Bloops and Blops

There has recently been a lot of bloops and blops in my life.

Case #1 Green Bloops and Tofu Blops

I made Peas and Thank You’s Green Tofu Curry on Thursday and absolutely loved it. No surprise though considering every one of Mama Pea’s recipes are great. Green blop? Don’t mind if I do!

Case #2 Blooping Chocolate Peanut Butter

I made overnight oats… I just didn’t wait over night. I woke up and felt that it was an overnight oats kind of a day, so I made the mix (added extra chia seeds so it would really soak it up) then put it in the fridge and distracted myself for as long as possible.

I made it 1 hour and 20 minutes before blopping on some bananas, strawberries and Maranatha chocolate peanut butter.

In the mix:

• 1/3 c. oats
• 2 T chia seeds
• 1 T flaxseed meal
• 1 T Goji berries

covered with unmeasured amount of almond milk, water and coconut milk creamer.

Set in the fridge for 1 hour and 20 minutes. It can work as short as 20-30 minutes, but preferably overnight.

Case #3 Whole Foods

I had an impromptu meeting with my best friend before she left to school, which conveniently made me pass Whole Foods at lunch time. Hollaaaa Food Bar!

A few bloops and blops of:

• Dal with Spinach
• Curried Cauliflower
• Black Beans
• Roasted chicken
• Thai steamed vegetables

Even though Whole Foods was absolute mayhem, I had to park in the back near the dumpsters and my head was spinning like crazy, I loved it. It totally hit the spot

Case #4 Leaving Whole Foods

As I was leaving the Whole Foods parking lot, I was sipping some water and accidently got a few blops of water on my leg.

Anyone else see the smiley face? I think my jeans also loved visiting Whole Paycheck Foods

Finally, Case #5 The Dog

One minute he looks like he’s paying attention

Next minute he blops onto the deck. Rough life pup.

Do you ever have any of those weird accidents where something ordinary looks like something extraordinary? Like the Grilled Cheese that looked like the Virgin Mary ?

and

What is your favorite thing to get at the Whole Foods Hot Bar?

Breakfast of Champions

Good news bloggies! I am actually surviving this week! I am right on track with the project and it’s actually looking fairly good.

Breakfast

If yesterday I had the Dessert of Champions, today I had the Breakfast of Champions.

Oatmeal topped with banana, strawberries and MaraNatha Dark Chocolate PB.

It was absolutely heavenly!!! I didn’t have my usual side of a fruit because I thought the banana, strawberries and PB would sustain me.

Boy, was I wrong.

Snack

About two hours later came an orange

Thirty minutes later my stomach was rumbling for some more food. I fed it with carrots dipped into hummus.

Lunch

I was still hungry after that, and I knew the small salad I had packed wasn’t going to sustain me, so I did a quick stop at Holy Cow for another Veggie Volcano. I didn’t have time to take a picture, but it looked exactly like the Volcano yesterday.

I love the mix of veggies, legumes and grains in this baby.

Snack

This kept my stomach satisfied for a good three hours before I dug into the salad that I had originally planned for lunch.

The last of the blueberry pecan salad.

I also had some unpictured prunes. I think my stomach should have come with an “off button”

Dinner

I actually got out of studio a bit early today! I was super excited to scarf down some nachos

Blue Corn Chips topped with Spring Mix, leftover cheesy rice, red and yellow bell pepper,  organic salsa and The Fitnessista’s Chia Chili Cheese sauce.

I was disturbed during my messy dinner (it involved a spoon and fingers) by a knock on my door. The lovely UPS man delievered a great treat to me.

POM juice!

I’ll be leaving in Pom Heaven for a while

So for a nice little dessert I mixed POM juice and water into my margarita glass.

Yummy.

I was planning on heading to the gym afterwards, but my body is still reacting to the stress I’ve been living with for the past week. I got a pretty bad stomachache and laid down instead. My body typically does this and it naturally appears after I eat anything, specifically something highly acidic. Apparently my body doesn’t like bell peppers

My stomach isn’t a 100% settled, but hopefully after I take a shower and calm down a bit, I will digest and be able to do a little bit of strength training tonight.

Is there anything stressful looming over your head? Feel free to get it out here!

Dessert of Champions

Hey bloggies! I hope everyone is having a wonderful Hump day!

Breakfast

Our weather is still soppy and wet so I was craving a big bowl of oatmeal. I actually dreamed of eating PB&J oatmeal last night!

I didn’t resist this craving, but topped the bowl with almond butter instead. I’m trying to get through specifically this jar because 1. I had been neglecting it and 2. I don’t want to have to move 4 jars of nut butter, 3 would be much better

In the mix:

• 1/2 c. oats
• 1/2 c. almond milk
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 T goji berries
• 1 T raisins
• 1 T flaxseed meal
• 1 T chia seeds

Topped with:

• Almond butter
• Crofter’s Raspberry fruit spread
• So Delicious Coconut Milk Creamer

I noticed I had a can a coconut milk sitting in the pantry. Since I’m trying to use everything up I went for it a recreated the breakfast the nutritionist made me at camp.

A naner, covered with coconut milk with cinnamon sprinkled on top. It still brings me back to cool, summer mornings

Snack

I packed myself another bowl of microwaved green apple with cinnamon on top and soon-to-be crushed Annie’s Cinnamon Crackers

There was some serious whining going on in the studio when I warmed this up and the aroma filled the air. Everyone wanted a bite of it! I’m not a huge fan of sharing my food, especially with people who tend to get sick a lot (ahem, architecture majors pulling all nighters), so I just lied and said I’m sick so I wouldn’t get their germs. Am I a bad person?

Lunch

I was super-duper excited to go to Holy Cow today. I was trying to decide between the salad bar and the pad thai. I wanted veggies but I wanted food to warm me up. I went with a new dish of theirs called the Veggie Volcano.

I can’t remember exactly what was in it but it was steamed veggies on a bed of quinoa with a pesto sauce and a lentil sauce on top. It was absolutely perfect! I got my veggies and carbs in and it warmed my soul

Dinner

After being at studio for 9 hours total today I was so excited to head back to the apartment for a little bit and make some dinner.

A Southwest inspired wrap and leftover salad

Into the wrap went:

• cheesy rice
• spring mix
• red, yellow and orange bell pepper
• salsa

Wrapped with care.

The Dessert of Champions

This didn’t quite satisfy me. I was craving chocolate but I was out of chocolate bars or ice cream, so I went with an old favorite.

Organic strawberries topped with MaraNatha Dark Chocolate PB.

That right there folks is the Dessert of Champions. Amazing and almost guilt free

Workout

As I mentioned before, it’s going to be difficult to get work outs in this week because I am working on my final review. I noticed that after working for 7-8 hours on Monday and Tuesday that my legs were really sore. So today I decided to stand at my desk (they’re pretty high, so I’m actually not bending over) for about half the time instead of sitting. We pumped some music, so I ended up dancing a bit as I worked. In effect, I didn’t had any leg problems today. I also went to Zumba (which was a sweat session!) and rock climbed today, so I got some cardio and strength there as well.

How do you manage getting your workouts in on incredibly busy weeks? Or if you have a desk job, do you try to do little exercises while at your desk?

Lesson Learned

I woke up groggy this morning, but it quickly turned into a lesson about what you should and should not put into the microwave…

I’ll just give you what you shouldn’t put into the microwave:

This. TJ’s sunflower seed butter.

See the burn on the rim of the container? There was a giant spark that came from that spot. Ok, ok, microwave. Point taken. Lesson learned.

I honestly don’t know what I was thinking. Obviously this is plastic and plastic does funky things in the microwave. I’ve just gotten so used to putting my plastic storage containers in there to reheat food I forgot that those were special plastic. As in not TJ’s sunflower seed butter plastic.

Moving on.

The dark chocolate PB did much better in the microwave, seeing as it is glass so I was able to nicely drizzle it over my oatmeal, and just blob on the sunflower seed butter.

In the mix:

• 1/2 c. quick oats
• 1/2 c. almond milk
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 tsp goji berries
• 1 T chia seeds
• 1 T flaxseed meal
• 1 microwaved banana

Topped with:

• warm dark chocolate PB
• cold TJ’s sunflower seed butter
• a handful of strawberries

AHHH-MAZZZING (despite the little lesson learned in the process)

Lunch

Lunch was eaten in class today as usual, so I packed it up in my usual tupperware.

Firstly, a veggie wrap.

I would love to show you the insides, but I’m afraid once its in there it isn’t coming out with out falling apart (trust me on this one, I tried)

But I will tell you that it contained:

• pesto
• red bell pepper
• green bell pepper
• tomato
• spring mix
• salsa

It definitely needed some umph. Perhaps some brown rice next time?

An orange that was eventually dipped into greek yogurt also came along for the ride.

yummy and nutritious as always.

Well I’m off to feed my hungry-hungry giraffe with some leftovers. Catch you later

Anyone else learned some microwave lessons? Either recently or when you were a kiddo? I remember my siblings and I had these plastic, sparkly Disney cups that we put in the microwave to make some hot cocoa. They started to melt and bubble and my mom had to throw them away

Feast Your Eyes on This

It’s Friday!!! Yeee!

Breakfast

I started off the day with one of the most delicious breakfasts ever. Feast your eyes on this guy.

Oatmeal topped with banana, strawberries and dark chocolate PB

In the mix:

• 1/2 c. quick cooking oatmeal
• 1/2 c. almond milk
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 T flaxseed meal
• 1/2 T chia seeds

Topped with:

• 1/2 of a nana
• 3 strawberries
• 1 tsp So Delicious Coconut Milk Creamer
• 2 T MaraNatha Dark Chocolate PB

I had absolutely no problem eating the entire thing in one bite

Major scraping action going on there, btw.

The only problem was that during the rest of the morning I was absolutely craving chocolate. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. All I wanted was more of this. I mean, it was absolutely amazing, but it was hard to concentrate on anything else but eating more dark chocolate. Hmmmmm.

Lunch

So after absolutely craving chocolate, I decided to give my body some veggies to get it back on track.

BBQ Chicken Turkey Salad

Absolutely delicious. I hope I start craving veggies again after this

Well I’m going to go out and enjoy this sun and do some more reading!

What are your plans for Friday?

Stressed to the Max

Happy Earth Day everyone!!

The past couple of days have been stressful to the max. I have felt overbooked, ran into problems galore with an assignment, and working with some personal relationships that are some what changing (not the ex-boyfriend though! He’s great!). All have taken a pretty big toll on me and has caused so much stress.

An education presentation was made to my sorority all about stress. Despite the awful things stress can cause: anxiety, grumpiness, snappiness, nerves and an overall icky feeling; stress can be good because it makes us productive. It helps us get assignments done (like my super huge vector assignment) and gets us to do the tasks you really don’t want to do.

However, when it gets to be too much, like how it has been, stress can be the negative effect that I have been experiencing. There are a few things you can do to prevent stress by the foods we eat.

Good foods are:

• fatty fish
• whole wheat bread
• oranges
• decaffeinated tea

However, some foods to avoid are:

• caffeinated tea
• coffee
• cocoa
• egg yolks
• butter
• cheese
• shrimp and other meat
• coconut oil
• cashews, almonds and other nuts
• soda
• sugar
• alcohol

Foods like soda, sugar and alcohol really didn’t surprise me, but the fact that nuts, coconut oil and shrimp can contribute to your stress is really interesting.

Breakfast

For breakfast this morning I started off with oatmeal, and later had my second breakfast of a naner dipped into chocolate PB

Coconut Oatmeal in a margarita glass

In the mix:

• 1/2 c. quick cooking oats
• 1 c. water (forgot to mix it with almond milk again! doh!)
• 2 T of the MIX

Topped with:

• 1 1/2 T So Delicious Coconut Milk Creamer
• 1 T Coconut flakes
• 1 tsp brown sugar

I had to add in the brown sugar cause it wasn’t so yummy.

As far as being a stress-friendly meal, the only thing going against me was the brown sugar.

For the fruit part of my breakfast, the MaraNatha chocolate peanut butter went against the stress-friendly meal with the cocoa and the nuts

But naturally it was absolutely delicious!

Lunch

Lunch had to be packed this morning, so I packed a Veggie Wrap

How to make a Veggie wrap my way:

Place yummy toppings in a whole-wheat tortilla

todays toppings included:

• european blend salad
• red bell pepper
• onion
• avocado
• pesto
• Chobani greek yogurt
• laughing cow cheese

Attempt to wrap it up, and lay a knife over it so that it doesn’t unroll while I wash the tub its going to go in

Slice it up and take a pretty picture of all of the veggies inside

Then cram it into my tub and shut it quick so it doesn’t unfold. Put it in your backpack and run to class cause you are most likely running late…again.

Enjoy exactly 2 1/2 hours later

This had a little less flavor than I would have liked. I omitted the usual brown rice, just cause I didn’t have an precooked at the time, but adding that would have added just a bit more to it.

This was actually rather stress-friendly with the whole-wheat wrap and naturally all of the veggies, the only little thing was the light spread of laughing cow cheese. Oh well.

Snack

I had the most delicious Larabar ever for a snack

The lemon flavor was perfect. It made me not eat it quite as fast as I usually suck these things down. And it tasted like a real lemon square.

As far a being stress-friendly, this baby is packed with Cashews and other nuts. Sooo not so much.

Destressing

Wow, it is really hard to eat a stress-friendly meal. It’s hard coming up with a meal that doesn’t contain my usual eats such as cocoa, nuts, cheese and a maybe a little bit of sugar.

I have been taking steps to really calm myself. Yesterday I went rock climbing with friends, which was an absolute blast. I have taken time away from my computer just to read. I haven’t turned on my TV since returning home from school (a daily habit of mine) and I opened a window and let the sunshine and fresh air pour into my room.

I was planning to go to a yoga class tonight, but planning my meals around that actually stressed me out quite a bit (isn’t that really ironic?!), so I think I’ll do some yoga and strength training in my room later on.

What do you do to destress yourself?