Yet Another Healthy Recipe Review Post

It's been about a month since I did my last recipe review post, so it's time for another!

We've now gone a whole three months without eating a frozen dinner once (although we have eaten frozen veggies a few times). So I'm pretty dang proud of myself for making this commitment to eat less processed, real foods, and actually sticking to it.

For this past month, I only have a handful of new recipes to share though, because now that we've tried so many yummy healthier recipes the previous two months (here and here), this month we recycled some of our favorite meals again, and added these new ones below to try out.

Another Healthy Recipe Review Post (With Calorie Counts)

So, my calendar is trying to kill me.

I can not believe how much we've got going on over the next few months: an impromptu out of state vacation, meetings and creating all the decor for a charity auction, concerts, running a 5K in December (and doing C25K so I don't die), 2x per week tennis lessons starting soon, my aunt is getting married in California, my husband's birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and all of the activities and travel that come with holidays, plugging away at our bathroom renovation (we've got the shower tile all up and floors prepped for floor tile this weekend), and oh yeah, it's the start of my busiest few months of the year at work. And probably 40 other things I'm not even going to think about until a calendar reminder pops up.

But all of that aside, I'm still committed to cooking us dinner nearly every night and eating healthy. I'm going for a lifestyle change, and no matter how busy life gets, I'm determined not to slip back into the pattern of just eating frozen dinners every night. And I'm back with a another recipe review post--reviews of the meals we've eaten over the past few weeks. There were some definite home runs this time around, and a lot I will be making again!

If you remember, this was the meal plan:

And here are my notes on each, the links to the recipes, photos and even the calorie counts. I've started counting calories, since going on this low-carb diet I was finding that some days I wasn't eating enough (good news, I've lost a few pounds). So I've been adding up the ingredients for each of these meals, so I can accurately account for what I'm eating. So many of the paleo/primal/healthier eating recipes don't include calorie counts, so I thought I'd share. Obviously it will differ depending on which brands you use, but at least it's something to reference!

Update on My Primal/Paleo Diet (with Recipe Reviews)

I did it! I cooked for more days in a row than I ever have in my life. I tried some new things. I devoted a lot of time to meal planning, and the cooking itself. But it feels good to know that we ate a lot less processed junk and a lot more veggies than normal!

So I think I'm going to give it a go for another couple of weeks. Maybe taking it slow, committing to short time lines will make it easier. Because it is a big commitment to eat healthier. Making sure you have enough food in the house to avoid the temptation to just go drive thru and grab something. Devoting at least 45 minutes to an hour of your evenings to food prep and cooking. Plus add in the 30 minutes 3x per week I've been doing the C25K program and shower time, I am losing a lot of time I would normally spend crafting or working on house projects. I'm sure most of you guys already spend a lot of time cooking, so my complaints are just something you get used to, but it really is an adjustment to no longer be able to shove frozen dinners in the oven and have a good 45 minutes to do other things around the house. I haven't had time to vacuum since I started this diet!

But struggles with the time suck that eating real food is aside, I wanted to do a little recap of the recipes I tried over the past few weeks. Mostly as notes to myself on what to try again, and what I would change, but also in case any of you are interested in trying any of these recipes. I thought it would be fun to jump on the Instagram bandwagon and take photos of the meals, but then I realized how annoying only being able to take a square photo is. So I snapped these photos with my phone, but added the photo filters on my computer with Pixlr-o-matic instead. As a reminder, this was our meal plan from my previous post:

So I'm Trying This Primal/Paleo Eating Thing For A Few Weeks...

...but man is it expensive to eat healthy!

Happiness Is: Garlic!

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I seem to be writing all about food this week!

This weekend is the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, held in the garlic capitol of the world, about an hour south of where we live.

I'm pretty insanely excited about going with The Mr. to the festival, because garlic is MY FAVORITE FOOD (yes, the all caps is necessary), and we haven't gone the past three years.

I know, I know, garlic isn't really a food. But I love it to death and will put it on just about anything, so to me, it counts! Saturday we will be eating about 4,000 calories of garlicky foods, and I will definitely be bringing home a giant bag of garlic kettle corn. It sounds a little weird, but the salty/sweet flavor of kettle corn, with the addition of garlic is heavenly.

Do you have any yummy food-related plans this weekend? And have you ever been to an entire festival dedicated to your favorite food?