Alright alright I know it's been a while....Life has been just plain crazy lately! More on that in a later post...
Anyway I wanted to touch a little bit on just what our daily meals look like, specifically breakfast and lunch.
As a reminder, we follow the Eat to Live principles pretty tightly, which is the foundation of my increasingly good health. It's not just about the food, as I discussed before, but putting in the right fuel greatly helps all the parts of the puzzle fit together better.
As with most of our past efforts, finding a good routine to keep things going was pretty high on the list. At first the novelty of it all carried its own momentum, but after a while it was evident we were going to have to come up with something for the long run. I felt we needed to make sure we could streamline as much as possible, both for economical as well as practical reasons.
Somewhere around the start of it all, we purchased a Vitamix [aka the Obliterator], and with it came a nice book of recipes. We tried a few smoothies, and pretty soon we found ourselves just making the one, day after day. We gave others a few more attempts, but we knew. So the Breakfast smoothie was born.
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| The breakfast smoothie |
- 1/2 C Almond milk [any non-dairy will do there]
- 1 C Water
- 1 Banana
- 1 Apple
- 1 Orange
- 2 Dates
- 2 Handfuls of Spinach
- 7 Slices of frozen Peaches
- 7 Frozen Strawberries [a couple more if they are small]
We like to call it a Seagram's smoothie [...], and it makes 3 servings for us. I like to augment mine with 2 Tbsp of Chia seeds and generous 1/2 C of Soy milk. I generally have it a bit later in the morning as I like to work out first and then enjoy the smoothie.
We still had to come up with a bit more breakfast. We both love Oat Meal so we decided to try different flavors with it. We settled on mixing in a banana and some of Costco's 3-berry mix [1 C or so]. It was good [we still make it], but not delicious like the smoothie. What really did it was coming across one of Dr. Fuhrman's recipe for an antioxidant breakfast bars. They basically have the same base ingredients, but somehow the combination is about as good as it gets for us.
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| Breakfast Bars |
- 2 ripe Bananas
- 3 Dates
- 2 Tbsp Sunflower Seeds
- 4 Tbsp ground Flax Seeds
- 1/4 C Craisins
- 1/4 C Zante Currants
- 1/4 C chopped Pecans
- 6 dried Apricots
- 2 Tbsp Goji Berries [optional]
- 1/2 dozen Almond [optional]
- 1/4 C Pomegranate Juice
- 1 C Frozen Blueberries, thawed
- 1 C Frozen Costco 3-Berry mix, thawed
- 2 C Oat Meal
Oven 350 F. Using a food processor, blend bananas first until near liquid. Add all but the Oat Meal, blend thoroughly. Pour in a bowl, add Oat Meal and mix well by hand. Pour in an 8x8 pan, bake for 40 minutes.
One batch will make 8 bars, we each get 1 [you can see one to the left of the plate in the picture]. And that's breakfast! Like I mentioned earlier, I will typically have a bar with a cuppa joe, go work out about an hour later and then have the smoothie. We'll have the regular Oat Meal breakfast when we forget to make bars, but by and large it's all about the bars!
My next idea came from reading the Eat to Live book itself. I noticed there was a 'baseline' quantity of greens, veggies, legumes, seeds and others that the good doctor recommends to have throughout the day, so I said why not make a salad out of those? It was going to be big, but that's the idea anyway so we gave it a try. As we made our first, its name emerged right away, The Gynormous! I struggled to finish it at first because it is so much food! It didn't take very long to get used to it, and nowadays the only thing I have to worry about is how long it takes to eat it [lots of chewing!].
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| The Gynormous |
- 1/2 head of Romaine, chopped [we use the Costco package, you would have to use less than that if using one from the store or the farm, like 1/4 head]
- 1 large handful of spinach, chopped [any dark green will do there]
- 1/2 Red Pepper, chopped
- 1 Carrot, chopped
- 1/2 beefsteak Tomato, chopped [use a whole for smaller types]
- 1/2 Cucumber, chopped
- 1 handful of Sugar Peas, chopped
- 1/4 Avocado, sliced
- 4 Mushrooms, sliced
- 15 grapes, sliced in half
- 1 can of Garbanzo Beans [any will do]
- 1 1/2 Tbsp Sunflower Seeds
- 1 Tbsp ground Flax Seeds
- Dressing: Costco Mango Peach Salsa [a smattering usually], Balsamic Vinegar [to taste]
I find that it is also a great place for leftovers to go...A bit of rice, steamed veggies, salmon...I also like to put in some heat, like a chopped fresh jalapeno or some Chipotle Peppers.
And so there you have it, a tasty breakfast and a delicious lunch! It has been more than a year and a half so far, and we both feel the same way we did the first time, we love it! As a matter of fact we don't feel quite right if we miss them, especially the Gynormous. The streamlining made a big difference both in the amount of money spent on those meals as well as the time to make them. No longer do we have to come up with something new day after day. We get most of the stuff from Costco [less in the summer] and we'll make batches at a time. I usually make a batch of bars along with dinner, it doesn't really take any more time. We make the salads the night before, sometime 2 or 3 days' worth [think about it, nothing goes bad and as long as we don't put in the 'dressing' nothing wilts]. We do make the smoothies daily, but that has become part of the morning routine [it only take a few minutes anyway, but it does taste better freshly made]. This approach may sound weird, but it really works well for us. The way I see it, doing it this way locks in the good habits and keeps the temptations away. I'm no longer terribly worried about those temptations anymore, but just the same I enjoy sticking this well established routine. Like I said before, we both have tried all sorts of ways to eat well in the past, this one's sticking!
That leaves dinner open. We try different things and experiment there, but it keeps it reasonable. I will share some of the recipes and ideas in a later post.
Until next time,
Oliver P.
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