Clean Eating: A Start. Again.

Mmmmm. A quiet morning. Our alarm went off early since our in-laws were coming over at 8am to help us frame the basement and plot out the backyard. The phone rang before 8am and it was C's mom. She needed him to come over and help them load up some stuff before we got to work, so I got up, made the bed, kissed him goodbye and started my morning. Teeth brushed, makeup on, dressed, dog out, dishwasher unloaded, tea brewed, Top Chef on in the background. It's a quiet, cool morning and I am feeling very motivated.

This morning's topic: clean eating. I think this is one of those catch-phrases that gets thrown around all the time without too many people really understanding what it means. First, some background. About 3 years ago, I was very unhappy with myself and how I looked. My eating was anything but planned or healthy. I was starting to hide in my clothes and lost my confidence. At my aunt's place at Christmas, I saw a scale downstairs and weighed myself. The number I saw changed everything and I decided that after that night, I was making a change. I had a gym pass to the YMCA and started working out about 1.5 to 2 hours per night. Once that became a manageable habit, I overhauled my eating.

I began reading every article that I could get my hands on about healthy eating, eating for fitness, and weight loss. I absorbed everything possible and chose a method that I felt would work for me: low fat clean eating.

This meant that I would stick mostly to whole foods. A food eaten in its original form. So, macaroni and cheese or microwave dinners were not allowed. As well, this meant no processed food. If the food had to go through numerous processes to become the form that it currently was, I was to avoid it. Lastly, avoiding preservatives (so, many things with added sugar or salt to give it a longer shelf live). On top of those constraints, I wanted to limit my salt/sodium intake, sugar, fat and refined carbs. Refined carbs are things like white bread, pastas, white rice, anything with a high glycemic index. The glycemic index or GI describes this difference by ranking carbohydrates according to their effect on our blood glucose levels. Translation: you want to eat foods with a low glycemic index, that release sugars slowly into your body to keep you feeling fuller, longer, and provide you with a steady stream of energy as opposed to spikes. These would be foods like all-bran, oatmeal, sweet potato.

Clean eating meant that I was basically shopping in limited areas of the grocery store. Fresh produce being the first: fresh fruits and vegetables were just a given, with vegetables coming in on top. Fruit being limited a bit more since they contain more sugar. My carbs were oatmeal, bran, and whole grain pitas, as well as sweet potatoes. Frozen veggies are good, as well as canned beans and tomatoes, as long as the beans are rinsed first to rid them of excessive beans. I avoided most meats except for fish and some chicken and stocked up on egg whites. I stuck to a 1400-1600 calorie low fat diet based on these foods and ended up transforming my body in 6 months and then a year. I lost tons of fat, gained loads of muscle and definition, and regained my confidence, strength, and passion.

Fast forward to now. Clean eating for me can sometimes be difficult to maintain. If I start having too many refined carbs, desserts, snack foods, then they somehow just sneak their way back into my diet. I am making an conscious effort to eat for my health again.

In keeping with that, I'm going to review some of the clean foods that I'd been preparing before our Montreal trip.

Fresh vegetable soups are such an amazing thing to make: low in fat and calories, full of nutrients, warming and filling. I love making soup and having some leftover squash and zucchini, I decided to saute these up with some garlic until soft, add in some low sodium chicken stock, and simmered until mushy.

Fresh veggies for soup

Once the veggies reached this state, I used and immersion blender to puree the soup until smooth.

Zucchini and squash soup

My mom has been giving us fresh produce from her over-abundant garden and this haul included fresh herbs. I chopped up some tarragon and dumped that in.

Seasoning the soup

With all dishes, it's important to not get caught up in the fact that it's homemade so it must be good. To become a better cook, you always need to evaluate your own food and determine what you would do differently if it didn't taste quite right. In an effort to add health to the soup, I left the skins on the zucchinis and squash. I think though, that by doing this, it gave the soup a bitter taste. The tarragon wasn't the best herb choice and the soup needed some more depth in flavour. I think next time, I would have sauteed an onion in the pot first, and perhaps a carrot. Live and learn.

For myself, part of successful clean eating is maintaining a clean and organize fridge and kitchen. Being able to easily see and find your ingredients is important to know what is fresh, what needs to be used up first, and to aid in the creative process of preparing the dish in one's mind. I found a couple of containers to put the tomatoes into, instead of having them roll around and bruise in the bottom of the crisper. All of the herbs were sorted by name and put into a Tupperware with the leftover citrus fruits. Ah, clean!

Organized crisper

One of my preish meals was what you see below. The meat was the only thing that I consider to not be the cleanest. The sausage is from Danny's Whole Hog and is cut with pork, but it is smoked, and is mostly deer that my husband hunted this past year. I am eating less and less red meat nowadays, so this isn't a staple in my diet. Fresh tomatoes and cucumbers on the side, as well as quick stir-fried Swiss chard. Better yet would have been if all of the veggies had been local and organic. In Montreal, we went to a Superstore there and found that almost everything we bought was locally made! I love that! We really need our Superstore here to supply more local products and to point them out better to the consumer.

Clean-ish meal

Since meat isn't a huge staple in my diet, I definitely look to other sources of protein. One of our go-tos is eggs. They can be eaten for any meal of the day and are just so versatile. We always have at least 2 cartons of eggs in the fridge since C likes to take 2 eggs for breakfast in the morning (although this may also have to do with the recent influx of ice cream making). I also like to keep cartons of egg whites in the freezer. I bought a ton when they went on sale and I had coupons. One of those cartons will be thawed and left in the fridge. I typically do 1 whole egg and 2 egg white omelets for myself. While egg whites have very little calories and fat, I find that making an omelet with only egg whites ends up needing to be steamed instead of cooked on the pan since there isn't the fat binding it together. Whisk together the egg and egg whites and pour into a medium-high heat pan with some PAM or brushed with oil. Note: most oils that we are popular kitchen choices have a lower smoke point. This means that canola oil and extra virgin olive oil will begin to smoke at a lower temperature, so you need to be careful how hot the pan is. This is something that I need to better master. It is believed that fats that have gone past their smoke points contain a large quantity of free radicals which contribute to risk of cancer. I would like to find some higher smoke point oils to keep in our pantry, such as Safflower oil. Oh, another thing that I just read was that many oils lose any nutritional properties once they are heated, so, use sparingly in a pan. To get the best nutrient value from the oil, sprinkle a little on top of salad or veggies afterwards. I won't get into the benefits of a raw food diet, but definitely eat as many foods raw as you can to reap the most benefits possible (organic is better - but still always wash everything).

1 egg and 2 egg white omelet

Back to the omelet. I actually flipped this from the pan, up into the air! I remembered Julia's words from Julie and Julia, encouraging the chef to be fearless in the kitchen. To vigorously shake the pan back and forth to loosen the eggs from the pan and then, whoosh! Beautiful!

A beautiful omelet

To make this more of a meal, some tomato sauce, garden fresh basil, and leftover light goat cheese was layered into the omelet, then folded down.

Omelet filling: Italian style

The sides to this meal was again, cucumber and tomatoes. The colour in this photo isn't off however. My mom gave us some heirloom tomatoes which were almost black on the inside. Their taste? So vibrant and fresh!

Clean meal 2

One last clean meal to note. I don't think I need to go over the sides, lol. I suppose looking at these photos now, we do tend to eat a lot of the same veggies, but we do switch them up. This salad is 2 cups of mixed spring greens, 1/2 a can of water packed tuna, trained, and 1/2 cup canned and rinsed cannelli beans. A few tablespoons of dressing and some tea, and you have a wonderful and fresh raw meal.

Clean meal 3

Well, my hubby is back and it's time to get to work on the house. Quiet time is over. I've had 2 cups of black cherry tea while typing this up and one organic nectarine. I'm going to go eat 1/2 cup of cooked Red River Cereal now to complete my breakfast. Try clean eating, your body, stomach, and mood will thank you.