What's Cookin

DJ Baby Bok Choy

I sure do a lot of cooking these days. I'm basically on a pattern where I have to cook every other day, sometimes I can swing it til the third day. I don't like pre-making meals for too many days ahead of time because I get freaked out about the freshness, and I don't like freezing them because I've never done that and I don't know how they'll reheat.

So today I had to do make food for Monday and Tuesday. I eat one container at 1:00 and one at 4:00, and one for dinner at 7:00. I try to taper the carb content a bit so that the meal I eat in the evenings is more just protein and fibrous carb, not starchy carbs.

Here is what I made today:

• baked boneless/skinless chicken breast
• steamed baby bok choy
• quinoa - the inca red kind (first time!)
• baked cubed sweet potato
• swiss chard sauted in coconut oil with garlic, then red pepper flakes and lime.



Look how colorful! The chicken is on the bottom.

...And the cooking didn't stop there.

Every morning I eat a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast. I usually add a partial scoop of protein powder to give it more substance. Ideally, I would eat egg whites too, but I just don't have time in the mornings to do all that cooking. It is a feat just getting out the door on time. So I was reading an old issue of Oxygen magazine the other night, and I found a recipe for these veggie-egg white bites this fitness model invented. You bake them in muffin tins to get individual servings and voila! Egg whites ready to go. She uses mini muffin tins but I just have regular size so I used those.

Egg Whites to Go
1 small box egg whites
1 small onion diced and sauted
1 shallot diced and sauted
1 small summer squash
1 small zucchini

Preheat oven to 350. Cut up the veggies; saute the onion and shallot in a bit of coconut or olive oil. Spoon diced vegetables into each muffin tin. Salt and pepper each pile of veggies. Open container of egg whites and pour over veggies into the muffin tins. They don't rise much so you can fill them as little or as much as you want. I just filled them til they covered the veggies. Bake for about 30 minutes or until they are done.

Here is what they look like:



egg whites to go!

I am so happy to have found a way to get high quality protein in the mornings! The benefit of solid food over protein powder is the thermic effect that is caused by the digestion process of eating solid food. And of all foods, protein burns the hottest, followed by complex carbs.

I'm getting ready to go watch Sunday night Mad Men (yay) and do my nails. This week went great and I am looking foward to tomorrow.