Weekly Eats

I literally cannot WAIT to get home tonight so I can organize my fridge and do all my food prep for the week.  I can’t even tell you the number of people who say to me every week, “I don’t know how you do that every Sunday.”  Well, to you I say, it’s SO worth it.  It helps me feel in control of my week, more organized, more apt to make healthy decisions, and leaves me more time in my day-to-day for other things that are more important.  It’s just so satisfying having everything ready to roll!  Monique and I were discussing this over g-chat today because she felt the same way a few weekends ago after being away for the weekend, and she put it best:  “Trying to NOT be that way causes more stress than just accepting that’s who I am.”  I am so glad to have a fellow Type A fitness freak to relate to… no offense, Monique!

Anyways, let me back up a bit and talk about last week’s eats.  There were some good ones!

I prepped two main lunches for the week.  First up was a strawberry chicken salad topped with walnuts, grape tomatoes, and goat cheese.  I drizzled a homemade honey white balsamic vinaigrette dressing on top.

And the second was Tim’s favorite quinoa dish that I make, my “very colorful quinoa salad.”  I guess you could call it a Southwestern quinoa if you wanted.

Dinners went as follows:

Sunday:  English muffin pizzas

Monday:  Zucchini Squash boats (the grocery store was out of green zucchini) with side salad

Tuesday:  Chickpea burgers

Wednesday:  Dinner out at Cobblestone’s before Jillian Michaels!  I ordered a Cobb salad, and broke my 1 out of 3 rule… splurged on a piece of bread AND a glass of sangria.

Thursday:  Wine and cheese night with the girls!  Slesh made two homemade pizza crusts out of almond flour, and we topped with veggies and meatballs.  We also had lots of snacks.  They mainly involved cheese.

Friday:  Roasted pepper corn pasta salad

Saturday:  A little bit of everything for leftovers!

I don’t track or photograph everything I eat, but a noteworthy snack was my first smoothie of the season!

Chocolate strawberry… yum.  🙂

Here’s this week’s plan:

For dinners…

• Sunday:  Greek Easter dinner
• Monday:  Grilled cod with strawberry salsa
• Tuesday:  Pulled chicken quesadillas
• Wednesday:  Pulled chicken leftovers in some form
• Thursday:  Quinoa for me (on the go), pulled chicken or tacos for Tim
• Friday:  TBD, depending on weekend plans
• Saturday:  TBD, depending on weekend plans

For lunches…  more strawberry salads, avocado egg salad, (what else to do with all the leftover Easter eggs?) and another batch of quinoa!

What’s on your meal plan this week?  Any favorite meals that you like to make with pulled chicken?

I’m off to the gym!

Random Things + Cranberry Chocolate Chip Bread

Hey guys.

Some things to mention:

— Did this 40 minute elliptical workout from BBB last night, followed by my ab challenge.  10 burpees > ab ladder > 10 burpees > ab ladder > 10 burpees… phew!  For the cardio work, I ended up increasing the resistance a little more on the last round to 12.  I was sweaty!

— My friend Lindsey at work yesterday told me she joined the Y, and it may have been the highlight of my day.  #gymproblems

— New dress, via Old Navy:

Wasn’t sure how I felt about the horizontal stripes, but I think I can pull them off.  I feel like every single item in the store had horizontal stripes on it when I went shopping last week!

— I’m really bad at twittering.  Seriously though, I’ve been ON twitter for a while now, but never actively using it.  I’m TRYING to use it more to bump the blog numbers and be more involved in this “little” online health & wellness community.  Anyone want to give me a crash course?  Tweet me so I’m forced to learn?  Or at least follow me?  K, thanks.

— Dinner last night:

Made the zucchini boats again, this time with barley.  Love, love, love.  Can’t wait to eat leftovers for lunch today.

Recipe time!

This is a recipe I made so long ago (it feels), but I just haven’t gotten around to posting yet.  I baked this around New Year’s I think, because I was just craving baked bread and wanted to use up the rest of the cranberries from when we made our cranberry pomegranate Christmas punch.  As you probably know, I’m not a bad cook or baker, but I’m not very creative or ‘go with the flow.’  I’m just not good at figuring out what ingredients to just ‘throw together.’  I would say about 90% of the time, I do follow a recipe, and if I post the recipe I do give due credit by linking to where I found the original recipe in the first place.  This recipe, however, I actually did just kind of do!  I had a recipe from a cookbook that I don’t even remember the name of, and I played around with the ingredients to make it my own.  I think this was delicious, if I do say so myself, and Katrina and Slesh tried it when we went over for a dinner date recently.  They gobbled it right up, so I think they liked it too!

Cranberry Chocolate Chip Bread

 Ingredients

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• A teeny bit of salt
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup almond milk
• 6 tablespoons unsweetened applesauce
• 1 cup cranberries, halved
• 1 cup dark chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
3. Whisk the egg, milk, and applesauce.  Stir into the dry ingredients.
4. Add the cranberries and chocolate chips.
5. Transfer to a greased 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.
6. Bake for about an hour or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

The cranberry and chocolate chips together were mmm, mmm, mmm.  Nom, nom, nom.

Are you on Twitter?  What do you use more, Facebook or Twitter?  Are you someone who tends to follow a recipe or are you more go with the flow when it comes to cooking?

Time for work!