“Real life is so lame”

And I’m back!

Don’t worry (I know you’re all so worried), I’ve been taking pictures even though I haven’t been around the past couple of days.  Let’s just say getting back on real life time is slightly difficult, and every opportunity that I would normally spend blogging, has been spent napping.  So lame, right? I’ve never been much of a napper because it seems like I either feel worse when I wake up, or I’m just plain crabby that I can’t sleep longer once I’ve fallen asleep in the first place.  This week has been a total exception.

That being said, eating habits have normalized for the most part.  We went to the organic food store that I mentioned the other day (SPROUTS) and stocked up on tons of healthy food to get back on track.

Day 1:

Cinnamon Raisin Ezekial + PB and cinnamon.  This bread is the shiz.

My beloved veggie wrap.  I picked up some house-made artichoke hummus from the store and it was really great… kinda made this wrap.  It’s also nice to have lot’s of different veggies on hand—FYI, avocado=creamy perfection.

Pita pizzas! I love making these because everyone can put whatever they want on top and it’s the perfect amount for one.  I loaded mine with:

• Garlicky red sauce
• Mushrooms (fave pizza topping EVER)
• Marinated kalamata olives
• Red onion
• Spinach
• Lemon Basil (grown by yours truly… thanks, Jessie!)
• Garden veggie cream cheese, mozz & parm

You’ll be seeing these again tomorrow when our friend Becky comes to town!  Wine and pita pizzas are the best for a solid ladies night

Day 2:

Optimum buckwheat waffles in a berry infused flavor of some sort.  These were good!  Waffles aren’t the most filling breakfast for me, but it’s fun to switch things up once in awhile.  Loaded them up with PB and fruit of course for extra staying power.  And real maple syrup for… deliciousness.

Staff appreciation lunch. Free Subway? Yes please.  And I’ve been craving sun chips lately so I was more than happy to see these.  I think the sub had turkey and ham?  It was one of those huge things that you just cut a piece off of.  Very generous of the Rec Center to treat us!

A salad with EVERYTHING but the kitchen sink, topped with Goddess and baked salmon.  Does it get any better than this?  Don’t think so.

Oats in the White Chocolate Wonderful jar + banana & granola. Not only really good, but also portable for mornings like today when I need to be at the gym by 6:30am and I don’t feel like making time to sit down and eat before I leave.  Which blogger actually came up with this idea? Genius.

Mid-day snacks don’t get any better than the green smoothie.  This one had vanilla soy, 1/2 banana, tropical frozen fruit mix, spinach and flax.

Perfect amount to hold me over until I did work on the un-pictured veggie burrito I ate for lunch.  It was a work fundraiser deal and I was sitting with a table of boys that I didn’t feel like explaining my food blogger skillz to.  I’ll photograph the leftover half I eat tomorrow—this thing was HUGE!  So huge, in fact, that I didn’t even need a real dinner, just veggies and hummus for a snack.

So THAT has been my week in food since getting back from vacation.  It’s amazing how wonderful real food tastes after not eating it for a week.  Still working on getting back into the exercise routine, but it’s coming.

SOOOOOOO excited for our  BFF Becky to land in Colorado tomorrow.  She’s visiting us until Tuesday so it will for sure be a great weekend!

There’s a nail-biting basketball game on right now that I need to watch.  K State vs. Xavier, SUPER intense!

Have a great evening and see you in the AM!

Opinions on Trader Joe’s

Homemade Broccoli Cheese soup!!!!!  I’m liking this whole “having food waiting for me when I get home” for all meals of the day.  Buddy (Jess’s brother) made this last night so we would have it for lunch/other meals throughout the week and it’s really really good.

I had chips and salsa on the side because we rarely buy chips anymore and I’ve been craving them like mad.

Mid-afternoon/pre-boot camp snack–1/2 Fage, granola, walnuts, raisins, cinnamon and agave:

And pure comfort food for dinner:

Spaghetti, homemade garlic bread, and salad with TJ’s Goddess dressing aka my favorite dressing ever.  I just read an article that says 80% of Trader Joe’s products are sold under their label but aren’t made by them.  News to me!  This dressing is one of those products supposed products and the ingredients are EXACTLY the same as Annie’s Goddess (which is double the price).  It can’t be proved that this for sure, of course, but it’s easy to guess which brands make what.

Check out the article here to find out which other products made the list. Read the comments at the end too, they’re pretty thought-provoking.

I personally love the style of Trader Joe’s.  They sell all of the foods that I like but at reasonable prices (prime example, almond butter). I’m convinced that anywhere you can get good-tasting $2 bottles of wine just can’t be bad.

Some may argue that it supports the “big box” corporations, but I think they follow good business principles and they seem to be environmentally conscious and community involved.

Opinions on TJ’s?

p.s. I think the Bachelor is a toolbox

Boring Lunch, Exciting Dinner!

Annnnnnnd Breakfast wasn’t too shabby either:

Leah and I were laughing earlier because we had an extremely similar breakfast this morning.  I swear I’m not a copycat! lol These are my leftover banana walnut pancakes from Sunday morning, this time topped with AB and berries.  This was exactly what I needed to get me going this morning! With my tea from above:

I’ve been eating breakfast super early lately (around 6:00) so mid-morning snacks have been a must!  Today I had a pink lady apple and this bar that I tried for the first time:

I LOOVEEEEEEEED this thing!!! Here’s what it looks like on the inside:

This baby was loaded!  It had peanuts, almonds, choco chips, pretzel pieces, sunflower seeds, oats, dried fruit (I think?)… Anyways, the important thing is that it was good.  A little high in sugar, yes, but on days where I’m moving around a lot I don’t really mind.  I love the sweet/salty combo!

As stated in the title of this post, my lunch was a predictable bowl of  leftover lentil soup and fresh pineapple.  Still so good! haha I think tomorrow will be my last day of eating this soup for awhile… the rest is chillin’ in the freezer.

Dinner was this RAINBOW of a salad that I threw together and ate before I went to lab:

I was surprised at all of the wonderful fixins I had in my fridge to make this beauty!  This may have been the best-tasting salad I have ever created… Here’s what went in:

• Earthbound Farms Herb Salad Mix (the best base ever!)
• Red pepper
• Avocado
• Carrot peels (I chomped on the rest while I put it together)
• Walnuts and Raisins (my favorite way to make any salad better)
• TJ’s Goddess dressing

You can’t really see how big this thing was, but it took up a large dinner-sized plate… I finished it in about 5 minutes flat!

I’m just getting ready to watch the Biggest Loser and take it easy for the rest of the night.  Tomorrow is another long day which includes early morning NSCA studying, internship office hours, Chem studying (lot’s!), Lecture, Body Step, and a “Biggest Loser Debate” group meeting.

I had a mini-emotional breakdown today, so let’s hope I can keep things together for the rest of the week.  Nothing serious, just one of those days, you know?  Nothing a chat with Mom and a swift run couldn’t cure though… I went for 35 minutes and felt super fast.  Without music or a buddy, I completely zoned out and just took in all of the fresh air.  Much better now!

What are your favorite ways to relieve stress?

A cereal kinda day

I’m back!

Thanks for all of the lovely comments on my new page… I’ve been meaning to jazz up the whole blog for awhile now, but by the time I post and catch up on my Reader, I feel like I’m on the computer too long and need a break!  Eventually I’ll have more recipes, workouts and pictures up, just not yet! On to breakfast…

This is the new Nature’s Path Optimum Power cereal I was talking about the other day… It’s the Blueberry Cinnamon flavor and I LOVE it! There are actually freeze-dried blueberries in it.  Here’s the ingredients:

Organic wheat bran, organic evaporated cane juice, organic whole wheat meal, organic soy flour, organic flax, organic puffed Kamut®*, organic flaxseeds, organic barley malt extract, organic soy fiber, organic oat bran, organic rice bran extract, organic freeze-dried blueberries, sea salt, organic cinnamon, calcium carbonate, folic acid, cyanocobalamin (vitamin B-12), tocopherols (natural vitamin E) added to enhance freshness.

Not too shabby, and it kept me full all morning.  I loved how there were so many different textures and shapes.  I would buy this stuff again for sure!
It was just a cereal kinda day.

After my internship I had this packed lunch in a cubicle in the library.  I never seem to learn that these wraps don’t hold filling well!  Regardless, it was still yummy, just a little messy.  Good thing I brought a fork!
Inside of this mess of a wrap:

• Black beans
• Mango
• Spinach
• Red onion
• Goddess dressing and Parm. cheese

Delish!

The honey Oikos was delicious as well, but had more honey than I needed.  Way too much in fact.  This is what was left at the bottom of the container after I finished it:

Yikes! No wonder why there’s 17 grams of sugar in this bad boy… However, I didn’t really mind because it was on the bottom so you could control how much you added.  I really loved the Greek yogurt/honey combo too so I would buy this one again!  Another Oikos winner!

After a fantastic workout (thank you, BodyStep!) I came home and showered, then made this early dinner because I was starving!

That’s right, more pesto!  This was a grilled sandwich with a packet of salmon, pesto, tomato, and pepper jack cheese. I wish it was bigger because I was sad when it was gone.  I absolutely love pepper jack  and I think that it was the best part! I’m telling you, pesto goes good on SO many things. I still have a little bit more left…

I snacked on a mix of raisins, walnuts and chocolate chips before step and I’ll probably be having another snack sometime soon because I’m still a little bit hungry.

This is random, but what are your thoughts on the Biggest Loser?  We’re having a debate in one of my classes, so I would like to hear your opinions!

Oikos Revew #1

Hello all!

So I took last night off from taking pictures, mainly because I took a nap after classes and when I woke up to make food at around 8:00 pm I was a little out of it!  I had a bean, rice and cheese quesadilla with salsa… pretty boring, but good nonetheless.  I was craving chocolate later on in the night and made some choco oats because I’ve been seeing them all over lately!  They turned out so good, I recreated them this morning, but made some improvements… Here’s the final product:

I don’t have chocolate PB or protein powder, so I used the closest substitute I could find, hot cocoa powder (coffee/mocha flavor).  This is what I went in:

• 2/3 cup of oats (makes a HUGE difference in satiety)
• water/vanilla soy milk
• Cocoa powder (about a tablespoon?)
• Frozen strawberries
• Large scoop AB

This was a great breakfast and held me over for about 5 hours until I broke into my Oikos Vanilla for a snack.

This was WONDERFUL! It’s a close match to Fage, but I think this is the best tasting yogurt I’ve ever had.  The creaminess is unbelievable, and the vanilla flavor is nice and subtle.  I hate super sweet yogurts that are loaded with sugar and I avoid artificial sweeteners so it’s tough to find kinds that I like. This packs 15 grams of protein and only 11 grams of sugar (remember, some of that is naturally occurring) in 110 calories of thick and creamy goodness. There’s slightly less calcium in Greek yogurts, but still a substantial amount as far as I’m concerned.

If I could find these in the grocery store, it would be a staple on my weekly grocery list.  I can’t wait to try the other 3 flavors!  Thanks again, Kristina! Be sure to check out the Stonyfield Farm website.  You can get coupons!

The yogurt held my hunger off until I got home around 1:00 and made this for lunch:

It’s the last of my leftover kidney beans and brown rice, mixed with spinach and goddess dressing.  If you’re wondering about that mess of brown near the top of the plate, let’s just say I got into a fight with the Ezekial tortilla while trying to put this in wrap form.  I love the things, but they’re not super pliable.  I ended up ripping it to pieces and eating it on the side.  Still tasted good though!

Thank goodness the rest of my afternoon is free so I can get a good workout in and maybe get some school stuff done before the weekend.  Later on tonight I’m going to watch a guest lecturer talk about eating disorders for my internship.  Should be pretty interesting… See you after dinner!

What are your favorite ways to use yogurt?

Mmmmm Carbs

Happy Wednesday!

I can’t believe I said that already!  As sad as I was to see spring break come and go, this week is almost over and I’m 6 weeks away from Graduation!!!! Graduation #1 at least… ha ha

So my eats today were all about grains.  LOVE them…

Breakfast was a perfect bowl of cereal, Post Great Grains to be specific.  This cereal is super good, almost like a granola.  I added plain yogurt (wish it was Greek, but sadly it was just plain), chopped apple, and of course some TJ’s almond butter because apparently I can’t go a morning without it!

As soon as I took this picture, I mixed everything up into a big mess of crunchy goodness and it was great!  Best breakfast I’ve had in awhile for sure.

Lunch was packed today because I did a little midday studying at the library.  Leftover rice, and the last of my black beans tossed in TJ’s Goddess dressing.  AMAZING!  I love the combo of rice and beans as is, but mix it with the best dressing in the world, and times it by 10.

Also had some citrus on the side and man was it juicy! Just the way I like it.

Do you like my classy presentation of a ziplock baggy?

I also had a individual chocolate Silk before aerobics and it did wonders for me! I was hungry and it was the only decent thing I could afford on campus!! ha ha… seriously though, tons of energy to get down in hip/hop!

Lastly, you know a carbo-licious day couldn’t be complete without pasta so I did it up good with a great spinach salad.

Extreme close-up of the spinach salad w/blue cheese, raisins and balsamic viniagrette.  Look at that CHEESE!!

As you have probably noticed, raisins are a regular addition in my salads.  It really adds a ton of good flavor.

I ate dinner suuuuuuuuuper early tonight and I’m pumped it’s still light out.  However, it’s still FRIGID so I can’t really go out and enjoy it.  I want spring now!!!!

Before I go, I’m actually remembering to link back to a post! First time ever I think! lol… The Fitnessista is having a Quaker giveaway so check it out here for your chance to win an “all natural gift bag”.  I heart robes.