Catchin up on 'What's for Dinner?' Whole Life Challenge Edition(s)

Sunday, September 23, 2012

On Tuesday I got home pretty late from work , and John and I were both pretty grouchy and hungry.  I thought he was probably missing carbs and I was just plain starving, so I offered to make sweet potatoes for us.  They were a quick meal in the microwave, served with butter and salt, and perfect.  We had some carrot and turnip slaw with them, which wound up being a very orange meal...

On Wednesdays John has darts, so I was fending for myself.  On either Monday or Tuesday I'd made quinoa to take along with my lunches (cooked red quinoa, avocado, tomato, olive oil & lime juice = amazing cold salad with great protein), and had a bit of quinoa left over.  I also had a big bag of spinach from my CSA share with Glade Road Growing that needed to be used. 

I sauteed up the spinach along with some baby bellas (grocery store), red pepper (CSA), green banana pepper (my garden) and garlic (my garden), and threw in the already-cooked quinoa at the end just to heat it up.  Awesome, quick, fresh and easy meal.

Thursday night we took the easy route and ate the soup that was left over from earlier in the week.

Friday was a fun one.  I got home a bit late from work, after having stopped off at Eats to pick up a few things (I went looking for, and found, coconut aminos, but also picked up some WLC compliant olives and vegetable juices). 

I knew that on Saturday morning we'd be tailgating.  There is a saying - "when you fail to plan, you plan to fail."  I wanted to plan ahead for the tailgate to be sure we would have the "approved" foods to take.  It's also a good "dry run" for the big Duke game where we'll have a bunch of guests visiting, and will be tailgating all day long with people who may not care so much what our diet is!

I'd tried earlier in the week to make homemade mayo.... A massive failure.  I really wanted to make slaw (which, as it turns out, the slaw recipe I chose didn't need the mayo), and also deviled eggs (which did).   We were out of eggs, so I ran out to the store and picked up two 18-packs (we've been going through eggs like crazy on this diet!).

While I made dinner, John tried his hand at mayo-making and had great success using grapeseed oil.  He whisked the whole time by hand, and it looked so beautiful and perfect in texture...   And then it had a horrible stale taste.  Which, we figured out, was probably because our grapeseed oil expired in 2005 (!).   Whoops.  And... Eww.

We threw that out, and he tried again with some (non-EV) olive oil and the KitchenAid.  That seemed to work...

Except, a 1/2 hour later when I pulled it out of the fridge to make the deviled eggs, it had separated into a not-very-good-eats looking oil slick on top of the thicker mayo-like layer.  :(  I spooned some out to use in the deviled eggs anyway.

On Friday night we needed another quick go-to meal, after all the grocery store running and late start.  While John worked on the mayo, I worked on making our meal.  I defrosted some tilapia filets and marinated them in sesame oil, diced garlic and dried Italian spice mix (oregano, rosemary, basil, marjoram, thyme) while the oven preheated.

I topped them with red bell pepper and banana pepper, and cooked them 25 minutes at 350 degrees.  Meanwhile I steamed some broccoli with a pat of butter and a couple of teaspoons of water and some diced garlic.  Done!

For the game I made Asian Broccoli Slaw.  I was running low on broccoli (after using some for our meal above), so I supplemented it with some shredded green cabbage.  I'd cheated and bought pre-shredded red cabbage to use.

I think coconut aminos may be one of my new best friends...  John used them to marinate some steak that he brought for the tailgate, and declared himself a fan.

Other than the slaw noted above, I also made some deviled eggs. We've been eating hard boiled eggs all week, so I just grabbed a few of those.  The egg yolks and "mayo" were combined with compliant mustard, celery, paprika, salt, pepper and dried dill, and a dash of vinegar, to make the filling for the deviled eggs.  I missed the dill taste of the pickle relish I normally include, but that was just how it was going to be since I didn't have any compliant pickles.  I used celery (for the crunch), dried dill and vinegar (for the taste) in an attempt to close the gap.  They were close, but not *quite* as good as my normal version.  Sigh.  I knew I should've bought the Bubbies Dills at Eats.

Still... Overall?  Good eats.

It's Sunday - big cooking day again to get ready for the coming week!  I have to think carefully about what I'm going to do next week, since I head back out of town to TX on Saturday morning through October 5...!