8-Meal Sunday

Every Sunday, I try to make 4 meals to eat for dinner during the week (I usally eat one after I make it, so I actually have 3 left). I usually make pasta. For the week's lunches, I usually bring frozen dinners.

But this week, I had two ideas I wanted to try, so I made 4 of each, lunches and dinners. This should make for a good week.

First I made a pasta dish out of the following (all weights are raw):

6 oz whole wheat fusilli
1 jar marinara sauce (Whole Foods brand, which I don't like)
5 oz spinach
6 oz mushrooms
1 medium onion
1 can of garbanzo beans
1/4 cup olive oil
8 oz chicken breast

The olive oil & chicken breast need explanation. I usually make the pasta with cheese (parmesan or mozzarella), or I plan to add cheese later, but I'm trying to cut back on saturated fat. I added the extra olive oil to try to make it taste good enough that I'd want to eat it even without cheese.

Removing the cheese also made it too low in protein, despite the garbanzos. I prefer to cook without meat (because it is easier, cheaper, and kinder), but chicken breast was the easiest way to make up the lack there, and I had some in the freezer.

This dish has 531 calories per serving and is very healthy in general.

Once I was done with that dish, I washed the giant frying pan and made a stir-fry. For this, I used these ingredients:

2 cups cooked brown rice
16 oz (one of those bags of pre-washed, cut-up) broccoli
8 oz (half of a normal-sized bag) baby carrots
1 block of extra-firm tofu
1 tsp canola oil
1 medium onion

and, for the sauce:

6 T peanut butter
8 t sriracha hot sauce (the rooster bottle you sometimes see at cheap Vietnamese or thai restaurants)
cornstarch
water

I made a peanut sauce last week that was really delicious, with peanut butter and coconut milk, but coconut milk is basically nothing but saturated fat, so I left it out this week. This is what the sauce looked like after I whisked it together:


And here is my final product:


This dish has 461 calories per (large) serving.