Me How I Want To Be

Breakfast this morning = egg white bake (egg whites, fresh steamed collard greens, red bell pepper, onion, & red.fat Mozzerella cheese)(100 calories) You place all ing. in a regular sized muffin tin and bake till firm. Then you have multiple breakfasts ready to go in the freezer. Just heat thru & eat with a 100% whole wheat flax & fiber sandwich thin (Arnold brand - 100 calories). Great well rounded breakfast! All for 200 calories. ——you can put anything you like into these little breakfast cups. Hope you’re eating a great healthy breakfast too!

But it totally worked!!  Look at this HUGE breakfast cookie!!  It’s definitely not cookie-like.  More muffin-like.  And 100% delicious.

Want to take this bad boy to go?  You could slice it in 1/2 and smear peanut butter and jelly in the middle. 

Buckwheat Muffin Bake [serves 1]

• 1/4c ground buckwheat groats [untoasted]
• 1T whole buckwheat groats
• 1/2-1t cinnamon
• 1/2T vanilla
• 1/2 large banana
• 1/4t baking powder
• 1 flax egg [1T ground flax meal + 2.5T warm water, whisked]
• 1T chia seeds
• 2T chopped walnuts
• 4T almond milk

1. Preheat oven to 350*
2. Whisk flax egg together and set aside for ~3-5min.
3. In a small bowl mash banana until egg-like.
4. Mix in almond milk + vanilla with a fork.
5. Mix in buckwheat, buckwheat groats, cinnamon, baking powder, chia seeds, and walnuts.
6. Mix in flax egg.
7. Lightly grease a small oven-safe dish, add mixture, smooth, and bake for 30 minutes. [I used a personal size soup crock]

*You can use 1 flax egg or sub 1 egg white or 1 chia seed egg.

*This was just barely sweet.  If you want a little more sweetness, add in 2t maple syrup/honey/sucanat.

*Use 1/3c pumpkin or applesauce, if you don’t like banana.

*Add 1-2T of other mix-ins like chopped dried fruit, fresh chopped fruit, chocolate chips, or coconut.

Oh, this was fabulous.  I topped it with peanut butter, grape jam [fruit juice sweetened], and unsweetened coconut. 

Want a bite?

Pretty sure this is on tabs for tomorrow morning as well.  Might have to throw some chopped apple in there too, or maybe a carrot cake version?

If you wanted to make a bunch of these on a Sunday, to prep for the week ahead, they should refrigerate + freeze really well.  Bake as directed, then let cool completely.  For the freezer, wrap in saran, then foil, then pop in a bag.  For the fridge, wrap tightly in saran, then store in a bag or container.  Defrost in the fridge the night before you want to eat it.  Then, heat, top, + go!

Sunday, January 22 2012

Today I will be buying groceries to last for 7 days.

3 meals & 2 snacks per day - for 2 people.

I will prep everything, refrigerate or freeze until ready to use. I am going to hold myself accountable for eating the meals that I’ve planned in advance. That will be the only way for me to stick to a healthy way of eating. If it’s not simple & quick I will go to a drive-thru in 2.5 seconds!

I will post my weekly meal plans every Sunday night. Including recipes & shopping lists. I live in a small town where there is really only a Wal-Mart, so I’ll be tailoring the shopping lists (with prices) to W-M. If you’d like to do this with me, please feel free.

I will occasionally be making vegan friendly meals. In which I’ll include meat substitutions. For most of the vegan meals I’ll be shopping at a local organic\vegan store called Earth Fare. I’ll try to cross reference the shopping from EF & WM to make the ingredients easier to find.

Have a great Sunday!  

Whether you call it a crock pot or a slow-cooker, this small appliance can be a busy mom (or dad’s!) best friend. There’s just nothing quite like coming home at the end of the day to a house filled with yummy aromas and knowing all you have left to do is sit down and eat.

So why don’t more of us get to enjoy this more often?

Because, as every crockpot owner knows, the only way to make this reality happen on a busy day is to have a morning leisurely enough to allow you to get your ingredients into the crockpot before your day gets insane. Which is why I now have a handful of uncooked crockpot meals stashed in my freezer. If you have a crockpot with a removable insert you can do it, too!

1. Simply line the insert with two layers of plastic wrap or foil sprayed with cooking spray, then dump in your ingredients and stick the whole thing in the freezer until it’s solid.
2. Remove it from the freezer, pop the foil- or plastic-wrapped contents out and wrap them tightly in more plastic wrap and/or foil and label it. Voilà!
3. Next time you want to come home to a dinner that’s ready and waiting all you have to do is grab a pre-frozen meal, pop it in your crockpot and add 2 to 3 extra hours to the cooking time.

Now, not every recipe will translate easily to this method. A whole roaster chicken, for instance, won’t defrost and cook in that time and, to be honest, probably wouldn’t be safe to eat even if you tacked on several extra hours to the cooking time. But stews, soups and casseroles are perfect for this method, including those which call for browning ingredients ahead of time.

Here’s one of my favorites using this method:

Crockpot Steak Pizzaiola
Serves 4-6

Ingredients

• Two 15-oz. cans tomato sauce
• 2 tbsp. Italian seasoning
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 2 lb. flank steak

Directions

1. Combine everything but the steak in a mixing bowl and pour half into foil-lined crockpot. (See instructions in blog entry above.
2. Slice flank steak in half, width-wise, and place in crockpot.
3. Gently press steak to bottom of crockpot then pour remaining sauce on top.
4. Freeze according to directions in blog entry above.
5. When ready to cook, peel foil off of frozen contents and place frozen meal into crockpot.
6. Cook on LOW for 8-9 hours.
7. To serve: remove cooked meat from crockpot and slice against the grain. Top with spoonfuls of sauce.

I usually have some crusty Italian bread in the house which we love to use to sop up the sauce. Add a side of green beans or a tossed salad and you’re good to go

Here are my ingredients ready for prep.

I bought pre-frozen strawberries and blueberries because it was a better deal than buying fresh and freezing myself.  Also, the strawberries were already sliced so it saves me a little time!  

I chose weight watchers vanilla yogurt because, again,  it was the best deal. [Also chose to use a magic bullet instead of a big blender b/c a) they are awesome and b)less to clean!]

 First I measured 1tbsp scoops of yogurt into a mini muffin tin.  I didn’t level it off, considering some of the yogurt was going to stick in the measuring cup.  Once they were filled, I froze them. [the recipe I found on pinterest used ice trays, but I didn’t have any of those on hand so I improvised.]

 Next I got to chopping my fresh fruit!

 And then arranged them on a silpat mat and popped it in my freezer![You could use a baking sheet if you don’t have a silpat!  I just chose something that would fit in my freezer & the fact that i could just roll all of the frozen fruit off when I was finished was a plus!] You want your fruit to be pre frozen before you combine them so that they don’ freeze together in the packs.

 A few hours later when everything was frozen, I layed everything out to prepare to bag my individual “smoothie mixes”.  If you use muffin tins like I did, let them sit out for a few minutes so they loosen up a bit, then use a spoon and they will pop out like ice cubes. [DON’T dip the bottom of the pan in warm water to loosen them up. I tried that(before i even bothered using a spoon) and they got melty really quick and i had to refreeze them!]

I used just short of a cup and half of fruit for each bag and 3 yogurt cubes.

After they are all bagged up, pop them in the freezer!  Next time you want a smoothie, you’re ready to go!  Just add a little juice or milk and voila!  I may try to add a little oatmeal or wheat grass next time to pump it up even more since I’m treating the smoothies as breakfast.

I was able to make 8 smoothies with the amount of fruit I had. 

1 bag of strawberries, 1 bag of blueberries, 3 bananas and 2 kiwis.  My total cost was $11 including yogurt, which brings my total for each smoothie to a whopping $1.37 & averaging around 200ish calories.

SUPER Easy Recipe:

1 c. oatmeal
1/2 c. peanut butter
1/3 c. honey
1 c. coconut flakes
1/2 c. ground flaxseed
1/2 c. mini chocolate chips
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, let chill in the fridge for 30 minutes, form into Quarter or 1/2 dollar sized balls, and Enjoy! I ended up dividing mine up into 3s and putting them in snack size ziploc baggies. They will last in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.