Sunday

It's a big sculpture

After our wonderful day of whale watching on Saturday, we had a lovely breakfast at a café on the marina, then headed off home. We did a quick look around Hervey Bay and found the whale sculpture that we had seen the last time we were here. She/he is magnificent.

Pete and myself

Sugar cane

Our drive home was uneventful, although we did do a quick side trip through Bauple; along the Bauple Tourist Drive. Bauple is a tiny town and the drive isn't particularly impressive. However, we did see Sugar Cane by the hectare and the dryness of the surrounding fields and bush was really obvious - no wonder we have a 'high risk' fire warning in place at the moment. I've always wanted to stop the car when I pass a field of sugar cane, jump out, break a bit off and chew on it, just to see how sweet it is and to say "I've done that".

We stopped off at the local supermarket to get fresh vegetables and a cooked chicken so I could do meal prep for the next three days. I have started the 12 week challenge at the local gym I attend, which includes a nutrition plan - the amount of food I am to consume each day is mind blowing, well, stomach blowing really, however, having seen the results when this plan is stuck to, I'm determined to do it.  Wish me luck. Below are the photos of my meal preparation.

3 days of breakfast, lunch and snacks. 

Salad with 90 gm's of pulled pork in bags in front.  Breakfast fritatta. Snacks - morning - salmon and nuts (only 3 allowed), afternoon, chicken and nuts.












To give you an idea of the amount of food I am to consume on one day, I have listed my meals for the day:-

Breakfast - omelette or frittata - 3 eggs, 1 cup each cooked spinach and mushrooms, 1 cup tomato, 50 gm's cooked sweet potato and 3 tblsp avocado,
Snacks - 2 daily - mid morning and mid afternoon - 3 nuts, cashew or almond, 30 gm chicken meat or 45 gm smoked salmon and 1 kiwifruit or 1/2 pear/apple.
Lunch - salad comprising, 1 cup baby spinach (I use lettuce, spinach and silverbeet out of my garden), 1 cup celery, 1 tomato, 1 medium cucumber, 1 capsicum, 1 medium carrot, 15 olives and 90gm's cooked meat.
Dinner - 135 gm mince, 50gm tomato paste, 1 grated carrot, 1 cup chopped capsicum, large lettuce leaves (use as taco shells), 3 tblsp avocado, seasoning for the mince.

Mushrooms and Capsicum to be added, then into the oven to roast

There are other breakfast and lunch options, and I think I will probably switch to a protein smoothie instead of my frittata, which just doesn't do it for me for breakfast and instead of salad every lunchtime, have 2-3 cups of roasted vegetables, no root vegetables or pumpkin except for carrot. I roast in layers eggplant, zucchini, carrot, mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower and capsicum and in-between each layer, I sprinkle cinnamon and salt and drizzle olive oil over, they actually taste delicious, hot or cold and I do enough for 3-4 days in one roasting.



Then we went to have tea with my daughter-in-law, my son was working and she and I went out to see Anh Do, which we both thoroughly enjoyed, leaving Pete and my stepdaughter, Alysha to look after the granddaughters.


All in all, we had a busy Sunday and fabulous weekend.

2 comments leisure, Meal Prep

Going vegetarian three days a week

I have been contemplating have three meatless days a week for a little while now, but have always found excuses not to start. Today I made a start, well, mostly, if you don't count the bacon I had with my smashed avocado and feta on toast with roasted tomatoes - opps.

I made Sweet potato and chickpea patties from a recipe that I saw and saved off facebook. I love facebook for recipes and always read the comments before trying any of them - it can save time and a disaster.  I'm intending to have one of these in a salad sandwich for my lunch at work tomorrow. I'll use a tomato and lettuce out of my very own garden it the sandwich. I have been picking tomatoes for a week now and they are delicious. I came home from my four days away, a little surprised to find none ready to pick, only to discover my son, who had been watering the garden for me, had been helping himself to them as they ripened. Then I gave my Aunt the next 5 that were ready, so finally, today I have picked another 5 for myself as well as given another 2 to my son. I have a feeling none are going to get into the freezer for me to use for sauce.  But, back to the patties - they are actually vegan, but don't hold that against them. They are meant to have cornmeal in them, but after searching all three of our local supermarkets and coming up blank, I substituted almond meal instead.

Next I made Mussaman curry for our tea, accompanied by Garlic Turkish Bread. I left the meat out, so it to was vegetarian, well, vegan actually and there is enough left for our dinner tomorrow night, so that's a win. We love this curry. I use a very mild Mussaman paste as none of us like chilli or 'hot' spicy food. This one has potato, sweet potato, eggplant, carrot, celery and onion in it. 

Then I got super organised and made strawberry chia pudding and overnight oats - enough to do two days. I'll have the chia pudding after Animal Flow tomorrow morning and overnight oats mid morning.  I put a grated apple, cinnamon, pepitas, flax seed, yogurt and either almond or coconut milk with my oats. I have been having 4 smaller meals a day later, which I find keeps me from picking away at sweet sugary snacks.

Do you have a favourite, easy to make vegetarian recipe you'd like to share with me? I'm going to need them if I am to succeed at three meatless days a week. 

1 comment Health, Meal Prep, meals, vegetarian

Meal Prep

In an attempt to keep on track with my healthy eating, which I have to say hasn't been going so well lately, I spent three hours this morning preparing meals for the first half of the week.

While it is a pain in the butt to do, it certainly makes it a lot easier during the week for work lunches, snacks and night time meals - especially as I leave home by 5.30am most weekday mornings and twice a week don't get home until 7pm or later.

So today I have made two different chicken breast parcels - one with lemon and thyme, the other with dukah, sage and apricots - I add a tblsp of oil to each foil parcel and bake them in the oven for about an hour.


     The chicken breasts are large enough that I can get two meals out of each one. I'll just cook green beans, broccoli and maybe a small sweet potato to have with it, or a salad. I rather like a salad during winter to make as a change.  While these were cooking in the oven, I also roasted a dish of pumpkin, sweet potato, capsicum, garlic and onion to make soup.

I used the vegetable scraps plus some other older vegies from my fridge to make stock, which I added to these roasted vegetables and blitzed up in the food processor. I had too much stock, so I have frozen the rest of it in 250 ml lots which I will use for another batch of soup, or when cooking rice or mince. 

I also cut up carrots, leeks, celery, capsicum, mushroom, zucchini and broccoli which I bagged up ready to make stirfry with - I might add that to one of the chicken breasts one night.

I also made pumpkin hummus to have with carrot, celery and capsicum 'sticks' and snap-peas as snacks, which I have cut up and put in Tupperware containers, so I can simply pack some of each into my lunch chilly bag every night, ready for the next day. Hopefully this will help me control the sugar cravings. I roast the pumpkin first and then add it to a normal hummus recipe. It really is delicious, but doesn't keep as long as plain hummus does. The chickpeas make this a very nutritious snack, full of protein and fibre. 

Lastly I made my take on Napoli Sauce. I freeze this in cup lots and keep some in the fridge to use over the next couple of days. It's nice over chicken, lamb or pasta. I tend to add extra vegetables to mine, such as carrot, zucchini, leek, capsicum as well as fresh basil and chives from my garden. Once cooked I blend it up roughly, as I like to have a few pieces of vegetable still visible. I don't skin the tomatoes, I'm far to lazy for that, which is why I use a blender to process it. I buy cheap overripe tomatoes to make this and am looking forward to when my own tomatoes ripen so I can use them instead. 

4 comments Meal Prep, Stock and Soup