As much fun as I had visiting T and my family down in central Arkansas, and as much delicious food as I ate while I was down there (grilling on the back patio, biscuits and chocolate gravy, The House, Star of India – what?), I missed my kitchen and cooking! So yesterday, I did my best to get back into my usual healthy eats and thought it might be fun to share with you guys. Now, I don’t always eat this well, but I didn’t have any real obligations so I got to eat pretty ideal meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
For breakfast, I made Heidi Swanson’s Muesli out of her new cookbook, Super Natural Every Day. I would highly recommend this cookbook – it doesn’t have too many “fancy” or difficult-to-find ingredients, and most of the recipes look very simple. This muesli definitely was – you mix up a quart at a time, then just add thinned-out yogurt and a splash of maple syrup and let it chill in the fridge. I was a little worried that they might be like overnight oats (yuck!) but they were really good.
I forgot to take a picture, but trust me, it looked just like Heidi's 
For lunch, I had an open-faced sandwich with avocado, alfalfa sprouts, tomatoes, and honey mustard on toasted Ozark Natural Breads honey, flax, oats, and sprouted wheat. I also had some blueberries, a Laughing Cow light queso fresco and chipotle, some Stacy’s garden veggie medley pita chips (both new finds for me, and both are awesome), and a few Wonder Mints.
Love all the colors in my lunch
You want me to help you with that sandwich?
For dinner, I roasted up some asparagus with olive oil and some fancy salt my mom gave me a while back, baked some tofu with a marinade of maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, tamari, and spices, and made Molly Wizenberg’s skillet carrots with onion and thyme. The carrots were definitely the best part. They tasted kind of like the carrots and potatoes I used to eat when my mom would make a roast and I would pretend they didn’t have meat juices all over them. I didn’t have any fresh thyme, so I used dried and it worked fine.
So glad I like tofu now =)
I also had a few hundred of these for dessert. Yum!
Crack Mints
Today, I picked up my CSA box, which contained salad greens, shiitake mushrooms, strawberries, mint, beets, and carrots. I decided to go ahead and bake something with the carrots (since I still have skillet carrot leftovers), so Anne P’s Whole Wheat Carrot Cake Muffins just finished baking and are cooling right now! These will be perfect snacks to bring to work this week, since I don’t really know what the food situation will be like yet.
These smell so good right now.
I plan on bringing my lunch, but the first two days are orientation and lunch will be provided. Having been a vegetarian for 20 years now, I’ve eaten my fair share of weird, sad lunches (white bread with American cheese and lingering ham juice that I pulled off before eating, baked beans on a bun at BBQs, iceberg lettuce with ranch, etc.) but these days I like to be a little bit more prepared by bringing a healthy lunch and snacks. I even got this awesome new lunchbox - 20% off! It has a little pocket inside and is neoprene (insulates for 4 hours) and machine washable!
And it's PURPLE! I tend to get obsessed with colors, then burn out on them. Look out, navy, you're next.
If anyone has any good ideas for other lunch/snack ideas that travel well, I’m all ears! I’m stocked up on fruit, hummus, pita chips, sandwich fixings, and now muffins, so I think I’ve got a good start, but would love to get your suggestions! Hope you all have a great week!
