Ah, my "diet blog week" is getting me some great feedback and making me evaluate EVERYTHING which I think will be benificial in the long run!
As I open my lifestyle up to your helpful comments, some of your comments have generated questions in my brain that I now need answers to...
- If I were to get brave and decide to get on a treadmill, what settings would I use? Remember, back in January I completed a 5K in 34:10 so what speed would I use? What incline? What else should I know so that I don't look like a fool?
- Does anyone have a good recipe for a "light" whole wheat bread? I would love to start making my own because I know it would save us even more money on the grocery bill.
- What brand of ketchup tastes good and doesn't have any HFCS?
Okay, now on to our Dinner Discussion.
I don't mind eating the same thing over and over for breakfast and lunch but my family doesn't feel the same way. So, I try to plan our meals for our dinners a month at a time and write it on a calendar so that I don't have to answer the question "What's for dinner?"
Typical meal:
4-6 oz serving of chicken, fish, lean steak, pork tenderloin (grilled or baked with various seasonings) My new favorite way to season chicken is with Tiki seasoning! What is your favorite seasoning?
Always served with two vegetables/sides -> one is always green and one is usually oven roasted with some EVOO (extra virgin olive oil if you don't speak Rachael Ray) on it so that I can get in my healthy oil (can you tell I am a rule follower?)
my favorite 'green things':
sorry, still a mommy blogger and that picture was just too cute to leave out!
my favorite vegetables: black beans, roasted cauliflower, roasted sweet potato 'fries', canned green beans, mashed potatoes (made with skim milk, couple of laughing cow cheese wedges, and smashed roasted garlic)
My favorite "all in one" meal is my beef and broccoli that probably should be called broccoli and beef. I usually use about 8-10 oz of lean steak cut into strips and browned in very little EVOO. Then, I take the steak out, deglaze my pan with fat free low sodium beef broth and 1/2 cup of low sodium soy sauce. Then add in a big bag or two (I make lots to have leftovers for my lunches) of frozen broccoli florets, steam until done. Add beef back in and allow to cook on low heat to reduce the liquid some to be more like a sauce. Serve over rice. YUMMY!
We eat beans several times per week. I cook my beans from dried because they taste better than canned and they save me a lot of money in the long run. $1 for a pound of dried beans when cooked is approximately 4 cans of beans that would cost you at least $4. I also occasionally cook 1 cup of cornmeal with 4 cups of water and make what some people call polenta but us southern girls call it grits without all the milk and butter... we eat it as a side dish, often when I fix a white fish.
At least once per month I make spaghetti (my all time favorite). I make my own meat spaghetti sauce with lean beef, crushed tomatoes and seasonings (no sugar or added fat) and serve it on healthy harvest whole wheat thin spaghetti. I also mix in a whole package of cooked and strained spinach. (See, rule follower, even my spagetti has two veggies -> tomatoes and spinach.)
I have a feeling I am going to get some comments about changing the beef we eat to turkey, etc but I probably won't be doing that. If you don't know me in real life then you don't know that my daddy raises beef cattle for a living...and that means that my freezer is stocked with *free to me* lean organic beef that I trust 100%. My ground beef is more lean than the 93% lean I have purchased before because there is NOTHING to drain off of mine once it is cooked.
Are you thinking... she should eat salads with her dinner? I would love to...some days. There was a time in my life where I thought I would rather be fat than have to eat a salad. Well, it turns out that my digestive tract does not like raw vegetables. I have
crohn's disease (I have not been on meds since giving birth to James!) but through several years of tracking my food I learned that my crohn's punishes me when I eat too many raw vegetables.
Also, if I eat pasta, rice, or potatoes at lunch time then I don't eat those things at dinner. We also rarely eat bread with our dinner. Although, this past Sunday I made these
sweet potato biscuits and we ate them with a little honey for desert! I left out the nutmeg (yuck), used 1/2 c whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup ground oats and added flax!
Speaking of flax,
have you entered my giveaway to win some *free to YOU* organic flax for your pantry?This post is linked up with Wordful Wednesday over at
Angie's place.