Food Prepping: Week Six

This week's ingredients. Tomatoes, bell pepper, onion, scallions, arugula, a carrot,
potatoes, soba noodles, edamame, a lemon, and salad. Snack ingredients not shown.

This week's food prepping went very quickly and efficiently. I don't know if I'm getting better at selecting what I'm making to make for easy prep, getting more efficient at the prepping, or getting back my cooking chops, which had gotten kinda rusty. Or a combination of all three.

My prep this week is for four breakfasts, four luncheon salads (to accompany half of a boneless, skinless, chicken thigh), two vegetable dishes for fish dinners, and post-run snacks (because it's getting too warm for cocoa). My goal calorie content for these is: breakfast, less than 160 (it goes with other stuff to bring brekky to about 400); salad, about 150; fish-replacer vegetables, less than 130 (because a fish patty is 130); post-run snack, 100-150.

The results. Including a couple of things made with ingredients not shown above. 

I am very excited about what I made. :D Here's the rundown: 

• Breakfast: My new favorite weekday breakfast is what I call Eggs and Vegetables -- roasted tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers topped with a poached egg and some Parmesan cheese. Delicious, filling, and well below target calorie count at 121. Obviously the eggs aren't shown because I poach those fresh each morning. (Front right of the picture -- two big round containers and one small one with the grated Parmesan.) 
• Lunch Salad; This week's salad is an Asian Noodle Salad with soba noodles, a little bit of red bell pepper, grated carrot, edamame, scallion and a rather nifty Thai-esque spicy peanut dressing. All over mixed salad greens and some arugula. (Four stacked flat containers of greens, four half-pint mason jars of fixin's in the back left.) This salad is higher than my usual target calorie count at 195, but the broiled chicken thighs it'll be going with are lower than usual, so it will work out just fine. 
• Fish replacer: Baked potatoes topped with a lemony vinaigrette dressing (with Parmesan cheese in it) and arugula. Sort of a salad in a baked potato. I have the potatoes baked, so they'll just go in the oven with the fish to reheat. I'll dress the arugula just before putting it in the top of the spud.  (Potatoes are in the front left; arugula and dressing in the back right.) I had to hunt for potatoes small enough to make it fit in the target calorie count, but I managed to get it to 137, which is close enough. 
• Post-run Snack: I didn't show the ingredients for this in the first picture, though the toppings are in the second, because I actually had it yesterday after my run. It's plain, non-fat Greek yogurt with toasted pistachios, almonds and quinoa, chopped dates, lemon zest, sea salt, and a little drizzle of olive oil. It was *delicious* and I forgot the lemon zest and sea salt. I can't wait to try it again. One 5.3oz container of yogurt will make three snacks (which works out perfectly because I run three times a week). (Two little round containers in the front middle with toppings; the yogurt is in the fridge. The orange packet next to them is an olive oil sample we got in the mail; I figured I'd use it here because it was about the right amount.) This may beat hot cocoa as a post-run snack and I'm a huge fan of the hot cocoa. The calorie count is right in my range at 125. 

I'm'a be eatin' good this week. :D :D

We finished off last week with the fancy weekend brunch version of an egg-tomato-pepper-onion breakfast yesterday. Tomatoes, peppers and onions sauteed with eggs cooked right in there until the whites are set and the yolks are runny with a lovely Dutch goat cheese (called Midnight Moon and that's all we know about it) over whole wheat English muffins. That's delicious speck (sort of in the line of proscuitto only smoked) around the outside of the plate.

It did not come out looking pretty this time, but it tasted *delicious*! 

Food Prepping: Week Four

This week's ingredients: Roma tomatoes, a bell pepper, an onion, mushrooms,
teeny tomatoes, a can of canellini beans, spinach, arugula, and kale.
Not shown: some 2% milk and various seasonings and stuff. 

I've got *most* of this week's food prepping done, but not quite all of it. I did manage to avoid getting in the way of dinner this week. So having one thing left to do tomorrow is definitely for the best. (Also, I wanted to go for my run, so I didn't want to take another half hour or more.)

As usual, this food prepping is (mostly) for me -- it lets me get more vegetables in my diet without taking away (in important ways) from what my husband, Patrick, and I have together. What I aim to prep is: an interesting salad for at least 4 lunches (it will replace a half-serving of our usual leftovers), something to replace my bowl of cereal at breakfast, something to replace one (of three) fish patties when we have fish a couple of times a week, and (maybe) a snack. 

What I made. 

This week I have:

• Marinated White Bean Salad -- the four jars have the white beans marinating in a vinaigrette, some sliced onion, and some teeny tomatoes. The four flat containers next to it have (mostly) arugula and some spinach. At lunch, the jar of salad fixin's gets dumped over the greens.
• Spinach and Mushroom "Gratin" -- In the rectangular dish in the middle I have what is almost certainly a very light gratin of mushrooms and spinach with a bit of a milky sauce. This is two servings and is my fish replacer. 
• Baked Eggs with Vegetables -- this will have some assembly required every morning. The two round dishes on the right have some roasted vegetables (onion and red pepper in the top one, tomatoes in the bottom) for this. (This is veggies for four servings.) In the mornings, vegetables and an egg (and some parmesan cheese) will go into a ramekin and bake until the egg is done nicely. (I did this back in my first week of food prepping like this and it worked out just fine.)

I haven't yet made the Kale Chips -- tomorrow I'll cut up the kale, massage some oil into the surface, and roast it into kale chips. I've done this before as well and they're a very nice snack. They're also dead simple. But they will have to be worked around slow roasting a pork butt, which is what we're doing for dinner (and leftovers for lunches for the week).

Food Prepping!

The Ingredients, except I forgot to include a carrot and a bunch of scallions
in the picture.

I'm trying to get in a habit of spending some time on the weekend preparing myself some healthy food to eat during the week. If I have interesting salads chock full of Good Stuff prepared, it's super easy to add one to my lunch. If we have healthful snacks, we'll eat healthful snacks.

I'm trying to get myself set up with a salad for lunches, something to replace the bowl of cereal at breakfast, something to replace a fish, erm, piece the two nights a week (on average) we have fish , and something snacky. These "replacement" foods aim to be lower in calorie and higher in nutrient content (or at least different in nutrient content) than what they're replacing. 

From the ingredients above, I made the following: 

• Four tofu and soba noodle salads with scallions and carrots. Those are the four mason jars (two half-pints full of fixin's and two pints with fixin's and some salad greens) and four blue-lidded containers in the back. The two smaller containers are supplemental greens for the pint jar sized salads. The greens are mixed salad stuff, baby spinach and arugula.
• Potato and sweet potato chips -- baked in the oven. (The potato chips are the dark brown ones.) These were experimental and definitely need some tweaking. We cut them a little too thin so they went from Not Chips Yet to Very Brown in a matter of seconds. But it's a nice, tasty snack that's not too difficult. So we'll probably try them again. 
• Four breakfast wraps (the tinfoil wrapped objects) with spinach, mushrooms, egg, feta cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. These are now in the freezer -- according to the recipe they get microwaved for four minutes for a tasty hot breakfast. :D
• Not shown: Tofu and roasted mushrooms for when Patrick and I are having fish. (We get Gorton's Potato Crusted Fish and Gorton's Beer Battered Fish and alternate them.) Replacing one fish piece with a quarter of a block of tofu and a quarter pound of mushrooms, roasted, will save calories, give me a treat that I've been missing (I love tofu and mushrooms) and deprive Patrick of nothing he would enjoy. So it's kind of a win all around. 

Not that it was an entirely successful food-prepping adventure -- I started too late and totally was in the way of Patrick making dinner. The breakfast wraps and salad went really quickly. The *chips* took forever -- next time we'll know to do only one potato instead of three, slice it a little thicker, and begin a little earlier. 

But I now have tasty, tasty food for most of the week. :D 

Diet Revamp: There's more to this than running

Today's lunch: White Coq au Bier (a half-serving) and Roasted Sweet Potato-
Quinoa-Black Bean Salad. Snacks not shown: A banana.
If I want an afternoon snack, I have a slice of whole grain bread
and a little bit of peanut butter.

So far all I've been posting about here are my runs, but this Upward Trend toward a fitter healthier me also involves some significant changes to my diet. My husband, Patrick, and I are working together to figure out how to keep what we like about our diet while allowing me to make improvements and get healthier.

The things we want to keep are:

• Eating most meals together -- we sit down at the table together and eat more or less the same food for at least 2 meals a day (breakfast and dinner) and we both value this highly.
• Eating mostly Patrick's (and our) home cooking -- Patrick is a wonderful cook and he enjoys experimenting with his cooking, trying new cooking methods and flavor combos. We do not want to take that away from him, or take away any of his joy in it.
• Beer -- We drink and enjoy craft beer together and do not want to give that up. We have always and ever enjoyed one beer a night, taking notes and really savoring it, so it's not too hard to keep it part of our healthful eating
• Cooking one big and special meal over the weekend -- working on it together is good bonding time and it makes leftovers for lunches for most of the week

The things I want to change are: 

• Eating less overall -- there is no way I can eat the same amount of food as Patrick without gaining weight and losing health
• Eating more vegetables that Patrick doesn't like -- neither of us are great vegetable eaters, but he's got a shorter list of Vegetables That Are Food than I do and I don't want to miss out on some lovely veggies that I like and he doesn't
• Food planning -- I do best at eating healthful foods if I have the whole day planned out from the start. It allows me to make informed choices about trade-offs (e.g.: If I have that donut, I'll have to pass on beer). I map the whole day out at breakfast and then just know that I'm not having that donut today. If I want one tomorrow, I'd better plan it in from the beginning.
• Calorie counting -- I have successfully lost 60 pounds counting calories, gained it back when I stopped, and want to go back to it because I found it basically painless and an easy way to make sure I was eating well (and not too much). It's part of the planning I do every morning at breakfast.

We're approaching the changes we make as an experiment -- we're trying new things to see if they work. If they don't work, then we can just try something else. If they do work, then we keep that as a tool to help us both get healthier. 

The lunch in the photo is what I'm having for lunch most of the week -- a half-size portion of the White Coq au Bier (like coq au vin, only we use beer instead of wine) we made on Saturday with a nice big, colorful salad. The salad has roasted sweet potatoes, roasted red peppers, dried cranberries, black beans, quinoa, arugula, and a nice big bed of mixed greens. This lunch is kicking ass and taking names -- the salad is amazing and the Coq au Bier absolutely delicious.

I think the general approach -- replace some of my portion of what we're eating together with something that Patrick wouldn't eat anyway -- is going to to be a useful tool in our toolbox. We just need to make sure we don't get tripped up by kitchen logistics. Our kitchen is small and awkwardly laid out, so we have to coordinate what we're doing in there.