OK, so Week 1 went well.  I had one lunch out, so it was 2 lunches of the burritos and 2 lunches of the Italian Wedding Soup, as previewed here.  The Italian Wedding Soup, honestly, was not that great to begin with, and holding it for a few days didn’t improve the gumminess of the pasta.  Not sure what the answer is, but it’s worth trying freezing it.

The burritos were good, though, although a little bland.

I jazzed them up with some Sriracha from the portable supply Santa gave me for Xmas.

So there are 5 burritos — frozen — left over from last week, and the plan is to use 2-3 of them this week.

The other lunch comes from Peruvian Vegetable Soup, which I found under the catchy title “How to Make Soup That Actually Fills You Up” on a site called FullPlate which touts a “majority fiber-rich” approach to dieting where 50-75% of your meal or snack should be a “fiber-rich” food (not to be confused with “fiber”; “fiber-rich” foods wants you to eat all kinds of vegetables and fruits as well as beans and such-like in order to eat things with a lower calorie density).

FullPlate is my latest diet gimmick.  Have I explained about me and diets?  What I’ve found about myself is that I get great results from a diet for the first few months (call it 2-4), and then my zeal flags.  Answer?  Refresh the diet gimmick every 3-5 months.  I don’t much care what the diet is as long as I have zeal for it, and by renewing the gimmick I can recharge my zeal.

So anyhow, I ran across the FullPlate diet reading and experimenting with Jane McGonigal’s SuperBetter book and self-improvement scheme.  I don’t know how FullPlate and she got together, but they are one of the “Quests” in the superbetter.com system, and they seemed simple (no measuring and looking up calorie counts) as well as the system seemed to work.

In any case, Peruvian Vegetable Soup is essentially a boatload of fiber-rich vegetables, beans, and qunoa united by a tomato-ey and cumin-ey broth.  The soup is designed (on purpose, says creator Amy Hanus) to be eaten in 3-cup portions, so it’s a huge slug of vegetables.  Reminds of me of a brief flirtation years ago with the Ornish 10% fat diet, where Debbie and I would gorge ourselves on vegetable stews and medleys of one sort or another.  It was OK.

So I ended up with four portions for lunches and a dinner last night for Debbie and me.

On a scale of Italian Wedding Soup to Burritos it’s probably 2/3 of the way to Burritos, so it’ll probably make its way into the lineup.

TBD.

Still on the lookout for fiber-rich lunches that I can make ahead and freeze.  I’ll publicize my efforts with anything you send me, along with a shout out to your blog or other social media.  Let me know.