Happy Wednesday!!!

For any new visitors to Healthy Plate Happy Family, this is the one day during the week where I show you a picture of everything that I ate during the day in hopes of showing you how to put “healthy eating” all together.

I have procrastinated putting this post together because of my colossal dinner FAIL.  But I guess you will see that I am living real-life here, with chaos and changes in plans and crabby little ones, and sometimes you just have to roll with it!

First up, for breakfast, I took advantage of a nearly empty Almond Butter jar and made a pumpkin version of Overnight Oats in a Jar.  Now, Overnight Oats can be made in any container you’d like. I just happen to like taking advantage of the little bit of almond butter that is left to blend in with the other ingredients.

Overnight Oats are a super convenient grab-and-go breakfast.  The night before, you simply blend up 1 part oats to 2 parts liquid (usually milk or water) and leave them to combine and thicken up overnight.  The flavor combinations and toppings are endless here!

Today, I went with pumpkin because I had a can of it open.  Into the jar (last night) I mixed together:

• 1/3 cup old fashioned oats
• 1/3 cup water ( because we were out of almond milk which is what I would normally use)
• 1 T chia seeds (ground flax seed would work too)
• 1/3 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 T. maple syrup
• 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (just cinnamon would be fine too)

Store this in the refrigerator overnight.  This morning, I topped it with some raisins and chopped pecans.  YUM!

I had a snack mid-morning of carrots, gluten-free rice crackers, and this Avocado and White Bean Dip.  It is really tasty – like a combination of hummus and guacamole.  And it is usually a little more green, but I made this a couple of days ago.  Perhaps the blinding brightness of the carrots will make up for it!

After a marathon grocery shopping trip, I came home and made lunch.  Today it was a massaged kale salad, one of my favorite salads.  This salad took me some time to warm up to.  In the beginning, I would make a smaller portion and could eat it as long as it was paired up with a sandwich or soup.  Now, I’ve grown to really like it and it can be my whole lunch.  I love this because of the powerhouse of nutrition – Vitamins A, K, C, calcium, fiber and loads of antioxidants in the kale, plus a little healthy fats from the avocado and olive oil to help absorb the nutrients.  And I haven’t even gotten to the add-ins!

Start with a huge bowl of washed kale (stems removed, leaves torn into bite-size pieces).

Make the dressing with a small wedge of avocado (a little less than 1/4 of an avocado), juice from a wedge of lime, 1 tsp. olive oil, a pinch of kosher salt, and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper.  Did you get all of those precise measurements?!?!?!?

Mash them up until it sort of looks like guacamole.

Dump the avocado mixture into the bowl of kale, and with CLEAN hands, massage the dressing right into the kale leaves.  This will tenderize the leaves making them much easier to eat and more palatable.

Then your huge bowl of kale will be reduced to a more reasonable looking portion like this.

Taste and adjust seasonings.  I usually like to add an extra squeeze of lime to give it more of a tangy flavor.  At this point, you can cover the salad and let it sit for a little while.  But I don’t recommend refrigerating it for a long period of time, or it will get pretty soggy, at least for my tastes.

Top with lightly toasted nuts (today was almonds), carrots, and cucumbers.  A lot of times, I’ll add diced apples or dried cranberries in as well for a little sweet contrast.

So I realized this afternoon that Darren and Hailey were going to be gone for the rescheduled Daddy Daughter Dance, so I would be having a little dinner date at home with Jake.  But then he wasn’t feeling well and just wanted to play Monopoly and snuggle on the couch.  Next thing I know, he was hungry for food RIGHT NOW, and I was scrambling to pull some dinner together.  I could tell he wasn’t feeling well because he didn’t really want any of his usual favorites.  He wanted grapefruit, then a homemade popsicle (pureed watermelon and strawberry), and then asked for a treat or a smoothie.  At this point, I was starving too and I also felt like Jake needed a little more substance.  So I decided to scrap my plans for a Greek salad and falafel, and make the treat/smoothie/dinner all into one dish!!!

Behold, the Chocolate Covered Cherry Smoothie!

Believe it or not, this thing was so filling that it turned out to be my dinner!  Maybe dinner wasn’t a fail afterall?????

Chocolate Covered Cherry Smoothie

• a little less than half of an avocado (1/4 to 1/2 of an avocado would work)
• 1 1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk
• 2 T raw cacao powder (or cocoa powder would work)
• 1 huge handful of spinach
• 1 whole banana, frozen in chunks
• 1 1/2 cups frozen sweet cherries (this is also awesome with strawberries!!)

Mix all ingredients in a blender until super smooth and creamy.  Add more almond milk to thin or ice cubes to thicken, as necessary.  This made 2 decent size portions.  You could scale back to 1 cup of cherries/strawberries, 1 T. cacoa, and 1 cup of almond milk for an individual portion.

So there you have it for this Wednesday!