meal ideas | Fitness is Sweet

Wow. It’s been such a long time since I’ve posted here, and boy what a time it is. We are closing out Week 7 of the COVID-19 quarantine and things have been both crazy and quiet. Given everything that is happening, I thought it would be a good time to come back here and post some meal ideas, especially given I’ve eaten every meal at home for 7 weeks now. I also thought it would be fun to include my workouts that I’m doing this week, given they’re definitely a little different. I’m really lucky now in that I have acquired a fair amount of gym equipment. I ordered a few things off of Amazon, but most importantly, I’m renting a dumbbell, a barbell, and some plates from Crossfit. My Crossfit has maintained a great community during this time. We still have programmed workouts everyday, there are plenty of live zoom classes, and we get a daily text from our coach with an individualized workout. They’re going above and beyond, and in this time, it’s been amazing to have that solid community and structure in my life.

Quarantine has also been a wonderful excuse to reach out and reconnect with old friends. I suppose perhaps that is how I found my way back here!

First, I’ll cover some of the meals I have made lately, and then I’ll move to my full day of eating!

One of the big things to come out of quarantine is that I’ve finally conquered my fear cooking chicken. My cooking method of choice is getting thin sliced chicken breasts, and baking them at 350 for about 25 minutes, with a pan of water on the lower rack in the over (a separate pan from the chicken) to keep the chicken moist. Game changer! This is a chicken breast with pesto, roasted carrots, and kale massaged with balsamic and olive oil.

This combo was surprisingly delicious. Baked chicken, hummus, zucchini roasted with Elote seasoning from TJs, and more massaged kale. Can you tell I visited my produce stand this week? It just makes me so happy to go in there.

More zucchini. This time zucchini noodles with pesto, chicken, and mozzarella.

Baked chicken with BBQ sauce, rice, and an artichoke (boiled for about 25 minutes) from the produce stand. I made a mayo-balsamic vinaigrette dipping sauce like I always used to have with artichokes growing up.

This salad is kind of strange, but it’s been a staple for me throughout the years, although probably not within the last year. Hard boiled egg, hummus, goat cheese. That’s it! This meal made me so happy because it’s simple, delicious, and healthy. And I love cheese puffs. These are Barbara’s baked cheese puffs, and these were a treat as a result of a very rare Whole Foods visit.

Another one of my favorite produce stand meals. Balsamic kale, roasted carrots, hummus, over easy egg.

Another artichoke, but this time with avocado toast. I love my avocado toast with 1/2 an avocado, cumin, a splash of lemon juice, feta, and an over easy egg. Basically my avocado smash, but the lazy version

Given we were on week 7, I decided having a super stocked freezer was no longer quite as necessary. That, and my mom warned me ice cream might be coming my way for my birthday. Honestly, when all this started, the main foods I stocked up on were veggies. I had a few bags of frozen veggies, and some canned veggies. Which I realize would not provide the calories long term in a crazy situation, but priorities, right? These were frozen butternut squash spirals that I sautéed. Served with baked lemon garlic salmon. Salmon is another meat I’ve gotten pretty good at cooking in the last year. For the Trader Joe’s salmon I normally get, I do 14 minutes at 425. This was a bit thinner, so I only did 11 minutes at 425 and it came out perfectly. Plus some sautéed spinach.

More salmon, this time teriyaki, plus frozen stir fry veggies. After royally messing up a number of stir fries lately with fresh veggies, I have decided to just make them with frozen from now on.

One random quarantine discovery was these gluten free spinach tortillas. This wrap is a winner. 2 laughing cow wedges (this is cheddar), red pepper, spinach, and chicken. With a side salad dressed with simple aged white balsamic, salt, and pepper.

And another meal of salmon similar to the above.

Ok. Without further ado, let’s move on to my full day of eating! Plus a little bit of day in the life of quarantine.

Breakfast:
I forget to snap a picture, but another quarantine staple has been protein hot chocolate. I invested (ok, only a $10 investment but 100% worth it) in a handheld frother and this has been game changer. My recipe is about a cup of soy milk with a splash of milk heated up, then blend in about a table spoon of DARK cocoa powder, plus 3/4 scoop of chocolate protein powder. Right now I’m using PE Science chocolate. I also had a chocolate rice cake with sunbutter.

I’m currently starting my first week of my clinical year, which is my last year of vet school! I’m on the Anesthesia rotation virtually now, so we had morning rounds. We were hoping to see horse anesthesia, but there was a problem with the connection. Here is my rounds buddy (one of them):

Lunch:

For lunch, I had the hummus, goat cheese, and egg salad mentioned above, plus a few GF crackers.

I also had the best cookie ever, a GF chocolate chunk cookie from Salty Sweet. These are the amazing cookies I used to get at the SFO airport that I’m sure I’ve mentioned before. I happened upon them and where else to find them and that has been amazing. My parents also sent these for my birthday!

After lunch, I had to prep for afternoon rounds, which involved making an anesthetic plan for a kitty patient. I also discovered the Giants were streaming a classic baseball game on facebook, so I watched this while working. During the last few weeks, I’ve had a lot of screen time and the weather is beautiful, so I try to get outside as much as possible. Normally I would try to go for a walk before afternoon rounds, but it was SO nice to see baseball again.

Snack: I had an unpictured white cheddar rice cake with kale greek yogurt dip, and then a handful of blueberry chex cereal right before my workout.

Workout: This one I made up myself since the prescribed workout was basically the extra credit I did yesterday, biking and running.

4 rounds:

15 deadlifts (130#)

15 box jumps

15 med ball cleans (14#)

I followed this up with an online abs and yoga video with my yoga group. I am now part of a group that does daily Zoom yoga classes together, mostly with videos from Corepower. It’s been a good time, and also good for me to get back into yoga. On literally the first day gyms were closed, I did yoga and planned to do it frequently during quarantine. I never did it until I joined this group of high school friends a couple of weeks ago.

Dinner:

This salad was a real winner, and my first time trying it. I did lettuce with Bolthouse Avocado Salsa Verde dressing, Mexican cheese blend, corn (frozen then sautéed) with Elote seasoning, and chicken. So good!

Dessert: A clio yogurt bar and a few spoonfuls of my birthday Jeni’s ice cream—blueberry and lemon!

Nighttime snack:

Caramel rice cake with sunbutter. This has been another staple if I’m hungry in the evening after dinner.

And that was my day! Wow, it’s weird to be back here but it also feels really, really natural. Hope everyone is surviving this quarantine!

What a creative title, right?

I wanted to finally catch up on all the food I’ve been having, especially as it’s getting more and more fall themed! We’ll divide it into meals, and dive right in!

Breakfast:

Zucchini pumpkin bread with leftover grilled peaches.

The current fall favorite: cottage cheese with pumpkin butter and sunbutter, with various fruit.

Also, can we just take a minute to appreciate the fact that I can still get good peaches at the end of October? I love CA sometimes.

Lunch:

Peach, goat cheese, grilled chicken salad.

Starting to move away from summer and into fall! Cranberry chèvre, Bosc pear, and deli turkey (the only meat I had on hand).

Mr. Pickles sandwiches that we got as part of a lunch talk. I had the insides of a veggie and a turkey.

Dinner:

Typical zucchini noodles: topped with tomato basil marinara and mozzarella.

My new favorite way to eat zucchini noodles (above and below): sauté them up and then stir in Trader Joe’s Fall Harvest salad, grilled chicken, and cheese. Must be served with avocado

Trader Joe’s Harvest salad with brussels sprouts, sweet potato, dried cranberry, sunflower seeds, and turkey. I actually used my own champagne vinaigrette instead of the dressing it came with.

This week, I cooked tofu for the first time! I got firm tofu, and for this meal, sautéed it with GF teriyaki sauce. I served it with snap peas and zucchini sautéed with soy sauce, garlic, and ginger.

This stuff is amazing. I could literally eat it with a spoon.

I made zucchini noodles (shockingly) and served the sauce with them, plus mozzarella. On the side, I made baked tofu that turned out surprisingly amazing. Most recipes said with baked tofu that you should use extra firm, but I liked it with regular firm because it’s soft still on the inside. I patted the excess water off the tofu, and then “breaded” it in nutritional yeast, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder, spray some cooking spray, and them baked them in the oven at 400!

Another meal of my usual and weird creation. Turkey, American cheese, guacamole, ketchup. Plus toast with butter on the side.

Same meal as above, but minus the cheese. It seemed a little overpowering with the sauce.

One of my last tamale Wednesdays! The evening farmer’s market is closing for the season very soon! (I can still get them at the Saturday market). Chicken tamale with a salad made with Bolthouse Farms Cilantro Ranch.

And lastly, sushi out with friends. I got a really delicious beet salad with miso dressing (above), and a California roll (below).

Etc

Pre-workout Cheerios (before 7am Crossfit).

I mentioned a few posts ago that I found a paper that showed pomegranate juice can alleviate food allergies or sensitivities because the polyphenols in the pomegranate juice bind to cashew proteins. (Note: DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME) Since I have a mild cashew sensitivity, I thought I would try it out! Also, it should be noted that in the article, cashew+pomegranate was not consumed, and not in this form. It was more theoretical. This Luna bar has cashews as one of the last ingredients, and I’ve had it before with either no reaction or a mild reaction. The verdict? I don’t know. I can’t tell if it worked, if I wouldn’t have reacted to it anyway, or if my skin imperfections are normal background or caused by the nuts. TBD.