This is how you clean the fridge.

Hey there!

I hope everyone’s hump day was superb and went by as fast as mine did!  I couldn’t be happier that it’s Thursday tomorrow… I feel like it was just the weekend!!

If you haven’t noticed already, I enabled comment threading in the discussion section so you can now reply to other people’s comments.  This can make it a little bit easier to answer questions and things… Just a little something extra I guess.

ALSO, I noticed that Miss Julie GoLean gave me a Kreative Blogger Award today! I’m excited because it’s my first Thanks, Julie!

RULES: List 7 things that you love, and then pass the award on to 7 bloggers that you love! Be sure to tag them and let them know that they have won. You can copy the picture of the award and paste it on your sidebar letting the whole world know…you are Kreativ!

1. Watching a good movie on a Saturday night… in my PJ’s!
2. Mini-vacay’s with my best friends.
3. Les Mills classes
4. The morning… Breakfast + tea + Today show = happiness
5. Blogging
6. Learning about nutrition/fitness
7. The 4th of July. We do this holiday up GOOD in my hometown!

I’m tagging Leah, Erin, Sarah, Melissa, Ashley, Lindsay, and Gina!

On to my day of food…

Walnut, Raisin, Flax oats w/brown sugar with a side of the last two pieces of my Veganomicon Banana Bread!

Lunch was this packed sammie of pesto (the last of it), tomato, spinach and Dijon mustard.  I threw in a honey Oikos and a banana too.

I snacked on some pecan pie LARABAR goodness (which was DE-LISH!) after Step to tide me over to THIS dinner…

Homemade White Bean and Vegetable Soup. I threw everything I wanted  to get rid of in the pot and it turned out great! Here’s what went in:

• 1/2 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 zucchini
• 1/3 large bag of spinach
• About 10 baby carrots
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 can great northern beans, about 1/2 cup of black beans
• Fresh basil
• dried oregano & thyme, salt and pepper
• About 2 cups of water?

I’ve never really had great success with soup besides chili so I was excited that this tasted good!

Pepperjack cheese quesadilla on the side for dipping… YUM!  I loved this meal…

I think my chem exam went well today.  One less thing to think about, but there’s always something to fill that void:-)

Good night!

Random eats

So I’ve had a crazy day today and I’m going to do a super quick post so I can watch the Biggest Loser and do “research” for my class.  Thanks for all of the great opinions on the show!  I really appreciate the ideas… I basically agree with what everyone said, so we’ll see if anything crazy happens tonight.

FOOD TIME
Super early breakfast of PB and Banana oats:

Throughout the morning, I had a snack from our National Nutrition Month table (which I helped set up for my internship).  You may remember this item from the first week of my blog!  We served this dish at our health fair back in February and it went over so well, we had it again:

Flavored tofu wraps with mango salsa.  SO DELICIOUS!!  I had 2 of these plus an apple for a snack to hold me over until lunch, which I unfortunately couldn’t get a photo of today because it was consumed during Human Disease!  I had a great new sandwich though which included tuna, Sarah’s guac, and raisins.  If you haven’t tried raisins mixed with tuna, I highly recommend it!  I had a blueberry Oikos as well.

Moving on to random eats, I snacked on a few piece of banana bread (recipe from Veganomicon, my favorite!)  for study fuel …

… and made a smoothie before lab which was soooooooo green today.  My favorite combo yet!

This guy contained:

• The rest of my mango (YUM)
  
• 1/2 frozen banana ( I see a banana theme today??)
  
• Handful of spinach
• Vanilla soy milk
• Flax
  

Since I didn’t end up getting home from lab until after 8:00 and since I’m not super hungry, I’m chomping on a mug of the Optimum Bound cereal right now and I think after TBL I’ll just call it a night.

Tomorrow I’ll have something more exciting, I promise!!!!!!

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!

My favorite day:-)

Mornin’ everyone! I’ve got lot’s of pictures since I never got around to posting last night.  As promised, I made Sarah‘s asparagus guacamole (which turned out great!) and some homemade pesto yesterday afternoon.  I found some great-looking fresh basil at the food co-op and just couldn’t get the idea out of my head! Here’s the 2 final products:

I incorporated the pesto into dinner last night because I had this quesadilla idea stuck in my head… This was seriously the best-tasting meal I’ve made in a long time! And so simple…

I scrambled up some eggs, and sandwiched them in an Ezekial tortilla with pesto, cheese, tomatoes, spinach and red onion.  The george foreman makes a mean quasadilla!

YUM! Ruby red grapefruit was on sale this week so I had some of that on the side.  Great Saturday night dinner!

A few hours prior to this I needed some study fuel so I cracked open the plain flavor of the Oikos stash and topped it with some new cereal I bought (some kind of Optimum Power??) and the last of my frozen strawberries…

The plain flavor rocked! This is for sure my favorite of the 3 I have tried so far… No added sugar, SO thick and creamy, and you get the biggest bang for your buck!  I couldn’t believe how much yogurt was in this bowl after I dumped it in… When I dish out yogurt from a big tub, I never have close to this much so I was pleasantly surprised.  I ate this at about 3:30 and it kept me going until dinner at 7:00.  2 Thumbs up for the PLAIN!

I almost wanted to have the same thing for breakfast this morning but in order to mix things up  I had this instead:

…which will probably sit better in my stomach during my run anyway.  Time to get cracking on my to-do list.

Have a nice day!

Spring-a-Ling-a-Ding

Happy Friday night everyone!

I hope you all had a fantastic day! SO happy it’s the weekend!

Breakfast was the last of my Whole Wheat Yogurt Pancakes with AB & J.  They held me over SO much better today! I’m not sure if it’s because I worked out later on in the morning (seems to suppress my appetite), or because I used extra almond butter but it did the trick.

I pulled out a Blueberry Oikos too, but I was full by the time I finished this so I ate it mid-morning instead…

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I didn’t care for this yogurt nearly as much as the vanilla flavor.  It was overly sweetened for my taste and the thickness just wasn’t there.  Also, I’m not sure if it was just me, but there seemed to be less in the container?  Sorry, SF but I have to be honest and I wouldn’t buy this flavor again.

I’m excited to try the plain flavor because I seem to like plain yogurt better than sweetened varieties.  I think I’ll be using it in my lunch tomorrow…

So between classes, I ate a packed sandwich while working on a presentation.  I didn’t get a picture because there was people all over and I was shy:-). I can tell you that it was a combo that you’ve seen on here before…hummus (tons!), spinach, red bell pepper, and jalapenos on whole wheat.  I just love it!

I practiced doing a sub-maximal exercise test with a few people from my Health/Exercise Leadership Skills class too.  We have to perform this on a partner for our final exam and I’m actually really nervous!!

The test involves progressively increasing intensity on a cycle ergometer and taking blood pressure and heart rate at set intervals.  Then we plug the numbers into equations and do all kinds of fun stuff…

Anyways, when I was finally done for the day, I snacked on a bowl of Great Grains (all gone now…) and a handful of carrots before Nichole and I picked up some basics from the grocery store.

Then, my room mates cooked an awesome dinner!  I present to you, Turkey Portabello Wraps:

Saute cubed turkey and mushrooms in a skillet like this:

Then roll up in a wrap with mayo, diced tomatoes, spinach, and mozzarella cheese!  We used these wraps tonight:

Inspired by a restaurant back home that we all used to go to…these are so delicious!  I’m still hungry but I haven’t decided what else I want yet LOL… Maybe ice cream?  I’ve been thinking about some good quality ice cream lately… Since it’s the first day of Spring, why not?

Enjoy your night!

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?