At the beginning March I started an initiative to
cook more fresh meals at home. With both of us working full time and sometimes
working late hours we had gotten in to a rut of having home cooked meals maybe
1-2x a week with dinner for most weeknights being a bowl of cereal, ramen
noodles, or chocolate covered pretzels. Further, we never have an organized
grocery list, often that meant coming back with things found on sale, like 10
boxes of pasta and sauce. This generally ended in lots of ‘spinach alfredo pastas’
or ‘grilled cheese and tomato’ sandwiches. While there isn’t anything wrong
with those meals, I wanted to try something different and less carb loaded.
Also, we are still figuring out where we fall on the whole organic vs GMOs
debate. We go the organic route on major items like milk, bread, and eggs but
will skip on other items. We just knew that eating fresh vegetables and meats
with less preservatives where we can control the amount of salt and oil we put
into our food was the best route to take.
With a full time job, cooking up daily meals and
especially planning them out was not an easy task at 6 pm when the toddler is
cranky/clingy and all you want to do is warm up something quick! So I decided
to give this whole Meal Planning business seen all over Pinterest a shot. This
way we could finally incorporate more vegetables into our diet, lessen the
reliance on rice and pasta dishes while also creating a more structured grocery
list for specific items only. This month my main focus was soups. Being in last
stretch of winter (hoping it’s the last!), making a warm bowl of soup is the
perfect way to heat up on a cold night and it’s the best way to incorporate
loads of healthy ingredients too. I planned it out so that we would only have
chicken (no beef!) with rice once a week, Daal with chapati bread once a week and
some form of vegetable soup weekly (the remaining days being for leftovers!
Working Mama only cooks hot meals 3 days a week shooooot!). It worked out well
because we had enough soup left over most nights for lunch the next day and
that meant less money spent eating out at work or less snacking on junk in
attempts to skip lunch. Win, Win.
Halfway through March we have fared well in sticking
to the meal plan, here are a few pictures:
Tomato Basil Cheddar soup
Minestrone soup
I ended up using canned tomatoes in both these recipes even though we had fresh ones at home because 1) we have a million cans of this stuff taking up space in my pantry! 2) I checked if using canned tomatoes was really all that harmful and for these two weeks I decided we’ll take our chances with BPA.
In two weeks the only time I’ve veered off the chart was on ‘Leftover night’ when I made a beef burger (ate it so fast no time for a picture!). I tried to keep it somewhat healthy; seasoning the beef with finely chopped green onions/cilantro, salt, pepper, and fresh minced garlic and only using half a teaspoon of olive oil to pan fry it. I topped the burger with fresh avocado slices and had it on an asiago cheese demi roll from Panera. Can I just say this burger was AMAZING. It was SO juicy and just the right amount of flavor to go with a bread that has a bold taste. This was one cheat day I’m glad I took!
Tomato Basil Cheddar soup
(using Greek yogurt instead of cream) |
Minestrone soup
my own spin on it: onions, fava beans, potatoes, cilantro, spinach, carrots, pasta, tomato sauce, chicken broth, topped with parmesan cheese and chopped basil. |
I ended up using canned tomatoes in both these recipes even though we had fresh ones at home because 1) we have a million cans of this stuff taking up space in my pantry! 2) I checked if using canned tomatoes was really all that harmful and for these two weeks I decided we’ll take our chances with BPA.
In two weeks the only time I’ve veered off the chart was on ‘Leftover night’ when I made a beef burger (ate it so fast no time for a picture!). I tried to keep it somewhat healthy; seasoning the beef with finely chopped green onions/cilantro, salt, pepper, and fresh minced garlic and only using half a teaspoon of olive oil to pan fry it. I topped the burger with fresh avocado slices and had it on an asiago cheese demi roll from Panera. Can I just say this burger was AMAZING. It was SO juicy and just the right amount of flavor to go with a bread that has a bold taste. This was one cheat day I’m glad I took!
Courtesy of Google Images. But it looks pretty similar to mine! |
I have to say, this meal plan wasn’t entirely
intended to help us lose weight as much as it was to keep us away from snacking
on Nutella covered everything and in that respect it was pretty successful. I
have felt more full and less tempted to eat sugary, fatty snacks filled with
suspicious ingredients. Girl scout cookies arrived in the house FOUR days ago
and not a box has been opened, that is MAJOR. It’s a nice change to have a
fridge stocked with vegetables, and being a meat lover it was a different
experience having beef only once in two weeks! Being a Desi girl I love me some
rice so lessening that was a tough choice, and while I could opt for brown rice
instead of white, again, I’m a Desi girl and I don’t mess with that. Rice on my
plate is white or not at all! But overall, I can feel the difference from the
changes already. My stomach is not nearly as bloated by the end of week two as
it has been in a while.
This meal plan was only for our 5 day workweek,
but we plan to incorporate weekends next month. This was just a test run to see
how we do. We slowly wanted to incorporate healthy eating, fresh vegetables and
maybe just save chocolate indulgences for the weekend! ;)
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