Eating Clean

Last week we tried out Clean Eating.  I'm not sure I was that successful if you judge me on how strictly I adhered to the diet, which wasn't my goal anyway, but I was happily surprised at how tasty the meals turned out.  I was a bit suspicious, to tell you the truth.  And when I told Isaiah what the theme was for the week he said, "Sounds boring." 

I set out to prove him wrong. 

So, the first question you might be wondering is WHY I decided to check out Clean Eating, and how I heard about it.  (Or maybe you've heard of it for years and are wondering why I'm just now catching on...)

I first heard the term when I joined my current gym.  The guy was trying to sell me on a really expensive personal training program and in our conversation asked me if I "ate clean."  In my head, I thought..."Well, I try to eat healthy, and I buy lots of fresh foods.  I really try avoid foods with high-fructose-corn-syrup.  And I don't eat fast food...except maybe the occasional Five Guys burger..." 

What came out of my mouth was, "Yep!"  He looked impressed.  Something told me I hadn't quite understood his question...

Alright...it was a lie, but at the time I didn't really know it was a "thing."  I just thought it was his fancy schmancy way of asking me if I was a healthy eater.

Then my friend Audrey asked me if I had ever looked through the recipes in Clean Eating magazine.  I hadn't!  Wait...there's a MAGAZINE?   Hm. 

Next thing you know I had the magazine and set out to find out exactly what Clean Eating was all about.  I am now very sure it doesn't include Five Guys...

So, what is Clean Eating?  Well, there are lots of resources out there, but the best way I've heard it explained is, "If man made it, don't eat it."  It means reading labels and not buying things with lots of ingredients that you can't pronounce.  ...In general only eating natural, fresh, healthy foods.  Sounds so easy, right?


First up was the Flank Steak roll with spinach and garlic.  I had never gotten this fancy with meat before, and I think I could probably improve my technique next time since the steak ended up looking a little mangled - not at all like the photo in the link.  But, I persevered and it came out intact (more or less).  I thought it was odd that you didn't do anything (marinade, rub, salt, pepper) to the actual piece of meat before putting it in the oven, and I should've listened to that thought.  It needed salt, at the very least.

I made a small green salad with homemade balsamic/shallot/vinaigrette dressing and then I ruined the whole "Clean Eating" thing by including store-bought tortellini.  

Two out of three ain't bad, right?

photo stolen from this site

Next we tried Talapia fish sticks with yogurt cucumber sauce.  We just discovered Costco's frozen Talapia fillets, which come individually frozen in a big bag and thaw really quickly.  Very handy to have on hand. 

I could write a whole post on my love for Costco, but I'll save that for another day.

I started with the yogurt cucumber sauce to give it some time to marinate in the fridge.  Then I got to work on the fish sticks.

Yogurt Cucumber Sauce

The "crust" is flaxseed, spices, peanuts, and sunflower seeds.  It was great!  The only thing I did differently in the recipe is that I only had one egg, so I went ahead and used the whole thing instead of just the whites.  My mom made this recipe later and stuck with just the egg whites and said the mixture didn't stick to the fish as well, so maybe try at least one egg yolk.  But don't tell the Clean Eating police.

We had the fish with my favorite quinoa salad, which made this an extremely high-protein, low-fat meal. In case you've never seen quinoa, here is the process - pretty much like cooking rice.  First rinse the quinoa, then bring it to a boil, and finally turn it down to low and cover it for about 20 minutes while it absorbs the liquid and gets nice and fluffy.

Oh, and here's the finished salad - a summer BBQ favorite.  Go ahead, make it.  To make it easy on you, here's the link again.

Last but not least we had a Clean Eating take on Chicken Picatta that I found on this Blog.  Isaiah ended up actually being the one who prepared the meal while I gave Anderson a bath, so there aren't too many pictures of the food.  There ARE, however, lots of pictures of Anderson in the bath.  (see below). 

Anyway, if you decide to try this recipe out, which I recommend, Isaiah said he would've added more salt to the chicken, and would've used regular olive oil rather than cooking spray, which he thought would've helped combat the grittiness of the whole wheat flour.  The recipe as-is was also a little too lemony, so he added more chicken broth to make it more balanced.

What?  Too many of Anderson?  :-) 

No meal plan for the next week - see forthcoming post!