Afternoon! Hope your Saturday is going well. Mine has been tres productive so far—which is good, because it needed to be!
Ryan and I unpacked the car, took down our Christmas decorations (tear), unpacked our Christmas presents (yay! It got me excited about the gifts all over again…it was like unwrapping the presents for a second time!), and headed to the grocery store.
This morning, I realized something: the house needs cleaning, and so does our diet!!! Oh, we aren’t unhealthy eaters by any means, and even when we’re on vacation (as we were for the past month), we eat relatively healthful meals. Still, a vegan cupcake is still a cupcake, right!? I can tell that my month-long vacay has kind of taken its toll on me—I’m a little bloated, probably have gained a few pounds, and just feel a little blah.
So, we (okay, mainly I…but Ryan is willing to go along with it!) have decided to focus on eating really healthy for the next week or so, just to get back on track and get to feeling good. The more information I seek out, the more I really start to believe that food and exercise can be momentous in terms of flushing toxins out of the body. I can feel a huge difference when I make the effort to eat clean, whole foods as opposed to processed stuff (vegetarian or not). Also, I’d be remiss not to mention that some of this is the influence of Alicia Silverstone’s book, The Kind Diet, which I’ve been reading. I’m only about half-way through, but I’ll be sure to give a full report when I finish. It’s very interesting—and obviously having an impact on the way I view my eating habits!
Anywho—that’s what we’re up to this week, so feel free to follow along!
Our grocery store trip was a healthy eating bonanza! I finally sucked it up and bought mostly organic produce…it stings a little when you look at the price, but again, the more and more information I seek out, the more it seems worth it to cough up the extra dough for the organic stuff. I meant to take a picture of our grocery goods, but I forgot! Oh well…you’ll be seeing it all over the next week or so!
My lunch made good use of our fresh produce:
Sauteed Greens with Mushrooms and Sweet Potato
Yum, right?!?
I find that I’m always inclined to just make a quick sandwich or wrap for lunch, instead of cooking an actual “meal.” But, really, this took maybe five minute longer than a sammie would have taken to throw together, and it was really nice to have something different. I think one thing that is really key to not getting sick of the vegetarian/vegan diet is to experiment and really throw some variety in the mix. Try out new vegetables and other food products, because, let’s face it: if I was eating a hummus wrap and an apple every day for lunch, I would get really bored, and would probably be much more tempted to run straight into the welcoming arms of a turkey sandwich.
Now I’m picturing being embraced by a giant sandwich.
Ahem, I digress.
In light of practicing what I preach, I tried out something new today at lunch: mustard greens! Have you ever had them? They were right by the kale, so I threw a bunch into the cart, along with regular ol’ kale (you know you’re a healthy eater when you start saying things like “regular ol’ kale”).
Here are the two greens, pre-lunch (the mustard greens are the lighter ones):
Vive la difference!
I removed the stalk from the greens and tore them into smaller pieces for the sauté. Along with the greens, I threw in a handful of mushrooms, about a tsp. of minced ginger, a few good shakes of tamari, and 1/2 a sweet potato that I had cubed and nuked the microwave for 3 minutes prior to adding to the greens.
Cooking away:
I’m always amazed by how much greens cook down! I added about a fourth of a cup of water to this and cooked the greens and veggies down for about 10 minutes, until the greens were sufficiently wilted. For the last step, I added some chopped raw walnut pieces (about a tbsp?) and about 1/2 tsp. of flax seeds.
Final product:
In the sun:
Delicious and nutritious! I love greens…they’re so chewy! I couldn’t really detect a difference between the kale and the mustard greens…I guess a green is a green is a green (apologies, Gertrude Stein).
Hope your day is going well! We still have much to do around here…Ryan is out shoveling the driveway as I type. It’s a beautiful sunny day, but MAN is it cold! I think we might go re-join our old gym today. They do three-month long memberships, and we got one back at the end of the summer, but when I started running outside so much for my half-marathon, we decided not to renew. Using the gym in Seattle and Shreveport reminded me of how much I like having the weight machines, and how much more I work myself when I’m using those machines as opposed to just my hand-weights at home.
Anyway…we shall see! See you tonight for another clean meal!
