I was awful at getting any decent outfit shots this week, but I did cook, eat and read about cooking and eating! So I'll share that with you instead.
One of my new favorite blogs is NPR's The Salt. Great, smart articles about all kinds of food-related topics. Last week they posted one about the US Dept of Agriculture's new website called SuperTracker. Since I love tracking my foodstyle, especially if I can do it for free, I hopped on over to check it out.
My preliminary review: thumbs up!!
SuperTracker is perfect for the Foodstyle, since I try to eat as much whole, fresh food as I can. The portions for each are the same as what I had built on my Excel spreadsheet, plus it has tons more cool graphs and colors and whatnot than my boring spreadsheet does. It includes calories (which I don't care about), exercise (which is soon to be on my list of things I care about), and best of all, shows me how much of each food group I am eating and what I am missing.
I like it better than the WW interface, too, because it doesn't open a different pop-up window for the tracker, and it's much easier to search for foods. But that could be because it doesn't have a lot of processed or branded foods on the list, which I prefer. Keep it simple!
I'm going to commit to using this daily instead of my spreadsheet through the end of the month. I'll let you know how it goes!
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Sunday cooking this week is being done in batches, as there is quite a bit to do. I have noticed that by Thursday morning we have run out of food and motivation every week, and all the momentum and success from the first few days quickly disintegrates into frozen pizza, restaurant lunches, and sheer laziness. So this week I am determined to have food available all week long, which means more food has to be cooked or prepared earlier in the week.
Round 1, done early in the morning:
- get a pot of my grandmother's tomato sauce simmering on the stove, for the day
-roast carrots, spaghetti squash and butternut squash. Let cool.
Round 2, done around lunch time:
-make Shelley's homemade "hippie granola" (EDIT: Well, almost made. I burnt it because I didn't stir it every ten minutes. But even so it's still pretty darned tasty! I will try that again next week.)
-make carrot-ginger soup (with butternut squash too)
-shred and refrigerate the spaghetti squash
Round 3, for dinner:
-prep and freeze hamburger patties and meatballs (bought 3 pounds of ground sirloin this week)
-roast a whole chicken and baking potatoes
-roast acorn squash for Hubby (I have leftover butternut squash from the soup)
By the end of the day, I will have food for:
-roast chicken dinner
-carrot-ginger soup for lunches
-spaghetti squash with meatballs for dinner (me)
-hamburgers for dinner (Hubby)
-pasta with butternut squash and cranberries for lunch/dinner (me)
-midweek chicken soup with carrots and leeks, and maybe some pasta (us)
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This better get us to the end of the week this time!
Some food photos, since I know you guys like those... :)
Pomegranate arils and blackberries, which go under my yogurt and granola
Butternut squash, roasted and ready to use!
Spaghetti squash, carrots, and butternut squash. I love winter.
The granola before I burned the daylights out of it.
In case you think I am exaggerating (color not enhanced):
Grr, I hate when I ruin a recipe I have been looking forward to trying! Do you guys ever do that?
Awww, rats on the burned granola! For what it's worth, I've done that once (and tried to eat it, too...). Also? I'd put the entire batch on one pan - you can't see the bottom of my pan when I make it. Hope it works out better for you next time!
ReplyDeleteThe pom/berry picture looks great - do you buy the arils already separated, or get the whole pomegranate and do it yourself?
Ahh, I had it in one pan but it was so thick I did not think that was right. Next time!
ReplyDeleteI bought the pomegranate and removed the arils myself. It was a little easier because I put the arils into a bowl of water once I got them out of the rind. Any leftover rind mixed in then floats to the top so you can skim it away. But it was still messy -- a labor of love!
Yum, granola!
ReplyDeleteI'm trying a cinnamon roll recipe right now and I'm afraid it's ruined already. I hope it rises. :(
The pomegranate picture wins a prize. I love the shine on them. Save that one for next year's calendar!
ReplyDeleteI almost always have to cook something new twice before I get it right. I get all exicted about new things and rush into them and often mis-read the directions, resulting in disaster.
We had a disaster this Christmas with a cream puff-type dessert. The pastry part didn't fluff right and we ended up trashing it. The cream I bought to whip up for the filling is still in my fridge. Christmas dessert was peppermint ice cream w/chocolate sauce instead.
I rarely DONT ruin the recipe :)
ReplyDeleteI am going to go look at that tracker. Not that I need one as I use Sparkpeople and I have quite the data base of custom foods built up. But I want to see yours up close.
ReplyDeleteAll your food sounds yummy. Every Sunday I make 2-3 roasted veggies, 2 starches (i.e. this week mac & cheese and baked potatoes) and usually 2 proteins. Of course there is also salad fixings and the assorted soup thrown in. Yes we eat the same things over and over but honestly it really helps me to NOT be tempted by take out!
So funny I stumbled on this last week when I was looking for a site to track my pregnancy weight gain. I don't love it. I found that a lot of foods I wanted to track aren't included, unlike calorie count - they even have Trader Joe's stuff. I'm going back to old school notebooks to keep track and count calories.
ReplyDeleteI am actually going to check out the supertracker....
ReplyDeleteand YES i hate it when I ruin food. I was baking CHOCOLATE flourless COOKIES a few weeks back and BURNT the nuts. I was supposed to put them in the over for a few minutes to get them a little roasted and walked out the door for a brief moment only to come back to a house full of smoke.