eat clean – Page 4 – That's Just Me

Good Health Natural Naked Popcorn

I love popcorn, but don’t snack on it very often anymore because of the extra carbs.

But I still regularly look at popcorn bags at the grocery store trying to find a low calorie snack. Most times, the calories are just too high. I mean 6-8 servings per bag!? I am afraid that we’d be tempted to eat several servings!

But today at Whole Foods, I found a 4 oz bag of Good Health Natural Naked Popcorn. Four 1oz servings at 120 calories each.

Good Health Natural Naked Popcorn nutritional data

Excellent!

I had planned on eating 2 servings which wouldn’t be terribly bad at 240 calories, but I decided to stick with only one serving and save room for some fruit afterward.

So it tasted very food. Light not too salty. I suppose those wanting a full buttery flavor might be disappointed, but I enjoyed it. It is not something I would buy on a regular basis, but I would buy again for a good healthy snack. What I really should be doing is popping my own popcorn. I bought a jar of organic popcorn weeks ago, and still haven’t tried it!

Is Eating Healthy More Expensive?

I just calculated my spending amounts for food, comparing the total for dining out and groceries from month’s past to what I am spending now eating healthier. Surprisingly, the totals were fairly equal.

On average, I would spend about $700 to $800 per month for both groceries and dining out. It’s still the same now, but I am spending much more on groceries and way less on dining out. Yeah, I could be saving a whole bunch more if I tried to cut a few more corners and maybe not purchase so many expensive items, and I really should try a little bit harder to work on that!

Eating clean and responsibly is expensive, I don’t care what anyone says! :) But I figure that I feel so much better inside and out when eat this way, so it’s worth it, right?

I hope in the next 6 months or so, I will have a better handle on things, and hopefully, I can budget our food spending a bit more. We’ll see!

Baked Chicken With Shallots Recipe

Made some wonderfully simple baked chicken with shallots tonight. Very easy and simple.

Serves 2
Ingredients:

Two (halved) chicken breasts (approx 4 – 6 oz each)
1 Tbsp Olive Oil
Chopped/Diced Shallots (one or two bulbs) – if you don’t have shallots, onions will do
Misc Herbs and/or spices, salt and pepper

Place chopped shallots in 8 inch square baking pan
Drizzle 1 Tbsp Olive Oil over the shallots
Mix oil and shallots together
Add Chicken pieces, flip to coat both sides of chicken with oil and shallots. Spoon shallot mixture over chicken.
Season with spices, salt & pepper.

baked chicken and shallots before baking

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Semi Homemade Pizza

The other day, I bought a ready-made “Rustic Crust” brand thin pizza crust. I know it’s not completely homemade, but the list of ingredients were very good: Unbleached/Unbromated Wheat Flour, Water, Natural Culture, Semolina Flour, Whole Wheat Flour, Sea Salt, Honey, Yeast, Organic Soy Oil, Olive Oil.

Yes, it’s white flour, but it’s pizza! Come on! I would have liked to get the whole wheat crust, but it was more calories. This was thin and crispy and absolutely delicious!

Anyway, here’s how I made the pizza:

I brushed 1 Tbsp of Olive Oil on the crust, and topped it with:
sliced tomatoes,
sliced halved onions,
chopped garlic
fresh spinach (chiffonaded),
fresh mozzarella (about 8 oz, sliced) – I will use less next time, and possibly some Parmasan Reggiano as well.

This photo doesn’t do justice to how wonderful and fresh it looked going into the oven.
homemade pizza - loads of mozzarella

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Eat Clean Diet Book Review

I love the concept of eating clean! When you eat whole (clean) foods, you naturally lower your sugar, salt, and calorie intake. I started off slowly, and it’s now become a lifestyle. Something I hopefully can follow for the rest of my life. And isn’t that the point of a “non-diet” – something that you can keep doing forever?

Now, let me be honest. I am not a rigid 100% clean eater. Processed foods do make their way into my diet occasionally, but for the most part, I try to eat as clean as possible. And I think that is how most people would as well.

Anyway, about the Eat Clean books by Tosca Reno . I guess I did things a little backward. I started learning about eating clean from online web sites and and I subscribed to Clean Eating magazine. In retrospect, I am glad I did it this way, instead of reading Tosca’s books first. I think I might have been scared off by the whole concept.

I received the The Eat-Clean Diet: Fast Fat-Loss that lasts Forever! book from the library.

While it’s a beautiful book, with great photos and colorful pages, it’s much too rigid. There are way too many restrictions like chocolate, fat (butter), egg yolks, beef, potatoes, and cheese. No eating after 6pm? We always have a light snack after dinner while watching TV.

Eating 5-6 daily meals (one meal every 2-3 hours) isn’t for me. I eat 3 regular meals plus snacks, and I don’t normally go over 500 calories for any meal, but Tosca suggests each meal to be 300-400 calories. If I divided my daily calories into 5 meals equally, I would only be eating 300 calories each meal.

Tosca also promotes non-stick cookware and bakeware, which I find to be dangerous to living things and the environment. I don’t know why a lot of chefs recommend non-stick, but it’s not something I like to use except for eggs and the occasional pancake breakfast. I would rather use a little more olive or coconut oil instead.

I don’t particularly care for some of her supplement recommendations either, like HGH (human growth hormone) and creatine. There’s just too much emphasis on body building and protein consumption. At this point in my life, I don’t desire to have a body like Tosca’s. While I admire her and all the work she puts into maintaining her fabulous muscles, I just don’t think it’s relevant to my particular lifestyle. But that’s not to say I won’t want to accomplish a buff body later in my life. I just don’t know!

Everyone knows for weight loss to work, you need to make it a lifestyle change, but this concept feels more like a dreaded “diet” to me. Too many restrictions will make you crave those foods even more. I prefer my Clean Eating magazine subscription instead of this book.

Disclaimer:
I love reading cookbooks, like some people love reading novels! I am inspired by recipes, and enjoy learning ideas from cookbooks; I like putting my own spin on a recipe rather than exactly following it. Please keep in mind that my opinions might be completely different from the other home cooks.

The Eat Clean Diet Cookbook Review

I received a copy of the The Eat-Clean Diet Cookbook: Great-Tasting Recipes That Keep You Lean by Tosca Reno from the library.

It boasts over 150 recipes, and it’s very well written with beautiful full color photographs. Although the recipes looked and sounded pretty delicious, I don’t think it would be a book that I would buy. Not that the recipes were complicated, it’s that there were occasionally ingredients I didn’t regularly keep in my pantry. Maybe a bit too frilly fancy, I guess prefer more basic recipes, which sounds kind of strange, because the recipes aren’t necessarily complex.

On a negative note, I found the text formatting difficult to read. For instance, the actual ingredient is formatted in a contrasting color. I found this more difficult to comprehend when reading. I think it might have been possibly better to use a bold formatting instead of a color to highlight the ingredient name.