Pizza or Quinoa

I’m sitting here drinking my dinner smoothie. It’s good but I do wish that it was solid food. I only have one more day till I can add things back in. It’s hard for me to believe that I haven’t had coffee, dairy, added sugar, wheat, or process foods for 3 days. It really hasn’t been as hard as I thought it would be.

My morning today started out with a SMOOTHIE. I bet you saw that one coming. ;) It was a green smoothie. But it wasn’t really green.

Green Smoothie

1 ½ C Almond Milk

1 ½ Packed Spinach

1 ½ C Frozen Cherries

This smoothie didn’t keep me as full as yesterday’s smoothies. Probably because it didn’t have as much protein. I would say this smoothie was just okay. All I could really taste was the cherries.

I was hungry about 10:30. I fixed a plate of hummus and veggies. This hit the spot!

The hardest part of my day was lunch. The office was having a pizza party! I wanted a slice real bad. Thank goodness I had a yummy lunch prepared. I was looking forward to my cold quinoa salad I made! It was really good! It will be making it into the recipe book. Remember me telling you I roasted some almonds last night? Well this is what it was for:

Quinoa Salad with Toasted Almonds

¼ C Slivered Almonds (I also used a few walnuts)

½ C Quinoa

4 Teaspoons olive oil

1 yellow bell pepper (I used a green one), ribs and seeds discarded, cut into ½ inch chunks

2 Garlic cloves

¼ Tespoon salt

1 Medium zucchini chopped

1 large celery stalk, diced

1 lime, halved

Handful of chopped spinach

1.       Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toast almonds until crisp, lightly browned about 7 min. Remove from oven and set aside. Meanwhile, place quinoa in a fine sieve and rinse under cold running water until water is clear.

2.       In a medium saucepan, heat 2 teaspoons olive oil over medium heat. Add yellow pepper and garlic until pepper is crisp-tender. About 5 min.

3.       Stir in quinoa, 1 cup of water, and ¼ teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil, reduce to simmer, cover, and cook 7 min. Stir in zucchini, cover, and cook until quinoa is tender but not mushy. Remove from heat

4.       Stir in celery, almonds and remaining 2 teaspoons of oil, season with salt, and fluf with fork. Cool to room temp, sprinkle chopped spinach on top and pack for a yummy lunch. When ready to eat serve with live wedge.

For dinner I chose to make the Mango-cocount water smoothie

Mango Coconut Water

2 C mango chunks

2-3 T Fresh Lime Juice

2 C unsweetened coconut water

I liked this one. It was a tangy mango flavor.

Hope you have a good night!

Ramona