My Week in Clean Eating

Swim started this past week for me on Monday and Wednesday, and Nate started his 90 day journey with T25, which posed a slight problem for my clean eating mission. Clean eating is great, but it does require planning and preparation. Side note: it is TOTALLY worth it. But, when I get home at 8:30 at night twice a week, the last thing I want to do is cook dinner. Since I am on an absolute mission at the moment (see this blog entry) I know I needed a plan.

So, I spent about two hours on Sunday night preparing some new clean meals in advance for the week. I was really pleased with all of them. They will definitely be added into the meal rotation!

1. Roasted Cauliflower - This one was even a hit with the picky eating husband. This seriously tasted like french fries to me. I added one thing to the recipe - I sprinkled bread crumbs on the cauliflower prior to putting it on the oven (ya, ya, ya, I know, I made it slightly less clean...but hey..we are eating cauliflower here! That is a huge step for former mac and cheese junkees). I forgot to take a picture of my version, but it actually looked pretty similar to the one on the website.


2. Quinoa and Black Beans - Ok. This was seriously delicious. And holy packed with protein! A friend of mine made this at our pot luck dinner prior to the MDI relay a few weeks back and I loved it. I *somehow* managed to follow the recipe and make mine taste like hers! (Ok, the truth is I had one failed attempt first...but I fixed it here the second time around).

3. Cauliflower Pizza Crust I was surprised how easy this was to make - cut the cauliflower, throw it in the food processor, microwave, wring it out, add some spices and throw it in the oven. Super easy, and good for pizza night because I ALWAYS forget to take the frozen pizza dough out in the morning. We have been using Portland Pie Company's multigrain dough for a while now, but since I'm not putting in the high mileage of marathon training, I was looking for something slightly less "carb-y."

So as we sat down to dinner and started eating, there was silence. I held my breath and waited for the verdict. And then it came - "Actually, this is pretty good!" SCORE! We both enjoyed this meal. If you make it, DO NOT expect it to hold together like a real pizza crust. We had to eat ours with forks. But nonetheless, it was still really quite tasty. We will be making this one again next week, but next time I am going to double the recipe. While I am not marathon training at the moment, I am still running (and Nate is still doing T25), and we both felt since all this basically is is vegetables, we needed a little more substance to be a meal.