My first week back with the co-op

The first half of the week I had some trouble waking up so it was cereal and fruit for breakfast.  But it was a healthy organic cereal by Nature's Path with some almond milk.
Dinner on Monday was  pan cooked cabbage with olive oil and salt and pepper with some vegan apple-sage sausage from Field Roast, a salad with goat cheese crumbles and tomatoes from the neighbor and plums.

Tuesday I used the leftover cabbage, some cooked cauliflower and yukon gold potatoes to make a bubble and squeak with some more of the vegan sausage from the night before and another salad.
By Wednesday I was at least up to making toast for breakfast, so it was peanut butter and toast and some fruit.

Then Wednesday night was steamed kale and rice with stewed plums and gleaned peaches with honey and a bit of cinnamon done in the crock pot.  After when I was about halfway through dinner, my husband pointed out that the stewed fruit would be really good on ice cream.  So I saved the rest of my fruit and had it over ice cream for dessert.

Then that gets us to this morning - Thursday.  I actually made breakfast for the family.  We had a frittata with spinach, onion and tomato, topped with salsa, toast and jam (I had fig butter on mine) and some grapes and orange juice.

Eh Veggies and then some amazing Leftovers.

Sunday night was some veggies over rice and some leftover layered salad.  It was edible.  We finished off the veggies and salad and stored the rice for later use.  I always make lots of rice.
Anyway the veggies consisted of onion, mushrooms, zucchini, a couple of the little sweet peppers and one of the larger green peppers.  cooked up in some hearty veggie broth and a little bit of flour to make it gravy like with salt and pepper.  I think it would have been better with more mushrooms and salt.  I am usually very stingy when cooking with salt.

Monday, the girl child didn't have school so I cooked up some eggs for me and the kids.  I made mine with onion and topped it with some of the grape tomatoes. And had a piece of toast with local honey and a mandarin orange on the side.

Then Monday night was once again Krav night.  So I made some "burgers" out of the leftover rice and some garbanzo beans, sweet peppers, onion, celery, garlic, salt, an egg and oats for the boy to pop in the oven before we got home.  I also put him in charge of making a fruit salad to go with it.
He made a lovely fruit salad with some pineapple, strawberries and apples.  He made a lot of it.  I know what I am having for lunch tomorrow.

Sunday - Breakfast, Lunch, Game Night

For breakfast we had had the sweet bread that came in our bread pack from the co-op, a fried egg and half an orange.  It was probably not our healthiest breakfast to date, but it was very yummy.  The bread had lots of dried fruits in it and was very good.

Lunch was yet more of the salad left over from Friday.  Finally finished it off though.  I might have made a bit too much of it.  But goodness we are getting a lot of lettuce from the co-op these days.  We are really not salad people.  Other ways of eating lettuce just doesn't use that much of it.  We are more prone to use it on sandwiches, as lettuce wraps and such.  I just can't figure out what to do with so much lettuce, but make salad.
We had the veg soup I made for Saturday, that we didn't get home to have, with it. The husband blended it in the Vitamix and we topped it with a bit of Field Roast vegan apple sage sausage.

Dinner was our game night at friends.  It will be last one for a couple of weeks.  But we made lemon pudding. by using a teaspoon of lemon extract instead of a half teaspoon of vanilla and then I layered some lemon slices on top.  I think next time I will add some lemon zest to it to add a bit more zing.  Maybe try a different starch.  The flour is not as effective with the almond milk as the corn starch is, and we avoid the corn starch when visiting this house hold.  So my pudding wasn't as thick as I would have liked.  The husband made walnut meringue cookies with the egg whites leftover from the pudding making.
We also took our usual hummus and a couple of the cucumbers to dip in it. 

Sunday - Breakfast- Lunch - Pot Luck

 Breakfast was once again an egg scramble with some onion and bell pepper with some toast, this time with some apricot preserves and a 1/4 of an orange.  Nice simple and quick.  The husband used the broiling pan to make bacon for the kids to go with their breakfast and for their lunch later.

Lunch was a layered salad that I made the night before and just mixed up right before serving.  It consisted of 2 types of lettuce, onion, bell pepper, celery, frozen corn and frozen peas and topped with mayo made with canola oil and fresh ground pepper.

The salad we are taking to the pot luck is about the same, as I made it at the same time, but I used broccoli instead of the corn.

My only regret about this salad, is that I wish I had made more.  I forget how much I love this salad.  It is really easy to make.  The only issue is that I worry about making too much, because it doesn't keep real well after you stir it up. You can make it the night before just fine, but you really need to plan on eating it all as soon as you mix all the ingredients together.

Sunday morning harvest muffins

Muffins around here are always different because we use the Universal Muffin Recipe from the Tightwad Gazette .  Today's muffin featured half whole wheat, that was freshly ground from the wheat we got from the co-op, and half unbleached white flour.  For sweetener it was half brown sugar and half honey.  And the extras were walnuts, dried cranberries, raisins and half a large granny smith apple we got from the co-op.

Our muffins are not as sweet as the store bought sort, which always seem more like cupcakes without icing than anything that should be served for breakfast.  We are going to try and make a point of eating all those apples we have left over from last week.  Very few were eaten and we got a few more this week, as well as pears, which we also have a hard time eating all of around here if I can't get the husband to take them to work for his lunch.

A typical Weekday Breakfast, Protein and Baby Steps

You might have noticed that my dinners don't always feature things that we consider a protein.  There is usually something starchy like potatoes, bread or rice involved, but no meat since I am eating vegetarian and rarely beans or nuts and such.  Breakfast or lunch is typically where a lot of my traditionally protein rich foods seem to be consumed.  But other plant based foods do contain some proteins and I understand we really don't need as much as we think we do.  I have been more concerned that we are getting enough fruits and vegetables in our diet.

Most weekdays this is it.  Some toast with peanut butter and some fruit.  I prefer crunchy peanut butter, but sadly I am out and decided to dip into the husband's preferred creamy for this breakfast.

Other times it will be a smoothie, with some soaked raw cashews in it.  And if my husband gets up early enough he might cook me an egg with some spinach and onion for breakfast.  I do not cook breakfast, because I am not a morning person and might burn the house own if I tried.

Lunches will either be leftovers from dinner, a peanut butter sandwich, or some sort of quick and easy treat.

I don't have a perfect diet.  I still eat junk food (usually crackers, tortilla chips and home made carob brownies).  I still eat lots of fats, usually in those brownies, my nuts or on my roasted veggies.  But my diet is much better than it was 6 months ago.  I am consuming less sweets, no sodas, no meats, and eating more leafy greens and more vegetables in general.  Small steps seem to be working.  I am loosing weight, and not at a crazy fast rate that would make my doctor worried.  And because of my strange diet restrictions I am eating more home cooked meals which means less sodium, sugar and saturated fats.

I don't think that I need to have a perfect plan right out of the gate.  I needed a plan to make me stop hurting right away.  Which meant no meat, no soy and no dairy.  And even that I took as small steps.  I did my best to cut out the soy a very long time ago, when I realized it was causing many of my migraines, although not all of them.  Turkey got cut out a couple years back when I realized it was causing hives.  I cut out the rest of meat last October.  But for all of 2012, I have been trying to increase my vegetable consumption.  It became easier when I needed the vegetables to replace the meat I wasn't eating.  Dairy got cut in December.  And January I began to make a point of making more home cooked meals.

At the end of this month my doctor should be releasing me from my activity restrictions I have had due to surgery, and I think that adding a regular exercise program will be the next step to my quest for a healthier me.  After that, I will figure out a way to tighten up the healthy lifestyle just a bit more.  Maybe in a year or two I will know what a really healthy lifestyle should look like.  But the one I am living today is looking really healthy compared to the one I was live two years ago or even a year ago.