Our Journey Continues: Day 11

We are not even two weeks into this adventure yet and today was difficult. It started out as a great day but had a lot of mental highs and lows.

Our breakfast was oatmeal bars and chocolate (spinach, banana, cocoa, etc) shakes.  I thought the kids would love them but the girls were not thrilled and took a while to plow through them.  Little J, Jason and I enjoyed these and the shakes turned out much better than the first round from last week.  I used a high powered blender which made a big difference in the texture and experience.

For lunch I had we picked from left overs and single ingredients for our individual meals.  Little M chose rice, an energy ball (peanut butter, dried fruit & seeds), blood orange.  All great choices.  Little E had her dinner from the night before which she again refused to eat.  I had left overs and salad and that was fine.

Dinner was an attempt at spaghetti and meatballs. The first and most major problem was that I tried using the failed tomato soup as spaghetti sauce.  It may be fine as pizza sauce but it just didn't have enough 'umpf' to make the dish.  In any case, Little M sensing my distress over-compensated on her praise for the meal,  Little J ate it so he could have cookies and Little E just ran around and refused to eat it.  I think my disappointment was that it just didn't taste like spaghetti and meatballs.  Better sauce would have helped so would a mental shift.

I can't make 'traditional favorites' because they are just not going to taste the same.  We need to find new favorites.  Plus, I am pretty much done with the oatmeal, banana, cinnamon flavor that we have had in several breakfast/dessert dishes.  It is ok once in a while but I need more variety than that.

Prior to this diet change I would plan each week with a beef, poultry, pork, fish, bean and egg dish.  It made meal planning easier and meant that we got variety in the foods we were eating.  This coming week I am going to re-implement this policy with adaptations, of course.  We will have a bean soup, a veggie soup, a salad dish, a grain dish, pasta and sandwich/wrap.  I might play with those some until I find the right combination.  But I am going to try to avoid 'look-a-like' dishes like the ones I focused on this week because they were just took disappointing.

I picked up The Forks Over Knives Cookbook today and will look for inspiration there.  Tomorrow, I will plan for Little M's birthday party at the end of the week.  Encouragement is welcome!