Hungry?  Here's a couple of things I ate this weekend.

Stuffed Bell Pepper
I just sort of made this up.   It has a wild rice medley with sauteed onion, red bell peppers, garlic, and spinach and some diced cheese and fresh tomato.  I par-steamed the pepper before stuffing it and then baked it for about 10 minutes after it was stuffed to melt the cheese and warm everything up.  Yummy yummy.

My brother actually made the salmon and tomato cucumber salad, but I helped come up with the plan and gave cooking input and tips!

Grilled Asian Salmon (Ina Garten)
Wild and Brown Rice Medley Mix
Tomato and Cucumber Salad
    -Chopped tomatoes with chopped cucumbers, olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.

I made a mistake.  Again.  Can you believe it?  It's like I'm queen of doing things the wrong way these days.  I'm ascribing it to having my mind in other places (like, I don't know, moving to France in three weeks!).

So I was trying to come up with something to make with some random, leftover white bread we have.  I'd like to preface that statement by saying that neither I, nor anyone in my household eats processed, sliced white bread on the regular and we only had it for a Back to School segment mom did (the bread was a "what not to eat" sort of thing).

I tend to be an elitist when it comes to bread and I don't feel bad about saying it; wonder bread, in my opinion, ain't so wonderful.  I just think we can do better.  Nonetheless, there sat the bread getting stale on the kitchen counter.  And while I'm not a big fan of white bread of the 50s era variety, I'm also not a fan of wasting food.  On top of that, we may have accidentally purchased an extra dozen eggs because someone moved the dozen we already had into the cheese drawer.  I don't know how this stuff happens guys, but life's crazy sometimes. 

So I decided to make a savory bread pudding.  I found an interesting and simple recipe on the interwebs that didn't require me to buy too many extra ingredients and also called for tomatoes, which is great, because - have you noticed? - tomatoes are everywhere right now!  Including in a giant plastic bag in our refrigerator.

So I got myself together, whipped up the whole mess, allowed it to soak for a bit, baked it and voilà!  It was beautiful and looked good.  I looked at my masterpiece and then, having kept open the web page with the original recipe, look to see what a great and similar job I had done.  And in that moment, as I sat at my computer, I realized that I had forgotten the cheese.  Not some of the cheese.  Not one kind of cheese.   All the cheese.  I audibly gasped (very dramatic) and immediately new that I must taste it.  There was, after all, plenty of time to hide all evidence.  No one would have to know.  I could cover this up.  I probably new a guy. 

I cut a slice of the still warm pudding.  I took a bite with concern.  I chewed.  Fear suddenly turned to relief when I realized that, not only was it good, it was delicious.  Like, really delicious.  Hmmm, maybe I'll have some for lunch, I thought.  mmmmm...

The moral of the story is that everything was fine.  Again.  And also that you should trying this recipe sometime.  And also that you shouldn't be afraid to trying switching it sometime, as I didn't make this recipe exactly to spec, but it still came out great.  

While I think that cheese would taste delicious, it was nice to know that there was significantly less fat and fewer calories.  Which is a miracle any time you're making something with the word "pudding" in it. I might eat it warm on top of a spinach salad for lunch.  Oh yes. 

This is the recipe as I made it: more bread, more spinach,  no cheese, Greek yogurt, caramelized onion and only one, large tomato. If I were to make it again, I would choose a more toothsome bread, to give it a bit more heft.  Also, stale bread allows for the custard to get soaked up by the bread creating a truer  pudding texture (as opposed to a frittata texture).  If your bread's not stale, set it out for uncovered for a while, or bake it in your oven to dry it up.

Savory Bread and Butter Pudding (adapted from a recipe at Pioneer Woman)

8 slices stale bread, quartered
4 pieces bacon, roughly chopped (or ham or other meat, or no meat if you’re a vegetarian)
1 large tomato, halved and thickly sliced
1/4 red onion, large dice (I just used whatever we had leftover)
Small bunch of silver beet/chard/spinach, roughly chopped
8 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup Greek yogurt
Salt & Pepper
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Fry bacon until crisp, drain off most of the fat and caramelized the onions in the residual bacon fat.
Scatter bread around dish
Intersperse bacon, tomato, and greens amongst bread
Whisk eggs, yogurt, milk, cheese, Dijon, and salt and pepper together and pour everything over the bread, making sure everything gets covered.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until custard is set.

I had an idea recently.  

I've always wanted to go to one of the those health retreat spas.  You know, the fancy ones that celebrities and really rich people get to go to because they're crazy expensive and totally decadent?  Yeah, that kind.  But the problem is that I am neither a) a celebrity (despite how you may feel about me, dear reader) nor b) a wealthy person.  I actually looked up what it cost to go to the Biggest Loser resort a while back and found that one week, one week at the California ranch costs $2,695.  Four weeks costs $10,000.  And while I would really love to go a on diet in the lap of luxury, 10 grand is just slightly above my pay grade. Slightly.

So since the house is a little quieter for the long weekend (various members are visiting family in the Great White North), I decided to create a spa-like experience for myself.  I got up and made it to the gym, I'm cooking yummy, clean food for myself (but not necessarily over-the-top diet-y) and trying to keep off the computer and TV as much as possible.  Today I did ok.  Tomorrow I'm going to try to do better. 

Here's what I ate:  for breakfast I made a berry smoothie that I adapted from a Food Network one I found.  I drank it outside in our lovely backyard.  Lunch was caprese salad and for dinner I made turkey piccata (I accidentally bought turkey cutlets...I didn't even know such a thing existed).  I'd never made piccata before and sort of just made it up after a couple recipes I saw on the interwebs.  It was delicious.  I tried not to pat myself on the back too hard.

So really the thing is, why can't we try to make the quality of our everyday lives better?  I thought about this.  Instead of drinking my smoothie in front of the computer, I ate it outside.  I took the time to walk down to our garden and while I was relaxing out in the perfect weather, I saw a very busy bee.  No literally, it was a bee on one of the sunflowers buzzing away, working hard.  If I hadn't gone outside just to enjoy the nice morning weather, I wouldn't have noticed this little bee, busy doing his part.  I liked the dichotomy of our existence in that moment.  Me relaxing, him working.  It was cool.  I grabbed my camera and caught him hard at work.  Maybe I'll try to do little things like eat outside more often.  I guess it's all about being present where you are.  Yeah, I like that idea.

Mixed Berries and Banana Smoothie (adapted from Food Network)

1 cup frozen mixed berries
1 frozen banana
1/2 cup greek yogurt
splash of vanilla extra
honey (optional)
ice (optional)

Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth.