Erica & Wes are trying to eat healthier.

Just a warning before we start this... it is currently 7:17 am on a Friday morning.
       I work half-days on Fridays, meaning I don't go into work until noon. I am up entirely too early!! (so please pardon any typos and/or nonsensicals...and it's too early for pictures.) I usually do chores and errands on Fridays before I go into work. On the to-do list today is to make a slow cooker meal and then head to my mom's to do my laundry. Since no one would want to read a blog about laundry, I'll will be doing another recipe blog post.

Wes & I are starting a "diet" next week. It's not necessarily a diet, technically. We are just changing our meal choices by eating healthier. And we're limiting ourselves to one sweet treat a day (which will be extremely hard for me *sad face*). We're getting older so we need to start watching our cholesterol, sodium intake and such. Also, I feel as if I am the heaviest I've ever been and I'm starting to look a little frumpy (damn metabolism... why you gotta slow down?) Plus, I don't exercise as much as I used to so I'm trying to get back into that as well. Changing lifestyles... that's the ticket!

I tried this once before when I did the Super Shred diet with a coworker in January. Surprisingly, it wasn't bad at all. I'll certainly miss sweets and chips but the rest of it is actually doable. I won't be starving myself or limit myself to eating certain things by calculating calories. There's a lot of variety and meal options in me & Wes' diet plan. The key is eating small portions throughout the day and choosing healthy things to eat for those portions. This isn't exactly the Super Shred regime but it's pretty similar.
       So here's what we're doing... we complied a list of "super foods" such as almonds, leafy greens, salmon, yogurt, beans, and the like. We are eating breakfast (something from our list like yogurt, oatmeal or a hard boiled egg), one morning snack (another item from our list--say a handful of almonds), lunch (something from our list like rice & vegetables, a salad or a turkey sandwich), and an afternoon snack (you guessed it--something from our list) and then for dinner, we'll have a serving of a grains or legumes, a meat and a vegetable. And then one sweet (can be used as one of the snacks or a dessert at dinner).
       I also have been going to the gym on my breaks and lunch at work so I'll continue that routine to have some exercise dispersed throughout the day. Oh and yoga... I go to class once a week for that.

So back to my slow cooker meal... I love the slow cooker, by the way. I throw some stuff in there in the morning and it magically cooks into a meal by the time I get off work. Today, I'll be making soup. It is literally three ingredients: a leafy green, a meat and some vegetable broth. I've done this with kale, collard greens, cabbage, and mustard greens. I haven't explored as much with the meats... only smoked turkey legs and ham hocks (which I know are both superbly unhealthy). It always turns out hearty and delicious.

THREE INGREDIENT SLOW COOKER SOUP:
       Ingredients needed: a leafy green (we're using type of Chinese choy today, "swamp cabbage" is what it is labeled at the market), a meat (we're using lean beef meatballs) and vegetable broth.

1. Prepare the meatballs by rolling a spoonful of ground beef into a spherical shape. Or you can use a cookie scoop to make meatballs of the same size. Set aside.

2. Wash and cut the greens. Set aside.

3. Put the meatballs in the slow cooker.

4. Cover with greens. This may look like too much but it will cook down.

5. Pour vegetable broth over the greens. I also add a can of water but it's probably not necessary if you want to only use broth. If you would like, you can add in a bay leaf or some herbs and salt.

6. Cook on low for 8 hours. Then you'll have soup for dinner!

Wes is making deliciously amazing pot roast.

Ahhh date night <3 Dinner on the patio. With lanterns!! Welcome spring : )

One of the first things that Wes cooked for me was pot roast. (Actually, the first thing he cooked for me was a pork tenderloin but that's not a regular in our recipe rotation so we'll just skip straight to the pot roast.) Not long after we started dating, one of his co-workers gave him some left over pot roast. Seeing as he was a bachelor, she gave him enough to last a week. LOL Since he had so much, Wes was nice enough to share. I've never had homemade pot roast; it was so yummy! Why have I never made this before?!?! After that, we (mostly Wes) felt inspired to make our own pot roast. Wes doesn't cook often, but there are two things he does well. One is chili and the other is pot roast. I'll blog about the chili another time.

We're having it for dinner tonight so I'm here in the kitchen taking pictures and typing as he cooks...
Slow-Cooker Pot Roast Recipe:
INGREDIENTS -                   3 cups vegetable broth      
    2lb of roast                         2 bay leaves (1 leaf for each pound of meat)




1 large potato                     1 pinch of minced garlic
1 cup lentils                        1 dash of parsley, salt and pepper (or however much you'd prefer)
1 cup carrots                      1 packet of soup mix



Disclaimer: Wes prefers mushrooms but he knows my favorite is lentils so he's doing lentils for me. You have to really like lentils to add them in your pot roast. If you aren't a huge lentil fan, I'd say go with mushrooms instead. Since the lentils are in the crock pot all day, they get super mushy and soak up all the broth. And its a crazy gravy-like consistency mess if you try to heat up the left overs. When I studied in Spain, my host mom made this really thick lentil soup and I LOVED it. It was one of the tastiest things that she cooked. So, I'm okay with mushy stewed lentils but they aren't for the faint of heart.

1. Thaw the meat. If you forget to thaw it, defrost the meat by running it under cold water (not hot water). Wes saw Alton Brown do some experiment with defrosting duck shaped ice sculptures    using either running cold water or in the oven and cold water worked better. Poor melted ducks!!
2. Cut up the meat, potatoes and carrots into chunks.

3. Put into the slow cooker in this order - meat, bay leaf, lentils, carrots, parsley, salt, pepper, soup mix, garlic, broth and, then potato. Save the potatoes for last. When they cook, they'll get soft but not mushy because they're left on top. (Some of this I'm quoting directly from Wes.)

4. Cook for 8 hours on low heat. If you only have 6 hours, you should have it on low for a majority of the time and then switch it to high for the last hour.

5. If you aren't going to be at home, no need to check on it. But if you are home, stir the stuff in the crock pot around every 2 hours. After your 8 hours are done, it should look awesome and like this.

So there you have it...my man can cook! : ) I'll ask him to make chili so we can have a blog on that, too. Using other people's recipes makes blogging easier. Maybe, I can bug my mom into getting some of her Chinese food recipes. Mmmmm!