It's a lemon and tarragon kind of day

I'm guessing it's lemon season right now.... Can anyone confirm?

In the last month, we have received a whole bag of lemons from my grandma, a whole bag of lemons from Rommel's parents, a few lemons from a friend, and my coworker also brought in a giant basket full of lemons. Before I'm even finished using the ones I already have, someone else gives us more lemons.

I was thinking of making a nice big batch of some sort of lemon vinaigrette. Lemon and tarragon go nicely together. But instead.... typical me.... I started with one idea and went lemon tarragon crazy.

For dinner we had....

Salmon seared on a cast iron with skin side down to create a nice crispy skin then finished off under a broiler then drizzled with some lemon tarragon vinaigrette.

Green beans with garlic, toasted almonds, lemon tarragon vinaigrette, and more fresh tarragon.

Simple salad with baby spring mix lettuce, cucumbers, and lemon tarragon vinaigrette.

Leftover brown rice quinoa pasta noodles with a red pesto sauce - SOMETHING had to have no lemon and tarragon, right?!

I have a nice little batch of lemon tarragon vinaigrette to use for salads for the rest of the week.... Hmmmmmm what else can I do with lemons besides the usual marinades, squeeze on cooked fish/chicken/veggies, and salad dressings?

Quick & simple soup & salad

I put together this meal when I got back late at night last week from Vegas. I was tired from traffic and the long drive so I didn't want to cook anything too complicated and I also wanted something light because of all the crap I had eaten that weekend.

I threw together spring mix lettuce, baby kale, bell pepper, celery, red onion,  already cooked mini shrimp, and raw tofu sprinkled with furikake and drizzled with soy sauce to flavor. I made a salad dressing out of sesame oil and rice vinegar that I let sit and infuse with garlic and ginger while I prepared the rest of the salad.

The Asian-inspired flavors of this salad worked well with this Trader Joe's Miso Ginger Broth that I had on the side.

I really just wanted something light, so I had this broth plain and it was pretty yummy on its own. But I could see this making an amazing simple soup with some tofu, mushrooms, and/or green onions added to it.

Perfect gifts

How perfect are these gifts for me?

I had been eyeing this Trader Joe's holiday gift set trio of roasted nut oils as soon as I saw it on the shelves. I really wanted it but wouldn't buy it. Good thing I didn't because my brother gave it to me for Christmas - along with a mandoline slicer that I also really wanted!!! Maybe I somehow subconsciously knew he was going to buy it for me, so I didn't already buy it for myself.

And I got this trio of champagne vinegars at a white elephant. At first, I felt kind of bad that I stole this gift from a toddler, but I think he was much happier with the transformer toy he ended up with instead.

Anyways, loving these holiday gifts! Perfect for all the salads I have been making!!!

Rommel is frustrated with me.... "Margo, do we really need to have 11 different kinds of oils and 8 different kinds of vinegars in our house???"  YES. :P

Meal Planning

Meal planning - seriously one of the best ways to make sure you stay on track.

I know when I don't plan, I tend to stray.... I end up eating out or I binge eat any unhealthy things I can find in my kitchen.

Make sure your kitchen is always stocked with ingredients to make your meals. Make sure you always have quick healthy snacks on hand that you can just grab and munch on. And most importantly (for me at least), make sure you have something to satisfy your serious chocolate cravings... haha. I like to keep a bar of dark chocolate hidden away for absolute emergencies.... If I have a bad chocolate craving and don't have any chocolate, I will end up eating everything in sight and never get full until I have some chocolate..... it's really a problem.

If you're like me and tend to be very busy all the time, plan out your meals in advance! It will help you to stay on track, so you don't have to stress about it when you're hungry. And always have healthy snacks on hand too!

Examples:

I baked a big breakfast fritatta for Rommel and I to slice up and have for breakfast for the next few days.

Frittata (mostly egg whites) with broccoli, onion, jalapeno cheddar, and leftover ham from our NYE dinner

Last night while making dinner and our breakfast frittata, I marinated some chicken, grilled it, chopped it up, then saved it to throw on my salad for lunch today.

Chicken breast marinated in lemon juice, lemon zest, garlic, and dill

Salad with heirloom spinach, arugula, grilled chicken, dill, green onion, lemon juice, and pumpkin seed oil

For dinner tonight, we have  lentil soup cooking away in our slow cooker right now :) I prepped everything for the soup last night so it is quick to throw in the slow cooker this morning. All veggies chopped up in a bag with herbs and dried lentils. Tube of tomato paste sitting on top of the bag in the fridge, so I didn't have to search for it. Chicken broth and all seasonings sitting right next to the slow cooker.

All the ingredients ready to go!

Everything thrown in the slow cooker in 1 minute this morning!

Tonight, I will marinate some flank steak, grill it, and chop it up for our lunch salad tomorrow.

Tonight, I will also start to prep dinner for tomorrow night. I will bake a spaghetti squash and get ingredients ready to make make marinara sauce in our slow cooker tomorrow morning. I also saved a little bit of the grilled chicken to mix in there.

Happy New Year! Eat well, plan well, exercise, and meet your health goals!

Souplantation Express

LOVE that one of the few Souplantation Express that exist is right by my office! When I don't have time to pack my lunch, it's perfect for staying healthy on a busy day at work because I can place my order online in advance. When it's ready, I just head over there, walk to the front of the line, pay, then bring my lunch back to the office to eat there if it's busy and I need to work through my lunch. It's only $6 which is a pretty good price for buying lunch considering the size of the salad (it's huge) and all the ingredients seem pretty fresh (don't taste like they've been sitting out for a while).

Today I had a salad made up of spinach, spring baby lettuce mix, celery, mushrooms, cucumber, cabbage, bell pepper, black olives, hard boiled eggs (for some protein and fat), edamame (for some protein), pepperoncinis, tofu (for protein), sunflower seeds (for healthy fat), avocado (for healthy fat), red onions, broccoli, red chili flakes, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. When I'm super hungry or if I know I won't have time to eat a real dinner later that evening (my situation today), I try to make sure I add a good amount of ingredients rich in protein and healthy fats to keep me full longer.

Today was also the first day that I saw they had their Asian ginger broth as one of the options for a soup - I've only seen this in the actual Souplantation restaurants before. It's only 50 calories for a cup of broth and tastes sooooo yummy, so I also grabbed a cup of that to go with my salad. I added tofu, green onions, and red chili flakes to the broth and it was sooo yummy. And I'm not even done with my food, but I'm super full right now! :)

Emergency lunch

I always have ridiculously busy weeknights and a lot of nights I'll get home late without getting a chance to prepare lunch for the next day. And I'll also wake up too late to prepare it. So I try to always leave healthy snacks and emergency lunch supplies in my office desk and fridge to prevent myself from eating out for lunch or even prevent myself from starving all day and end up binge eating a bunch of bad food at night... I usually try to make sure I leave some nuts, Trader Joe's instant miso soup, string cheese, yogurt, spinach, and salad dressing in my desk or fridge at work. My company also started providing healthy snacks for the office - usually fruit and granola bars. I try to always opt for the fruit since the granola bars have a lot of added sugar. I also like to keep a good stash of really yummy teas that I bring in from home (to have in addition to the teas my company provides for the office) because sometimes I'm not really hungry but I just have a craving to taste something yummy in my mouth - tea TOTALLY satisfies that craving for me. Btw, current tea obsession = Chocolate Yerba Mate, rose petal tea, and Celestial Seasonings Honey Vanilla Chamomile mmmmmmmmm.

Anyways.... today was one of those days where I didn't have time to pack a lunch. Luckily, I have all my snacks and emergency lunch supplies in the office!! As I was leaving the house, I looked through my fridge and found a boiled egg to eat as my mid-morning snack and part of some leftover avocado to add to my salad. I also found an almost empty container of fat-free cottage cheese, so I added a spoonful of sugar-free jam to the container so I can have a protein-rich afternoon snack that will satisfy my sweet craving. I grabbed all of these quickly and ran out the door this morning.

Here is what I threw together for lunch!

Salad made of spinach (stored in my fridge at work), avocado (grabbed from home this morning), Trader Joe's hummus salad dressing (stored in my fridge at work), and some red chili flakes (I found one of those little packets of chili flakes you get with pizza that someone in my office had saved). I also had a reduced fat cheddar cheese stick (stored in my fridge at work) and some Trader Joe's instant miso soup (stored in my desk at work)

Workout at work!

I recently got the idea from my coworker to do quick work-time workouts! It's probably one of the best workout decisions I've ever made. I used to rarely ever take my two 15 min breaks the California law is required to give us - only when I was so tired and my brain couldn't function anymore I would step outside for 10 minutes and take a slow walk to clear my head.

My coworker brought up that he takes his 15 minute breaks even if he's not tired and just walks anyways. He sets his alarm for 7 minutes, starts walking, then when his alarm rings, he heads back to the office. If you take both of those breaks, that's already 30 minutes of walking! And even better if you speed walk! If you add in 30 minutes at lunch, that's a WHOLE HOUR! I didn't realize how much it adds up until I heard that! So I started doing it too and I feel awesome :) I'm much more energized, work more efficiently when I get back to the office, plus get a good amount of extra exercise for the day.

A lot of times I don't make it out to walk all three times every day, but I try. Most of the time I'll get only two walks in, but it still adds up!

Today I made the decision to add a few simple strength exercises in to my lunch time walk. So instead of setting my alarm for 15 minute to walk out during lunch, I only set it for 10 minutes then I stop to do some exercises before walking the 10 minutes back. I didn't want to get too crazy because I don't want to show up at work super sweaty, so today I did a 1 minute plank, 30 second side-planks on each side, and 10 push-ups. Then I speed-walked back to my office and ran up the three stories worth of stairs to my office two steps at a time, so that my heart rate was still up when I sat back at my desk. I only spent a little over 20 minutes out there, so I still have time to eat lunch at my desk and write a little post right now :P

I didn't want to do anything too crazy for strength today, but I think tomorrow I will have to add more. It was a little too easy. Maybe I'll repeat everything another time and add some tricep strengthening also - my triceps are WEEEAK.

On my way walking back to the office, I saw a food truck along the street called Epic Eatz. It's supposed to be San Diego Surf style foods. I saw they had halibut ceviche and ahi poki on their menu.... MMMMMM I think I need to try that when they are back next Tuesday.

http://epiceatz.com/

Also, I just ate a really yummy and simple salad that I brought from home! Mache lettuce with micro-basil, mini heirloom tomatoes, half of a part-skim mozzarella string cheese sliced thin, balsamic, olive oil, salt, and pepper. So yummy! That micro-basil really does it, I think.

For a mid-afternoon snack, I brought a plain brown rice cake (one of those crispy puffed rice cake things) with some of Trader Joe's flaxseed almond butter to spread on top

Yummmmm this stuff is AWESOME. http://www.traderjoes.com/fearless-flyer/article.asp?article_id=374

Another quick, yummy salad

This was another quick salad I threw together this morning as I was rushing to leave for work. I honestly just threw in some things that I already had on hand that I thought might work together, but it turned out much better than I expected! I'll have to make this again for lunch sometime :)

Baby mixed lettuce, cooked quinoa, avocado, raw pepitas, nectarine, Trader Joe's light champagne vinaigrette, and a generous sprinkling of black pepper

Quick meals

Another morning where I have barely any time to have some breakfast and prepare a lunch for myself before work... Luckily I try to make big batches of plain quinoa to store in the fridge and quickly add to almost any food for some complex carbs with lots of nutrients!

This morning I took some of the quinoa, added a splash of milk an some Splenda and warmed it up in the microwave to make a hot cereal. I topped it with a light drizzle of chocolate syrup and some dried cherries because I was craving something sweet. This held me over until about 1pm for lunch with no snacking!

For lunch I had to put together something really fast before I left for work so I grabbed some mixed lettuce greens, more quinoa, some blueberries, and a bottle of trader joe's light champagne vinaigrette (pretty good option for pre-made salad dressing that's low in calories, fat, and sugar) and made this yummy salad! I also grabbed a mango to slice up at work to eat on the side. Yummm.

Asian Salad Dressing

So I have this Asian style salad that I ALWAYS make. It's pretty much my favorite salad ever - I throw it together all the time. And I always get requests by friends and family members to make it. I make the dressing from scratch, but I've never written down a recipe for it until a few days ago. I'm not really a recipe type of person - I usually just go by what feels right and tasting as I go. But at least now that I have  finally written down the recipe, I can make my favorite salad dressing taste exactly the same every time!!!! This probably isn't something that I should be that excited about.... but honestly this is an awesome dressing. It deserves some excitement.

I love this dressing because it is a great blend of pretty much all great flavors: savory, sweet, sour, salty, and spicy. I usually make it in a salad with whatever veggies I have on hand (carrots, cucumbers, celery, bell peppers, etc..) and load up the salad with A LOT of sliced green onions and cilantro - I seriously think this is what makes this salad so good. If I have some leftover chicken, I'll throw that in too - especially when the chicken had marinated in a little soy sauce and garlic or one of my fav marinades, Trader Joe's Island Soyaki. Then sprinkle the whole thing with sesame seeds and some of the dressing. Yummm!

See??!?! Doesn't this look like an awesome salad? Too bad I forgot to take a picture of it all mixed up - it looked even better... Now on to the dressing recipe:

Asian Salad Dressing:

Ingredients:

- zest of 1 orange

- 4 cloves garlic, grated

- 1 inch knob of ginger, grated

- big pinch of red pepper flakes

- 2 tbsp Miso paste

- 5 tbsp soy sauce

- 6 tbsp rice vinegar

- 5 tbsp mirin

- juice squeezed form half an orange

- 8 tbsp sesame oil

- 8 tbsp canola oil

Directions:

1. Zest/grate first 3 ingredients into a 16 oz jar with a lid.

All the yummy grated goodies

2. Throw all of the other ingredients into the jar with the orange zest, garlic, and ginger. I ran out of red pepper flakes when I made this, so I substituted with Shichimi Togarashi (Japanese red pepper and spice blend). It was still good with Shichimi Togarashi, but I think I prefer the spicy bite that the bigger chunks or red pepper flakes add.

All of the other ingredients... 

3. Close the lid and shake up the jar!!! Its best to let it sit in the refrigerator overnight so the orange, garlic, and ginger flavors are pulled out into the liquids, but if you're short on time an hour will be ok.

Yummm!! It doesn't look very pretty, but I promise it tastes really good!

4. Drizzle over a salad then EAT! Of course, the most important step :)