Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Freekeh out

Yeah, there was more middle of the night barfing last night, let's not discuss it.  I'm so over it.  And I will probably end up smacking myself in the head for saying this, but I am cautiously optimistic about tonight.

Today seems to have been the day of super-tasty food that looks gross.  I am also a terrible food photographer so that doesn't help.

Breakfast was yummy.

Oats cooked with 1/2 cup skim milk, 1/2 cup water, bananas and pumpkin, fried egg with salsa and the rest of my coffee from yesterday that has a dash of vanilla oat milk in it.
 Coffee is basically back in my life these days.  I made it about a month and a half without caffeine, but then Christmas happened and I had a cup here and there.  Charlotte's birthday prep warranted another cup or two, and this vacation DEFINITELY required large doses of caffeine every morning.  So now I am having it with breakfast every day, and if it starts to bother me again then I'll cut back.  I love coffee so much though, it's kind of silly to live completely without it!

3 years ago, I bought a bunch of Valentines craft stuff at AC Moore.  I remember that it was 3 years ago because at the time I was thinking "this will be really useful for entertaining Emily next year when I have a little baby to take care of too".  Then I lost the bag of stuff, and only recently found it again when Will cleaned out our downstairs closet.  Today, faced with yet another day trapped in the house with my sick kid, I dug out the jewels and the glitter glue for some desperation crafts.  Luckily the girls enjoyed it, and it only required minimal cleanup afterward.  A definite win!

The colander was for sticking pipe cleaners in.  I don't know why, but kids love it.


While the girls were crafting, I had a babybel light cheese wheel, then started assembling my lunch.

I didn't know what I wanted, but then I remembered I had leftover guac in the fridge that won't last much longer and an idea was born.  This was one fantastic salad!

Greens, guac, salsa, chopped orange bell peppers, pinto beans, sweet brown rice, black olives, nonfat plain greek yogurt, chopped red onions, corn kernels and a sprinkling of hot chili powder and salt
 I love how all the yogurt and salsa and guac all mix up together into a kind of dressing.  Mmmmm.

In the afternoon I was craving some fruit...

Pineapple spear and raspberries
 ...but that didn't quite do it for me so I added in 30 pistachios.

Yes, I counted them out
 I was still hungry at 4:30 and dinner wasn't going to be ready for awhile, so I had another snack.

1/2 banana and 1 Tbsp Justin's peanut butter
 I picked up some freekeh a couple weeks ago because everyone's been talking about it in the blog world and I wanted to give it a try myself.  I cooked it up tonight and before adding it to my recipe I tasted it straight.  Hmmm.  It tasted to me like bulgur mixed with a lot of nutritional yeast.  Not my favorite, but not bad either.  I used the rest to make Lauren's Freekeh + Turkey Loaf (except I used ground beef instead of ground turkey because I accidentally left the ground turkey defrosting on the counter all night and had to toss it because I am SO not risking any more barfing incidents around here).  I also made it in cupcake tins because the time spent dividing the meat mixture into tins is MORE than made up for in cooking time savings.  Plus then I can call them "ketchup frosted meat cupcakes" and the girls are more likely to eat them.

I wasn't sure of the nutritionals on these guys and I was too lazy to look everything up so I just started out with two...
Mmmm, meat cupcakes
...plus some brussels sprouts sprinkled with nutritional yeast and balsamic vinegar.
Looks gross, tastes delicious
 I was not quite satisfied yet, so I went back for seconds.


I loved this take on traditional meatloaf because it was filled with veggies and whole grains, making it a well-balanced dinner all in a convenient loaf format :-)  Plus a full 50% of my children ate their serving, which is impressive.  Will and I agreed this is how we should always make meatloaf in the future!

A grapefruit rounded out my day.

Repeat footage.  I didn't feel like snapping and uploading for just 1 more picture but I assure you my grapefruit looked almost exactly like this one I ate last month
I'm not even going to say I'm hoping to get a full night's sleep tonight because that hasn't worked for me the past 10 nights, so I'll just say see you tomorrow.

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