Meatless Monday? Almost....

If you follow my blog or other food blogs, you've probably heard of Meatless Monday. Quite simply, that just means eating vegetarian one day a week. I don't follow it as a rule; it's just a concept I have in the back of my mind. I wasn't even thinking about it yesterday but there didn't seem to be any meat in any of the food I ate yesterday! Then I realized it was Monday and I was thinking, Hey, I'm actually doing Meatless Monday without realizing it! And then, as I was eating my leftover spaghetti and sauce, the next two forkfuls I picked up had two tiny pieces of leftover meatball in them....Oh well. Lol! :)

Jazz up your lunch (or dinner) repertoire with Red Tuna Salad

This new take on an old favorite is now my go-to lunch when there are no dinner leftovers available, or at least not enough to satisfy. We are staying at my in-laws who like to keep albacore tuna on hand. Rena just likes to eat her tuna plain with nothing in it. While I'm not usually a big fan of mayo, I get bored if I have to eat my tuna plain. So here's what I came up with:

Red Tuna Salad

(Amounts listed should be enough for just one person; use more if you're serving more than one. You could even put each person's serving in their own bowl to suit everyone's individual tastes, as this is a flexible recipe.)

1/2 can tuna (I've only used albacore tuna but I suppose it couldn't hurt to try this recipe with chunk light tuna.)
1 small red bell pepper, more or less, or part of a larger red pepper
A few mushrooms (optional)
Tomato sauce or salsa to taste
A grain (preferably a whole grain) of some sort -- ready to eat -- such as bread, crackers, cooked pasta, cooked couscous, cooked quinoa...(optional; I sometimes skip this and just eat more of the other stuff) (definitely skip if you are on a low-carb diet)

Chop/dice the red pepper and mushrooms (if you're including them) into your bowl. (No mixing bowl needed if you're making an individual serving; you can go ahead and put it directly into the bowl from which the eater will be eating it.) Add the tuna. If you are using a grain that is in small pieces such as pasta, couscous, or quinoa, add it. Now mix in your tomato sauce/salsa until the tuna salad is mixed thoroughly. If you're using bread or crackers, top them with your prepared Red Tuna Salad. Enjoy!

Hubby asked for fourths of tonight's easy, delicious salad with just five ingredients...

...Though he's a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. He'd asked for salad because he said he needed raw greens! I'd already made him an omelette containing chard for breakfast but I guess my unofficial health coaching is working! :)

Here's the salad that I threw together in a large mixing bowl:

All ingredients were organic. (See this post and the one it links to for why organic is better.)

Four slices Ezekiel cinnamon-raisin bread (you could probably use any other cinnamon-raisin bread, or even plain bread plus raisins, but Ezekiel bread is a complete protein)
Walnuts (maybe about a cupful or more)
One bunch lettuce (not a head of iceberg; I think it was green leaf)
A few small carrots
A little bit of cilantro (you could probably leave that out if you don't have it)

I just broke up the bread into small pieces, tossed in pieces of walnuts, tore up the lettuce into small pieces, attempted to Julienne the carrots, and tore up the cilantro.

What are your favorite random (or not-so-random) salad ingredients?

"Slumber Party" with Hubby! :)

Cross posted in The Daily Yay!

To celebrate my new job, hubby and I decided to have a special chicken dinner. I gave Rena an early, simple dinner of crepes (I make them with coconut oil instead of butter or margarine to cut down on my dairy intake, as I might be slightly lactose intolerant, and to avoid using a product with soy) with some raw tomato and some raw avocado on the the side (she loves them; I don't always have to cook side dishes for her) and then put her to bed. I headed to QFC at the University Village Shopping Center to get kosher chicken, as Whole Foods around here doesn't carry it.

I decided to call my parents on the way. They're three hours earlier, as they live in Cincinnati, but it's ok for me to call them late. They had actually just walked in the door: They'd been out late at the wedding of a local Chabad rabbi's daughter. They reported that there must have been 600 people there and that a bunch of them asked about me. It made me happy to know that so many people in my hometown still think and care about me. Even someone who wasn't at the wedding asked my mom about me recently when she ran into her at a grocery store.

At QFC, I headed to the kosher poultry section. I hadn't seen Empire Organic chicken in ages, but lo and behold, it was there last night! I bought all the drumsticks and left the whole chickens and boneless skinless breasts for others.

Back at home, I preheated the oven to 400 degrees and made a one-dish dinner out of a dozen drumsticks, a couple big bagsful of cremini mushrooms, and a pile of raw cashews; seasoned with salt, red pepper flakes, and a little turmeric; with coconut oil mixed in. Forty minutes later.... Yum! :) Hubby and I ate up all the drumsticks -- we each ate half a dozen and saved some of the other stuff for today.

Then we had fun singing, dancing, joking, and playing around. We do that part of a slumber party most nights, really, but this was special because we were celebrating my new job! :)