DAY THIRTY SEVEN:
burger night! hamburger pattie on a “pepper bun” topped with sautéed mushrooms, red onion, pickles & ketchup….and then on the side, a simple salad of tomatoes, red onion, fresh basil and feta on baby spinach, kale & chard with olive oil and balsamic drizzled on top
DAY THIRTY SIX:
greek salad (red, orange, yellow & green peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, goat feta, kalamata olives & homemade greek dressing with fresh oregano) on romaine with grilled pork tenderloin souvlaki
DAY THIRTY FIVE:
Grilled Chicken Thighs w/fresh Cilantro, Mint & Basil + Grilled Peppers, Onions, Mushrooms + Tomato + Avocado + Baby Spinach, Kale & Swiss Chard Greens + Dijon Vinaigrette
DAY THIRTY FOUR:
Grilled Veggies & Prawns on Broccoli Slaw & Spinach….Finally got a new bbq!!!! Yeah! We’ve been having summer weather for a couple months now and without a bbq, it just felt wrong cooking inside every night, heating up the house. So I’m happy to take things outside for a while!
This salad was a bit of odd combo, but the guys had bbq’d italian sausages on a bun, with grilled peppers and onions and coleslaw on the side…so I grilled myself some prawns and put it all together atop baby spinach…so good! The best bite was a combo of the sweet smokey onion, zingy slaw and a garlicky herby (homegrown parsley! so potent and green!) prawn 🙂
DAY THIRTY THREE:
Roast Beef + Caramelized Onions + Broccoli + Fresh Corn Kernels + Diced Tomatoes + Avocado + Green Onion + Red Leaf Lettuce + Balsamic Dressing….The guys had roast beef dip and caramelized onions and corn on the cob….My salad was fresh, crunchy, very filling & satisfying 🙂 Those onions were amazing on it! Olive-oily oniony goodness apparently goes really nicely on a salad! I really liked the contrast between the savoury roast beef and onions and the sweet crispy corn kernels that were sliced off the cob…
DAY THIRTY TWO:
garlic thyme roast beef on red leaf lettuce, mushrooms, red peppers, tomatoes, avocado & white onion with balsamic dressing
So tonight I roasted an outside round roast for dinner – we getting down to the smaller, “tougher” roasts left over from our 1/2 cow we bought (what a GREAT decision we made there! organic grass-fed beef from a local farmer, it’s been awesome. The meat is amazing, I love that it’s from a healthy happy cow and that we were able to support a local real live person and their family. If you’re on the fence about making the investment, it’s been far cheaper too. And, to seal the deal, lots of great studies out there showing that grass-fed beef is way better for your, beyond the hormone/antibiotic/yucky stuff, but actually nutrient wise, which makes sense, we all are what we eat! Recommend!!)….so I roasted it using my fav method, to first slather it in a paste of minced garlic, extra virgin olive oil, lots of salt & pepper and dried thyme), then I roast it for 1/2 an hour at 450 degrees, then turn down the oven to 300 degrees and roast for one hour more, until it reaches 145 degrees. I then take it out and let it rest for about 20 minutes (or more) and it’s *perfect*, super tender, so good, and it works with all inexpensive cuts of meat! So the guys were going to have beef dip & carmalized onions – but plans changed and it wound up being just me for dinner, so I sliced off some beautiful thin slices and had it on my salad. Very good! Even better??!!! Dinner for tomorrow is already done, whoohoo! LOL!
DAY THIRTY ONE:
Bolognese (zuch., carrot, celery, mushroom, onion, garlic, tomatoes, ground beef) Sauce on Steamed Green Bean and Spinach Salad….?!….Welllll…yes, stretching the limits on the definition of “salad” with this one….BUT! There is a reason – made Spaghetti Bolognese for the guys tonight, so I put my sauce atop a bed of spinach (see those little leafies poking out the edges?!) and some steamed green beans….So green beans and spaghetti sauce always makes me a little nostalgic, lol, because, this was where it all began for me. My first baby steps into eating better were replacing SOME of my man-sized full plate of spaghetti with a green beans. I would have half and half, noodles and beans mixed together. As time went by, less and less pasta on the plate, more and more beans. Till the day came when I gave up pasta completely, which became easy because I genuinely enjoyed the beans and sauce and didn’t miss the noodles at all. I know there are other options out there, rice noodles or even the shirataki noodles, but, the shirataki’s are a little too pricey for me (everything I do has to be sustainable financially! lol!), and this time of the day, I don’t need the carbs of rice noodles. I like my veggies and protein, it works for me, my body works well this way, so I’m happy 🙂
DAY THIRTY:
Curried Ginger Coconut Carrot Soup + Roasted Beet Chickpea Cauliflower Spinach Chicken Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette….very, very good. The sweet beets, the chewy crunchy salty chickpeas, hearty roasted cauliflower, delicious all together!
DAY TWENTY NINE:
Home at last! Hurray, never been so happy to eat oatmeal and fried eggs and salad, good, real salad…. It being Mother’s Day, Richard took over cooking duties tonight and out came a roasted veggie salad, so roasted eggplant, asparagus, red and yellow peppers, red onion, garlic, on crunchy fresh romaine finished with fresh pineapple chunks and cherry tomatoes, with a gigantic chicken breast on the side (which I could only eat about 2/3’s of). Just sprinkled a titch of balsamic vinegar and some salt and pepper to round it all out. Hope you all had a lovely Mother’s Day! 🙂
DAY TWENTY EIGHT:
Oh yeah, it gets worse….at the Zoo…ordered a “Chicken Salad”…out came a breaded deep fried chicken breast slices on top of a caesar salad…so my husband wound up eating two lunches, while I went back and ordered a garden salad and a hamburger, minus the bun. Actually, pretty satisfying. But maybe I was just really desperate at this point, after surviving on scoops of peanut butter, beef jerky, and kettle corn for 24 hours. ;/
Iron Heart Personal Training 