Pizza anyone?

Well, another week is under my belt. Oddly, under my belt my pants fit a little less snugly. Very cool. Those of you who know me don't think of me as needing to lose a belt size, but I have the classic diabetic-prone thick waistline. In fact, when I was a child my parents used to call me "cuadrada", Spanish for square one, because even as a child I had no defined waist, no matter how thin I am, I always have "love handles". So I went shopping. 😊

Back to our journey. Not unlike so many other women, I had a tough week. I had a back ache that took me out of commission for several days. I was not about to work, then stand in front of the stove making dinner. Honestly, the worst days, we ate leftovers and I made a wonderful Moroccan Lentil soup. I love the soup because it has has lots of herbs and spices with medicinal and anti-inflammatory ingredient. It is easily paired with a salad or sandwich. Phil still eats tuna, so he had tuna sandwiches and I had tortillas with avocado.  We ate the soup for two nights. I froze the rest. The following night I put two potatoes in the oven and sauteed some mushrooms and probably had salad. Can't recall. Oddly we can't even eat an entire potato any more, so the next night we had leftover potato. I had come home sore and tired from work, I pulled the soup out of the freezer had it a third night.  Phil added the soup to his potato. He said it was delicious.

Once I started feeling better, I went to the store and bought vegetables and a block of extra firm tofu. We had Korean Caramelized tofu, quinoa, and vegetables. The next evening, I made some "oven-fried" chicken strips to eat with the leftover quinoa and coleslaw. I have decided to eat a little chicken and beef, but only organic*. We now can share one beef steak and have leftovers.

The two-breast chicken package allowed me to make 8 strips. It was as close to fried as I have come to in a long while. We really enjoyed them. I had broken down and bought a package of coleslaw mix. I usually don't like to buy precut, prepackaged vegetables, but honestly, in a pinch they are great. With only two of us in the house, it eating entire head of cabbage can get old real quickly

Yesterday I got back to work and made a vegan pizza. Yup. I made the crust, but I suppose you can buy one. Phil had never eaten a vegan pizza, so I made 1/2 with cheese and 1/2 without. I told him which was which, but he went for the vegan side anyway, as there were more vegetables. 

 

*I do like the taste of beef and will grudgingly eat chicken. I believe we can eat a healthy diet with a smattering of these two ingredients into our diets. My desire to change our diets and lifestyle come from the family history of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. I know if we don't consume any animal fat we can reduce our risk for both. Therein lies another conundrum. Most of the meat substitutes and cheese substitutes are made of soy, which is getting a bad rap for being genetically modified. Therefore, is it better to eat lots of GMO tofu and cheese substitutes or a bit of organic antibiotic free chicken, beef, and cheese? Stay tuned.