A Quickie

Hey bloggies! I’m going to have to do a quickie post cause I still have to pack and I leave for my sorority’s convention EARLY tomorrow morning. (Yes, I know every other post says that I have been packing, but I have barely even packed… I have a lot more to do!)

Breakfast

My internship began today so I had an early breakfast of PB&J oats, well AB&J oats techniqually. It’s always a comfort food of mine.

Heaven

Lunch

For lunch, the boss at my internship took us all out to eat. We went to one of the best Italian restaurants near his work. We went to Nicolino Ristorante Italiano. No picture, but I got the Melanzane a la Baresee
Grilled eggplant in a fresh marinara sauce with olive oil, garlic, basil and smoked mozzarella. Served with linguine

It was wonderful. I ate 4 out of the 5 slices of eggplant.

Dinner

I went to Best Guy Friend’s house where we went to Starbucks (I got an tall Iced Skinny Vanilla Latte), washed my diry car, and just hung out for a while until rush hour died down. When I got back I made a new recipe, 5-minute spinach calzone.

I put in about a cup of spinach, 1/4 c of mozzarella and about 3 T of marinara sauce into a bowl, stirred it around. Stuffed the mixture into the pita and put on the grill for about 10 minutes, or until the cheese melted.

I loved how simple it was to make, and it was so yummy! I can’t wait to make this again.

I also made a fresh salad with avocado, apple, strawberry and blueberries on spring greens with a raspberry vinagerette.

My plate:

Yummmm…

Off to pack!

Do you wait until the last minute to pack? Usually I love to get everything packed before hand but I’m getting worse and worse at that!

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?

Lots o’ Nuts

So I could definitely make some sexual innuendos with my post title today, but I’m going to keep it clean and classy.

Today I’ve definitely consumed my fair share of healthy fats in terms of nuts.

Breakfast

Breakfast actually started out innocent and nut free.

One egg scrambled eggs with red bell pepper, spinach, onion and mushroom wrap

Sunflower and Millet toast topped with cinnamon and truvia

and my usual fruit fix– 1/2 a naner and starfruit

This breakfast gets three stars

Snack

My snack is where nuts came into my life today

Honey Chobani Greek Yogurt with 2 T almond butter.

I only have a little bit too much almond butter left for Oats in a Jar (OIAJ) so I decided to start digging in. Healthy fat, right?

So about 3-4 T of almond butter today. I usually actually try to limit my nut butter intake to 2 T a day just to keep myself in check. I could eat a whole jar if I allowed myself.

But I don’t feel guilty about my sudden surge in nut butter. It’s not going to kill me and it’s not that unhealthy.

Lunch

The lack of guilt over consuming lots ‘o nuts  headed into lunch. Once again, it started off innocent with a homemade pizza.

• organic marinara
• spinach
• pesto
• grilled chicken
• mushrooms
• yellow and red bell peppers
• onion

but ended rather guilty again.

A fresh herb salad (best salad mix ever!) with strawberries, blueberries and walnuts. Dang it. Guilty as charged. I knew that I had already had a surplus of nuts too.

It was definitely yummy though

Snack

Cally was baking a cake (it’s chocolate too!), so to fight my hunger from the lovely aromas coming from the kitchen I went with a berry fresh smoothie

• frozen strawberries
• frozen peaches
• POM juice
• almond milk
• 1/2 a naner
• chia seeds

garnished with shredded coconut

So yummy.

So goals for the rest of the day: layout my portfolio for my architecture class, oh, and don’t eat any more nuts!

The latter goal will be lifted tomorrow

Trail Mix and a Hike

Good afternoon everyone!

Breakfast

I wasn’t sure what to eat this morning. Last night I was craving some french toast, but since I had pancakes yesterday I went for some good ‘ole oatmeal

Coconut-Strawberry Heart Oatmeal

• 1/2 c. quick oats
• 1/2 c. almond milk
• 1/2 c. water
• 1 1/2 T of the MIX
• vanilla

Topped with:

• 1 T So Delicious Coconut Milk Creamer
• coconut flakes
• strawberries shaped into a heart

It was delicious as always.

Lunch

Lunch came pretty soon afterwards because I had a hike during my normal lunch time

I made the same pizza I had a couple of nights ago.

The steam fogged up my camera lense!

I love how veggie loaded this thing is with spinach, red and orange bell pepper and onions! It was so amazing.

Hike

My friend invited me for a hike. It was the same one I did last week, but I was definitely not going to turn it down!

This time around the hike was SO much easier. We talked about life and politics instead of complaining about how steep it was. Plus we were actually going at a way faster pace.

I ate about half of some homemade trail mix at the top.

• Corn puffs
• Life cereal
• dark cocoa chips
• coconut flakes
• raisins

It was pretty decent. I need to work on the mix a wee bit more though.

What have you been up to today?

Blender Happy

Between all of my activities today, constantly running in and out of the apartment, my blender was a very happy guy.

He blended my first breakfast of the morning, the banana-coconut cream

Farmer’s Market

Two of my roommates, Cally and Richard, and I headed off to Saturday Market soon after my first breakfast.

Richard got a scone and Cally got a cinnamon roll for Jeremy

I desperately needed some food so we headed to the cute food court

I ended up getting a Crepe filled with spinach, onion and LOTS of feta cheese

It was absolutely delicious. It had a lot more cheese than I had expected, but that just may have made it even better

My only goodie was a $2.50 bag of Arugala. I’ve never tried Arugala before!

Lunch

A few hours later my blender got some action with the cocoa-nut cherry smoothie from the smoothie compilation by The Fitnessista

It was sadly only okay.

Afterwards I dashed off to my sorority’s “BBQ” which offered hamburger and chicken burgers, chips, fruit salad and cherry pie.

I ate a couple sun chips and a good amount of fruit salad.

Feeling like a penguin after eating so much, I waddled to my studio to do some quick drawings.

Pottery

I then raced back to go to a pottery place with Cally.

I painted a bowl for my future salads

I loved how the leaves and the flowers turned out. Not too fond of the funky giraffe though. The stencil worked horribly. I could have done a much better job just eyeing it. Oh well.

Cally made a bunny plate for her mom

She was really happy about how it turned out

Dinner

Once again the blender got some action mixing up Chia Chili Cheese for some supreme nachos!

I added about 6 T of nutritional yeast instead of two because it didn’t taste cheesy enough for me with the two. The grocery store didn’t have yellow bell peppers this time, so I had to use orange instead. However it was still absolutely delicious on top of my nachos! I have some extra that I put in the fridge but I have a feeling it won’t stand for tomorrow.

Supreme Nachos

• About 20 Blue Corn Chips
• Spring Salad mix
• black beans
• brown rice
• tomato
• red bell pepper
• avocado
• Chobani greek yogurt (for the “sour cream”
• all topped with Chia Chili Cheese sauce

It was really good! I loved how I could “indulge” in supreme nachos, with out really indulging as far as it being unhealthy.

My blender got its fair share of a workout today that’s for sure

What is your favorite “indulgence” that you make a healthy version of?

Some Mac & Cheese Loving

Good Evening bloggies!

Today is Tuesday which means grocery shopping day! Yayyy! I look forward to this day all too much

Limit the Bill

First I’d like to catch up on the first of two goals: Eat It, Not Buy It, which is essentially trying to eat more food in my pantry space instead of buying lots of similar food, thus eating up more space

What I did well on:

Went through both my instant and old fashioned oats

Exhausted my fruit and veggie selection (except the carrots)

Ate my many types of crackers for snacks

Started using all of my different types of cheeses in my cooking (provolone, swiss, cheddar, parmesan, goat cheese, feta and ricotta…do I have enough types?!)

Starting eating my Costco-sized box of Kashi bars again

What didn’t go so well

I gave in and bought a larabar today, but kind of for good reason as explained later in the post

I haven’t really used up any of the food in the two bins in my bookshelf

My bread supply is still fairly large

So I would so say I’m doing fairly well on my goal. I’m really proud of myself! When I have time I’m going to go through my boxes and find something to make out of them. I do have plans to use my box with a ton of baking supplies later in the week though

Lunch

For my grocery shopping I need some serious fuel. In comes the smoothie and Kashi bar

The smoothie was one of the best I’ve ever made! I was inspired by the Chocolate Peanut Butter smoothie by Heather

It contained:

1 c. 1% milk (once again, I was out of almond milk)

1 scoop Chocolate Whey Protein Powder (as subsitute for cocoa powder)

1 1/2 T Sunflower Seed Butter

1/2 cup ice

1/2 packet Truvia

and 2-3 handfuls of spinach

I had to omit the bananas cause I didn’t have any

Grocery shopping also requires a cute outfit (so that the guy in the bakery will give you fresh, right out of the oven bread )

I promise I did put on some boots before I headed out of the apartment

Grocery Shopping

I was soon off to the grocery store and realized that I didn’t even need to go to Market of Choice today, so I only went to Safeway.

Here’s the math for my $75 goal in Limit the Bill. I met my goal last week with a bill of $63. This week I was also going to try to keep myself under $75

My bill from Sunday’s Trader Joe’s run was $16.63 to be exact. This meant I could spend $58.37 today.

I shopped quite efficiently, looking at the higher and lower shelves for the best prices and deals. Here is what I came home with:

Eggs, Safeway brand quick oats, spring mix, almond milk, popcorn and blue corn tortilla chips

2 pears, orange and red bell pepper, 2 Red Delicious apples, Shirataki noodles, a grapefruit, avacado, 8 bananas, strawberries, and organic pastry flour

Also unpictured was a gallon of 1% milk cause my roomies were almost out of it and I felt guilty for using theirs this morning and some floss

Oh, and what was the price of all of this yummy food?

$46.69

add in the $16.63 from TJ’s and you get a grand total of $63.62. Almost spot on from last week! I’m really patting myself on the back for this one Two weeks in a row baby!

Okay, okay and little while later I stopped at our bookstore to pick up some Endangered species chocolate, when I saw a Lemon Lunabar! I had been absolutely dying to try this flavor, so I bought it. Add about $4 onto my grocery bill.

I also bought this book that I’m super duper excited to read!

Change Your Brain, Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen, MD

It’s about how to improve your health in specific ways like maintaing your ideal weight, sharpening your memory and reducing stress by changing the way you think. I’m excited

A review is to come when I finish the thing

Snack

Whew, grocery shopping really takes a toll, so naturally I had to have a snack:

Jasmin-Oolong tea and left over brown rice with low-sodium soy sauce

‘Twas the perfect snack for a cold, rainy day

Dinner

After getting some much-needed help on a project I made some veggie-filled mac and cheese with a apple and pear salad for dinner!

Veggie-Filled Mac & Cheese makes 2 servings

1 box Annie’s Organic Mac & Cheese

1/4 c. milk of your choice

4-5 c. spinach

~1/4 c. water

1/2 c. frozen peas

1/2. cup onion

1/4 c. red bell pepper

Cook your favorite kind of Annie’s Organic Macaroni and Cheese (mine is Real-Aged Cheddar Shells) according to directions

Meanwhile, wilt about 4-5 cups of spinach in a saucepan in water (or olive oil)

add frozen peas, red bell pepper and onion when spinach is almost all wilted.

Once both are cooked, dump the veggie mixture into the mac & cheese and stir well.

Enjoy

I also made the an apple and pear salad that competes with my BBQ chicken salad

But I’m going to save this recipe for later. I bet you can’t tell what the two main ingredients are

Question of the Day: What book are you currently reading? Or what book inspired you in some way?

Oatmeal Makes Everything Better

It’s Friday and it’s sunny outside. It seriously can not get any better than that

Breakfast

This morning I woke up feeling so sick. I wasn’t in the mood for breakfast :0 (!!!!!) I knew I would feel better if I ate so I made some PB&J Oats

In the mix:

2 packets Instant Oatmeal (I’m done with it! Yay!!!)

1 cup water

2 T of THE MIX

and topped with

1 T Crofter’s Raspberry Spread

1T PB

1/2 a banana

2 T Coconut Milk Creamer

I had to force myself to eat it. My stomach was actually hating me for it, but once it was digested I came around and felt a whole lot better. See, oatmeal just makes everything better…that’s a really good name for a blog, FYI

Lunch

I’m joining Kalli and celebrating Smoothie Friday

Oatmeal bread toast with cinnamon and truvia and a 1/2 of a Green Monster

In the Monster (that I only drank half of the total mix- the other half is in the fridge for later):

3 c. spinach

2 c. frozen strawberries

1/2 a nana

1/4 c. coconut milk creamer (I am becoming so addicting to this stuff!)

1 1/2 c. water

3 ice cubes

a sprinkle of truvia

(forgot the flax seed)

And there was definitely an 2 squares of Green & Blacks dark mint chocolate for dessert

unpictured

Enjoy your Friday! I will be off enjoying the sun and later it will be my turn to make roomie dinner

Sunday Stuff

I love Sundays. I love the mentality of a day of rest. Not that I actually do rest on this day, but it gives me more time to catch up on life. Anyone else absolutely love Sundays?

My camera was left at a friend’s house last night so I had to take all my pictures from breakfast on my phone AND I don’t have pictures to post right now of my scrumptious dinner from last night! Humph. I will have to update you on dinner later today when I get my camera back.

This week I’m implementing two policies. The first is Limit the Bill. I currently spend way too much at the grocery store, around $100, every single week. I am going to try to limit this to bill to $75 for a while then eventually spend only $50. Two of my roommates spend $50 between them, so I should be able to meet that since I’m only spending for one person. Then again, I don’t buy cinnamon rolls because they are $2 or buy what ever cereal or bread is on sale at the time like they do, but I should be able to get to that while still eating they way I do.

The second policy I will reveal most likely in today’s nightly post

Okay, back to the best part: the food!

Today’s breakfast was inspired by the farm fresh eggs I bought yesterday at the farmer’s market.

I just love that the eggs are brown!

I grilled red pepper, onion, turkey, mushrooms and wilted the spinach. I then tossed in some tomato and added two whole eggs and attempted to make an omelette.

For the side I toasted half an english muffin and topped with maca, cinnamon and mesquite. I also cut up 1/2 of a small banana and added two strawberries.

Ta-da!

So my omelette-flipping skills need some serious help, but at least it tastes the same. Right?

Off to super busy day. I have to do a lot of “Sunday stuff” including studying and cleaning. I tend to like this though. What do you usually do on Sundays?

Grocery Bill Grawrs

‘Ello puppets! How is everyone doing today?

It’s a pretty gloomy, cold day here. Definitely getting a case of the “blah’s”

Oh well.

Woke up to a beautiful mix of Kamut, Life cereal, an apple and topped with Chobani greek yogurt surrounded by a sliced orange that sorta looks like rays of sun.

The result after carefully mixing an overfilled bowl of cereal

Ta-da!

For some reason it really didn’t fill me up, and a couple hours later I stripped some of this guy…

It’s just string cheese sillies!

Class got out early, so I was able to enjoy this baby

My go-to sandwich of spinach, turkey and cranberries on Buckwheat sourdough bread.

I absolutely love this sandwich, and even got my mom hooked on it, but I’m perhaps getting a bit sick of having it a lot. I think the bread isn’t really fresh anymore, so the crust is harder than usual.

Today is grocery shopping day! I usually love grocery shopping, today didn’t go so well though

I went to Albertson’s instead of my usual Safeway, because our Safeway doesn’t sell cleaning or make up products. Ugh, so I trucked to an unfamiliar Albertson’s and was totally thrown off my game.

1. The produce section was so disorganized

2. The strawberries looked sick!

3. The signs weren’t labeled right! I don’t count brown rice as a “canned food” nor do I count weight-loss supplements as “nutrition”

Ugh. Plus the checker couldn’t stop hitting on his bagger who was rolling her eyes. So it took like 5x as usual to do the shopping which really frustrates me.

I really wanted to check out another healthy food market, so I ventured to it, but naturally my google map directions only gave me 1/2 of the directions to find it, so I had to drive around the streets till it popped up!!!! Grawr.

Anyways. IT WAS WAYYY OVERPRICED! Almond milk does not cost $4 each, Annie’s cereal is not $5, and this little guy cost me $12!!!!

Grawr. I’m such a cheap college student.

Anywho, this is what I came back with:

basil, brown rice, organic marinara, almond milk, mango, raw revolution bar, soy noodles, saffron, avocado, apples, cucumber

Annie’s fruity bunnies cereal, frozen strawberries, strawberries (not from Albertsons), pears, tomato, carrots, acorn squash, deli turkey meat, Chobani yogurt, protein powder, mesquite, mushrooms

I spent way too much money this week on groceries! I did go off the list a bit and buy the pineapple Chobani yogurt, mesquite, soy noodles, and raw revolution bar. All there is left to do is improve for next week and go back to my regular grocery stores and NOT GO OFF THE LIST! Anyone else have this problem?

After all this uber frusterating shopping a PB&J Larabar was consumed.

Thank you Larabar! I loooooove you!

Going to a body sculpting class later today! I’m hoping my body can make it, it’s been hating me recently.

Anyone else have any frustrating grocery shopping stories? Or pet peeves?

I hate it when the clerks put everything but your “feminine products” in the reusable shopping bag, and then put them in a clear one. It just bugs me. I want everyone to know I’m on my period and out of tampons.