Salad and Dessert

This is what I dug in to the other night for dinner. There is spinach, carrots, bell peppers, almonds, cucumber, mushrooms and tomatoes. I love salads! It is a great way to get vegetables in for the day. If you are looking for ways to add vegetables in to your diet or more of them have a salad with lunch and/or dinner.

And for dessert I had some dates with cream cheese and walnuts!! OH SO GOOD!

Parsnips

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be buying parsnips AND eating them.

Never had a parsnip growing up, but recently I had a cooking class and we made parsnips. I was brave and tried it and guess what? I liked it! This must be a sure sign of getting old! hehehe

Needless to say I found parsnips at Trader Joes and was brave (again) to buy them. I had them the other night and are super easy to make….you cut them up and steam them. To top them off I added some butter and salt.  They sort of resemble the taste of a carrot, but don’t… sort of hard to explain what they taste like, but I think if you like carrots you will like parsnips. I have a feeling this is going to be the year I try a bunch of new foods! 🙂

I also thought the bag was great. It states that it is biodegradable. How awesome is that!?

Here are a few pictures:

 

 

Polenta Pizza

Ever try the stuff they are making at Trader Joe’s? Well the other day I walked in there and they were making polenta pizza. I had never had polenta until the other day. The polenta pizza consisted of polenta (obviously), bruschetta and white kidney beans. I have to say it was SO good I bought all the stuff to make it myself!

Makes for a great appetizer or in my case a meal 🙂

Stuffed Vegetables

I went through a cook book trying to find something that sparked my interests and I came across stuffed vegetables (eggplant, bell peppers and tomatoes) and I was sold! I have made stuffed bell peppers before, but stuffing other vegetables is a great idea.

Off to work I went and here is what I got:

I bake it for about 20 minutes and then topped it with some yogurt cheese, covered it and baked it for another 10 minutes.

This meal turned out really really good. I have to admit it was my first time buying an egg-plant and first time knowing what to do with it once I bought it 🙂 The ‘stuffing’ is made of brown rice, garlic, onions and fresh herbs. I think it could be a little more flavorful so next time I make it I will modify the recipe a bit!

Hope you had a wonderful New Years Day!

Sweet Potato Fries

I love sweet potatoes and what a better way to eat them is as fries! Picked some up at Trader Joe’s a few days ago so I cooked some up tonight and had them with a salad!

Here is my salad (spinach, mushrooms, onions and sliced almonds)!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sweet potato fries:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And finally I used some really great ketchup! It contains NO HFC (High Fructose Corn Syrup)! It is made my Muir Glen. YUM! Taste just like regular ketchup!

Whole Grain Quinoa Blend

This Whole Grain Quinoa Blend is awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made some corn bread and broccoli to go with it and had a fantastic dinner!

 

Broccoli Slaw

My new obsession is Broccoli Slaw from Trader Joe’s. My goodness it is SO good. I just add a lil dressing and I am good to go. On this particular day I had some shark that was grilled up on the grill! YUMMM!!! Made for a taste ‘new’ salad!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I washed it down with a Clementine Izze!!

Homemade Onion Rings

Last night I attempted to make homemade onion rings! Didn’t turn out so well because 1. I forgot to add salt to the mix and 2. because I accidentallymixed all the ingredients together when I was suppose to keep them separate and 3. because I didn’t use enough oil.

With that all said I will have to attempt these again to make them better. It was a good start and a good learning experience. They didn’t taste all that bad but they could have been A LOT better. These were a lil dry….ok a lot dry 😉

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stir Fry

Last night for dinner I made some stir fry. I really like stir fry, not to mention it is a GREAT way to consume tons of veggies at once! I did get a bit lazy though and bought a premade stir fry pack for $3 at Trader Joes! It was a pound of veggies! I still feel like I am recovering from my 5 week course so I went the easy route 😉 I did add some extra broccoli since there wasn’t much in the bag!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made some rice noodles to go with the stir fry. It was delicious!

Tacos

I ran a 10k this morning and did really well. 6.1 miles, 52:11 and my pace was 8:16! This is by far my fastest 10k.

After my run I had some toast  and a banana. Since I ate breakfast so late I had a late lunch/early dinner and made some tacos. I used organic blue corn taco shells and used re-fried black beans from Trader Joe’s and the fixings were, guacamole, spinach, tomatoes, onions and mushrooms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

These were really YUMMY!