Our Food Day

This morning was extremely busy at our house. There was a lot of scurrying around for me this morning. By not long after lunch I had time to kick back in my big comfy lounge chair, put my feet up and relax. This is a picture of what the boys were doing while I was rushing around like a lunatic. I swear I want to come back as a pampered cat in my next life. Could my boys look any more relaxed? I don’t think so.

The idea for this post came from a comment Blessed Mama made yesterday. She was apparently shocked to see tortilla chips in our Costco cart and mentioned that she was happy to hear I was normal. This really struck me since I think our food consumption isn’t that different from all of yours. Since I also have received quite a few emails asking me what we eat on a daily basis I thought I should post what we bought yesterday as well as what we ate today so you can see what we consume on a daily basis. Here goes nothing.

Costco purchases yesterday:

Carrots
Celery
Vidalia onions
Frozen wild blueberries – for smoothies and oatmeal
Frozen mixed berries (raspberries, blueberries and Marion berries) – for smoothies and oatmeal
Frozen Broccoli – for soup
Lemons – since they aren’t organic these won’t be part of our green juice
Bananas – for chocolate banana peanut butter smoothies and banana soft serve
Grapes – to eat frozen
Cherry tomatoes – for fresh salsa and relish
Avocados – just because I love them, LOL
Dried mushrooms – I use these in everything
Whole wheat flat bread – for making enchiladas for dinner with the parents
Tortilla chips – because Dan wanted them and I can’t say no all the time ;-)
Japanese green tea – we can never have too much
Canned diced tomatoes – just because my Italian DNA never thinks you can have too many tomatoes
Green juice – this was a first purchase and it was crazy sweet I don’t know that we will buy it again
No salt seasoning – the Costco brand is really good if you haven’t tried it yet

In addition to stopping at Costco we also went to the health food store. We stop there a couple of times each month for things that we would otherwise need to order on line. It is a small store but the variety of items there carry is quite impressive. Here is what we picked up there:

Health food Store purchases yesterday:

Spirulina powder – to add to our smoothies and fresh juices
Slippery elm – for sore throats
Aloe juice – for sore throats
Mushroom Defense – to boost immunity
Cumin seeds
Red lentils – because Dan loves his lentil and tomato soup he wiped out the store
Stevia

Other things we typically buy at the health food store are: wheat grass to be juiced, unusual beans like eye of goat or Christmas limas, nettle tea leaves, dandelion root tea, probiotic powder and millet.

Our food today:

7:30 am – breakfast (my serving size not Dan’s he eats 50% more)

½ cup oats
1 cup water
½ cup wild blueberries, frozen
½ cup mixed berries, frozen
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
1 tablespoon walnuts, roughly chopped
Sprinkle cinnamon

9:30 am – snack

Double green tea (2 bags) with ascorbate C powder
1 tablespoon dry roasted edamame (another Costco item)

12:30pm – lunch

Bowl of mushroom soup with red wine and quinoa (recipe in this post)
Double green tea (2 bags) with ascorbate C powder

4:30pm – snack

½ avocado
½ cup salsa
Double green tea (2 bags) with ascorbate C powder
1 tablespoon dry roasted edamame

7:30pm - dinner

Sprouted Short Grain Brown Rice Topped with Veggies and Sesame Seed Sauce (recipe in this post)

10:00pm – snack for Dan

Chocolate, banana and peanut butter smoothie – Since Dan lost over 5 pounds when he had his sore throat we have been giving him extra calories at night to try to put the weight back on. This smoothie is his favorite so that is what I make.

Lunch:

Here is the soup I made for us for lunch for today. It is nothing complicated just a plain mushroom soup in a red wine flavored base. I served it over quinoa for extra protein and calories. Here is what I did:

Mushroom Soup with Red Wine and Quinoa
serves 2

Ingredients:

1 cup dried mixed mushrooms
3 - 4 cups water (depending on how long you simmer the soup)
1 yellow onion, peeled and finely diced
4 cloves garlic, peeled and finely minced
1 cup water
1 cup dry Italian red wine
1 teaspoon thyme, dried
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 cups quinoa cooked **

Directions:

Combine the dried mushrooms and 3 cups of water in a microwave safe bowl. Heat on high until the water is boiling. Allow the mushrooms to sit in the hot water until they are tender (about 20 minutes). Once the mushrooms are tender it is time to start the soup base.

Bring the 1 cup of water to a rapid boil and add the onions and garlic and cook until tender (about 5 minutes). Add the strained mushroom liquid (you strain to catch any dirt or girt that may be contained in the dry mushrooms). Chop the mushrooms roughly into pieces that will fit easily on a spoon. Add the mushrooms and remaining ingredients (except quinoa) to the pot and simmer for at least 15 minutes so the flavors can marry. I simmered mine for an hour and needed to add additional water.

Place the quinoa in the base of the bowl and top with the mushroom and wine broth. If desired you can include some parsley, rosemary, julienned spinach or truffle cream.

** I try to keep a cooked grain in the refrigerator to add to soups or to make a fast lunch. Recently I have been cooking a lot of quinoa. I like the protein and calories it adds to dishes.

Nutritional Information:

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 410.9
Calories From Fat (8%) - 34.64

Total Fat - 3.87g
Saturated Fat - 0.09g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 38.08mg
Potassium - 867.92mg
Total Carbohydrates - 64.19g
Fiber - 8.67g
Sugar - 3.79g
Protein - 11.06g

Comments:

This is a simple soup but if you like mushrooms this is the soup for you. We happen to be mushroom fiends so we both love anything that has an intense mushroom flavor. Sometimes I am in the mood for a thinner broth based soup. However if you like thicker soups you can use cornstarch or arrowroot to give the broth some body. I combined cold quinoa from the refrigerator with the hot soup and it was enough to warm the quinoa. You can also microwave the quinoa if you prefer. I was a little surprised by how filling this soup was.

Dinner:

We are having another rainy day today. Apparently there is another front coming through. When the weather is like this I tend to want soup, hot soup not raw soup. There is something about cool rainy weather that just says soup to me. Even though we had soup for lunch I considered making soup again tonight but ultimately decided it would be too much soup for Dan in one day. Instead of soup I thought Asian food would be good.

About 20 years ago I bought a large hardback cookbook at a second hand book store simply titled “The Complete Asian Cookbook” by Charmaine Solomon. This book is an encyclopedia of Asian cuisine which contains over 500 pages. It was first published in 1976 and covers food from Pakistan to Cambodia and everything in between. If you ever see the book I hope you pick it up and take a look at it. It is the most used Asian book in my cookbook library.

The book contains an interesting sauce recipe, which I have adapted of course. The author says this Korean sauce is called Cho Kanjang (or sesame seed sauce) and that it works on cooked or raw vegetables. She recommends that you make the entire batch and keep it in refrigerator. Here is the recipe:

Sesame Seed Sauce
Makes 14 tablespoons

Ingredients:

½ cup sesame seeds
1 scoop Stevia, or to taste
3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
1 tablespoons liquid aminos (the original recipe called for ¼ cup soy sauce)
¼ cup water

Directions:

Combine everything in your blender and puree until creamy. Adjust seasonings (stevia, vinegar and liquid aminos) to suit your palate.

Nutritional Information (per tablespoon):

Amount Per Serving
Calories - 29.92
Calories From Fat (61%) - 18.2

Total Fat - 2.55g
Saturated Fat - 0.36g
Cholesterol - 0mg
Sodium - 343.76mg
Potassium - 47.03mg
Total Carbohydrates - 2.63g
Fiber - 0.61g
Sugar - 0.02g
Protein - 0.91g

Comment:

This sauce has a nice flavor and is a good compliment to both raw and cooked veggies. It is excellent over steamed kale, broccoli or wilted spinach. It really is a nice all purpose veggie sauce. You can make it more or less sweet, salty or acidic to suit your tastes. I like to finish dishes that use this sauce with black sesame seeds for visual reasons but white also works is you only want texture.

I used this sauce on a simple dish of lightly cooked veggies (onion, garlic, green beans, eggplant, and savoy cabbage). I served the veggies on sprouted short grain brown rice and topped it with the sauce, a few black sesame seeds and thinly sliced green onions.

This is another variation of what I call a rice bowl dinner; although I served it on a plate so you could see it all. As a broad category rice bowls are probably the most common thing we eat. I change the veggies and the sauce and sometimes even the grain. But the general concept remains the same, a whole grain topped with veggies and sauce. I love the simplicity and ease of the dish. You can add baked tofu, beans, or seitan if you please. The sauce is what gives this dish its flavor, add as much of little as you like.

Unrelated notes:

First I want to say I hope that today’s post gives you a better idea about what we eat at our house. Typically there would have been a salad or two in our day but Costco didn’t have any organic baby spinach yesterday and that is something I only buy organic. I have a question for all of you. Did you get a better sense of what we eat on a daily basis from this post? Would you like me to do more posts like this? I can’t do this every day because it takes hours to do this. But if it is helpful I can do a few posts a month like this. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

Today the final e-Cornell course started. I did not have time to log in, but plan to watch all the lectures tomorrow. I wanted to let you all know so that you would realize why I won’t be getting to my email as quickly as usual. As soon I have finished the last course I will write a post about the program and my thoughts on the level of the material and who would benefit from the program.

Over the last few days I have been watching the lectures from the 2009 Nutrition and Health Conference. I have been very pleased with the information contained so far. It will take me another week or so to get through all the lectures. When I do I will come back with a thorough review. But I can tell you that I have already decided to buy the DVDs from this year’s conference if that gives you some idea of what I think so far. ;-)