In my world there is an unwritten rule that you come when
your friends need. So after I picked myself up off the floor and quick laughing
after a great friend texted that bread “It’s the friend that likes to get you
in trouble and lead you astray!” which kinda sounds a lot like me. Well only
when my friends are under a strict no buying rule and I drag them to warehouse
sales and other random junk type sales. So she mentioned that she needed
to get healthy and I thought oh let me make a list of my favorite things I would like to text her; it's a lot to text so now she gets an entire post! I am not the authority on healthy eating because I am far from
skinny, but I do make a concerted effort on most days to keep the preservatives
and junk food out of both my own and my family’s diet. I have found that small changes in our food has allowed my son to get from and entire shelf of medication to just a single medication each day. I am far from perfect and will take the easy route if there isn't a fall back plan when life gets rough which means processed food and a backsliding effect or cereal; just because I can eat yellow box cheerios and bananas everyday doesn't mean this is a healthy choice or something my family could stand. So long story short these are some of my favorite go to recipes that keep me from backsliding too often. I
apologize in advance for some not so great photos that I took with my iphone,
but I wanted to share a lot of recipes at once and already had these photos for my own use, well maybe a lot are from Instagram.
My favorite quick breakfast food:
No Cook Oatmeal
½ cup quick oats
1 tablespoon chia seeds
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Put everything into a glass jar or microwave safe container
(if you want it hot) and shake until well mixed and put in refrigerator
overnight. In the morning microwave for 30-60 seconds for children and 90 seconds for adults. My secret is I make up a bunch of jars with the oats, chia seeds, and brown sugar in advance then add the milk and any add ins at night.
You can make this Cinnamon Apple Oatmeal by adding 1
teaspoon cinnamon, ½ teaspoon nutmeg, ½ medium apple cut into chunks.
We also like to add a handful of blueberries or a few fresh
strawberries before putting it in the refrigerator.
You can see on the right that there are 5 whole strawberries in the larger jar and none in the smaller. This image is from early on in our kitchen overhaul and you can see how much processed foods I had in my fridge at the time this photo was taken. Remember small changes!
My favorite Smoothie:
Adapted from
this
green smoothie recipe.
Tropical Green Smoothie
1 cup coconut
milk
1/2 to 1 cup of yogurt vanilla or plain (I like to use homemade greek yogurt as
its thicker and less sugar but any vanilla variety greek or regular is still
really good)
3/4 cup pineapple (this works out to 1/2 can of cubed pineapple so I eyball it)
1-2 fresh or frozen bananas (I buy the ones that are reduced then peel them and
freeze them)
2 cups spinach
2 tbsp sweetened coconut
2 cups ice
1 tbsp chia seeds (only if fiber has been an issue)
After several trials with coconut milk we have come to rest
on our favorite brand is So Delicious (certified organic); some of the others
we have tried are super sweet which the kids love but I just don’t like the
sticky sweet smell. Word to the wise put the ingredients in this order in a
traditional blender and opposite order in a magic bullet type blender or its
difficult to get it blended well!
What I do is pour ½ into a glass, then split the other half
into glasses for my kids when we are pairing this with a protein source,
typically nut butter on some type of whole wheat bread (not the kind you buy in
the store but the kind where you see real nuts and grain pieces in it). If I am
using this as a meal, I don’t share but drink it all myself.
You do get bonus points for drinking this out of a jar using a fun straw which just makes the day oh so much better. No this wasn't Easter time, but I love the bunny straw so much. Don't judge my massive collection of books in the background this is where the magic happens!
Our favorite indulgent snack mix:
You know I prefer to make my own cereal, but there are a few
varieties that I buy just because they are yummy and I like them…..yellow box
cheerios and bananas are calling my name....YUM!
Tyler’s favorite...Sweet & Salty Trail
Mix
2 cups rice
chex
2 cups peanut butter cheerios
1 cup banana chips
1 cup dried pineapple (I cut these into small pieces before measuring)
1 bag pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup sunflower kernels (optional we don’t always add these and it’s just as
yummy)
Mix everything together in a large bowl. I then bag this
into 1/4 cup snack size baggies as its super easy to over eat this!
My favorite Chicken
Salad:
I literally
threw this together in my kitchen while looking for an alternative to salad
dressing because my daughter loves to drown her leafy greens in ranch dressing.
1 16 oz can
chicken breast (I also like to use shredded chicken that I have made, it’s
about 1 ½ cups chicken)
2 ribs celery,
chopped
1 small fuji
apple, chopped
3 stalks of
dill, chopped
¼ cup greek
yogurt, start with vanilla while you get use to it then switch to plain
Mix everything
together and put on top of a large bowl of greens and you will think you are
having dessert first when the apples and yogurt flavors co-mingle. You can also
use this in a wrap for a great lunchbox treat.
This is super easy to vary if you are out of something or have something that is getting to the end of its usability. Remember that it's better to use it than throw it away.
I actually made this for dinner tonight using Chobani vanilla yogurt and even my veggie resistant daughter ate it without any griping and even packed some up for her lunch tomorrow. I call that a win!
My favorite
Salad:
This is a
tossup between a couple so I will give you both, neither of which have a catchy
name but are high in the flavor department.
The first I am
not sure is actually a salad and is an adaptation from one of my main source
for juicing inspiration when I began. The original can be found
here.
Black Bean
Salad
1-2 cups mixed
greens (I like this at the office and will use the bagged salad variety that is
typically kicking around the office fridge)
1 serving of
refried black beans (check your can and be sure you stop at 1 serving)
1 serving of
canned or frozen sweet corn (check to make sure you limit yourself to 1 serving
and there is no added sugar. Yes I did say no added sugar, trust me it’s there
more often than its not)
1 tablespoon
shredded cheese (optional but I almost always opt YES)
2 tablespoons salsa
In this the
only thing that I have to heat up is the refried beans, the rest I like cold.
The mix of warm and cold makes this seem like it’s not a salad.
1-2 cups mixed
greens (I like this at the office and will use the bagged salad variety that is
typically kicking around the office fridge, see the theme here)
4 ripe
strawberries sliced
1 tablespoon
shredded cheese (optional but I almost always opt YES)
2 tablespoons
poppy seed dressing
I layer the
salad, cheese, strawberries, then drizzle the dressing on top in this order
everytime…it is an obsession.
We spend hours and hours searching for the perfect produce for our family, get it home wash it, and put it in pretty bowls and feel like Supermom or maybe just I feel like Supermom. Then within a few days the fruit flies are swarming the kitchen. Not only do these little things annoy the crap out of me, in my mind they are little dollar signs swarming around.....this is worse than sweating because I am too cheap to run the air conditioning in Texas when it's 80 degrees in April. Talking about Texas heat how about this for refreshing!
I don't really deal with fruit flies, I just prevent them from attacking my kitchen. 
