Look at my lunch! Sweet and spicy tuna in a de-seeded cucumber. Super light and packed with protein :-)
It could’ve used some mayo but I didn’t have any. This is a great breadless, starchless lunch for those of you trying to eat higher protein/lower carb meals. I’m planning to make cucumber boats using other stuff soon. I think they would be good with chicken salad, regular tuna salad, egg salad …
Okay, enough about lunch. Gotta run!
Turns out marinated and grilled portobello mushroom caps on buns are very tasty. We’d never tried anything like this before but they came out great. We’ll definitely be making them again.
I used this Rachel Ray recipe as a guide on how to cook them. Although her recipe looks good, I was out of balsamic vinegar, so I made a marinade of Worcestershire sauce and oil and seasoned them with salt and pepper before grilling them on a grill pan. I also skipped the roasted pepper paste but I’m sure it would’ve been good too. I did, however, hunt down some smoked mozzarella (pricey but so worth it) to melt on top.
Stats (includes 1 oz. smoked mozzarella):
calories 329
fat 17
carbohydrate 30
protein 14
This is a great base for an easy, light (and meatless) meal.
Tonight was use-up-the-big-bag-of-tortillas night — er wrap night. We had turkey, the same shredded cheese from last night, lettuce, and tomato wrapped up in a whole wheat tortilla. Another light, extremely quick and easy meal.
This is actually a photo of Kevin’s. I over-stuffed mine and it exploded. But it was still very good.
Totals for mine, which included yogurt cheese and jalapeños, with the side of apples, carrots, and pickles added in :
calories 385
fat 13 grams
carbohydrate 51 grams
protein 22 grams
I’ll leave you with a photo of this evening’s beverage, carbonated (seltzer) water with lime, in our fanciest glass …
Tonight we had our version of taco pizza. T-t-tasty tasty! It’s also really light, easy and fast.
These involve whole wheat tortillas, beef with taco seasoning, and the usual toppings: lettuce, tomato, shredded cheese, sour cream, and jalapeños. This time though, I decided to use yogurt cheese because that’s what I had on hand and I wanted to see how it would taste on a taco pizza. I was doubtful because I don’t like it plain (it was made with nonfat plain yogurt) but it was actually a good combination with the jalapeños.
Directions go like this: cook ground beef, add taco seasoning. Take tortilla and put on cookie sheet sprayed lightly with cooking spray (or put on aluminum foil on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray to minimize the cleanup). Put some meat on it, sprinkle on some cheese, leave it in a 450 oven for about four minutes. The tortilla gets crispy and hard enough to hold its shape when you pick it up. Then pile on whatever other items you like :-)
Home slice with his slice ….
Here’s the breakdown for one taco pizza with a little under three ounces of beef, 1/3 cup of cheese, lettuce, tomato, jalapeños, yogurt cheese, and one tortilla each:
Calories 380
Fat 16 grams
Carbohydrate 31 grams
Protein 31 grams
Soup and grilled cheese sounds good. Better than “refrigerator soup” which is what I’ve been calling it all day. Okay, how’s “Garden Vegetable Soup,” or “Vegetarian Vegetable?” You can fancy it up however you like. The reason I made soup today is that I wanted to go to the farmers market for produce but I had no room in the refrigerator. I had to use up what was there before I could go and buy more groceries, so that’s what I did. I had cut up vegetables — celery, onion, broccoli, cauliflower, baby carrots — that needed to go. They were still fresh, but I was ready to move on to different food. I also had shredded mozzarella that needed something done with it and a loaf of whole wheat bread that needs to go.
Here’s what I came up with:
(I threw in some green beans from the freezer too.) I figured I’d calculate the nutrition info and start a page for the nutritionally-minded cooks out there on the interweb looking for meal ideas. While this meal surely could’ve been cleaner or better (depending on whose standards you’re using — more protein, less dairy, lower carb, less dead, more alive, etc. etc. etc.) you could surely do a lot worse. Here’s what I made and here’re the stats:
Grilled cheese sandwiches: two slices whole wheat bread, about 1/3 c. of shredded cheese with a little real butter on the bread and olive oil spray in the pan to prevent sticking. I used 1 tbsp. of butter and I figured about 1/2 tsp. of olive oil between the three sandwiches that I made.
The sandwich had 362 calories, 43 grams of carbs, 15 fat, and 15 protein.
The soup was made up of the vegetables I mentioned plus tomato sauce, canned diced tomatoes, spices, and fresh garlic. It was enough to almost fill a 5-quart slow cooker (The soup only cost me the first 10 minutes of my lunch break today).
Each cup of soup had 51 calories, a negligible amount of fat (.3 grams), 12 grams of carbs, and 2.5 protein. I had about 2 cups (roughly 2/3 of what I had in the bowl — I couldn’t finish it all). It was actually too much food for me, volume-wise, but I ended up with a meal that was 464 calories, 15 fat, 55 carb, and 17.5 protein. Not too bad. Plus it was quick, easy, and my fridge is much emptier!
I think it’s fun when we make our own salad bar at home. On this particular night, we had various vegetables, a few cubed cheeses, some ham, olives, and the stars of the meal: fresh pineapple (so good) and grapes.
Another light but very good meal, and one that doesn’t involve any cooking. Stuff like this is great in the summertime or in December when it’s pretty warm outside, like now.
