Prep goals

After a long day in the car, we were all so happy to finally pull into our garage.

But oh boy, did we have a ton of stuff to unpack and put away!

And I had to come up with something to eat.  V was sick and wanted to go right to bed after her bath, so I didn’t bother making food until she was down.  Poor thing had a GI situation the whole ride home and didn’t eat anything from 9 am on.  When V refuses food, you KNOW she isn’t feeling well. I just listened to her and let her go to bed to hopefully sleep it off.

I had the last salad I bought from Cafe Gratitude, which was the “I Am Pure” with ginger tahini marinated kale and avocado, sea palm, nori, cucumbers, carrots, cilantro, basil, green onions, sunflower sprouts, and teriyaki almonds.

Thank goodness I got extra dressing.  The other tupperware had sesame oil, which I added too.  Not sure if that was for that salad, but they included it for some thing and I hadn’t used it yet, so seemed like a fine addition.

There were literally three almonds, though, so I added cashews on top.  If nothing else, it was nice to finally get a bunch of fresh stuff in my face after a very snacky day stuck in the car, but I’m not sure this was my favorite of their salads.

Kyle and P had random odds and ends that I managed to scrounge up – chili from the pantry and sweet potatoes I had roasted and wrapped up prior to us leaving.  Good enough!

I spent the rest of the night unpacking and getting things put away.  At least kinda.  Because I realized pretty quickly that I needed to organize all the treats I brought home..

And all the treats I got for Christmas…

And all the sweets I already had in the pantry…

OH MAN.  It’s like our house is a chocolate black hole.  Obviously I eat it all, eventually, but I think I’m borderline hoarding at this point.

Check out this beauty that I got at Better Buzz coffee shop!  Anyway.  More on the pantry progress later.

To start, I had dessert.  One cookie down!

I had candied ginger and ginger tea as well.

And then I made a plan for the weekend.  Pantry reorg was priority number one.  And then it was onto food prep.

The next morning, I took all the chocolate and sweets out of the pantry…then cleaned EVERY SINGLE shelf in the pantry.  And then made a whole new section (in the shoe room, not the pantry) for treats.

The rest of this shelving unit has shoes and that’s why it’s called the shoe room, but now it’s home to more important items.  😉

We were still very much food-less, but I made steel cut oats for the kids’ breakfast, and pulled a banana bread from the freezer for Kyle.

I had a cinnamon roll calling my name though…

Still riding that 2017 sugar high!  No room for detoxing here.

Yummmmm…took care of that bad boy.

After a bunch more cleaning, I had to take a break for a kiddo birthday party.  But as soon as we got home, the kids went down for naps and I got right back into the kitchen.  I had to finish off our grocery list so we could hit up all the stores that afternoon.

Miraculously, I found these brussels sprouts in the fridge so I could have a vegetable for lunch.  But there wasn’t much else to eat…so I added sheep pecorino romano and rosemary marcona almonds.

These almonds are ADDICTIVE.  Salty and savory and amazing.  It’s a miracle I didn’t eat the whole bag.

Not too bad for an empty house.

After the kids woke up from naps we went to Costco THEN TJs and THEN Nugget.  Phew!  It basically took the entire rest of the day.

I’ll share our NYE dinner later (we stayed in, so don’t get too excited), but for now, here’s how I spent the rest of the holiday time (with Kyle watching the kids so I could get MAJOR things checked off my list).

Every body loves a check list…  🙂  🙂  🙂

NNP’s all purpose stir fry sauce (because I had oranges that were on their last leg) form her Ready or Not cookbook.

Unpictured: AAG’s ranch dressing from her Celebrations cookbook

This spicy almond butter sauce

Unpictured: balsamic vinaigrette

Three sheets of roasted veggies – butternut squash (x2), yellow onion, and carrots.

And while the oven was on…

I roasted two cans of chickpeas.

This baked potato with bacon was leftover from my dinner at Bob’s steakhouse. I brought it all the way home, only to decide to make it into a tortilla espanola (or quiche pizza, as the kids call it).

I chopped everything up super fine, then added 1 1/2 cups of whipped eggs, 1 tbsp EVOO, salt and pepper.

The oven was getting a serious work out.

My other appliances were working too, though, I used the microwave to steam broccoli.

And the instant pot to steam sweet potatoes.

And I made some dried fruit/seed balls in the food processor.  It’s been a while since I’ve made bars for the kids, but I used to do it every weekend.  Now they can eat Larabars and other commercial products, so I have gotten a little lazy.  The I saw these at Costco and thought I should just make them on my own.

Mine had dates, dried apricots, dried blueberries, sunflower seeds, coconut and cinnamon.  And then I got the idea to roll his peanut dose into a few of them.

So I made three that way with 2 grams of peanuts per ball, but the rest were just plain.

It was not an easy task, rolling the dose into the ball since the amount is so high now, but I got it done.  Hopefully he likes it.

My goals for 2018 aren’t any different from my goals for 2017, but I am committing to making it happen.  Food prep.  With a real plan.  Every weekend.  It’s the only way to survive eating as well as I want to without going insane.  And that’s the key to my health and happiness after all.

Happy New Year!