Healthy Bowls O'Dinner!

I’m 4 weeks out from my marathon and according to Coach George and mi padre, it’s time to “get focused!” My dad berated me last week about rock climbing, and I got an unprompted email from George this week telling me to stop climbing and start eating fruits and vegetables.

Weeeellllmmkfine, I will take a break from climbing. But the fruits and veggies thing? That I already have under control!

Bowl O'Dinner: Butternut squash, asparagus, kale, onions, wheat berries, Israeli couscous, black beans, egg.

I don’t normally blog about my daily dinners because, well, I think you all like reading about and looking at fabulous desserts (right? who doesn’t?). Plus I pretty much never follow a recipe. Plus plus I'm usually far too hungry when I'm cooking dinner to be bothered with good pictures (as you can see).

But I do cook myself dinner every night, and according to SpeedyKate  (whom I enlisted to corroborate my veggie-eating habits to George), “Mollie eats more vegetables than anyone else in the world, I think.”

So to prove to you all that I am not, in fact, internally composed of buttercream, here are some recent bowl o'dinner "recipes." (No quantities included – use what you have, do what you feel).

Mollie's Bowl O'Dinner (which has, in some form, been rocking my world since 2006):

1. Sauté/pan-steam (i.e. no oil, a bit of water, put a top on the pan): sweet potato/butternut squash, garlic, onion, asparagus, and kale. 
2. Add water as necessary to keep it from sticking to the pan. 
3. At the end mix in a spoonful of tomato sauce, and your grain of choice. 
4. Add an egg (crack it into the veggies and put the top on the pan so the egg gets poached) and finish cooking.
5. Finish with cheese and salt and pepper.

Variations/notes:

• A: Really, any vegetables work. Be conscious of relative cooking times though. (i.e. Sweet potatoes take a lot longer to cook than asparagus, so add them at different times.)
• B. Grain options: half rice/half quinoa (they take about the same amount of time to cook so you can just do them in the same pot); OR rice/red lentils; OR wheat berries/Israeli couscous (these you have to cook separately and mix at the end – recipe here). 
• C: Asian-ish variation: instead of tomato sauce, use soy sauce, vinegar, chili powder, garlic, ginger, and a few finely chopped almonds.
• D: Indian-ish variation: curry powder and chili powder!
• E. I usually eat everything with fresh red or green leaf lettuce mixed in at the end for crunch (I call it 'hot salad.' And I can see that face you're making through the interwebs, but I will have none of your judgement – it's good!).

2. Wheat Berry Salad: 

1. Roasted butternut squash, kale, onions, and black beans.
2. Cook wheat berries and Israeli couscous separately and then mix them together (recipe here). 
3. Eat it with salsa, cheddar cheese, a scoop of Greek yogurt (like sour cream but way better), and maybe some tortilla chips crumbled on top.
4. Mix in fresh lettuce at the end; the lettuce will wilt a little bit and be delicious.

3. Whole wheat spaghetti: 

1. Sauté garlic, onion, asparagus, and broccoli, plus a Trader Joe’s frozen turkey meatball chopped up.
2. Add spaghetti and sauce. 

On top of this, of course, is chocolate and desserts and popcorn and chips and salsa and large quantities of peanut butter...but that's another story for another day.

Also, here are some previously blogged about real food recipes that fall into the healthy dinner category:

Wheat Berry Couscous Salad

Beet Risotto with an egg over spinach. 

Garlic Scape Pesto Pasta with greens and yellow squash. 

And with that, I rest my case. I eat plenty of cake and cookies, but I do not ONLY eat cake and cookies. If you actually want more details on how to make any of these things, let me know and I'll get back to you.

Marathon focus-face ON!