Im sick of chicken and sick of steak and those are the main meats I eat. I cant make fish right. I always overcook it so I dont normally make it. I know I need to find recipes but its hard on a budget. Ive been making the packs of meat and eat it for dinner and then lunch and dinner the next day and its awesome. Saves a lot of time and money. I eat lean cuisine pizza some days cause its sooo good but its high in cals. Around 350 just for the pizza. Dinner is usually my smallest meal and breakfast my biggest. Im always more hungry in the am. I also wake up at 5 and go to bed around 9ish so my night ends early.
So, what meats would you be eating if you weren't working on your weight? Can you incorporate some of them into your diet? Would you eat fish if you knew how to cook it?
I am not so much sick of chicken, but I am sick of calorie controlled salad dressing. It always tastes fine on a spoon, but when I use it on a salad it is totally blah and unsatisfying, probably because of the limited fat. When I loose a little more weight and it cools off so I can walk a little more, I am going to try to use "real" salad dressing in moderation.
You can hide veggies in meatballs to bulk up your ground meat. Endless possibilities.
try different cuts of steak and chicken. There is more than just "boneless, skinless chicken breast" and sirloin. I personally choose boneless, skinless chicken thigh. MUCH more flavor and juicier!
I went through the same thing you are recently. I found Walden Farms that have 0/0/0 products. The salad dressings are good. I think Ranch is the best. They also have syrup,jams, and bbq sauce among other things.
As far as meat and a budget I am right there with you and the veggies frustrated me. I do alot of chicken many different ways like bbq, chicken salad, baked or broiled. I also use it in chicken and dumplings...I don't eat the dumplings; but take out the chicken and broth with the fat skimmed off and add veggies for soup. ground beef goes in to hamburgers, chili (no beans), meat loaf etc. I have learned to cook fish by looking at several different recipes, pick out the best ideas and combine what looks good. Actually fish isn't bad once I learn just cook it till it flakes.
I didn't really eat a lot of meat. A lot of pizza and fast food or pasta and breaded chicken and when I cooked meat it was bone in chicken. I guess I can buy thighs and eat around the bone n skin. I don't miss anything I used to eat accept pizza. The stuffed meatballs w veggies sound yummy. May try thx!
You can hide veggies in meatballs to bulk up your ground meat. Endless possibilities.
try different cuts of steak and chicken. There is more than just "boneless, skinless chicken breast" and sirloin. I personally choose boneless, skinless chicken thigh. MUCH more flavor and juicier!
I agree with being more creative with your meat options and overall food options. There's a low carb quiche I make with ground beef, eggs, spinach, and low fat cheese. I have grilled salmon. Turkey bacon for breakfast is great. I combine shrimp and veggies in an omelette. Check out recipes.com or allrecipes.com to get an idea of quick items you can prepare. Boredom can lead to added cravings so be sure to change things up.
I love food - I really love good, flavorful, food - and so a key aspect of my process has been stepping up my cooking so that my meals are delicious, flavorful, and plentiful, and still on plan.
That means lots of roasted vegetables, sauteed vegetables with garlic or onion and lots of seasoning, pan-seared fish with various spice rubs, spiced chicken, and so on.
I've become good at cooking Indian food. A great place to start with Indian cooking is Madhur Jaffrey's book "At Home With Madhur Jaffrey." (All of her books are great but this is an especially good one to start with, as in writing it she set out to simplify the techniques and use ingredients that are accessible to Western cooks.) Most of the dishes in it are already fairly healthy, but I often find I can use even less oil than they call for, and they really are good, wonderfully flavorful, and can fit into a calorie-counting plan very easily.
I've been experimenting a lot lately with new recipes, and I've found some sites to look to for inspiration. I just tweak them if I need to in order to make them suit my needs. Maybe try taking a peek? There is also a great recipes section here on 3FC with all the nutrition information.
My husband and my FAVORITE things is shredded BBQ chicken: let several chicken breasts cook in the crockpot on LOW overnight, and by the morning they will fall apart just by stirring them with a spoon (if cooked on high or medium they won't fall apart so easy), drain excess water/juice, then mix in just enough BBQ sauce to change the color and keep it moist so that it's not dry when you freeze and re-heat. Once re-heated we always add a little more sauce. (I eat with the top or bottom of a toasted wheat bun and a fork).
Other staples include Jennie'O ground turkey for burgers, meatballs, taco meat (I eat the taco meat with a bowl of lettuce and some salsa). I also have been trying salmon on the grill (I too don't have a clue on how to cook it, so I go safe and use foil)
One thing I need to work on is adding more veggies
I've been experimenting a lot lately with new recipes, and I've found some sites to look to for inspiration. I just tweak them if I need to in order to make them suit my needs. Maybe try taking a peek? There is also a great recipes section here on 3FC with all the nutrition information.
My husband and my FAVORITE things is shredded BBQ chicken: let several chicken breasts cook in the crockpot on LOW overnight, and by the morning they will fall apart just by stirring them with a spoon (if cooked on high or medium they won't fall apart so easy), drain excess water/juice, then mix in just enough BBQ sauce to change the color and keep it moist so that it's not dry when you freeze and re-heat. Once re-heated we always add a little more sauce. (I eat with the top or bottom of a toasted wheat bun and a fork).
This sounds awesome! I'm totally going to try it.
One of my favorites is to throw some chicken breasts (I throw them in frozen, might drizzle some taco seasoning on them, or some salt and pepper) in the crock pot with some salsa (enough to cover the chicken), corn and black beans. Cook on low for approximately 6 hours, then shred. Top them with a small amount of light sour cream (or greek yogurt) and light cheese and eat either on rice or lettuce. Delicious!!
It's easy to get in a food rut, in part, I think because we don't really see all the choices that we actually DO have. We go to the grocery store and buy what we've always boughten, and eat what we've always eaten.
I'd suggest going to the grocery store one day to browse. Don't buy a thing, just wander the aisles and look at the selections. Maybe even take a note pad and write down the foods you're not familiar with that seem interesting (and affordable).
Then go to the library or a bookstore and browse the cookbook shelves (or browse amazon and make a wish list of the books that seem interesting to you... there are TONS of cookbooks geared towards those on a budget and for all cooking experience levels and time constraints). Then print the wishlist and take it to the library to find and even order the books.
The libraries are usuallly FILLED with budget-friendly, easy recipe cookbooks (They're often also very popular so you may end up on a waiting list), many even geared towards specific weight loss diets, or weight loss in general.
Even if you never make any of the recipes, browsing cookbooks (or even recipes online) gives you a much wider perspective of your choices.
If you want to broaden your horizens even further visit the ethnic groceries, the farmers' markets, the specialty and health food shops. Even those that are expensive often have hidden bargains for example tvp - textured vegetable protein - is often cheaper in healthfood stores than in the standard grocery stores, and it makes a great ground beef substitute either on it's own (or as I prefer it) as a way to "dilute" cheaper (fattier) cuts of ground beef. TVP is virtually fat free, and much cheaper per serving than even the cheapest ground beef, but on it's own it's extremely bland. By browning it with cheap ground beef, I end up with a mixture that nutritionally is more like the expensive leanest ground meats, but at a price that's even cheaper per serving than the cheapest of ground meats.
I brown the dry tvp (looks like grape nuts cereal) with garlic, onion, celery, sometimes bell pepper and 80% ot 85% lean ground beef (sometimes even 70% ground meat, depending on what's on sale). The fattier the ground meat, the more tvp I add. Then I add hot water or broth (you need to add hot water to rehydrate the tvp so for every cup of tvp you need to reconstitute it with about a cup of hot liquid.... but doing it AFTER browning allows the tvp to absorb the juices and fat from the ground beef so that the fat and flavor distributes through the entire dish more evenly).
Then I freeze the ground beef mixture in a ziploc bag, "Smooshing" the bag every 30 minutes or so during the freezing process, so it freezes into scoopable "crumbles."
Then when I want to make a meal I scoop out the crumbles I want and then use them in place of browned ground beef in all sorts of recipes. At it's simplest, I'll scoop a half cup of crumbles, add some light barbecue sauce and microwave it until hot, and then will pour it over a baked potato, or some brown rice, or over mashed cauliflower....
Hubby and I have been on some super tight budgets in our marriage (we've had months where the entire food budget was $25.... hard to eat healthfully on $25 but we ate a lot of chicken, beans, rice, onions, cabbage, potatoes, celery, carrots, and bananas).
There are a bazillion ways to add variety to your diet without spending a lot of money, and the tips and recipes are everywhere online and in the library (and in our shoestring forum).
If you can find an asian grocery in your area, I HIGHLY recommend it. Just in the condiment aisle alone (jarred and canned simmering sauces and broth packets...) you can find seasonings to add to a crockpot chicken.
For example, in a little asian grocery store about three blocks from our house, I found a line of southeast asian curries. The can gives stovetop directions (essentially heat broth.. add meat, then vegetables) but I usually use a crockpot. I layer chicken pieces with onion and bell pepper, throw in the cans of sauce and that's it. If I want more veggies, when the meat is cooked and about a half hour before serving, I'll add a bag of frozen mixed veggies. That's it. Then serve over rice or with soft tortillas.
I've tried an assortment of green, yellow, red, and orange curries (for the really hot ones I'll add a small can of coconut milk to cut the heat).
Another great find at asian groceries is all sorts of jarred and canned soup powders and soup cubes. The "pho" cubes are especially good as a seasoning for chicken and beef. Pho is a southeast asian noodle soup, and the soup base makes a great base for cooking beef and chicken. I use Pho Bo cubes (bo being beef) as a seasoning for crockpot or dutch oven beef roasts, and Pho Ga (ga being chicken) as a seasoning for crockpot or dutch oven chicken.
Simmering beef roasts, pork roasts, and/or bone-in chicken in a mystery sauce is my favorite go-to meal. Almost no preparation time... place meat in crockpot or dutch ofen (add sliced onions and other seasoning veggies if I feel like taking the time to chop onions and celery or whatever) add sauce, simmer until tender. Serve plain in a soup bowl, or pour over carbohydrate or carbohydrate substitute (if you're low carbing).... such as, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, quinoa, pasta, mashed cauliflower, riced cauliflower, whole grain toast....
or serve with tortillas or flat bread.
It's amazing what can be used as a simmering sauce. Pasta sauces diluted with tomato juice, spicy V-8, diced tomatoes with green chiles, broth-based soups (in powder, cube, paste, or liquid forms), enchilada sauce, stewed tomatoes, chili starter or chili seasoned tomatoes, barbecue sauces, salad dressings....
Salad dressings are awesome as marinades and simmering sauces. Hubby and I go to salvage grocery stores (sort of like privately owned Big Lots) and some sell salad dressings incredibly cheaply. I discovered that even the absolutely worst-tasting salad dressings, almost always make a pretty-decent marinade or simmering sauce. And they come in a gazillion flavors.
A great oven-fried recipe (for fish, porkchops and chicken) is to marinate the meat in a ranch or other creamy dressing, and then coat with a crispy coating and then spray lightly with cooking spray and bake at 400 until the meat is done. The coating can be anything crumby.... cracker crumbs, plain or seasoned bread crumbs, panko, crushed cornflakes or even rice crispies, even mashed potato flakes).
Usually the coating crumbs need at least a little salt as a seasoning (ranch dressing mix powder also makes a good seasoning for the crumbs).
sick of the foods im eating
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