saturday breakfast

I take my Saturday morning breakfasts pretty seriously.  I love em!  Since I'm not a morning person, during the week my breakfast is always making a smoothie and drinking it on the drive to work.  But Saturday morning I feast on good things.  

I noticed that when I think I'm going to take a picture of my food, I add even better things in there. So that means you'll probably being seeing more pics of my food.  Just a heads up. I hope it gives you ideas too.  

If you're not familar - millet is an amazing for you grain loaded with nutrition.  There's lots of ways to have it but, it doesn't have a strong taste so its great for adding to other foods.  I cooked a cup earlier this week and put it in a tupperware.  I've been adding it by the spoonful to my soup, salads, and obviously saturday morning breakfast tortilla.  It's good stuff. 

P.S. that recipe for a smoothie is probably my favorite drink on the planet.  It takes just like Orange Julius but not so sugary.  So its yummier. And better.  Sorry Orange Julius.  

Happy Saturday!  

Green Smoothies

I'm pretty in love with fuit or veggie drinks right now.  I have them as my actual meal or as a snack.  Just fill a water bottle up with juice and I'm set.  I love them at work to keep myself from snacking on other things. I love them in my car.  I love them everywhere.   Snacking on vegetables has never been my thing. I try sometimes because I feel like I have to.  But something magical happens when you blend your food up into a liquid mess.  Then I WANT  to have it.  

I made myself a green smoothie this morning.  Anything that I could find in my fridge that was green passed the test.    

 red kale

celery

pear

sprouts

broccoli

banana

cucumber

ice cubes

water

Warning: It took me a long time to acquire a taste for a drink like that.

I started making smoothies originally with yogurt and fruit only, then slowly started adding vegetables that weren't strong tasting. I started figuring out which combinations I could stomach (bananas go a long way in covering up other tastes).

Now I'm at a point where I actually crave those healthy shots to my body.  Especially if I didn't eat so good the day before.  It's like my body is screaming for some veggies again.  Kale! Spinach!  It's a good place to be at.

Cream of Broccoli - The Good For You Edition

I love cream of .....anything.... soup!  Especially cream of broccoli.  Probably because it makes me feel like its really good for me since it has the word broccoli in it.  You know?  I was browsing  through recipes in the book The Everything Anti Inflammation Diet and found an actually good for you version of the soup.  They took out the cream and substituted with Silken Tofu.   I'm NOT a lover of tofu but thought I'd try it anyways since its blended up into the soup and I can pretty much pretend its not there.  

Silken (soft) Tofu looks like this in case you've never heard of it (I hadn't) and you can find it at a natural foods type of grocery store.  I found it in the beans/specialty foods isle, not in the refrigerated section like I thought.   And..........to talk yourself into giving tofu a try you should know that tofu is really good for you.  It has iron and copper which will help with energy, calcium which of course will keep your bones strong, omega 3 fatty acids which is good for your heart and preventing clots and clogged arteries, selenium which helps regulate your thyroid and is cancer-fighting, and it can help with menopause if youre into that kinda thing currently.  Pretty good stuff to add to your diet every once in awhile! 

Cream of Broccoli

2 heads of broccoli, cut off the stem and chopped

1/2 yellow onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup fresh parsley, minced

6 cups low sodium vegetable stock

3 Tbs white or yellow miso (also found in health food stores)

12 oz package Silken Tofu

salt and pepper to taste

toasted pine nuts to top it off

1. In a large saucepan, saute onions and garlic in oil til tender. 

2. Add parsley (save a little for garnish).  Add stock and broccoli. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until broccoli is tender, about 15 mins.

3. Remove small amount of broth and dissolve miso into it. Stir back into pot. 

4. Crumble tofu into broth, use hand mixer to puree until smooth (or add mix to a blender).

5. Add salt!  It needed it :)

112 calories/serves 8

Slow Cooker Homemade Chili

I've been on the lookout for new healthy recipes (actually coming through on one of my new years resolutions woo!) and I came across this one that sounded super yummy.  I can't remember where I saw it so I recreated it as best as I could remember and depending on what I had in my kitchen.  It came out as yummy as I hoped and I counted 160 calories per 1 cup servings.  And its slow cooker so its cooking all day and ready when you come home.  None of the attempting to make a healthy meal after work while I fill up on chips and salsa because my starving stomach just can't possibly wait any longer.

3 frozen chicken breasts

1 packet taco seasoning

1 can black beans (no salt added)

1 can kidney beans (no salt added)

1 can chopped tomatoes

1 can corn

1 small can green chilies

1 cup mango salsa

chopped onions

chopped red bell pepper

1 cup water

In that order, add all ingredients into a crock pot.  Cook on low for 8 hours.  Mix and shred the chicken before serving.  Mmm mmmm.

Juice Fast Day 3

Day 3 and I was feeling MUCH better than day 2. Yay!  Even though it'd only been a couple days I couldn't fight the urge to just check the scale.....2 lbs lost.  Maybe its water weight as they say or what not but thats okay - long as the numbers on the scale are going down I'm not gonna question it.  The real success was when I tried on a pair of jeans that were too tight to wear last week.  If you think I wore them  comfortably today then you would be correct.  


9:30 AM - fruit smoothie


11:30 AM - apple


1 PM - vegetable smoothie


Midday I still had a headache and tummy ache like yesterday, but overall I was feeling better.


3 PM - sauteed vegetables again


6 PM - fruit smoothie


I'm cutting my fruit/veggie fast a day early because life happens and I'm going out to lunch with friends tomorrow. But I'm feeling pretty successful about 3 days so its a wonderful thing.  I'm planning on doing 1 or 2 of my meals only fruits and veggies for awhile til I drop a few more lbs.  At least dinner is fine being 90% veggies.  Easier said than done I'm sure...wish me luck!


Since I'm a healthy smoothie pro now I added some of the drinks below for ya.  You can make endless types of smoothies depending on what you like.  Its way fun to put like colored foods together to make a really pretty drink.  If you're gonna put say blueberries and kale and strawberries together you might get something a lil brown/poopy/greenish.   Still healthy - just doesn't make you feel as gorgeous as a bright red smoothie might ya know? 

Smoothies a la Jen

1.  Banana, kale, apple, 1/4 cup non fat milk, water

2. Banana, strawberries, cutie orange, water and 1/4 cup non fat milk

3. Kale, spinach, broccoli, celery, water (this is as disgusting as it sounds...drink it fast ladies!)

4. Banana, orange, 1/2 apple, carrot, 1/4 cup non fat milk, water, flax seed

5. Blueberries, strawberries, red bell pepper, kale, water

6. Spinach, celery, banana, kale, water

Pumpkin Muffins

Tis the season that I can't control my urge for Pumpkin Muffins...and I have yet to find a recipe that beats this one.  So moist!  And chocolatey!  I balanced out my guilt of eating all 24 myself by reducing the amount of sugar to 1 cup instead of 2.   I didn't miss that 1 cup at all so if you feel adventurous....reduce the sugar even more.  Or try no sugar at all (then tell me how they turned out please and thank you).   Thank you mama for the recipe.  You've got all the best ones! 

Pumpkin Muffins:

Beat 5 eggs

Add:

1 cup oil

16 oz. pumpkin puree

2 cups flour

1 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp baking soda

2- 3oz packages of instant vanilla pudding

Mix until creamy.

Add:

dark chocolate chips to taste (I use the whole bag.  Yep that's right. The whole bag. Back up off me) 

Bake @ 350 in a greased or lined muffin tin for 30 minutes or until golden brown on top.

Yields 24 muffins.

I found out that each muffin is packing almost 250 calories.  That would have been nice to know before I destroyed the whole batch by myself...in a matter of days.  But they're just too good to ignore when they're sitting there on my counter begging to eaten.  Don't say I didn't warn ya.