If You Eat Quinoa on Memorial Day, the Communists Win

Day Whatever

It was Memorial Day weekend and I’ve been skipping around/cheating occasionally, so I’m giving up on doing daily meal updates until I’m back on the wagon on Tuesday. Here’s what I made/ate from the Buzzfeed challenge over the last few days:

Collard-Wrapped Turkey Burger

Jewel doesn’t carry collard greens (huge shock), so I bought some butter lettuce instead. I added some garlic, but other than these two adjustments, I followed Buzzfeed’s recipe. Yum. This was the best turkey burger I’ve ever had, which doesn’t say much, because I’ve only ever had like three turkey burgers, but this was pretty damn good. Even my husband said it looked really good. He was sufficiently horrified that I couldn’t eat it on a roll, however. I swear I took a picture of it but I can't find one so apparently not. Sorry.

Soft-Boiled Eggs with Sweet Potato Soldiers, Roasted Tomatoes, and Kale Salad

This was pretty good, and an interesting idea. It took for-frigging-ever to make, though; there’s a lot going on in this recipe. Again, I hate kale, so I just used romaine. I will say that their instructions for soft boiling eggs are much more accurate than their instructions for hard boiling them; these turned out the perfect amount of runny.

Baked Eggs In Garlicky Collard Greens and Sweet Potatoes

Meh. This was ok. I’m getting kind of sick of eggs and ‘garlicky greens’ at this point. Is this really what vegetarians survive on?

AB&J Smoothie

I subbed peanut butter (see previous posts). This was realllllly good. Definitely tastes like a liquefied PB&J with banana. 

Paprika-Roasted Chickpeas with Crispy Kale on Cheesy Portobello Mushroom Caps

This was also surprisingly good. I had some leftover artichokes, so I threw those in there as well. Tasty. 

Chia Pudding with Blackberries, Coconut and Pistachios

Meh. Same shit different berry.

I also made a veg stir fry with quinoa instead of the goddamn cauliflower rice they seem to love so much. It was good.

Rent a Wreck

Day 5

Breakfast

Chocolate Banana Smoothie

This was by far the best smoothie I’ve made on this challenge or the 2014 version. That being said, I left out the spinach because I was too lazy to pick spinach before work (I didn’t buy baby spinach, I had the regular stuff) and I used peanut butter instead of almond butter. I’m not entirely sure what Buzzfeed’s problem with peanut butter is. I refuse to buy $13 worth of almond butter for no apparent reason. I don’t think the addition of spinach or the substitution of almond butter would have changed the taste all that much, so...anyway, this is so good it’s hard to believe it’s ‘healthy’. Seriously.

Lunch:

Carrot Ribbon Salad with Chickpeas, Figs, and Pistachios in Cider Vinaigrette

Fuck this salad. I spent a decent amount of time last night shredding three perfectly good carrots with a damn vegetable peeler for this garbage meal. The carrots are still not really what I would call ‘soft’, so I spent my entire 45 minute lunch break chewing. My jaw is killing me. I don’t know how I could have gotten them any thinner, so I really don’t think this was my fault. Also, between the carrots and the figs, this salad is cloyingly sweet. The chickpeas don’t do much to cut the sweetness, and they’re also not the same shape as the carrots and figs, so they sort of all end up at the bottom of the bowl. The chickpeas on their own are pretty good, though, so hopefully we will be using the second half of that recipe for something better than this travesty of a salad. Considering how much time I spent chewing, I was hungry half an hour after eating this. I have a 3.5 mile run tonight, and I will be very put out if I’m starving to death because I wasted my lunch on a bunch of fucking shaved carrots. :::End Rant:::

Snack:

Cucumber Matchsticks and Hard Boiled Egg

It is what it is.

Dinner:

Potbelly’s Wreck. I did a 3.5 mile run at 7pm. I got home around 9:45. No way was I actually going to cook.

Are You Eggsperienced?

Day 4

Not a lot of pictures from today because I had some leftovers and I didn’t actually make breakfast. Also, photographing a banana and some carrots is overkill. I’d give today a solid 4/5, diet food wise.

Breakfast:

Banana

I had bird rescue this morning, which meant that I had to be awake at four a.m., which meant that there was no way in hell I was making breakfast. I had a banana.

Snack:

Carrots and hummus

Lunch:

Leftover Roasted Vegetables with Shredded Chicken, Parsley, and Lemon

I left out the parsley and lemon because whatever. This was fine reheated.

Dinner:

Spaghetti Squash with Spinach, Parmesan, and a Fried Egg

This was also (somewhat surprisingly) really good. It’s fairly similar to the first spaghetti squash dish. Again, I had acorn squash because Jewel sucks at carrying things I need when I need them, and I tossed in the remaining ground turkey/tomato/spinach mix from the first incarnation of this. There were only about two tablespoons of it so I figured it wouldn’t add that much, calorie-wise. Tasty.

Bonus: I got props from my chef husband on what he referred to as ‘a perfect sunny egg’. He always complains about how hard it is to get egg orders correct, so I’m pretty proud of myself. It may not have translated super well on film as I had already plopped it on top of my squash mixture and I think some yolk leaked out the bottom, but it was a very pretty egg, originally. 

Night snack:

Almond Milk hot chocolate

This actually tastes really good, but the chocolate never seems to completely melt into the almond milk the way it does with real milk. I’m not exactly sure why this occurs, but it makes the drink a little weird and lumpy looking, and a lot of the unincorporated chocolate sticks to the sides of your mug. Aside from the consistency, it does a pretty good impression of real hot chocolate, with a nice nutty undertone from the almond milk. I didn’t take a picture.

Not a Frittata

Day 3

Breakfast:

Broccoli and Scallion Frittata

I just made this as an omelet, I have no patience (or liking, for that matter) for frittatas. As previously stated, I also am not going to eat the second half of this thing for lunch, because reheated eggs are friggin gross. I made a half recipe. It was good.

Lunch:

White Bean, Cucumber, and Tomato Herb Salad

I made Sunday’s lunch for today because I have bird rescue tomorrow, so I need to bring two lunches to work for the next two days. This was the only one that didn’t use ingredients from previous meals, so it seemed like the best choice. I would have actually eaten it on Wednesday instead of Tuesday, but I didn’t think the sliced cucumbers would make it that long without getting gross.

Anyway, the salad was ok, aside from being kind of boring. I mean, it’s just cucumbers, tomatoes, and beans with some herbs. I couldn’t detect any ginger in the dressing, and there was just a tiny bit of heat from the jalepeno, even though the infused juice sat in my fridge overnight. Meh. I wouldn’t bother making this again.

I haven’t read ahead, but I’m intrigued by what we’re going to be using the infused juice for. I hope it’s a cocktail (spoiler alert: it’s definitely not a cocktail).

Snack:

Broiled Grapefruit with Coconut

Swapped out the sliced apple and almonds for this bad boy. I haven’t actually eaten a grapefruit since I was about 12, so this was an experience. It was pretty much as I remember it. It adds an interesting touch to eat it warm, though I don’t really know if it improved the grapefruit all that much. The coconut was actually a really good addition. Overall, this was good, if you like grapefruit (I do).

Dinner:

Pan-Roasted Salmon with Garlicky Swiss Chard and Cauliflower “Rice”

Salmon: good. Garlic: good. Cauliflower: gooood. Not a lot could go horribly wrong with this, unless you overcook the salmon. I didn’t make the cauliflower into rice, I just chopped it into bite sized pieces (see my previous rant) and I used spinach instead of Swiss chard. I also just pan seared the salmon instead of baking it. I would say just cook it however you normally would cook salmon. I considered grilling it, but no matter what I do, it always sticks.

I was way too tired to actually make a ‘night snack’, so I ate another one of my multitudinous banana popsicle things. I think my containers were small, so I ended up with 7 of them total.

Side note: it took an immense amount of willpower to actually make salmon when my husband was making steak sandwiches loaded in cheese.