I Love The Outdoors!

This past weekend I was so quiet because we went camping with our girl scout troop and I did not bring my computer!

I do love camping and have been doing it for almost 13 years now.  For those of you who do not know, I also have a website all about camping, Your Camping Guidebook.

Besides just loving nature and the outdoors, and in South Florida this being the perfect weather to be outdoors, I also love that I have complete control of what I eat on my campouts and can remain healthy while out there!

Before I get into the food though I thought I would break away and share a little of what we enjoyed this weekend!

We stayed at Billie Swamp Safari which is located right on the Big Cypress Indian Reservation.  Even though this is only a couple  of hours away from me I have never been here before!

Instead of tents, we slept in these chickee dorms!  They had bunk beds inside and slept about 12 people.  FabPreteen slept in one  with all of the girl scouts while I stayed in another one with FabHubs and FabStepson!

These dorms were right on the edge of the park so we were able to walk around and look at the animals that were in the park after the park had closed for the day!  That was very cool!

Our dorm was right next to the venomous snake house and the alligator pit!  Not so cool!  I was really hoping nothing would escape!!!!!

This chickee hut had a big round table in it and we would sit here to eat our meals. This was the view of the beautiful  Everglades from outside the chickee dorms.  You can see some more of the 2-person dorms in the background! There was a lot to do while we were here!  We saw a couple of animal shows. Then we went on an airboat ride through the swamp!  Billie Swamp Safari has 2200 acres of nature preserve so we saw a lot of animals.   Not all of them were Florida natives though. Obviously these guys are! After the airboat ride we went on a swamp buggy ride.  We actually did two of these…one during the day…and then one at night. 

 

The night ride was AMAZING!  We saw a lot of animals then as well. At one point we pulled up to a fence post and there was a gorgeous barred owl sitting right on the post! 

I hadn’t taken my camera out before since I figured I couldn’t get any good shots at night and boy was I sorry!!!!  He  sat there for a few minutes looking at us look at him…but then he flew away while I frantically dug in my bag for my camera.

An ostrich egg!  It is dead though :(

A few more Florida natives!  Cuter I think than the last pair of natives I showed you above!

This weekend I packed perfectly foodwise and loved everything I brought!

Other than one meal at the campground's cafe (at which FabPreteen and I ordered the veggie burger) we ate Friday’s dinner and Saturday and Sunday’s breakfasts and lunches from our cooler.

As usual, the key to eating healthy, especially when eating out, is in the planning, so Thursday I made up a little menu and went grocery shopping.

While we do have a full camping kitchen setup, I didn’t think it would be easy to use at this campground so I planned meals that did not need cooking.  That turned out to be a very wise choice!

Friday night I cooked a big pot of rice, and then opened a couple  of cans of black beans for the rest of the family.   I set out toppings of sour cream, chopped green onions, and shredded cheddar for them.  

For me, I had an eggplant that needed to be used up so I made this quick, easy, and delicious Moroccan-style eggplant and chickpea stew that I put over rice and topped with cashews and golden raisins.   YUMMMMM!

I took four plastic Gladware containers and divided the rice between them…more for FabHubs of course…and then put the beans on three of them and the eggplant stew on the fourth.  I let everybody top theirs with what they wanted, added a spoon and four bottles of water, and everybody ate in the car when we hit the road!

Dinner solved without resorting to drive through!!!!

I  also quickly threw together in the blender some hummus which came together really fast and was so delicious!  I don’t think I will go back to store bought again if  I can avoid it.   No picture though!!  I planned on using this for snacks and lunch on Saturday.

I also packed cut carrot sticks and celery; cheese sticks and Laughing Cow cheese; some tortilla chips; pretzels; granola; almond milk; bananas;  yogurt; crackers; bread; peanut butter; almond butter; strawberry preserves; apples; pears; clementines; cucumber; halvah;  and probably other stuff I can’t remember at the moment!

I also packed a few cans of tuna and some mayo…but I wanted to try and get FabHubs to eat the hummus instead.

I did a lousy job of taking pictures of food the rest of the weekend though!

Breakfast on both days was the granola and almond milk with sliced bananas.  We also had the clementines.

Lunch was PB&J for the kids and yes, the hummus and cucumber sandwiches for FabHubs and me!  The tuna was going to be a pain to make out there so FabHubs decided to give the ole’ hummus a try.  Before a few months ago he had never eaten  the stuff in his life!

Everybody also had either pretzels or chips (a rare buy for me!) and they had to eat some carrots and celery.   The hummus turned out soooo good!  FabHubs asked several times, “You made this?”

We all also had fruit and some halvah, and then some chocolate covered pomegranate I had gotten from Costco. 

FabHubs was surprised he was able to be full.  He is still not totally converted to this meatless lifestyle!

Dinner at the cafe was pretty lousy!  The group had to choose sides and drink as a group and I was pretty disappointed.  Macaroni and cheese and corn!   I sorely missed my salad and fresh veggies.  But worst of all was the drink!  We had to choose from iced tea, lemonade, and fruit punch.  I had thought we would each get to choose our own and had instructed the kids they were NOT to choose that red-colored sugar water formally known as fruit punch.…but turns out there was one choice for the group and they had chosen, yep…the fruit punch!  SIGH! 

So we bravely took a few sips (there was no water either!).   Of course FabStepson (my sugar addict) and FabHubs had no problem with it…but FabPreteen and I ended up hunting down some water.  It was too much for us!

Lunch on the way home was a free for all  from the cooler!  We snacked all the way home on cheese/chips/crackers/carrots and celery/hummus/fruit!!!!  And it was so good!

I know this post turned very long-winded!  I will end it here but I do have some exciting news from the scale to report…..I will do that in another post though!

Hope you all had a great weekend as well!!!

On The Hunt For Tonight’s Plan

This week’s produce box also yielded this!

Aren’t they cute?  They are baby bok choy.  I put my phone in the pic so you can see how small and cute they really are!

They need to be eaten…tonight!  The leaves are starting to wilt! 

I bought those green bags from a boy fundraising for his band…but the jury is still out on whether they are working or not.  The baby bok choy don’t seem to have passed the test!

Anyway…I think I made these once before…the big ones though, not baby, in a meat stir fry.  As of yet I have no clue what to do with them today!  It will probably be a stir fry of some kind…the box also had a huge hunk of ginger and a garlic bulb so some of these will go in there too.  I also have some frozen shrimp and I just might surprise and delight the FabFamily tonight by throwing it in there. 

Still have to figure out the sauce though……FabHubs is not a soy sauce stir fry fan so I have to be careful what I add. 

As far as the rest of today was concerned:

Breakfast was the same old boring usual with a few little twists…but I do love what I am eating so boring is okay.

At 6:15 a.m. while trying to finish up FabTeen’s breakfast, FabStepson’s lunch..and run FSS over to the bus stop by 6:30 I gulped down an espresso….with sugar.  I know!

I then dashed back home to finish up FabTeen’s breakfast and lunch…I made us both Green Monsters and gulped that down.

Working on my third morning shift of breakfast and lunch for FabPrettn and driving her to school, I had oatmeal/almond milk/ water/naners/almond butter…and I tossed in the last of the organic blackberries I got on Monday.  YUM! 

After coming back but before starting work I had another foamy homemade eggnog latte but I didn’t snap a picture.   You will have to look at yesterday’s if you want to see it!  It was really good…and I even liked the cinnamon on it!

This didn’t hold me until lunchtime though…so I decided to make a juice.  Everything organic…but this time the only things from the box was the parsley.  This is a new addition to my juices but I am trying to use it up (I have two bunches now) and it actually adds a very clean and refreshing flavor to the juice.

Before:

After:

The colors are so pretty!

This was in the Prevention magazine I got yesterday and so I am trying to commit to following this routine at least three to four times a week.  I need to do something!  I may be doing okay with the eating….but I am really sucking in the exercise department.  This chair gyrokinesis is perfect for me since I cannot get up and down from the floor.  I did some of it today and it felt good.  I need to really set up a goal to make this happen regularly…my body really really really needs it.

Shortly after that, lunch called.  I had last night’s leftovers and boy did the flavors meld nicely overnight! 

I topped it with 1 TBS of raisins…and we were out of raw cashews so  I opened the can of roasted cashews I bought from our Girl Scout fundraiser.  I used 1 tablespoon of those too…chopped up so they would go further.

On Monday I also got some Cara Cara or blood oranges, which I had never had before.  They are supposed to be naval but they did have seeds…and I expected them to be “bloodier” looking that that…they really looked like a pink grapefruit inside!  I got five of them Monday.  FabPreteen ate one on Monday and when I looked today one was starting to rot!  So those are on the “”Need to Eat” list now! 

I cut one up and had it with lunch.  It is sweet and okay….these weren’t the best oranges I have ever had though.  I don’t know whether it was these particular oranges or this variety, although I suspect it is just these oranges.

Finally…a little indulgence.   Also from the Girl Scout fundraiser, choco-covered raisins.  These are HUGE!  Big like grapes!  I wish they were dark, I am loving the dark chocolate as I get older.  They are not…but they were still good.

One big thing I have learned over the past few months is that is possible for me to take a measured amount of something, like a tablespoon of nuts, or 1/2 tablespoon of almond butter…or in this case 4 or 5 of the raisins, and enjoy that, rather than having a huge heaping scoop of something that is full of fat…or keeping the can of nuts or raisins out and having mindless handfuls. 

It is a nice balance between having a nice treat and feeling deprived. 

Three Meals From The Produce Box

Because I spent so much time at my mom’s last week with visiting family, we are in serious “hurry up and eat veggies” mode around here this week!

These are the last three meals I have made…all using my organic veggies.  (Breakfast doesn’t count…it is usually oatmeal and fruit…which goes so fast it is a blur in our kitchen).

Dinner last night was a huge helping of the balsamic mushroom/shallot mixture I made last Friday to make sure my ‘shrooms didn’t go bad.  I also had a generous salad using the last of the green leaf lettuce from last week topped with carrots, cukes, cherry tomaters, and scallions.   With my peanut dressing….I love my peanut dressing!  I also rustled up a leftover half of a baked sweet potato.  I sliced that up and pan fried it in a little Pam.

 

For lunch today I had a way too old avocado….it should be green but it is actually that black thing in the picture!  I have been meaning to use it for a while but it is one of those things that needs to be used once it is made so I procrastinated until it was nearly beyond good.  Also some cilantro, lemon juice, diced scallions, and diced cherry tomaters for my own version of guacasalsa. 

Everything diced in the bowl, then mixed together.  I had this on some lavosh crackers along with a few carrots.  Again, everything but the crackers came in the box!

Oh this was so good!  FabTeen came home from school and finished off the rest so I don’t have to worry about it going bad.

I threw in a snack today….one of my all-time favorite fruits in the whole world…persimmons!  And I love the acorn-shaped Hachiya persimmons.  I had two that were ripe…and since everybody around here but FabHubs is a major persimmon fan we were each limited to half a persimmon.

Dinner tonight was “a compost pile” as grumpy old FabHubs called it….formally known as sweet potato/green bean curry which was really good.   The aromas that came out of the pot as I added the spices were unbelievable.  The recipe called for yogurt, but I did not have any left so I used Almond Milk instead which worked just fine.  Last week I tried my hand at making Veggie Broth with the scraps and cuttings from our veggie meals.  It came out fine…and I used that in the curry for the liquid as well.  

I served it over brown rice along with toppers….raw cashews and raisins.   Not only was this delicious and filling….but it used up two of my sweet potatoes (I have at least five to go I think!) and a whole mess of green beans!

Looks good, doesn’t it?

And I just can’t resist throwing in breakfast this morning since I have the pictures anyway.  Yes it was my usual, oatmeal made in the micro with almond milk, water, bananas (I love them cooked) and a spoonful of almond butter with some cinnamon sprinkled on top.  

But I added a treat to this morning’s espresso.  I frothed up a little bit of Silk Milk soy eggnog and added it to my espresso…for good measure I sprinkled cinnamon on top of this too…not my favorite but it is a superfood so I went for it.   My own version of Starbucks.

I feel I am making a dent in the packed fridge!

And I have a victory…FabHubs is taking leftover “compost pile” for lunch tomorrow.

How Did You Fare This Thanksgiving?

As usual, this week has been a hectic one!

I started off with a 1-pound weight loss…not too shabby considering  my TOM started on Wednesday!

Next week’s BL weigh-in will show a weight loss, although it won’t be stellar, especially coming right on the heels of Thanksgiving, other family gatherings, and a campout this weekend.  (One would think camping would lend itself to weight loss…but  somehow  I manage to pack and plan my meals a little too well!)

The day quickly kicked into chaos with a call from a client needing a stat dictation (not planned);  a planned produce delivery (but breaking down the boxes did not go anywhere near as well as it should have); and  serving at a middle school Thanksgiving luncheon (planned…but due to the previous activities not going as planned I was VERY late). 

Thanksgiving went okay…the family gathering part was great!  My brother was visiting from North Carolina with his wife and my five beautiful nieces…and announced that #6 is on its way (still trying for that elusive boy I guess…LOL!!!)

The eating part was not bad…but I wish I would have done better.

For both Thanksgiving and Christmas everyone in my family has their specific dishes.   We don’t even say who is bringing what anymore…it is just known that I will make my homemade cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes, that we will fry a turkey (while my sis will roast one) and my FabHub will bake a few loaves of bread.  There are more family members and more side dishes…this is just our arena)

And so we did!

At mealtime (after stuffing myself on appetizers of too much brie, crackers, guac, and FabHubs homemade bread) I first piled salad on my plate. I made sure at least 50% of the plate was covered in salad (I was very excited to find a beautiful salad made by me stepmom there!).   My basic rule of thumb now is to make sure I cover half my plate in veggies. 

On the rest of the plate I had one small slice of turkey (yes, the fried one FabHubs made…and he did a FabJob)…a small slice of ham made by my stepdad (I couldn’t resist), some of my cranberry sauce, a large bunch of asparagus, and a small helping of mashed potatoes. 

I was disappointed in myself because I succumbed to the meat when I was going to try and go meatless and stick with veggies only…but proud of myself that I really piled on the veggies and kept the meat to a minimum.

I also had one  of FabTeen’s  delicious homemade Parker House rolls, his first time making these….and then came dessert.  We won’t talk about dessert!!

In the overall  scheme of things I ate well enough to sample most things, stay high on the veggie side, and I was not uncomfortably stuffed.  I  don’t think I will be down for my “official” weigh-ins next week (Monday for WW and Tuesday for BL) but I don’t expect to be up either…and that is a great feeling.

After visiting with family again today before they leave…we are now packing for another Peace River overnight canoe trip…this time immediate family (Me, FabHubs, FabTeen, FabPreteen, and FabStepson) only. We have never done this with family only….only in a large scouting group.

Again, I am packing healthy.  The menu:

Lunch:  Veggie Burger wraps and salad

Snacks:  Apples, grapes, Naners

Dinner:  Homemade pizza (veggie for me!); Grilled naners with minimarshmallows and choco chips (okay, an indulgence there)

Breakfast:  Coffee (Oh Yeah!); Rocky Mountain Eggs (scrambled eggs and cheese with sauteed taters, red and green peppers, and onion, all made in the Dutch Oven.

FabHubs really really really wanted bacon or sausage in his eggs.  Honestly I know I love them myself…but I am trying to not eat meat so I persuaded him to not have them.  Besides…I know on his pizza he will have pepperoni (turkey pepperoni because that is what I bought them last..heeheehee).

It is now midnight here and I have to get up at 4:30 or so in the morning so I am headed to bed.   We have to load up the food (everything else is packed and in the car) and leave here no later than 6 a.m.  We have a 3-1/2 hour drive to the canoe outpost…and then four hours of canoeing before we hit camp.

Hope you all had a Thanksgiving filled with wonderful blessings…and enjoy your weekend as well!

A Healthy Cooking Frenzy Part Two

I knew I wanted dinner to be meatless.   LOL…when I was serving it, FabHubs kept asking where the rest of dinner was.  He ate it but didn’t go back for seconds.  When we have meat dishes he will usually finish up ALL of the meat….seconds and thirds…whatever it takes!  Remember…he is gifted  with one of those metabolisms…he could eat a whole cake and it wouldn’t show!

We had gotten a lot of interesting veggies in our last two produce boxes and I had a lot I needed to use up.  So I decided to make a giant balsamic veggie roast and throw in whatever I had, or could fit!

I put in:

Sliced mushrooms, some halved cherry tomatoes, chunked up carrots, chunked up onion, a whole bunch of garlic cloves (Oh Yeah!), half of my little sugar pumpkin, two absolutely GORG purple potatoes, broccoli, and  I think that was it!

Look at this potato!

And remember this pumpkin I meant to use up last week but didn’t?

Well FabTeen chunked it all up and it looked like this!

  Aren’t those colors just GORGEOUS!

And then we decided to dress it with balsamic and olive oil.  I put about 1/8 cup of balsamic, and then topped it off with 1/8 cup of olive oil.

We tossed all the veggies into a huge bowl and then dumped the dressing onto it so it wouldn’t all pool in the bottom of the pan.  We stirred  and stirred until the veggies were well-coated (this was some of my directing part!  Remember, I wasn’t cooking tonight!)

And into the oven at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes, stirring every 10-15 minutes.  This was the result:

Boy…look how much color gets cooked out of them! 

Then the Indian spice rice….Oooohhhh this was fantastic!  Normally I find recipes I like and then adapt to whatever I have, but for a rare change I actually followed this one!  It came from Enlightened Cook and I know I will be back to her site!  We did use Basmati rice instead of brown…although I do love brown rice.  I know I will buying brown Basmati when I run out of what we have on hand now.

FabTeen did this one all by himself…I only found and printed the recipe, he did the work! 

This has all sorts of very healthy spices in it, including SuperFoods  cinnamon and turmeric, as well as raisins.   It also  has caramelized onions and raw cashews.  I probably could have eaten the whole bowl!  Guess what I am having for dinner tonight!

My dinner plate:

Finally, to finish off the little sugar pumpkin, we decided to roast it.  I wanted to make savory, but we found this recipe for sweet and I was outvoted!

For us it didn’t come out great…it needs some tweaking.  Next time I would lower the temp from 400 to 350, especially since we had thin  wedges.  The sugar sauce was overdone, and the pumpkin was a little underdone…but we ate it nonetheless.  More superfoods in the pumpkin and all of the spices.  I did do a little squirt of canned whipped cream I have had in the fridge for a while, since before embarking on my whole food path but after Weight Watchers.  It really made a difference in the palatability of the pumpkin  wedges.

Our version:

Mixing  the spices  and melted butter:

Adding it to the pumpkin wedges (sorry, a little blurry):

Our roasted pumpkin wedges:

My dessert plate: 

I can’t believe I have gotten so excited about veggies!  What is this world coming to!!!

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!