E2 - 28 Day Challenge - Day 2

On The Menu:

Breakfast: Banana & Toast
Lunch: E2 Basics Wrap w/ leftover Gnocchi
Dinner: Black Beans & Rice

What We Actually Ate:

Breakfast: Rip's Big Bowl (I had shredded wheat, grape nuts, & uncle sam's flakes topped with bananas, strawberries, & original almond milk)

Lunch: Whole Wheat Penne with 365* organic Italian Herb pasta sauce

Dinner: Black Bean & Brown Rice - Rip's recipe and can be found on the Whole Foods website. (I used dried beans instead of canned, water not broth, & left out the water chestnuts because Graham doesn't like them)

My Thoughts: Today went pretty well. I usually don't eat breakfast, just have a cup (or 2) of coffee, but I've really enjoyed it the past two days. The fruit adds some sweetness without me adding sugar. YUM! Lunch was good too. Chelsea claims she doesn't like WW pasta but she gobbled up TWO bowls of this stuff. The sauce tasted great and with a coupon at the store it made it cheaper than the Bertolli and Newman's Own organic sauces I've been getting at Walmart. We skipped the wraps because I felt like there was plenty of food with just the pasta & I could stretch the veggies that I have for another meal. Thankfully, because I have the week's menu posted on the fridge, I was able to see at a glance that I needed to get the beans soaking for dinner & didn't find myself looking for a plan B come supper time. This meal was pretty yummy with all of the fixin's. Normally I would have liked a little more 'spice' to it but because I'm nursing I opted to go with a little S & P instead. Chelsea just ate the rice but the rest of the kiddos liked it o.k.

In the Challenge Rip includes a 'dessert' each day. Sometimes it's as simple as a bowl of melon but I'm trying to teach my kids that dessert is not a mandatory course for each meal. So I picked a few of the suggested dishes and included them on the days where I felt like it might be a struggle to get the children to eat their dinner. (Read: Bribery) Last night was one of those nights. So before they scuttled off to brush their teeth we all enjoyed a big scoop of strawberry sorbet. It was so yummy. Just a simple snag from the freezer section. The Diet suggests lemon sorbet with raspberries, which sounded wonderful, but my store didn't have either so strawberry sub'd nicely.

I was a tiny bit hungrier today than yesterday and I'm not sure why. Everything I ate seems like it should have been more filling - tons of fiber - but I found myself grabbing a Mojo bar in the afternoon and then snacking on some pita chips & hummus while watching some evening tv with Graham... We'll see how day 3 goes.

* 365 is Whole Foods store brand. It's a good value, lots of it is organic, and it's a good quality. At the Arlington location they are nice enough to clip the store ad coupons and display them in front of the items so saving even more is not hard. You know how much I love coupons so this just totally made my day. They also have coupons on the website. There doesn't seem to be a print limit and the store coupons will stack with manufacturers coupons for even greater savings! :)