Another favorite dinner salad that's super filling and gorgeous to boot:

Mixed greens

1 hard boiled egg

1 cucumber

4 stalks jarred hearts of palm (Trader Joe's!!!)

1 avocado, or you can use half

1/3 red onion

A couple slices of salami to garnish with

That will give you two servings, and a beautiful dinner to look at and feel good about eating. 

Speaking of grilling and summer!

Is there any finer thing? I'm going through pictures deciding what to blog about, and I'm re-inspired by lower carb goodness (just ignore that red wine there, you!). There is nothing tastier and more satisfying than a fresh steak grilled to just barely rare (what can I say, I like it bloody) with a side of fresh grilled veg. We took two steaks here, though we probably should have just split one, and salted, peppered, and grilled. Nothing else to it! I took mine off in probably 10 minutes, the hubby probably almost twice that. We grilled the asparagus on foil for about the same time and with the same toppings: salt, pepper, little bit of olive oil. It really leaves you feeling like you've eaten something delicious and healthy and light. MMMMMM.

I still fail at updating this in a timely fashion.

Anyway, regarding weight goal-- I'm within 5 pounds of my pre-pregnancy weight and I'm elated! Old clothes are fitting...(happy dance).

Food pic and recipe: It's been unseasonably warm here for the past few days (though now it's cold and rainy again, which is also fine), so I decided to post one of my favorites:

OH, yeah.

Shrimp, fresh from the store. I just don't have good luck heating and cooking shrimp that's been frozen.  I love to defrost it under cold water and eat it in a million different varieties of salads, but for grilling or anything else, they have to be fresh!

Anyway, I took these suckers, poured some oil and chopped garlic over them and let them sit a couple hours. Then grilled them on skewers until they were firm-ish.

Gratuitous picture of them all skewered coming off the grill:

More pictures, you ask?

They are truly a thing of beauty. 

And these grilled little guys were perfect with that salad above. 

My summer salad goto:

1 large tomato, or a couple smaller ones

1/2 red onion

1 avocado

1 cucumber

All chopped up into similar sized pieces, and drizzled with salt, pepper, lemon juice or red wine vinegar, and extra virgin olive oil. SO good, so refreshing, and the perfect accompaniment to grilled or roasted meats (in addition to a crisp white wine of course!).

I topped the salad over quinoa that I just cooked up with nothing special added, but this could easily have been a lower carb meal without it.

A new year, etc. etc. etc.

One of my new year's resolutions (I know, yawn) is to keep up my blog, including actually writing down recipes and including other topics like workouts, nutrition, diets and gratuitous pictures of my dog, Jackson.

On the workout and diet front, I'm down to only 8 pounds over the weight I was when I got pregnant. That's pretty good news, but when I got pregnant I was already 20 pounds over my ideal weight, so.... It's time to get to business. I'm following a low (white) carb diet for the most part and trying to get a handle on portion control--my weakness.

I've also registered for my first ever 5K on Feb 26th, so I  have no excuse but to run a few miles a few times a week. I've been doing pretty well so far this year, and am hitting the gym today after work for 3 miles. Woo.

On the baby front, I'm so happy that the little man has a couple teeth now and is eating real food:

We've got us some laughing cow cheese, white beans, turkey, tangerines, and blackberries...oh my!! He eats everything I offer him so far (fingers crossed).

On the adult food front, like I said, I've been trying to minimize the white carbs and stick with proteins and veg for dinner. I've been doing a lot of cool stuff with broths/soups, hot sauces, etc etc.  Here's one I've been making for dinner at least one night a week recently:

Yes, those are breadcrumbs on the pork chop. I know, I know. But I use my own bread dried out and chopped, and I use so little. Sigh. I use a couple slices of leftover sourdough or rye, toast them, and crumble them up. I should stop.  Then I dredge the pork chops in an egg, a little bit of those bread crumbs, and sautee them in oil. I should probably watch the oil too.

For the cabbage, which was DELICIOUS, I took:

1 medium head of red cabbage
2 small granny smith apples
1 small yellow onion
A few cloves of garlic, depending on your love for garlic!
2/3 cup white vinegar (but if I had apple cider vinegar I would have used that)
3/4 cup water
A few black peppercorns
A few dashes of salt
2 tablespoons sugar

I basically chopped up the veggies and apples and threw them in the slow cooker along with those ingredients for about 8 hours on low. So easy, healthy, and delicious. I could (I didn't) literally sit there and eat out of that slowcooker vat until it was all gone. I swear I didn't do that.

Finally, the apple of my eye, for no reason at all except that he's awesome:

I have a thing for salads...

Or maybe just taking pictures of them. Here's another beauty from the pregnant days:

 

We have green leaf lettuce, salami torn up, cannellini beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, avocado, red bell pepper. My usual vinegar and oil. <3

Most pretty salad

What can I say? I craved a lot of salads while pregnant and this was one of my favorite (or at least prettiest):

Black beans, avocado, heart of palm, tomato, spinach, red grapefruit. Oil and Vinegar to dress. Delish:

Been a long time, been a long time...

Not that I have any readers that I know of, but I still apologize for the lack of posts. I was busy giving birth to my baby and things like that. Speaking of said birth, I thought I would kick off my new posts with the meal I was served at Kaiser for dinner after giving birth:

I mean, this is a hospital we're talking about, so I'm not going to give it a long, loving review, but still. A "salisbury steak", baked potato, fresh veggies. It wasn't a bad way to celebrate the birth of my spawn. I'm a little bummed that they brought us Martinelli's sparkling cider rather than champagne, especially since I've heard rumors of other hospitals around here offering up the real bubbly.