What's For Lunch?

Today it's tuna salad on a bed of arugula.  I added cannelloni beans, pecans, green apple, red onion, celery, and a little mayo to tuna.  I sliced some cucumbers, an avocado, and some heirloom tomatoes.  Add a little sea salt and fresh cracked pepper and it's ready. 

Quick, easy, and yummy! 

My husband joined me for lunch so that's why I made it pretty. 

If it's just me I don't arrange the plate like this. 

Yes my husband actually eats this and doesn't wonder where the main course is?  When I met him he drank a liter of soda a day and lived on beer and carne asada burritos.  He has totally bought in to eating healthy with me.  It's much harder to eat healthy if your spouse isn't on board.  I'm lucky mine welcomes meals like this.

What did you have for lunch? 

What's For Lunch?

Today's lunch is brought to you by Trader Joe's...again. 

Don't tell my husband I'm in love with Joe.

I started with a Brown Rice Tortilla...gluten free. 

 Put these in the fridge, they go bad quickly if you leave them out on the counter.

A little Mayo smear, a slice of turkey, a big bunch of arugula, some sliced tomato, salt and pepper.

Did you know arugula is great for cleansing your liver?

Roll it up.

Say ahhh.

Another quick, yummy lunch for a busy mom.

What's are you having for lunch?

Time Saver In The Kitchen- Beware Vampires!

I like to cook and I'm always on the look out for time savers. We eat home cooked meals six days out of the week. It's healthier and cheaper. Our kids participate in soccer and volleyball and I'm coaching volleyball, so meal time is usually after an evening practice. When I'm coaching or shuttling the kids around, I try to make dinner ahead of time or prep. dinner and my husband will complete it when he gets home from work. This is one way I've found to speed up the home cooking process.

I'm getting a little side tracked, but this is good to know. If you buy whole garlic cloves look for the ones with the dried brown stuff on top. This one is locally grown from somewhere in California, probably Gilroy. The ones with this part cut off may look prettier, but they are from China. I personally would rather buy food locally grown. I think I'm going to grow garlic this year in my veggie garden?

One clove of garlic is .50 cents a piece at our local grocery store. I still buy these for recipes that call for fresh garlic, but I also buy the big bag of garlic cloves from Costco. It's about $5 and it's already peeled. This bag is from Gilroy, California the "Garlic Capital Of The World." The big bag is very economical. The problem is it usually goes bad before I finish even half of it and we use a lot of garlic.

Now when I buy it I put it into the food processor that day.

Chop, chop, I freeze it in batches. It's ready to go and no stinky fingers.

Here is another time saver I learned from my friend Kristy. Click on her name to see her blog. She is a fabulous cook and has great recipes on it. She turned me on to these frozen herbs from Trader Joe's. They have basil, garlic, and cilantro. You can find them in the frozen veggie section. They are great when you don't have fresh on hand and they taste better than dried.

Just pop out a cube. Time to make a Trader Joe's run, I'm almost out.


Happy Cooking! How Do You Save Time In The Kitchen?

Chicken Milanese Rughetta

I got this recipe out of a House Beautiful Magazine. Click here
for the recipe.
This is one of my mid. week go-to recipes. It's delicious as is but I made a few changes to it to make it even healthier. The recipe calls for Panko style bread crumbs. You can buy them in the Asian section of your local grocery store. I use Almond Meal Flour on my chicken breast for a gluten free option instead of Panko. You can buy Almond Flour at Trader Joe's or any health food store. I didn't have time to go to Trader Joe's. I found it at my local grocery store.

No Gluten

This is what the recipe calls for.

I pound the chicken breast until it's about an half inch thick. I use dried basil instead of rosemary (the recipe calls for rosemary) because the favor was too overpowering for my kids. I like it both ways. My family likes the basil better. I also switched out the olive oil to cook the chicken breast to either coconut oil or grape seed oil. Both coconut oil and grape seed oil are healthier cooking options than olive oil. They have a higher flash point and stay stable at higher cooking temperatures. You will use less oil when cooking. You can't tell the difference in taste. I finish the recipe off with olive oil for the dressing.

This is how I serve it with tons of fresh arugula and cherry tomatoes on top of the chicken breast. The veggies are the main dish and the protein is the side dish. You can't see it, but there is a piece of yummy chicken under all those veggies. I also made a side of oven roasted peppers and red onion. I roast the peppers and onion at 350 degrees for about 20 min. with some salt and pepper and a little grape seed oil.

Quick, Yummy, and Healthy!

Drink Up!

With so many of us re-focusing on our health after the Holidays, one of the best things we can do for our bodies is drink enough water. We have all heard "drink 6-8, 8 oz. glasses of water a day," but for many of us that doesn't begin to meet even half of our daily water requirements.

Maybe you are walking around in chronic dehydration? Are you tired, is your skin dry, do your joints ache, do you get headaches, are you having trouble losing those few extra pounds you put on over the Holidays?

You might be dehydrated?
Did you know you have a 20% higher chance of sustaining an injury during exercise when you are dehydrated?

A better gage for daily water requirements is to drink half your body weight in ounces of water. More if you exercise. (not all at once).

I found a great website to calculate your exact water needs, it factors in your climate, exercise times, and other factors to give you a daily water intake goal. To find out how much you should be drinking click Here.

I love these 24 oz. Contigo autoseal BPA free water bottles. I strive to drink at least three of these water bottles every day, four when I do a hard workout. I carry one of these pretty much wherever I go and sip water throughout the day. I bought the three pack at Costco several years ago for under $20. They are easy to use (just squeeze the top around the neck), they never leak, I can measure how much water I drink, the kids love them, they're hard to break (we have managed to crack them on the tile floor). I can't find them on the Costco website, but I just bought another 3 pack right before Christmas, so I think they still have them?
As always, consult with your doctor if you have a preexisting health condition. If you aren't a huge water drinker, it's a little difficult at first to adjust to this much water intake. You might want to start on a day when you have easy bathroom access. Don't worry your body will adjust quickly.

Happy Sloshing!