Wednesday, November 25, 2009

My new staples

Before I learned to eat healthy, my breakfast and lunch were actually pretty boring--the same thing every day: cereal for brekky, sandwich for lunch. Dinner was kind of boring too, some meat, some veggies, some pasta or potato. I have so much more variety now. But I'm starting to find some staples that are repeatable, with variation, every day. Maybe it's boring but it also saves time and energy and I like them. These staples are:

beans, greens and/or veggies, seeds. These beans, and these beans are good, because they have carrot or other veggie juice in them and that makes them sweet and flavorful. So they end up flavoring the other stuff too. Greens can be raw lettuce or other greens, bok choy (raw or cooked) or cooked greens (kale, collards, mustard, etc.). Veggies can be almost anything: chopped celery, cook brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, etc. Then ground flax or hemp seeds to make it creamy, or unground sunflower or pumpkin seeds for crunchiness. You can make something different every day with this combination.

salad: greens, seasonal fruit, seasonal raw veggies, edamame, sweet pea dressing or some other favorite. See the dressings label for a bunch of them. I usually develop a seasonal favorite salad that I repeat for a few weeks because I just like it.

fruit: whatever's in season, or frozen berries in the dead of winter. Right now it's pomegranates.

These three staples make up my three meals a day usually. At least that's been my habit the last few weeks. Lately the biggest meal, beans & veggies, has been my late brekky. Then a salad at dinner. Fruit in between. But sometimes the fruit meal will switch with brekky or dinner, depending on my schedule.

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