Tilapia

So, I did not follow Eat for Health today. I bought tilapia with every intention of following the EfH recipe, but when I went to make the fish I could not find my EfH book!

I decided to fix the tilapia anyways. First I sprayed each piece of fish lightly with PAM. Then I dredged it in a combination of flour, whole wheat bread crumbs (I made some toast and put it in the food processor), and a mix of Cajun spices, salt and pepper. After each piece of tilapia was coated in the flour mixture, I pan fried them with a small bit of oil, 3-4 minutes each side. I placed each fish fillet in a 300 degree oven to keep warm as I made the next one. At the very end I combined some butter, garlic, parsley and fresh squeezed lemon juice on the stove and poured it over the fish. I made 4 tilapia filets so that we would have leftovers for tomorrow's lunch. We ate it with some brown rice and fruit on the side.

It was soooo yummy! Andrew declared that it was the best fish I have ever made. I'm not quite sure about that, but it was tasty. I'll have to buy some more fish now.

Elspeth's 2nd Birthday

Summer wanted a healthy cake for Elsie's birthday party. Before we went to the Olive Garden for the birthday dinner I baked the cakes in my fluted round tart pans. When the cakes were cool I filled them with a mousse whipped from a package of cheesecake Jello pudding mix, an envelope of Dreamwhip and 1 1/2 cups milk. After dinner Matt stopped at Costco to get the fruit sorbets and I went home and decorated the cakes with fresh fruit.

"Mommy, come and help me blow out the candle!"

Oops! The candle fell over!

No problem. The candle was still buring so Summer righted it and Elsie was able to blow it out (with a little help from Mommy and Daddy!)

Baked Beet and Brown Rice Salad

Today is September 1st. That seems like a good day to start back on the Eat to Live program. This last month has been full of company and trips with lots of junk food and eating out. I've gained some weight and just don't feel that great. There definitely need to be some changes. I don't think I'll go through all the recipes in the "Eat for Health" book like I had thought before. I'll instead use healthy recipes from lots of different sources.

Today I was looking through our fridge to figure out what to throw away and what needed to be used after my trip to take Andrew back to BYU. I found some beets that needed to be used. I had used the tops for a green smoothie 2 weeks ago and had forgot about the actual beets.

The recipe for this salad comes from "Veginomicon". I've wanted to try it for several years. It was very good. The beautiful pink color from the beets and the pine nuts and thin sliced scallions on the top added extra pizzazz. Mark said that he doesn't really like beets that well, but he liked this salad. He said it was the most delicious beet dish he'd ever had. Definitely a keeper.

We also had green beans from our garden and a green salad that featured cucumbers and cherry tomatoes from the garden. We also had some leftover vegetarian chili.

Cuban Black Beans and Brown Rice

This has been a crazy week of barbeques and potlucks so I haven't posted. For one of the barbeques I needed to take a salad. I used the leftover Pasta with Roasted Vegetables from a few days before, added romaine, feta cheese and italian dressing, making it a Roasted Vegetable Pasta Salad. I got several compliments on it. Go figure. The original recipe had made so much that everyone was pretty much tired of it by that time. It was a nice little ressurection.

We remade the Sweet Potato Stew again yesterday, but I didn't take pictures since it was included in a dinner last week. We had the Cuban Black Beans and Brown Rice today with Summer's family. Everyone loved it (except Joe who hates tomatoes and Josh who informed us he doesn't like rice). I thought it was very good.

We also made the banana ice cream from Eat for Health. In the jana/drjoel blog, she added strawberries and dates. I thought that sounded nummy so I tried it that way. About half way through blending my VitaMix motor stopped. It was totally dead. Matt drove over to their house and brought back their BlendTec. Before the ice cream was done his blender was smoking and giving him messages that the motor was overheating! We went ahead and ate the ice cream at that point. It had small little pieces of dates in it, but was still wonderful. Unfortunately, it was all so stressful that I didn't even think of pictures. We'll have to try the recipe exactly as it's written next time and hopefully get some pictures. (btw, I read my VitaMix owner's manual and after 45 minutes the machine reset itself and everything was good)

Tomato Barley Bean Soup

On the Jana/DrJoel blog, Jana's husband complains that the meals aren't salty enough. This one was definitely not too salty. I substituted organic low sodium beef broth for the vegetable broth because I thought that sounded good with barley. It was still pretty bland. I think as I get weaned from salt I probably will really like this soup. Mark said he would eat it again. I told Dad to go ahead and salt it if he wanted to. I noticed that he didn't and just ate it as it was.

Green Beans with Gado Gado Sauce

Love this! Andrew thought that this was a great dinner. He loved the flavors in the Gado Gado sauce, but he told me that the green beans were too crunchy and the sauce was a bit bland. I agree with him completely about the green beans. I didn't steam them long enough. I really enjoyed this and I will definitely make it again. The recipe was fairly simple. The sauce was quick to make and it all came together really well. There was enough left over for my lunch tomorrow. Maybe the beans wont be as crunchy after a night in the fridge.

Turkey Spinach Burgers

We took the day off Eat for Health yesterday because we got home late from our Eagle Creek hike. Oops. Doesn't look like we'll finish before I take Andrew back to BYU! Oh well. We'll finish after I get back from Provo at the end of August. I almost took pictures of our Panda Express takeout last night and pretended it was day 3's EFH dinner!

Today was fast Sunday and I just did whatever was quick from day 3. That ended up being the turkey spinach burgers since I had everything ready from yesterday. The burgers were very good! We ate them on whole grain buns with watermelon and the leftovers from the last few days. Everyone agreed that they were very tasty and we'd enjoy having them again.

Pasta With Roasted Vegetables

Today was day 2 of Eat for Health. I notice that I'm not using the breakfast and lunch menus because things have been a little crazy during the day. This is the main dish from day two's dinner menu. I made a few small changes. Instead of eggplant and yellow crookneck squash I substituted zucchini and baby bella mushrooms. That was just what I had on hand. We also had a green salad and watermelon with our dinner. We all thought it was good and would like to try it again.

"Eat for Health" day one

This is the Braised Bok Choy. It looked so pretty that I wanted to take a picture of it on its own.

Here is the bok choy with the Spiced Sole (I didn't have Tilapia or Haddock on hand) and Chunky Sweet Potato Stew. The flavors of this dinner were very complimentary. The stew said it served 2 people. The four of us each had generous portions and we still had a full cup of stew left over. Everything was VERY tasty. We didn't fix the brown rice or the Poached Pears with Raspberry Sauce for dessert. We did start with a romaine salad, though. Everyone agrees that this whole meal is a keeper and that we want to someday try the pears.