Do I bore you? I bore me. I feel so redundant. Maybe in my haste to just get through this week I didn’t really learn anything. I blog to keep up my commitment to myself and my family. I feel like documenting my silly discoveries will help me maintain my commitment. Overall it was a good week. Uneventful, but good.
I am constantly looking for quick ways to make a meal. I think this is why the grocery store has so many quick meals; from cereal, to hamburger helper. I think every busy mom just wants to “set it and forget it.” We are bombarded with helpful tools, pretty packages, and even the cringe worthy commercials of the sweet toned mommy voice and the cute little kid eating a toaster strudel for breakfast. Can someone please tell me what part of a toaster strudel is good for you?
And therein lies the problem, quick equals processed. I am not getting on a pedestal or anything, I am just upset that food manufactures are adding crap to our food to make us eat more (mono-sodium glutamate) or adding crap to bulk up the product to save money (cellulose) and marketing it to us as healthy or nutritious. We moms think that it has to be good because it is fortified right? Not all pre-packaged things are bad, and by consumer demand more and more options are popping up. My theory is if you can read everything in it, and it has minimal processing, use it for the times you need a quick meal.
I bought these Frontera sauces in several flavors, and they are so good! The time saver here is not taking out all the spices and sauces and measuring. All natural goodness, and all I had to do was add the veggies.
15 oz baby portabellas, 1 large yellow onion, 3 cloves fresh garlic, one red bell pepper, 1 can black beans, 2 cups cooked quinoa. 1 cup corn. Saute mushrooms, onion, bell pepper until soft and onions are translucent. Add beans, quinoa, corn, and taco seasoning of your choice.
Can you eat to much hummus? I am kind of weird I really like eating the same food over and over and over, until for some random reason I decide I want something else. So I am on a hummus kick. Recently I went to a home and garden show where one of the booths was all natural dips. The samples were amazing, and even though they were sour cream and mayo, I thought this could flavor the beans!! So I bought some and they are amazing. My next goal is to figure out how to make them, because they were a little high priced, but I don’t want to live without them!
1 can chick peas, 1 can white beans, three drizzles of olive oil (seriously i hardly ever measure), half a lemon juiced, and season of your choice, between 2 and 4 tbsp. Put everything in a food processor and process until creamy. Flavor enhances after about an hour.
My oldest son has been begging for biscuits and gravy, for the last couple of days. Last night I really wasn’t in the mood to cook, so I looked in my Chloe cookbook, and low and behold a vegan gravy! It was pretty simple to make and I thought to make a quick meal even better add some eggs.
I am following quite a few vegan pages on facebook, by far the Minimalist Baker is one of my favorites. A few days ago though this recipe popped up and I had to try it. It was really good but my two tips; 1) add more spices (it was a little on the bland side) and 2) mix it all together. Making the salad look pretty is nice and all but its hard to get everything on the fork. Next time mix it all in a big bowl.
Getting a good cookbook as been the key to my success. I highly recommend Chloe Coscarelli’s books. I don’t know how I stumbled upon her, but I got two of her books, and now she is popping up on tv shows. Her recipes are easy to follow with easy to find foods.
Sometimes the food is so good it takes everything in me not to lick the plate. So here is to another week of clean eating and just doing the best I know how.
justkeeptrying 