Cook book

I got a wonderful surprise on Friday as I was getting ready to leave work. See, a few months ago we had the opportunity to submit recipes for a healthy cook book for our well being initiative. I submitted the recipe for my Asian lettuce wraps. Well our well being captain stopped by Friday afternoon with a cook book....I had made it in! Only a few people from headquarters made it. Very exciting! I'm happy others will have a chance to try my yummy recipe, because it's one I truly love. Today I'm spending my afternoon making beef veggie and barley soup for dinner and prepping my lunches for the week. My new kick is adding blueberries and strawberries to my lunch. Antioxidants supply an added (and much needed) boost during the day.

Prep for Success #2

Last week I talked about preparing the weekly dinners on Sunday, to ensure you're eating decently throughout the week.  It worked really well last week!  So today as I was preparing dinners for the week, I decided to try the same for my lunches.  I normally eat very healthy at work, because honestly I don't have time to snack and only have what I've brought.  But sometimes at night I'm a little rushed trying to get my lunch together for the next day.  Hopefully having it all prepared ahead of time will give me 10 minutes back each night to breath. 

One other thing I'm trying to work into my habits is eating more balanced.  I've found that as Susanne and I are on this challenge that I eat very healthy during the day (aka low calories, not on purpose so much as that's just what I'm used to eating during the day) then binge on chips and junk at night to hit my calories.  I know, that's odd.  One of my other co-workers is super into the healthy eating lifestyle, so I got some tips from her this past week.  I haven't quite worked my way up to the smoothies she eats (I admire her strong stomach - some smell a little like swamp juice), but I did hear her message about getting enough veggies and nutrients each day to feel better.  So my goal starting this week is to focus on eating the right types of calories and having balance in the types of food I eat, rather than just focusing on the calories.  This week I made turkey & veggie tortilla soup (a version of another recipe I posted in the past), and am bringing strawberries, pea pods, and pea pods for lunch.  Hope this helps!

Home Made Mac 'n' Cheese

We had a dinner party/game night with our friends last night, and this is one of the dishes I whipped up, ala Martha Stewart (from her Oct 2011 issue).  Of course, I made a healthy dish (Chicken Tortilla soup) for myself and anyone else who wanted a lighter dinner, but this turned out pretty well!

*Warning*
This is not a healthy recipe!  The only reason I'm posting it on here is because it's all natural and is a great substitute for the boxed, preservative-chocked

Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter
1C panko breadcrumbs
5C whole milk
1/2C flour
4C grated sharp cheddar cheese
1 1/2C grated Gruyere cheese
1 1/2C Fontina cheese
coarse salt and ground black pepper
1/4tsp nutmeg
1/4tsp paprika
1/4tsp cayenne pepper

1lb elbow macaroni

I like to prep all my ingredients ahead of time in bowls so I can quickly assemble.

Preheat oven to 375F.  Butter a 9x13 baking dish.  Melt 2T butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.  Add breadcrumbs and toast, stirring occasionally until golden brown, about 5 min. (see pan in front right of below photo)

Warm milk in a medium saucepan over medium heat. (back left pan)  Melt remaining 6T of butter in a large high sided skillet over medium heat.  Heat until butter bubbles.  Add flour and cook, stirring constantly for 1 min.  (front left pan)

Gradually pour the warmed milk into butter mixture, whisking constantly.  Continue whisking until mixture bubbles and thickens, about 5 min.  Remove from heat and stir in 3C cheddar, and 1C each Fontina and Gruyere, 1/2tsp salt, 1/4tsp black pepper, the nutmeg, cayenne, and paprika. 

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  Cook pasta.  Drain and transfer pasta to cream sauce.  Stir to coat and transfer to baking dish.  Scatter remaining cheeses on top and sprinkle with toasted bread crumbs.  (I would recommend starting the water heating when you put the milk on to warm.  That way the pasta is ready to go just as your cheese sauce is getting done.)

Bake about 15 min, until the cheeses are melted.  If you did it like me and prepared it ahead of time and stored it in the fridge for a while, you may need to cook it for longer.  We baked it for about 25 minutes.  Enjoy!

Food Scale

Well, talk about bummed.  I have this pink Taylor food scale that I LOVE from Target.  Unfortunately last week it started showing ERR instead of a weight when I turned it on.  New batteries didn't help, and after some research Mark declared it legally dead.  Add to this, Target doesn't carry this model anymore.  It matches my kitchen so perfectly that I'm very sad.  It's also crazy how dependent I'd gotten on having a food scale to measure everything out.  I'm 100% positive that I'm eating more than I think, despite my best efforts to eyeball the correct quantities.  I'm in the market for a new food scale.  If you have any suggestions please let me know!

Prep for Success

As of last week my life has become insane again.  Mark and I are working long hours and that means we don't want to make dinner when we get home (aka McDonald's tempts us as we drive past on the way home).  So tonight I decided to actually prepare everything on our weekly menu board ahead of time.  See, last summer when things got busy I purchased a menu board so that I could have the meals planned and Mark could help make them.  We've been pretty good about using it still, but not as proactively as we could.

So today I put a turkey fillet in the crock pot with some organic chicken broth.  This was basically like a roast.  It resulted in BBQ turkey sandwiches tonight for dinner, and we have shredded turkey for couscous later this week and sliced turkey for more sandwiches too.  A delicious and healthy way to kill three meals (birds) with one crockpot (stone).

Next I got the meat prepared for my favorite asian turkey lettuce wraps.  Man, this stuff smells so good I had a hard time saving it for tomorrow night.  All we'll have to do tomorrow is heat up the meat, slice the lettuce, and enjoy.

Anyways, it's such a good feeling knowing that we have our meals basically set for the week and totally prepped.  If you're as busy as us, this might be helpful for you too!

Shopping Trip

Today when we went grocery shopping I was so proud to look in our basket.  Here's what we bought:

turkey tenderloins marinated in applewood sauce (currently in my crock pot)
green bell pepper
organic carrots
organic hearts of romain
broccoli stuffed chicken breasts

and one not so proud item.....donuts.  yep, I still have balance in my diet! 

Our goal this week is to add as many veggies as possible to each meal.  I've got green beans, peppers, broccoli, tomatos, etc in the fridge right now.  Let's see how this works out!  If you have any tips or recipes please share!

Shirtdress Success!

Well, this time around has been interesting.  In some ways it's much easier because I was able to keep up with a lot of the habits.  In other ways though it's been tough.  My downfall happens when I get busy.  Work has been insane lately, and it means that I'm grabbing food in between meetings and eating dinner late.  By the time I get to dinner I'm absolutely starved, since it's been about 8 hours since I ate lunch.  So at that point all I want is junk food.  There is definitely a difference between the way I feel when I eat healthy and don't stuff myself than when I pig out.  That is enough to make me watch myself. 

This weekend I decided to do my quarterly closet excavation and see what antiques I could pull out to the front.  I discovered an adorable navy shirt dress that I stuck way in the back a couple years ago.  My hips had gotten, ahem, "a bit more generous" and this caused the dress to be a tad inappropriate for work.  I tried it on (along with other things in my "possible donation" pile) and was shocked to see that it looked great!  The front closed the way it should and it didn't look inappropriate at all!  The work fashion police won't call me out on this one anymore!  It's little things like this that make the sacrifices all worth it.