Food Glorious Food!

Hope everyone is having a great first couple of weeks of Spring. The weather is nuts (82 yesterday, 51 today, etc.) but I took advantage of the incredibly warm and wonderful days over the weekend. Well, sort of. It was a rough week, actually. I worked 6 days, all downtown Chicago (which is 40 miles from my house) and had a couple of late nights. Now, please refer to my last blog about excuses. Ha! That went right out the window this week. I had every excuse in the book and only worked out TWICE! Yes, twice. And neither workout was all that impressive. I also ate like the Titanic was going down and the only food aboard was nothing but junk food.

Being overbooked and not planning is an equation for disaster in my life, and what a disaster this week was. This blog is about full disclosure for me and I am embarrassed to admit this but I ate McDonald's three times, Dunkin Donuts twice, Epic Burger once, Jimmy Johns once and went out for sushi once. The rest of the food I ate was popcorn, cereal, cookies and cheese and crackers. No wonder I didn't have the energy to workout and felt like crap all week. All I ate was crap! Typically, I am a great meal planner for our household. I shop every week, prep food on the weekend, make sure everything is healthy and use as many whole foods as possible. Unfortunately, I have been on this downward spiral with meal planning and we have been eating convenience foods, fast food and just junk in general. Well, I'm happy to say that I got my kitchen back on track yesterday!

I cleaned out the fridge and pantry and got rid of anything that was not healthy. Luckily, I don't usually keep a bunch of junk in the house (I go through drive-thrus for that) but the cleaning process felt great for both my fridge and my state of mind. Clean fridge=clean mind. I had some bananas that were starting to brown so I cut them up into chunks, portioned them out and froze them for smoothies. You can also freeze whole bananas and use them for banana bread or a sub for oils in baking. They basically turn to liquid when they thaw so they are great for baking and you're not wasting any food.

Papaya - yum!

I shopped smartly, even going to two stores to get everything I needed at the best prices, and came home and prepped for the week. The prepping took less than an hour, which, in my mind, is an hour well spent. I bought a big, beautiful papaya and cut it up into chunks and froze it too (for smoothies). The papaya was $2.79 and I got two bags worth of frozen fruit out of it. A small-ish bag of frozen papaya from the grocery store is about $4.99 so I saved over two bucks. Saving money makes me very happy and smug. "You paid how much for what?" Frozen fruit is great to have on hand for making smoothies, or stirring into yogurt. If you've never had papaya before, this is what they look like and they taste sort of like a tropical cantaloupe with the texture of a mango. They are mild and delicious and make a great smoothies (see smoothie recipe). Peel it, scoop out the black seeds and cut into 2 inch chunks. That's it.

I also made a big batch of turkey taco meat. I add a few things to bulk it up (it's more filling and lasts longer). If you have meat eaters who refuse to eat ground turkey, make this recipe and don't tell them you switched the meat. Trust me, they'll never know! Here's the recipe:

Turkey Tacos

• Cooking spray plus 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 lb ground turkey (93% lean, sometimes written 93/7, the 100 percent lean stuff is too dry for me)
• 1 packet of your favorite taco seasoning mix
• 1 can petite diced tomatoes
• 1 can fat-free or vegetarian refried beans (the non-vegetarian ones are made with lard and really, no one needs to be eating lard)

Directions

Finished product. Delicious!

1. Saute the turkey in the olive oil and cooking spray until just cooked through. 
2. Add the taco seasoning packet and the canned tomatoes with the juice. The seasoning packet says to add water but I just use the juice from the tomatoes. 
3. Let that cook down for a couple of minutes then stir in the refried beans. It makes double the amount you would get with just the turkey and it adds 30 grams of fiber to the whole recipe. Fiber=filling (and tooty so don't eat this if you have a hot date later or have to sit somewhere quiet for a long period of time).

We also stocked up on salad stuff, I cooked off some chicken which I used to make a low fat curry apple chicken salad and to save for chopped salads later in the week. We have apples, clementines (cuties), low fat cheese sticks, low fat yogurt, roasted almonds and a pork tenderloin with roasted fennel that I'll make later in the week. I will prep it on one of the nights we are eating tacos since I won't have to cook that night and my dear husband will throw it in the oven for me the night we will eat it for dinner because he gets home earlier than I do. Planning and cooperation! Sounds like a Sesame Street episode.

I actually feel less stressed out this week because I know I have all of these meals planned and I don't have to worry about what I am bringing for lunch or cooking for dinner. Now I can focus on working out this week and breaking in my new running shoes. I am also testing different kinds of gels and chews that I will use for energy the day of the triathlon. I'll let you know how it goes.

Have a great week!