"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly plants." -Michael Pollan

Friday, November 16

Forgot the Rice!

Panko-Crusted Tilapia
with a Lemon, White Wine, Caper Sauce
over Sauteed Turnip Greens and Kalamata Olives




Finished working from home right on time for a nice walk to the grocery store for our dinner ingredients. We are FLAT OUT of groceries for the week and had no vegetables at all to cook but canned tomatoes. This is sort of a goal of ours to save money. I feel like we normally keep a good stock of stuff in the fridge - at a cost - and we are trying to learn to live off some of our staples. So anyways, we desperately needed something green for dinner and bananas for breakfast (1 day without them was torture!).

30 minute walk was freezing cold, but nice and brisk. While at the grocery store we sampled three wines (1.5 oz total) and had 3 cheese samples (tiny cubes), which I logged as around 75 calories.

I also had a few kashi crackers with leftover goat's cheese at 5:00. I was getting really hungry, but I didn't want to have a big snack with dinner looming. I am SUCH an intuitive eater these days! I made it all day today with very minimal snacks. Oh yeah, and I had 2 almonds from husband's pile at 3:30. Had two of these:



Once back from the store, we opened a nice bottle of Frei Brothers Sauvignon Blanc. It's quite typical Sav. Blanc. with crisp grapefruit flavors but it changed SO MUCH during dinner! More later. I had my wedding rings cleaned today and they are SO SPARKLY!!!! Someone remind me to get them cleaned more often! I never think they look that dull until after I get them cleaned. I tried to capture the sparkle here, but I think it just missed the flash....



The wine changed dramatically with the meal. It was an amazing contrast and one of the best wine and food pairings I've ever experienced. The dinner was very acidic and it made the wine much more like a buttery Chardonnay and not like crisp grapefruit at all. Unfortunately, this led me to have 2 more oz. for a total of 8 oz of wine tonight. But I'm not feeling tipsy, so hopefully my body isn't mad at me :)

Tilapia and turnip greens. We used a pound of greens (a HUGE bag) and they cooked down significantly. Since we're volume eaters, we have to make a huge portion of the raw stuff to get enough cooked! This was 75 calories worth of greens - and if you know anything about calories in greens, that's a LOT!



The tilapia was delicious, but halfway through dinner I realized we had forgotten the rice!!!!!!!! We're so used to just protein + veggies for dinner that I completely forget. Luckily the husband had made it the day before, so we just had to microwave it hot (a good strategy - cook rice on the weekends and just nuke when you need some).

This is the BEST brown rice we've ever had. We usually have basmati or just the quick brown minute rice, but this stuff is worth the 45-minute simmer. It's sticky and gluteny - just the way I like it! I think I much prefer short grain to long grain. I ended up buying this because it was half the price of some of the others, including the basmati. What a steal!

Lundberg Short Grain Brown Rice. See more here.



Half-eaten fish with rice added:



Dinner was delicious, but rather salty (from the olives and capers??) so my mouth is craving more to eat. I was going to cook tapioca, and then pumpkin pudding, but I'm full. It's all in my mouth. So I'm going to skip.

Snack calories: 130

Total dinner calories: 550

Total Friday calories: 1662

-537 thru workout and walk. I probably burned more being on my feet for a few hours at the chicken event, but I guess I won't count these....feels too much like cheating today since I did eat some unhealthy things.

= net of 1126. 100 under. Maybe I'll have some warm milk and half a CIB??


Tomorrow's schedule:
  1. Wake up around 7
  2. Normal breakfast, lazily
  3. 8:45 gym time + 45-minute spin class
  4. Snack + latte
  5. Grocery shopping
  6. Lunch
  7. Thanksgiving decor shopping
  8. Relaxation
  9. Grilled chicken and portabellas

2 comments:

Moran said...

Hey Kath!
I was wondering about your rice...what do you mean when you say that you cook it on the weekend and then use it throughout the week? don't you cook 'new' rice every time you're about to eat it? Oh and another question...your protein and veggies for dinner - sounds good and very smart; how do you make up your mind as to what to have usually?
Sorry about the huge comment and the questions! I just am a huge fan of your blog and can't help but ask!

KathEats said...

Hey Moran,

Of course I'd like to make fresh rice each time, but it's a pain to have to simmer it for 45 minutes on a hungry time-crunched weeknight. So we will sometimes will make 2 cups of rice on the weekend and then just re-heat it the night we want to eat it. It's just a time saver, that's all!

We get our meal inspiration from all different avenues - what's in the fridge, what's on sale, recipes in magazines, other blog inspiration, and cravings. We like to have vegetables at every dinner and usually have some protein source - chicken, fish, pork, ground turkey, frozen shrimp, frozen salmon, boca burgers, deli meat, eggs, tofu, beans, etc. Once we pick the protein and veggie, we try to think of good ways to incorporate the flavors and if it's a lighter day, add some whole grains.

I like to have big breakfasts and lunches and smaller dinners, so the whole grain is often what I will take out if dinner is looking high in calories. But lately I've been enjoying having different things like the rice on this day - it really made dinner more complete - so I might start adding grains in moderation too!

We do have pasta, tacos, and breads for dinner, so it's not that I'm at ALL against grains at dinner, we just don't have them as often as a protein + veggie combo. Hope that helps!