Wednesday, September 15, 2010

What's for Dinner? And Breakfast, and Lunch? Plus How to cook Brussel Sprouts

OK. so you are probably asking yourself how does this work practically?


Well here is a typical day for me:

For breakfast I take a banana and a stone fruit (peach plum, nectarine, whatever happens to be on the best sale at the local farmers market that week) and a small Tupperware of grapes.

I usually eat the banana by 8:30 then perhaps an hour later the grapes and between 10:30 & 11:00 I'll eat the stone fruit, or I might save it till later in the day, the key is I only eat when I'm hungry. I also keep a water bottle filled with ice water at my desk - you should drink about a gallon of water per day and often those "hunger cravings" are actually "thirst cravings" but we have trained our bodies to get most of their water from the food we eat by not hydrating with pure water. When I start to think I'm hungry I drink some water first, then decide if I still need to eat something. When I do want to eat, I have a nice, healthy, guilt free, fresh fruit snack.

At noon I get some raw vegetables (sugar peas, broccoli, celery, carrots, etc.) and dip them into my homemade creamy balsamic dip. I will also have a bit of rice or vegetables left over from dinner the night before. (While I have brought my cooking down from every recipes feeds 8, I still usually have enough to feed 3 instead of 2 but I don't have an aversion to eating leftovers the next day so no problem. )

I will take a variety of dried fruit and another stone fruit back to work for the afternoon and when the 2 o'clock munchies hit and everyone else in the office is scouring for chocolate, I have my sweet dried fruit. Most dried fruit is as sweet as candy because the sugar in the fruit is concentrated. It also gives you a great energy boost without the sugar crash you exporiance from simple sugars like chocolate & other sweets.

For Dinner I have a variety of vegetables that I bought at the farmers market that weekend. When I get something that takes a long time to cook, like potatoes or corn on the cob. I cook it over the weekend and refrigerate it. Then it is a simple matter of re-heating in my steamer and it is ready to go. I usually make a side of either rice or potatoes and two vegetables. I was making more initially because my husband didn't think 2 vegetables and rice would fill him up. After a few days he asked me to limit the amounts I was cooking and keep it to just these three items. At some point, usually midweek, I serve a small portion of tuna salad, which I also made over the weekend so the flavors would have a chance to develop.

As you can see we aren't starving by any means, or even depriving ourselves. In fact, we are eating better, quantity and quality wise, than we had prior to this experiment. We are also exploring new foods and many things that one or the other of us thought we "didn't like" we have grown to love because it was on sale at the farmers market and we learned a good way to cook it.

For example, Brussel Sprouts. Can I see a show of hands, who hates brussel sprouts? Well same here, but my husband has fond memories of his step-mom's brussel sprouts growing up, so once a year I would make them for him. Granted, mine were never as good as hers. :-) Well brussel sprouts are incredibly cheap especially when they are on the "dollar discount" table at the farmers market. So I decided I would learn how to make them. Since I already had my stove burners full that night I decided to try them in the steamer. (besides, I had already tired making them sautéed, boiled, and baked & hadn't liked them much) I put a layer of them in my steamer and sprinkled them with olive oil. Them I decided for flavor to add a mix of herbs, I have a kitchen garden of herbs or you can use an Italian mix. I used oregano, thyme, basil, rosemary, parsley) then I took about a teaspoon of kosher salt and sprinkled over them and steamed them until soft.

The result was the best veggie side dish that I could remember having. I now LOVE brussel sprouts and am probably driving my hubby crazy with how often I want to make them. I get so excited when they are on sale at the farmers market and so disappointed when they aren't.
 
So if you think you don't like something, try it again. You probably just haven't had it cooked right. I can't recommend the steamer enough for this. Vegetables were meant to taste GOOD. (I really don't thing God decided to make something that tastes horrible and force people to eat it :) They are also FULL of stuff that is GOOD FOR YOU. But so often we bake, boil or nuke the flavor and the vitamins right out of them. With the steamer, you retain all the yummy goodness and it takes much less time to cook. Besides just outright experimenting with food, I search the internet for recipes that include a new item I just found at the market or skim through some of the hundreds of cookbooks we have for recipe ideas. I usually use these as just a base idea and modify them according to our personal preferences, but these recipes give me a starting place. Have fun and don't be afraid to experiment. What new vegetable can you cook this week?

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