Health Made Simple, Days 21-22

I'm already on week 4 of Health Made Simple! I can't believe how quickly it's going by. These meal plan things tend to drag on for me typically, but I think, since I'm not being super-strict or denying myself things, this one doesn't feel like a meal plan at all. It just feels like normal life, except with way more fruit (and way less plant meat!) than I'm used to.

Sunday morning started with Avocado Toast topped with pickled onions and bagel seasoning. So good!

Morning snack was — you guessed it — fruit! This bowl had pineapple, strawberries, and clementines.

Lunch was a leftover brown rice bowl with kale, mushrooms, chickpeas, tahini sauce, and pickled onions. Shortly after lunch, my parents came over from Arkansas. My mom had plans to stay for a couple days to help me paint my dining room and hallway, and my dad needed to fix my running toilet and bicycle brakes. My mom and I went to Home Depot for paintings supplies and immediately got to work. I snacked on baby carrots and celery with goddess dressing while we worked.

I told my mom that, instead of grabbing takeout for every meal while we painted, that I'd be cooking Health Made Simple meals. She was totally down for that, so while she kept painting, I stopped to prep us some dinner — Black Bean Burritos with Salad. These had black beans, kale, mushrooms, onions, guac, salsa, lettuce, pickled onions, and tomato. My salad had cashew ranch, and she opted for a bottled carrot ginger dressing. Sorry for the crappy photo, but we had no time to waste on food styling. We had work to do!

Sadly, I FORGOT to add brown rice to our burritos! Still good though. Oh, and those wraps are whole wheat and made with very few ingredients (unlike the highly processed Mission ones). They're by La Tortilla Factory. My new fave!

We wrapped up painting around 11 pm, enjoyed a glass of celebratory red wine, and went to bed. And then we woke up bright and early on Monday morning to get back to painting. I took the day off work, and my mom is on vacation all week. 

My meal plan recommends smoothies every week day for breakfast and solid meals on weekends. But they say oats are a perfectly fine alternative if you'd rather have that. My mom burned herself on smoothies a few months ago when she did a reset plan that involved smoothies for every meal. So she was much more in favor of Steel Cut Oats over smoothies. I added a mashed banana and maple for sweetener and topped with blueberries, strawberries, and walnuts.

Mid-morning, we both snacked on fruit bowls with banana, clementines, and grapes.

And then for lunch, we had leftover Black Bean Burritos (with rice this time!). Plus, I made us some Air-Fried Potato Wedges on the side. As you can see, I had paint all over my hands (and my legs and my arms and my face!).

In the afternoon, I snacked on some trail mix, but I forgot to take a picture. Around 5 pm, I pulled away from painting (while my awesome mom soldiered on!) to prep dinner again. This time, we had Marinated Baked Tofu & Veggie Stir-fry over Quinoa. This meal plan recipe was one of my faves so far! The tofu is marinated with soy sauce, maple, and garlic and baked in the oven. The veggies — broccoli, carrots, and green/red bell peppers — are fried without oil and seasoned with a maple-soy sauce that's thickened with cornstarch. My mom loved this too!

After dinner, it was back to work for a bit! And then, finally, around 9 pm, we called it quits for the night and enjoyed a couple glasses of wine while watching Queer Eye on Netflix. What an exhausting but rewarding weekend! I'm soooooo grateful that my mom gave up part of her vacation to help me paint (and real talk, she did most of the work!). She spent the night again on Monday, so she'll come up again in tomorrow's post.