Eats of lately and getting back to basics

Hi friends! Happy Tuesday! We’re back in town after an amazing trip to Colorado. I’ll share a recap and pics tomorrow but I wanted to say thank you to those of you who sent recs my way. You guys always have the best hiking and restaurant suggestions! Liv is back in school (one day a week….) which has been a little bit of a blessing and a curse. She was so excited to see her beloved friends, but she said the constant social distancing reminders made the day feel awkward.

For today’s post, I’m sharing some food and meal ideas + a little update. Over the past three weeks, I’ve been focusing on getting my nutrition back in gear a little bit. With 2020 life, I’ve put nourishing myself on the back burner. Sometimes, my Daily Harvest was the only significant produce I’d get on a given day. After being home for so long, I was just sick of food. I was sick of cooking every single meal (takeout twice a week) for months on end, and cleaning up afterwards. I felt blah and uninspired, so after making food for the girls and cleaning it up, we were right into the distance learning and chores of the day fun without taking much time to prepare a complete meal for myself. (For the record, the girls have had homemade waffles, pancakes, omelets, oats, fruit, or French toast every day since March and are pretty pumped about it haha. The good news is that I love cooking for them, but not for myself.)

With the lack of fresh food for myself, I started to feel slow. I know I feel better when I have more produce in my life and take the time to cook “real” meals with nutrients and protein. So, I reached out to my friend Karen, who owns the the local gym, Telos, to see if she’d help me put together a more structured meal plan. This way, instead of staring at the fridge blankly, I had some new and exciting ideas in my routine and it would guarantee that I was properly fueling myself. (It’s funny because I KNOW how to do all of these things, but I think I also needed someone to *care* if that makes sense.)

So for the past few weeks, I’ve been focusing more on my nutrition and think it’s made a huge difference. I feel more powerful during my workouts, and I also don’t feel hangry at random points during the day. Also worth mentioning here that I still live my life. We ate so much amazing food in Colorado, which also gave me some new recipe creation inspo for the blog!

Here are some of the things that I’ve been enjoying:

Breakfasts:

Egg scrambles with VioLife feta and a side of fruit

Oatmeal with protein powder, chia seeds, maca, berries, and nut butter

Paleo waffles with protein fluff and berries

Smoothies with protein powder, pineapple, spinach, almond milk, and chia seeds

Lunches:

Salads with lots of chopped veggies and a protein (like tuna or salmon burger)

Leftovers. This seems so obvious, but it’s been an awesome tip! I just make extra dinner and have the leftovers for lunch the next day. This is perfect because they’re already made and I don’t have to do more cooking.

Turkey deli wraps with hummus and lots of veggies

Buffalo chicken salad

Buddha bowls! Lots of veggies, brown rice, chickpeas and/or edamame, and some kind of tasty dressing or sauce

 

Dinners:

The dinners have been the best part about asking for meal ideas. Trying new things has made me more excited about cooking, so cooking dinner at the end of a long day doesn’t feel so blah. Dinners have to be family-friendly that the kids and Pilot will enjoy, so these have all been home runs.

Shrimp grill basket: the girls went crazy for this one. It was tons of different veggies (sweet potato, zucchini, squash, onion, bell peppers), shrimp, chicken sausage, lemon juice, tamari and garlic

Honey butter salmon with roasted veggies

Turkey chili (I also made cornbread for the crew)

Sweet potato chicken pad thai

Sheet pan meals, like sausage, onion, peppers, and broccoli all cooked together in a sheet pan

Burrito bowls with chicken, beans, veggies, and guac

So there ya go! Sometimes all ya need is a little outside dose of inspiration. 🙂

What are some breakfasts, lunches and dinners that you’re loving right now?

Some of my standby healthy breakfast, lunch, and dinner ideas are in this post.

xo

Gina