Love Of Oats

A blog dedicated to balancing a healthy and fun life… with oats!

Monthly Archives: May 2010

Easy Meatless Monday ~ Italian Style

Here’s a great, super easy meal perfect for a Meatless Monday!  I had made chicken parm & pasta for Bill and thought this was a great meatless alternative that was super easy to prepare… especially since I was exhausted after doing the Pure Cardio routine from Insanity!  It was a rough workout but I learned that I need to pace myself according to what I can do NOW instead of what the instructor / team is doing… this way I maintain proper form while still pushing myself to my personal limits!

All I did was spiralize a medium sized squash, placed it in a bowl, added 1/2 cup of cannellini beans, topped it with 1/2 cup vodka sauce, and added ground black pepper and crushed garlic… I microwaved it for 2 minutes, gave it a good stir, microwaved it for an additional 30 seconds… and sat down, topped it with 1 T of grated Parmesan cheese,  and enjoyed this scrumptious bowl full o’ veggies & good stuff :)

Perfect End

Tonight’s dinner was the perfect end to a fabulous weekend!  I was so excited to try the grass-fed beef that we picked up from the Farmer’s Market yesterday so I based our meal around that.  I was going to bake sweet potatoes, but after seeing Kath‘s spiralized sweet potatoes, I decided to make them – yum!

The star of the show was the Sirloin… I have been trying to reduce my meat intake since I have been slightly afraid of meat after watching Food Inc… In fact, I haven’t had any meat since Wednesday… I’m not a heavy meat eater but I usually have a small portion every night at dinner so this has been unusual for me… needless to say, I was looking forward to this special splurge… I marinated it simply with olive oil and sea salt… and then Bill grilled it outside on a low heat…

It was simple but delicious!  Grass fed beef actually takes 30% quicker to cook than corn (yuck) fed beef because it is more lean… I really loved the tenderness of the meat, not to mention that I was in love with the fact that I knew where my food came from!!!  Ours, if you were wondering, came from Naturally @ Holben Valley Farm…

The runner-up to the beef was sweet local South Jersey corn… After shucking the corn, I spread them with a little butter, garlic, pepper and wrapped them in wax paper and then microwaved them for 2 minutes… can you see our adorable “Butter Baby” corn the cob holders… we got these as a shower gift and I get excited every time we have corn so that I can use them… Bill used a set of blue ones hehe…

Now, I am getting ready to wind down, relax, and get ready to watch the Phils game on prime time tonight… I also have some frozen bananas in the fridge, perfectly primed for banana soft serve… ;)   Hope you guys have a great night and a not-so-manic Monday…