The Great Lunch Swap Project

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First off, be a part of the Virtual Valentine's Exchange! Full details are here.
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Also, be sure to enter my Running the Sahara movie giveaway as well here!
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You may have noticed that I've been talking a bit more about food, and cooking in particular lately. Truthfully since I went on my soup and buttered toast binge throughout reserves in December I've been feeling so...meh...about cooking. I needed some inspiration from somewhere.

I think we can all agree that this is a good time to try and save money as well. One of my first steps? Cutting out the trips to Starbucks (and other various coffee establishments). I have a pretty sizeable collection of tea, so who needs all those coffee drinks? Check out my tea collection at work:Earl Gray is my favorite. I have four kinds in there!

Anyhow...back to food. My friend DGB and I both had the same goals:

• Find some inspiration in food.
  
• To branch out with our cooking a bit more and try some new recipes.
• To cut back on the eating out by bringing our lunch more often.

Together we came up with the Great Lunch Swap Project. The rules are:

• We each find one new recipe to cook each week.
• DGB cooks her new recipe Tuesday night and brings the leftovers for lunch for both of us on Wednesday.
• I cook my new recipe on Wednesday for lunch on Thursday.
• Share said recipes with each other.
• If you do not bring lunch on your day then you have to pay for lunch!

This was week one of our little experiment. DGB was wanting to try quinoa, so she whipped up some balsamic marinated chicken with quinoa, peppers and asparagus with some tomatoes on the side. She even brought me a juice box!
Tonight I got cooking. I found a recipe in the Whole Foods Cookbook for a Moroccan Couscous salad that I worked with. I whipped up the dressing - equal parts of lemon juice, orange juice and olive olive, some freshly grated ginger, honey, and some cumin, cardamom and cinnamon. I wanted to add in some protein to the salad though - and I went with some tofu.I sliced the tofu, blotted it dry, dipped it in the dressing and put it on a baking sheet. I baked it at 425F for 30 min, which was maybe 5 minutes too long for my somewhat thin slices. I wish I could convey how good the tofu smelled when it was baking... Yum!I threw together the couscous with some red and yellow pepper, raisins, dried apricots, orange zest, toasted pistachios, and tossed it with some more dressing. Overall I really liked the flavour combinations. Fingers crossed DGB likes it tomorrow!
I knew there was a reason I got three rest days on my schedule this week! I got my training schedule for the next month and it is going be to interesting...and a lot of fun!!