Lunch: April 27

Lunch today was an attempt at a variation of red beans and rice. Black beans and brown rice. Included some endamame, spinach, onion, bell pepper, and celery. Opted to go meatless. Had some chili powder in the mix but most of it boiled away.

Need to add spices later in the process because this was a bit bland.

Estimated nutritional content: 300 calories, 53 g carbohydrates, 3 g fat, 16 g protein, 13 g fiber, 205 mg sodium, 685 mg potassium 

Someday I will do some real cooking rather than simply boiling, stir frying or combining a random set of ingredients.

Lunch April 25

Today's lunch was whole wheat linguine with chicken, spinach, onion, mushroom, bell pepper, and Butoni marinara sauce. The chicken and pasta were the dominant flavors; the sauce was secondary. Only used a half cup. Tasted good with no side effects so far. The marinara was in the back of the fridge for a while and looked a bit questionable.

Estimated nutrition information: 457 calories, 56 g Carbs, 10 g fat, 40 g protein, 622 mg sodium, 1106 mg potassium.

Food Preparation Adventures

Today's homemade lunch was a salad. Salads are hard to mess up.

This is a spinach salad with tuna (Starkist tuna pack), grapes, pineapple, walnuts, celery, bell pepper, mandarin oranges, a dash of red pepper flakes and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar.

Didn't use salad dressing because each ingredient has enough flavoring on its own and the vinegar and flakes took the edge off the spinach. The dominant flavor was whatever was in that particular bite. I'm not a fan of salad dressings for salads with flavorful ingredients. Especially, ranch dressing. After all the stuff I put on this salad, topping it off with ranch dressing would have been like taking a giant shit on it. If I want ranch dressing, I'll drink it straight from the bottle.

I'm not a foodie but ranch dressing is wrong for most occasions. It drowns out all other flavors. It is salad dressing version of glitter. Glitter is the herpes of crafts.

Ranch dressing is appropriate for salads consisting of nothing but iceberg lettuce, a bit of red cabbage and some carrot shavings. This is not a salad but a dressing delivery system. It provides a good excuse for consuming a lot of ranch dressing without drinking straight from the bottle because either the bottle is unavailable or you're with people.

I also prepared my own yogurt - Dannon plain yogurt with frozen blackberries (thawed by lunch time). I wanted to cut down on my sugar intake and save some money.

Yes, there is two cups of spinach under all that.

The numbers for this lunch: 548 calories, 84 g carbs, 16 g fat, 40 g protein, 530 mg sodium, 1,576 mg potassium

Adventures in food preparation

This week I'm experimenting with making my lunches rather than using prepackaged food.

The first experiment is replicating the Simply Asia noodle bowls. The experiment is pictured below.

Did use one pre-made ingredient, pre-cooked chicken breast. Ingredients: 2 oz. of whole wheat linguine, 1 tbsp of low sodium soy sauce, one stalk of celery (chopped), 2 tbsp of chopped onion, 1/4 cup of chopped bell pepper, 1/4 cup of edamane (soy beans), 1 tsp of Tabasco, a pinch of red pepper flakes, 1 pre-cooked chicken breast (diced), 1 tbsp of almond butter. Stir-fried the vegetables in soy sauce & Tabasco while linguine was boiling. Heated up chicken. Drained noodles, stirred in almond butter, added vegetables and chicken. Stirred some more. Added a dash of red pepper flakes. Estimated nutrition content: Calories: 437, 36 g Protein, 13 g Fat, 51 g Carbohydrates, 727 mg Sodium, 489 mg Potassium

I didn't work off a written recipe, just threw together the ingredients.

Tabasco and soy sauce were the dominant flavors with a hint of celery. The noodles had an interesting texture. I thought it tasted as good as any of the pre-packaged meals with the added benefit of less sodium.

Cutting down on sodium was the main motivator for this experiment. I trade some time for expense. I enjoyed doing this.

Over two hours since eating this and have not suffered any ill effects.

Maybe I should get a parsley plant for the office to garnish these photos.

Lunch: April 15

Today's lunch: Zatarain's Jambalaya flavored with sausage.

Package versus reality.