Author Topic: What are your daily meals like?  (Read 10865 times)

EconDiva

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What are your daily meals like?
« on: March 06, 2016, 01:10:08 PM »
I was curious to know if most of you eat the typical 3 meals a day (breakfast, lunch and dinner)?

If so, what is a typical "day of meals" like for you?  And do you cook all of your meals? 

For instance, right now, for me, I do the breakfast, lunch and dinner thing pretty much every day...with breakfast almost always oatmeal, lunch is usually a piece of chicken and 2 sides from the work cafeteria (I know, working on this)...and dinner is highly variable but usually a piece of meat or fish and again 1 or 2 sides. 

Since joining the MMM boards, have you changed anything in your diet?  Now that I am cutting back on eating out a lot and cooking more and more, I'm starting to notice how much meat is costing me and am going to start planning for meals without meat.  Which is definitely going to be new territory for me as, outside of salads, I'm used to having meat with most meals except breakfast.

ransom132

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #1 on: March 06, 2016, 01:51:28 PM »
I eat 5-6 times a day, I workout and I am trying to bulk at this moment, so its protein/carbs/healthy fats for each meal and I eat three servings of veggies and three servings of fruits per day.

Elliot

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #2 on: March 06, 2016, 02:07:59 PM »
I believe food is not only necessary fuel, but one of the simplest and most practical joys we can have. I don't limit myself to a stoic protein+veggie+starch+fat mush. I DO plan ahead for our meals so we don't end up having impulse food spending.

This week we're having curried cashew chicken over rice, lasagna and Caesar salad, and broccoli mushroom stir fry. We make enough of each for leftovers, and belly, body, and back account stay happy.

Breakfasts are pretty "boring," we typically have yogurt+honey or milk and Cheerios-style cereal along with whatever fruit we decide to buy, typical and apple, orange, or banana. Sometimes we do the fruit with toast and peanut butter or a microwave poached egg.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2016, 05:20:52 PM by Elliot »

Ynari

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #3 on: March 06, 2016, 02:10:12 PM »
We're pseudo-traditional? We generally do 3 meals a day + snacks, but TBH dinner can vary from 6pm to 9pm depending on our schedules. I cook nearly all of our meals, though SO will cook once or twice a week when it's convenient or I don't want to. We eat out once or twice a month.

I usually have milky tea/coffee for breakfast; sometimes I'll have fruit/etc with it if I'm hungrier. SO does oatmeal.

Lunch is usually leftovers, salad, or a meal centered around eggs. (or all 3!) It's "whatever's easy". I usually don't cook up meat for lunch, unless it's a part of the leftovers. But it's not uncommon for me to do something like kimchi rice/salad bowls with fried egg. I like spicy cabbage :) Leftovers are way easy, though.

Snacks are smoothies, fruit, and chips/dip. SO and I never seem to be able to justify most processed foods anymore, from either a monetary or health standpoint, so we don't really buy cookies and the like.

Dinner is where meat comes in - tonight we are having a pork roast because it was on sale. Probably a side of butternut squash, maybe (frozen, as I always have on hand) spinach and rice? Usually it's something centered around ground beef, chicken quarters, etc., as they're the cheaper types of meat around here. A general week of dinners would include: tacos, Thai curry, a soup or stew, stir fry (well, "throw everything i have in a pan and spice it how I'm feeling that day"), pasta, chili/potatoes, and probably more tacos!  Frozen dumplings are our backup dinner for nights that just aren't having any real cooking. Most of the meals we make are 1. very flexible with ingredients and 2. Can be made with however much meat you'd like.

For me, my diet is not tremendously different than before MMM. I've always eaten a lot of leftovers, and I've been cooking for myself for a very long time now. But what I cook is a bit different than when I started out - I do not usually shop around a recipe these days. I used to plan things out more, but now I know enough about cooking and my culinary preferences to mostly just wing it in the kitchen. I wouldn't really recommend winging it if you're just starting out cooking - but learning some flexible recipes can be super helpful and give you a lot of freedom.

ETA: Oh, I forgot dessert! Can't forget all the chocolate we eat. Bought on sale. :P  Tea/coffee with condensed milk is a nice treat, too. We try to keep it simple - shhh, don't tell anyone it's because I'm too lazy to bake.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2016, 02:12:30 PM by freznow »

jac941

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #4 on: March 06, 2016, 04:30:07 PM »
Breakfast: Yogurt with fruit and nuts or oatmeal with dried fruit and nuts most days. Once a week I'll make pancakes or waffles at my kids request.
Lunch: Salad with beans, nuts, or an egg for protein or leftovers from dinner.
Dinner: Varies. In a typical week we have fish once, meat a couple times, and beans or lentils most nights. I probably make bean burgers (falafel / black eyed peas fritters / black bean burgers) every other week or so. I'll also do baked eggs pretty regularly. Veggies are whatever we get in our CSA box + maybe a salad.
Snacks / dessert: Fresh fruit with peanut butter or cheese, a handful of nuts, etc. We rarely make dessert -- we get PLENTY of junk food at kids birthday parties, potlucks, and other events we're invited to, so we really try to avoid having it around at home.

We cook almost everything from scratch, but even so our grocery spending is outrageous - $700 / month for a family of 4. Since starting to read MMM, I've tried to cut the food spending and am totally in awe of the folks here who can feed their families at $100 per person per month. My spouse is totally happy with eating more vegetarian, but he won't compromise on quality and also strongly prefers organic / local. So we're definitely eating more beans and lentils these days, and we really try to limit the meat. Right now what's killing us are the nuts and dairy. I started making yogurt because we were going through 3-4 quarts a week and a gallon of milk is much cheaper than 4 quarts of yogurt. Now we have to break the nut habit...organic nuts at our grocery store just hit $15/ lb.

Zikoris

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #5 on: March 06, 2016, 05:00:28 PM »
Three meals plus snacks, yes to making them myself.

My breakfast is usually a mini bagel with peanut butter. Leftovers for lunch. I make such a huge variety of foods for dinner that I can't really generalize on that, but stir fries, casseroles, curries, and bread-based dishes (pizza, calzones, pot pie, empanadas) are all frequent. Snacks are things like fruit, nuts, or homemade baked goods.

The two things that make us weird are that we have very close to zero food waste, and I flat out refuse to overspend on groceries. I don't make excuses or rationalizations to spend more, I don't try to justify overspending because other people do, I just spend what a reasonable amount to spend is, which in Vancouver is around $100-$125 per person.

DebtFreeBy25

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #6 on: March 06, 2016, 05:14:06 PM »
For today's meals I had:

Breakfast: A crepe with jelly a coffee. I've been making a batch of crepes once a week and refrigerating or freezing the leftovers for quick heat and eat breakfasts.
Lunch: Used some leftover seasoned ground turkey to make a taco.
Snacks: A banana with dark chocolate, a handful of chips.
Dinner: Baked chicken, mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables. This part of a takeout meal my grandma bought. We usually make a similarly easy dinner at home with enough leftovers to get for lunch later in the week.

My husband and I have always been frugal, but food spending is not our best category. We're currently spending about $300/month on groceries for two people. There are others on this forum who spend much, much less, and I've been working to bring our grocery spend down. My husband always points out that groceries are always cheaper than eating out, and we've been doing much better in that category. We're down only eating out about once a month (excluding meals where my more spendy family members insist on picking up the check).

little_brown_dog

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #7 on: March 06, 2016, 05:16:43 PM »
Three meals a day homemade.

we eat alot of vegetable stirfries with tofu, veggie quiches, and soups/stews. Since we are vegetarian, tofu, eggs, whole milk cheese/yogurt, and lentils/beans are our protein sources. Eggs are eaten every day since we have our own flock of layers. We also eat alot of onions and broccoli - they're cheap, ridiculously healthy, versatile, and as an added perk they are often listed as lower pesticide residue veggies.

We do not keep snacks like chips or cookies in the house. Same for juices or sugary beverages. The only drinks we have are soy/almondmilk, tea, and coffee.

Edit: Just did the math - we are eating for about $12-14/day for 2 adults. We could probably get that a bit lower since we do splurge on some organic produce and specialty items like almond milk and almond milk creamer for coffee. Forgoing those would probably have us around $10/day for 2 adults. But given our income, we are okay with being a bit more spendy when it comes to food.
« Last Edit: March 07, 2016, 05:52:20 AM by little_brown_dog »

Rural

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #8 on: March 06, 2016, 05:49:56 PM »

 Three meals a day, and I had snacks, though he doesn't always.


Breakfast is always peanut  butter on toast made from homemade bread


 My lunch is leftovers; his is a sort of trail mix made of Cheerios and peanuts


 Supper varies wildly, and it's something I cook most days.  If we find ourselves still at the college 45 minutes away after 7 PM, often the best-laid plans go agley and we wind up at McDonald's.  When I cook, it involves meat maybe a third of the time? I'm trying to add back a little bit more meat because he had started to complain, so maybe half the time these days. Meat's never a main course, though, but a component of  what's usually a one pot meal, with less meat than the norm. We also eat a lot of TVP - any meal that would normally call for ground meat is meatless.

lizzzi

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #9 on: March 06, 2016, 06:15:40 PM »
Three meals a day home-made.

Breakfast: Two cups coffee, oatmeal with nuts and milk, maybe one piece of fruit or serving of berries, maybe a tablespoonful of peanut or cashew butter, just eaten off the spoon.

Usually a cup of tea around 10:30 or 11 am.

Lunch: Often supper leftovers or leftover soup or else salad with protein on top--tuna, hardboiled egg, leftover fish, chicken, or meat, whatever. Usually a portion of starch with it. Maybe some cheese--I like cheese.

Supper: (For two adults and three kids, 5,6,8.)Mondays are usually home-made soup and some kind of sandwiches. Friday is always a seafood dish of some kind. (Lots of Aldi's tilapia.) Tues-Weds-Thurs usually includes one ground meat kid-friendly dish--my various homemade versions of Hamburger Helper meals. I usually do some kind of chicken once a week--the sky's the limit there--depends on what I can find cheap.  I probably will do pork or beef once a week on alternate weeks, and like to do a meatless supper with something like cheese tortellini, mac and cheese (NY Times version is the only one worth eating), or a spinach-cheese casserole. Sometimes an Eastern European supper of pierogis and kabasi with cabbage and onion. I usually have fresh fruit or some kind of fruit cup based on canned fruit mixed with fresh. Lots of vegetables, both cooked up from fresh or else frozen. Starches can be pasta,  rice, white or sweet potatoes, couscous, or some kind of good sandwich rolls on Monday nights. We all drink milk; maybe the adults will have water instead. I cook for the family Mon-Fri, but on Sat. and Sun. I'm on my own, and supper is either leftovers from the week, or often an egg dish, like  scrambled eggs or an omelet. If I'm really not feeling like cooking for myself, I'll make an eggnog in the Vitamix and just have that for supper. (Pasteurized eggs..pricey, I know.) Wine off and on, maybe a shot of Jack Daniels on Sunday afternoon.

2Birds1Stone

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #10 on: March 06, 2016, 06:24:39 PM »
I eat ~3 times a day + 1 or 2 snacks.

Breakfast is usually 2 packets of oatmeal at work after the gym.
Lunch is usually left overs from dinner or a cold cut sandwich.
Dinner always varies a ton, we cook dinner 6 nights a week and go out once a week (using Groupon)

trailhugger

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #11 on: March 06, 2016, 07:51:42 PM »
My three kids and I eat three meals plus at least two snacks, most days. Meat figures into breakfast and dinner most of the time, but I stretch both the dollar and the portion as best as I can. I stock up and freeze, pay less than $2/#, when possible, and we get venison from my in-laws and homemade sausage from my uncle.

Breakfast, at least on weekdays, is ham & cheese toasted on a tortilla. Kids call it a "roll up sammich." :lol: Sometimes I will add eggs, also, and sometimes we do refried beans (homemade) instead of the ham. DH and I split one burrito-sized tortilla and the three kids split a second (and then end up eating a banana or splitting an orange, as well). Weekend breakfasts are more likely to include eggs, and sometimes I make pancakes (sour cream, sometimes with bananas or blueberries), french toast, biscuits or toast.

Lunch is sandwiches and fruit or veggies. Sometimes I will eat leftovers if there's only enough for 1 serving of something. DH's schedule makes it really difficult for him to pack a lunch but he frequently has lunch meetings where it is paid for, or he will grab something he knows will keep and saves half for the next day.

Dinner is mostly homemade and varies by seasonal availability. Colder weather, more soups and baked/roasted dishes, warmer weather is more salads and grilled dishes. I plan out dinners for the week by taking things out of the freezer to thaw on Sunday or knowing what is on sale at the grocery store, to pick up on my weekly Tuesday (last day of the 'weekly' specials) trip. Meat is common but the bulk of the meal is usually vegetables. Sometimes we have starch in the form of rice, pasta, or potatoes, frequently not. Bread with dinner is rare, a special treat, unless it is soup or sandwiches.

Snacks may be fruit, toast, yogurt (plain whole milk with a dash of cinnamon), crackers, or carrots & hummus.

Sometimes we end up with a second afternoon snack on weekend days when DH is also home and we're all outside and/or busy working on yard/house/Jeep projects or go for a family bike ride on the greenway.

alsoknownasDean

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #12 on: March 07, 2016, 05:29:35 AM »
I'm going to accept a facepunch or two here... I tend to have just the two proper meals a day more often than not, breakfast is usually coffee (with milk), often (free) lattes from the work coffee machine if it's a work day.

Lunch is usually something made in bulk at home if I'm taking food in (especially Indian curries or the odd stir fry or pasta dish, etc), and once or twice a week I might go and buy lunch (it used to be every day, working on this one).

Dinner is usually something like an Indian curry, stew, stir fry, pasta and sauce, maybe tacos or a good bowl of soup. Again I might grab something once or twice a week, especially on weekends, but these days I'm more inclined to grab something from the freezer than go to the chicken shop/noodle place/etc.

Snacks are usually fruit (especially bananas). I don't buy cookies or anything like that (and chocolate is very rare), and I try not to buy too much cheese or salami because there's a good chance I will eat it.

I tend to cook with more beans over the last couple of years (since finding this site/forums). Last winter I made lots of baked potatoes because potatoes were dirt cheap. Plenty of vegetables (especially capsicums) if I can get them cheaply enough.

Sent from my LG-D855 using Tapatalk
« Last Edit: March 07, 2016, 05:31:33 AM by alsoknownasDean »

Nickyd£g

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #13 on: March 07, 2016, 06:21:47 AM »
Three home made meals a day, plus a snack on weekdays.

B: scrambled egg and veggie wrap, bacon & eggs, toast & eggs.
L: salad with protein, leftovers such as spaghetti bolognese, chilli, pesto chicken & rice, lentil & ham soup
S: fruit
D: protein and non-root veggies - mainly fish or chicken fillet in sauce with steamed broccoli, green beans, sprouts, etc. [I don't eat any carbs after 3pm]

All pretty simple to make. I shop and prep meals for the week ahead every Sunday, it takes me around 2 hours and I budget around £30 per week [including toiletries and household goods].  I try to eat free-range/wild caught/grass-fed/organic if possible but I don't stress if I can't find it or it's out of my budget.

PharmaStache

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #14 on: March 07, 2016, 06:37:44 AM »
B- smoothie (banana, oats, spinach, etc)
Snack- cheese and crackers
L- leftovers (often a hearty homemade soup- we plan easily transported meals and make extra to have as lunches), piece of fruit
Snack- yogurt or homemade muffin
Supper- highly variable, weekend can be more elaborate but weekday is always quick.  Never a piece of meat with 2 sides.  My favs are Qdoba bowls (rice with chicken and all the toppings), salads (like a tex mex salad, steak salad, chicken salad), pita pizzas are another weeknight fav.  And eggs. 

MsPeacock

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #15 on: March 07, 2016, 06:47:46 AM »
Breakfast is almost always just coffee during the week. I am more inclined to make breakfast on the weekend when my kids are around.

Lunch is almost always leftovers from the prior nights dinner or ramen fortified with a couple of handfuls  of veggies.

Dinner is planned, usually from budget bytes, varies widely depending on what is quick and simple.

I rarely eat snacks, but if I do it is most likely pretzels or some tuna fish.

Philociraptor

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #16 on: March 07, 2016, 07:30:47 AM »
Breakfast = 3 eggs and a couple ounces of meat (bacon or chorizo)
Lunch = 8 oz meat, 1 cup veggies, 1 cup starch, some fruit
Dinner = 8 oz meat, 1 cup veggies, 1 cup starch

We make all our own food.

Photo of recent lunch attached.

ooeei

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #17 on: March 07, 2016, 07:31:45 AM »
Breakfast:  Breakfast tacos (egg, bacon, leftover refried beans) or waffles with peanut butter

Lunch:  Some sort of leftover.  Taco soup, Italian eggplant sausage soup, pot roast with potatoes and rice, stir fry with rice, etc etc

Dinner:  Some sort of leftover usually.  See lunch menu.

My girlfriend makes me breakfast and packs my lunch every day (I'm a lucky guy), and she cooks most of the stuff that we turn into leftovers.  We have a chest freezer and tons of reditainers to store things.  Make a huge batch, freeze.  I made about 20 servings of refried beans recently.  We usually have 2-4 things in rotation at a given moment to allow for some variety.  Things like stir fry are made fresh for the most part (with frozen veggies though).  Once in awhile I'll do homemade pizza, bread (for sandwiches), or burgers, and we have homemade salads sometimes.

golden1

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #18 on: March 07, 2016, 07:48:40 AM »
I eat the same breakfast every weekday.  Toast with PB, a fruit and two pieces of canadian bacon.  Oatmeal or cereal just doesn't cut it for me and if I eat that I am starving 2 hours before lunch.  On weekends I eat cereal, or pancakes and bacon.  Sometimes I'll eat a greek yogurt for a midmorning snack, or a handful of almonds.  Lunch is either leftovers or a sandwich with fruit  and veggies with hummus.  Once a week I eat out for lunch.  Dinner is whatever it is that day - tacos, pasta, fish, chicken etc....with a starch and veggie.  I usually grab a takeout dinner once or twice a week when I am busy - working on getting rid of that. 


wenchsenior

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #19 on: March 07, 2016, 08:34:37 AM »
The amount of food most people eat in a day blows my mind. Hell, the amount of food I used to eat in a day blows my mind. I wish I had more appetite and could gain weight easier, as I did in my 20s.

It is so difficult for me to work up to eating more than twice per day...digestion is too slow and I tend to eat a lot of bulk in terms of fiber/fruit/veggies/whole grains. I get (usually only slightly) hungry every 8-12 hours and tend to eat around 10 am and 8-9 pm. Typical breakfast is oatmeal with nuts and fruit; or 1-2 eggs with some veggies; or some whole grains, veggies, beans sauteed together. Typical dinner is a large mixed veggie salad with some fish or poultry; or some other meat/veggie combo with or without a carb, depending on appetite.

My husband isn't that big an eater either, and yet astonishingly, our grocery bill remains considerably higher than the typical one I see posted here. It is a mystery LOL.

soccerluvof4

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #20 on: March 07, 2016, 09:23:26 AM »
I alternate days with eating for breakfast:

4 egg omlette (3 whites one yolk) stuffed with a ton of veggies and white cheese usually mozzarela
next day
Oatmeal with rasins and nuts.

Usually not a morning snack.

Lunch- Usually a salad preferably i make a wedge salad with blue cheese dressing, nuts, tomatos etc.. and a 65 cent pot pie from Aldis

3pm snack usually handful crackers or small bit of left overs

Dinner- Wife cooks very healthy usually try to limit to one serving of everything. We eat fish once a week (usually salmon) Red meat once a week, chicken once or twice a week and the rest meatless meals with lots of veggies.

Before bed I love to eat 4-5 piece of cut celery with good peanut butter or hummus.

I eat whatever I want on Sundays

mm1970

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #21 on: March 07, 2016, 01:34:03 PM »
It varies, but not by much:

Breakfast: smoothie (protein powder, banana, peanut butter, ice, water), and a piece of toast (sometimes homemade)
Snack: cottage cheese and fruit
Lunch: Salad, sometimes with protein (hard boiled eggs), sometimes with leftovers on the side.  Salad is usually greens, carrots, sunflower seeds, vinaigrette
Dinner: a carb, a protein, and vegetables (burritos or tacos, pasta, stir-fry over rice, chicken with potato and a veg)

use2betrix

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #22 on: March 07, 2016, 02:13:13 PM »
Breakfast: 3 eggs, 3 egg whites, 1 piece Ezekiel bread with apple butter, 2/3 banana
8:30 am: 1.5 scoops whey protein
11:30 am: one of the meals in the pic
2:30 pm: 1/2 of one of the meals in the pic
6 pm: 1 scoop whey 1 scoop syntha 6
8:30 pm: 4-5 oz chicken or hamburger and salad with light ranch

We've been eating similar for many years. I like the foods. We have occasional cheat meals within reason.

FLBiker

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #23 on: March 07, 2016, 02:38:39 PM »
I have oatmeal w/ pb and banana almost everyday.  On the weekends, I like fried egg sandwiches or veggie frittatas.  Once in a while, pancakes / waffles, but I don't really like "sweet" breakfasts.

Lunch is always leftovers from dinner, plus some carrots and fruit.  We're vegetarian.  Popular dinners include veggie stirfries w/ tofu, slowcooked veggie / lentil / bean stews, various "bowls", etc.  Sometimes egg dishes for dinner, too.

I'm historically not much of a snacker, but I'm developing a strong trailmix habit.  I used to eat a ton of nuts, but I felt like it was better for me to cut them a bit with lower fat fare (like generic Cheerios, dried fruit, etc.).  Not the cheapest habit, I admit.  Even though I don't buy premixed trail mixes, I've gotten pretty fancy recently.  Right now, I've got an Asian one with soy wasabi almonds, rice crackers, wasabi peas and dried edamame, and a sweet one with cocoa almonds, yogurt raisins, peanuts and Aldi-brand cheerios.  Aldi is a great source for the ingredients.


tobitonic

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #24 on: March 07, 2016, 03:59:01 PM »
We're big on the approach popularized by the Blue Zones / Okinawan Program books, which is basically to eat like folks in long-lived traditional societies: unprocessed, mostly plant-based foods. We're also fans of French traditional eating patterns, in which snacks are basically not a thing and people generally eat at the same times every day.

During the work week, I'll typically eat a big meal around 11 that's primarily comprised of leftovers from dinner from the last couple of nights, and then eat an afternoon snack (i.e., a light meal, not a bag of potato chips and cookies and this and that) at around 3 or 4 when back from work, then dinner at around 6. Depending on hunger levels, I might eat an additional snack at 7 or 8. So I typically eat 3 to 4 meals a day. DW is home with the kids, so their approach is similar except that they'll typically eat around 8 and noon, then 3 and 6.

Drink-wise, during a normal week, we typically only have water, milk, hot chocolate, tea, and wine available, and I'll almost always just have one of the first 3 during winter and one of the first two year round.

MsPeacock

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #25 on: March 07, 2016, 05:11:14 PM »
For the folks who say they eat "3 oz of this" and "8 oz of that" - do you actually weigh or measure your food for every meal? Just curious if so, and why.

SilveradoBojangles

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #26 on: March 07, 2016, 05:20:22 PM »
I do three meals plus a 4:00pm snack (we don't eat dinner until 8 most days). I really love to cook, and to eat, and I think it's a miracle that I don't weigh 400 pounds.

Breakfast - for me, usually plain yogurt with homemade granola, or toast (I make my own bread) topped with PB & banana slices, avocado and olive oil, or a fried egg. My husband likes cheerios. Maybe an orange. We always have coffee.

Lunch - leftovers from the night before, or I'll make a salad. I work from home.

snack - nuts, fruit, carrots and hummus, string cheese, hard boiled egg, etc. Whatever suits my fancy when I wander downstairs.

Dinner - Friday I made a delicious moroccan chard and garbanzo bean stew with couscous. On Sat I made a fresh pea risotto (we have a lot of peas in the garden), an asparagus and leek soup, and sous vide pork chops (We splurge and have meat about once a week). My husband made a lemon-olive oil cake to go with this. Last night was split pea soup and biscuits. Tonight: Macaroni and cheese and braised greens. Tomorrow - black bean-quinoa burgers, probably accompanied by some roast veggies.

mm1970

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #27 on: March 07, 2016, 05:28:45 PM »
For the folks who say they eat "3 oz of this" and "8 oz of that" - do you actually weigh or measure your food for every meal? Just curious if so, and why.
I don't weigh much, but often measure.  Weight control. I worked pretty hard to take off the baby weight (32 lbs), and when it creeps up, I have to measure stuff out.

Mostly, I follow the 21 Day Fix color-coded meal plan.  Meaning, when my weight is stable, it's a guideline.  When I'm trying to lose weight, I get more serious and measure stuff out.
(Each type of food is its own color, and each color has a specific sized container, and I get a certain # of each color a day).

use2betrix

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #28 on: March 07, 2016, 06:35:21 PM »
For the folks who say they eat "3 oz of this" and "8 oz of that" - do you actually weigh or measure your food for every meal? Just curious if so, and why.

We weigh ours. We go in spurts of weighing and estimating. We purchase food for 7 days at a time and since we eat so much meat we need to make sure it's divided how it's supposed to be.

Also, since we work out a ton, food is the most anabolic and important substance in existence. The proper diet can make or break every effort for the gym as well as energy/muscle/etc. Right now we're cutting weight very slowly to maintain as much muscle as possible. I am on a goal to lose about 1.5 lbs a week, and have been. Without measuring it's virtually impossible to know your maintenance levels and what you need to cut weight.

While it all sounds difficult or miserable it's really not. Since I eat so healthy and often I'm never that hungry. I enjoy all the foods I eat (look at the pics above, delicious) and I've been doing it so long it's habit by now. I'm down 20lbs this year since I started cutting and have kept my strength yet I have way more visible abs, look "bigger" and feel better. Since I travel all over for work the weightlifting has just been a hobby I've maintained pretty regularly since I was 14.

I should add that my stay at home wife does all the meal prep now. I did when I was single, and she also did when we both worked, so it's easily doable.

Philociraptor

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #29 on: March 08, 2016, 07:19:44 AM »
For the folks who say they eat "3 oz of this" and "8 oz of that" - do you actually weigh or measure your food for every meal? Just curious if so, and why.

Similar to use2betrix, we exercise every day (Crossfit), so getting enough food in is very important. We only go to the grocery stores once a week, and we make all our food for the week in 1 cooking session. We weigh out protein to make sure it's enough for us to get around 1 g protein per lb of lean body mass each day.

aprilchem

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #30 on: March 08, 2016, 07:31:49 AM »
3 meals a day, homemade.  I have three kids and a husband and we eat breakfast and dinner around the table as a family every day (unless the husband is traveling, and then it's me and the kids).  I cook entirely from scratch, including milling my own grain and baking my own bread, because I really like to cook. 

Breakfast for us is usually oatmeal casserole, eggs, pancakes, etc.  I often will have just coffee or tea, because my stomach can be testy in the morning.

Lunch is leftovers for everyone.  Today my daughter and I took rice and veggies, and my husband and one of the boys took leftover short ribs and roasted cauliflower.  My son who is very picky packed himself turkey pepperoni, crackers, and fruit.

Dinner is fairly traditional.  We eat beef and pork as our main meats because we buy 1/2 cow a year and a pig twice a year from a local farmer.  Free-range, humanely raised chicken is above my budget so we don't eat it a lot.  I also try to make at least 1-2 vegetarian meals a week.  This week we'll have shortribs (yesterday), homemade veggie pizza, pot roast, homemade pasta with sauce from last summer's garden, and breakfast for dinner.  Veggies are what I get on sale, so this week it's roasted cauliflower, roasted carrots, sauteed mushrooms, and broccoli.  I use my pressure cooker almost every night.  We eat a lot of rice as our starch because my daughter is obsessed with rice. 

We're lucky to have good sources for a lot of our food - I grow and freeze a lot of veggies in my garden every summer, my secretary sells chicken eggs for $2.50 a dozen, and we have a great relationship with the farm where we buy our meat.  That means I don't have to go to the grocery store much - a lot of our other staples (rice, wheat berries, etc.) I buy on amazon.

mozar

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #31 on: March 08, 2016, 08:58:03 PM »
I see so many delicious ideas.

Breakfast is sliced tomato, veggie sausage, scrambled egg, avocado, in a tortilla.

Snack is a banana chocolate chip muffin that I bake a batch of every two weeks.

Lunch is sliced tomato, avocado, spanish rice and cuban style beans in a tortilla. I make the rice and beans every sunday and it takes me an hour.

I hate doing anything after work so much that I usually end up eating a fistful of dark chocolate chips for dinner.

I'm open to eating venison as people shoot a lot of deer around here. I also plan on getting a csa this summer, because I just won't buy vegetables because everything here is shipped from California (I live on the East coast), and it tastes old.

Boganvillia

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #32 on: March 18, 2016, 01:38:01 AM »
In our household I am currently the cook for 5 nights out of 7, although that is going to change soon! when I start work full-time. I must admit I tire of churning out something decent each night. We have a boarder and because of this we have raised our usual standards for our nightly meal. This is beneficial for all of us - but does takes extra effort. I set the table with a tablecloth, and water glasses with ice and a dash of lime, and everyone serves themselves from bowls in the middle , as opposed to my plating the dishes up.

So ... what do we eat? It is different all the time. We don't have a rota the way some families do. (We do tend to have spaghetti bolognese once a week at the moment, though, because it is so easy to cook up bolognese sauce on the weekend and freeze it for an easy Wednesday or Thursday night option.)

I tend to shop on Friday, so it's easy to cook fish on Friday evening. Tonight I cooked this: http://www.annabel-langbein.com/recipes/lemon-fish-pie/83/  which went down pretty well, and I served it with peas (ex-frozen). I didn't have enough potato so I subbed in the equivalent amount of parsnip, which I had bought in bulk on special a week or so ago, and which needed eating. I also didn't have enough lemon so I reduced the lemon juice to 1 tablespoonful - it was fine.

This week I had a lot of various types of sausage in the freezer - it was all 33% off - and not much else (because ... nothing else was on special, and we had done a week of 'eating down the pantry' the week prior). So we had 3 sausage-based meals. DH made a pissaladiere - fancy kind of pizza - topped with sausage meat and caramelised onion and olives; another night I made bangers and mash; and finally last night I turned lamb sausages into sausage rolls, as I happened to have puff pastry  on hand. I used http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/33669/moroccan+lamb+sausage+rolls+with+yoghurt+sauce and served the sausage rolls up with the spinach and yoghurt etc.

The teenager made a meatloaf last weekend.

Desserts happen maybe 2 nights out of 7. This week I made panna cotta, and another night I made lemon sago pudding. The teenager sometimes makes chocolate brownies. The preschoolers have a nightly dessert which is usually natural yoghurt with either jam or canned fruit.

For breakfast, most of us eat oatmeal, supplemented by toast (bread from the breadmaker). One of the preschoolers tends to sleep in so sometimes he has a banana smoothie for breakfast with a Weetbix blended in for bulk.

For lunch, we eat either peanut butter sandwiches, or leftovers from dinner. After dinner, we often get out the plastic boxes and parcel up our lunches for the next day straightaway. For the teenager's lunch, I tend to make a loaf of bread in the breadmaker on the weekend and then call her downstairs to make up 5 peanut butter sandwiches and then freeze them for the week. This works really well.

For snacks, I like to make mango lassis (canned mango from Indian shops, rosewater, cardamom powder and yoghurt) and banana smoothies. I make an oat bar out of rolled oats, banana, dates and nuts for the biscuit tin which make portable morning teas for the kids to take to preschool or swimming lessons.

We cook all our meals and never ever eat out.

GuitarStv

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #33 on: March 18, 2016, 06:12:21 AM »
Our daily meals are sorta like that opening scene from Saving Private Ryan . . . there's shit flying around, your ears are ringing from the repeated clashes and crashes of dishes hitting the floor, you've gone numb from the agonized screams of the unhappy, and there's a deep sense of foreboding at the futility of the whole effort.  Is a meal really worth this kind of horror?  You just wolf down whatever food is available in misery.

We're hoping things get better as our son grows out of the terrible twos.

Boganvillia

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #34 on: March 18, 2016, 03:15:47 PM »
^^ Guitar Stv, our mealtimes were like that only 18 months ago: not complete without howling, screentime, and mopping. Visitors were visibly shaken.

Things are much better now.

dreams_and_discoveries

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #35 on: March 18, 2016, 03:34:57 PM »
Well I'm the first to admit my diet isn't great; I buy faddy stuff and spend a bit too money, eat too much sugar and can be lazy.

On the good side, I'm veggie, and most of my main meals end up being cheap vegan staples. I make massive portions, then tupperware them up/leave the pot in the fridge for a few days. Curries are a fav - usually dahl or mushroom, with homemade chappati or rice. Chilli - an eternal classic cheap meal, made with dried beans. I do a mean rice and beans, with whatever frozen/leftover veggies I have, or couscous/quinoa/bulgar and veggies etc. Started baking bread again, and making my own houmous. Always homemake pizza's just the way I like them - verging on soggy, loads of sauce. Heavy on the pepper, and light on the cheese.

These are my staples, all reasonably priced. I then add in things I fancy trying out, a few dishes get added into the rotation, some are more own-offs. I grow veg in summer, and usually end up with gluts - there are always a few bean weeks, courgette weeks, tomato and cucumber weeks.

The above covers dinner and lunch (I batch cook, take them to work and microwave). For brekkie, I have porridge at home at the weekends, and cereal/juice/coffee is provided free of charge at work, so it would be rude (and very unmoustchian) to not have it there. They also have far too many unhealthy snacks, which I eat copiously.

I have a large larder, which is always stocked to the brim (honestly, I could survive for months off my stash). Keep loads of beans/pulses/grains/rice - about ~10 on the go usually in glass jars, tins of tomatoes/fruit, different flours, sugar and baking supplies as well as all the herbs/spices. And my freezer is rarely not full, so I've always got loads of options.

Last year I spent £110 a month on food for just me - doesn't sound too bad, but could be lower and could be healthier.

Beardog

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #36 on: March 18, 2016, 05:53:46 PM »
Here's a typical day:

First Breakfast: a bowl of greens (kale, collard greens, salad), steel cut oats, wheat germ, pressed tofu.

Second Breakfast: a large bowl of cut fruit, a quarter cup of nuts, two cups cheerios (dry).

Lunch: quinoa or brown rice, frozen vegetables, maybe some kind of vegan protein like soy chunks or beans.

Snack: banana and granola, small piece of chocolate

Dinner: a bowl of bean stew with assorted vegetables (spinach, tomatoes, hot peppers, brocolli, etc), toast, avocado

hedgefund10

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #37 on: March 18, 2016, 08:39:10 PM »
PBJ on wheat bread and almonds for lunch. Pasta for Dinner. Glass of 1% milk before bed. Rinse and Repeat

MandalayVA

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #38 on: March 20, 2016, 12:22:46 PM »
Three meals, homemade.  I don't snack because my meals fill me up.

Breakfast--2 eggs fried in ghee over green beans with a cup of tea.  Quick, easy and tasty!

Lunch--a hearty soup or a salad and a thermos of bone broth, fruit (either a little bowl of berries or an apple)

Dinner--meat (usually chicken) and non-starchy vegetables

 

ShortStuff

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Re: What are your daily meals like?
« Reply #39 on: March 20, 2016, 12:55:31 PM »
Breakfast: oatmeal with walnuts, almond milk, and usually berries or banana tossed in.

Lunch: leftovers, or PBJ sandwich with a piece of fruit as side. Or a salad.  Work snacks are nuts or fruit or yogurt.

Dinner: The most loved dinner at our home is Friday night homemade pizza. (we used to do take-out pizza before becoming frugal). We get a ball of dough from Trader Joes for $1.19, then stretch it out on parchment paper and load it up with peppers, mushrooms and tomatoes.

We also do 1 rice with chicken/tofu meal each week. just pop rice into rice cooker and cook the stir fry additions during the 25 minutes it takes for rice to finish. Pretty versatile meal as you can add different stuff each time and different sauces such as soy or sweet chili, etc.

Eat more non-meat meals, even if you are not vegetarian, as we are not. It's good for your wallet and your arteries!
« Last Edit: March 20, 2016, 12:57:55 PM by ShortStuff »