A week of Thai salads

Looking back on this week’s lunches there is a pretty clear theme!

I took one day off (for a smoked salmon snacky plate), but otherwise I managed to eat my way through 4 bunches of kale.

Asian and Thai flavored salads for the win!  It’s all I craved, so I just listened to my body and gave it the good stuff.

I was out of Nugget’s Thai sesame dressing for the first part of the week but remedied that by Wednesday.

The Kewpie deep roasted sesame dressing was a delish stand in until then.  I paired it with leftover roasted butternut squash, avo, and salty blanched almonds.

I made the same-ish salad the rest of the week with the Nugget Thai sesame dressing.

Once I ran out of butternut squash I used roasted sweet potatoes since I made two trays of them over the weekend.

As for nuts, I was in a peanut mood.  Almonds, cashews or peanuts all work in this salad.  Or sunflower seeds if you’re living in a nut free home.  But now that we are safely able to have peanuts on hand, I’ve been making up for lost time.  THEY ARE SO GOOD!

The cilantro was the extra touch that put it on the next level.  I’m starting to think that meals with herbs help settle my stomach.  That’s based on very little research, mind you, but I swear meals with parsley and cilantro are much better tolerated.

My afternoon ginger tea is also super helpful.  It literally works like a charm. Every. Single. Time.  My gut was kinda wonky for half of the time we were in San Diego and then for a few days after we got back…including Thanksgiving, which was a bummer.  But it is better again now, which supports my theory that my gut’s reactivity is (at least a little) hormonally driven.  Now I just have to figure out a way to keep that phase more tolerable, because I’ve definitely had stretches way longer than a month without pain!  Hmmm.

Truth be told, I’ve been tempted to skip meals altogether because of how annoying it is to feel fine…then eat…and then immediately feel crappy.

Wouldn’t that make anyone want to quit food altogether?  Ok, I’m not serious of course.  But this has been a slippery slope for me in the past, so at least I know better, GI pain is not a reason to shut down my whole GI system.

Liquid mornings are a decent compromise though.  And by that I mean, coffees and other beverages that give me enough calories to work out and feel good, but still keep my gut appeased.  Maybe I should go back to juicing?  Juices and smoothies are usually pretty stellar options.  I just forgot about them because it’s colder weather now and my mind doesn’t exactly jump right to frozen blended things because I’m a California girl who prefers to stay above 70 degrees.

So anyway, I had Thai salads on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.  And this will probably continue for the foreseeable future, because we know how my food ruts go.  🙂

I may even prefer the sweet potatoes to the butternut…hard to say.  I’ll get lots of food prep done this weekend so probably another sheet of butternut squash will be included in that.

Next step is figuring out how to make my own Thai dressing.  I’ve googled like crazy but can’t find Nugget’s recipe anywhere.  Maybe I should write to them and beg for the secret.