Thursday, May 3, 2012

Week 3: Picnic, gopicnic, It's SPRINGTIME...go on a picnic!

Well first off, I apologize for the lateness of this post. Blogger must not have liked my first, second or THIRD entry as it gobbled them up into cyberspace never to be heard from again. It's okay, the posts were plant based.
It's also okay because as I type this 4th attempt, I have a new perspective and may change things up a bit.

This week's adventures reminded me how easy it is to just fall back into a good ol' meat and something on the side mentality, especially when someone ELSE is cooking.

Now if you haven't been following along on this journey to 90% plant based consumption, I invite you to start at the beginning and catch up, it's okay...we'll wait for you.

Are you back? Great. So now everyone is pretty familiar with the morning smoothie recipe I use and that I make meals go further by incorporating dinner left-overs into lunches for me and the hub so I'll spare ya the day-of-the-week breakdown (mostly because I didn't like the way it was formatting) and just give you some highlights from the week.

Now, in looking at my notes from the week...it looks like there was a wholelotta meat on my plate.
Tuesday we had "fried" chicken with zucchini
Wednesday we had pork and plantains
Saturday we had hamburgers and hot dogs
and Sunday morning we had bacon with breakfast and for dinner we had Chicken Club Pasta

That looks like 4 out of 7 nights of carnivorous consumption...BUT...
Remember this is where I employ the portions on my plate rule.
My journey is not to become a vegan or even a vegetarian...at least that's not what I'm feeling led to at this time. My journey is to a 90% plant based diet (meaning food consumption, not weight loss) so meat and animal products are still going to play a part in our menus, just not as predominantly.

Let's look at the Chicken Club Pasta as an example:
This was a "mommy made it up" recipe that came to my brain while we were driving home from the beach after not having grocery shopped all weekend...it's amazing what you can do with what you have :)
The final recipe yielded 8 servings

2 chicken thighs cooked and chopped
4 slices left over bacon from the morning, chopped
1 full head of broccoli, chopped
1 bag of spinach
1 can diced garlic tomatoes
1/2 cup ranch dressing (check for gluten)
1/2 cup parmigiana cheese
olive oil as needed
1 pkg Tinkyada GF pasta


No special magic here, I just cooked all the ingredients added the ranch and cheese last and let it all simmer under cover to get all saucy then spooned it over pasta and voila. And it was tasty.
So yes, there was meat in it, but the over all dish was at least 75% plant based and since my breakfast and lunch are typically much higher ratios, I think I evened out for the day :)

That being said...I definitely had a day that tipped my numbers for the entire week.
Saturday we went to a picnic complete with hamburgers and hot dogs and all the trimmings.
And I had one of each
And they were both mm-mm-tasty-good.
In the grand scheme of things, I'm not going for perfectly perfect. It's good to know that I am feeding my body what it needs MOST of the time so the few times when it comes up to have what it WANTS don't throw me for a loop. I covered my bases making sure all picnic items were GF (thanks to the hostess who checked with me before going shopping) and I enjoyed the day with friends, new and old.

This week's total SCORE brought to you by gopicnic GF boxed meals.
I stumbled across these in a 7-11 of all places while we were on our way to the beach on Sunday.
All the items in the box are individually packaged so you can eat it all at once, or snack throughout the day.
This little gem was PERFECT for the beach. It doesn't need to be refrigerated AND it was perfectly Babs friendly (GF).
A nice little Sunday morning gift in the least likely of places :)

Enjoy your week!