The Healthy Weekly Menu

We are trying to get back on our healthy eating diet (I say this as I'm munching on an everything bagel with scallion cream cheese and green olives for breakfast...) and one of our best tools is planning the weekly menu in detail on Sunday.  Let me share our menu for this week, which is mostly foods that we eat on the FourHour Body diet:

Sunday, November 10th, 2013

• Tarka dhal (from a curry cookbook at home, recipe below)
• Hungarian spice rub roasted chicken (Sunday night dinner)
• Salads
• Make bottle of Carrot-Ginger salad dressing
• Shredded Korean Short Ribs with cucumber slaw
• Homemade granola for his breakfast
• Soft boiled eggs for my breakfast

As for the salads, we eat those for lunch and with dinner throughout the week.  For lunch, I usually add canned tuna for protein to mine while he likes to eat a side of the lentils and beef with a smaller salad.  Most of the shopping is done at Trader Joe's and they have lots of bags of mixed greens, different sprouts and other healthy salad toppings. We do the shopping and cooking Sunday afternoon then roast our chicken to start off the week with a nice healthy dinner.  It is a great feeling to have lunches and dinners cooked for the whole week.  Plus, it is easy to heat up so we can still enjoy a relaxing dinner at the table even if we've worked late.

The tarka dhal is one of our favorite recipes.  It is really healthy and very easy (and cheap) to make.  We usually have a lentil dish every week and we have been hooked on this one for the last three weeks.  I add avocados to mine usually because I love avocados in pretty much everything.  It also mixes great with any meat for a complete meal.  Last week we have had a spicy ancho brisket that was great with the dhal.  Here is the recipe we use (it is a little modified from the original since we have made it often).  The original recipe comes from a book called 'The World's Greatest-Ever Curries" and I would highly recommend it.  

Tarka Dhal 

(This is for 4-6 servings, for two of us for a week, I usually make 4 times this amount, but usually only use 3 or 4 jalapeños and 8-ish red chillies):

Dhal ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of red lentils, washed
• 1/2 cup toor dal (split pigeon peas), washed
• 2.5 cups of water
• 1 tsp. grated ginger
• 2 tsp. minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp. turmeric
• 2 jalapeños, diced then pulsed in food processor until a pulp
• Salt to taste

Place everything in a large pot, bring to a boil then cook for 15-20 until lentils are soft and the liquid is gone.  Add more water if lentils are still not soft but should be more like an oatmeal consistency than a soup.

Tarka ingredients:

• 2 tbsp. of vegetable oil
• 1 onion, cut in half then thinly sliced
• 1/4 tsp. of mustard seeds
• 4 dried red chillies
• 1 big tomato, cut in half then thinly sliced

Heat oil then add all ingredients.  Cook for 2-3 minutes then stir into the finished dhal.  Serve with cilantro or if you want more heat, raw chillies.  I recommend a garnish of avocado.