I Am Overrun!!!

The race is on!  Between being out of the house a lot this week AND having no extra kids to help us eat fruits and veggies…the fridge is way too full!

 

It looks like a garden in there!   And a lot of my fruit is out on the counter in a fruit bowl as well!

I already had a lot of produce left over from my delivery last week and this week’s delivery came late…on Wednesday instead of Monday…but it came in full force!

This week was a particularly gorgeous box too…..

It had:

• 1 broccoli (I still have some from last week!)
• 1 box grape tomatoes (I still have from last week too!)
• 1 bunch leeks
• 2 gorgeous Delicata squash (I have never tried these!)
• 2 yams
• 1 fennel (another thing I have never tried fresh)
• 1 bunch collards
• 1 red cabbage
• 1 bunch parsley (I still have one bunch of parsley and cilantro from last week!)
• 1 bunch turnips with greens
• 1 head red leafy lettuce (again, lettuce left from  last week)
• 1 box blackberries
• 1 hand bananas
• 1 crenshaw melon (I have my honeydew from last week…and I have never tried crenshaw)
• 2 boxes strawberries
• 4 apples
• 1 pound of mandarins
• 4 pears
• 1 box cranberries
• 1 box raspberries

And as a coordinator thank you, Annie threw in these for me!

Organic dark chocolate covered almonds!

Huge!

Delicious!

Forget produce, the rest of the day I am snacking on these! 

Dark chocolate, almonds, organic…all of the things that make them completely healthy right?

    

Here are those beautiful Delicata squash….they are so pretty!

And the fennel!  Pretty too…I have to figure out what I am going to do with it.

By the time I sorted the boxes and everybody picked them up, I had not even eaten breakfast!  (I had managed to fit in an espresso though)

And it was lunchtime.  Since I had a ridiculous amount of lettuce…I decided we need to be eating a lot of salad around here over the next few days. 

While shopping yesterday I had treated myself to these:

     

A Julienne peeler and a veggie scrubber!  I was pretty excited about the peeler…I love the texture of Julienne’d carrots and beets.  I am not a beet lover…but lately I love it fresh in my salads, only Julienne’d though…or a little in my juice…I don’t think I can handle them cooked or in wedges.  (I may try one balsamic roasted though…that makes everything taste good).

Unfortunately the peeler didn’t work!  It was such a struggle to use it that I ended up pulling out my big ole chef’s knife and did it by hand.  Back to TJ Maxx this is going!

Also in the mix:

• Leftover rice from last night’s dinner
• grape tomatoes
• carrots
• beets
• red bell pepper
• green leaf lettuce

 

I topped it with my favorite…Thai Peanut dressing!  It  hit  the spot…and the rice was filling enough to keep me satisfied when I left to finish up shopping for the day! 

I also threw into my purse two little mandarins to snack on during the day.

By 8 o’clock I was hungry and almost done!  I kept wishing I had brought a snack…I completely forgot about my mandarins!!! (and I have soooo many of those…they are on the must eat now list too!)

This time for dinner though I was somewhat prepared!  I had made that big pot of brown rice earlier in the week to try to be ahead of the game…and for once I was!

I had also stocked up on a variety of Gardein products last week when they are on sale for $1.99 in my Publix.   I got at least 6 of each variety…they are processed, but they satiate the meatlovers in my family somewhat so I pull them out occasionally to treat them.

Tonight we had the beefless tips!   And for  a change I didn’t get “The Look” from FabHubs…so he is starting to accept them.

I also had two bunches of fresh spinach left from last week that needed to be used.  I pulled one bunch out and washed it, weeded out some mushy pieces, and chopped off the bottoms of the stems.  I  left the leaves intact with most of the stems on for cooking.

I rough chopped about five cloves of garlic and tossed them into a pan of heated olive oil.  I browned the garlic, then put in the washed bunch of spinach, sprinkled some Adobo seasoning, and stir-fried them up until  they were still pretty green, but wilted.  I topped this with some freshly grated parmesan (I put FabHubs to work grating the giant wedge I got from Costco this weekend!)

He did compliment the spinach! (I have to say myself it came out really good).

I also heated up some of the brown rice in the microwave (I am torn between using it or not at this stage of the game…but it sure comes in handy sometimes) and sprinkled crumbled  feta cheese over the top.

And since we had no kids to set an example for, we dragged our plates, along with a glass of wine (merlot for me….sangria for FabHubs) into the family room and sat in front of the TV watching Criminal Minds!

The best supper we have had all week!   

Losing Balance In A Hectic Week

Since last Saturday, this week has been very unusual food-wise to say the least. 

My nutrition has definitely been off, although I have still managed to keep what I have eaten on the healthy side and thankfully not succumbed to the dark side, as my kids love to call junk food now.

With my kids gone and a light work load, I saved all of my Christmas shopping  and running around until this week.

I would leave the house and not end up back until almost 11 p.m.!

And believe me, then I sure didn’t feel like cooking!  And I have found that healthy eating habits require a certain amount of planning and preparation so when hungry and it is late, it is very easy to turn to the dark side!

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, FabHubs and I ended up sort of scrounging around the fridge and digging out leftovers….no real meals were eaten, and more importantly, not much fresh fruits and veggies were being eaten!

This stressed me physically, because now my body does crave the fresh fruits and veggies regularly, but it is also stressed me mentally because the produce box from last week was sitting…and sitting produce quickly turns to rotting produce!  I have not been able to eat enough from it yet.

By Tuesday I had had enough of this and I did a little planning in advance, by making a large pot of brown rice to keep in the fridge.  I figured if the rice only had to be reheated, the rest of the meals would come together quickly.

But Tuesday night again we ended up out late.   By 10:30 (p.m.) I was ravenous!  I had only eaten an oatmeal breakfast and a homemade juice before I left the house.

My mom didn’t want to eat…and when FabHubs met up with me after work, the little sneaker had already eaten something!

I finally dragged FabHubs to this little Asian restaurant in the mall to get something to go for me.  He is not a fan of Asian food and I am a big fan…so I took this opportunity to enjoy some….even if I was kind of irritable by this point.

They had bubble tea…which I have never had!  So I ordered one to sip on while I waited.  I ordered an eggplant stirfry (I looooooveee eggplant…and FabHubs doesn’t, so another opportunity taken).  This turned out to be an appetizer, so I had to order a side of brown rice to go with it.

I tore right into it in the car…I was so hungry I  forgot to pull out my camera first!  So the pictures of my pretty much demolish meal came once I got home!

I love those little purple eggplants too!  I have never bought them…I always get the big one.

Here is my bubble tea!  For my first one I just went with the plain simple tea.  I enjoyed it…between the bubble tea and scarfing down my dinner I ended up being so full I left over a bunch of bubbles!

LOL…Cookie is waiting for me to hurry up so we can go to bed!

After I ate all that I WAS SORRY!  It tasted good…but I was too full and uncomfortable!  I don’t like to eat late at night and that is just what I did.

I went from being uncomfortably hungry to uncomfortably full. 

I know I need to practice better balance sometimes….but sometimes things just get a little too chaotic and it gets difficult!

Have you been keeping balance in your life this holiday season? 

Have you put any special practices in place to make sure you stay balanced?

A Few Days To Recoup!

Since my last post I have happily taken a few days of rest!  Yes I have still worked, and yes I still had some craziness to deal with Wednesday and Thursday….but a biggie, I have NOT COOKED since last Tuesday!

Ahhhhh….that in itself is kind of relaxing!

Wednesday, as promised, I took the Fabulous Preteen and her BFF to see New Moon.  Okay…I now completely and totally understand why all these 40-something women have gone Jacob crazy.  I so get it!   Hmmmm…

OH!  Excuse me…back to blogging!  On the way home, since we were near Whole Foods I decided to drop half of my Christmas money I had saved for gifts for the kids and get a few things I can’t seem to find on my side of the city (unrefined coconut oil…spelt flour…organic kabocha) and some things I was just out of and needed to get (rolled oats, quinoa, broccoli, ginger, and more!)…and while we were there I fed them.  I just didn’t want to cook when I got home!  I was burned out.

They had Whole Foods pizza which my FPT declared was the best pizza.  I had been craving sushi!  Easy!

Thursday was spent working….and then hanging out at FPT’s school for her Xmas class party.  I took advantage of every minute I could with her because after school her dad was picking her up and whisking her, along with FabTeen, to Canada for a week where they will be spending Christmas with him and his family.  I know they have to go….but even after 12 years of these alternating weekends and holidays I still get a huge knot in my tummy every time they leave me. 

So focusing on the positive….this week I am not driving anybody anywhere!  And I am doing my Christmas shopping ALONE…or with FabHubs.  But I warned FabHubs that if he got grumpy on me and started complaining I was going to LEAVE HIM HOME!  Now I know for most husbands that would be a threat they would be happy to have made good on them…and FabHubs usually falls right into that category.  But he is enjoying his alone time with me (and I with him!)…something we don’t get much of.

And with no kids around, he and I have been able to be lazy in the cooking department.

Thursday night I did make him cook!  I printed him this recipe for Mama Pea’s curry which looked really good, and adapted it to what we had on hand.  I then proceeded to take out all the veggies I wanted to go in it.  The tofu was already waiting for him, marinating in the juice of one lime, 2 TBS honey, a big ole spoonful of jarred garlic (out of my yummy organic!) and 1 TBS of soy sauce.

I took out the brown rice (and asked him to make that first), then took out whatever veggies I had on hand that might go well with curry…broccoli (which I had picked up from Whole Foods, none left in my produce box), one each of white and sweet potatoes, a huge handful of green beans, and some carrots, as well as the garlic and ginger!

  

One of the things that is really great about FabHubs is if I give him any recipe and the ingredients, he will make it.   He even took these pictures for the blog while he prepped and cooked!

   This is the tofu broiling. 

  On the other hand…sometimes he really takes his time when cooking……

I think we finally had dinner around 10 p.m.!  But boy was it goooood!

He put the chopped cilantro on top (I adore cilantro!) and additionally I topped mine with raw cashews and golden raisins.  This was/is one of my absolute favorite dinners!

And it was a large amount.  So we ate it Friday night too.  And he ate it Saturday for lunch while I was out.  And there is still some more!

Saturday night for dinner we went out for a treat, to Houston’s.  I have never been there before! 

I was starving and over-ordered a bit..I had only had a shot of wheatgrass juice at Jamba Juice during the day, and a giant glass of home juiced carrot/apple/ginger/beet juice when I got home.  I was going to get a juice at Jamba, (another place I had never been but I really wanted a shot of fresh wheatgrass juice!) but when I saw the menu I really didn’t want a smoothie type drink which is what they mainly have, and the only juices they had there were straight carrot or orange.  No combo juices!  And I wasn’t going to pay $3.00 for a small glass of carrot juice when I could make it at home!  So that is what I did.

But by the time we sat down for dinner I was ravenous! 

We decided to share two of their specialty sushi rolls as an appetizer, the Thai Tuna roll and the Shrimp Macadamia roll.  Both were really good….I had never had nuts in my sushi before!  But I have to say, next I would stick with the Thai Tuna roll…it was sweet, crunchy, and it rocked!

I had never had sushi wrapped in the rice paper either…I have always had it wrapped in nori.  Of course the rice paper didn’t add any flavor to it, but it was pretty!

The shrimp macadamia roll:

My beef lovin’ husband took advantage of eating out and ordered a hamburger.  Yes…in the past I would have gotten that too!

But I settled for the best veggie burger I have ever had!  This didn’t even look like a veggie burger when it was served…and it was moist and flavorful!  I am going to have to hunt this recipe down for FabHubs to make for me. 

     

We shared the sides of the spinach and fries.  My only complaint was that the menu didn’t mention the mayo on the burger and I hate mayo!  That was an unpleasant surprise and I wished it would have come on the side.  It had never even occurred to me it would be on there.

I was only able to eat half my burger and took the other half home.

Hubs wanted dessert!  So we split a dessert of their yummy brownie…..

I haven’t been that full in a very long time!  I was uncomfortably full.  We were both so full that the next day we weren’t hungry!  We had an Amazing Grass Green Monster around noon….and that was it until around 2ish when I had my leftover veggie burger and he had his homemade calzone….and that was it for the day.

Later on we snacked on some dried mango and chocolate covered pomegranate from Costco….and I did snack around some of the Costco food booths too while we were there.  But that was it.

This morning, weigh-in day though, I am UP a pound!  BLECH! 

Oh well…it will come off and I know I will not be eating like that again for a long time!

Today I do have veggies to make before they go bad so it is back to cooking for me.  But with no kids to be driving all over the place this week, thankfully this week will be much easier going as I sit in my house and work, and cook and shop….alone!

Overwhelmed, Overtired, and Overdone….Is It Over Yet?

By 6:30 a.m., while walking back from the bus stop for FabStepSon, I realized was already done for the day…exhausted, and spent the walk back trying to figure out where I might be able to crawl back into bed and sneak a snooze!

But with a list like this for today:

that was just not a reality…so back to the house I went, to rouse FabPreteen and start getting child #2 ready for the day!  Get her up, make her breakfast and lunch…shower, get dressed…all that was in the plan.

“Mom, I don’t have any clean uniforms!”

UGH!

So after a rushed load of laundry and everything done, off to school we went (in a slightly damp uniform shirt)…so I could come back and hit the ground running.  Again.

It doesn’t help that I have gone to bed no earlier than 12:30 a.m. the last three (or four?  I cannot remember!) nights. 

And it doesn’t help that my alarm cheerily goes off every morning at 6:05 whether I want it to or not.

Today all the running has caught up with me and I am tired, grumpy, and ready to crash…this isn’t how it is supposed to be, is it?  but of course today my list is the longest.

I am constantly running on the edge of overwhelm…putting out fires as they need to be put out and not managing to get to the smoldering stuff until they become raging fires…and many times I have too many fires going on to handle all of them effectively.

How do other working moms balance it all?  House, job, kids, school, hobbies….sometimes I am just overwhelmed.

So today we come back to being guilty of leaving the teachers’ presents until the last minute…yes…I have to get them today!

And yes…I promised FabPreteen that I would take her and her BFF to see New Moon on the new moon, today, before she leaves for Canada for the week.

And while I didn’t commit personally…somehow (casting a finger at FabPreteen here) I have to run to Publix to get the Caesar salad I was volunteered to bring to the class party tomorrow…and the gift for the Secret Santa. 

And while there I will probably have to run to CVS to pick up something for the kids for Hanukkah tonight….

And have I mentioned that I haven’t done the first lick of shopping for Christmas yet?…

But hey..that fire isn’t raging yet, I can wait until next week when all kids are gone…after all, I will be looking for something to do, won’t I?

 

Quick run through of my eats today:

I love pink grapefruit…and we got three in our box!  I have to fight FPT over these….she didn’t have enough time to eat this half so I stole it from her…hee hee.

 

Today’s oats were yesterday’s daydream.  The bananas were finally ripe enough to start eating…oats/almond butter/cacao nibs/banana slices.

HEAVENLY!  OMG this was soooo good!

 

Into my Oh She Glows box to try some of the delicious teas she sent me…since I was too lazy to make coffee. 

I opted for this one…..

And then followed the directions on the back, making it with almond milk, to make a yummy Chai tea!

Although the quantity was a little less than satisfying…I had been hoping for a full cup.

 

This held me for a while, until lunchtime.  We got more of this yesterday…and this is to die for!

 

The ingredient list, however is a little scary with the peanut butter and canola oil…I am somewhat nervous about how many points this has and there is no NI on the bottle for me to figure it out.  I limited myself to one heaping tablespoon. 

 

I really wanted a wrap with this, with an Asian style veggie burger…but I am worried about the baba ganoush going bad so I ended up with a scoop of that.

And I am so sad….I am all out of my Mary’s crackers and had to suffer through all that I could scrounge up….some Ritz! 

I finished up with one of the mandarin oranges I got on Monday…but the picture seems to have disappeared so you will have to imagine it…it was sweet and sprayed juice all over the place…and now I have to leave for a 2 p.m. child pickup!  (to be ready for a 3 p.m. appointment I have which hopefully ends before I have to pick up the BFF at 4 p.m…..to be to the movies by 5 p.m…..have I told you I am tired today?)

A Really Yummy Day

After having a midmorning Amazing Grass  shake I was good until about 2ish…and then it was time to eat! 

I try to use up the leftovers  at lunchtime since I am here alone anyway…and  am usually the one happy to eat them!

Lunch was a Flatout multigrain wrap (love these!) with organic lettuce and tomatoe….Alas..the cuke was an English cucumber from Publix!  No cuke in the box this week and we are BIG cuke eaters in this house!

On top of this I plopped a bunch of the Baba Ganoush I made last week out of the organic eggplant!

I finished off last week’s box of tomatoes by having a few on the side…we just got a whole ‘nother box and these needed to go!  Also on the side was a big scoop of the leftover avocado salad.  This was made Sunday I believe…and the flavors have had a chance to meld together…it was just deeeevine!

A small dessert with the last of yesterday’s raspberries (yes..already!) and a square of my Hanukkah chocolate.  I am finding that chocolate seriously filling…one square after a meal seems to top me off every time I have one!

When FabTeen made himself a snack of Baba Ganoush, I couldn’t resist finishing off the crumbs of the Mary’s Organic Crackers.  I am in LOVE with these crackers!  I am also out of these crackers!  I think these are going to warrant a special trip to Whole Foods!

Here were the stars of dinner tonight!  The Cheddar cauliflower and the broccolini. It seems like everyone has heard of broccolini except me!  This is only the second time I have had it and both times they were in my box!

FabTeen  requested a cheese sauce to go over the broccolini.  I haven’t made it in a while so I gave in.

Simple…make a basic white sauce with butter/flour/ground mustard/dash Worcestershire…subbing plain Almond milk for the milk.

Then I just added a hefty handful of shredded cheddar…no measuring.

Cauliflower was chopped small, then browned in EVOO with garlic.  This Cheddar cauliflower, beautiful raw,  turns a beautiful deep yellow when cooked!

It was really sweet and delicious and I couldn’t help but put some aside to put in our salad too. 

I do love raw cauliflower…but that is an ongoing battle with the rest of the family, who is not even crazy about it cooked…but at least they will eat it that way!

Tossed with chopped parsley (last week’s  box!) and then sprinkled with organic lemon juice and regular old parmesan cheese.

Salad was a combo of the last of last week’s butter lettuce, which I really loved…and this week’s green leaf lettuce, which is good but I don’t love as much!

Also on it…carrots, red Bell pepper,  tomatoes, cuke slices, and more chopped parsley.

Finally we had some Forgoza bread from a local gourmet/natural type market.  Basically a soft bread with parsley/green onions/cheese cooked right into it.

  

I topped my salad with simple  Balsamic and an olive oil drizzle.

And yes..I couldn’t resist the cheese sauce on my broccoli!

Another meatless, filling, and satisfying meal…for most of us at the table that is!