in some sesame seed, too. Quite good.
    Dinner: Out of concern that my celery-heavy diet might put me at risk for contracting Beriberi, I decided to indulge a bit at the hockey game tonight. I had a bag of cashews, coated with that delightfully sugary sweet glazed praline nut stuff. Oh yeah. I can't recall if I had a burrito or what, I just don't recall. For what it was worth, tonight's hockey game, normally an enjoyable affair with the Aces over Phoenix 5-2, was marred by Phoenix player Dave Pszenyczny being seriously injured on ice, requiring emergency surgery. Our friends and I prayed for him right there at the rink, and praise Jesus, the medical reports are that his surgery was a success and he should be able to play by next year's season start. Anyhow, celery didn't factor into dinner too much tonight.

Day 5 - Starting weight: 173.6 lbs (yes, that's a gain)
    Breakfast: Okay, this one was a pure blow-out. We ate breakfast at the Hogg Brothers Cafe. Celery was not on the menu. They did have a vegetarian omelette which had celery in it, but that ain't what I ordered. I had a giant omelette with link sausage and Polish sausage in it, absolutely fantatic. Our kids each had one pancake. Thing is, each pancake is the diameter of a medium pizza! Giant. Of course, I had to have a tiny sample of those pancakes, you know, just to be sure they wern't too spicy. Oh, yeah, I followed up breakfast with a breve, too.
    Lunch: Didn't need lunch, probably couldn't even have fit it in if I wanted to. I did swing by Charlie's Bakery for a bubble tea.
    Dinner: Okay, another night at the rink. No celery. Instead, I had a hotdog covered in chili, cheese, and yellow peppers. I didn't eat the bun, however, so I'm sure that made it all okay. Aces won 6-1 over Phoenix, again, and happily, no injuries tonight. I did, however, eat a stick of celery with peanut butter at home, so there was celery eaten today; keeping my theme of 7 Days of Celery on track.
    Ooh, I know tomorrow's weigh-in will not be kind. Too much non-celery in there, oh yeah, way too much.

Day 6 - Starting weight: 175.0 lbs (argh.)
    Breakfast: Celery, Bacon and Cheese omelette, which I made at home. I must admit, today's weigh-in was a bummer. Although it would be easy to blame yesterday's overindulgences, I suspect that instead, maybe the celery in the refrigerator has lost some of it's potency due to aging. Anyhow, I've only got two days to go, so we'll see. If I continue to gain back weight, that must prove that the celery went bad, right? Right?
    Lunch: Didn't have lunch.
    Dinner: Three tamales. I doubt they had celery in 'em, though. Good thing I had that celery omelette.
    And at 9:30 p.m., I had a bowl of cereal and a banana. I had to do a 12-hour fast for some annual blood work.

Day 7 - Starting weight: Did not weigh. (I knew that scale would be hating on me)
    Breakfast: Well, that didn't happen until after the doc's office, I had a 12-oz. breve.
    Lunch: I had a Vanilla Creme protein bar, one of those South Beach Diet ones. They're not that great tasting, but they're filling.
    Dinner: This was sort of the fireworks at the end of the show. Ending my "7 Days of Celery" with a bang, I did up a stir-fry that probably should have served three, and I ate it all.
     
    Celery Leup Cheung Stir-Fry

• 4 stalks celery, diced as you see fit
• a few stalks green onion, diced diagonally
  
• 4 leup cheung sausage, diced diagonally (it's a Chinese sausage with a waxy look and a slightly sweet taste)
• 1/2 onion, chopped, but not too fine. I like big slices
• garlic-chili hot oil paste (another of those Asian grocery items, this stuff is fantastic)
• Hot oil (Sun Luck brand works fine)
• Steamed brown rice (that's what I used, anyway. You want white rice, go for it)
• Oyster sauce (can't cook Chinese without oyster sauce, for sure.)

I heated my wok up good and hot, and slapped in a spoonful of the garlic chili hot oil paste. That stuff immediately made the house fill up with a near toxic cloud of eye-burning vapor. To this I added in a generous splash of hot oil. Now this is a serious cauldron o' oil going. Since this is hot oil, I carefully added in the leup cheung. Once the leup cheung looks right, add in the other ingredients, and shake on a good glob of oyster sauce. Stir it up good, put the wok lid on for a few minutes, stir it a bit, and toss the whole mess on a plate of steamed rice.

This was serioulsy good. Hot, too. Oh, and it had celery.

Final weight: 173.6 lbs. I figured with such a restrictive diet, I would have lost far more. Well, I suppose losing 2.4 pounds over a week is pretty reasonable. I feel like I haven't lost too much muscle mass, and oddly enough, that celery was filling.