What I Ate Last Week – Week 1

What I ate last week

Here is my new post as promised. I thought this would be a fun series to add in addition to my weekly recipe posts, as it’s a view into my day-to-day eating habits (for those of you that care or are interested).  Welcome to my food diary. This so called food diary may give you some new lunch or dinner ideas, show you how I portion up my meals and give you a bit if insight as to who I really am. You will see that I am a big fan of leftovers and a creature of habit, especially when it comes to breakfast. I will post Monday through Friday’s meals from the prior week. I may occasionally post a weekend meal, but I like to have my weekends off from photographing food, so maybe not.

6:00 am. OK, here is what I have for breakfast almost every morning, I kid you not. I may mix it up a bit on occasion, (steel cut oatmeal, Greek yogurt with granola) but I typically have a bowl of cereal every day, yes every day, and I have been doing so since I was 17. Eggs and toast do not cut it for me in the morning and I can’t have anything to sweet or I will crash. Cereal does the trick and fills me up till lunch.

Cereal with strawberries and coffee

So what’s in the bowl you ask? I throw in a combination of the three cereals below.

Boxes of cereal

I put the Ezekiel on the bottom (or grape nuts), throw a bit of Cafe Fanny on next (this is the best granola and it’s locally made in Berkeley where my best blog buddy Em lives), then I top it off with some Fiber One (you know, to get some extra fiber in). If I’m not having a smoothie that day, I will throw 2 tablespoons of flax seed in and then top it all off with whatever fresh berry is in season. Strawberries and blueberries are in now, so I throw one of them on there. I know it’s a carb heavy breakfast, and a pretty big bow of cereal, but it works for me and I never tire of it.

I’m not skipping over the coffee, no way. I need my cup of joe in the morning. I have about one to two cups of Peet’s coffee every morning. I brew up some Major Dickason mixed with their house decaf and I drink it black, thank you!

That is basically my daily breakfast routine. Just so you know, I am not going to post breakfast again unless I have something different, as who wants to see the same picture over and over!

Monday:

Lunch:

I made up some chickpea veggie burgers that morning for the week and decided to have one for lunch along with my favorite kale salad. I always drink water as well. Basically I have coffee in the morning with breakfast and then it’s water the rest of the day! I drink about eight to ten16oz glasses like the one below. To give the water some taste I sometimes add some fresh mint leaves or sliced cucumber.

Chickpea burger and salad

Dinner:

Monday is one of our crazy nights. Eli has baseball till 6:00 and Zoe has dance till 6:45 and doesn’t get home till 7:15, so it’s one of those nights where I am basically a short order cook.  We typically have leftovers on this night (if there are any) or it’s grilled panini night. We were lucky this Monday, as John had made some amazing beef pho the night before, and we all had that for leftovers along with some asparagus on the side.

Pho soup in bowl

Dessert:

Yup, we all had this homemade ice-cream sandwich below. I made the cookies (recipe next week) and inserted them with Three Twins Madagascar vanilla ice cream.  Delish!

Homemade ice cream sandwich

Tuesday:

Lunch:

Tuesday is the day where my peeps and I train with our trainer, Stein, after drop off. I’m always hungry about an hour or so after the workout, (because he works us so hard) so I tend to have a smoothie.  The smoothie below is my spinach power smoothie. Another reason I have a smoothie on this day is to hold me over till lunch because I work hot lunch at the kid’s school and don’t get to eat till 1:15 or so (that’s late for me). I eat breakfast at 6:00 each morning so I hungry by noon.

Spinach power smoothie

BTW, the kids have an amazing lunch program. Their lunch is provided by Good Earth, which is an amazing all organic Grocery Store.  The lunch fare is all organic, the meats are organic and hormone free and everything is made fresh that day. Yes, this is a public school we are talking about, not private. Parents volunteer to serve the kids lunch each day. It takes 10 parent volunteers to serve up lunch every day. We serve it behind serving stations just like a caterer does at an event, and we have chafing dishes that hold the hot entrees.

Fresh fruit and veggie display
This is just a photo of the fruit and veggie table. I pushed all the stuff together so you could see it.

Tuesday is burrito/taco and enchilada day. The kids can either have a burrito or taco anyway they want or an enchilada.  We serve them the rice, beans, turkey meat and cheese into their taco or tortilla,( basically whatever they want in it) and then they can top it with fresh salsa or sour cream.  The kids also get seasonal & organic fruits, fresh veggies, Caesar salad with homemade dressing and croutons, hard boiled eggs, whole-wheat bagels and organic vanilla yogurt which the kids can top with some amazing homemade granola.  Good Earth rocks and we are so lucky that they provide this amazing and nutritious lunch for our kids.  Anyway, the reason I am talking about the kid’s hot lunch is because I always treat myself to a burrito when I work Tuesday lunch.

Fresh veggie burrito
Here is a photo of the burrito before I rolled it up.

Dinner:

Tuesday is another hectic night and I am usually tired from my workout as well as serving hot lunch for 3 hours, so I like us to have something that is easy to whip up. As you saw, I made these garbanzo bean burgers on Monday so we had these for dinner along with my kale salad, yet again. I warned you that I loved kale salad and that I am obsessed, are you seeing it now?  Zoe ate these burgers with us, but Eli is not a fan, so when I sauteed up the burgers I cooked him up a cheese quesadilla. Surprise, surprise, my kids are not fans of kale salad so I steamed them up some broccoli. I know this might have seemed like a short order cook night, well it was, but some nights you gotta do what you gotta do.

Garbanzo burger with kale salad

Dessert:

Ice cream sandwiches for dessert again, but with Three Twins sea salted caramel ice cream in the middle.

Ice cream sandwich

Wednesday:

Lunch:

What, kale salad again?  Are you really surprised? I had some leftover kale salad a piece of whole-grain bread topped with some not so healthy Jiff peanut butter. I know, Jiff, really? I am trying to convert to the healthier stuff, but I really love Jiff and sometimes I just want good old- fashioned peanut butter.

Don’t criticize me!

Kale salad and peanut butter toast on plate

Dinner:

Wednesday is a night where we are all home and can eat at a normal time like a civilized family. This is the night where I tend to make up a nice meal that everyone enjoys.  We had turkey burgers with the fixings and some asparagus on the side. You will be seeing a lot of asparagus on our plates, as it’s in season right now and so tasty.

Turkey burger

Dessert:

No dessert for me, as I needed a break from 3 nights in a row of ice-cream sandwiches. I made the kids an ice-cream cone though.

Thursday:

Lunch:

I love this lunch. It’s a blueberry and spinach smoothie (recipe soon) that I paired up with multigrain toast topped with walnut butter (I had a healthier nut butter today, see Em) and fig jam.  It was delicious and satisfying. It was also raining out so I wanted a warm and gooey sandwich.

Nut butter toast

Dinner:

Thursday was cold and rainy and I had lacrosse pick up, so I wanted to have something quick and comforting. I still had some chickpea burgers around so John and I each had one of those paired with my favorite creamless tomato soup (which can be made in 25 minutes folks).  The kids had the tomato soup with grilled cheese panini’s.

Creamless tomato soup

Dessert:

I took another night off from dessert, but the kids had ice cream cones, yet again. The cold does not stop them from enjoying ice cream.

Friday:

Lunch:

Friday is usually the day that I like to meet up with a friend for lunch. I met up with my friend Carolyn at one of my favorite lunch spots, Rustic Bakery. I had this Asian chicken salad below.  I also brought along my own water, because why buy bottled water in a plastic bottle when you can be drinking out of glass!  Carolyn and I did split a rather large cookie for dessert, but I forgot to get a photo of it, sorry.  It was a dark chocolate cookie with white chocolate chips in it. Yum!

Asian chicken salad

Dinner:

On Fridays we tend to go out to dinner, as Marin mama needs a night off from the kitchen. This night we went to one of our favorite spots, Avatar’s Punjabi Burrito, which is located in Larkspur. I had a glass of wine, (because it was Friday) and these amazing pumpkin enchiladas. They are superb! This photo does not do them justice as I took it quickly with my iPhone because people were staring at me wondering why I was taking photos of my dinner. I am still getting use to photographing food in public.

Enchilada combo plate

Dessert:

For dessert we headed down the street to Modern Cookie Company. This is the place where I got the idea for my s’more cookie.  John and I split this s’more cookie (just look at that thing, yum) and it was decadent. Here I am going from no desserts in two days to two deserts in one day. I figured I really only had one dessert as I split both of them, right?  Eli had the s’more cookie as well.  Zoe had a dark chocolate cookie with butterscotch and chocolate chips baked inside. She raved it was one of the best cookies she has ever had.

S'mores cookie
This dessert was the perfect way to end the week!

This dessert was the perfect way to end the week!

I am human and I may not make the healthiest choices all the time. I want people to see this diary so they know I am being real here and not trying to come across as someone who eats only the healthiest and most natural ingredients. I try to eat with real ingredients most of the time, and I know my morning cereal choice is not the healthiest, but I am slowly willing to convert. I am in the process of trying wheat berries and other natural substitutes in lieu of my morning bowl of cereal. Stay tuned and see what I come up with.  Also, please send me any suggestions of your favorite breakfast or lunch foods. Cheers for now!

With love Jackie
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10 thoughts on “What I Ate Last Week – Week 1”

  1. I did enjoy reading your food diary, Jackie, and it has given me an idea for a post. Don’t worry, I’m only going to do it once, and I’ll give you a link as the inspiration for it. I like the fact that you eat many things more than once — we always do that. Thanks for a great idea.

    1. Hi Sharon! I love that this post inspired you. I actually got this idea from my friend Em, and that is just the way things work in the blogging community. We all are here to share ideas etc. I can’t wait to see what you come up with.

  2. I loved this – and I also love how amazing your photos are – I need to up my game for the daily eats photo (and possibly clean my I phone camera screen, which I think could be part of the problem. Too many grubby baking hands all over it!).

    Anyhow – I also love your eats – so fresh and healthy looking. It’s so funny how I’ve sort of gone off meat a bit since arriving. Not totally (still loving jerky and chicken enchiladas!) but I just crave it was less. Im not sure if its the weather or learning more about plant based diets in school. In any case, Im very jealous of all your veggie burger eating AND of those ice cream sandwiches. We learned about dessert at school on Wednesday and – although I always have SOMETHING a bit sweet after both lunch and dinner, usually it’s just fruit. I’m thinking I need to get more creative with my healthy desserts, as well as being more advneturous at the weekend!

    And guess what I just had for breakfast. It was actually like 3 courses that started with a small goats yogurt, some strawberries and your flax, and then I had a cup of applesauce with peanut butter stirred in and then I had half a cookie from the batch I baked yesterday. I’m feeling EXTREMELY full right now … but also full of energy for the day.

    Speak soon and have a great Friday! xox

  3. Hi Em! Wow, applesauce with peanut butter? How was it? It’s funny that I don’t eat applesauce more. I think I have an aversion because it was something I fed the kids when they were little and it reminds me of baby food. I totally know it’s not though.

    Are these cookies the ones you baked with the oat flour? I still need to try them. I swear, I have not been baking lately because there just isn’t time. I am soooo ready for summer and relaxing.

    Go with your gut on the meat thing. I go through periods when I don’t want meat at all and I listen to my body. I may serve the family some meat, but I just don’t eat it. I think you’re finding other satisfying substitutes to meat and thus not craving it. I also think it’s the California vibe and energy that you’re going with as well. Living here has changed the way I eat as there is so much amazing produce year round and variety here in grains etc that you really don’t need meat.

    Have a great Saturday girl and I think I may join you next Saturday for that class. I just have to get the hall pass 🙂

  4. Love this!! It’s fun to see your yummy eats and I am definitely inspired to change up my lunches next week. Great blog…. thanks!

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