Hey MAMBO

Today's cooking day requires a glass of this wine- "Hey MAMBO" for two reasons. One, my friend Allison bought it because this "California sultry red" reminded her of me and two, today is my birthday.

Last week's meals were pretty tasty. I'm adjusting to the concept of eating the same dinner two nights in a row (having never really been one for leftovers). But here's my motivation: preparing one meal intended for two nights really is a money AND time saver.

This week I'm continuing our change to have the bulk of the meat we consume for lunch, with vegetarian dinners at night. And on the weight loss front, I did manage to lose 3 pounds this week. It's amazing how much of a difference 3 can make- I am at least able to button up the un-buttonable jeans from last week. I'm not saying they are actually wearable just yet... but we're making progress.

Here's the menu for this week:
For lunches- chicken fajitas on Monday & Tuesday, sausage & peppers with a dab of goat cheese on Wednesday and Thursday, sweet & sour shrimp Friday and perhaps Saturday.

(I grilled a bunch of chicken last night, so today's prep day will be to roast the veggies and saute the chicken sausage. The rice is already cooked and I will saute the shrimp a little later in the week.)

For dinner:
Sunday & Monday night- vegan nachos- here's the recipe: http://veganjoy.blogspot.com/search/label/nachos
Tuesday- veggie pizza (homemade crust I'll probably make tonight with sliced mushrooms and roasted bell peppers cooked tonight- the veggies will be paired with a little bbq sauce and some bleu cheese)
Wednesday & Thursday- Leftover veggie lasagna that I froze 2 weeks ago
Friday- Raspberry Chicken & brown rice (this is a bulk recipe that I will make today from the "Don't Panic" cookbook. I'm making 18 chicken breasts and freezing 15 of them for later.)

The veggies tonight will take an hour and a half to roast the way I like them, but the rest of the food to prep shouldn't take too long to prep. Wine in hand and "Psych" on www.hulu.com, it should be enjoyable enough. :)

Oh, It's Official...

My jeans don't fit. That's what I get from a summer of fun and (less than) occasional fast-food trips... So this week's menu will be somewhat less exciting. Hopefully it will result in a loss of 5 pounds so at least I can button them up... Oi.

For me-
Breakfast: either 1/2 an apple & 1/2 a grilled chicken breast or orange cream green smoothie (see entry below for recipe)

Snack 1: 1/2 cucumber (no dipping sauce, I'm afraid), 1/2 sweet potato (will likely make baked fries, with Pam instead of oil) and 1/2 chicken breast

Lunch: Handful of spinach or grilled asparagus, 1/2 sweet potato, 1/2 chicken breast or shrimp

Snack 2: 1/2 apple, tomato slices (with a little salt) and 1/2 chicken breast or roasted turkey breast

Dinner: I can't follow the "Eat Clean Diet" exactly and still feed my family. So I'm gonna try these recipes:
Mexican Rice & Beans (from the Eat Clean Diet cookbook)
Eggplant Parmesan (made with as little cheese as possible)
Spaghetti & Beans (from Rachel Ray- you can find on the foodnetwork website- I will substitute fried seitan for pancetta)

For my eggplant parmesan, here's how I make it:
2 small to medium sized eggplants, sliced into 1/4inch slices (no need to peel)
Handful of fresh basil
Marinara sauce- I haven't measured this out- maybe 1-2 C.
8oz part-skim mozzarella
1/2 c. bread crumbs
1/2 c. parmesan cheese
Fresh spinach- maybe 2-3 c.

Preheat 450*. Pat the sliced eggplant dry with a paper towel. Season with a little salt and pepper. Mix up some bread crumbs and parmesan cheese on a plate. Smash each eggplant slice in the mixture on both sides. You don't need eggs or anything else- the bread crumbs should stick pretty well. Lay each slice flat on a sprayed baking sheet. Bake the eggplant slices at 450* for about 25 minutes, or until the bread crumbs are golden brown. (I do this rather than frying the eggplant because it saves a ton of calories and still gives a pretty decent texture.)

Once the eggplant slices are done, spray down a large baking dish (or two small ones, if you want to save one to cook later in the week). Put a big of sauce at the bottom, lay down slices to cover the bottom. Top with a little bit of cheese, all the spinach, more sauce, then the next layer of eggplant. Top with the basil,  sauce and cheese. Bake in 350 or 375 degree oven until heated through and the cheese has turned golden brown and bubbly- probably 20 minutes or so.

I'll try to post the Mexican Rice & Beans recipe later this week. This recipe was surprisingly fabulous. Spicy and healthy!

This Week's Goal

Taking a little from everything, here's my general eating plan for the week. Next I will fill in the blanks with recipes that hopefully stay a little closer to budget this month. I got a notice from my budget manager (mint.com) saying that this month I spent 25% more on groceries than average and it said: "you might want to look into that."  HA! After menu-planning, I'll have to get on that...

Applying the 5-6 meals a day idea, combined with a general decrease in meat/dairy products and refined sugar, this is what I'll be trying to do:

Breakfast: 1 whole grain and 1 protein: for me, this is almost always an english muffin toasted with 2 TBS of peanut butter. Admittedly, I have not yet switched over to all-natural peanut butter. God help me, I LOVE Jiffy.  But I have been trying to learn to like oatmeal and cream of wheat. The "Eat Clean Diet" Lady recommends scrambled egg whites when she eats oatmeal. I gag at the thought, so will be skipping that.

Snack 1: A protein and a fruit: My friend Joy has a recipe for an orange cream green smoothie that I am still modifying to my tastes- but it's basically a frozen banana, the inside of an orange, orange zest, spinach, water and ice. The combination of spinach and fruit = amino acids which = protein. you can find her recipe on www.veganjoy.blogspot.com. The other option will likely be yogurt and either granola or frozen berries. I am still researching the health benefits of cow's milk yogurt versus soy or coconut milk yogurt. For now, cow's milk is substantially cheaper.

Lunch: A veggie, a bread-type portion, and meat: I will probably consume meat at this meal- i figure that will give my body more time while I'm awake to digest it. My personal goal is that if I had yogurt for my snack then I'll forgo cheese at this meal, just to make sure I'm not getting too much dairy in a day.

Snack 2: fruit and protein: this will likely be any piece of fruit with a scant handful of nuts. if i didn't eat peanut butter for breakfast, then i might opt for an apple with peanut butter. but i figure i had better limit my PB consumption because 1) I would eat it constantly if allowed and 2) I'm eating the sugary, trans-fatty kind.

Dinner: Veggies, starch (bread, pasta, etc.) and protein: I am going to try to generally make this meal vegetarian, focusing heavily on beans rather than meat for protein. That's not a hard-and-fast rule, but something to work towards. I figure I can make my  meat-y meals ahead (on Saturdays) and enjoy them at lunch throughout the week and focus on getting lots of veggies and very lean proteins in at dinner.

The one thing I really have to be mindful of is my portions. I'm eating more often during the day, but sometimes my portion sizes are the same as if I wasn't eating snacks. I'm trying to mentally shift my thinking to say, "I only need to eat enough to get me through the next 2-3 hours, not the next 4-5 hours." And if I'm not hungry in 2-3 hours, I probably ate too much at the previous meal. This is super hard.

I feel the need to pat myself on the back because I have been soda-free since July 29th. It feels like it has been a WHOLE lot longer than one month and it has been a SERIOUS battle not to drink one, especially recently when we've had some pretty hard days. And unlike our male counterparts, I have NOT lost 10 pounds just by doing this (not any pounds, actually) so I'm trying to remain motivated other ways, like reminding myself that there is nothing nutritionally beneficial to soda (diet or regular) and that it's NOT good for me.... I seriously need an AA group for soda consumption.

More to follow once this week's plan is in place.

A Quick Note

Today is Friday- we have managed to survive the first full week of school, though not without incident. Included in this week were karate class and Adrian's first ever soccer practice, as well as a four hour meeting for me that started at 6:30pm, James' birthday and the general exhaustion of long, busy days.

I have come to a conclusion about the cooking once a week idea: TOTALLY worth it. I can't tell you how helpful it was, even on the nights we DIDN'T have after-school activities, to be able to just put dinner together. No dicing or sauteing. Things were just ready to go in the oven. This included our lunches, since I've decided to pack both Adrian and James' lunch every morning. James in particular had a variety of food to eat this week that hopefully kept him from lamenting the loss of his fast-food lunch habit.

I will try to find recipes that are a little bit less intensive for the next week I do this (unfortunately, my grocery bill has been a bit out of hand this month, so the last few days of August we will be consuming whatever I can find around the kitchen). But I think this is honestly going to be the best way to keep my sanity during the school year, and still keep a healthy dinner on the table.

See you in a week, with the next menu and suggestions-

Worth It? The Jury Is Still Out...

This constitutes only round one of the dishes that were dirties last night in my whirlwind cooking extravaganza. Of course, calling it that makes it sound a whole lot more fun than it actually was. The temperature was 94* at 5:00pm when I got started last night. Admittedly, I had wanted to start earlier in the afternoon, but couldn't. I started on 5 recipes at once. That might have been a mistake...

I got the wheat berries cooking in one pot. water boiling for the lasagna in another, and a large saucepan for the lasagna sauce. In the sink, the chicken for the chicken crescents was thawing and in the oven were the zucchini and tomatoes, roasting in preparation for the ratatouille (which I had to make without eggplant this time). It was about that time that I needed about 4 more hands... one to lay out foil on the counter that was already covered in dishes so I could lay out the cooked lasagna while cooking more (had to do in batches), another hand to line the lasagna pans with plastic wrap and foil so I could freeze 2 pans, another set of hands to open all the cans of tomatoes, tomato paste and tomato sauce to dump on the frying onions and another to check on the veggies in the oven. Because that all needed to happen at the same time.

This is when I put out the S.O.S. call for a sous-chef. My husband came to the rescue, opening cans and spreading copious amounts of foil. The temperature in the kitchen was hotter than outside with 3 burners on full blast and the oven at 375*. We ran out of counter space so once the lasagnas were put together (not baked), I had to place them on the floor in the pantry to cool before I froze them. The roasted veggies found their places on kitchen chairs to cool (thankfully the kids were outside playing) and as you see in the picture above, the dirty dishes had taken up what seemed to be permanent residence on the counters.

I didn't quite get through my entire list of food to prep for this week- sometime tonight I still need to make homemade sausage-flavored seitan and mix up Cara's FABULOUS basil salad dressing (see previous post). James grilled 10 chicken breasts. There's no way I'd gotten through it all without him (or if I did, there's no way I would have still been a pleasant person).

Once I get those last two things made, I will have plenty of food all prepped and ready to serve up for the next 7 nights. I really, really hope it was worth it. And I hope I get better at this, assuming I ever choose to do it again. :)

Keep On Keepin' On...

Did I just accidentally quote The Brady Bunch? Or was it the Partridge Family?

At any rate, as eating seems to be something we absolutely have to do every day, there's nothing left to do but just keep trying to improve what we eat. So we're making small changes around our household- some radical, some not so much.

Neither my husband nor I are quite ready to make the grand leap to vegetarian (let alone vegan). However, after several great conversations with some vegetarian and vegan friends and 3 trips to India, he is much more willing to concede that the meat industry consumes an inordinate amount of resources, especially when compared to what is used by other countries. So our commitment right now is simply to eat LESS meat. To this end, I have scoured a few vegetarian cookbooks as well as consulted with my good friend Joy (author of www.veganjoy.blogspot.com and the upcoming cookbook "Eat. Live. Thrive. Recipes from Everyday to Exotic") about how to make sure that we continue to get the necessary protein in our meatless meals.

As I have talked with vegans, who, generally speaking, are more concerned with the treatment of animals in any industry, the diary industry actually seems to be a less-humane industry than even the meat industry. I have to admit that at this point, I am selfishly more concerned about depriving myself of much-loved cheese and yogurt than I am about the conditions of diary farms. Ignorance is everything, I suppose. I'm too afraid to watch all the recent documentaries that expose the meat and diary industries in this country. Having said all of that, though, I have made the commitment to again consume LESS animal-derived diary products than before. I have switched my kids to soy milk, which they love. And I want to be sure that I am not replacing meat in my vegetarian dishes with more cheese because nutritionally speaking, it would be a bad move.

So our recipes this week look like this:

Tonight: orange-teriyaki chicken with brown rice & roasted bell peppers/onions

Sunday: shrimp stir-fry using leftover ingredients from above plus a sweet & spicy sauce

Monday: herb-crusted island pork tenderloin with roasted cauliflower and yucatecan corn

Tuesday: spinach lasagna (made in a huge batch to freeze) (vegetarian)

Wednesday: ratatouille (vegetarian)

Thursday: leftover lasagna

Friday: James' birthday choice- chicken crescents & pecan pie (healthy ideals thrown out)

Saturday: grilled pizza (probably BBQ sauce, caramelized onions & bleu cheese, maybe with sausage-flavored seitan crumbled on top)

Sunday: grilled salmon and asparagus

A couple of other recipes I'll be making this week for our lunches include whole wheat pasta with a basic tomato sauce and sausage-flavored seitan and a wheat berry salad with an orange-vinaigrette dressing.

-For the sake of the health of these kiddos...

Vegan? Vegetarian? Sugar-free? Sucralose Is The Enemy?

Who can tell anymore just exactly what the best dietary guidelines are. I went looking for a cookbook at Barnes & Noble the other day and there were (literally) hundreds of "diet" books, in one form or another. Honest to God, it is EXHAUSTING to assimilate all the information there is about food and somehow formulate it into an educated decision about what to cook for dinner.  And yet, I don't feel like I can ignore all of this "great" information and still call myself a responsible adult and parent.

My husband and I both come from, shall we say, "non-dainty" stock. We both eat when we're stressed, anxious, bored or if given the option. I managed to lose 40 pounds after Baby #2 and have only put on about 8 of those after 3 years. My husband also lost 40 pounds, but has unfortunately put most of that back on. We have two very healthy, wirey boys who are active and intelligent. While I don't worry at this point about childhood obesity, given that you could play their ribcages like guitar strings, I do worry about setting them up with good eating habits that will go with them throughout the rest of their lives. So it doesn't feel like a luxury for me to worry about all of these different dietary concerns when my husband (who is genetically predispositioned towards diabetes and heart issues) desperately needs to curb his anxiety-food relationship and I have two eager young minds who will either learn to reach for a bag of chips when they are hungry or a bag of carrots- and who will either learn that food will make them feel better or that there are other ways to cope with stress.

So I'm neck-deep in food-related information. I have articles, books, cookbooks, blogs and friends- all of which (or whom) contain valuable information about the best way to feed ourselves. The conclusion? It is absolutely impossible to adhere to all of these great ideas simultaneously. I feel like I'm choosing my own religion, picking this idea from the Eat Clean Diet and removing that food as suggested by my lovely vegan friend. Will this mish-mash of food-dogma lead to a healthier body, or am I just making myself crazy for no reason?