[Man Healthy] Taco Pasta & An Explanation

I actually remembered to do What I Ate Wednesday this week! This almost never happens – I’m so happy with myself, haha. Thanks again, Jenn from Peas and Crayons, for hosting this awesome weekly party

 

 

Recently, I’ve just been having a big bowl of fruit for breakfast each morning. I’ve noticed that I go through times when I’ll be super hungry in the morning and need something filling like oatmeal or scrambled eggs right away, but then other times it’s a huge struggle to get myself to eat anything in the hours after waking up. Lately, it’s been the latter, so a bowl of fruit has been my compromise since I know that eating breakfast is really important.

 

 

I know you’re probably sick of hearing it, but I’ve been obsessed with turkey sandwiches lately! Half a pound of turkey at the deli will last me four lunches during the week. I fill up my sandwich with tons of lettuce and tomato, as well as a little bit of light mayonnaise and mustard. The past couple weeks I’ve been getting this Sara Lee 100% Whole Wheat bread that’s only 60 calories a slice. I’m not counting calories anymore, but I do still try to keep things on the low side, so it’s nice to know I’m making a good choice.

 

 

In order to hit my protein goal for the day, I always need to have a bunch of protein in my afternoon snack. Recently, that’s been coming in the form of a couple soft-boiled eggs, or a protein shake. My new favorite is Chocolate-Covered Strawberry!

 

 

I don’t make dinner every night, but, when I do, I always try to make it a big source of protein. Last week I made this delicious Taco Pasta (sounds weird, tastes amazing – I promise) that Brent and I absolutely devoured. And it’s definitely a [Man Healthy] meal, too!

 

 

Taco Pasta

(recipe by Miranda Mowbray, Biting Life)

Ingredients (serves 4):

1 pound lean ground beef/turkey

4 cloves garlic, minced

Canola Oil

Salt and pepper

Chili Powder

Cayenne Pepper

Dried (or fresh) cilantro

1/2 pound elbow macaroni

three tomatoes, diced

1 jalapeño, seeded and finely diced

8 oz. frozen corn, cooked according to package directions

2 oz. fat-free cream cheese

3 tbsp. fat-free plain yogurt

Directions:

Prepare pasta according to package directions; drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, sauté garlic in canola oil over medium-high heat in a dutch oven pan, until fragrant.

Add the ground meat, season with salt and pepper, and stir continuously to break it up into small pieces.

Continue cooking the meat until fully done (about 7 minutes).

Add the cooked corn, jalapeño, and tomato to the pot and cook for 5 more minutes; season with more salt and pepper.

Add the cooked pasta, cream cheese, and yogurt to the pot; stir to melt and combine.

Season to taste with salt, pepper, chili powder, and cayenne pepper (remember, there’s already a jalapeño in there).

Enjoy!

Now that this post is over, I want to briefly touch on yesterday’s post. I did get a few people that disagreed with my take on the situation, as well as plenty of people who were supportive of what happened. Just to clear things up, I wanted to share something I wrote to a friend in response to some questions that she had (edited only to make sense in this context). I kind of got the feeling that you guys thought I was being completely unreasonable and basically having serious #firstworldproblems.

Honestly, writing yesterday’s post was fun. I’m a writer and I love to write, as well as maybe stir up some controversy every know and then. Just because I’m writing a post about something, doesn’t mean that I’m taking it dead seriously, so I hope you guys get that.

I do get what you’re saying – I understand that some of what happened is procedure, but everything was handled so inappropriately and disrespectfully. Obviously it’s an exaggeration to call it “blackmail,” but I really do feel that I was treated poorly. And, as a consumer who is paying for this service, and as somebody who has worked in customer service for years, I’m often upset (if irrationally so) by bad customer service. 

I completely understand that doctors can’t just give you unlimited prescriptions for the rest of your life without you coming in for a checkup. That would be ridiculous. But they forced me to make an appointment within a three week window that I really didn’t want to make an appointment in. I should’ve been able to make an appointment, if not for January, then on my own schedule in the next month or two.

You mentioned that you got a letter in the mail reminding you to make an appointment. If my office had done that, or given me a call, I would have made an appointment right away. I didn’t receive any notice that I needed to make an appointment, or that my birth control was suddenly going to run out if I didn’t make one immediately. Partial blame for that does go to CVS, because they are supposed to warn customers when they only have one refill left, which they did not do for me.

Also, just to get around to your first point, the receptionist actually told me that the doctor wasn’t there that day. So I don’t know what exactly happened behind the scenes to get my prescription filled, but it wasn’t filled by my doctor. I know that the receptionist can’t fill the prescriptions herself, I’m not an idiot, but (a) she never should’ve promised me a refill if it wasn’t necessarily going to happen, and (b) she should’ve realized when she brought up my file the first time I was on the phone that I was overdue for an appointment and had us figure it out right then, instead of fifteen minutes later after I’d already given up and left the pharmacy. I know that people make mistakes and that’s something you have to accept when you’re dealing with people and companies, but she was extremely rude to me on the phone after I was perfectly pleasant to her, she didn’t apologize for her mistakes, and she refused to allow me to make an appointment on my own timeframe.

I also maintain the point that birth control is not some CRAZY medication that needs to be seriously monitored, especially when somebody has been on the same medication and going to the same office for years, like me. Like my GP’s office cleared up for me, it was not a big deal to wait until January like I wanted. So it should’ve been no problem to let me wait until then, or at least until a convenient time for me within the next month or so.

I will admit that I was worked up over the issue and that my blog post was filled with enflamed language and exaggerations. But that’s kind of the whole point… It’s a blog. Sometimes I want to say something sort of controversial and see what happens. I’m a writer, that’s what I do. Normally, I write about food all day – I love it, but sometimes it’s fun to have a crazy story and get people to start talking about it. I just don’t want anybody to take this whole thing too seriously. The incident was weeks ago, I’m not pregnant, I’m over it, and I’m perfectly happy with my current arrangement for OBGYN care.

Hope that clear up any questions you all might’ve had. I totally appreciate people playing devil’s advocate! That’s what I was hoping for  I really don’t want to sound like a bitch, or like I was lying just to get views or something. I really do feel like what the company did was wrong and that, as a consumer of their product, I deserved much better service. I just might have made it sound like I was a little bit more obsessed and a little more upset about the problem than I actually was. But it got people talking! And that was my goal, as a writer.

I thought it was interesting that the overwhelming responses were either “Oh my god! That’s horrible!” or, basically, “Everything in this post is stupid and wrong!” There was pretty much no middle ground whatsoever. I think that people’s opinions on stuff and how they react to different situations is so interesting. And half the fun of writing is hearing feedback, so I loved hearing everybody’s thoughts on the issue – negative or positive