Beginning the Clean Eating Journey

Last week was the first time that I tried to go by a meal plan for the week and went grocery shopping for the planned meals. I have to say that it is training me to learn some habits in planning ahead. By doing that I found myself staying within my calorie range simply because each meal and snack was planned for the day which kept me from straying from my food goals.

I am always pinning foods and browsing food blogs to find recipes and last week I picked a few to make for each night of the week. Some didn't turn out so great, which I won't be making again. Others turned out perfect and others turned out to be good enough to want to make it again and add it to my repertoire  of homemade meals.

I have mentioned that along with trying to find foods that the hubs will like, I also am trying to expand my taste buds to enjoy the taste of vegetables and things I never really ate in the past but now like.

So here are a few of my featured clean eats that made the cut of being added to my rotation for meal planning:

Meals:

Italian Slow-cooker Chicken - The recipe called for cooking 6-8 hours. The chicken turned out kind of dry so next time I'll probably do it for 5 hours on low. I made it with asparagus instead of carrots because I don't like cooked carrots (though it's been years since I tried it last). I had asparagus on hand since the hubs likes it so I made it with that. It didn't turn out so well. Next time I'll either make the asparagus separate, or add it in for the last hour. Or try a different veggie all together. I still don't like asparagus, so who knows!

Three-Cheese Spinach Pita Pizza - I followed the directions from the recipe but made it with tomato sauce, spinach, low-fat shredded mozzarella, feta and parmesan cheeses. The pita bread was awesome as the edges were crunchy and the rest of it was soft. Just delicious and it was all under 350 calories!

Snacks:

No-Bake Energy Bites - I followed the recipe for this one too except I left out the coconut flakes and the flax. I don't have any ground flax and I just don't like the taste of coconut. The consistency held up without me having to sub anything for it. Very good and very addicting. Gotta be disciplined with this stuff in your fridge!

Sunflower Applesauce - I used to not like applesauce and recently gave it another chance. I found that I LOVE it especially with sunflower seeds in it! I usually just do 1/2 cup of unsweetened applesauce and 1/8 cup of sunflower seeds.


Every week I challenge myself to make a veggie smoothie and so I tried a strawberry and chard smoothie. I had never heard of chard so I thought to try it in a smoothie and see how it'd taste. It wasn't good. Just flavorless and even adding Truvia didn't work. Oh well. Can't wait to experiment with the next smoothie!

Chard leaves are huge!

A couple other meals made the cut but I had to modify them a bit that I think I might just give them their own posts so that I can ramble about the recipe modifications I had to make since I am a picky eater, lol.

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