Puppy Face

Thank you so much for your awesome responses on my food allergies post. I am trying to clean up my diet, however, it is ridiculously difficult now that I am home. My mom and I are switching off cooking dinner, so I only control what I eat for dinner 1/2 of the time, and when I cook for the parents it must meet their standards

Parental meal standards:

• Must contain meat. Red meat is preferred.
• May be a small salad provided, but my dad will not eat any uncooked veggies
• Preferably something they recognize. Nothing too adventurous.

Anyways, I’m struggling through that one. But I am working on cleaning up my other eats through out the day. With this freezing cold and wet weather the pacific northwest has been having a raw diet doesn’t sound particularly appetizing. I will just talk with my parents some more and try to figure out a game plan.

Lunch

I was excited to dig my teeth into a meaty tempeh sandwich. Meaty as in huge, thick and juicy of course. Although I did do an article about The Great Soy Debate, I figure that soy in moderation and non-genetically modified is okay.

I went ahead and marinated these babies in 2T of soy sauce and 1 T of Worchestire sauce for thirty minutes

They tempeh patiently waited for the oven to warm up so they could be baked to deliciousness.

I baked them for 25 minutes at 375, flipping over the tempeh half way through.

I set the ingredients while I waited for the tempeh to cook. I’m so impatient when it comes to food.

In the sandwich:

• wild blueberry spread
• spinach
• goat cheese
• tempeh
• on San Juan Island nine-grain bread

It was just perfect and hit the spot. I finished up with a huge unpictured apple. It took me about 10 minutes to eat!

Puppy Face

This face is the inspiration for my post’s title.

There is absolutely no reason behind this but I thought my puppy was too cute when he was sleeping. However when I got the camera in his face, he woke up. Hence the shocked, puppy face.

Maybe the moral of this story is that even the cutest of people (or dogs in this case) don’t look so cute when they wake up. Meh, or this picture just really made me laugh.

Question of the Day: Do you ever run into problems cooking for other people?

Mexi-lunch

Good Afternoon everyone!

Breakfast

I love waking up knowing I had this waiting for me

Overnight Oats!

• 1/2 c. quick oats
• 1/4 c. almond milk (I ran out)
• 1/4 c. coconut milk
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 T chia seeds
• 1 T flaxseed meal
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• sprinkle of cinnamon

Put in the fridge overnight and topped with:

• 1/2 a nana
• dark chocolate PB

I didn’t include the chocolate chips because I knew I was going to top with the PB. The PB was definitely yummy, but I like the chocolate chips better

I also made my first “healthy” breakfast recipe I tried when I was a junior in high school.

I was a junior counselor at an adventure camp and the cook happened to also be a nutritionist. At this point in my life every time I ate, my body told my brain to throw up the food because it was making me sick. I never did because I thought that I would become bulimic. Therefore I just slowly ate less and less because all the food was making me sick. The nutritionist told me that my body wanted me to throw it up because I was eating such awful food, it was like poison to my body. The next day he made me this breakfast:

A naner covered in coconut milk and topped with cinnamon. It always reminds me of cool, summer mornings

I started eating this every morning and slowly my body stopped telling me to throw up the food I was eating.

I used coconut milk from a carton this time, but it is definitely better with coconut milk from a can because it is thicker.

Lunch

After eating an unpicture kiwi and my last cantaloupe spear for early afternoon snacks, I dug into my Mexi-lunch

A Mexican-inspired wrap

• whole wheat tortilla
• pesto
• salsa
• mixed spring greens
• brown rice
• red and orange bell pepper

I forgot the goat cheese this time, but I was still hungry so I included it in my goat-cheese nachos.

I absolutely can not get enough of goat cheese obviously. I didn’t even touch the salsa on the side because the goat cheese and blue corn chips were just phenomenal by themselves.

I have zumba in a little while and chapter afterwards! Hopefully I can get a good picture of dinner tonight

Do you remember what your first turning-point healthy food was?

Sometimes You Have Those Days…

Sometimes you have those days where you eat your breakfast while making lunch:

1/2 c. quick oats

1 c. water

2 T the MIX

Topped with:

1 1/2 T Crofter’s Raspberry Spread

1 T  TJ’s Almond Butter

Sometimes you have those days where you are rushing to make your lunch and you almost forget to photograph it.

2 slices Oatmeal bread

3 slices deli turkey

1 slice swiss cheese

tomato

red bell pepper

onion

lettuce

pesto

Chobani greek yogurt

& dijon mustard

1/2 of an very unripe pear

the rest of my Mary’s Crack

2 T of farm-fresh blueberry-ginger goat cheese

Sometime you have those days where you just need to lay down and hope your headache goes away.

Sorry for the uber short post bloggies, it’s just one of those days

Climbs and Falls

Hey bloggies I hope you all are enjoying your friday night! I’ve had such a great night!

I was pretty hungry later on in the day so I finished the rest of my green monster from this afternoon

As well as unpictured Mary’s Crackers dipped into some blueberry goat cheese.

It kept my stomach well settled until roomie dinner; and this time it was my turn to cook!

I made Cajun Turkey Burgers on whole wheat bread, a family-secret macaroni salad and a quick ceasar salad.

I still have to make food that will appeal to my roommates (who had a 30 minutes conversation on their favorite fast food restaurants, taco time came out in first)  but I did make it healthier by serving it on whole wheat bread and using barilla-plus macaroni elbows.

Personally, instead of cheddar cheese I had swiss and used dijon mustard instead of yellow. I could have switched out the mayonnaise in the macaroni salad, but I was too nervous to upset the careful balance in the recipe. I’ll do it next time I make it though.

Afterwards I headed to the rock climbing wall to climb for the first time in a month.

Today was super exciting! I climbed my first real overhang:

(my friend/personal rock climbing teacher had to take the picture cause my hands were shaking so hard!)

As well as I learned to lead climb, and took my first lead fall. I did not hook my rope to the top clip and instead grabbed onto the top of the rock and was instructed to let go. This meant I fell about 20 feet! It wakes you up way more than coffee in the morning. Whew!

Overall, a great day. I’ll be chilling in front of my TV watching Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution

Do you rock climb? What has been your most favorite memory and scary memory? The fall was a big one for me, as well as when I was belaying a climber about twice the size of me. He fell and I was picked off up the ground about 10 feet and into the wall. Good times

Double trouble

I hope everyone is having a great Sunday evening. My day was spent running errands and studying.

First we have to back track to yesterday.

I snacked on the blueberry goat cheese that I got yesterday at the farmer’s market on top of some Mary’s Crackers.

Dinner was eaten shoveled in my mouth at 4:00 due to having to be at my sorority at 5

A goat-cheese & guava quesadilla (recipe from Barefoot Contessa), with Baja-style corn leftovers and a baby salad beast filled with avocado, red bell pepper and tomato with pear dressing from Trader Joe’s.

The quesadilla was the real star here. It tasted sweet and decedent like a crepe! Absolute LOOOOOOVE.

After the sorority function, we went back to the sorority house and chilled for a while. The sorority house isn’t filled with very healthy eats, lets just say. However apples and oranges are always available so I cut an apple (with a plastic fork), sprinkled some cinnamon and tossed it into the microwave for 45 seconds. I actually had two guys stand behind me and say how hot I was for “cooking” and not just top ramen. Wow. Anyways, everyone wanted a taste of it and loved it! I’m so sad I don’t have a picture of it, but just imagine apple slices with cinnamon on it. If I’m making this again I’m demanding at least a metal butter knife.

This morning’s omelette was posted earlier, so it’s time now for some lunch-action!

No, ladies and gentlemen you are not seeing double. I had another guava jelly & goat cheese quesadilla and a baby salad beast. I can’t get over how much the quesadilla tastes like a crepe!!! It’s so fantastic

I ran off to do some errands. Stopped at Target to pick up a few things but at the check-out line realized that I had forgotten my wallet. I had to run back to the apartment then run back again to Target to actually buy them. I swear my shopping trips can’t ever go right.

I also stopped at Trader Joe’s where I kept in mind the two parts of my grocery shopping goals. My first goal discussed earlier today was to Limit the Bill, by only spending $75 a week on groceries. The second part of my goal, Eat It, Not Buy It, is making me eat the food I already have stocked up instead of buying a lot more.

I have a very limited food storage space that includes half a cabinet for foods I use most often and two small boxes in my bookshelf for foods I don’t use as much.

Yeah, that’s all the room I have. Oh, well and some floor space for cereal boxes.

I apologize profusely for the horrendous camera pics, but I guess it’s better than nothing.

Anyways, so in order to make room and not have food shoved in every nook and cranny I’m going to try to eat what I have, and limit what I buy.

In that case, my haul wasn’t very big from Trader Joe’s

Turkey breast, Oatmeal bread, and Indian Fare’s Jaipur Vegetable and a reusable bag.

I’m very, very, very excited to try the Jaipur Vegetables

I had to rush off to a meeting, which wasn’t bad for once. Hoorah! It tends to help when I’m active in the conversation.

But after I was starving for some stir fry.

I grilled a turkey cutlet season with salt and pepper, and put it off to the side. Then sauteed frozen stir fry vegetables while washing the noodles.

And finally I combined the turkey, stir fry, noodles, 1 T of olive oil and 1 1/2 T of Stir fry sauce over low heat to come up with this beautiful sight.

It was all pretty good except for the turkey which was really tasteless.

I used these noodles

I didn’t even realize the calories on this guy until after cooking them! 20 calories per serving, so 40 total. Holy cow!

I just calculated up the calories on my meal and I’m honestly astounded. I’m not a usual calorie counter, but here’s the stats:

Noodles: 40 cals

Veggies: 45 cals

Turkey: 70 cals

Olive Oil: 20 cals

Stir Fry sauce: 30 cals

Total: 205 calories

Holy smokes! That is nothing for how big and satisfying it was! It’s been 3 hours and I’m still full.

Wow. Well it’s off to bed for me soon. I hope you all get some rest for the week ahead

Are you a calorie counter? Do you just watch them a bit, or not at all?

I tend to as what I call it, “know what I’m eating.” I look for what a serving size is and the sodium and sugar levels as well, plus scanning through the ingredients quickly.

A Farm Fresh Saturday

Good afternoon bloggies! I hope you are having a spectacular weekend and enjoying my new layout and header!!!

The morning started off with another mixing of the cereals

First started off with the Special K, then followed by Life and Annie’s

and overfilled with puffed Kamut

Only a bit more Kamut left, then I’m back to my beloved millet!

I was soon off to the local farmer’s market with my roommate Richard. We had to run to catch the bus, but we made it.

I came home with some great loot.

Farm fresh Blueberry Ginger Goat Cheese which was snacked on immediately when I got home

A Summer Strawberry fruit wrap eaten at the track meet

Farm-fresh eggs!

I was rushed to get the to the track meet, but on the way had to stop to take pictures of these gorgeous flowers

They are so pretty! I have been seeing them on campus and I was really excited to finally take pictures of them

The track meet was fantastic! A little windy, but great weather overall.

B-e-a-utiful form

Ashton Eaton, world record holder

the beautiful hurdles

I’m really excited for the upcoming meets. I just love watching people attain new PR’s and records. Plus with all the events going on, it keeps my mind entertained.

On the way back I stumbled upon some students playing Quidditch.

I love Harry Potter and I guess they are running around so I approve.

I have a sorority function later tonight. Have a great rest of your Saturday!

What is your favorite part about a farmer’s market? I love all the free samples!