A place to showcase my health journey.
I’ve seen these mason jar omelettes but I’ve been hesitant to try them. The idea of putting the jars in the oven just seemed odd to me. But this weekend, while researching some recipes for Keto, I found one and had to try it.
I was reading a post on Humanthology by Ashley McCormack about eating with your eyes. When talking to her father about why he spent so much time making the food look nice on the plate, he replied, “Because first, you taste with your eyes.”
I’m not sure about you, but I’ve heard this before and it so true. Just last week, I made a Fish Pie and while it tasted great, it didn’t look very good. My family only ate about half. But wait, that’s not all the story. So, I may get the plating of the food nailed down, but what about that next step? Taking the food photo. For the most part I’ve focused on the actual dishes, but lately I’ve wanted to just be able to take a better picture. Then it happened. I got advice that I actually took. Thanks to my friend Angie (one of my ESO guild-mates, who lives in NC) who recommended that I purchase a photo box.
Continue reading “Eat with your eyes, not really, but in theory”I wanted to try a new salad this week, something less complicated, which is hard since I feel like you need to have a lot of ingredients to really get all the health benefits. But after some searching I found Autumn, over at It’s Autumns Life. I did a basic search for: Chicken Keto and up came this delicious looking salad. So, I had to try it.
So is lunch, dinner and snacks. I cannot even tell you how much time I spend thinking about every meal and what impact certain food has to my journey. I scour websites looking for recipes, usually I look at the images first because if it doesn’t look good, chances are it doesn’t taste good. I test those out that make the short list. Here’s a breakfast that looks great and taste amazing.
I’m sure that I’m not the only one that says this. Let me set the scene, you’re out at a restaurant, eating a great meal and you say to (yourself) or the people that you’re with “I could make this”. My kids are so used to me saying this that they now offer up the suggestion. Often starting a conversation with ” hey mom, you could make this into a salad jar right?” Well, challenge accepted. I SUPER love East Side Mario’s (ESM) Garden Salad. We don’t have an ESM near us (but hey, we have four, count’em – Mary Browns, Swiss Chalet, KFC and Popeye’s, chicken restaurants in town). Here is a picture of my most favourite restaurant salad.
So, my biggest struggle the last couple of months has been coming up with something to eat. Well, not only eat. Plus it wouldn’t hurt if my family enjoyed the meals we were eating too. They are not picky but we do love food. The metabolic plan hasn’t been going very well the last couple of months i.e. no change on the scale. I needed to find some way to keep my success on track. Then I discovered Linda. WOW, what a difference it makes to finally have a place to research recipes, plan my meals and come off like a star, all at the same time!
Continue reading “Eating on plan, made easier with help from Linda”
Not everyone gets excited about sitting down and making a plan. BUT I love this part of my journey. It’s scary to think that I used to not know what I was having for a meal until it was dinner time or until I felt hungry. Using a very simple meal plan template, like the one I found in Excel, pictured here:
Continue reading “Weekend Meal Planning, something to get excited about”
This is a quick post. Sometimes there are those things that we like so much, that we want to have more. Food is like that for me.
Each week I make salads (and sometimes breakfast) and place them in the fridge. Yesterday it struck me, as I placed the last of my Overnight Oats with Berries in the fridge, that the mason jars are taking over ample fridge real estate.
This is not only a catch phrase made popular by Clara Peller in 1984. But it was also my question when looking at all my past salads. Sure, I did the Mason Jar Steak Salad, but since then I haven’t really played around with meat other than chicken.
There are so many studies, websites, books and probably Twitter posts about not weighing yourself everyday. But do I listen? Nope. So each morning I would wake up and weigh myself. Some mornings I would be thrilled, others I would feel defeated, either way it would set the tone for the entire day. So I have called a truce with my scale and I feel liberated.
A couple of weeks ago I made the Grilled Veggie with Balsamic and I had some suggestions (to myself) that I thought would make this a better salad. Well, I did it. I took my own advice and I re-made the salad. I re-made it so much, that I had to re-name it! So please join me in welcoming my new salad:
I’m back! Well, I wasn’t really gone, but I haven’t been “here”. I’ve been busy making salads, trying out new things and generally enjoying the summer. I made an entirely new salad yesterday and it was pretty good (see my suggestions to improve). I tried it with my family last night at dinner (without meat) and I’ve got it in my lunch for today. Do you like grilled vegetables? I do and I figured I could turn that love into a salad and here’s how:
Some new stuff is happening this week, a change to a favourite and something not yet tried. Plus, this week I was fortunate enough to have a very close friend ask if we could make the salads at her house. She’s looking to add some convenience and of course deliciousness to her week. It all started with a glass of wine.
I was thinking, I love chicken and as you can see, I use it in most of my salads. But I also love beef. So I did some research to see how I could fit some Steak into my jars. Normally you lay warm medium rare steak over crisp greens and drizzle with your favourite dressing. I improvised!
OK, so yesterday I thought I was on the ball. Yup, we were busy with my son for an end of year activity (he’s an Air Cadet) and didn’t have a ton of time, but I went shopping and got everything I needed for this weeks salads. I had this. Or, so I thought.
So this is not a regular post, I’m going to report on my last weigh in (from Thursday), plus update you with two new salads and (drum-roll), a new mason jar video.
I’ve told most people this story, but perhaps not everyone. As I mentioned last week, I was in Punta Cana (see my resort review here) and while on an excursion, my phone (Samsung S6 Edge) sustained water damage. I had forgotten it was tucked in my life vest and I jumped into the ocean to snorkel. It did turn on after being bagged in rice and soaked in Isorpopyl alcohol. But the battery started to expand. I’m currently waiting on a battery replacement, so fingers crossed.
Continue reading “What do you do without a good camera on your phone?”
Repost: April 11, 2016
It’s Sunday, which means food planning (mostly done on Friday), shopping, prepping and preparing. And I love it! I love everything about each aspect of my routine.
