Thursday, June 16, 2011

Eating Right

After almost three solid weeks of eating out and eating treats and having pop around all.the.time we made our way to Rochester. We are coming down off the junk food high pretty well, but, well, let's just say that our digestive systems are still adjusting to the whole wheat, fruits and leafy green veggies.

I will forever chose sweet over salty. I mean salty is good sometimes, but for the most part I chose a sweet treat. I have found that once I've started into the pattern of having lots of sweets around I always want them around. That seems to be the only hiccup in the whole situation. I want sweets just about every night after the kids go to bed. Does that happen to anyone else? I hope so.

At any rate the sugar detox started last week and I have been surprised at how well it seems to be going. Of course the kids are asking for pop and sweets, but since we don't have it around the house it's easy to say no. And also we've kicked off the summer veggie eating.

Here are a few options that we've tried lately that have been surprisingly well received by my children:

-Muhamara dip with pita bread and carrot sticks for lunch. (Dan thought this didn't really constitute a lunch, but I noticed he didn't need any snacks between that meal and dinner.)
-BLT bread salad which is a baby spinach salad with crumbled bacon, tomatoes, feta, green onions and homemade croutons. It was simply delicious and the kids even ate the spinach!
-"Mock Gyros" which is really just pita sandwiches. Mindy gave me the recipe, or rather left it at my house so now it's mine!
-Indian-spiced salmon with basmati rice. I totally over-cooked the salmon, but everyone still ate at least some of it.
-An orecchiette salad with baby spinach tomatoes and roasted bell peppers. This one was not so enthusiastically received by the family, but I loved it. Dan gave his usual answer to vegetarian dishes, "This is good. You could add some salami to it."
-Cilantro lime black beans which is also a recipe that Mindy "gave" to me. These made excellent enchiladas.

With this success in getting my kids to eat things that look different than normal and have a higher percentage of veggies I've been very happy.

4 comments:

Nurse Graham said...

Now I have some inspiration for next week's menu--although it will take some tinkering with to make it gluten-free for me.

Dan's mom said...

Some shrimp sauted with lemon & pepper or tuna in oil would work to add Dan's protein to the orrchietti & still keep it Italian & light.

Michael was rummaging around in my fridge yesterday & asked me if the salami was a summer sausage or what - I told him it was Corso's Natural Balance dog food that we use for treats but the good news was that it is "human grade" beef product.........

dad said...

No Bob's Smokestack BBQ?

Mindy said...

We had Mock Gyros for dinner last night. Yum! Thanks for the dinner inspirations. I need more of them, so feel free to share more of your successes!