I'm Making Plant-Strong Dinners with Help from Clean Start by Terry Walters

Thank you to everyone who became a fan of Healthy Girl's Kitchen on Facebook. The fan page is a great place to exchange ideas and ask questions. I encourage everyone to get involved. Making healthy choices is so much easier when you surround yourself with like-minded people.

It seems like my life is beginning to organize itself around our special Friday night dinners. These days, I'm gladly sticking with recipes from Clean Start by Terry Walters because I'm continually blown away by the results I'm getting from this cookbook. The three Clean Start dishes below are all amazing. Terry's delicious recipes are all uber-healthy, but not all super low calorie, so balancing them out with  low calorie salads and raw veggies on weeknights is important for me. But on Friday nights I relax a little, and here's what that looks like for me:

Challah with Clean Start's Carrot Cashew Miso Spread
Trader Joe's unfiltered grape juice
Organic Energy Chana Dal Soup (picked it up from the restaurant this afternoon)
Clean Start's Deep Dish Greens with Millet Amaranth Crust
Simple Baked Tofu with Tamari
Clean Start's Cocoa Brownies

Whew! That's a lotta food! Why does it seem that way to me? Because weeknight dinners, for the most part, have become completely uneventful affairs in my house. I work full time, for one. And secondly, I have found that keeping dinner really simple has helped me to maintain my weight loss. Yeah! Less stress and an easier time with the scale. It's a win-win situation.

Contrast this with the home I grew up in, where a friend jealously remarked, "Every night is Thanksgiving at the Schkolnick's." My mom has spent the greater part of her life in the kitchen, something I envy, as I too inherited the cooking gene. Everything in my household growing up seemed homemade. Mom even went through a make-your-own-yogurt phase. Much to my sugar-lovin' chagrin, there were no Devil Dogs in my house, well, that's not totally true. I think they made an appearance once. But they were kept in the freezer. I think my mom thought that it might help me eat them slower. Not!

Anyway, back to the fabulous Clean Start Dinner.

Clean Start's Deep Dish Greens with Millet Amaranth Crust.

A total winner. I'd gladly make this again and again and serve it to guests.

Clean Start's Carrot Cashew Miso Spread--CRAZY GOOD!

 Better than butter on your bread any day!

Simple Baked Tofu with Tamari

Clean Start's Cocoa Brownies--way TOO good, I've gotta watch myself around these. All of the kids and adults loved 'em and they are made with wholesome real healthy ingredients--bananas, dates, almond meal, maple syrup, etc.--but they are easy for me to overindulge on!

What was dinner like in your home growing up? Are things different in the home you live in now?

What is a typical weeknight dinner for you these days? Do you pretty much stick to the same-old same-old or are you creative during the week? 

Do weekend dinners differ from weekday dinners for you?