Gifts and a Home Cooked Meal

The almond butter fairy decided to visit me this afternoon!

I can’t wait to try these!!!!!! Thanks Barney Butter! 🙂 The 90 calorie packs are seriously the best thing since sliced bread for my lunchbox…we shall give it a go tomorrow! There also might be some serious almond butter cookie baking going on in the near future to put these jars to good use. You can never have too much almond butter!

I got a lot done this afternoon, primarily in the kitchen department. I made food for the week and tupperwared it up in the fridge for easy access during the next few days. I also finished Water for Elephants. LOVED it! I almost cried at the end just because it was over. If you haven’t read this one you better get your hands on it soon….it will suck you in for sure!

Midday I made a little snack of an apple with peanut butter. Haven’t had this for awhile and it was delicious. I try to eat more tropical fruit in the summer and save my crazy apple eating for fall but I couldn’t help myself when I saw these beautifully crisp Red Delicious apples at Whole Foods yesterday.

And…I finally got around to making those turkey meatballs from “The Eat Clean Diet”. They are very simple to make—just lean ground turkey, fresh herbs, whole wheat bread crumbs and an egg to bind it all together. This is why having a food scale is helpful—I made exactly five servings (3 meatballs per serving, 4 ounces total) and froze two of the servings to be baked later.

I also made the sweet potato risotto recipe from the same book. This recipe had my name all over it. I looooove sweet potatoes and go crazy over risotto (heck, I have a special risotto pot from williams sonoma). However, there were definitely a few quirks in the recipe. The original recipe claimed to serve four but judging from the calorie count per serving (171 kcal), I knew that the amount of rice was too much (original recipe called for 1.5 cups rice for 4 people). So, I made half the recipe and used only 1/2 cup arborio rice and 2 chopped sweet potatoes, but I needed about 8 cups of chicken broth when the recipe said I would only need two. Now, not that I’m a professional risotto maker, but I did made it a ton back when I was in culinary and I know how to make a good pot of it. You need tons of liquid for the rice to soak up. Two cups is nothing! So, in the end, I halved the recipe and got three good sized servings out of it. It was worth it—–it was freakin’ amazing!!!

So, here’s my homecooked meal: 3 turkey meatballs with organic roasted garlic marinara sauce, a scoop of risotto and a spinach salad with balsamic vin. I was so stuffed after the meatballs and risotto that I couldn’t finish my salad. It’s okay though. I think I got all my veggies in at lunch today!

But of course I had room for a dark chocolate square (obviously!):

And I’m bringing a half soymilk/half water protein shake for later in the night…

Tonight is really not a night I’m looking forward to. Actually I grimace when I think about it. We are making petit fours, opera torte, madelines and linzer cookies. Now this doesn’t seem like too big of a deal but each thing requires about 500 steps and is very intricate and time consuming.  Hopefully it’s not too late of an evening!!!