Thanks for the Balance. feedback It’s good to know I’m not alone in feeling out of whack and all over the place sometimes. Sometimes you just sit there and wonder, “Am I going crazy?”, you know? But life is like that, it moves flows and dips and stands still and changes and keeps on keeping on and all the while you have to shift and adjust to keep up with all of this. All of your views on keeping balance are so darn smart :)

One thing in particular,  brought up by Melissa, that I haven’t thought about much lately is Happy Goals. I’ve never been very strong at goal setting (I think a large part of that is that whole fear of failure deal) and I don’t often make them. When I have set them the past, they really do help me to be diligent at working towards what it is that I’m aiming for, but I have a hard time setting them in the first place:
A) Half the time I can’t think of what goals I want to set. A silly reason as goals can be anything but I have trouble with this a lot of the time.
B) Failure fear. If I don’t try, I can’t fail. Horrible mentality. Need to kick that one to the curb asap.
C) Because it’s not something I’ve done regularly, I don’t even think about goal setting 90% of the time. I forget to do it and I forget how helpful it is. I guess I need to write myself reminders – SET GOALS.

So in conclusion? I think I need some goals. I think I need things to work towards. It’s hard to think about what you want to accomplish when you are stuck and rutted and really don’t have a clue what you want. But a new month is coming, and a new school year is coming, and thus the perfect conditions are a brewin’ for some new goals (no matter how big or small) to be set.

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I can’t be contemplative and brooding all the time though, it’s tiring! So let’s take a look at what else has been going on in my household over the past few days.

Got rhubarb? We did. Well then what else is there to do than make Strawberry Rhubarb Bars?

Actually there was probably many other things I could have done. I also made rhubarb sauce (just rhubarb, sugar and water boiled down) with the leftover rhubarb which was stellar. Much moreso than this dish, which was slightly disappointing. It was good…ish. But not nearly as good as I thought it would be. Not one for the recipe binder anyway.

And since granola has now become a necessity in this household since my mom is now loving it (much to my despair… move over Cookie Monster, here here the GRANOLA Monster has been born… I can’t keep away from it!) a fresh batch was born this weekend.

Cherry Almond Granola -became —> Cranberry Raisin Peanut Granola 

I used dried cranberries, raisins, chopped peanuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, a few chopped cashews and a few pine nuts. I used safflower oil and everything else stayed the same.

We should probably also talk about this 5 Minute Blueberry Banana “Ice Cream” I stumbled upon and just had to make this morning. I only had a wee bit of cottage cheese left and bloobs that were unfrozen, but this was still pretty bomb. Why have I never blended cottage cheese and frozen banana before? Genius!

Still on the topic of blended treats, what do you do when you have a huge badonk watermelon cut up in a container in your fridge that’s swimming in a pool of hunky chunky watermelon juice?

You freeze the juice. Later on you slightly defrost said juice, throw the now slush into a blender along with a splash of almond milk, a splash of lime juice and a dash of vanilla protein powder and you soon will have birthed a crazy refreshing watermelon delight. Topped with homemade granola of course.

I have this habit of eating cold chunks of banana straight out of the fridge dipped in peanut butter. It’s amaze. So instead of just eating it mindlessly as per usual I thought I’d just turn it into breakfast.

Cold banana + homemade peanut butter + cottage cheese + cinnamon + Kay’s Naturals Honey Almond Protein Cereal

Num.

+ morning coffee (duh) + morning face (hello world…)

Sometimes I eat things that aren’t sweet though, I swear. Though not so much lately… hush hush.

Homemade potato salad made with light buttermilk and dijon mustard?

Dig in!

Lettuce leaves and cottage cheese? Dig in…a little less enthusiastically.

Steamed broccoli, baby carrots and a small sampling of lean ground beef from the fam’s tacos plated for dipping into salsa, hummus and tzaziki. dig dig dig.

Vegan? No I be not (note the ground beef above…) but I do like me some vegan cookbooks and when I found a recipe for Breakfast Veggie Chorizo using TVP, I knew I had to make it immediately.

I’ve had a bag of unopened TVP in the cupboard for ages. I never knew what to do with it, had never ever tried it and frankly, I just ended up forgetting about it. So glad the Veggie Chorizo recipe revived my memory. The main players are onion, a variety of spices (many of which I didn’t have, hello improvision), TVP and tomato paste.

My first bite of TVP was… weird. But weird as in interesting, intriguing, give me a few more bites and a few more and wow this stuff is pretty awesome! And then my mom tried it… and loved it! Literally she sat there eating it while exclaiming “I love this!” with a slightly shocked yet overjoyed expression. Who would have thought, my mom loving some crazy faux meat substitute. Fist pump!

Vegan with a Vengeance is clearly a winner. Now which recipe shall I try next??

So much food. So uh, none food excitement of the day:

New lenses! Cha ching! (?)

I’m not blind so I usually either don’t wear anything at all or wear contacts if I think I’m going to need to actually see stuff (Like in lectures. Or at the bar…). I use glasses once in a while but mine were 6 years old. Just a tad outdated.

Now that I got my new shades (without the shade…) clearly I’m soon to become a true braniac. I forsee my IQ jumping 30 pts within a week’s worth of wear.

Pimpin.

Almost as pimpin as these they-pop-in-your-mouth grapes that we just picked up tonight. Pleasing.

Do you set goals regularly? What are your current goals? Tell me all of them!
I think, to start off, my newest goal shall be… to set some goals ;)