It's been a while!

I am officially on summer break!  My school year went 2 weeks longer than everyone else, because I attended a scoring conference and took on 2 weeks of extended school year.  It was nice to work with the Life Skills kiddos again, but I am glad to have this time to recharge and prepare for another school year! 

I'm enjoying lazy mornings with Natalie and getting to do all of the fun things I miss out on during the school year.  We've been to all of the parks in the area including the sprinkler park (her favorite)!  You would think my eating would be better having all of this time, but I find it to be a bit more difficult.  I have access to food all day here, while at school I only have certain times without students.  It is a moot point with vacation coming up anyway :)

Our CSA shares have been wonderful!  It really does make a difference to have vegetables a day or two after they are picked ripe.  Natalie comes with me to pick it up each week.  Who knew a 2 year old could be so excited over vegetables!  Our first share had broccoli and the whole way home she kept saying "Mommy, I eat bocci!!!"  I've gotten her involved in some of the prep, too.  There are so many things I've never cooked with before - like swiss chard, fresh garlic (before the 'papery' surrounding forms).  She loves to "chop" with a plastic knife and whisk anything that needs it...even things that don't. 

Lots to celebrate!

Today we picked up our first CSA share!  It was filled with many great veggies - carrots, spinach, spring onions, potatoes, mixed salad greens, and 2 bunches of broccoli!  We aren't huge potato eaters, so I'll have to find some recipes.  The rest of the ingredients are either daily staples or can easily be pureed and frozen for use later on.  Hopefully it will be a good season - they did decide to supplement the carrots, broccoli, and potatoes from another organic farm.  It's just been so rainy and cloudy in our area the last several weeks that the plants aren't quite as mature as they normally would be this time of year!

 

More exciting news - earlier today I weighed myself at school.  I've been doing this once a week just to keep track of how I'm doing.  My official weight loss to this point is 15 lbs!!!  I was ecstatic to see that number.  Our meals are consistently clean, but my snacking still goes back and forth.  I'm glad to see it hasn't had a negative impact!  Ideally I'd like to lose 5 more pounds to make it to a healthy BMI, but I am very comfortable with the changes I've seen already.  This has been a complete lifestyle change, so we'll just keep doing what we're doing!

Clean Cooking = Second Nature

We still have some not-so-clean habits, but preparing clean meals is becoming so much easier!  I don't need to think so much, and cleaning up an existing recipe is becoming a breeze!  Today I took a recipe for banana bread out of my Deceptively Delicious cookbook and cleaned it up with whole wheat pastry flour, agave nectar, and olive oil.  This is my first time baking with agave nectar, so I'm anxious to see how it turned out.  I know one thing - it made the house smell FANTASTIC!!!!  I would post a picture of it, but I can't find my camera :( 

Our grocery bill has leveled out a lot now that most of our pantry and freezer has been restocked with cleaner options.  Last week was a record low - $90!  That is $30 less than our typical bill was PRE-clean eating.  Most weeks I am able to stay about where our food budget used to be.  I'm hoping it will drop a little more when the CSA kicks in.

I've been so excited to start picking up our share.  Sadly it was pushed back because the growing season was delayed because of unseasonably cool temps, tons of rain, and very little sunshine.  We pick up our first 1/2 bushel May 24.  Here's hoping it is a great growing season!  They have such a variety on their harvest schedule - plus some new foods I've never cooked with!  My co-worker said they include a recipe card each week to help you prepare the foods in your share.  I may even get some new clean recipes out of the deal :)

Clean eating in pictures!

Here are some pictures of the clean meals I've made.  This coming Friday I'm going to try out the clean pizza crusts I made up over the weekend!  It is fun to try new recipes and learn a new style of cooking.  I'll have to take a picture of the clean chocolate cupcakes I made today.  They are so decadent you almost don't believe they're clean!!!

Curried Mango Chicken and Quinoa

(pretty good - I love the nutty taste of quinoa)

Clean Broccoli Quiche

(delicious!  Natalie couldn't shove it in fast enough!)

Crustless Italian Quiche

(this will be awesome for using up our CSA veggies)

Score!

I don't seem to be keeping up with this blogging thing very well! 

Today I took a personal day to stay home with my sweet girl.  We had a busy day planned with lots of running around.  I decided to get an early start, but we got to the shopping plaza before the majority of the stores opened.  Natalie and I went to Giant, since we needed extra bananas for our clean Wild Blueberry Muffins we'd be making later.  We had about 20 minutes to kill, so we wandered around the store.  Turns out they have almost everything I've been driving 45 minutes to Wegman's for!!!  Even Ezekial bread!  It was an exciting moment :)

We made the muffins this afternoon - they smell fantastic!!  I'm going to wait until Natalie gets up from her nap to taste test with her.  This is so much fun!  I can't wait until summertime when I can be home with her every day.

Let's keep this my dirty little secret...

I have eaten like crap for the last week!  I've had clean meals sprinkled in here and there (orange buckwheat pancakes were tasty), but it has been mostly over-processed birthday foods.  It was such a wonderful week though!  Hard to believe my baby is 2 already!

This lapse into dirty eating habits has me wondering - can food really make that much difference in your body?  It must because I've been much more lethargic, bloated, and battling headaches the last couple of days - a drastic change from my energetic, slim+mer feeling self from a week ago.  That definitely gives me motivation to get back on track!  Tonight I'm whipping up a shrimp stir fry with buckwheat soba noodles.  It smells sooooo good (soy sauce, honey, ginger, lime, and garlic).  I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Next week I'll fully be back to cleaner eating.  It truly is all about planning!  There was nothing prepared for my lunches this week, so I stuck to grab-n-go type meals.  Of course, these are anything but clean.  I'll have to get some cleaner options in mind for next week :)

A clean spin on an old favorite

Today's shopping trip was a lot less tragic than last week!  I spent the normal amount, but bought much cleaner foods.  I'm finding that it is not at all difficult to maintain a clean(er) eating lifestyle, but it does take quite a bit of planning.  This weekend we kind of took off, since we were running around and are still trying to work through some of our processed foods in the freezer and pantry.  I definitely notice that I am more tired, but it could also be the sleep interruptions from Natalie's cold :(  Back to regular clean eating tomorrow!

This week for lunches I'll be taking "Loaded Black Bean Burritos" and they smell delicious!  I took an hour this evening to make them all up, so they are ready to be heated each day.  For snacks, I'll stick to nuts with dry fruit, fruit with a hard boiled egg, and greek yogurt with granola. 

I was really excited for tonight's dinner.  I used a recipe from the Clean Eating Magazine's website to figure out how to "clean up" my favorite stroganoff.  It turned out pretty well!  The differences weren't too drastic.  I used whole wheat noodles instead of egg noodles, low-sodium beef broth in place of canned consumme, seasoned with a sprinkle of sea salt and pepper in place of the teaspoon of table salt, and carmelized onions and mushrooms with cooking spray instead of butter.