Say Yes to Salad

confessions of a sometimes vegetarian

February 9, 2012
by Maggie
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The Last Post.

I enjoyed the past 4+ years of writing and blogging here so much, but it is time to move on to another chapter of the salad life. Keep saying yes to salad. Namaste to all.

*If you visited this blog last night, you may have gone to a page that said the blog was private. I debated closing it down for good, but I like having a record of my recipes. I may go through and edit past posts over time to make this less of a personal blog and more of a resource. Thank you again for reading; I hope you enjoy!*

February 8, 2012
by Maggie
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beets for brains [wiaw - what i ate wednesday]

to continue the meal of the day theme, i’m doing my first what i ate wednesday.

breakfast was oatmeal + fruit (melon and grapefruit) + cinnamon from my work cafeteria. i’d say it’s a good 1 cup of oatmeal (cooked) and another cup of fruit. i get this most mornings if i don’t have yogurt + fruit.

for lunch i brought yogurt + banana, and baby carrots + halal dip (the dip that comes with street meat – if you’ve never had it, oh my gosh you are missing out – the best one is on 53rd and 6th ave).

i planned on supplementing this with some kind of snack, and this is what i got…

we have a “snack shack” that opens after the cafeteria closes for lunch and they sell (at a discount) stuff that didn’t go during lunchtime. so this slice of veggie whole wheat pizza (i think vegan? with mushrooms and sauteed kale) was just $1.09. it was big, filling, and i think healthy enough. it was also quite delicious.

for dinner i was craving veggies, so i just cooked up beet greens in butter, steamed a large beet, and topped them together with about 2T brewers yeast (after seeing HEAB eat it often). i also roasted an entire kabocha squash – 450F for about 25 minutes.

to be honest, i usually eat more than this! but i’m very happy with my eats today. everything was exactly what i was craving. and i was accidentally vegetarian.

what did YOU eat today?

p.s. why beets for brains? because i’m currently exercising my brain by taking stanford’s free online machine learning course. if you’re into programming i highly recommend it.

February 7, 2012
by Maggie
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Meal of the Day #2

Quick and dirty post tonight.

meal of the day #2.1

This was European yogurt from Trader Joe’s (chocolate flavor) with a banana. A very simple breakfast meal.

meal of the day #2.2

And this was cheesy veggie pizza from Lombardi’s for dinner. Imagine this x2 :)

What have you been having for breakfast this week? Do you like pizza?

February 6, 2012
by Maggie
5 Comments

February Goals + Meal of the Day #1

meal of the day #1 – february 6

This was breakfast/brunch yesterday. I cooked up 4 eggs in bacon fat with onions and chopped Brussels sprouts (split between me and the hubs, I think he got about 2/3 of it), a cup of Irish oatmeal (he got more of this as well), nitrate/nitrite-free bacon (this is the “bits and pieces” from Trader Joe’s – it’s cheaper than the regular strips, but made of the same natural stuff – we split-ish, Bobby probably got a little more), and steamed kabocha squash (I took all the squash).

***

Back in January I laid out some goals for myself for this year. I decided to take them one at a time, a month at a time – seemed more reasonable than doing 12398438 goals at once. My initial goals for January were:

  1. Food – Cut the artificial sweeteners completely
  2. Life – Read a book for 30 minutes a day.

january goals – update

Now, I don’t think I completely succeeded at either one, but I did make good progress. I think I read 30 minutes a day at least 5 days a week for all of January, so I will call that a win. Nice! I’m still not finished with the book I got for Christmas (Bill Bryson’s Made In America), but I’m almost done.  I think I want to add fiction novels to the mix in February because I tend to get distracted when I’m only reading non-fiction.

I went in and out on the artificial sweeteners one. One day I would be adamant about not having Diet Cherry Pepsi; other days I caved. I’m guessing this was a 50% fail rate. So it needs work. One thing I noticed was that I tended to use the excuse, “I’ll have this soda instead of that cookie my coworker brought in,” but then I would end up having the soda AND the cookie! So that is not valid, not valid at all.

I didn’t have a good way of tracking these goals – so I will do that for my February ones.

february goals – food and life

  1. Food #1 – ditch diet soda (continued).
  2. Food #2 – no snacks 2 hours before bedtime (eep hard for me).
  3. Life #1 – keep reading 30 minutes a day; add fiction books.
  4. Life #2 – go to sleep by 11:00pm 5 nights a week (eep this is also a killer).
  5. (*general – track these in Google Calendar or a Google Doc – tbd*)

There is another thing I’m going to do in February but I don’t want to include it as a goal, because I don’t want to have more than 4 goals hanging over my head. It is to post one meal a day (see above) for the rest of the month. February is a short month so I only have 24 meals to post, including today. I have been taking lots of meal photos because of that Eatery app I mentioned.

Do you have any February goals? How are your new year’s resolutions working out?

P.S. Woohoo Giants! Who were you rooting for? I brought this large plate of veggies and hummus to a super bowl party last night and they were a big hit. The favorites were baby carrots and the peppers.