A dinner of Ooops, It's lunch.

Dinner was to be this lovely steamed Kale over a mix of brown and wild rice and a side of the blended veggie soup.  But silly me, was rushing out the door for the girl child's Krav Maga lessons and hit the keep warm button instead of the brown rice button on my rice cooker.

The mistake was noticed before I arrived home, by my darling husband.  But as he worked late, he did not arrive home early enough to fix it in time for dinner to actually be prepared in a timely fashion.  So we ate at Taco Bell - yeah bean burritos, no cheese?  Then packed the kale and rice for lunches.

The kale was cooked in the steam basket above the rice in the rice cooker with some crushed garlic cloves and some sea salt.  A nice easy meal, provided you actually push the right button.

Crock pot Veg curry

Herm, the colors on my photos has been odd lately.
Anyway, Saturday night's dinner was a curried veg done in the crock pot and a brown and wild rice done in the rice cooker.

The curry had onion bell pepper, a sweet potato, both those giant carrots, a cauliflower, a few cloves of garlic crushed, and a can of organic diced tomatoes from Costco.  The curry part was a yellow curry powder from Costco mixed with paprika and olive oil and some water and then it was all cooked on low in the crock pot and severed over the brown and wild rice. 
I am going to need to go get me some more brown rice soon.
But since I made this in my giant crock pot, and the girl child is on strike against spicy foods, we have leftovers.  She isn't starving herself, she had leftover spaghetti from the other night from when the husband and I went to celebrate our mini Ides of March anniversary.

Stir Fry

Tonight was a simple stir fry over brown rice.  It consisted of lots of cabbage, carrots, some onion, bell pepper and pineapple with coconut aminos for the sauce. 
I am so happy to have found the coconut aminos for my stir frys.  I have missed soy sauce.  While this isn't exactly a soy sauce, I seem to be able to use it like it is.  It has a much milder flavor.

I really should have done a double batch of rice, for the girl child finished off all the born rice and now there isn't any for breakfast in the morning or lunch.  But we still have veggies left.

Reworked Leftovers - Stuffed Bell Pepper Edition

Last night's lentil stew was mixed with equal parts brown rice and stuffed into bell pepper halves and topped with tomato sauce and baked at 350 degrees until the peppers were nice and tender, which was nearly an hour.
For a side we cut up 2 apples, a pear some strawberries and tossed with some blueberries and the juice of half a lemon and called it fruit salad.

There is lots leftover for lunches.  I will confess to having two peppers (BTW, that is a salad plate you are seeing, so while a large pepper, we are not talking something too huge).  I had a larger breakfast that usual and missed lunch, and was starving by dinner, which ended up late.

In other news I finally made it to the gym for the first time in two months.  I got my release from the doctor yesterday and couldn't wait to get back to some activity.   I met up with a friend and we spent a full hour in the pool.  Not swimming, but walking.  I am working up to my activities again after all.

I also weighed myself since I was at the gym and access to a scale.  I continued to loose some weight and am down a whole 27.5 lbs.  About 8.5 since my surgery in early December.  Which means that while I have lost an average of half a pound a week since joining the gym, I have been loosing a bit more than a pound a week since I went dairy free.  My weight loss did pick up after going vegetarian, but not as much as it has since going diary free as well.  Of course that 27.5, does include the fibroid that was removed, which does skew the half a pound a week average.  I think before going vegetarian, I was only loosing a pound a month.

I would like to keep my weight loss average at about one pound a week.  With the gym I want to ton, build my stamina back up and get myself active again.  I think it would be nice to take up running again.  That would be much easier on my knees if I weighed just a bit less.  And I think some other activities would be fun too.

Lentil Stew for a crazy day

Today was a lentil stew cooked up in the crock pot.  I am so glad that I had a crock pot dish planned too.  It wasn't supposed to have been such a busy day, car troubles threw a wrench in everything.  I ended up having to give the husband a ride to work at the last moment and then take his car in for repairs, that took up most of the day, before hurrying on to my scheduled doctor's appointment.  Fortunately the crockpot was already started before everything went kapoot.
 We had lentil stew over brown rice with a side of fruit.  I had a pear.

Lentil Stew

1 lb bag of lentils
1 can diced tomatoes
2 carrots sliced
2 stalks of celery sliced
1 onion chopped
1 heaping spoonful of minced garlic
half a bell pepper chopped
enough water
salt and pepper
1 vegan Italian sausage sliced (added one hour before serving)
All ingredients except sausage was dumped in crock pot and cooked on low for the day.  Water was added as needed.

Served it over some brown rice I had leftover, because I could and it was one less thing to cook on busy day.  And the side was whatever each person grabbed to go with it.  I had a pear. 

Savoy, Beets and Rice

Tonight was steamed savoy, rice and roasted beets.  The savoy was cooked the same way all the other greens have been steamed this week, with celery, onion and garlic.

The beets were tossed in olive oil salt and pepper and baked at 400 degrees for about 30 min and when they came out of the oven had the juice of half an orange squeezed over them.  The husband ate the other half of the orange. 

The rice was leftovers from earlier and I just sprinkled it with water and reheated it.

The savoy was another purple green.  We had several of those this week from the co-op.  I do think I need to come up with a new way to flavor the greens when I cook them.  We do seem to like the texture of steamed greens over the sauteed, but they do start to taste alike when they have the same seasoning all the time.  I wonder if just salt and lemon would go over well next time.

Bean Burritos, Rice, and Leftover Chard

The chard did not get finished off, so was reheated and served again.  But I had made a lot of chard.
This was another collaborative meal, since it was girl scout meeting night.
I cooked the pintos with some onions in the small crock pot (which is a 1.5 qt crock) and started the rice in the rice cooker and made the guacamole (avocado, chopped onion, minced garlic, lemon juice, salt and diced tomato (some of the grape tomatoes we still had left from last week's co-op share))

While I was out playing cab service to the girl child the husband got home from work and made the burrito filling which he informs me was to saute some onion and garlic in oil, then add beans that had the liquid strained off and mash them as he went.

The rice was taken from the rice cooker and a bit of lime juice added as well as some chopped fresh parsley.  The husband really liked the rice, I wasn't real thrilled with it.  But then he ate his inside his burrito, and I prefer my rice eaten by itself.

The tortillas are whole wheat tortillas from Central Market.  I warmed them with a damp paper towel in the microwave, since I had been storing them in the refrigerator. And my burrito was filled with just the beans and some Pace medium chunky salsa.  And I dipped it in the guacamole.  Once I realized how good the guacamole was with it, I sort of wish I had put it in the burrito.  My husband had 2 burritos with everything in it.
 The girl child ate before her meeting with a frozen no cheese veggie pizza, which she then spoiled with adding pepperoni to.

Steamed Greens and the Small Kitchen Appliance

Tonight was a simple meal of steamed greens, sauteed squash and brown rice.  What made this really easy is the rice and greens cooked together.  Originally it was supposed to be steamed Kale, but I had a small amount of spinach and a small amount of baby broccoli left and I just added it to the steam basket too.

I cooked my rice in my rice cooker, because if I actually try and cook rice on the stove, I always manage to ruin it.  I am just not that attentive of a cook to handle something like that and I hate boxed instant rice.  A brown rice has a nice nutty flavor that makes it something interesting to eat instead of just filler fluff that instant white rice is.

In the steam basket on top of the rice cooker I had all the green stuff I mentioned coarsely chopped as well as a quarter of an onion diced and a couple spoonfuls of minced garlic (I would have just used a couple whole cloves if I had them) and some sea salt.  On the right is a photo of what my steam basket of greens looked like before it steamed.

Once again I had to be away from the home to pick my daughter up from an activity, so I had the squash and onion sliced for the squash and asked my husband to saute it when he got in.  He used coconut oil for the saute.

I guess with me showing me using my rice cooker, I should probably confess something.  I really like kitchen appliances.  My rice cooker, my crock pots (yes I have 2) and my Vitamix are the coolest toys ever.  My husband is just as bad with his waffle iron and bread maker (although I make most of the bread in the oven and it never sees the bread maker).  I also have a Kitchaid mixer we got when we married nearly 14 years ago, that is still going strong and it has been put through the wringer.  Especially in those early days when I was still making breads that needed to be kneaded and we didn't have a bread maker.
Not all of our appliance purchases were a great idea.  I hate the George Foreman Grill with the multiple plates.  We were killing blenders about every 9-12 months until we finally broke down and got a Vitamix.  Okay to be fair, we inherited our first Vitamix and managed to kill it in a year's time, but it was a 30 year old Vitamix.  And sometimes the old fashioned cooking tools are the best.  Our favorite skillet is an iron skillet that belonged to my great grandmother.