On Sunday evenings I generally spend half an hour or so thinking about what we will have for dinner for the week so that I can create a shopping list on the Monday. I find this helps me save money and food waste as I am only buying what I need. Lunches tend to be a little less organised, so this time I also devised a menu of healthy lunches for the whole of the week for me and hubby. I took inspiration from some of the recipes in Eat Healthy Magazine and changed them to suit our tastes where necessary. This is how our lunch menu looked:
Monday – jacket potato with tuna mayo, sweetcorn and spring onion.
Tuesday – Sweet potato and butternut squash frittata
Wednesday – Green Goodness Bowl with egg
Thursday – Beetroot, orange & quinoa salad with smoked mackerel
Friday – Prawn & avocado pasta salad (gluten free for me)
Monday was nice, you can’t go wrong with jacket potato and we both enjoyed it. Sorry I didn’t take a photo!
Tuesday, this was delish! It was a recipe was from Eat Healthy mag, but I made a few changes:
roasted sweet potato and butternut squash (diced), roasted red peppers (from a jar-sliced), 5 medium eggs (beaten), 2 spring onions (chopped) & some grated Duchy organic cheese for top – Heat a little oil in a 20cm frying pan, add the potato, squash and peppers to the egg, mix together, season to taste and then pour into the pan. cook gently for 10 minutes and then sprinkle spring onions and cheese on top and place under a pre-heated grill until golden and set. Very nice indeed and very filling too!
Roasted Sweet potato and butternut squash frittata
Wednesday – well hubby got out of this one, he had to meet a colleague for lunch (that’s his excuse and he’s sticking to it). Today was The Green Goodness Bowl, a recipe from Eat Healthy mag again. I decided to do it anyway for myself. Now I can’t stomach egg unless it’s beaten together, so the change I made to this recipe was to swap the poached egg for a one egg omelette and no garlic as I was using garlic infused oil to cook with.
broccoli florets, asparagus spears, kale, courgette, avocado, an egg and lemon juice. Basically, fry the veg (except avocado) with the lemon juice for a few minutes, then put sautéed veg in a bowl, sprinkle over avocado and torn egg omelette. Erm, this was yuk! I seriously could think of better ways to cook and eat these ingredients – definitely will not be doing this again – hubby did the right thing to get out of this one!
Green Goodness Bowl – I’ll be the judge of that!
Thursday – today was Beetroot, orange and Quinoa Salad this is yet another recipe from Eat Healthy Mag, but I changed the ingredient feta cheese (which I don’t like) to smoked mackerel (which I love). There’s a lot of ingredients in this one and to be honest I’m not sure I can go through with it again! I found it a bit contradictory, it says use raw beetroot that you peel and roast yourself, then it lists a pack of ready cooked quinoa in the ingredients! Anyway, I did it all to the letter except the feta cheese bit.
To summarise – ingredients are: raw beetroot, large oranges (I used blood oranges as I simply love these and they are in season), 1 pack of ready cooked quinoa, dressing (olive oil, red wine vinegar, maple syrup and some juice from the oranges), chopped fresh mint, baby spinach, toasted mixed seeds and pomegranate seeds – put them all together and hey presto a superfood salad – I liked most of the elements in this recipe and would use again, but try as I may, I just cannot grow to love quinoa! I find it dry and tasteless, even though it is supposed to absorb the flavour of the dressing. Personally I prefer brown rice. Hubby was stuck at work so I ate mine and he had his when he could, I was out at the time and when I got back I saw that he had eaten it and left a note saying ‘lovely’! I was perplexed as I seriously didn’t think he would like it – well later that evening he admitted he didn’t like it as there was too much going on, I agreed and said it won’t happen again!
Roasted beetroot, blood orange and smoked mackerel with quinoa
Friday – Well it was doomed from the start really, as you have read we both started out well but towards the end of the week it was obvious that I can’t pin my hubby down for a particular time to sit and have lunch, he needs to have stuff in the fridge ready to go when he gets time – his usual is dippy egg with marmite toast, scrabbled egg with salmon and toast or a sandwich, mostly of tuna mayo. This isn’t so bad for hubby, I usually make bread for him in the bread maker (not gluten free) anyway and also I try to have homemade breakfast bars or cake for him to snack on too. Today he was going for a ‘business breakfast’ so I abandoned the original menu and for me, I just used up what was in the fridge from the week and made a salad of it, it wasn’t so bad and took minutes!
Leftovers lunch
Tonight, we are both going to put all that healthy eating behind us and have a blow out at our local Indian restaurant and maybe I’ll have a few cheeky cocktails – Cosmo please barman! ♥
GlutenfreeSally 