The "diet" plan continues. And by "diet" I mean we're making a conscience effort to eat healthy food in healthy amounts. The last few weeks have been a success... My favorite pants are fitting perfectly. So we continue. After a couple of flops last week, I've added in some of our favorites. Success! Dave says that compared to last week this week was like eating on a cruise ship. hahaha.
Recipe Quick Links
Easy Overnight Oats, Marin Mama Cooks
Slow Cooker Mexican Chicken, Budget Bytes
Chickpea Burgers, Marin Mama Cooks
Kale Salad, Marin Mama Cooks
Creamy Pasta Bake, Simple Balance
Feta Stuffed Chicken, Chatelaine
Applesauce Muffins, Weelicious
Primal Fudge, Practical Paleo
Week in Review
Easy Overnight Oats - My new morning obsession continues. Will be trying some new flavor combinations in the next few weeks. yummm.....
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| Overnight Oats |
Slow Cooker Mexican Chicken - I know I throw around the word favorite a lot but this truly is a tried, tested and true favorite in our house. I served it on a bed of romaine lettuce with our favorite fixin's. Ok, confession... we used a few nacho chips for scooping but it was Sunday! Totally allowed! The next day we had it with brown rice for lunch. Note: I replace all the spices in the recipe with 2 Tbsp of Mexican Spice Blend. That's always premixed in my cupboard making this quite possibly the easiest thing I make.
Fish w/ Golden Beets and Arugula Salad - Fish is becoming another family favorite and it seems the plainer we cook it the better. This week I simply baked it with lemon juice and salt and pepper. On the side we had boiled golden beets (these are soooo good!) and arugula salad. In case you've missed it this is just arugula, a drizzle of both lemon juice and olive oil, shredded or shaved Parmesan and pepper. A ridiculously fast and easy weeknight supper. Marin loves fish. A kid hit every time.
Chickpea Burgers - I'm in love with all things chickpea so these burgers are a hit in my books. I didn't dress them up, just had them along side a kale salad on the first day and leftover stir-fry and rice on the second day. The Kale Salad on day one was what's become my regular kale salad (from Marin Mama Cooks) with some shredded purple cabbage, leftover beets and pumpkin seeds added in. Some goat cheese would have been awesome... I even had some, not sure why that didn't happen.
Baked Tofu with Peanut Dipping Sauce and Stir-Fry - I really enjoyed this tofu, but then again anything dipped in this peanut dipping sauce is going to be good. I made an Asian marinade and soaked slices of the tofu before baking at 400 for about 25min. I made the marinade up as I went, not really measuring anything but I'll give you my best estimates:
Asian Marinade
- 2 Tbsp Soya Sauce & Sesame Oil
- 1 Tbsp Rice Vinegar
- 1/2 Tbsp Honey & Lime Juice
- 1/2 tsp minced ginger (jarred)
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
Peanut Dipping Sauce (From the cookbook Life's on Fire)
- 1 1/2 Tbsp creamy Peanut Butter, softened in microwave for 20-30 seconds
- 1 tsp brown sugar (or honey)
- 1 Tbsp soya sauce
- 1/8 tsp cumin powder, cayenne pepper
- Water to smooth
I tried to stick to an Asian theme for the stir-fry - purple cabbage, edamame (organic, frozen), onion, red pepper, mushrooms, zucchini, kale and the leftover marinade from the tofu. Not sure if I've ever mentioned this but tofu was one of Marin's first foods. I would just dice up firm tofu and toss it on her tray. She loved it and still does. I buy organic tofu - it's a little more expensive but still a cheap meal.
Creamy Pasta Bake - This is such an interesting combination of ingredients... pasta sauce, plain yogurt, peanut butter, nutritional yeast... I just had to try it. And it was pretty darn tasty! We had it for lunch twice but I wanted to try it out on Marin as well so she had it for supper on Thursday. A big kid hit - she gobbled it up! And I'm totally inspired by Wendy McCallum's story. She left her job as a lawyer and went back to school to learn more about nutrition and real food. She now has a successful blog, business and a cookbook (Real Food for Real Families) that I'm dying to check out. Santa? You listening?
Pork Tenderloin - I cooked two pork tenderloins at once and we had it two nights in a row. Once with roasted vegetables and once with mashed (cauliflower, parsnip and golden beets). I used the following marinade from the Crazy Plates cookbook. The recipe says to marinate for 1 hour and bake at 350, uncovered for about 40 minutes. I actually made only half the sauce and skipped the marinating step. I would recommend marinating if you have the time but unless you want a lot of extra sauce I think cutting back works fine.
Marla's Maple Pork (from the cookbook Crazy Plates)
- 1/2 cup Maple Syrup
- 2 Tbsp each of Soya Sauce, Ketchup
- 1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
- 2 tsp Orange Zest
- 1 1/2 tsp each of curry powder, ground coriander
- 2 tsp minced garlic
- 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
Feta Stuffed Chicken and Greek Salsa - A Friday treat without the cheat! We love this meal. It's really just a bonus that it's actually pretty healthy. The Greek Salsa is super easy to make. Finely chop tomato, cucumber, red onion and anything else you choose (eg. peppers, zucchini, olives). Add feta and toss with the Greek Dressing found on my handy printout. mmm, mmm, mmm!
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| Greek Salsa |
My muffin fix this week was leftover Applesauce Muffins from the freezer. I don't think I did these justice when I mentioned them last week. These are really good!! You'd never know they have no oil. We were also treating on the end of the batch of freezer chocolates I made weeks ago! The recipe says it makes 10 but I broke them into small pieces so that they could be just a little quilt free treat. Note, I also added unsweetened shredded coconut.
Hope you all had a great week!
Sandra
