Getting enough protein: Cooking on the weekend

One of the things that’s difficult about watching one’s macronutrients is that it is harder to eat more than 100 grams of protein per day than one thinks. It’s easy to do this for 1 day, a week, but every day for weeks? That’s hard, even if you just focus on getting that protein first and maybe not looking at carbs and fat. If you’re also counting carbs, or limiting them, it gets even harder. This past weekend I attempted to cook protein rich meals (from scratch).

Saturday night: meat sauce (I didn’t get a final meat sauce picture, but I added sautéed ground beef and mild Italian sausage meat to this).

Sunday night: creamy chicken mushroom sauce (with spaghetti). There were 2 chicken breasts and 2 chicken leg meats in here. Plus a whole boc of sliced button mushrooms and a small box of sliced gourmet mushrooms.

Mega Granola Oat Nut Chocolate Chip Protein Bar, or, Squirrel Food

In the afternoon while slaving away at my computer, I crave a snack but it’s hard to find something high protein, healthy, not too sweet, and guaranteed unprocessed. So why not make your own? This smelled really good as I mixed it together.

DRY INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup milled flax seeds
3 huge scoops vanilla protein powder
1 tbspn blueberry extract
1 cup pre-prepared granola mix (from my local grocery store)
2 small handfuls of your favorite raw nuts or what you have on hand
2 small handfuls of dried fruit (I had cranberries and raisins)
2 tbspn cinnamon
1/2 cup Semi-Sweet chocolate chips (optional)

WET INGREDIENTS

1 cup peanut or your choice nut butter
1/2 cup Manuka honey
1/2 cup agave nectar
1-2 cups soy or your favorite nut drink
2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 300°F. Butter or spray a flat cookie sheet.

2. Mix all dry ingredients together except for the chocolate chips.

3. Mix all the wet ingredients together until mostly combined.

4. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together. At this point, it should smell good. Mine did.

5. Add any wet ingredient you prefer if the mixture is too dry or more rolled oats or wheat germ if too wet. I ended up adding an extra tablespoon of peanut butter to soak up the dusty wheat germ/flax seed that weren’t absorbed.

6. Plop the mixture onto the pan and flatten with a spoon until desired thickness/thinness. My mixture only took up half my pan.

7. If you choose to use chocolate chips, press the chocolate chips into the top of the mixture.

8. Bake until edges are golden brown or dark brown (or in my case, like they are half a minute from burning). Mine took approximately 18 minutes. Place on cooling rack and let cool.

Can’t really tell the before vs. after except for the edges.

Smoothie

I’ve been drinking a smoothie every afternoon. Before that I’d only have 2 meals a day, one in the morning (a giant breakfast) and I wouldn’t be hungry again until dinner (a smaller meal). Then I started to really workout and as a result, I got hungry. A smoothie fit perfectly into the afternoon.

1 banana
1/2 cup fresh berries or other fruit of choice
High protein yogurt (I mix half of the high protein yogurt from Aldi’s and half of the local grocery brand)
1 scoop Ascent vanilla whey protein powder or your favorite protein powder (best tasting protein to me)
1 scoop Naked Creatine
1 cup (approx.) your choice of milk or juice

I love berries so I’m always making a banana-berry mix. The banana is not only for flavor but it helps thicken the smoothie a little. Sometimes, when I have fresh mangoes around, I’ll use a mango/peach fruit blend with mango/peach yogurt. The flavor options are endless!