Category: healthy eating

January 15, 2015

Healthy Food Prep How-To and Sample Meal Plan

Setting myself up for a week of success starts on Sunday. I am much more likely to stay on track if I have my meals prepped before the week starts. So, my family typically does the grocery shopping after church on Sunday and then I prep my food straight out of the grocery bags when we get home. It has gotten a little bit trickier with an infant to care for too. She slept through a good 1/2 of my food prep this week, but then I had to stir things and nurse at the same time for the other half. A momma’s gotta do what a momma’s gotta do.

Now I’m one of those people that can eat the same thing all week. It has to be tasty though. I’ve made a few duds that I could barely swallow by week’s end (lentil meatloaf, blech!). But I have many old standbys that I make regularly and that I know I’ll look forward to all week.

Tip #1: Start by creating a list of all the breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks you enjoy that you can reference when you’re all out of ideas.

So, each week, I plot out what I’m going to eat at work for breakfast, snack and lunch every day. Every morning, I also have a Shakeology smoothie after my workout at home, so I have to remember to pick up frozen fruit. So, then, I think about all the ingredients I’ll need for these meals and write out what I need on my grocery list. Then, Hubster and I try to figure out at least 5 dinners for the week. We typically either have leftovers, go out to eat, or have dinner with family/friends the other two nights. I try to keep our dinners pretty clean too, but Hubster likes to cook too and it’s not always “nature-made” types of meals. He’s a meat and potatoes man, and that’s ok with me.

Tip #2: Using your list of meal ideas, sketch out a plan of what you’re going to eat for each and every meal for the week. It doesn’t have to be exact, but you should have a pretty good idea of what you’ll be eating and when. This is where it’s much easier to eat the same thing every day for breakfast and lunch. (And a lot of the food we get is in cartons, like Greek yogurt, so it doesn’t make sense to eat it as a snack for only one day).

So, here’s what I’m planning to eat for the week (keep in mind I’m nursing so my intake is higher than normal):

Breakfast: Egg whites + Salsa + Turkey links

Snack 1: Plain Greek yogurt with toppings (pecans and honey)

Lunch: Quinoa with mixed veggies and feta (tomatoes, spinach, mushroom, onion)

Snack 2: Chickpea salad like this

Family dinners:

Beef tips and gravy like this
Easiest crockpot chicken parmigiana ever (chicken + 1 can spaghetti sauce, top with mozzarella)
Teriyaki meatballs (ground turkey + egg + oats + teriyaki sauce, baked in oven)
Turkey stroganoff like this
Broccoli/chicken crockpot meal like this

You’ll notice that not all of our meals are completely clean, but they’re pretty darn healthy and soooo much better than packaged foods or most restaurant foods. My chickpeas and salsa come out of a can for convenience and they’re still pretty darn healthy.

Tip #3: Transfer all ingredients needed for meals onto your grocery list

Here’s my corresponding grocery list. Some of the ingredients we always have on-hand and some we needed to pick up.

Then, we head to the store, of course. We try to stick pretty closely to the list. We may throw one or two non-listed items in the cart, but ideally our goal is to spend $100 per week on groceries (including diapers and pet stuff). So, not only are we eating healthier, we’re also saving money by preparing meals at home and sticking to our grocery list.

Tip #4: Most of your food should come from the perimeter of the store, i.e. the produce aisles, meat section and dairy section. The closest thing to how God made it.

Once we get home from the store and unpack everything, I get to work making my work food for the week. I find that for me, it’s best if I start right away. I’m already up and about, handling all the food. If I put all the food away and get settled in, it’s harder to get motivated.

Food prep doesn’t actually take that long. Well, it could if you wanted to get fancy, but generally I spend an hour or less. That’s one TV show–and I have healthy food for the entire week!

Tip #5: Always start with the food that takes the longest to cook.

Get those things that cook longer in first, especially the ones that don’t require any attention while they’re cooking. I put my acorn squash in the oven first where it went for 1 hour and then started the quinoa on the stovetop for its 15 minutes of cook time. While those things were cooking by themselves, I was chopping and sauteeing veggies and preparing the chickpea salad.

Yummy nighttime snack for the week.

Simply place cut-side down in a pan of water and cook 375 for 1 hour

My pile of veggies sauteeing in olive oil while the quinoa was cooking.

(My lunches consists of just these two mixed together with feta on top)

Quick chickpea salad

Tip #6: Load all your work food for the week in a thermal grocery bag.

Next, I load all the parts of my meals into a big grocery bag and bring it to work for the week. I used to portion out the egg whites and Greek yogurt into individual containers and take one at a time to work every day, but I’ve found that it’s so much easier and so much less time consuming to just bring the whole container to work. I don’t ever forget anything this way and I don’t have to carry a lunch bag every day, just the one bag on Monday that stays in the work fridge all week. I know that the egg white (microwave scrambled eggs) and Greek yogurt containers have just enough for 5 days, so I never have to worry about portion sizes with things like that. The sausages come in 10-packs, so I have two per day–and then I don’t waste plastic baggies on each serving either.

Dinners are just prepared nightly or thrown in the crockpot in the morning, depending on what we’re in the mood for, who feels like cooking, etc. We like fast and easy meals, otherwise we’re more tempted to go out or eat junk instead. I always keep a few extra things on-hand that we can snack on when we get home from school/work like string cheese, baby carrots, popcorn and the above acorn squash. The snacks typically need to be easy and in the front of the fridge so we remember they’re there and don’t grab for something less healthy.

Really, for one hour on a Sunday, this type of preparation is so worth it! It’s so much easier to stay on track during the week and not have to wonder what our next meal is going to be. It’s not as hard as it seems to prep healthy food for an entire family for a whole week. Give it a try!

How do you prep for the week?

November 19, 2013

Yo Yo Dieting Versus Challenge Seeking

Definition of YO-YO DIETING

: the practice of repeatedly losing weight by dieting and subsequently regaining it

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If you haven’t noticed, since I publish all my workouts publicly, I enjoy a good workout challenge. So far I’ve tried Supreme 90 Day, LiveFit Trainer, and 12WBT. I’ve also worked out with the Insanity, Turbo Jam and Turbo Fire series workouts. I really enjoy finding these types of regimented plans to challenge myself and change up my fitness routine.

But a comment in the 12WBT forum gave me cause to pause a moment between plan hopping recently to think about whether or not what I was doing was on the level of yo-yo dieting. Isn’t that what I was doing jumping right from one plan to the next? With a little reflection, it’s easy to see the difference between this type of challenge-seeking and yo-yo dieting. But what exactly is the difference between what I’m doing and yo-yo dieting?

1. I do not give up three days into the plan.

We all know people who start new diets and go hard the first few weeks and then peter off. They pay all that money for weight loss memberships, they sound super diligent about how “this time will be different” and then, after about two weeks, they just can’t keep going for one reason or another. That’s the biggest sign of a yo-yo dieter. A challenge-seeker on the other hand does not give up unless something is really wrong or unbalanced with the plan. I have been known to go off of a plan or adjust them to my own needs when I feel like something isn’t working for me. For example, I couldn’t follow S90Day completely, because the intensity was literally making me sick–my immune system was suffering. And on the 12WBT system, I know that 1200 calories are not enough for me, so I’m adding a little extra lean protein and greens to fill out the plan. However, most of the time, I complete what I start–mostly because I don’t start anything that’s just a fad or a short-term solution.

2. I am consistent.

Not only am I a consistent exerciser and have been for over 11 years straight now, but I am also a pretty consistent eater. I don’t try any diet tricks or crazy supplements. I don’t go on and off diets. I eat almost the same type of thing every day. I love to try new recipes and such, but I consistently eat pretty clean. And I try to keep my calorie range pretty consistent–no crazy variations or fasts for me. A yo-yo dieter on the other hand will try diet after diet after diet. They might undulate calories, restrict calories, make crazy diet shakes, etc. And when they’re off the plan, they’re really off the plan, often binging or returning to their old ways of unhealthy eating. They rarely truly learn what it means to have a healthy sustainable diet.

3. I follow sound medical advice.

My alarms go off when I hear about diets that restrict you to 500 calories a day or require shots of some special serum. I’ve never tried a “detox” or “cleanse,” because those are just hype. And in many cases, those types of diet plans are detrimental. I even shy away from swallowing anything other than a multivitamin and an Omega-3 supplement (because I don’t eat fish). You have to convince me with sound scientific proof before I’ll put anything else like that in my body. Sound medical advice states that fitness is healthy. It states that eating foods closest to how God made them is healthy. Medical advice doesn’t say carbs or gluten are bad. Those are the guidelines that inform my choices.

Yo-yo dieters are often the victims of marketing hype. I mean, those late-night infomercials can be pretty tempting if you listen long enough. And if Dr. Oz says it, then it must be true, right? Even the great and powerful Oz has been known to be wrong. These people and programs have major money and marketing teams behind them, so it pays to do a little of your own research. If WebMd says that there’s no real benefit from drinking apple cider vinegar, then don’t drink it!

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4. My weight doesn’t fluctuate that much.

I’ve had some episodes of unexpected weight gain for reasons other than the yo-yo effect, purely medical. Other than that, my weight stays pretty much within a 2-3lb range. I can tell each day what I should weigh when I get up in the morning. Yo-yo dieters typically lose a bunch of weight when they go all gung-ho over a diet plan, but the second they stop the plan, they often gain all the weight back and then some. I’ve never fallen into this pattern, so I’ve never had to experience those fluctuations.

5. I’m not obsessive.

Ok, I admit, I’m obsessed with the health and fitness industry, but that’s a whole different subject. It’s my passion, so I love to live and breathe it. However, I don’t get obsessive about food, working out or tracking my progress in a way that’s unhealthy. I follow judicious exercise guidelines and only track my food if there’s a reason to (a few extra pounds, an upcoming meeting with a nutritionist, etc). Since my weight and diet don’t fluctuate that much, I don’t obsess about standing on the scale. If I miss a workout–most often because I’m listening to my body–I don’t worry too much about it or try to make up for it. Yo-yo dieters and other disordered eaters, on the other hand, can become quite obsessive about what they’re eating and are often constantly thinking about food.

6. My intentions are different.

I like to try new recipes. The 12WBT is by far the best when it comes to clean recipes. I gobbled this stuff up. I also join these plans not as much for weight loss as for a challenge. As a trainer, I know that my body will just adapt to whatever I put it through, so these types of challenges help keep my body guessing. My intentions are never to drop a bunch of weight and then consider myself happy. I am happy. I am not intent on getting to a crazy end result, I’m intent on changing and challenging my body in new ways.

7. I don’t consider a “healthy diet” to be synonymous with “being on a diet.”

When people talk about “diet,” they may be referring either to what they eat normally or what they eat temporarily. That “diet” word is pretty troublesome and wrought with conflicting meaning. As stated, I am pretty consistent with what I eat and consider how I eat to be how I will eat for the rest of my life. I will never go back to eating rows of Oreos at a time or downing a Mt. Dew with every single lunch. Nor will I ever eat cabbage soup every day for a week. I eat a pretty normal, balanced diet. I hardly ever consider myself to be “on a diet.” Yo-yo dieting is very much a temporary solution. You have six weeks to change your body or three weeks of this soup and two weeks of that. A dieter will often put themselves on a diet for a specified amount of time, after which they revert to not being on a diet. They never really establish a lifelong, sustainable healthy diet.

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8. I don’t believe in quick fixes.

There is no magic diet pill that will strip away layers of fat overnight, as we’re all aware. Losing weight takes effort. I know exactly how hard that is, because I’ve lived it! In order to lose weight, you must do work. Yo-yo dieters often look for simple solutions or someone to do the dirty work for them. The mindset of a challenge-seeker is quite the opposite of a yo-yo dieter. They’re seeking challenge, not seeking the path of least resistance, so to speak. I enjoy new challenges because they push me in a way that I sometimes can’t push myself. They’re motivating to me, not like fad diets that sound a little more like torture.

What do you think?

October 30, 2013

Seven Ways to Stay on Track on Weekends

My worst enemy for healthy living is the weekends. Hands down. All the progress I make during the week tends to be cut down by a few extra handfuls of food here and there. I’m not even talking about gorging on food, I’m just talking about a little extra. Like one handful of cereal and one handful of nuts and raisins, or something of that sort. Once in awhile, Hubster will bring home an extra donut, so there’s that. Maybe my metabolism is far different from others, but still, something’s got to give.

This past weekend, I decided to tackle weekends, and came out the other side with nary an extra pound. Here are some strategies that might be helpful to you if you are struggling with the weekend weight creep monster like I am:

1. Gather Weekday Leftovers: By far one of my biggest problems with weekends is meal prep. I always, without fail, prep for my work week on Sundays. However, I rarely prep for the weekends themselves. Most clean perishable food will not keep for 6 or 7 days. I think even 5 days is pushing it. So my strategy is to put aside extra leftovers from dinner during the week to save for the weekend. That way I don’t have to dedicate another whole night to food prep, but I’ll always have something healthy to nibble on without waiting.

2. Kitchen Makeover: One of the pre-season tasks for the 12WBT is a kitchen makeover. For mine, I had a stockpile of leftovers from a get-together at our house that were haunting me every time I went into the kitchen. Hubster has also been stockpiling yellow M&Ms for a baking project, so guess where the rest of the M&Ms are? In the kitchen! Buh-bye! I threw the extra treats away and forced Hubster to hide the M&Ms if he still wanted them. Call me wasteful, but to me, it’s more of a waste to continue fighting that inner battle and extra layer of outer fat than to throw away a wasteland of junk.

3. Conquer BBQs: Sure, right when I’m trying to get even more super-serious about my eating, a family member goes and throws a potluck-style bbq feast. Haha! We had fun with the party, but I had to use some restraint at the dinner table. Since the paper plates were section-style plates, I just put a little scoop of a few of the best looking dishes in each section. Have a small helping of what you’re really craving and focus the rest on healthy veggie-based dishes for the rest of your meal. And guess what? This past weekend, I didn’t blow any of my progress!

This is just a partial picture of what I was up against!

4. Carry a Water Bottle: at all times! I am really good about drinking copious amounts of water at work, where I’m like 20 paces from a Culligan water cooler. At home though–that’s a different story. I can now tell how dehydrated I tend to get on the weekends by how thirsty I am on Monday mornings. Knowing that sometimes thirst can be mistaken as hunger, I decided to make it my mission to glue a water bottle to my hand from the moment I woke up Saturday morning. I even chugged quite a bit down before that BBQ to make sure I wasn’t trying to satisfy thirst with food or fill my tummy with non-healthy things.

5. Stockpile Healthy Snacks: You can’t just throw away the junk, like step #2 suggests, without finding substitutions or you’ll fail. Make a mental or written checklist of the healthy snacks and meals you have on-hand right away Saturday morning, so you know what to grab. My list included plain popcorn, Greek yogurt and acorn squash. I also made sure those snacks were the first thing I saw in the fridge or cupboard too. Out of sight is out of mind, and I wanted to make sure the healthy stuff wasn’t out of mind when the donuts walked through the door.

6. Chew Gum: In between meals, chewing sugar-free gum is a healthy habit to get into. It signals that you’re done with your meal, making it impossible to continue grazing. Yet at the same time, it’s keeping your mouth and taste buds occupied (and cleans your teeth!) so you don’t continue eating out of boredom. Also, most food tastes gross after you’ve been chewing gum. This strategy really works wonders!

7. Distraction: I find that the more I think about food and hang out in the kitchen, the hungrier I become. So dumb. Leave the kitchen already! I’m never short on projects or goals to conquer, and I find that when I’m immersed in a DIY or writing project, I not only get that much closer to my dreams, but I also forget about food for awhile. There’s no extra grazing or fistfuls of this or that. You see, I spend a lot of my time in the kitchen. It’s one of the places that always has something that needs to be cleaned and always seems to have a meal in progress. But while those noodles are boiling, find something else to work on.

There you have it! Seven bona fide, tried-and-true ways to keep yourself from sabotaging your weight loss progress on the weekends. They definitely have been working for me, so I sure hope they can help you too!

I’m eager to hear: what other ideas do you use to keep your weekends clean?

October 22, 2013

Big Healthy Breakfasts

Some people think of healthy meals and all they can picture are those teeny tiny little gourmet meals where the glaze looks like more of the meal than the meal itself in their mind. Looks a little like this, right?

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Does this ring a bell with you? You feel like you can only eat a tiny bit of food and that you’re surely going to be starving within an hour. I want to show you exactly what I eat for breakfasts quite regularly so we can explore this idea a little more closely.

Let’s dispel those myths, shall we?

I’ve noticed that I can pack quite the doozy of a breakfast for fewer than 500 calories. I mean, we’re talking tasty egg dishes and oatmeal and a smoothie–all at once. See that? I have what appears to be three breakfasts in one! All for fewer than 500 calories, and with tons of lean protein. The best part is, I stay full for several hours with all of this food and I can even have a snack a little later in the morning.

Let’s break it down so you can see how this works

1. One packet of Great Value maple and brown sugar oatmeal, prepared with water. 150 calories

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2. Five egg whites with a pinch of shredded cheese and spices of choice, 91 calories (18g protein!)

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You can also add a ton of veggies and make a veggie scramble, which adds minimal calories and packs a TON of vitamins and nutrients. And aside from salt and pepper, Mrs. Dash is a wonderful way to spice up the eggs.

3. One fruit smoothie or milkshake. My regular morning staple is 1 cup frozen mixed berries, 1 scoop protein powder and water. Sometimes I make a milkshake with a few Tbsp milk, one frozen banana, 1Tbsp peanut butter, water and 1/4c Greek yogurt. 190 calories (or 255 calories for the milkshake)

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Total calories for three breakfasts in one: 431!!!

Then, around 11:00am, I usually have a light snack. Sometimes I’ll make chickpea salad or just munch on a serving of cottage cheese. This usually amounts to another 150 or so calories. So, I’m still under 600 calories by lunchtime.

Wanna know what other myth this defies? The one that says that healthy food takes so much longer to prepare. Wrong! Oatmeal packets take about 5 seconds to prepare. Egg whites can be scrambled in the microwave in minutes and a smoothie prepared in a Magic Bullet takes about 15 seconds. That’s faster than drive-through, my friends! And it’s so incredibly healthy and nutrient-packed that it makes little sense to eat any other way.

Healthy eating really can be that easy…fun…colorful…nutrient-dense…fast… I could go on!

What’s a typical breakfast like for you?

*all calorie estimates were based upon my own ingredients using the Sparkpeople.com nutrition calculator

October 22, 2013

Big Healthy Breakfasts

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Let’s dispel those myths, shall we?

Let’s break it down so you can see how this works

1. One packet of Great Value maple and brown sugar oatmeal, prepared with water. 150 calories

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2. Five egg whites with a pinch of shredded cheese and spices of choice, 91 calories (18g protein!)

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Total calories for three breakfasts in one: 431!!!

Healthy eating really can be that easy…fun…colorful…nutrient-dense…fast… I could go on!

What’s a typical breakfast like for you?

*all calorie estimates were based upon my own ingredients using the Sparkpeople.com nutrition calculator

October 21, 2013

Weekly Meal Planning

Breakfast:

Milkshake: 1 frozen banana + 1/4 c plain Greek yogurt + a dash of milk + 1 Tbsp peanut butter + water
Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal
5 Egg Whites + a Pinch of Cheese

Snack:

Four Amazeballs

Lunch:

Black Bean Stew

Snack:

Chickpea Salad: 1 can chickpeas + 1 chopped tomato + 1 small chopped onion + 1 chopped cucumber + 1 Tbsp olive oil + 1 Tbsp vinegar + 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Dinners:

We have grilled chicken, burgers, subs, and a frozen convenience meal (veggie-based, pretty healthy) on the menu for dinner.

This menu makes me so excited. The Amazeballs are one of the best treats on the entire planet. They taste as amazing as the name suggests. It’s hard not to eat them all when I’m prepping them. The black bean stew just makes me feel all warm inside. It’s just like chili, but it’s super healthy. That full pot of color just makes me smile. I’ve had some serious cravings for maple and brown sugar oatmeal (you just can’t make it the same yourself), so Peanut and I each have a bowl of it in the morning. And a milkshake for breakfast? Um…yes please! It’s important to get excited about your food when you’re eating healthy. It makes all the difference in the world.

I tend to pack most of my calories into breakfast and the beginning part of my day. Reason being is that I work out in the mornings before work, so it only makes sense to pre-fuel and post-fuel. Then, I generally taper off the calories for the rest of the day. It feels much better to go to bed at night with a light belly rather than an over-stuffed one. The morning is when the metabolism starts rumbling and the evening is when it should start slowing down. My food patterns naturally mimic my metabolism.

I’ve been enjoying throwing together these random chickpea salads for snack. It’s almost become a weekly staple of mine. I just throw whatever veggies sound good together with a can of chickpeas. I wrote out above what I threw together this week. A clean dressing of olive oil, vinegar and lemon juice provides the perfect taste for almost any veggie mixture. That salad divides up among the five weekdays perfectly.

Our dinners often change, but we try to always have a rough schedule penciled out. I sometimes eat a little bit differently than my family does, perhaps subbing a Boca burger for a full-fat meat burger and a whole wheat bun for a pointless white one. This week, I’m going to try extra hard to stay out of all the snack-y things we have in our kitchen right now. It’s really throwing off my game.

What are you eating this week?

October 21, 2013

Weekly Meal Planning

Breakfast:

Milkshake: 1 frozen banana + 1/4 c plain Greek yogurt + a dash of milk + 1 Tbsp peanut butter + water
Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal
5 Egg Whites + a Pinch of Cheese

Snack:

Four Amazeballs

Lunch:

Black Bean Stew

Snack:

Chickpea Salad: 1 can chickpeas + 1 chopped tomato + 1 small chopped onion + 1 chopped cucumber + 1 Tbsp olive oil + 1 Tbsp vinegar + 1 Tbsp lemon juice

Dinners:

We have grilled chicken, burgers, subs, and a frozen convenience meal (veggie-based, pretty healthy) on the menu for dinner.

What are you eating this week?

August 19, 2013

Weekly Food Prep

Food glorious food! This is what mine will look like for the week. Spot any protein in there? This is what another week of following Jamie Eason’s LiveFit trainer looks like. Protein plus veggies mostly.

Breakfast:

Banana pre-workout

Smoothie with oats + frozen berries + protein powder post-workout

5 egg whites plus cooked veggies later in the morning

Snack 1:

1/2 cup cottage cheese + chives + chopped cucumber

Lunch:

Squash + brown sugar + raisins

Italian Turkey Burgers with spinach on Sandwich Thins

Snack 2:

If needed, I will have two hardboiled eggs.

Dinners:

Grilled chicken + sweet potatoes

Turkey sausage + potatoes + onions

Pork chops + Brussels sprouts

Turkey chili

Leftovers

Veggie burgers and…um…birthday cake:)

My week will consist mostly of clean eating (with the exceptions of Sandwich Thins instead of Ezekial bread). Saturday might be a different story. We’re having a late birthday party for me since I turned the big 3-0-. I can assure you there will be birthday cake involved, but I’ll still try to balance that will a lot of lean protein and produce. Otherwise, my entire week is planned out to a “T” exactly like shown above. Since the squash isn’t running dry in my backyard, I decided to incorporate them again this week. The chives, tomatoes and onions came courtesy of my backyard too. I love this growing season!

I can’t wait to try the new burgers and have delicious fruit smoothies for breakfast. This is how I spend my Sundays, peeps. Usually it’s church then grocery shopping with Hubster followed by meal prepping for the week. It’s a great way to ensure that the week is full of good things. It also helps me get to work on time when my food is all ready and bagged:) I even have all my vitamins set out for the week. Go me!

What’s in your lunch box this week?

August 15, 2013

How Does Our Garden Grow?

With green pepper bells and pungent smells
and pretty white onions all in a row.

Earlier in the season, I gave you a peek at the planting of my backyard superfood garden. Sadly, we lost our cucumbers, but we’ve been getting quite the harvest off of our humble garden these past few weeks. In fact, one week, I was able to put together an entire week’s worth of salads for my lunches with my abundant lettuce harvest.

Our acorn squash is getting a little over-zealous. Oh wait, I’m the one who was over-zealous by planting not one, but two squash plants in our meager plot. I do that every year:) I know I pack too much in, but I just can’t help myself when it comes to fresh garden veggies.

This week, I’m having a whole week of stuffed acorn squash for lunches. I shared the recipe here. It was just sort of put together with some things I had around the house and the farmer’s market.

I could lose a Peanut in all those squash plants!

While we were gone on our Mackinaw City trip for a week, my father-in-law kept our garden picked. We came home to this ginormous bag of snap peas. I ate from that bag for days and days. It’s so nice to be able to plan my clean eating weekly menu with my own backyard grown produce. It’s going to be a great season!

We have this neat program at work where you can donate all those extras from your garden to local food pantries. I think this idea is genius! We’ve always got too much zucchini or too many tomatoes or a plethora of herbs in our backyard, so why not share the green love? If I don’t eat them all myself, I hope to donate some acorn squash to this cause since that’s what’s currently taking over our garden:)

Did you grow anything this year? What do you do with your leftovers?

August 14, 2013

Clean Stuffed Acorn Squash

Healthy? check
Clean? check
Filling? check
Low-cal? check

What’s not to love about a recipe like that?

Clean Stuffed Acorn Squash

3 whole acorn squash
1lb ground chicken
1 cup cooked bulgar wheat
1/2 carton sliced mushrooms
1 cup chopped tomato
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 onion, chopped

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Slice each squash in half and clean out the seeds and pulp. Place the halves face down in a pan in 1-2 inches of water. Cover the skins of the squash with tin foil. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes, or until the flesh is fork-tender.

While that’s baking, start cooking your ground chicken on the stovetop until done. Drain grease, if there is any (the leaner the meat the better). Add in all your veggies and the bulgar wheat. Saute until everything is cooked through.

Once the squash is cooked through, let it cool a bit and then spoon the filling into the center of the squash and serve. Makes 6 servings.

I separated the stuffing into six different serving containers and wrapped the squash completely in tin foil in order to take it to work for lunches. I heat the filling and squash up separately and then scoop the filling inside the squash bowl at work. It looks like one heckuva meal and indeed it’s pretty darn filling. When I plugged the numbers into the Sparkpeople nutrition counter I came back with just 259 calories and loads of nutrients, vitamins, protein and all-around good stuff!!!!

This meal was a perfect match for the lunch option on the Jamie Eason plan and perfect for this harvest season. I hope to make a Southwestern version with the rest of the squash that’s coming out of my ears for next week. Check back for another taste-tested, Bounsee-approved stuffed squash recipe next week!