A Healthy Cooking Frenzy

Sunday lots of cooking went on in my house….and luckily for a change I didn’t do any of it!

FabHubs traditionally has cooked weekend breakfasts and for those he goes all out!  Bacon, sausage, waffles, eggs, grits, pancakes, english muffins, omelets, homemade biscuits and sausage gravy…you name it, he would make it.  Is it any wonder I had weight issues????

To his credit, he is at least open to trying a healthier way of eating…and this morning asked if he could make me us whole wheat pancakes.  And I said YES (even though I am not a huge fan of pancakes) and I asked him to add bananas and superfood walnuts to them.

And so that is what he did and what we had!  With no smoked meat in sight either!  I had one and a half pancakes, and a cup of my yummy daily espresso.  I also had a small sugar seckel pear while I  waited for my brekkie….I hadn’t eaten much protein the night before and I was starving!

A little while after that, I made everyone a Green Monster!  So far everybody is a fan around here except the FabPreteen…who was at her dad’s this weekend..and who is the president of the “Judge A Food By Its Cover” club.  Yes…she completely judges everything’s taste by how it looks and is the most difficult eater I have in my house….in a sea of difficult eaters (with FabStepSon and FabHubs being next, in that order). 

Now…no pictures of breakfast….but I was good about the pictures the rest of the day and boy do I have some gorgeous meals to show you!

After working  for a while, (yes…catching up with work  on a Sunday…one of the other sides of self-employment) I realized I still hadn’t had enough food at breakfast and I was hungry! 

I  made myself a snack of tomatoes, carrots, and tzatziki I had made for dinner the other night.  It was good, but didn’t hold me over.

So I pulled out the juicer and made everybody and myself a glass of my usual healthy yumminess….carrot/apple/beet/ginger.  Again…everybody loves it except for the FabPreteen, although FabHubs complains that it is not cold enough for him and I won’t let him stick it in the fridge to chill down (you have to drink it right away or it loses a lot of its vitamins and health benefits!).

After juicing, the real cooking began! 

FabHubs decided to re-create the English Muffin recipe for my camping website, in pictures.  I will be loading that up today and will come back here and make the link live for the recipe as many of you asked me for it.

FabTeen decided he was going to make some healthy cookies!  AND….he told me this weekend that he would start doing more of the cooking for dinner.  Since we have switched our way of eating our cook (FabHubs) has gone on cooking strike!  He will eat it but he won’t cook all those funny things I bring home now! 

So, all I had to do was pretty play director last night and the food appeared!

Starting with the cookies.  These are a recipe from my kids’ dad’s side of the family called “Special Cookies.”  They are a really rich and yummy chocolate chip cookie.   What?  What do you mean there is one missing???

FabTeen decided to doctor up the cookies and make them healthy by substituting ground flax meal for the egg and for the 1/3 cup of shortening.  shortening.   By far, he is the one who has taken the most to this healthy way of life! There was still 1/3 cup of butter left in the recipe and we decided that next time we sub flax meal for that too and see how it turns out.  We also used semi-sweet chocolate chip cookies and I would like to check out a healthier alternative for those as well, or at least organic.

The recipe ended up making 33 cookies at 2 Weight Watchers points each and lots of added health benefit from the flax meal.  Flax seed, should be ground to get the most benefit from it.  I remember my ex-MIL making us Red River cereal and adding extra flax seeds…which would come out looking the same as how they went in!  Now I have been researching and I see why!  Our bodies do not break down the husk, so you need to grind it before using…and you need to store it in the fridge so the nutrients and oils do not break down.

Flax is very high in dietary fiber, which helps to relieve constipation (but make sure you drink your water with it!), high in vitamins E and B, and is the richest source of Omega-3 fatty acid, you know, the one they tell you to eat salmon and other fish to get in order to help prevent heart disease.  Flax meal is also high in lignans, which are antioxidants, and can help reduce your cholesterol.   This little seed sure is a power house!  I put a tablespoon in our daily Green Monsters to make sure we get some…but this sure is another painless way!

If you want to read more on the mighty flax seed,  this dietary fiber site has some great information.

Boy these were GOOD!

Now on to dinner…yes!  We made the cookies before we did the dinner!  And sampled too :)

I will put dinner in a Part 2 as this is getting long!

I Am Running!

And I don’t mean for exercise either, although I wish I could.  Sure would be some great stress relief. 

This week has been nonstop. I dutifully took pix of all of my meals all week…but by the time I finished working/kids/dinner/fight everybody off the computer/etc. and sat down to blog I have been waaaayy too tired!  And even then I can’t seem to type a sentence without constant alternating interruptions from the other four people in the house!

And work was busy too so I couldn’t even steal away a few minutes this week from there to blog.  (I am self-employed and work from home so I am not really stealing from anybody from myself when I do this!)

Girl Scout Camping

Last weekend we camped with the Girl Scouts.  Isn’t this cabin cute?  We fit 12 girls and 4 leaders in that cute little cabin!  Girl Scouts are spoiled and don’t tent camp…we use cute cabins!  (Wait until my rustic Peace River trip next month with the Boy Scouts.  No cabins there! or even bathrooms for that matter.)

Meals were provided but I packed myself a whole bunch of my own goodies for just in case.  I packed fruit, salad, Almond milk, Amazing Grass, spinach, my magic bullet type blender (to make Green Monsters at camp!) chickpeas, an amazing salad, balsamic vinegar, soba noodles, Via coffee, feta cheese and some snacks.  I was a good scout…I was prepared!

….and just in case was on Saturday lunch when they served hot dogs.   I pulled out my beautiful salad with all sorts of crunchy veggies piled on, topped it with the chickpeas and feta cheese, and then added some of my soba noodles with peanut sauce.  It was sooo much better than hot dogs! 

And I am so proud that my daughter, on her own, told them while she liked hot dogs, she  would opt for the pizza because the hot dogs were not healthy.  PROGRESS!  I SEE PROGRESS!!!

Weighing In

When I snuck onto the scale Sunday night, in full clothes (I KNOW, I KNOW!) I was down one whole pound from last week.  I felt good and I figured I would be down for the “official weigh-in” Monday morning.

Of course that was before we  went to Olive Garden for my mom’s birthday dinner! 

The “official weigh-in” brought me back to the previous week’s weight.   But really I know it is less because I still carried the weight of the meal from the night before.  I am still quite pleased with my weight loss.

Produce Box

I also picked up our fresh organic veggies for the week….what a fantastic bounty!  This definitely makes us eat more produce in this house!

Yoga

Tomorrow I am going to try and fit in a chair yoga class that I found.  I haven’t really talked about it, and will probably elaborate more in a future post, but I have a mild form of a neuromuscular disease which causes my arm and leg muscles to be very weak, and at this point, at this weight, I cannot get up from the floor by myself.   I am hoping the weight loss will help that, but honestly I don’t know if my muscles have degenerated to the point where even with the weight off I will be unable to do that.  At this point I am still hopeful though.

So back to the yoga…I know I need to add exercise to my routine.  It is something that is hard for me physically…and I am envious of you runners, it sounds so freeing to throw on a pair of sneakers and go for a run, but I will probably never be able to do that.   Right now I can walk, and I can walk 2 miles (3 is pushing it!) and I am happy with that.  But I would like to do something to help the flexibility of my muscles and yoga sounds great.   But I cannot do regular floor yoga.  I am excited to try this chair yoga, which is supposed to stretch and work on all of your muscles including the legs.  Hopefully I can fit it into my schedule tomorrow.

And after this long-winded update, I will leave you with some photos of what I ate today:

Pear Oatmeal with cinnamon and almond butter:

Fresh made carrot/apple juice (not green!!! but oh so good!)

Finally finished off the soba noodles with veggies and peanut sauce

Dinner was:

Vinegar dressing:

Cukes and sweet onions waiting to be dressed:

Dressed salad:  

A surprise photo from a sneaky daughter:

Cauliflower stirfry….even the cauliflower-hating husband said this wasn’t bad!  Finally!  YAY!My complete dinner of Boca Burger/Balsamic roasted asparagus/stir fry cauliflower/Thai cucumber salad.  Oh this was good!  I started eating and forgot to snap pix at first!

WOW!  This ended up being a mega-post!

I could finish it up finally because everyone else is asleep!

And as I post I am enjoying a glass of Merlot…but I am too lazy right now to deal with taking the memory card out of the computer, putting it back into the camera, taking the picture, putting the memory card back into the computer, uploading the picture, and then posting it into this post,    Waaay too much work for me at this moment…so you will just have to use your imagination.   It pretty much looks like a glass of Merlot though.

And on that note….I am tired and Cookie and I are going to go off to bed as well.