Bacon Lentil Pasta - A 30 Minute Dinner

Lentils.

If you haven't tried them, try them. 

Please. 

Yeah, yeah, they are healthy. But that's not even why I'm telling you to try them. They really are high on the list of foods that I ooh and aah over every time I eat them. There are so many different varieties, and they do have different textures and tastes, so the kind I am specifically referring to here are the green lentils. They hold their shape (unlike red lentils), they have a great texture, and when boiled and tossed with olive oil and herbs I could devour a big ole' plate of them like you gave me a steak. I'm not saying they taste like steak, just that my enjoyment level is high. 

I do enjoy eating them simply prepared next to veggies and bread, but there are other ways to prepare them that are equally delicious. Would you like to know a secret on how to enhance the flavor profile of any lentil dish?

Bacon.

I know, so original of me. As if there's anything that isn't better with bacon. But when you're head over heels over a whole wheat pasta dish with lentils, I think you can afford a little bacon. 

I'm a big fan of TJ's Uncured Applewood Smoked Bacon. It's nitrite and nitrate free, and thickly sliced. Bacon has never really been my thing, but in the past year or so I've realized how a little goes a long way when flavoring almost any dish. I'm still not one to sit down to a pile of bacon with my pancakes (at least not too often), but I've learned to appreciate it in small amounts. If I'm creating a recipe in my head, and have a great combination that is just missing a little somethin', bacon or sausage enters the picture and I suddenly have a masterpiece. Thank you pigs for solving all my recipe problems! 

 And yes, I just added bacon to my health food. I'm American, what can I say?

Bacon Lentil Pasta

Ingredients:

3/4 cup green lentils, rinsed and picked over, preferably soaked for several hours (or overnight)

5-6 oz. dry (2 cups dry) whole wheat fusilli pasta (or pasta of choice)

2-4 slices bacon, diced

1 large onion, sliced

1 tsp. dried oregano

1 tsp. dried rosemary

1 tsp. dried thyme

1/2 tsp. dried sage

salt to taste

2-3 Tbsp. olive oil

Directions:

Place the diced bacon in a large frying pan over medium heat. Cook until some of the fat renders out and it's beginning to brown, but not fully cooked. Leave all the bacon fat in the pan and add the sliced onions. Add a bit of salt to the onions, and cook them until caramelizing. You shouldn't need to add any fat, but if there doesn't seem to be enough to prevent the onions from sticking, add a bit of butter. Meanwhile, boil your lentils for about 10 minutes or until tender. As soon as the lentils are done, drain them and put them in the pan with the bacon and onions, and add all of the herbs. Season to taste with salt, mix it well, and let it all cook together on low heat for 3-5 minutes. Cook the pasta according to your liking, drain it, and add it to the lentil bacon mixture. Stir it all together well, drizzle with 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil, and serve immediately.  

 

What I Buy and Why - Beef -- First Video Blog Post!

I finally posted my first video! I should probably get into some amount of video editing at some point, and it's a good thing I didn't go the actress route because I make too many weird faces while I'm talking (which I didn't know until I started doing this!), but here it is! 

Disclaimer: I am not formally educated in nutrition. This video conveys the opinion I have developed through my own research.

What I Buy and Why - Beef

If you would like to read more extensive information on the health benefits of eating 100% grass-fed beef, these two links will serve you well.

www.whfoods.com

americangrassfedbeef.com

 Below is a picture of the beef I buy at Trader Joe's. As you can see, it clearly states organic (and has the USDA stamp in the bottom right corner), and says 100% grass fed. Another brand I know of that I believe is widely available is Strauss. They have beef, buffalo, and lamb that I have seen.

A Chocolate Peanut Butter Lover's Breakfast Dream

After hearing about Silk's new cashew milk, seeing it on sale, and spontaneously buying it, my brain was racing with all the ways I wanted to use it. I am sometimes inspired to make new and tasty things with normal foods like potatoes, but when I come across a new product that I have never heard of (and it actually sounds good, unlike Oreo potato chips) my mind goes wild imagining all the ways I could utilize and enjoy this new product.

Remember this chunky chocolate buckwheat granola?

What about this peanut butter oat cereal?

Do you see where I'm going with this?

(Yes, I'm just showing off my new skill of putting pictures together)

Put them side by side....

With cashew milk....

And this happens.

YUM!!!

(This is so good that I literally went and prepared myself a bowl while writing this post because it's kind of {almost} lunch time and breakfast can pass for lunch {especially when you eat it a little early})

During my excitement and spontaneity of buying cashew milk, I forgot that the regular nut milks are sweetened, and I normally buy unsweetened nut milk. They really don't add much sugar, but I mixed mine with some normal milk in this to keep the sugar level a bit lower. If you're not bothered by the extra sugar by all means enjoy the regular, but I would recommend the unsweetened version (my writing pace has seriously slowed since preparing myself this bowl of granola a minute ago).

So this is just a combination of recipes, but I'll write it recipe-style anyway

Chunky Chocolate and PB Granola with Cashew Milk 

Ingredients:

1/4 cup chunky chocolate buckwheat granola

1/4 cup peanut butter oat cereal

1/2 cup or desired amount of cashew milk (or any milk)

Sliced bananas (optional)

Directions:

Place granola's side by side in a bowl. If using, place sliced bananas on top of granola. Pour desired amount of milk over the top, and enjoy bites of each granola by themselves and together. I don't mix mine, but you can if you please.

To all of you chocolate peanut butter lover's out there, you're welcome.

This Week's Menu - Pantry Cooking

I decided a couple weeks ago that I should do one whole week without grocery shopping. I did make sure we had things like apples and milk around, but I wanted to push myself to think outside the box and use what I had wisely. I think it's a fun challenge! I always have things in my pantry that last a long time, such as dried beans, rice, lentils, other grains/seeds etc., which I am happy to have in stock but I can also get in the habit of not using. So this week I am making all of our dinners (well, actually everything we'll eat) out of things we have around that I had no plans to use. Some items are in the fridge and need to be used, others have been sitting around in the pantry being neglected.

Here's what I came up with for the week without grocery shopping:

Tuesday - Breakfast burritos - breakfast sausage, potatoes, onions, cheddar cheese, eggs, salsa/chipotle sauce, sour cream/creme fraiche -- Yum!

Wednesday - Very simple and fast pesto pasta -- won't be getting home until 8:40ish tomorrow, so quick dinner it is! Literally just cooking pasta and tossing it with Trader Joe's quinoa pesto that I talked about in this post.

Thursday - pesto chicken sandwiches with apple and smoked Gouda -- I haven't decided if I will heat these up grilled cheese style or if we'll eat them cold. This will also be very simple. I'll use more of the quinoa pesto, lay out sliced chicken, and top with the apples and cheese.

Friday - bacon lentil pasta -- Remember the bacon black bean pasta I talked about in this post? I am going to make a very similar dish with green lentils instead of black beans and probably no parsley. I love simple pasta dishes like this.

Saturday - fiesta pasta -- Never made this but it looks like it must be pretty good. It's also one of those dishes that I almost always have all of the ingredients to make.

The veggies I have on hand which will probably make appearances are roasted sweet potatoes, roasted carrots, and sauteed cabbage.

I still have several meal ideas I came up with from what we have in stock that aren't on this menu, so even though I'll have to pick up some vegetables, fruit, and peanut butter for next week, I probably still won't need to buy too much. I guess I'll be saving on February's grocery budget! Hopefully it doesn't mess me up for March.

Here are some of the things we'll be having for breakfasts and snacks that I basically always have everything to prepare:

Chunky Chocolate Buckwheat Granola

Peanut Butter Oat Cereal

High Protein Energy Balls, Carrot Cake Energy Bites, and Peanut Butter Chocolate Bites

Have you ever done pantry cooking weeks? Was it fun and challenging, or did you find yourself at the grocery store halfway through? 

Happy cooking!

My 2-Day Cleanse Recap and Second Day of Eats

This week for What I Ate Wednesday I am doing a recap of my two day cleanse, featuring my second day of eats.

A couple weeks ago I decided that I would do this cleanse. A two day weekend cleanse. I can't really do it on the weekend because of my schedule, so I did it this past Monday and Tuesday. My goal is to eat in such a way that doesn't require cleansing, but I do enjoy following little plans like this now and then to check in with my eating habits. If I do a two day cleanse and feel drastically different and better, I probably need to change my daily habits. My hope was to feel good, but not much different than normal.

In past cleanses I have done I only focused on food. This time around I wanted to focus on not only my food consumption, but also resting my mind and body. I did light exercise (walking and yoga), slept plenty (no alarms and naps included), and I even went to the sauna as she recommends in the above linked post! I really enjoy saunas, and I had heard about the detoxifying affects of sweating before, but I normally do plenty of sweating during exercise. Since I was only doing light exercise I thought going to the sauna would be a nice way to get a good sweat in, and it sure was! They have one at the Georgia Tech fitness center that I had never used, so this pushed me to familiarize myself with it. I'll probably start going there regularly. It felt great to sauna, walk home, take a lukewarm shower, and then get into some comfy clothes.

On the first day of the cleanse, my plan was to drink the smoothie for breakfast and lunch and have the soup for dinner. After drinking the smoothie for breakfast though, I was not looking forward to having it again for lunch. It wasn't terrible, and I even enjoyed the first half of it, but it wasn't drawing me in at all for lunch, and I was not looking forward to having it for breakfast the next day either. Since I had the time, I made a big pot of the soup for lunch, and then the work was done for dinner on both cleanse days. The soup was good! I preferred it without the lemon, but other than that it was enjoyable and I didn't change it. 

I needed to add an apple to the first day because I was at work and too hungry to last until dinner. I think an apple is fully worthy of being on a cleansing menu, so I didn't feel bad.

In order to be excited about my second day of cleansing, I decided to make some minor changes to the smoothie recipe. I nixed the mint, avocado, and 1 pear, and added a banana. The mint wasn't doing anything for me, and the avocado was what really turned me off. I really wanted to like it but it just wasn't working. This was far more enjoyable for me!

I still wanted to consume the avocado though, and I wasn't crazy about eating only liquid for two days, so I sprinkled half of it with salt and a heavy dose of cumin and the other half with salt and lemon juice and ate it for lunch with the pear that I also took out of the smoothie. This plan worked much better for me!

I also added an apple and a cup of chamomile tea to the second day of cleansing for a late morning snack since I was at work and knew I'd be having a late lunch. This did the trick and held me over until 2pm when I finally had lunch.

For dinner I heated up the leftover soup from Monday, which I continued to enjoy. I ate it three times over the course of the cleanse, and I think I liked it more and more each time I had it. It definitely has a strong cilantro taste, but it's mellowed out a bit by the sweet potatoes it is blended with. Yummy yummy (though maybe not that appetizing)!

Here's a little summary of my cleansing eats and activities:

Day 1:

Lemon water

Ginger Pear Mint Smoothie

Yoga

Soup

Nap

Apple

Soup

Plenty of water throughout the day

Day 2:

Lemon water

New and improved smoothie (Same as previous day minus avocado, mint, and 1 pear, plus 1 banana)
Apple
Long walk with Carol
Chamomile tea

Avocado with 1/2 cumin and salt 1/2 lemon juice and salt, pear

Yoga

Sauna

Soup
Chamomile tea

Plenty of water throughout the day

So in the end, I added two apples, a banana, and cumin to the food consumption, and eliminated some mint, but that was all. 

The food items I was craving during the cleanse that I could not eat were: bread, eggs, and peanut butter.

The peanut butter is not surprising at all since I eat it so often and love it so much. I'm totally fine with craving bread, too. I make basically all the bread we eat, and a lot of it is from freshly milled whole wheat flour. Meaning, we eat pretty healthy bread and I'm comfortable with the amount of it that I normally eat. I'm sure it wasn't helping me that I made bread for Marshall to have with the soup. And I don't know what wagon you're in, but I'm in the eggs are healthy wagon and that's not going to change, so I was not disappointed to be craving those either. I think what my body wanted was more protein, and that's a good thing, so no craving concerns.

One thing I focused on more that I will hopefully continue to do is drink more water. Water is one of the only things I drink, but I still think I don't drink enough. I'm trying to make it a habit to always take a drink when I am thirsty and not put it off. Whether I'm trying to fall asleep, wake up in the middle of the night, in the middle of baking/cooking, or busy at work, water needs to be a priority!

So in the end I was very happy with how I was feeling at the end of the two days. Basically normal, just looking forward to my normal eating habits, which I established do not need to be changed. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have some chocolate chips on my PB banana toast this morning, but what's a little chocolate now and then going to hurt?

Nothing, you say? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Trader Joe's is My Happy Place

For starters, Trader Joe's did not pay me for this post. Which is obvious if you know me since my blog isn't a big deal, but I'm about to sound like I'm getting paid. I even told Marshall that a nearby Trader Joe's might be on my "must-have" list when buying a house. Okay, back to business.

Have I mentioned I love Trader Joe's? I think I've made that quite clear in the past, but in case you hadn't caught on, Trader Joe's is like my candy shop. I love to go there with no time limit, browse each and every aisle (at least once), and discover what new products they may have.

Usually when I grocery shop I go in with a list, get everything I wrote down (usually) and nothing more (except when frozen peas are unexpectedly on sale). I really love to grocery shop, but it's not usually an adventure...Just a routine. Except when I go to Trader Joe's. I still go with a list, and plan to buy everything on it, but I also plan to pick up random things here and there that we either love, or that I think we may love after trying it.

Saturday was one of those times that I found many exciting things to try! Well, they're at least exciting to me. I had already looked at their fearless flyer online, so some of the new things I found I already had my eye out for, but I still had a blast.

I picked up the usual suspects - all kinds of nuts, dried cranberries, ground beef, bacon, peanut butter (I usually buy this at Target. They have the best price on organic PB!), and apples, but let's get to the fun stuff! 

I think I was most excited about the Edamame Hummus. It has a combination of edamame and chickpeas, as well as your other typical hummus ingredients. I like hummus but I get tired of it quickly. It's definitely not a staple in our fridge. This, however, was really tasty. I found it to be lighter and fluffier than traditional hummus. It went really well with these crackers, as well as the next new item I bought: Inner Beans and Inner Peas.

Here's a little snapshot of our lunch plate - The Inner Beans and Inner Peas are the penne-looking items.

Inner Beans and Inner peas. What a strange name. But tasty product! And they're actually made with whole black beans and whole green peas. Impressive, right? Unlike those "veggie" chips that have a tiny amount of green pea powder to give them color, whole green peas is the first ingredient of only a few on this package! I preferred the peas and Marshall preferred the beans. So inconclusive as to which one is better. I guess you'll have to decide that for yourself : ) 

I wanted to try some different varieties of pasta, so I was happy to find a whole wheat fusili, and even happier to find a brown rice quinoa pasta. One of the main reasons I wanted to try that is because it's gluten free and I now have a few gluten free friends. Marshall and I will try it first before making it for them, but I'm hopeful. Whole wheat pasta seems to be hit or miss. I don't understand how they can be so different from one another when the only ingredients are flour and water, but I've definitely had some that were better than others. I haven't given the Trader Joe's variety a shot, so we'll see. And I'm sure the type of sauce you pair with it makes a difference as well, which leads me to the next item.

Pesto and Quinoa. It's basically just a traditional pesto with quinoa added. It might not turn out to be that exciting, and the protein content per serving is only 1 gram (though I'd probably eat more than two tablespoons), but why not give it a try? I'll probably just toss it with some pasta, possibly with some chicken or fish, and it'll make a fast and pretty cheap dinner. 

Next up, green tea infused mints. Plus, they're shaped like cute little leaves! Here's an excerpt of what Trader Joe's had to say about these:

"Did you know that green tea extract has been shown to contain antioxidant properties that can inhibit the root causes of bad breath? In other words, the mint will leave your breath smelling fresh and clean, and the green tea may just help keep it that way."

Sounds good to me! These definitely have subtle green tea notes with mint being the main flavor. But not an overbearing mint flavor....Just right.

Last but not least, I bought shampoo at Trader Joe's!

I spotted this in the fearless flyer, and since we're running low I thought I'd give this a try. It's supposedly salon level quality (which is what I'm used to using), and I love that the ingredients list is a bunch of different natural oils and such. I probably won't know until using it several times how I feel about it, but I'll keep you updated.

And what do you think the best part of the whole trip was?

Carrying everything home in my Eat More Kale bag that my mother-in-law gave me!

This was obviously a successful Trader Joe's trip. Not every trip is this much fun or filled with so much excitement, which is why I had to share this with you! And just like a candy shop, I walked away with a little more than I needed ; )

40 Plant Foods Challenge - Winter Edition

Remember when I did the 40 plant foods challenge (Lead by happyhealthymama) back in June? I mentioned in that post that maybe I should do it again in the Winter to see if I also get enough variety when there isn't so much produce in season. Since I live in America I can ALWAYS buy fruits, vegetables, and all kinds of other plant foods regardless of the season, but since I usually stick to the sale items, and not as much produce is on sale this time of year, I thought maybe I lacked variety in the Winter. The past week was the test!

This time I categorized everything according to food types rather than showing the list based on which items I added each day like I did last time. In comparison to the challenge I did in June, I did eat a little bit less fruits and veggies, and I ate a lot more nuts and seeds. This is no surprise to me since I have been eating a lot more nuts and seeds in general. I think if I did the challenge again in the Summer, even if the fruit and veggie categories were a bit higher again, there would still be an increase in the nuts and seeds category.

 Spices and Herbs:

1. oregano
2. basil
3. Cinnamon
4. Chili Powder
5. Ginger
6. Cumin
7. Paprika
8. Black pepper

Legumes:

1. Black beans
2. Red lentils
3. Green lentils
4. Peanuts

Fruits:

1. Pear
2. Cranberries
3. Clementine
4. Apple
5. Grapefruit
6. Banana
7. Blueberries
8. Orange
9. Tomatoes

Nuts and Seeds:

1. Sesame seeds
2. Flax seeds
3. Chia seeds
4. Psyllium Husk
5. Pecans
6. Almonds
7. Cashews
8. Brazil nuts
9. Walnuts

Vegetables:

1. Broccoli
2. Kale
3. Carrot
4. Brussels sprouts
5. Sweet potatoes
6. Sweet onions
7. Red bell peppers
8. Red potatoes
9. Green Beans
10. Garlic

Grains:

1. Oats

Total: 41

I am very happy with my total of 41 different plant foods in a week. In June I had 44 total plant foods, including 5 more veggies for the week and 3 more fruits, but my nuts and seeds category went from 2 to 9! A few of the ways I've been enjoying more nuts and seeds are these crackers, these granola bars, and all kinds of energy bites (black bean chocolate peanut butter, carrot cake, and honey nut bars are all great).

If you're looking to add more plants to your diet and aren't sure where to start, let me recommend a few of my favorites:

honey lime sweet potato tacos

warm fall harvest salad

sweet potato-carrot-apple-red lentil soup

massaged kale salad with lentils sweet potatoes and caramelized onions.

Enjoy! 

Menu - Eating More Fish

Monday - leftover sweet potato-carrot-apple-red lentil soup, bread from the freezer

Tuesday - salmon, scalloped potatoes, and sauteed cabbage -- I'll probable saute the fish in butter with lemon and a fresh herb.

Wednesday - crock pot chicken with apple and sweet potato

Friday - Thai chicken salad

Sunday - homemade buckwheat pasta with chicken, broccoli, cabbage, bean sprouts, and ginger peanut sauce


I decided that this year I want to add more fish to our diet. I used to buy it on a fairly regular basis, but somewhere along the lines I got out of the habit. The fish at the market always looks so good and I've never managed to buy it....Until today!

My go-to way to prepare fish before was to marinate it and bake it. That usually turned out good (except for when I cooked it too long), but I would like to become confident with throwing it in a pan with a couple other tasty ingredients and be certain it will come out the way I want it to. So you can keep me accountable from hear on out to eat more fish.


Happy first week of February!