Whitley County Family YMCA : A Martha Stewart in the Making!

First week of meals complete! And I survived! J Cooking will never be “easier” than running through McDonalds but it did make me feel better physically and mentally. In thinking through my post I asked myself a question. – Why do I choose to eat out rather than cook? After thinking for about a half a second it is easy for me to realize as to why. I choose to eat out rather than in for two reasons:

1. Convenience – its quick and requires no prep

2. Social - I never eat alone so I meet friends for dinner making it part of my social life

For this experiment to be successful and create lasting change I knew I needed to make in easy and I needed to make it social by incorporating my friends.

How to make it easy? – I schedule weekly prep on Sunday evenings. I decide which meals I want to make for the upcoming week and go to the grocery story to purchase needed items. I also prep all parts of the meal that I can on Sunday evening. I cut veggies, place portions into baggies, schedule which days I am going to cook, etc. Prepping saves time. By planning ahead - meals are semi premade, meat is thawed out, and cooking at home rather than eating out suddenly seems a little more “easy”

How to make it social? – Food = Friends. Friends = Food. Local restaurants frequently serve as a meeting placed for my social community. Meeting at restaurants are easy because no one has to clean their home, you can choose a restaurant location that is convenient for all, and it requires very little preplanning. So I began to think about all the reason I would want to create that social culture from my home rather than from a restaurant:

1. A home is comfortable – you can sit on the couch, relax, even come to dinner in a hoodie.

2. Time urgency – when eating at a restaurant I feel rushed. We all need to arrive around the same time and when we are done eating I feel rushed to leave so the next customer can be sat. When eating at home I can have dinner and enjoy conversation on my time rather than their time.

3. Variety – because I eat out so often restaurant food has become boring and has begun to taste the same. There is something to say about the taste of a home cooked meal J

Meal #1 – Pizza

I love pizza and it looked easy so I chose to make it for my first meal. I was also watching my friend’s 2 year old son and thought it could be sometime fun that he may enjoy helping me with. I ended up being ½ right. Pizza was easy but Embry enjoyed playing Angry Birds on my phone WAY more than making the pizza. J

Creating a Healthier Meal = Carbohydrate (C) + Protein (P) + Veggie (V)
C+P+V Thought process will be explained in a later blog post so be sure to keep reading J

Ingredients for BBQ Pizza

1 - 100% whole grain pizza crust – I prefer Boboli pizza crust (Kroger)
1 - onion
1 – orange pepper
2 – chicken breasts
BBQ sauce

Instructions for BBQ Pizza

1. Carb = 100% whole grain pizza crust. I used Boboli.

2. Veggies = spread 2-3 TBSP of BBQ sauce evenly along with chopped onion & orange pepper

3. Protein = 2 chicken breast cooked prior spread evenly on pizza

4. Cheese – spread ¼ cup of low fat mozzarella cheese over pizza

5. Bake at 450 degrees for 8 – 10 minutes

One pizza will make approximately 2 servings

Don’t like BBQ Chicken? – How to make other healthy pizza.

C + P + V = Healthier pizza

Carbohydrate:
100% whole grain pizza crust

Proteins: Choose one
Chicken
Hamburger (lean)
Refried beans (make sure no lard is listed as an ingredient)
Ham
Cheese (low fat)

Veggies: choose as many as you like
Onions
Peppers
Tomatoes
Broccoli
Other Veggies

Follow the same instructions as above but switch sauce to tomato based if desired

Finished Thoughts – I loved it! And it was easy! Instead of eating a greasy pizza I felt like I was eating a gourmet pizza made from a nice pizza restaurant like 800 degrees. This could also be a fun family healthy food meal to make. Kids of all ages could help decorating the pizza. I would defiantly make this meal again!

All the making of a fabulous pizza

Finished Product - BBQ Pizza

Embry voted Angry Birds to be greater than making a pizza but not greater than decorating cookies!

Meal #2 – Mexican Night

In following with my social themed cooking – I invited my friend Emily to dinner for Mexican Night. I was excited to try this recipe out because Jodi included her homemade Mexican seasoning recipe. I can easily purchase a seasoning packet but with many foreign ingredients listed I found the homemade seasoning recipe to be a nice alternative without sacrificing any of the flavoring.

For Mexican Night I chose to make Ground Beef Nachos.

Ingredients
½ serving of organic sweet potato tortilla chips
½ serving of organic natural yellow tortilla chips
1lb lean ground beef
1 – onion
1 – red pepper
1 – avocado
Shredded reduced fat fiesta blend cheese
Salsa
black beans (optional)
spicy pepper hummus (optional)

Mexican homemade seasonings
½ tsp. garlic powder
1 ½ tsp. cumin
1 TBSP chili powder
¼ tsp. cayenne pepper (is spicy – optional)
salt/pepper to taste

Avocado Dip – ½ avocado – mashed with fork – add salt and garlic powder to taste

Not hungry for Nachos? Other Mexican themed meals…

C + P + V = healthier Mexican meal

Carbohydrate – choose one
100% whole grain tortilla
2 tacos
8-10 Tortilla Chips

Proteins – choose one
Chicken
beef
Refried beans (make sure no lard is listed as ingredient)
black beans
low fat cheese

Veggies – choose many
Onions
Peppers
Salsa
Lettuce
tomato
cilantro
Others

Finished Thoughts – excellent! Instead of sticking with one kind of tortilla chip I decided to mix it up and use half sweet potato and half corn. The sweet potato chips added some sweetness to the overall meal. I was also pleasantly surprised by the avocado dip. It was super easy and required very little ingredients but had a lot of great taste! Next time I will add more cayenne pepper to my seasoning. I thought the seasoning was good but I would like it even better if it had an extra kick.

Happy Cooking!

Cara