Weekly Menu #3 for October

It's been a busy week! Between painting, getting sick, and keeping my toddler corralled, I've struggled to stay organized. But I'm finally ready to post—so here we go:

Monday – slow cooker BBQ and grape jelly meatballs with applesauce and chips

We spent the afternoon painting an apartment with friends and had dinner together afterward, so meal prep needed to be quick and simple. These meatballs are super easy—it was really nice to come home and find the meatballs ready and not much else to do before dinner. Admittedly, these are not the healthiest meatballs that the world has ever known….on the other hand, it would be pretty easy to upgrade them by using sugar-free jelly and BBQ sauce. As for the meatballs themselves, you could always make them from scratch ahead of time—it just takes a little extra planning. The Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook has some great meatball recipes, and of course you can always check Pinterest.

Tuesday – taco lettuce wraps

These are just as good as regular tacos, but easier! If you prefer foods made from scratch, you know the difference in quality between “real food” and processed foods. The downside to making everything from scratch is that it usually takes longer. The health and yum factors make it worthwhile, but sometimes you just want something quick and easy, without all the extra steps. By replacing the taco shells with Romaine or iceberg lettuce, you eliminate the work of making the taco shells. And of course if you're cutting back on carbs, it's also helpful in that regard.

Here is the recipe. Doesn't it look amazing? I skipped the sauce, but followed the basic idea. This is definitely a recipe I will use again.

Wednesday – stuffed bell peppers

These are always filling and delicious. I usually stuff the peppers with rice, veggies, and beef, but I think I might try fish instead of beef this time...white fish pretty much goes with anything, so I don't expect any weird flavors.

Also, you can fit a lot inside a bell pepper – no need to slave away in the kitchen making extra side dishes. ;) I'll probably spoon out a little applesauce for Dean, though. There's no way he going to eat a single bite of bell pepper—he can just have applesauce and some of the fish/rice mixture instead. 

I don't usually follow a specific recipe for stuffed peppers--I just stuff and bake 'em. But if you want a good basic recipe to follow, this one looks delicious. 

Thursday – twice baked cauliflower

Take a peek at this recipe. Doesn't it look good? I haven't made it before, but I have high hopes for it. Cauliflower is one of the few vegetables my toddler will eat. Besides, there's cheese. And BACON. Who doesn't like bacon? (I love bacon. Don't you like bacon? Are you telling me you don't like bacon? No, you're reasonable, of course you like bacon. Everyone likes bacon. ;))

Friday – chicken with poblanos and cream

I just found this recipe off Low Carb Maven – and to me, gotta admit, it looks like manna from heaven. I love chicken. I love peppers. And I love cream-based sauces. Only problem is, the hubby does not like spicy peppers...poblanos aren't that spicy, but still suspect. So I'll probably replace them with a green bell pepper...and make myself a separate dish with the poblanos. ;)

Saturday – pizza night!

I don't have any pepperoni on hand, so we'll probably settle for a cheese pizza...might add some kale and kalamata olives on mine. This is the recipe I use for pizza dough. 

Sunday – leftovers

Leftover pizza, that is. :)

That's the menu for this week! And now I'm off to work on next week's menu... :)

Weekly Menu #2 for October!

Well, here's my second menu plan for October, and it's actually on time today! (Sort of. In future, I'd like to have these posted in the morning as opposed to the afternoon. Still, progress is progress! ;))

So here's what I'm planning to make this week....

Monday – Greek lemon soup (The Silver Palate Cookbook, p. 55) with flatbread

This is one of the meals I “sprung” on my unsuspecting husband one evening when we were newly married. His tastes are very—shall we say, American—and he doesn't always appreciate new foods! “Lemon soup” sounded pretty suspicious. Edit: OK, so I started out bragging about how much Andrew enjoyed this soup against his own will, but I have to admit he wasn't too enthusiastic about it last night. *Sigh* But honestly, it's almost a crime to dislike this soup. The flavor--oh my goodness, the flavor is out of this world! Not to mention this soup is very easy—and very inexpensive—to make. Check out the recipe here.

Tuesday – chicken cobb salad (Against All Grain, p. 136) with flatbread

I'm using the recipe from Danielle Walker's Against All Grain, a cookbook I own and wholeheartedly recommend. There's a similar (but not identical) recipe posted on her website, which you can find here. (The online version calls for marinating the chicken a longer period of time; in the book, she marinates it for only 30 min. It's probably great either way! In fact...I may not marinate it at all...)

I love “hearty” salads—with meat, cheese, nuts, etc. Something that fills you up and offers a wide variety of flavors and textures that compliment each other. I love the flexibility, too; you can dress it up or down anyway you want. This recipe calls for avocado, bacon, chicken, boiled eggs, tomatoes, and artichoke hearts; I'll take away the avocado and replace the bacon with ham (a crying shame, but I don't have either on hand), and add some cheese and kalamata olives. Can't waaaaaiiit!

Wednesday - Thai pad see ew (Against All Grain, p. 148)

Another recipe from Against All Grain. Again, pretty easy, not much to it, but delicious! One of the few "foreign" foods that my hubby will eat. Click here to view the recipe. 

Thursday – lemon chicken (The Silver Palate Cookbook, p. 55) with wild rice and green veggie

I haven't made this one before, but wow...I am really looking forward to it! This recipe looks amazing. I'll probably make a few tweaks, since I avoid using sugar or white flour in my meals whenever possible. Maybe I'll coat the chicken with Parmesan instead...mmm. I'll let you know how it goes!

The chicken recipe is posted here. 

Friday – salisbury steak (Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook by Pearl Barrett and Serene Allison, p. 174), steamed veggie, mashed potatoes (for Andrew & Dean)

Definitely a keeper—very satisfying, very flavorful.

Saturday – pizza

Gotta have Saturday night pizza! SO easy when you make the dough ahead of time (thispizza dough recipe is amazing). And it's fun to experiment with the toppings. Usually I just do sauce, mozzarella, and pepperoni, but last week I ran out of sauce. It was just as good without it, honestly. I covered one half of the pizza with pepperoni and the other half with sliced jalapenos and kalamata olives...gosh, that was amazing.

Sunday – leftover pizza

Note: If you were wondering, the Parmesan-coated fish sticks from last week turned out great. The Parmesan worked well as a replacement for the white flour. :)

Newbie THM Menu Plan

Will anyone believe me if I recycle the old excuse, “it's been crazy the last few weeks”?

Well, it has. In a good way, I must confess—warm, summery winter days, strolls by the creek with my baby, new books to read, and the THM cookbook to study and obsess over during Dean's nap (my leisurely portion of the day)--such enjoyments have kept me from updating this blog the couple weeks. And before then? Shucks! I don't even know what happened!

Anyway, back to the present. Dean's nap will end in about half an hour, so I have a limited amount of time to finish up this post and get it published on the blog. I can't share everything I would like to, this time around. For now, I'm going to post on THM. In a few days, I will post family updates and lots of cute “Dean moments” to share with you. :)

I officially started the THM “diet” on March 1. Here are the culinary successes and failures of that first week. If you have any ideas for improvement, let me know! I'd like to keep posting THM weekly menu plans on a regular basis; it forces me to write them out and start planning, and I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas for improvement.

If you're new to THM, there are 5 basic types of meals allowed on the plan:

S meals – protein + fat

E meals – protein + carbs

S Helper – S meal + small amount carbs

Crossover – protein + fat + carbs (fats and carbs “even”)

Fuel Pull (FP)– protein (no fats or carbs)

S and E meals are the backbone of the plan and help you lose weight (so do Fuel Pulls, but you can't rely on them too often). Crossovers help you maintain or gain weight, if you need to. S Helpers help you lose weight, but not as effectively as S or E meals.

OK! Moving right along:

Monday

S Breakfast – scrambled eggs

I'm used to cooking eggs in butter, but this time I used coconut oil. It was surprisingly delicious! Andrew didn't like it as much, though, so I'll stick to coconut oil for eggs when he's not home.

E Lunch – cottage cheese waldorf salad

Basically cottage cheese, diced celery and apple chunks, and spices—good, but I'll never eat this as a whole meal again. Too much of the 'same.' I love cottage cheese but I couldn't eat that much in one sitting. Next time I'll make this as a side, not a meal in itself.

S Dinner – chicken with salad (complete with cheese and nuts)

S snack – 85% chocolate bar

By the way, 1 chocolate bar equals about two pieces, so it's a small bar. It's usually satisfying though, especially if you suck on the pieces instead of chewing them.

Overall this was a good day for THM. The lunch was regrettable, but hey – live and learn. The waldorf salad is still yummy in small amounts! And none of the meals required special ingredients, although I didn't buy cottage cheese before starting THM.

Tuesday

E Breakfast – quinoa with 1 tsp butter, s & p

Pretty good. Butter is your friend here. Of course, this being an E meal, I couldn't put on as much butter as I would like (I discovered a couple weeks ago that quinoa + salt + lots of butter = out of this world yumminess), but the allowed 1 tsp does make the quinoa enjoyable. I wouldn't be tempted to eat it two or three days in a row, though, as I do with some recipes.

S Lunch – Thailand soup (from the original book) with a small side of cottage cheese

Wow. I don't always like ethnic foods, but wow...that soup was good, and incredibly easy to make. You literally put a few ingredients in a pot, stir once or twice, and wait for it to warm up. So easy, so delicious!

The cottage cheese was tacked on as a filler—I was still a tad hungry after the soup. They didn't really “go” together, though—I'd like to experiment more with easy side dishes.

S Dinner – PIZZA! With salad, of course. So...the crust for this particular THM pizza was basically made from cheese and egg-whites. And it was good. Oh. My. WORD. It was SO GOOD. I do not have words to describe how good that crust was. It was almost a shame to put the toppings on – they detracted from the crust, which was the real star of the show.

Unfortunately...the crust stuck like crazy to the parchment paper. (Actually, I may have used wax paper...does that make a difference? Hehe, I hardly ever use either one!). It took me at least half an hour to peel it all off. I couldn't peel it off the edges so I just cut them off and used the center for making pizzas. However...that crust was so good...I couldn't stop eating it, wax paper and all. Tells you something about the flavor (or maybe I'm just crazy).

*happy sigh * So, anyway, I'm gonna have to tweak this recipe, but it's a keeper. I'm not sure if I'll use it for pizza though—I might opt for the cauliflower crust on that front, and keep this cheese crust for making crackers or even flatbread.

S/E snack – ½ cup blueberries

S snack – 85% chocolate bar

Wednesday

E Breakfast – oatmeal with 1 tsp butter, yacon syrup, blueberries and nuts

S Lunch – Thai soup, 1 piece leftover pizza

Yes, that's two days in a row. What can I say? It's good stuff!

S Dinner – cheesy pesto chicken with salad and blueberries

S Snack – 85% chocolate bar

Good stuff. I need more ideas for E meals, though.

Thursday

S Breakfast - Cinnamon “muffin in a mug”

Edible, but only just. To be fair to the recipe, our microwave is pretty much shot, and I had to substitute ground flax for the almond flour. Still...kinda gross. I might try my hand at an oven-baked version of this, but I won't do it in the microwave again (unless we get a new one).

By the way—I experimented with the chocolate version of this recipe last month, before I had actually committed to THM, and it was terrible...let me tell you, chocolate and stevia do not go together! The cinnamon version was heavenly by comparison. Anyway, I purchased the THM Gentle Sweet Blend recently, and I can't wait for it to come—it's supposed to taste more like sugar and compliment chocolate better than stevia. Once it arrives, I'll start experimenting with THM chocolate desserts again. Not before. ;)

S Lunch – steamed cabbage with sausage and cream sauce

So...this was meant to be a Fuel Pull, but I didn't have the right kind of cheese for that, so I made it S-style instead. Sigh...I added too much water to the cream sauce and that—well, it watered it down a bit. It had potential, though, and I will experiment with this one again. Next time I might just nix the sauce and use more spices for flavor.

E Dinner – flounder with garlic & parsley, quinoa, and salad

Really enjoyed this. Nothing new here, except I ate quinoa instead of fried potatoes (which is what we usually eat with fish). I did fry up some potatoes for Andrew and Dean, though—otherwise I might have had a mutiny on my hands! The potatoes made them very happy, however, and Dean was content with potatoes and bites from Mommy's quinoa. Hubby was content to shun the quinoa, luckily for me.

E snack – lemon-blueberry muffin

S snack – 85% chocolate bar

Breakfast and lunch were miniature disasters, but I learned from the experience and have some ideas for redoing them next time.

Friday

E Breakfast – 2 E muffins and some nonfat Greek yogurt with blueberries, sweetened with stevia and flavored with lemon extract

The muffins were good (see the recipe here) and the yogurt was a good idea...just a little bit too much of a good thing, though. Greek yogurt just seems so thick and tart, even when you sweeten it. I liked it, but not enough to eat it for breakfast again.

The muffins, though—those were yummy. I am looking forward to using the THM Baking Blend (which I also just ordered and is in the mail) to achieve a higher rise and a more “muffin-y” texture.

S Lunch – Lettuce with 1 can salmon, mixed with mayo (homemade) and drizzled with olive oil

Seriously good stuff, woman. Insanely easy to make, insanely delicious. This is a meal I will make over and over and over and over again.

FP Snacks – Good Girl Moonshine and lemon gummies (both from the cookbook, which came in the mail just yesterday!)

Oh my word! So good! If you like ginger, you will love Good Girl Moonshine. (And by the way, if you are pregnant and suffer from morning sickness, I'm betting this would be a great beverage to alleviate your nausea and help you feel human again.)

The lemon gummies were great too. Dean and I have been snacking on them all morning! They were super easy to make and super delicious, too. (Or, as Bertie Wooster might say, “delish.”)

S Snack – 85% chocolate bar; ice cream

No one's taking my chocolate away from me. EVER. It doesn't MATTER how many other snacks I've had today—chocolate rules supreme!

The ice cream was super good—though I didn't get more than a bite or two. My dairy allergy (?) kicked in and got me coughing again, so I gloomily listened to my commonsense and did not partake. (I am, however, in the process of making non-dairy ice cream, so we'll see how that goes.)

S Dinner – cabbage with salmon

So, this is basically what I had for lunch...just with cabbage instead of lettuce. Yes, I do repeat myself—a habit I need to break—but it's so easy when you like it and don't know what else to make!

Saturday

I just realized, I forgot to track my meals for Saturday!

Sunday

S Breakfast – scrambled eggs

S Lunch – quiche and salad, blueberries in almond milk

Yes, I'm repeating repeating myself again. ;) Sometimes it's just quick and easy. And in my defense, I did not subject my family to this repetition—they got up later and had something else for breakfast.

Crossover/Cheat Dinner – raw cauliflower and broccoli, half a bagel (with butter), half a slice of banana bread, cheese

Yes—carbs + fat collision. I didn't have a lot of either, though, so I'm hoping it counts more as a crossover than a “cheat.” :P

S Snack – 85% chocolate bar, Skinny Chocolate, THM “Trimmy” hot chocolate

Ate a little too much chocolate today, but...it was good. :P The THM hot chocolate was delicious, even though I didn't have all the ingredients listed in the recipe. I substituted butter for the MCT oil and added some cream to thicken it. It was still rather thin when we drank it, but I enjoyed the flavor and the buttery taste. It was different but delicious, and I will definitely make it again.

Monday

E Breakfast – Trim Healthy Pancakes, with sausage

S Lunch – leftover quiche, salad

S/FP Snacks – Skinny Chocolate, Choco Baby Frap (FP)

S Dinner – Loaded Fotato Soup, salad, cheesecake for desserts

The “Fotato” Soup is really cauliflower soup, which tastes just like potato soup. Cauliflower is great potato substitute. I never really had faith in this principle until now! I think I actually prefer this to the original.

The THM cheesecake was good, though I will make it differently next time. Next time, I will not use nuts for a “crust” (as suggested in the original book)--soggy nuts don't add anything desirable to the finished product. It also needs time to just sit in the fridge before you eat it. Nevertheless, this was a yummy dessert and I will probably make it again sometime. 

If there's one thing I've learned from tracking my meals this week, it's that S meals are way easier to throw together than E meals; E meals take careful planning. You have to think ahead a little to do this successfully. That's definitely something I need to work on. I have a tendency to make "whatever is easiest at the moment" on a short time schedule, but if I want to be serious about this, that attitude is not going to work. Moral of the menu, right there. ;) 

(Another moral--get some culinary variety in your life, or sharing your menu plans with friends and family can get embarrassing!)