A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Chicken and Veggie Quesadillas

Quesadillas are one of those Tex-Mex restaurant dishes that's just as good, if not better!, made at home. Perfect for a family, they're easily customizable, delicious, and both quick and easy to make. Anyone can make these and I'm talking to you, Aunt Kay!  All you need is some kind of already cooked meat (or skip it and go vegetarian!) and at least a vegetable (or not and go carnivorous) and a hot skillet.  But since the goal is to eat healthier and get in those 5 servings of veggies a day, I went with the cooked chicken breasts that I had simmered in the chicken and orzo soup I made earlier in the week, and the onions, mushrooms, and red and yellow peppers that magically appeared in my crisper. By magically, I mean that Auntie Miranda found on sale at Aldi's and was kind enough to pick up enough for both of our homes since they were so cheap--thanks Auntie! 

 
 For those who know what a Girl Geek/Trekkie I am, is it really a surprise to know that my pizza cutter is in the shape of the Enterprise?  Yeah, I thought not.  Makes me smile every time I use it. 

 

 

Peanut Butter, White Chocolate, and Cashew Energy Bites

I kept seeing "energy balls" or "energy bites" all over Pinterest and wondered what was up with that. Well, now I know! They are 1 ounce bites (which actually means about 3 bites) of sweet and savory deliciousness wrapped around a lot of nutrition, if you do it right.  In texture and taste, they're a cross between a no-bake cookie, candy, or an old-fashioned sugar plum. Remember the Christmas poem "...while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads..."   I made those one year for Christmas and wonder why I never did again. An all natural chewy bit of carb happiness, I mean, energy. Will definitely be keeping these in the rotation. They will be great for at home but even more perfect for work when I need to grab something quick and easy to nibble on because it's too easy to get busy and end up going 8-10 hours without eating anything and that low blood sugar nausea feeling that comes on doesn't do me or my patients any good.

I will make up other flavors but my first foray into the energy bite world was kind of a rebellion against all things chocolate.  Every recipe I've ever seen has chocolate chips or cocoa in it.  There are some of us out here in the world, I confess, who are not chocoholics.   Loved watching Bobby Flay (old eppy) over the weekend where he made French toast sticks with white chocolate/orange ganache and said "White chocolate has always been my favorite chocolate. My Mom still brings me a white chocolate bunny to the restaurant every year on Easter."  Ahhh!  And yes, a fellow white-a-holic! 

 

2017 Glenna's Dose of Reality Diet Meal Plan (Week 8) Feb 24th- Mar 2nd)

 What's new this week? I've lost another 2 pounds! That makes a total of 28 poundss this time last year.  Not fast but livable. It's all about cooking good food at home, avoiding drive thru's and chemicals/preservatives/etc as much as possible and watching portions, not at all about saying "I'll never eat such and such again", making fake substitute foods, or depriving myself. It's about LIVING, EATING, MOVING and ENJOYING life! 

THE WAY IT WORKS:

The way I work my plans is the opposite of most meal plans. This is not a concrete day by day, meal by meal, snack by snack down to the minute food plan. What works for me is to prepare for the week a pot of soup, bread from scratch, a sweet of some kind, and have readily and easily available the ingredients for a specific salad, breakfast, snack foods, and six dinner menus for the week. I add the salad and/or soup to many meals each night to add veggies to our day.  I have shopped for the groceries and prepared any veggies I need to like washing and cutting up carrots and celery for snacks, greens washed for the salad and its components in baggies in the crisper so that grabbing and throwing these items together is a snap.  My meal plans for dinner can be made on any night of the upcoming week as we want them and have time to prepare them.   Having soup, salad, homemade bread, and a sweet made in advance round out nightly dinners, make great lunches, and don't leave me scratching my head wondering what to pull together each day and ordering a pizza instead of eating in. My goal is to have a variety of from scratch "clean" foods easily fixable so we don’t get bored, and also to make the most of nutrients, without specific calorie counts, but including good oils, quality protein, and plenty of fiber from complex carbs. 

Because of my job, I work 12 hour overnights and those are usually clustered around the weekend so I look at the grocery ads on Wednesday, shop Wednesday or Thursday, and prep Thursday or Friday.  But that's just because of the way my work days fall. Anyone else following this idea would want to shop/prep/cook more heavily around their days off, whether that's mid-week or the weekend.

(Recipes that are here on my blog that I will be using have links.)

Week :

 Weekly Prep:

Breakfasts:  Cheerios, Scrambled Eggs and Toast

Soup:  Chicken and Brown Rice Soup                   

Salad:  Copycat Arris Pizza Spinach Salad w/Bleu Cheese and Red Wine Vinaigrette

Snacks:  Veggies & Homemade Ranch Dressing, Bananas

Lunches:  Soup, dinner leftovers, Salad

Breads:  Mashed Potato Dinner Rolls

Sweets: Girl Scout Cookies Lemonades (What? It's a great cause! Only 2 per day max)

Meal 1:

Sautéed Cod Filets

Vegetable Orzo Pilaf

Spinach Salad w/Bleu Cheese, Walnuts, Dried Cranberries, and Red Wine Vinaigrette

Meal 2:

Grilled Pork Chops

Vegetable Orzo Pilaf

Steamed Broccoli

Meal 3:

Grilled Chicken Breasts

Baked Potatoes

Dole Bagged Salad (on sale this week) with light dressing

Meal 4:

Pulled Pork in the Crockpot /Slow Cooker (1/2 recipe/2.5lb pork roast)

Mashed Potatoes

The Works Broccoli Salad

Meal 5:

One Pot Chili Mac & Cheese

Bagged Dole Caesar Salad w/light dressing (on sale this week)

Meal 6:

Hot Chicken Salad Casserole

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Broccoli or Spinach Salad 

Copycat Arris Pizza Spinach Salad with Bleu Cheese and Red Wine Vinaigrette

  One of our favorite places to eat, when I'm not cooking at home, is a locally owned restaurant, Arris Pizza on Republic Road.  Started in Jefferson City, MO in 1961 by Arris Pardalos, we're lucky to have one his few franchises here in Springfield, just a couple of miles from home.  The pizza is thin-crusted crunchiness that we love with generous toppings and the salads are to die for. They serve pizza, pasta, sandwiches, and salads, almost all of which are made from scratch in house but we are bad about sticking to our favorites:  Gene's is the Hercules with ground beef, Greek sausage, bacon, and Canadian bacon, while mine is the Veg Head (tomatoes, artichoke hearts, black olives, green peppers, spinach, and mushrooms) plus Greek sausage. Gene jokes that I shouldn't be allowed to ordered a vegetarian pizza and then add sausage to it, but hey, it's my party--and it's so yummy! 

Of course they have Greek Salad (duh!) and a Caesar, but my favorite is the Berry salad with spinach, romaine, berries in the summer or dried cranberries, bleu cheese, toasted walnuts, and their homemade red wine vinaigrette.  Even when I'm cooking at home I love to serve my version of this salad. The combination of fresh green, sweet berries, savory walnuts, with the bite of bleu cheese and the sweet fruity dressing is the essence of the perfect bite, in my mind and mouth. 

Disclaimer:  I don't claim that this dressing recipe is directly from Arris, and I have no connection to the restaurant or its owners, but this recipe is one of my go-to vinaigrettes as it  tops a delicious salad to serve at home that is very close/similar to the one I always order there.

 

 

2017 Glenna's Dose of Reality Diet Meal Plan (Week 7) Feb 17th-23rd)

Now that Valentine's Day is over, and it was lovely, and the candy has disappeared AND I even lost 2 lbs this week which is the real treat, it's time to get back on the straight and narrow.  Oatmeal for breakfast, crisp veggies and Greek yogurt for snacks, a cabbage salad for the week, fluffy angel biscuits for bread, hearty split pea soup as the soup of the week (still cold out there!), and some straight forward entrees: steaks, spice rubbed country ribs, chicken cacciatore, and a quick healthy pasta thrown into the mix.  Let's do this!

THE WAY IT WORKS:

The way I work my plans is the opposite of most meal plans. This is not a concrete day by day, meal by meal, snack by snack down to the minute food plan. What works for me is to prepare for the week a pot of soup, bread from scratch, a sweet of some kind, and have readily and easily available the ingredients for a specific salad, breakfast, snack foods, and six dinner menus for the week. I add the salad and/or soup to many meals each night to add veggies to our day.  I have shopped for the groceries and prepared any veggies I need to like washing and cutting up carrots and celery for snacks, greens washed for the salad and its components in baggies in the crisper so that grabbing and throwing these items together is a snap.  My meal plans for dinner can be made on any night of the upcoming week as we want them and have time to prepare them.   Having soup, salad, homemade bread, and a sweet made in advance round out nightly dinners, make great lunches, and don't leave me scratching my head wondering what to pull together each day and ordering a pizza instead of eating in. My goal is to have a variety of from scratch "clean" foods easily fixable so we don’t get bored, and also to make the most of nutrients, without specific calorie counts, but including good oils, quality protein, and plenty of fiber from complex carbs. 

Because of my job, I work 12 hour overnights and those are usually clustered around the weekend so I look at the grocery ads on Wednesday, shop Wednesday or Thursday, and prep Thursday or Friday.  But that's just because of the way my work days fall. Anyone else following this idea would want to shop/prep/cook more heavily around their days off, whether that's mid-week or the weekend.

(Recipes that are here on my blog that I will be using have links.)

Week :

 Weekly Prep:

Breakfasts:  Bananas Foster Oatmeal

Soup:  Split Pea Soup with Ham

            

Salad: Patchwork Slaw w/Curried Vinaigrette Dressing

Snacks: Carrot & celery sticks w/peanut butter, oranges, & apples, Greek Yogurt

Lunches: Leftovers, Cottage Cheese, Salad of the Week, Soup of the Week

Breads:  Butter and Honey Angel Biscuits

 

 

 

 

 

Sweets: No sweets after eating chocolate last week for Valentine's Day! :-)

Meal 1:

Gene's Country-style BBQ Ribs

w/Steven Raichlan Rub

Mashed Potatoes

Steamed Snow Peas

Meal 2:

Tuna Patties w/Homemade Tartar Sauce

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Patchwork Slaw

Meal 3:

Traditional Pasta Carbonara  (Healthy--no Alfredo sauce!)

Bagged Dole Caesar Salad Mix w/light dressing

Meal 4:

Broiled Steaks

Baked Potatoes

Steamed Broccoli

Patchwork Slaw

Meal 5:

Slow Cooker Kielbasa Casserole

Angel Biscuits

Meal 6:

Chicken Cacciatore over Pasta

Steamed Green Beans

Angel Biscuits 

Swedish Meatballs with Mushroom Sauce

What to do when you can't decide which of your husband's favorite dishes to make for Valentine's Day dinner?  Make both!  He worked only a short day yesterday so pulling it off sort of a Bridge Jones fiasco in that the meal came down to TWO meats, mashed potatoes...and brownies! But he said it was the perfect Valentine's meal and that's all that really counts, right? Right!

The two entrees were Swedish Meatballs with Mushroom sauce (recipe here) that is an adaptation from a Swedish Meatballs with Cranberry Sauce recipe that I made for my cousin James' birthday a couple of years ago.  The cranberry sauce is to die for, with its traditional Scandinavian spices, but since I had fresh mushrooms but no cranberries...you got it, mushrooms won the day.  I also made Gene's own Country-style Boneless Ribs, another of his faves, and served both over mashed potatoes which is a little piece of comfort food heaven. 

 

Happy Valentine's Day 2017

Happy Valentine's Day to all but most especially to my patient, loving, patient, funny, tolerant, fun, patient hubby, Gene aka Generino! 

After 24 (25 in 2 weeks!) years, I still you very much.  Thank you for being the Mark Darcy to my Bridget Jones (I know you won't get that but the chicas will.)

 

2017 Glenna's Dose of Reality diet Meal Plan (Week 6) Feb 10th-16th

 So much stuff going on this week, including jumping out of Chris's humongously tall pickup truck (long story) and my right knee saying "Thanks a lot, (W)itch!"  So a few days ice/heat treating followed by a cortisone shot at the doc says I'm not going to spend hours on my feet in the kitchen this week!  But that's okay.  Life is still good and we can make this work by choosing meals that are fast and easy to put together, that Gene can easily help with, and by stocking up at the grocery on Dole bagged salad with the lighter dressing choices and a trip to Breadsmith for my favorite sourdough bread!  Why Breadsmith? Because they use no preservatives or additives

In the sweets department, it's Valentine's day next week so everybody gird up your diet loins!  Doesn't mean I'm going to forsake all treats, just going to try to limit it a few pieces of good white or dark chocolate. Confession time. I'm really not a huge chocolate fan in general but if it's that bitter dark awesome or the sweet creamy white kind...I can be known to go a little nuts.  Nuts....also good in chocolate!

 

THE WAY IT WORKS:

The way I work my plans is the opposite of most meal plans. This is not a concrete day by day, meal by meal, snack by snack down to the minute food plan. What works for me is to prepare for the week a pot of soup, bread from scratch, a sweet of some kind, and have readily and easily available the ingredients for a specific salad, breakfast, snack foods, and six dinner menus for the week. I add the salad and/or soup to many meals each night to add veggies to our day.  I have shopped for the groceries and prepared any veggies I need to like washing and cutting up carrots and celery for snacks, greens washed for the salad and its components in baggies in the crisper so that grabbing and throwing these items together is a snap.  My meal plans for dinner can be made on any night of the upcoming week as we want them and have time to prepare them.   Having soup, salad, homemade bread, and a sweet made in advance round out nightly dinners, make great lunches, and don't leave me scratching my head wondering what to pull together each day and ordering a pizza instead of eating in. My goal is to have a variety of from scratch "clean" foods easily fixable so we don’t get bored, and also to make the most of nutrients, without specific calorie counts, but including good oils, quality protein, and plenty of fiber from complex carbs. 

Because of my job, I work 12 hour overnights and those are usually clustered around the weekend so I look at the grocery ads on Wednesday, shop Wednesday or Thursday, and prep Thursday or Friday.  But that's just because of the way my work days fall. Anyone else following this idea would want to shop/prep/cook more heavily around their days off, whether that's mid-week or the weekend.

(Recipes that are here on my blog that I will be using have links.)

Week :

 Weekly Prep:

Breakfasts:  Greek Yogurt, Cheerios

Soup:   Beef Vegetable Soup                  

Salad: Bagged Salad mixes from Dole or other

Snacks: Carrot & celery sticks w/peanut butter, oranges, & apples

Lunches: Leftovers, Sandwiches, and/or Soup of the Week

Breads:  Breadsmith sourdough (no time to bake this week)

Sweets:  A LIMITED amount of dark and white chocolate (Valentine's Day cannot be ignored!)

Meal 1:

Deli Style Sandwiches:

Deli meat and cheeses on Breadsmith sourdough

Carrot & celery sticks w/peanut butter 

Meal 2:

Baked Chicken Fajitas 

Meal 3:

Creamy Tuna Bacon and Pea Pasta

Dole bagged Salad w/light dressing

Meal 4:

Butter Onion Cheeseburgers

Dole Bagged Salad w/light dressing

Meal 5:

Ina Garten's Turkey Meatloaf

(Recipe cut into two portions--freeze half for another dinner later)

Mashed Sweet PotatoesSautéed Green Beans

Meal 6:

Breakfast for Dinner:

Light Sausage Links

Cheesy Scrambled Eggs w/Mushrooms and Onions

Hashbrown O'Brien (Ore-Ida)

Sourdough (from Breadsmith) Toast

 

 

The Works Broccoli Cauliflower Salad

 Remember when broccoli salad was called Trees N Raisins salad because that's basically all it was, with maybe some sunflower seeds?  Me too.  This is so much yummier (and even healthier too).  And ultimately customizable to what's in your fridge and pantry.  When I really go all out I love to add both broccoli and cauliflower, cashews and sunflower seeds, raisins or dried cranberries and grapes, bacon and onion, AND cheese cubes.  Yum. It's a huge crunchy, sweet, salty, savory party for the mouth.  I love to make a good sized batch and leave it in the fridge to be eaten all week since it keeps very well for several days.  It can be the salad for dinner,  a lunch by itself, or even just a snack. 

 

2017 Glenna's Dose of Reality Diet Meal Plan (Week 4) Jan 27th--Feb 2nd

A new week and guess what?  It's my birthday next week!  Even though on Tuesday there will be a date night going on but I am going to splurge a little with my cooking calories and make a few of my favorite things, like shrimp and grits, copycat Joe's Crab Shack Harvest Bay Mahi Mahi, and Springfield Style Cashew Chicken. At the very top of that list is my very favorite birthday dinner: My Mom's Chicken Chow Mein.  When we were kids we always got to pick the meal and that was my favorite. It's a simple stir fry-ish dish (not authentic at all, seriously) of chicken and vegetables over rice or noodles. Mom always served it over rice but by definition it should be noodles.  Either work great for me.  It's the tasty walk down memory lane that serves me the best. 

Happy Almost Birthday to me! 

 

THE WAY IT WORKS:

The way I work my plans is the opposite of most meal plans. This is not a concrete day by day, meal by meal, snack by snack down to the minute food plan. What works for me is to prepare for the week a pot of soup, bread from scratch, a sweet of some kind, and have readily and easily available the ingredients for a specific salad, breakfast, snack foods, and six dinner menus for the week. I add the salad and/or soup to many meals each night to add veggies to our day.  I have shopped for the groceries and prepared any veggies I need to like washing and cutting up carrots and celery for snacks, greens washed for the salad and its components in baggies in the crisper so that grabbing and throwing these items together is a snap.  My meal plans for dinner can be made on any night of the upcoming week as we want them and have time to prepare them.   Having soup, salad, homemade bread, and a sweet made in advance round out nightly dinners, make great lunches, and don't leave me scratching my head wondering what to pull together each day and ordering a pizza instead of eating in. My goal is to have a variety of from scratch "clean" foods easily fixable so we don’t get bored, and also to make the most of nutrients, without specific calorie counts, but including good oils, quality protein, and plenty of fiber from complex carbs. 

Because of my job, I work 12 hour overnights and those are usually clustered around the weekend so I look at the grocery ads on Wednesday, shop Wednesday or Thursday, and prep Thursday or Friday.  But that's just because of the way my work days fall. Anyone else following this idea would want to shop/prep/cook more heavily around their days off, whether that's mid-week or the weekend.

(Recipes that are here on my blog that I will be using have links.)

Week :

 Weekly Prep:

Breakfasts:  Cheerios, Oatmeal, Scrambled Eggs with Mushrooms and Green Onions

Soup:   Chicken and Brown Rice Soup

                  

Salad: Cut up Veggies with Homemade Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

Snacks: Clementines, apples

Lunches: Leftovers,  Soup of the Week

Breads:  Beer Bread (Can also use a can of any flavor soda in place of beer)

Sweets: Apple Crostada

Meal 1:

 Copycat Joe's Crab Shack Harvest Bay Mahi Mahi

Steamed Broccoli

Meal 2:

Chicken Chow Mein (Mom's Recipe)

Meal 3:

Vodka Marinated Pork Roast

Buttered Egg Noodles

Steamed Frozen Vegetable Medley

Meal 4:

Shrimp and Grits

Sautéed Fresh Mushrooms

Meal 5:

Halushki

Green Beans

Meal 6:

Homemade Springfield-Style Cashew Chicken

Steamed Broccoli