Culinary Expansion

So who knew this round of myfitnesspal and hubby's crazy low carb diet will become a culinary expansion for the family! A dear friend of mine who is also on the crazy low carb diet messaged me to say "I was waiting for you to start to get creative with food" Nice, I like that compliment!

To support hubby's diet and stick to my adherence to the balanced "MyFitnessPals" intake, I have trying to think beyond the stir fry's and the mix vegetable soups!

Here is where the experimentation has resulted in so far

1. Zucchini Boats: Loaded with vegetables and topped with cheese and home made sauce
2. Lettuce Taco Wraps: Instead of beans, a concoction of vegetable stir fly, but having the taco shell as the lettuce: So Lettuce, layered with guacamole, then vegetables, topped with red, green salsa and always topped with more Jalapeno's

3. Modified Vietnamese Pho: And instead of the noodles, using julienned crisp vegetables and then all the fun toppings to mimic a "pho"

4. For Soups: Carrot, tomato, ginger soup. I am telling you dearies, as weird as this sound it was one of the best soups for the winter I have made so far!

5. Beet Salad: Ok this is not the adventurer one, but is my friends tried and tested recipe: Beets tossed with onion, cucumber, ginger, chilli and guacamole as the salad dressing

Here I what I want to experiment with and am perplexed with if it will work

1. Vegetable cutlets/ patty and I am still at loss for a low carb binding agent, I can think of chickpea flour, but since hubby is doing no nuts/ grains this is also out.
2. Vegetable lasagna with Zucchini sheets instead of the pasta sheets! Sounds interesting to me and may work
3. Spinach or Broccoli soup: It really sounds boring to me but I have been told its crazy healthy

What other ideas do you have for this culinary expansion?

On a progress point: Well honestly with weekend travels, milestone parties and general life, every weekend our plan goes out for a toss. But I have been honest enough to track in the tool even if I was 3 times my calorie intake for the day! Giving me a good continuous day streak! Hubby has been also going back every Monday to his healthier food choices and eating all green vegetables as needed.

Can we both improve: Hell yes! Are we both doing okay: Yes! and Is there directional progress: Maybe!

What brings me joy!

Year after year, my resolution every year is keep the calendar as open as possible and just go with the flow. And then the weeks start rolling and kids events, our events and general planning nature kicks in and calendar starts filling up. And here goes the first resolution out the window!

But then there are some times, when we consciously keep the weekends free for "just in case trips" especially the long weekends. This time around, the strategy worked. Except I missed a dear friends birthday and I need to celebrate with her! We could make a short trip on the long weekend and really reminisce with our friends, get amazing parenting tid-bits from a couple I think have gotten it figured out this parenting thing. And of course we called friends who were en route the road trip to see if we could pop in to say Hi! It worked out beautifully for this short trip!

Whilst in Pitt a cozy afternoon, Our friend had volunteered to take the kids to D&B, till this point I am not sure if it was for him or for the kids. But thank him for that since his wife, Sumit and me spend a wonderful afternoon admiring the Warhol Museum and then just sitting in a coffee shop for over 2 hours! (Sans Kids!) Of course Sumit found this amazing board game made in 1970's and that provided the right fodder to just truly "be in the moment"

There was no farce, no judgement, no pretenses, just the three of us bonding over this game and enjoying ourselves immensely! We had no clue how the time flew. During a conversation we asked a friend just hitting her milestone birthday. What's important to her to 2020? She being a highly self aware individual said "Do more of this(referring to the afternoon in the coffee shop), simple things but things that bring me more Joy" and as we continued the conversations over dinner with the rest of the family what she said resonated in my mind!! "Do things that bring more Joy"

Do I know what those things are? Definitely Not yet! But I will learn from her and Sumit's wisdom and may be do things and figure it out along the way.  If I could predict, a lot of them will be around food! But I am excited to learn over the course of 2020 and start a new tag "Bring me Joy".

And before you think we had an epiphany moment over that coffee, no, we made enough jokes over the 'Mary Kondo' philosophical viewpoint as well!

So you think about it: What brings you joy?