Avocado Citrus Salad and Spaghetti Squash with Tomato Sauce

Okay, back to keeping track of recipes I try so I know what to repeat and what to avoid.

Yesterday I shared a PDF with a friend. It's a one-week meal plan along with shopping list(s). It's so easy for me to go off the rails if I’m not prepared. I suddenly realize I’m really hungry but don't have time to prepare anything and I’m totally sick of the "grab 'n go" foods like nuts and raisins. So I cave, just this once. (Except I cave a lot.)

So I made myself a weekly meal plan. It's not set in stone. If I go out with friends, I know I will go off the rails slightly. No biggie. When I get home I return to the meal plan.

Here's what it looks like.

On the left, I have the days/meals, in the middle I list the recipe and where to find it, the column on the right is my shopping list (these are not all the ingredients for the recipes, merely the ingredients I don't already have on-hand).

In a perfect world, I don’t eat processed foods, but I also want to choose my battles carefully and I think using jarred spaghetti sauce once a month is going to do a lot less damage than me eating fast food because I didn’t do any meal planning.

I read an article yesterday that mentioned that pomegranate juice (unsweetened) can have the same health benefits as that glass of red wine we're supposed to drink every day. So I am, as we speak, having a 4 oz glass of pure pomegranate juice while breakfast is cooking.

Breakfast... yeah, I think it's a fail. I was trying to do a recipe I found in a WFPB group on Facebook. I won’t share the recipe here because it’s not mine to share (and because I probably won’t be making it again).  It was a potato and bean mixture, fried up (or baked) like a hash brown.  Maybe my expectations were too high.  I think mine cooked for 30 minutes. And despite a ton of spices, I thought they were bland (or maybe I'm just a salt addict) so that white stuff you see on top is salt that I've added.  I also added some unsweetened kethcup.  That helped.  Hey, not everyone is going to like every recipe.  And that’s why I’m keeping track here… so I can remember which recipes I like.

Lunch was much better.  The recipe was Avocado Citrus Salad from the UC Davis Integrative Medicine website.  Usually I play around with recipes, making tweaks and substitutions all over the place.  But this one… I think I only did one thing differently.

The hardest part (most time-consuming) was peeling the grapefruits. For the oranges, I just peeled, segmented, and cut each segment in half, but for the grapefruits, I removed all the skin, peel, and membranes… I wanted only the pulpy goodness of the grapefruit.

And I don’t mean to rub it in (trust me, I’m grateful every day!) but before making this salad I went into the orchard and picked the two grapefruits and two oranges right off the trees.  MMmmmmm!

The dressing has no oil and I didn’t miss it.  I added no salt to the salad and I didn’t miss it.

The recipe calls for toasted slivered almonds… I put some on parchment into the toaster oven, set it to 425, then kept my fingers crossed I’d remember to get them out before they burnt.  I did.  Yay!

My tweak for this recipe was merely to add more almonds to the salad than the recipe called for.  Maybe I was still feeling cheated by my breakfast.  Oh and I also usually use more dressing than a recipe calls for but I gave this one the benefit of the doubt and I was not disappointed.  Perfect amount.

As I was eating, I was (again) thinking about how grateful I am for the opportunity to eat the way I want. I do not take for granted that I have access to amazing, healthy food choices.

Afternoon rolled on and I ended up going back for seconds on the salad.  What can I say; it was yummy!

But then I didn’t feel like making a big ordeal for dinner (as in spending a lot of time cooking) so I went for the spaghetti squash I’d bought for emergencies.  Go figure I’d have an emergency so soon.  I was just feeling rather blah so some warm and easy comfort food was what I needed.

• I put 1½ cups of water into the instant pot, added a steamer trivet, and then the whole squash after poking it with a few knife holes so the steam could escape through the skin.
• I set the IP for 15 minutes of pressure cook with a quick release afterward.
• When it was done, I took the squash out of the pot and set it on a plate to cool while I heated up the marinara.
• LuciniOrganic Spicy Tuscan Tomato Sauce (ingredients: Organic fresh tomatoes, organic peppers, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, parsley, organic carrots, organic onions, organic chili pepper)
• I cut the squash in half (cut it on the wide part not the narrow part if you want the long strands), added some to my bowl, put a couple ladles of marinara and topped it off with a bit of shredded Daiya JalapeñoHavarti Style Block

Thus ends my day.  My meal plan is thrown off a little, but I expect that and roll with it.  I may try the potato pancakes again for breakfast tomorrow since I have a bunch leftover (uncooked).  I will be eating lunch out as I’m taking someone out to an appointment and she wants to treat me to lunch afterward.  

Depending how I feel afterward will determine if I have squash leftovers for dinner or go ahead and make the Cabbage over Rice (which I should since I was supposed to have it tonight… but we’ll see).

These little beauties were from our little garden.

Index of all my recipes