Today's Eats - Yes! Good stuff!

Ahhhh. For a day that began at 3:30am with a roaring sinus headache, it has turned out to be a great day! I was able to fall back to sleep around 8 and slept until 9 and thankfully my headache was nothing but a bad memory. I'm sure it was related to the popcorn I ate for dinner last night but I digress. For breakfast I again had yogurt, 2 egg whites, granola, and some orange juice. No pulp, thank you very much! I do not like to drink chunky liquid. Yuck!



This breakfast really hit the spot. The french vanilla yogurt with the cream on top is simply to die for and 4Tbs is plenty.

At lunch, I got a little creative, and in spite of the incredible heat that we've been suffering through lately, I made my own cream of mushroom soup from scratch. Not organic, mind you but not loaded with fake ingredients either. I know I said I wasn't going to do the step by step thing but this was sooooo good. It must be shared with you.

First, here are the ingredients: mushrooms, flour, butter, olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, thyme leaves, chicken broth, cream.



I cleaned and diced the 8 oz pkg of mushrooms and then placed them into a 2 qt saucepan with a tsp of olive oil and a Tbs of butter over medium high heat (7). You will notice the mushrooms giving off a bit of liquid.



Add a pinch of salt, 1 clove of minced garlic, and then let this cook for a few minutes until the liquid has reduced considerably. When there is just a little liquid left, add 1 Tbs of flour and stir. There won't be any liquid left in the pot and the mushrooms should be covered by the flour. You can add more flour if you like a thicker soup. The smells coming from the pot will have you licking your chops!



Ok, I'm apologizing now for the unappealing picture you're about to see.



Sorry about that. At this point you will add 3/4 of a can of chicken broth to the mushroom mixture and some freshly ground pepper. Add 1/2 cup of cream and a 1/2 tsp of thyme leaves. I used dry but if you have fresh, by all means use them it will just take a little more. Taste to see if you need any additional salt and add if necessary. Heat this until warmed through and then serve. This makes four, 1/2 cup servings or two, 1 cup servings. It's so good it will make your toes curl. Of course, if you don't like mushrooms it will just make you hurl. hee hee, catch that little rhyme there? corny, I know. Couldn't help myself.

I had one cup of soup along with 2 poppy seed and cracked pepper breadsticks. Delicious! I think next time though, I will have 1/2 cup of the soup and a half of a sandwich with dijon mustard instead of mayonnaise to try and balance out the fat in the meal.




For dinner, I stopped by the grocery store and picked up a rotisserie chicken because we had dental appointments this afternoon and frankly I hadn't cleaned up the kitchen after making the soup. So there you go. I made the haricot verts with butter and garlic again to go along with it and it was really delicious. I didn't eat the skin though because it was very overdone. You know how those chickens get after sitting on that giant heater for too long. The meat was good though.



All in all I felt much better about today. For me eating is more than just giving my body food. It's about feeding all the senses. I use nice plates and silverware and take my time eating to really focus on the experience and importance of giving my body delicious and healthy food. Of course, I'm going to stray from that from time to time. Right now there is a Totino's Party Pizza in my freezer just waiting for a day when I don't want to be standing over the stove cooking lunch or dinner and I don't want a sandwich. It knows it's time will come. For the most part though I'm striving to give myself quality nourishment. Now that I've begun this part of the journey, I'm going to add in an exercise element as well. I'll talk about that more this weekend.