Week 1
In which there was a great deal of greek yogurt, frozen fish and an excess of quinoa.
Breakfast:
Kashi Go Lean Crisp (3/4 cup)
Chobani Greek Yogurt Plain No Fat (1/2 Cup)
Black and blue berries (1 cup)
Total: 7 sp
Lunch:
Greens (variety and quantity are key)
Purdue Grilled Chicken Strips 1/2 cup (not necessarily a budget item, but I love how convenient they are)
Avocado Cilantro Dressing (2 tbls) OPA by litehouse brand
Salad Total: 3 sp
Gazpacho
I mixed up a big batch of this early in the week. Every time I make this I put different veggies in it depending on what I have on hand. Essentials are tomatoes and cucumbers and onions, but this time I also used zucchini. My liquids were a combination of red wine vinegar, worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and low sodium tomato juice. Except for the olive oil, these are all pretty low in points, so that 1/4 of the recipe is 4 sp. I add croutons as a garnish for another point.
With the salad and the Gazpacho together for lunch, I ate about 8 points every noon.
Dinner:
I had tilapia in the freezer. A lot of it. We are moving in a few weeks, and my thoughts have turned to the difficulty and potential annoyance of moving large quantities of frozen food. The tilapia had to go.
One short pinterest search later, and I had a plan. I started with these two recipes:
http://www.joyfulhealthyeats.com/grilled-tilapia-bowls-chipotle-avocado-crema/
and
http://www.cookingclassy.com/2015/02/grilled-fish-tacos-with-lime-cabbage-slaw/
Then I did a little mixing and matching. Using the spice combination/marinade from the fish taco recipe, I grilled up (thanks George Foreman) 8 fillets. Four of those I shredded for fish tacos. I had forgotten the red cabbage at the store (oops), so my taco consisted of a medium flour tortilla, 1/6 of the shredded fish, mango salsa from Costco, and 1/4 avocado. My husband consumed easily twice that much without blinking, but when the portioning is followed, each taco works out to about 8 sp. Here's the catch. I don't know how to count the points for marinades. The eight points includes all of the points of the oil in the marinade even though some of that marinade was discarded. This might actually be a lot lower in points, but to be safe, I calculated it as if all of the marinade was consumed.
The other four fillets, I saved for later that week when the taco meat was all gone. Then, using the guidelines of the fish bowl recipe, I made a large batch of quinoa...perhaps too large. Actually I know it was too large. For some reason knowing I would need 3 cups of cooked quinoa, I thought it would be great to make 3 cups of uncooked quinoa. That easily doubled in size. But at least I had enough quinoa.
The fish bowl was 3/4 cup quinoa plus tomatoes, corn, and black beans (1/4 cup each) (and of course the fish). I also whipped up the recommended avocado yogurt dressing, which honestly tasted more like yogurt than avocado. Tweaking of that recipe will be done if I ever make it again. This was approximately 9 sp all together.
For variety in between the fish recipes, I made a vegetable curry: http://laurencariscooks.com/vegetable/
The key to this was taking my time and cooking the spices in the oil first before adding onions and the rest. I used up all my leftover veggies from the week and also threw in a can of canned chicken for some protein. Kinda defeats the purpose of the vegan nature of the recipe, I guess. Coconut milk is a bit decadent, but when you load it up with vegetables, 1/6 of the recipe is 10 points. I ate it over some of that huge batch of quinoa, for a total of 15 pts for the meal.
With these three recipes, my husband and I got through most of our dinners for the week.
Week 2
In which there was still quinoa, a lot of it.
Breakfast:
Boringly enough, I didn't vary it. Stuck with my yogurt, berries and Kashi.
Lunch:
Found a recipe to help me overcome the quinoa overload: http://peasandcrayons.com/2016/01/greek-quinoa-bowls-recipe.html
Instead of bell peppers I used tomatoes and cucumbers (which was delicious!). I had about the equivalent of 1 cup uncooked quinoa left from last week (about 3 cups cooked). I used Lucerne, low fat feta cheese, and followed the website's dressing recommendation. 1/5 of this recipe was 8 pts. I added 1/4 avocado for each meal, making my lunch a total of 10 sp.
Dinner:
Went for some chicken this week instead of fish. Picked up a large pack of 10 thighs and started with these recipes:
http://www.cookingclassy.com/2015/08/balsamic-peach-chicken-skillet/
and
http://kristineskitchenblog.com/3-ingredient-slow-cooker-taco-chicken/
Didn't change much in either recipe (other than using thighs rather than breasts) and the results were amazing. I used four thighs for the balsamic peach chicken recipes. Who knew that peaches + caramelized onions + balsamic vinegar + tomatoes = heaven ? Oh, I guess the chicken was there too. But I think I would have been happy just eating the peaches, onions, and tomatoes. The best part was that a quarter of this recipe (1 thigh plus the extras) was only 7 sp. It tasted as good as 20. I added steamed asparagus as a side vegetable for 0 sp, and had a very satisfying meal.
The Chicken tacos were super easy. The results didn't blow me away, but it was a very satisfying meal. 1/6 of the meat was 4 pts. To this I added a medium flour tortilla for 3 pts.
These two recipes got us through most of the week days.
Off to a good start.
No comments:
Post a Comment