Salad Days

Sadly, I wasn't kidding about needing to go on a diet after eating Tex-Mex pretty much every single day of our vacation. Especially considering that my parents are coming to Austin in early August...and we'll be eating Tex-Mex pretty much every single day of their visit! So between now and then, I'm monitoring my eating habits more closely than usual.

I'm not following any kind of trendy diet plan or anything. I've just stopped snacking between meals, and I watch my portion sizes. I also try to eat as many fruits and veggies as possible.

One night I made fettucine with tons of fresh zucchini, from my uncle's garden, and cherry tomatoes, from my own. Keeping the veggie-to-pasta ratio high allows you to eat a big helping, with fewer calories.

H-E-B has started carrying this crazy powdered peanut butter stuff called PB2. You add water, and it turns into a peanut butter sauce. Not quite the consistency of regular peanut butter, but similar. However, almost all the fat has been removed. This is a wonderful find for a dieting peanut butter lover like myself. Peanut butter is awesome, but it's also high in fat.

PB2 sauce is great spooned over apple or banana slices. This is a typical lunch. Apple slices with PB2, and Wheat Thins with a little cream cheese and raspberry chipotle jam.

One day I roasted some beets. Pretty purple jewels!

I made a salad with romaine lettuce, beets, red onion, and avocado. I blended up some Creamy Horseradish Dressing, from Appetite for Reduction. Such a fantastic pairing! I bought a huge thing of prepared horseradish -- this is my go-to salad dressing now!

Here's another salad I made, also from Appetite for Reduction. It's the Sushi Roll Edamame Salad with Green Onion-Miso Vinaigrette. This salad totally has a huge "wow!" factor when you place it on the table. Just gorgeous. And it has all the lovely flavors of veggie sushi. Most importantly, it's quite filling, thanks to the brown rice in it. It's a salad you can eat for dinner and be satisfied.

I had a couple of less successful attempts from AfR, as well. The Apple-Miso Tofu sounded promising, but I found it bland and way too salty. Tony agreed.

I served the tofu over rice alongside Orange Scented Broccoli, which I didn't care for, either. It was too spicy. I should've cut the amount of red pepper flakes in half. 

Oh well, they can't all be favorites. AfR will still be getting a lot of use over the next several weeks.

Tony loves to dine out and so do I, and I can't deprive us of that just because I'm trying to drop some L-B's. I just try to eat mindfully and stop eating when I'm full, since restaurant portions are always huge. My veggie enchiladas from Chuy's provided some tasty leftovers.

I said that I've restricted my snacking, but Natural Grocer was having a really good sale on Go Raw snacks, which I'd been wanting to try. So I picked up a couple of bags. I sampled them, then passed them over to the kids.

The Pizza Flax Snax really do taste like pizza! They have a strong fennel flavor, and a nice satisfying crunch. Olivia loves them. The Chocolate Super Cookies are slightly chewy and have a rich chocolate flavor. Although they are small little discs, these snacks are filling.

Here's one more lunch I had this week -- beets, carrot sticks with Sanctuary Dressing from AfR (didn't care for its thick texture -- the horseradish dressing is better), and a few Go Raw cookies.

I am down three pounds so far, so I'm pleased with that. We'll see how this next week goes.

Hope you have a great week!