Food update: week 10

If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me about what I was eating, I would be a millionaire. At school, coworkers constantly show interest in my dietary habits. While training, fellow athletes want to know what it is I am drinking. Fans wonder how they can apply my nutritional success to their training regimens. Being an unabashedly healthy eater inspires a spectrum of curious comments from others.

Let me preface this article with the Frey Consistency Doctrine. It goes, Consistency is the key to success. In training, that means it's better to run 2 miles, 4 days per week than it is to run 8 miles one day per week. And it is better to train with moderate volume 11 months a year than it is to train with very high volume for 5 months of the year. This applies to your food choices, too. It is best to eat healthy at 90% of your meals every week. It is less consistent, and therefore worse, to eat healthy at 100% of your meals for 3 weeks, then crash and burn in week 4. So, if you want to eat like the bird, it doesn't matter so much what you eat or how much you eat, it just matters that you eat healthily consistently.

That being said, I offer you a glimpse into my bird food. I tend to cook a lot of my food for the week on Sunday, then just scoop out what I need for the week as it goes along. Here's a sample of what I've cooked for this upcoming week. These pictures are the actual food I cooked.

Baked Quinoa with Shrimpies, Apricots and Oranges
Ingredients
2 .5 cups Quinoa
6 oz dried Apricots diced
4 cups hot Chicken Stock
16 oz. miniature, frozen, precooked shrimpies
Juice and finely grated zest of 1 orange
Kosher Salt
Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Heat the chicken stock till boiling in a sauce pan on the stove.
3. In a large baking dish or dutch oven pour in the quinoa, apricots, salt, pepper and the orange juice and zest and stir well.
4. Pour on the hot stock and cover tightly and place in the oven for 25 minutes.
6. Uncover. Sprinkle shrimpies evenly over the top, and cook another 10 minutes.
7. Let rest 10 minutes after removing from the oven then fluff quinoa.

Sugar & Spice Sweet Potato Fries
Ingredients
4 pounds sweet potatoes
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp fresh orange juice
2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Method
1. Preheat oven to 425.
2. In a large bowl, whisk the vegetable oil with the orange juice, salt and pepper.
3. Peel and dice the sweet potatoes into 1 inch cubes. Alternately, cut into 1/2" wide french fry strips. Toss the sweet potatoes with the oil mixture until well coated.
4. Place potatoes in a single layer on a large baking sheet. Bake until tender, about 20 minutes, tossing halfway during the cooking time.
5. Combine brown sugar with cinnamon.
6. Sprinkle evenly over sweet potatoes. Bake until glazed, about 5-10 minutes.

Crustless Broccoli Quiche
Ingredients
6 whole eggs
14 egg whites
14 oz low-fat cottage cheese
Salt
Black Pepper
10 oz. frozen broccoli

Method
1. Blend together eggs, whites and cottage cheese until well combined. Add salt and pepper and stir well.
2. Fill muffin cups with vegetable mixture of your choice.
3. Top with egg mixture.
4. Place in preheated 400 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes or until just set. If using a large baking dish cook for about 20-30 minutes or until just set.
5. Let cool then pop out of pan.

Buffalo Loaf

Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of this one...

Ingredients
2 pounds free range ground buffalo
3/4 cup toasted wheat bran
1/2 cup minced red onion
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons prepared horseradish
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil

Method
1. In a large bowl, mix the buffalo with wheat bran, red onion, Dijon mustard, horseradish, eggs and olive oil.
2. Season with salt, and pepper.
3. Pack mixture evenly into three, seperate, miniature loaf pans.
4. Bake for about 30 minutes at 400 degrees.

*This recipe would be best cooked by forming meat into patties and grilling on an outdoor grille, or frying over high heat in a cast-iron pan.

Editor's note: All recipes for the week are adapted from Chef Lisa's 'Recipes with Photos' thread on the Muscle with Attitude forum.