Time keeps on slippin'

It's been a while, but mostly because I've been making versions of the same thing.

I'm trying to eat reaaaally healthily, and stay under 1500 calories/day.

Generally, for breakfast I have an activia yogurt with 2/3 cup of low-fat granola and a ton of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.

Lunch is easy - at work we have big egg salad sandwiches on multigrain bread, so I've been buying one every other day and eating half of it at a time.

For dinner, I'm eating mostly vegetables with a good serving of protein (I've found some great fake chicken breasts that I can cook in the oven) and *sometimes* including rice or a piece of toast.

Actually, I've come up with a really weird scrambled vegetables recipe that I'll probably make in the next week.

I really want to find some tempeh but I have no idea where it is.... I walk down every single aisle of the grocery store when I go, and I haven't seen it yet... this may be a question for mom.

Anyway, stay tuned.

Also, a note to me: Zucchini cooks faster than you think so it should NOT go in the first round of vegetabes in a stir fry. I should do tofu, broccoli, peppers, beans, then zucchini.

Mmmm..
The two halves of this meal definitely didn't go together, but they were both delicious and as I am not competing in any sort of food network challenge, I don't think it mattered.

I wanted to get as much food-group diversity as possible into this, so it's got almost equal parts tofu, vegetables and pasta.

I set the water to boil for the pasta and heated some sunflower oil in a pan. I had marinated my tofu in this amaaazing stuff (President's Choice Garlic + Rosemary White Balsamic Marinade) and threw that in to cook first. Then I chopped up a green pepper and put that in after the tofu had begun to brown. When the water was boiling I put in some rotini and just stirred everything for a while. I saw some mushrooms in the fridge and thought, "what the heck!" so I chopped them into bite-size pieces and added them to my stirfry.

For the pasta sauce, I had half a can of Ragu in the fridge.. but I wanted to make it fresher feeling, so I decided to add some spinach. I happened to have a bunch from a couple days ago so I chopped up about two handfuls of it and mixed it in with the sauce. Then I microwaved the mixture.

Everything was finished at the same time, so that worked out well.

And it was good!

I've Roasted Potatoes!

I really need a better camera.

Well today's dinner was an adventure. I saw baby red skinned potatoes in the grocery store the other day but was too nervous to buy them.. I've never done anything with potatoes, not even mashed or baked..
I finally got some, and decided to try it tonight. J was having fish as a main course and I hadn't really thought about it before so I whipped up some pasta. I know there are an awful lot of carbs on this plate, but it had to be done. That wasn't really the point anyway - I really just wanted to make the potatoes.
I didn't pay attention to how many I used, but it was enough for two good helpings. I cut them into quarters, put them in a bowl, and drizzled 2 tbsp of olive oil over them. I added enough salt, pepper, onion powder and garlic salt to cover them, and then mixed in some Herbes de Provence. I put them on a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil with the skins facing up, and poured the oil mixture from the bottom of the bowl evenly over the potatoes. I put it into the oven at 350F.
It took about 40 minutes to cook. I flipped them at 15 mins, then moved them around at 30. They were beginning to turn brown but it took another 10 before they really looked golden and crispy.
The rest of the plate is just green beans steamed in the microwave for 2 minutes, and some rotini with Ragu and cheddar.

(There's garlic bread too, but all we did was take it out of a bag, put cheese on it and cook it)

The potatoes were really good! They did need to be salted after, but were delicious. I was really afraid of over seasoning them, so I think next time I'll just add more of everything and it'll be even better. Also, I wouldn't do potatoes and pasta again. I should have gotten one of those pre-marinated fake chicken breasts or something. My next mission is to find something I can cook up as the protein part of a meal. All my entrees are carby.

Beans, Rice and Vegetables

I tried several things tonight that were complete experiments. I had half a can of kidney beans left over from last night's dinner and decided early in the day that I'd like to do something with rice, and with green vegetables. At the grocery store, I picked up green beans and some really fresh asparagus as well as some salad fixin's so I could have a couple sections on the plate.

I started cooking 1/2c. brown rice and 1/4 cup of lentils with a 1 1/4c. water and 1tsp. vegetable broth. When it was close to done, I chopped the asparagus and beans into little segments and popped it in the microwave with a sploosh of water for 2 1/2 minutes. The rice and lentils looked done so I added 1/4 can of kidney beans and the vegetables, and stirred it up. I wanted to season it somehow, so I mixed in a pre-made Lemon Pepper seasoning, but next time I won't - I think it would have been better with the Herbes De Provence or thyme or basil or something a little earthier.

I chopped up some cucumber and campari tomatoes, and put it on a plate with some 7 Lettuce mix. I thought I had dressing up until this moment, and then it turned out I didn't.. which is fine because I never used to eat it anyway. I sprinkled a little lemon juice on it (although that might have been horribly expired so it was sparingly..) and was set to go.

It was ok. I think the right seasoning could have reallly improved it, and it wasn't *bad*, I just knew I made a mistake with that Lemon stuff. But it did *look* great, and that's half the battle.

**I thought about it overnight and what would *really* have made this better, is different rice. The brown rice plus the lentils plus the beans made it kind of mushy. Not horribly so, but I think it would have been improved with some wild rice instead. Or some other rice I don't know about yet. Something sturdier.

Pasta with Beans

This was in order to use up some vegetables left over in the fridge and some of the cans I've been collecting in the cupboard. I started pasta to boil, and put a pan on the stove with a bit of sunflower oil.

I used:
1/2 a crown of broccoli
1 red pepper
1/2 can of chick peas
1/2 can of kidney beans
2 servings of pasta (I just filled a small pot)
About a cup of pasta sauce
Parmesan cheese
Cheddar cheese
Garlic salt
Onion salt

While the pasta cooked, I tossed the broccoli and pepper into the pan. After that had cooked for a little while I added the chick peas, then the kidney beans. I let that go for a while until it was about halfway done and the pasta was ready. I strained the noodles (rotini) and put them into the pan. I added enough pasta sauce to coat everything. When the vegetables looked ready, I added parmesan cheese, garlic salt and onion salt, stirring it in. I scooped half of it into a bowl and grated some cheddar cheese over top.

It was lovely. Next time, I'd like to have more vegetables and less pasta but it was great this way too. I've never added beans to anything before and it worked out well. I think I'll do it a lot in the future now that it seems achievable.

Chocolate Coconut Macaroons

For Father's Day I made a huge batch of our family's favourite cookie.. the chocolate macaroon. This is easy to vegan-ize, and I think it actually tastes better that way so I usually do. They're so easy and so delicious.

Pictures to come soon... I gave away most of them and then ate the rest before I had a chance to photograph them. But I'm going to make some more to use up all the extra ingredients that are having a tough time fitting in the cupboard.

INGREDIENTS (non-vegan):

6 heaping tbsp. Cocoa
1/2 c. Butter
2 c. Sugar
1/2 c. Milk
3c. Rolled Oats
1 tsp. Vanilla
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 1/2c. Coconut

In a large pot, blend the butter, sugar and milk. Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients. Spoon onto cookie tray lined with waxed paper and chill for approx. 2 hours. Makes around 3 dozen cookies.

**** When making the vegan version, use soy milk and margarine. We find that cutting the cocoa to 3 heaping tbsp works better (and tastes better) with the soy milk.

Well, kind of.

I almost had a very unhealthy dinner tonight. I didn't feel like cooking so I headed out to Fortinos to buy a box of Kraft Dinner which I planned to consume out of the pot, in its entirety. While I was walking, I thought about what a bad idea that would be, but couldn't completely convince myself not to do it..
I decided to add a couple more components so I wouldn't end up eating way more KD than any human should. At the store I browsed around and picked up the PC White Cheddar stuff, and a broccoli crown. I like the way green vegetables make it look so much better.. I happened upon some fake-chicken skewers and thought, "Heck, I could use some protein," so I bought those too.
I boiled the water and put the skewers in a pan. I didn't use a ton of oil... actually I just sprayed the pan pretty well with PAM.. don't tell anyone...
When the times aligned, I steamed the broccoli in the microwave for 3:30, but when I checked it I thought it was a liiitle undercooked so I let it go for another 30 seconds. Everything was done at about the same time.

It certainly doesn't count as actual cooking, but it's also not the worst dinner in the world. I used calorie-reduced margarine instead of butter for the KD, so I felt a little better about that. Plus I ate about half as much as I would have if left to my own devices

All told, I had each food group represented on the plate - lots of protein in those skewers (although they were NOT good and I don't think I'm going to have them again. Too chewy and it reallly felt like I was eating meat. That texture doesn't sit well with me), a big helping of dark green vegetables, as well as dairy and grains in the pasta. I topped it off with a big glass of water, and felt pretty good about myself for not going back and eating the rest of the cold pasta.

Fresh Vegetable and Tofu Stirfry

I had a container of tofu and a bunch of spinach and green beans in my fridge that were nearing the end of their usability period, so I decided to make a stirfry tonight. I actually did one the other day that was unreported in here, and found the tofu was a little bland (I only used sunflower oil and herbes du provence for flavour) so this time I marinated it in a pre-fab teriyaki marinade. I cut the tofu into bite-sized cubes, tossed them in a tupperware container, slathered them in the sauce and stuck it in the fridge for a couple hours.
I wanted to add a couple more colourful and chewable vegetables so I moseyed over to the grocery store and just browsed around for a while. I ended up leaving with a yellow pepper and a broccoli crown. (They had NO red peppers! Is it suddenly out of season?)
My stomach told me that I needed a bit more substance to fill me up so I started a pot of brown rice and went to do the dishes. By the time I was done, so was the rice but it stayed nice and warm in a covered pot while I cooked everything else.
I cut up the broccoli, green beans and spinach and put it all in the microwave (next time I'll do the spinach separately, because the others took much longer and I had to redo them). While it was cooking, I started heating up the pan and chopping the pepper.
I splooshed on an inexcessive amount of sunflower oil, and dropped in the pepper and the tofu, letting it fry for a few minutes before adding the broccoli and beans. Towards the end, I tossed in the spinach (but in the future, I'll wait until the last minute because it all shrunk and some of it stuck to the pan) and the rest was standard flip, stir, flip, stir until it looked done. Just before the end I sprinkled on a little of the herbes du provence which I though was risky because I didn't know how it would go with the teriyaki flavour of the tofu, but did anyway because I wanted an extra boost for the veggies.
I scooped half the rice into a bowl and topped it with half the stirfry, and we were off to the races.

It was delightful. The marinade ended up liiiightly flavouring the vegetables and the herbs actually tasted great. It was crunchy and smushy and *tasty* and filling. I didn't do anything to the rice so it was fairly bland but it went well with everything else and I don't think adding butter or other seasoning would have yielded a better result overall - this was healthier and what I really liked about it was the purity of the whole thing. Lovely.