Food Diary: July & August

DenaAugust 5, 2011

evolutionyou.net | pineapple chunks

It’s no secret that I love food, but what you may not know is that I also like to take pictures of it. As a part of my ongoing commitment to fitness, I’m sharing my favourite healthy culinary creations with ya’ll in a new Food Diary series. Bon appetit!

July went out with a bang because I was on vacation. This involved all sorts of terrible, delicious things like pizza, daiquiris, sushi, and shrimp/lobster quesadillas! 😉

evolutionyou.net | quesadilla

evolutionyou.net | sushi

evolutionyou.net | strawberry daiquiri

evolutionyou.net | pizza

Back when I was doing my Spring Fitness Challenge, my friend Lou told me about the 80/20 Rule. The 80/20 rule says watch what you eat very carefully 80% of the time and don’t even worry about the other 20%. I love it! I think it’s a very practical stance on food. So, as soon as I got home I got straight back to business.

Juicing
Matthew and I have been juicing for awhile. In the past we’ve gone through periods of juicing regularly and then long stretches of not juicing for months. Recently we’ve made it a priority to make juicing a regular habit once again. The benefits of juicing are endless. Drinking fresh, raw fruit and vegetable juice is the absolute best way to allow your body to absorb vitamins and nutrients. A juicer is a powerful motor with teeth, that breaks the cell walls of fruits/veggies and releases all of the nutrients into a solution that your body sucks up like a sponge.

We juice a variety of produce but mainly oranges, apples, lemons, carrots, beets, and celery. We recently tried a grapefruit and a cucumber from our garden! Variety makes things interesting.

Many thanks to Matthew for making me juice every morning and cleaning the juicer afterward, too! 🙂

evolutionyou.net | juicing

evolutionyou.net | juicing

Summer Chili
I am such a chili girl. I could eat chili every day and not get sick of it. There is nothing like a piping hot bowl of chili with a nice dollop of sour cream. But, seeing as how it’s been sweltering hot here in New Jersey, we’ve not quite been in the mood for chili lately. So, once again, I decided to experiment! Earlier this week, I made my first batch of Summer Chili!

evolutionyou.net | summer chili

Ingredients:
Organic quinoa
White kidney beans
Pineapple chunks
Butternut squash soup (or any other soup base that you prefer)
Black pepper
Sea salt
Red cayenne pepper
Stir fried vegetables of your choice

Directions:
Boil a big batch of quinoa. Add boiled quinoa, soup, kidney beans, pineapple chunks, and stir fried veggies (I used leftover mushrooms/green beans/onions from the night before) to a big pot. Heat until everything comes to a slow boil. Reduce heat. Add spices. Let simmer for twenty minutes. Enjoy!

evolutionyou.net | summer chili

evolutionyou.net | summer chili

I served the chili with a side salad of romaine topped with raw nuts, soy cheese, and raspberry vinaigrette. It was divine!

Cherry Tomatoes
And last, but not least, our cherry tomatoes are finally starting to ripen. We pulled the first one from the vine last night and cut it in half. I could have died right there—it was so good!

evolutionyou.net | cherry tomatoes

That’s all for this edition. Eat well, be well!

xo,
Dena

Comments (4)

  • Lou Mello

    August 5, 2011 at 8:09 am

    Fab post as always and the food just looks wonderful. Summer chili and cherry tomatoes are just the best.

    I should do more juice, just lazy and don’t take the time to do it right.

    Have a great weekend.

    1. Dena

      August 5, 2011 at 8:11 am

      Thanks, Lou! And more importantly thank you for sharing the 80/20 rule with me. You’ve always been such a “wellness inspiration” to me. 🙂

      Hope you have an awesome weekend, too!

  • Meg

    August 5, 2011 at 1:22 pm

    Your tomatoes look great! Isn’t a great feeling when it finally starts to grow and you can eat your yummy veggies. I want a juicer, but I also like that I can just go to a local juice bar and they do all the work for me. Do you spend a lot on veggies to make the juice? I feel like one juice takes a lot!

    1. Dena

      August 5, 2011 at 1:29 pm

      Hey Meg! You are so lucky. We don’t have any juice bars around here, but then again, we live in the woods! It’s a drive even to the grocery store. 🙂

      It can get expensive. We set our budget and then stick to it. I try to buy whichever produce is on sale. For awhile I was doing 100% organic but that got really expensive really fast. Good news is that it doesn’t take too much to make two nice glasses of juice. A typical juice breakfast for us is 2 carrots, 2 pieces of celery, 1 beet, and a piece of fruit.

      Still, if we had a juice bar nearby, you bet I’d be there!

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