What's the best (healthy) thing you've eaten today?

[dreamshark]

As anybody who has ever watched "Survivor" knows, there are two kinds of hungry people: the ones who love to think and talk about food when they are hungry, and the ones who are driven nuts by people talking about food that they can't have. I'm type 1.

The one thing I like about dieting is that being hungry makes food taste SO GOOD. I spend a lot of time putting together my diet lunches and looking forward to whatever healthy food Richard has cooked up for us to eat for dinner. If I'm going on a diet I no longer feel guilty for splurging on gourmet groceries as long as they're in the healthy category: $12/pound wild caught salmon instead of $6 farmed salmon. Or at a lower level of splurge, Starkist albacore canned tuna instead of cheap store-brand tuna. Fancy olives and peppadew peppers for my salads. That kind of thing.

Here's some wonderful things I've eaten today, and enjoyed every bite of:

Breakfast: 1 slice of whole wheat toast with a Tbsp of chunky peanut butter and slices of fresh peach on top, eaten with a big mug of fresh brewed coffee. Mmm. (One of my favorite low-cal breakfasts, using whatever fruit is in season)

Lunch: (here's the new discovery). 5 ounces of Mori-nu silken tofu (firm), cubed and marinated in spicy/sweet eggplant chutney and eaten cold. Even though tofu is Japanese and chutneys are Indian, it's an inspired combination. The chutney is pretty intense, almost too spicy for my taste. But combined with the cool custardy tofu, it's just right. Silken tofu is made through a different process than regular tofu, and the texture is incredible. I don't think I've tried it before, but I'm definitely buying more of this stuff!

So... what's the best healthy food you've eaten today? Or this week? Or this month? Do you have favorite diet menus you go back to over and over again? Tell me about them!

Comments

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

I had a yummy fruit and nut bread toasted for breakfast. It comes from Shannon's store in Chicago.
I had it with butter and coffee.

I've been eating up my homemade baked beans that have baked beans, black beans, chick peas and kidney beans. Also my homemade coleslaw as I love cabbage though this time I over did the mustard and pepper so it has a lot of zing and kick.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I had a handful of nuts and berries: dried blueberries mixed with walnuts, pecans, cashews and pistachios.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Today so far I have eaten a turkey sandwich on rye bread with onion and avocado. This is not *particularly* unhealthy, anyway.

Made some nice roasted vegetable burritos with a little pork last week; it's one of the few times I've found the vegetables in a dish to be the best-tasting part (other than some disastrously bad food I've encountered).

Pamela uses silken tofu in things like vegan French silk pie. Which is good enough to be edible to non-vegans, a remarkable achievement for that sort of dish in my experience. (Not, however, very relevant to any sort of real diet.)

[pameladean]

I just had some leftover quinoa cooked in vegetable broth with carrots and onions, and a nice piece of leftover tilapia baked with a generous smear of hot curry paste, all topped with leftover cucumbers and sweet red peppers from a somewhat lettuce-deficient salad. It was very good.

P.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Last night I made an eggplant dish- eggplant, onion, tomatoes, green chiles and coconut milk with the standard MDH brand pre-mixed spices. MDH spices have come to be a sort of a "Vegetable helper" in my cooking.

I chose a sweeter, more cinnamony spice mix than I usually use - the Biryani mix. I liked it, Squeaky thought it was okay, vanaabegra thought it was good but a bit too sweet.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

This post has really got me thinking because it occurs to me that I tend to enjoy food more when I'm dieting too.

Eating salt and fat based foods is some sort of satisfying, but I allow myself the foods that I actually like - the more flavorful, spicier home made food, when I'm trying to be conscious of what I'm eating.

Hmmm...

[mmagidow.livejournal.com]

Well, let's see. I started the day with a glass of home-made raw milk kefir, followed by whole-grain english muffins (and two cups of free-range coffee, delivered by bicycle, but I don't know if that counts as healthy). For lunch I had home-made tamale pie and brown rice. Eat your heart out, Amy! I have bigger portions when I make it. I can't brag much about what I had after lunch, but I don't eat them very often. I'll just leave it at that!

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Today? What did I eat? A turkey sandwich with lettuce, tomato, sprouts, cheese and mustard. Part of a banana. A few pieces of melon. A cup of coffee. A few potato chips. Part of a popsicle. (All that was shared with my little lovey at the zoo.) A medium DQ sundae with chocolate syrup, peanuts, and pecans. And some juicy water and some plain water. I think that's it. So some a little healthy, some not so much. It seems like there should have been something else, but I can't figure out what it might have been, or when I might have eaten it. I probably should have had dinner.

The tofu sounds good.

K.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

We had a spinach frittata for dinner tonight (the 'spinach' was actually lambsquarters from the garden) and a salad with pinenuts, pretty healthy and tasty.

I made mushroom and zucchini fajitas the other day, yum.

I love zucchini 'papardalle' with pesto sauce. You use a vegetable peeler to make wide ribbons of zucchini, then saute them in a dry non-stick skillet (no oil, no water, just a little salt to draw out their natural juices). When they're totally limp, mix in the pesto sauce. Or any other pasta sauce, I suppose, but I've only done pesto.

Sauteed shrimp with a little white wine and blue cheese over pasta. Doesn't take much blue cheese to pack a punch.

Good luck with the diet!

[ambertatge.livejournal.com]

I just made the zucchini "pasta" the other day. It was inspired by you. I put a tomato based sauce on and it was pretty good.

[ssussminh.livejournal.com]

Wow, this crowd has gotten a LOT healthier since I last looked.
Everyone is eating vegetables and stuff that is good for you!
It's taken me most of a lifetime to get to the point where
I even considered that stuff food.

Sharon, glad you tried the silken tofu! (We spent a couple of
days in our carpooling time talking about tofu. Sharon filled me
in on how to make your own. I'm not THAT ambitious!)

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Yep, I bought it because you recommended it! I'd always been confused by the "silken" yet "firm" nomenclature and just passed it by. I actually looked it up in my Book of Tofu which explained the differences in how the two types are made and what they are for (at least in Japan). The silken type is mostly for eating cold with sauces because of its exquisite texture. It doesn't stand up so well to frying, so other varieties are used for that. In Japan the silken style is thought of as "summer tofu" and the tofu shops gear up their production in the hotter months.

[sillyliss.livejournal.com]

Have you tried marmite on toast? A friend sent it to me from Europe, but I'm a little daunted by it so far.

The best healthy food I've eaten today is a peach. I love fresh fruit. It's one of the few healthy foods I like. Raspberries, strawberries, peaches. Summer fruit is the greatest. :)

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"Have you tried marmite on toast?"

Well, no. I took a tiny taste of marmite once and have to agree with the general American opinion that it's one of those things (like lutefisk) that people only eat to show their solidarity with their native culture.

As I recall it tasted like concentrated pickled soy sauce, only saltier. Ewwww. I don't think it counts as healthy fare unless you're desperately anxious to drive up your dangerously low blood pressure. :-)

I agree with you about fresh fruit. That's one of the foods that I've come to appreciate quite a bit more since it became one of my main "diet foods." I think I started out with a bit of a bias against fruit because of all those well-meaning nutritionists advising parents to "encourage your child to choose fresh fruit as a dessert." I'm sorry, but you will never convince you average American child that fresh, unsweetened fruit is a DESSERT. It's food that Mommy makes you eat because it's healthy. Yuck. It's used as padding in the toe of your Christmas stocking because Santa is too cheap to fill the whole thing with candy!

But when I'm running a calorie deficit (i.e., losing weight or trying to) everything tastes much sweeter. Suddenly it occurs to me that fruit kind of DOES taste like a dessert!