Day one--Feeling Great Menu

Or so it says on the menu summary. Here's what we ate today:

Healthier Lifestyle Tea. I didn't love this. The added lemon juice to the green tea overpowered the green tea taste. I may have just as well drunk hot water and lemon juice. After I finished drinking it, I glanced at the recipe and found I had doubled the dose. Oops. Tomorrow I will try it with only one teaspoon of lemon juice and see if that makes the difference.

10-Minute Energizing Oatmeal. I've never been a fan of cooked oatmeal. I can remember in first grade being served it at Lori Tollinger's house--that gelatinous lump of hot yuck. I added brown sugar. No help. I added milk. Nope. I pretended to politely eat it, while stirring it around. I eat oatmeal raw daily, but making and eating this recipe was a big stretch for me.

You know what? I didn't hate it and probably could eat this again. The cinnamon/molasses flavor was quite a good combo and adding the milk after the fact made it more like soggy cereal. A good find, and worth the adventuresome eating. Matt liked it too.

I'm noticing we were also supposed to eat 1/2 cup blueberries and 1/2 fresh papaya with breakfast. Oops.

Snack: 1 medium banana, 1 TBS almond butter. I will not eat bananas. I don't like them. My one pass this week is anything involving bananas. We had an apple, sliced and peanut butter. But I have a genetic abnormality that precludes scooping only 1 tablespoon of peanut butter. We had more. I was worried too that I would be very hungry, so I was padding our diet with peanut butter.

Lunch:
Healthy Turkey Caesar Salad 2. Can you visualize four cups of lettuce? It's roughly the mass of a 12-week kitten. It's a lot of lettuce. A lot. Then I added a tomato, 1/4 cup cucumbers, 1/4 cup mushrooms, 1 cup kidney beans, 2 oz turkey and 1 tablespoon sunflower seeds. This was a huge salad. It involved a lot of chewing. The dressing ratio was totally off: 2 tablespoons lemon juice to 1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil. I would have reversed those numbers if I was making the dressing. Also, I'm not sure what makes this salad "Caesar" unless it is the 1 tablespoon of Parmesan cheese added to the dressing. Kidney beans in a Caesar salad? Mushrooms in a Caesar salad? I quibble with the naming.

Remember how I was worried about Matt and having enough food? He could only finish half. When I asked him how he liked it, he said, "The flavors were weird at first, but I liked them eventually."


Snack: 1 medium apple. Ate it.

Dinner:
3-Minute Guacamole with Crudites: This was easy to make (though not actually three minutes) and I thought it was very good. It made a nice portion, too, for an appetizer. Matt's feedback. "What is that tart taste?" he asked me. We figured out it was the lemon juice. He's not a fan. And there is a lot of lemon juice in the healthiest food, it appears. I juiced three lemons yesterday in the course of cooking, which is more than I have juiced in the last three months combined. WHF loves lemons, so I will be buying more when I go to the store. Matt didn't eat much of his guacamole.

Salmon with Dill Sauce: Do you know how small a serving 1/3 of a pound of salmon cut in half is? Very tiny. The guy at the counter claimed he couldn't cut me 1/3 of a pound, instead, I took home .44 of a pound. Which was good, because I was splurging a little on the fancy salmon. Then, the dill yogurt topping makes a ton. I just went with it. It was actually delicious and I really liked the salmon cooking technique. This one is a keeper.

5-Minute Broccoli: Once again, can you visualize 1 pound of broccoli? A huge amount. HUGE! We both couldn't finish. Eating a half pound of steamed broccoli was too much for us. While I was making the recipe, I was wondering, would I ever combine feta and broccoli? Nope. It was fine. I may make this again.


Optional Dessert:
5-Minute Grapes with Honey-Lemon Sauce: I bought stuff for the optional desserts because I was worried about being hungry. It turns out that wasn't necessary. But this was another winner. I'm not the biggest grape fan, but the honey lemon (with lemon zest) topping was a great balance to the grape flavor. I also kind of sniff at the idea of fruit for dessert, even if I know fruit makes a delicious dessert for many people. This was delicious, and very dessert-y. We both ate it all.

I spent about two hours cooking today. Not sustainable during non-vacation times, but fun for vacation.

Day one summary in 9 words: no longer worried about being hungry, out of lemons.