Today began our clean eating challenge!  After a beautiful wedding last night (and a ton of delicious food), it was the perfect way to start fresh. 

When I woke up I was feeling a little apprehensive.  I knew we didn’t have many groceries, at least nothing fresh, so it made breakfast a little difficult.  Because Jay was having eggs, I decided to do the same. 

I did manage to scrounge up a few veggies and my breakfast consisted of one egg, half a red pepper, 1/4 onion and a handful of spinach.   I always call concoctions like this “scrabbles” because saying omelet would mean that it actually looked pretty.

I knew that I could not use regular ketchup, so I used sriracha sauce instead.  While I was thinking that I was avoiding anything processed, I later looked at the bottle and read the label:

Ingredients: Chili, sugar, garlic, salt, distilled vinegar, potassium sorbate, sodium bisulfite and xanthan gum

Definitely not real food!  I was so bummed because I am really starting to love the stuff and now I have to go without it!  I also was disappointed that I didn’t take the time to look at the label and just assumed that it would be okay to eat.  Lesson learned!

I also had some black coffee. I’ve been hooked on coffee creams for quite some time so it is going to be a challenge to stop using them.  I just love the flavors that you can buy and I found myself visiting coffee shops less frequently because the coffee I was making at home with the creamer was comparable.  So now I have to be more creative with my morning beverage and I think I found the solution today while shopping.  You’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s coffee to see if my plan worked!

After breakfast I fought the Manayunk Bike Race and ventured to Trader Joe’s.  It was definitely interesting to read labels and make healthy decisions.  I really could spend half a day in that store!

Originially I planned on taking stuffed peppers for dinner, but I was running short on time and had to get to work.  I wound up prepping some of the food that I cooked later on and eating lunch as I went.  I snacked on some TJ grape leaves and plain greek yogurt topped with blackberries, raspberries, blueberries and creamed honey.

Ingredients for the grape leaves are: rice, grape leaves, onion, sunflower oil, water, dried dill weed, salt mint, spices, citric acid

The two questionable ingredients would be sunflower oil and citric acid.  Though after doing some research I found that sunflower oil is a natural product, as one would assume, and citric acid often is lemon juice.  So I did feel okay eating these as a snack, especially because they need to be refrigerated and are perishable.  Sure beats eating chips!

Instead of the stuffed peppers, I packed a salad packed with vegetables!

In my salad was:

I topped the salad with a homemade vinaigrette, fresh parsley and a chili lime chicken burger.  I love these burgers and would really like to try making my own!

Day one went great!  While it was definitely tricky trying to think about what I’d eat for the day, I had fun planning and brainstorming.  I’ve definitely learned already that it takes time to eat real food when there are so many other food imposters out there.  I’m excited to learn more and of course eat more!  Until tomorrow!