Busy busy busy busy

Looks like it was baked in the oven, doesn’t it?  This is just a mix of 1/4 cup grape nuts, 1/4 cup oats, cinnamon and flax, walnuts and raisins, plus vanilla soy milk. Added 1/2 banana after heating.  Delish!

I love the texture combo of mixing the 2 cereals together… Definitely a nice change from the regular oatmeal.

Today should be utterly insane.  I have a stats exam, which I probably didn’t study enough for, class, boot camp and full body fit.  When I come home I need to PACK for the weekend and get super organized for Thursday so we can get out of town at a decent time.

All day Friday I’ll be attending this.  I’m SO excited to learn some new things and get officially certified.

My legs are feeling pretty sore today from my run yesterday so workout is up in the air for today.  Have a great Wednesday!

Walnut and Flax encrusted French Toast: Edited

Easter breakfast!!! I had so much fun making this… A great way to start my Sunday morning.  It was really simple too.  Here’s what I did:

1.) Dip a slice of whole wheat bread into batter (vanilla soy milk, 1 egg, cinnamon).

2.) Press the bread into a mix of crushed walnuts and flax (some falls off, but do the best you can!).

3.) Butter a pan, and “fry” each side until crispy.

4.) Carmelize berries/bananas by adding them to a separate pan with some brown sugar and cinnamon.  Keep the heat on medium or lower to avoid scorching.  Slow and low on these!

5.) Plate the french toast and layer the fruit mixture on top.  Enjoy!

ANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND…. Yesterday I had the sudden urge to stop at the food co-op after my workout and looky what I found:

You have no idea how excited I was… I’m such a geek, I know! LOL Although I said no more bars for awhile, I think this qualifies as an exception since I haven’t been able to find this guy anywhere.  Come on, you know you would do the same!  I’ll eat it this week sometime before a workout.  Hope it lives up to all the hype!

Sorry this posted funny this morning, I tried using a gallery for the first time and it messed everything up. Is there a way to post a gallery without using all of the pictures you downloaded for your post?  I can’t figure it out so there’s no recap of yesterday’s food… Help me out people!!

Raisin Walnut Chai Oats

Friday!!! I can’t believe I’m posting this late, but I just got done watching 7 Pounds (Will Smith) and by the time I got all of my stuff packed for the weekend… I’m just now getting settled down!

My oat experiment turned out well!

I’m running low on oat toppings/mix-ins and I’m OUT of soy milk, so I needed to get creative today… I used 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 of a packet of instant chai, walnuts, and raisins + water and microwaved for 2 minutes.YUM! This combo was so so good!  I love the flavors of chai tea and it added a nice creaminess too.

I’ve come to the following conclusion about my likes and dislikes when it comes to oats:

• I prefer less liquid than the recipe calls for (I eyeball it, but probably about a 1:1 ratio of oats:liquid
• I don’t like stove top oats as much as microwaved ones… I know, this is weird but I would rather have hearty texture than creaminess
• I like sliced banana mixed in, but NOT cooked in.  I feel like when I cook it right in, the taste is just off…
• Nut butters can’t stay on the spoon because I use a heaping spoonful and there’s no way I can get a bite!
• My all-time favorite topping is granola.  The crunch is spectacular!

ANYWAYS… I had a pink lady with my breakfast as well because I wasn’t sure how well this would hold me over… Worked like a charm!

Lunch was sporadic today because my planned 1/2 Clif bar pre-workout snack turned into a full Clif bar + banana mini lunch:-) This flavor was just too good and plus I was hungry so I thought, what the heck!

This flavor was GREAT! I haven’t really met a Clif bar I didn’t like, but as soon as I bit into this, I remembered why it was one of my favorites.  Plus it was super filling and I felt great for my workout an hour later… Seriously, I could have stayed on the elliptical forever!

After I got home from the gym and showered, I still wasn’t really hungry but I knew I should eat something to refuel so I grabbed this snack on my way out the door for a group meeting:

Have I mentioned how much I love hummus?  This batch is super creamy and delicious!

Dinner was an extra-cheesy grilled cheese sandwich with the LAST of my Lentil Soup… Promise!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmm pepper jack!

Annnnnnd I wanted something sweet with my movie so I had some wine and some dove dark chocolate and it was delish!  7 Pounds was really different… I’m not quite sure what I thought of it actually.  Super intense and thought-provoking, but not what I was expecting.  Has anyone seen this movie yet?

Tomorrow I’ll be up nice and early to get some exercise in before class because I’m leaving to go home at 3:00!!!! The timing couldn’t be any better for me because I just need a couple of days to regroup right now.  I’ll be going out to eat at my FAVORITE restaurant back home for pizza and caesar salad… splurge meal for sure, but so yummy!  I crave this meal when I’m away at school.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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!

I love Sundays.

It’s true!!!! I know, most people hate that the weekend is over, but I think Sunday is the most relaxing day of the whole week.  I wake up without an alarm (like 7:30) and I throw together some coffee (mmmm….) and usually make a more time-consuming breakfast.

Today’s menu: Whole Wheat Yogurt Pancakes that I found on KERF yesterday.  As soon as I saw the recipe, I knew I had to use it because I’m trying to get rid of some full fat yogurt that my mom bought me.

The texture of these was phenomenal! Kath is a genius in the recipe creation deparartment.

I topped these with a smidge of AB and microwaved frozen strawberries (maple syrup is expensive, and the fake stuff grosses me out). Although you can’t see them, mini choco chips are hiding inside as well!

As far as yesterday goes, here are my eats that I forgot to blog while I was being lazy on the couch all night!

Breakfast was a boring bowl of oats (banana, walnuts, flax, AB) I need some new and interesting toppings!

Lunch was a fabulous sandwich since I went to the store and bought my favorite local hummus!! I was craving this today!  It was very green… Toppings were spinach, cuke, and avocado. I had a Pink Lady too.

Dinner was Tofu with some charred veggies:

Tofu (with olive oil, honey, cinnamon, chili powder, salt)

Veggies: there’s a special place in my heart for caramelized onions:-)

Voila!

This tofu was probably the best I have ever made because it was frozen and I thawed and pressed out the liquid for the second time.  I reccommend doing this with tofu, the texture was perfect!

I also had 2 small bowls of great grains today because the stuff is so darn good! One for a midday snack, and they other while I was watching TV at night because my tummy was growling!

Lastly, I had a great slow but tough workout yesterday.  Sometimes I feel like getting a good burn in, but I want to focus on form which is SO important! I’m telling you guys, it’s better to do less reps with perfect form than the other way around.  Take your time! I did:

• 30 minute walk on inclines 1-10
• Hammer curls, overhead tricep presses
• Lot’s of push ups! (I’m working on upper body strength)
• Overhead shoulder presses on a bosu
• Lat raises
• Planks
• Ab twists

I finished with slow stretching because I’ve been sore all week from hip/hop.  I may take today off, I may not… We’ll see?

Enjoy the last bit of your weekend, I’m off to finish a paper!

Overnight Oats: Success!

Hey there!

Can I just say that I’m REALLY loving the Fage right now?!  I had this snack yesterday between lunch and dinner which soooo hit the spot:

This is Fage with homemade granola and dried cherries…  SO good.  I can’t even begin to describe the creaminess of this yogurt.  And sadly my TJ’s cherries are going fast! I need to start rationing them better! ha ha

I had “breakfast for dinner” which included scrambled eggs with cheese, mushrooms, jalopenos, and a generous amount of  hot sauce, plus an ezekial english muffin (cinn. raisin) with preserves.  Perfect Friday night meal!

For some reason when nothing really sounds appealing, eggs always come to mind… I love em!

After eating dinner, my roommate and I went to the sled dog races down town that I mentioned before and they were really neat to see!  I couldn’t get any good pictures of the dogs because they were moving fast, but they looked so happy and energetic!  Here’s a pic of us girlies:

My nose gets so red when I’m outside in the cold! ha ha

I’m sure the bars were PACKED after the dogs went through, but I’m in what I like to call “money-saving-mode” for my spring break trip.  More on that later…

Back to the title of the post, I tried the overnight oats out for the first time ever this morning and WOW!  These will be repeated many times because they were incredibly creamy and delicious.  I remember seeing these on blogs awhile back but just never thought I would really like them all that much.  The thought of cold oats made me think of sogginess.  After the Fage was purchased, that all turned around…

I mixed 1/2 cup of oats, 1/2 cup vanilla soymilk, and a big scoop ‘o fage in a bowl, covered it, and put in the fridge overnight.  This morning I added a mashed nanner, and topped it with raisins, walnuts, and flax.

It was so refreshing and good… those are the only two words I can think of to describe  it!  I highly recommend trying this.  I figured that if it didn’t end up the way I wanted, I could always toss it in the micro and I’m sure it would be like normal.

I’m off to finish up a couple of school-related tasks, and then maybe a trip to tar-jay to read some magazines, browse the bar aisle, and try on clothes that I won’t buy! ha ha I love Saturdays!

Enjoy the day!