Short but sweet

Breakfast: Pumpkin oats–with chia seeds, cinnamon and maple syrup.  These were fabulous!  Maximized volume.

I snacked on the most addicting granola in the world throughout the morning/afternoon, probably about a cup.  I just can’t get enough of this stuff!

Lunch was leftover lasagna again.  But I swear this stuff keeps getting better! I had compliments on how good my desk smelled…

Dinner part 1 was veggies + hummus

Dinner part 2 was another freeie Luna bar (didn’t love this flavor) and a blood orange which is my new obsession of a fruit!  I didn’t get home until 9:30 so unfortunately my dinner was a little blah tonight.  Normal posts resume tomorrow!  I need cooking back in my life!

Just to note, I did my schedule 4ish miles at lunch today and felt great!  I’m loving the soft dirt path and comfortable pace that I run with a coworker near my home office.  And the weather could not have been more perfect.  Tomorrow is Hot Yoga Sculpt day (I am terrified of this class!!) so I’m looking forward to a good stretch/sweat.  Woo hoo!

I have a fun day at work tomorrow, then before you know it, Wednesday and the first day of a new month will be over.  Ca-raaaaaaazy!

 

Another beautiful day in Colorado

Yesterday it was all about the blueberries; today is all about the BLACKberries!

I have seriously been craving a scone for weeks and I was just about to go to Starbucks to get my fix when Jenna from Eat, Live, Run posted the recipe for Blackberry and Cream Scones.

The best part about them?  They take 30 minutes from start to finish, and the only ingredient I actually needed to go out and buy was the blackberries.I have to admit, my batter was really wet and sticky to the point I thought these would be going in the trash (not sure where I made a mistake).  But I added some more flour and did the best that I could to form triangles–they taste great! That’s all that really matters, right?

I felt so sophisticated eating a scone for breakfast. I would highly recommend these–especially if you are a novice baker like me!

After training a couple of clients and working out myself (trying to work on strengthening my knees for running), I came home and heated up some leftovers from last night.

The Runner’s World lasagna reheats wonderfully! This may be my new go-to recipe.  I feel like I’m getting a ton of veggies in with each piece too and not going overboard on cheese.  Just to clarify, I made some subs to the original recipe including:

• Cut down the 12 oz cream cheese to an 8 oz container of garden vegetable flavor (reduced-fat was all I could find, but I can’t even tell!)
• Cut the amount of mozzarella in half.  I just grabbed a small container from the deli instead of buying bags of it.  Cheaper, and I don’t miss it.
• Cut out a layer of noodles.  Instead of 15, I used 12.
• Added sliced olives and jarred artichokes in between layers
• Added pesto in between layers (whatever I had left of a jar) because I had some on hand.

Another beautiful day in Colorado today!  I think I’m going to see a movie before yoga–have I mentioned how much I look forward to Sunday yoga?

 

 

Adventures in the kitchen

Blueberry pancakes, I love you.

So funny tidbit, there are several Registered Dietitians working at the home office for my Dietetic Internship.  Around Christmas-time when everyone starts bringing in treats to work, the RDs get really creative with gifts instead of passing out the typical cookies.  My Internship Director actually gave me homemade multi-grain pancake mix, pure maple syrup and green tea!  On days like these, I know I made the right career choice.

Anyways, I finally decided to use the mix in today’s breakfast and they turned out great! Nice and thin, just how I like ‘em.  I added blueberries and topped with the syrup and a smear of peanut butter.  A great pre-run meal.

For some odd reason I was up way too early this morning and ended up grocery shopping before 9am.  It was nice to get a start on my cooking projects though! Check out the Elvis Granola:

Turned out even better than last time I think. I probably had at least a cup of this throughout the day via handful, spoonful and bowl.  It’s just too good to resist!

Lunch was rushed since I had to get to work [not long] after my run/stretch/ice/shower routine.  Enter the smoothie!

This one had 1% milk, frozen banana chunks, frozen blueberries and spinach.  Just enough to hold me over for a couple hours until I could get back home and eat this lovely egg sandwich:

LOVE the yolk of an egg. I also had some raw veggies + hummus for my cooking snack while I worked on dinner (seems like I was in the kitchen all day today!  Not that there’s anything wrong with that…).

Dinner was hands-down the best meal I have eaten in a long time.  I got this Creamy Spinach-Mushroom Lasagna from Runner’s World and it was fantastic!

I used garden vegetable cream cheese for more flavor, and I also added some sliced black olives and artichokes in just because.  Make this now!

Tex-Mex Lasagna: Success

Thank you to my cousin Nicole for this amazing recipe from Cooking Light!

It’s a Tex-Mex Lasagna that I decided to make for some dinner guests last night due to the ease of preparation, minimal ingredients and overall appeal.  I feel like it’s pretty much an enchilada in layer form so you can’t really go wrong, am I right?  Cheesiness=crowd pleaser.

Everyone seemed to like it so I would say it was a success!  It’s vegetarian too… but I bet the boys didn’t even notice.

***Per Nicole’s suggestion, I subbed flour tortillas for the noodles and I would recommend this as well.  ***

Made a pretty solid salad for lunch today as well.  I’ve been on an extreme salad kick and am feeling really good about it.  I definitely have more energy and my skin is finally starting to clear up after a rough couple of months.

• Spring mix
• Tomatoes and sundried tomatoes
• Cuke
• Red onion
• Carrot and Celery
• Grilled chicken
• Raisins
• Blue cheese (heaven)
• Strawberries

Aaaaaaaannnnd this dressing that I got to eat up all by myself because Jessica doesn’t share my passion for all things ginger:

Compliments the other flavors wonderfully.

I have another busy day ahead.  Long to-do list ahead, but the good news is I’m hanging out at Starbucks all day to get it done.  Such a rough life!

I’m making baramundi fish for dinner.  First time purchasing it—we’ll see what I can come up with for a cooking method.  Chao!

Almond Encrusted Tilapia

Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm this was good.  And it was so easy!

Step 1: dip fish in flour

Step 2: then in a beaten egg

Step 3: then in a mixture of flax meal and almond meal (just whiz them through the food processor)

Step 4: Pan-fry in canola oil for a few minutes on each side (or until flaky)

I know that so many people are scared to use oil and butter, but this is just one of those times that the extra fat/calories are totally worth it because of the wonderful flavor it brings.

I never make tilapia any other way now because it just seems so blah when it’s steamed.  Keep the sides lighter and trust me, it won’t be a heavy meal.  Pan-frying is a lot different than deep-frying.  It’s crispy but not overly greasy.  Try it once and you’ll be hooked!

To go with the fish I made this salad for some veggies:

Romaine and spinach, bell peppers, dried mango and Annie‘s gingerly dressing (which I really love).

Jess made oven-roasted potatoes too.  They had garlic and some other spices on them… I’m not sure but they were really good!

Backtracking to lunch…

The last of the lasagna from Friday, veggies + hummus, and grapes.  I had the apple, this bar and 2 oatmeal cookies for snacks throughout the day.  I was really hungry all day… pretty much never went longer than a few hours without eating.

And my easy day turned into an intense racquetball day which was pretty awesome.  I’m majorly diggin’ racquetball right now.  You work up a good sweat without even realizing it!  My legs aren’t sore anymore so maybe it was a good idea to keep them moving?  I’m not sure what I’ll do tomorrow yet.

Aaaaaaannnnndd here’s a snippet of my running playlist.  I feel like the right music makes a workout so much better.  Maybe it’s just because when I download new songs,  I really look forward to getting out so I can listen to them.  I have a shuffle so these flow randomly like the wind–and my life.  RANDOM.  I present to you, my jams:

1. Rock that Body, BEPs
2. Gimme More, Britney Spears
3. Around the World/Harder Better Faster Stronger, Daft Punk
4. I Wanna go Crazy, David Guetta
5. Last Night, Diddy and Keysha Cole
6. Bennie and the Jets, Elton John
7. Til I Collapse, Eminem (great for motivation)
8. Circle of Life, The Lion King Soundtrack (the musical!!!!)
9. We Build Then we Break, The Fray
10. Dig, Incubus (I sing this extremely loud when I run outside)
11. La La La, Indy Q
12. Big Pimpin’/Papercut, Jay-Z and Linkin Park
13. Bigger than My Body, John Mayer
14. Nothing in my Way, Keane
15. Let it Rock, Kevin Rudolph (never gets old)
16. When you Were Young, The Killers
17. All These Things that I’ve Done, The Killers
18. Poker Face, GaGa
19. Selling the Drama, Live
20. Kids, MGMT
21. I Want You Back, NSYNC (you bet I have Nsync on my ipod)
22. All the Right Moves, One Republic
23. Even Flow, Pearl Jam
24. Fly Like and Eagle, Seal
25. Cry for You, September
26. Spice up Your Life, The Spice Girls (total pump-up song)
27. City of Blinding Lights, U2
28. Icky Thump, The White Stripes
29. Jenny was a Friend of Mine, The Killers (one of my all-time faves)
30. Tik Tok, Ke$sha

Night!

Best lazy day ever.

It’s been SO long since I’ve had a day as relaxing as today.  Trained one client in the morning, came home and made pancakes, took a 3 hour nap… doesn’t get much better than that!  I’m not even really a nap person but I was so tired from the long week that I pretty much collapsed right after breakfast.

First off, dinner last night was pretty solid too.  I made a veggie-filled lasagna on the fly and it turned out good!  Here’s what it looked like:

I layered a jarred red sauce (sauteed spinach and mushrooms were added to it), asparagus sauteed in garlic and red onion, ricotta and mozzarella cheese, and sundried tomatoes. I’m pretty excited to dip into the leftovers tonight because lasagna always tastes better the next day.

And this morning, as promised, I whipped up a recipe from my beloved Hell’s Kitchen cookbook and it was amazing!!!!!

I made the Lemon Ricotta Hotcakes. These are melt-in-your-mouth wonderful.  And the lemon flavor really comes out strong.  I can’t type out the recipe, but I can tell you that the trick involves whipping egg whites to stiff peaks, similar to an angel food cake. I finally got to satisfy my mad craving for bacon too.  Perfect brunch.

Aaaaaaaaaand my me list is coming along pretty great as well.

5 ME things to do this weekend:

1. Wake up without an alarm on Saturday morning and make a really good breakfast. CHECK
2. Bake something CHECK
3. Manicure and Facial (no need to pay someone, these I’m doing myself!) CHECK
4. Long run (9 miler)
5. See Valentine’s Day!

I used the Quaker recipe to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  I’ve been wanting to make these forever!! There’s nothing healthy about them–2 sticks of butter, cup and a half of sugar… yeah.  Gotta do what you gotta do I guess.  They’re calling my name from the kitchen so I’m probably going to have to bring the majority of them into work so I don’t eat the whole batch in 2 days.

I’m about to continue my lazy day theme by laying on the couch and watching some TV.  And eat some more cookies.  Enjoy the rest of your Saturday!

Spring is coming!

Good evening all!

So I think today is the nicest day we’ve had, weather-wise, in a super long time!  I even went for a run outside…it felt great! It was around 3.5 miles and the temperature was just right.

Cassie, one of my roommates came with me and I was thrilled to have a her along since I still didn’t replace my i-pod.  I feel like she made me go a little bit faster, especially in the beginning when I usually slack a little bit.

About an hour before we left, I had this as a mini lunch to fuel me through the run:

I used the packaging as a plate so I didn’t have to dirty a dish… classy, I know!  It’s an Ezekial tortilla w/the best hummus in the world and spinach.  I LOVE these tortillas. Nutty and delicious, and not huge like most others.

After we got back to the apartment, I made us both smoothies which had:

• Vanilla Soy milk (finally bought more, I missed having it!)
• More spinach
• Banana (1/2 each)
• Honey
• Flax
• A few frozen strawberries
• Fresh-squeezed OJ (1/2 each)

They were so creamy and delicious… And FILLING! I think I OD’ed on spinach today because my stomach was in pain! ha ha… Every once in a great while, I eat too much fiber and I feel like I’m pregnant! I had some cinnamon puffins and walnuts between the smoothie and dinner as well, so looking back, it’s one of those days!!!

No worries though, it’s nothing a little lasagna can’t cure… Can you say cheesy goodness??

Cassie made this de-lish dinner and it did not disappoint!  She used ground turkey (seasoned really well!) and there was cottage cheese inside… Other than that, I can’t tell you much else besides it smelled and tasted wonderful!

I can’t believe it’s already going on 8:00!  Where did my precious Sunday go? I actually made good progress on my homework today, so I think I can take the rest of the night to do whatever.

P.S. I forgot to mention what I stumbled across at the health food store yesterday…

LARABAR sale! Plus I had a coupon to use.  I’m pumped because as much as I love ‘em, I don’t usually buy these because of the price.  I’ve had all of the flavors shown, but I’ll be sure to do reviews each time I eat one.

Can I get everyone’s top 3 ranking for favorite flavors? I still haven’t found the Coconut Cream Pie, Cinnamon bun, Lemon Bar, or Peanut Butter Cookie… seemingly some of the best kinds according to blog world! ha ha figures…