Thursday, October 22, 2009

Delish Salads and hodgepodge dinner

Everyone sees my salads and says they look good. Here is what I ate the past two days.

Yesterday - Halfway Cobb Salad
Romaine lettuce - chopped up whole bag and put in Tupperware with wet paper towel on top. Will last for several days that way. Mom's trick I learned years ago! Each evening I make a salad up for the next day.

-Trader Joe's "Just plain chicken" This is flavorless and mushy and comes cut up in chunks already - almost like solid babyfood! For some reason I like it. My tastes really have declined. I think because of my TMJ I'm drawn to mushy foods.

-2 Tbs crumbled Gorgonzola dried cranberry blend from TJs - saves a step!
-1/2 cut up small orange pepper

-For dressing I used a TJs bottled olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing I keep at my desk. I prefer it to be disposable as washing a cruet out at work is kind of icky. Lasts a few weeks and gets tossed.

-Can't remember the carb - must have been a slice of some whole wheat bread.

-I had some walnuts after as I was hungry.

Today - Lazy Woman's Thai Salad
-More leftover Romaine
-more plain chicken, and a few leftover steamed shrimp from dinner last night
-1/2 cup brown rice leftover from dinner, thrown right into the mix
-several pea pods, would have been nice if I actually cut them up, but again getting lazy.
-1 Tbs peanut butter - just glopped it on for added "peanut sauce" flavor
-few slices mango (sadly I must admit I have taken to buying this fresh, pre-sliced and in a plastic container. Horrible, I know)
-another bought dressing - TJs spicy peanut something - not fantastic but making from scratch is pretty labor intensive and I often don't have fresh limes. I actually put this on the night before but tried not to get it on the lettuce, so it wouldn't wilt.

This one was delicious.

Poor Dave got a bowl full of various leftovers - taco beef bits, baby lima beans, brown rice, cabbage strings. I haven't heard any complaints yet.

BTW - To make baby cabbage strings - a great garnish or side...
-Buy one bag shredded cabbage for coleslaw
-spread on baking sheet
-very lightly sprinkle with oo and salt
-roast at 400 for 10-15 min or so
-kind of like a dietetic onion string. Ok sort of - it's no Outback or anything. I made kind of as an after thought as it was getting sad looking, but It would be a great garnish, in the way restaurants do that with onion strings - a nice dinner party trick!

Dinner last night -
-Roast pork loin with garlic, soy and sesame oil
-steamed shrimp
-brown rice
-peanut tofu
-broccoli-slaw salad (can buy broccoli stems shredded like cabbage in a salad bag)

I know this was 3 main dishes but I didn't expect them to all get eaten at once. I was also kind of planning to make "combination pad thai" but with broccoli slaw instead of noodles, and some rice to fill people up. I ate the tofu over the salad, and since I was too hungry to wait for the rice to finish cooking I decided to have extra dessert. Um, not sure about that decision but oh well - ended up eating 240 cals of dessert in 4 bites. Dave ate a lot of everything. Kids complained about all choices. The kids wanted the plain boring overcooked steamed shrimp of all things. Why didn't they want that delicious pork with the homemade sauce???

Of course I gave everyone more choices than they should have had and ended up with far fewer leftovers than I expected. Pork gone. Shrimp - 4 left. Lots of rice. Small amount tofu. Some salad.

Alex ate a bit of rice, a couple bites each of shrimp and pork chopped up orange pepper, which he declared he liked more than he thought he would and Natasha ate a couple pea pods and some shrimp. Neither kid ate much. They were allowed small desserts and I was positive they'd be complaining of hunger later but they didn't. I guess they weren't that hungry.

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