Just a quick plug for spinach: I freaking LOVE spinach!! When I was pregnant with Reuben, I ate spinach pretty much every day. When I had my GD test, the results came back showing that my iron levels were higher than that of an average woman BEFORE she gets pregnant. When you're pregnant, the fetus basically steals all the iron you would normally make for yourself, so you usually end up on iron supplements. Even your prenatal vitamins can't rebuild it enough all the time. But my spinach habit proved very helpful in this regard, and I never had to take a supplement during that pregnancy :) Spinach is also loaded with folate, making it a good pregnant-lady food for that reason as well. AND spinach helps fight cancers, including skin cancer, is a highly alkaline food, which can help balance all the acid we take in from animal products, and can even improve brain function! Eat it! Eat it often! I buy two bags of spinach a week and eat them basically by myself. Ok plug over. On to the details of my lunch.
Now, here's why I can't do a juice fast. Not that I feel the need to, but here's why I decided not to get a juicer. I just love protein. It makes me feel good. I usually put protein into whatever veggies I'm eating during the day, just to fill me up a little bit so I'm not tempted to snack later. Another thing I do is eat a HUGE lunch (as you can see) for the same reason. As a breastfeeding mom, I still eat whenever I get hungry, but I'm also trying to train my body to realize it doesn't need snacks all the time, especially with such huge lunches.
So today's huge lunch is heavy in beta-carotene, iron, and protein, and quite large. Good stuff. I'm still full just thinking about it. Here's what I did:
1. Cook up some spinach. I throw it in a frying pan and let it wilt down. Spinach has a ton of its own juice, so you don't really need to add water or oil or anything.
2. While the spinach is cooking, prep your eggs. I use 2 eggs to about 3 cups of spinach (but I'm a spinach addict. Use as much as you want.) and just a little bit of cheese (mozzarella, of course).
3. Remove the spinach and add some oil to the pan. I always always use olive oil, but to each his own. Once it's hot, cook yourself a mean omelet. For me, that meant getting my sister to cook it for me since I suck at omelets :) But she taught me well, so hopefully next time I can do it myself. (The last time I made this it was basically scrambled eggs with spinach on top.)
4. Add the spinach to the omelet before you fold it up all pretty, and voila! Green stuff and eggs.
I've been wanting to find a good veggie smoothie recipe, so today was attempt #2 at carrot milk. The first attempt went a little better, sadly to say. I am following a recipe that came with my parents' Blendtec, but I'll be altering it next time since I wasn't a huge fan of how it turned out. But here's what I did:
1. Cut 2 carrots in half. You should probably peel them first, but I didn't. I really don't mind the skin.
2. Pour 1 cup of milk into the blender, and stick the carrots in standing straight up. That's what the recipe said to do, so that's what I did.
3. Add 1/4 cup of ice cubes (whatever the heck that means. I did 4 or 5 ice cubes).
4. Blend and enjoy.
I had absolutely no faith in the blender at this point.
But it looks like it did a pretty good job! Super smooth! I think I'll pour it into a nice goblet and make it look all pretty.
Ok looks like it didn't do as well as I thought...a huge chunk of carrot was hiding in the blender and plopped into my pretty goblet.
Two! I guess it can handle one whole carrot, but not two. Next time I think I'll chop them smaller, whatever the recipe book says to do.
Yuck, what a mess lol.
Anyway here's my finished meal. It was really good, but like I said I need to alter the smoothie recipe. Next time I'll do more milk, more ice, and smaller carrot pieces and we'll see how that works.
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