The Quiet Life of Violet

Momma's Food: Left-over Taco Salad

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                        


Leftover taco salad is the easiest lunch ever. Whenever we have tacos for dinner, I make sure to cook a little extra meat/filling so that my lunch the next day is easy as pie. When I make the filling for dinner, I usually chop up an onion into small pieces and cook in a swizzle (that's a word, right?) of organic olive oil for a few minutes. Sometimes I chop up mushrooms and cook them with the onion. Next I'll add my meat - either ground turkey or grass-fed ground beef - and add some of Trader Joe's taco seasoning (no MSG!), a bit of tomato paste (sometimes) and a tiny bit of stevia powder. That's it. Super easy.

The next day for lunch I'll make my salad base (I used chopped kale and romain lettuce here), then add chopped or sliced tomatoes, yummy delicious avocado, carrots, bell pepper strips and goat's milk cheddar cheese and top it with the filling, some salsa and crunched up tortilla chips or left-over taco shells. I like to re-heat the meat in a frying pan so that it gets the cheese all melty and divine. When I was eating cow's dairy products, I would add a bit (a huge bit) of sour cream and mix it all up. The meat + taco seasoning, salsa and sour cream make a dandy dressing. It still tastes really good with out the sour cream, though! Sometimes I smoosh up half an avocado and add lots of lemon-juice to make a sort of veg-sour cream.

And yes.. I recycled that tomato picture from last summer. Don't hate! ;) I can't wait until the juicy heritage tomatoes come back into season! YUM.

And that's what Momma ate.

 

 

Momma's Food: A Soup & Rice Lunch

Homemade wonton soup: Chicken broth with a bit of cornstarch to thicken, frozen ginger-chicken mini-wontons, corn, peas, sliced mushrooms, garlic powder, sesame oil and cilantro.

Spicy fried rice: Trader Joe's Japanese Fried Rice plus a scrambled, pasture raised egg, sesame seeds and Sriracha - my new spicy obsession.

Sipped on some water in a fancy cup with ice, frozen blueberries and sliced lemon from my tree.

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This was not a gluten-free meal by any means! Although I stay away from wheat 95% of the time, I try to have a bit here and there so that my intolerance doesn't get worse. It's a fine line that I tiptoe across. How much wheat I need to have to not get worse vs. having too much and upsetting my body. It's a bit tricky. This lunch hit the spot and sat well with me. Score!

Have you made anything delicious or fancy for lunch lately?

 

Momma's Food: Tuna, Chard and Chips

Sandwich: Canned tuna mixed with organic mayo, dill pickle relish, sunflower seeds and whole grain dijon mustard on toasted gluten-free bread, plus pea sprouts.

Sides: Sauteed chard with fresh garlic (stained red from the chard stems) plus a little salt and pepper. Tiny dill pickles, sliced tomatoes and chips (made by Trader Joe's!) fried in olive oil.

Drink: Carbonated water (I LOVE my SodaStream!) with a splash of Tazo Passion tea and orange slices over ice.

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Just a simple lunch. There is nothing quite like putting the baby down for his afternoon nap and taking the time to make something for myself. Feeding my body, feeding my little heart and soul. A bit of  catch up (not ketchup!) on Hulu and I'm golden.

We had a busy weekend, hence the lack of posts these past few days. Roman has decided that he doesn't want to go to bed like he used to and fights it EVERY NIGHT. Sometimes until 10:30pm - three hours later than normal. Add a few wake ups during the night (although last night was just one wake up like normal!) and you've got our nights. Add getting dinner made and cleaned up and the working on the house chores that I wasn't able to do during the day to the noise of the screaming boy and you're at the Clark household. Saying that Dustin and I are exhausted and frustrated is putting it nicely. We have to work hard to not pick fights with each other over stupid things and ruin the whole night. It's work, folks! The difficulties with having a little baby don't stop once the baby goes to bed!  In the end, our love and inability to not laugh when the other lets a smirk slip keeps us going. It's so important to make time for ourselves and for each other and it often seems like there aren't enough hours in the day. That's why weekends are a bit quite 'round these parts. We spend it soaking up every minute of "family time" and seeing our families in our hometown and sneaking in visits with friends.

We are blessed! Busy as hell, but blessed.  

 

Momma's Food: Breakfast Eats

  Breakfast:              

I love eggs, avocados and leftovers for breakfast!

Because of my Whipple procedure and how my digestive tract was "re-wired," having normal carb-y, sugar-laden breakfast staples is just not in the cards for me and my body. I have to have protein and very little simple sugar (jam, syrup, honey) or my heart races, my stomach pitches a fit, I get light-headed and feel heavy all at the same time.  All of those things are not amazing when you're trying to take care of a rowdy, pterodactyl-screeching nine-month old little boy.

I hard-boil a half dozen of eggs every Sunday evening or Monday morning and enjoy them all throughout the week. Hard-boiled eggs are a Mom's best friend. Seriously. Pre-cooked, hanging out int he fridge and  sitting conveniently in their own little wrapper. Perfect. A few taps on the counter and a rinse under the faucet and my sweet little breakfast eggie is free! I trade off between buying organic, free-range eggs at Trader Joe's and buying pastured eggs from Kaki Farms at my local farmer's market. The pastured eggs are the best -- firm, marigold yolks that stand up in the pan until popped while frying. Delicious! Nothing like deep, dark yolks made by a chicken that pecks grubs and bugs. Just like nature intended.

Most mornings I make an avo-egg mash and eat it spread on either a gluten-free bagel or piece of toast, or with a handful of spelt pretzels. (Spelt pretzels have gluten in them, no wheat though. Just thought I'd clarify.) If I'm not having a hard-boiled egg, I might fry one up or skip eggs and smear some goat's-milk cream cheese on a bagel for protein. I like to have a side of veggies or fruit with my protein/carbs, and sometimes I have both! Left-over dinner veggies work perfectly as a quick breakfast side.

Yum!

 

 

 

 

Weekend Re-cap

My lovely friend Nic came out and spent thursday through Saturday morning with us! She loves babies and Buggie was no exception. They were fast friends! It made my heart so happy.

We had a girl's date on Friday night (Bubby watched the baby) and had so much fun. We got some delicious chinese food from P.F.'s and giggled the whole time even thought the restaurant is CRAZY loud. Our waitress had to take a break, so her sub was this hot (H-O-T) guy and we ate his cute little face up. That was, of course, until he spilled the soy-sauce-vinegar-sesame oil sauce from the cucumbers (in the picture below) on the corner of my phone and IN MY PURSE. I smelt like a sushi roll all night. I told Nic that it was my karma from oogling at a cute guy while I was married. ;)

We got some candy from It's Sugar, a "by the quarter-pound" candy store. The sour gummy belts are my jam. So good. We had purchased our tickets to The Hunger Game in advance, so after wasting a bit of time at Barnes & Noble, we made it to the theater with an hour to spare. Thank heaven we did - half an hour before the show started, the whole theater was there and lined up in a queue outside theater 9's door! Another case of  "Reasons Why I Love Having One Leg" was brought to light when Nic and I were LET IN THE THEATER FIRST because I was in a wheelchair. It gave us enough time to get our seats without getting trampled by the crowd. It was awesome and we were so thankful for few minutes we were given to pick the perfect seats.

The movie was awesome. About a month ago, Nic had requested that I read the first book in the Hunger Games series so we could see the movie together and I ended up reading all three of the books in two weeks... which is damn good for busy stay-at-home-Momma.

Saturday Miss Nic drove home and the boys and I headed out to Oakley to visit our families. Dustin's Mom made us an AWESOME dinner -- she always makes great food -- and then Dustin and I made a quick trip to BJ's for a hot gluten-free cookie (it came with ice cream, which Dustin was only too happy to have all to himself).

Yesterday Dustin and I met up with my family for lunch at Oodles of Noodles (a Mongolian grill type place that has GF rice noodles!) and Boopy was a grumpy pants. I think he's afraid of my Dad's beard.

 

 

 

 

 

Mom took pictures!      

We drove home after lunch and made a quick stop at the grocery store, came home and did a bit of whirlwind house cleaning, took a family walk and then loafed around the rest of the night.

It was a great weekend, folks.

Oooo... question: Roman has taken to crying after we put him down for the night. If we get him up, he's fine and isn't wet, hungry or hurt, so we know it's just that he wants to be a part of the evening-time action even though he's tired. Do we let him cry it out? It breaks my heart hearing him cry! Will he develop some sort of mental issue and grow up thinking that his parents abandon him at bedtime? Any help would be awesome!

 

Thanks guys!

xoxx,

 

Poaching, My Pretty

Poaching, in cooking terms (not gypsy hunting terms), means to cook food in gently simmering liquid - normally water, milk, wine or the like. Poaching is a good technique for more fragile foods such as eggs, fish, poultry, fruit or fish. Poaching help keeps the food nice and juicy, which is normally a hard ball to catch when cooking the above. Especially fish. Oh, my fish is usually nice and dry when I bake or pan-fry it. (I secretly like my fish on the dry side, though.)

Now, I like to make the most of all the food that I cook with and waste very little, so when I decided to poach some chicken breasts, I ended up using the poaching liquid to whip into my mashed potatoes (see bottom for directions). They were so good! It's hard to mess up mashed potatoes, though. Am I right?

For my poaching liquid, I used organic low-sodium chicken broth from Trader Joe's, a quartered onion, a healthy splash of white wine, a couple stalks of celery, a large pinch of salt (Momma likes things salty) and a spoonful of TJ's Flower Pepper mix. It's just black peppercorns, rose petals, lavender, cornflower and calendula - easy to make if you don't have a Trader Joe's near you. The Flower Pepper took the broth to a new level - slightly sweet smelling, with strong hints of pepper on top of the delicious wine-broth combination. 

I put the raw chicken breasts into the liquid, then turned it to high until it reached a boil. Let it simmer for two to four minutes, then cover, remove from heat and let it sit in the hot liquid for half an hour. And... that's it. The chicken came out moist and yummy, and all though we just shredded it and ate it with steamed veggies, buttery mashed potatoes (broth included!) and salad, it was so very tasty! Poaching is the perfect way to prepare chicken for anything from salad-sandwiches to casseroles. Super versatile and very easy!

A few ideas for using the broth after poaching:

• Make a quick soup. Strain and then add a bit of cornstarch paste (cornstarch + a bit of water or broth) to thicken, then add a splash of soy sauce, frozen peas and corn and drizzle whipped raw egg at the very end for egg drop soup.
  
  
• Make a nutritious, fortified pot of broth. Pour poaching liquid into a stock pot, add water until 2/3 full + a packet of unflavored gelatin (SO good for you!).  Add roughly chopped carrots, onions, celery, flat leaf parsley and a handful of garlic cloves. Boil for a few hour and strain out the solids. Fresh, gelatin-rich broth! Freeze or use within a few days.
  
  
• Make a dinner soup. This is a good way to use left overs! Make a big ol' pot of soup for dinner with the broth idea above, add lots of veggies, shredded or chopped meat or beans/quinoa/lentils, and cooked pasta or rice. Swirl with olive oil (the fat helps you absorb the vitamins from the broth and veg!) and serve with some hot, crusty bread or rolls.
  
  
• Make a mash! Boil chopped potatoes until soft in broth. Remove potatoes to a bowl, reserving broth. Mash potatoes, add butter (pastured or organic are best!) and/or olive oil, thin with the left over broth (a little at a time) and season with salt and pepper. I also like to add a few hearty shakes of garlic powder for good measure. You can also mix it up by subbing half of the potatoes with steamed cauliflower, parsnips, sweet potatoes or broccoli. A bit of raw cheese stirred in never hurt, either. We love the cheese 'round these parts.

Enjoy and happy poaching!

Lots of love,