First dinner...

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Today was the first day of our food journey in 2020. Our first meal today was spent with family enjoying the awesome New Year's Day breakfast buffet at the Moana Surfrider hotel - an unusual luxury!

There are lots of vegetarian options. We had veggie omelets (we are still eating eggs and a little cheese), salad and fruit. I also had some potato salad and miso soup - this is Hawaii.  Both of us were still feeling some after-effects from our New Year's Eve cake binge, but we started our year doing what's most important to us - talking with family under the banyan tree in the courtyard with the beach and ocean in view. This ended up being both our breakfast and lunch, followed by a long nap as soon as we drove back home!

For dinner, we decided to make a go-to meal that is simple and yummy. I do most of the cooking and tonight was no exception. I made a broccoli and mushroom stir-fry with brown rice noodles and a green salad with tomatoes, carrots, cucumber and sunflower seeds. This is a dish that relies on what I have learned is a classic base: onion and garlic sauteed in olive oil. So many meals start with this, and a lot of them include ginger as well, which is in the recipe for the stir-fry I made. Onion, garlic and ginger sauteed in olive oil, with some low-sodium soy sauce, can be a base for any kind of veggie stir fry - just include whatever vegetables you have, and saute them for as long as necessary to get them to a consistency that you like. A lot of the dishes we'll be making this year will include this as the base. Also, it's worth mentioning three products that we use a lot and really like. We love Brianna's Poppy Seed dressing. It's not the lowest calorie dressing, but has good ingredients and does not require much to make a salad great. You can also see the kind of soy sauce we use - low sodium and gluten free - and the rice noodles that we get from Costco. If you have tried any of these products, let us know what you think.



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