Tag Archives: oatmeal

How was everyone’s fine long Labour Day weekend… aka basically the final weekend of summer?!

Shock gasp horror

I still can’t get over the fact that it’s already September… and a week in already at that.

And that I start back to classes in a week. Welcome Fourth and Final Year oh boy. I think I’m ready for it though… bring it on books.

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My weekend wasn’t terribly adventurous.

It involved chilly and peaceful mornings.

Accompanied by warm and comforting breakfasts.

Simple stovetop banana oats with peanut butter and raspberries

Soft and chewy whole wheat pbjb waffles with fresh cantaloupe

The weekend was actually quite laden with peanut butter.

As well as vast amounts of roasted buttercup squash. I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough. I cooked up a big sucker yesterday… and not a trace remains.

It was less laden with other vegetables, though I tried to stomach them where I could. I think I’m in a vegetable rut. I’m just not loving them as much lately. Sigh!

There was a bit of shopping (along with some sweet deal scores!) that happened.

I found this Living Raw Food book in the book section of an antique marketplace at our farmer’s market. Perfection condition $12. Done! I’m clearly not a raw foodist but I find it to be an interesting way of eating and this book seems to have some great recipes as well as a whole slew of good clean food information, so I couldn’t pass it by.

Not so raw but an equally good deal, Designer Whey Double Chocolate Protein Powder for $8 on clearance. I love Winners.

And a retro bar night of drinks and 80s tunes probably happened last night. Black Sunday, busiest night of the year at this particular hole in the wall bar. Can’t miss it.

(weheartit)

And of course, a little recipe testing had to happen as well.

Vegan with a Vengeance (which first introduced me to TVP) delivered my TVP-filled dinner tonight in the form of TVP Veggie Burgers.

This probably would have been much more successful with tiny TVP chunks (mine were the large ones) and much more finely diced vegetables. They barely held together so the whole “burger” concept was basically shot.

I managed to get one lone burger to stay together.

(The left white blob is mashed potato and the right white blob is mashed cauliflower mixed with laughing cow, dijon mustard and ff sour cream… mmm)

The taste is still, well… tasty, so the remainders shall be eaten fork style. Or maybe wrap style! Endless possibilities. Ish.

I also had a request for da mom for fresh baked granola. So of course I delivered. And this batch got a standing ovation.

Welcome home Averie’s Vegan Gluten & Soy-Free Granola.

I completely de-veganized it by using normal butter. That is what we’ve got. And I threw in a handful of pumpkin seeds and raisins. Cooked it for 15 minutes.
And I halved it. You know, just in case it didn’t turn out…

What was I thinking? This one took over first place as favourite homemade granola recipe so far!

Perfectly crunchy, satisfyingly sweet.

How do you spruce up your veggies and make them more exciting when you’re just not feeling them?

Highlight of your long weekend?

Have a terrific

bright-tuesday36_large
!

Breaking Up With the Food Rut

July 15, 2010

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Summer tends to throw these food rut things at me. Maybe it’s the more frequent access to the fridge and thus the more incessant snacking that does it. Or it could be the darn hot hot heat making its contribution to wacky appetites. Whatever it is, the past little while has been quite food rutted and I haven’t been enjoying nearly anything I’ve been eating. How unfun is that?

Well, this past week I’ve started to chip away at this silly rut and the fun of food has started to make a comeback.

One tried and true method to kicking the food rut to the curb is digging into the million mile deep pile of blogland recipes and giving them life. I save recipes at a rate 10x(+add about three zeros to that) that at which I actually make them. I put a dust speck-sized dent in the pile though during my still ongoing food rut breakup this week.

It all started with a waffle.

Okay so this isn’t even remotely a recipe (most especially since the waffle was of the boxed variety – Red Berry!) but it was blog-inspired. My waffles are typically topped with banana, yogurt, maple syrup… that kinda jazz. THIS one was topped with laughing cow paired with raspberry jam, a combo that has seen many people’s stomachs, but never my own. Until now. Take that food rut.

Feeling oh-so-inspired already, that same fated day of waffle wonder had me also whipping up a smaller version of raw chocolate cake. (I may have squeezed a ridic amount of walnutty oil out of the ball of chocolate wonder before containering it. It was messy business.)

And this snack plate, although seemingly innocent and a weakling in the battle against the food rut, hides its strength in those sushi rolls, which came from COSTCO. My first try of Costco sushi? Definitely strong enough to dent up the food rut.

And speaking of Costco, it continued its role in detrutifying my palate with its Kirkland brand marinated chicken skewers. From grill to stomach, summer meals are looking up.

Come to think of it, new food products are always good to break up the everyday food monotony (thanks Captain Obvious?).

Like the moment when I finally broke into my first bag of Kay’s Naturals White Cheddar Cheese Kruncheeze which I received a little while ago but was saving for the right circumstances (such as the current food rut). OH MY. I am so glad I still have four various bags of this stuff left and yet so sad that I have yet to see it around here. SO addicting.

Or the moment when I discovered my first 100 calorie sandwich thins here in Canada (technically they’re 110 but who’s counting).

Or the moment when I arrived home late evening after a day trip out of town (which was yesterday) and hadn’t had much feeding, so the belly required some instant gratification. The old and nearly expired stash of frozen Lean Cuisines came to the rescue, and I was highly satisfied with a box of chicken and vegetable pasta doused in plenty of Frank’s Hot Sauce.

But I digress. Because the blogland recipes are where it’s really at.

Like Janetha’s all star protein smoothie, the one that almost killed my Bullet. Definitely had to whip this one up in two rounds.

A slight trouble to the Bullet but a super treat to the belly, this was very worth the blending issues. And yeah, it’s sitting on my floor.

Having taken an accidental break from kale for the past long while, I reintroduced it back into my life in the form of a massaged kale salad.

Masseuse partner in crime and massaging oil of choice was Mr. Newman and his light balsamic vinaigrette, followed by plenty of avocado and a good squeeze of lemon.

Carrots, tomatoes and nooch rounded out the bowl. I’ve been slacking on my veggie consumption lately so this packed a mighty punch. Repeats will happen!

Or there’s always the oldies but goodies (And simultaneously uglies, huge apologies for how completely nasty this looks). But that would be one mad delicious enchilada inspired by an old Jenna recipe.

Mine was stuffed with a mixture of fat free sour cream and salsa, chopped cooked chicken, spinach and diced tomatoes, and topped with green enchilada sauce (The rest of the fam’s also had shredded cheese in and on theirs), then baked at 375 for ~30 minutes. These are always instantly devoured despite their horrific appearance and messy nature.

And then we arrive at today, where the food rut breakup is still going strong.

At breakfast, we have cookie dough.

Julie knows what she’s doing. I do not. I overflowed my bowl of cooking wheat bran and instant oats (all out of OAT BRAN!) many many many times. Next cookie dough round I stovetop it.

But after cleaning up the mess, transferring to a new bowl, freezing for about 20 minutes and mixing all up with plain yogurt, mighty maple and SF jam, breakfast got owned in an epic way.

At lunch, we have butternut squash ~~lasagna~~ …not so lasagna.

I followed the recipe very basically (but reduced to like 1/5th)

My way:

1. Pour jarred pasta sauce into the bottom of a small dish.
2. Cook chopped onions in pan with balsamic vinaigrette, then wilt some spinach in there.
3. Mix shredded mozzarella cheese, ricotta, cottage cheese, salt+pepper and dried oregano in a bowl.
4. Cook diced butternut squash in the microwave for 5 minutes.
5. Layer cheese mix, then spinach and onion, then squash, then more sauce, and top with feta.
6. Bake at 375 for about 35 minutes.
7. Oh, and measure nothing. Apparently. I just threw bits of what I had together.

Good thing I made a mini version because I may have devoured most of this today.

And then, on a similar but slightly different note, if you want to break out of an exercise rut… try a SPIN CLASS. Which is what I did for the first time ever today. I’m not a member of a gym but my friend is and there was some online thing to sign up for a free 3 day pass. I did, but apparently they phone you the next day to set it up. I didn’t know this and hadn’t set mine up yet but I got to do the class free anyway. Sweeeet deal.

It was toughish, but ain’t no thang for my thunder thighs.

But if you’re going to be super smart like me and drink a giant Iced Coffee Smoothie prespin (1 cup cold coffee, 1/2 cup skim and almond milk, stevia, xanthan and guar, 10g chocolate protein powder, 4 frozen strawberries, and mucho ICE) then make sure to empty your bladder at least 3x before hopping on the bike.

And to put an end to it all – watermelon. Because it’s summer and thus a necessity.

Here’s to a Food Rut Free week!

I have a Blog?

June 9, 2010

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19 Comments

A… Blog?

…What is that?

I seem to have forgotten in amongst all of my…

Skanking to ska tunes and drinking brews at music shows.

Source Source

Riding insane roller coasters at Canada’s Wonderland. Behold BEHEMOTH:

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DO try going to amusement parks on an early June Monday when summer has not yet technically begun and kids are still all in school. My longest line wait was 15 minutes tops and I got on all of the best rides in the park, the above beast TWICE.

DO NOT, however, go on a day that is deceivingly sunny, only to be blasted by out-of-nowhere Arctic winds. I ended up having to go back to my car to change into jeans and a sweatshirt and still spent the next two hours freezing my buns off. Icy air + fast, sky high rides = Ice CUBE <–That was me.

Now if I could only figure out a way to translate my roller coaster riding bravery into real life bravery. A future mission perhaps.

Working out.

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Or not. I took more rest days than I have in months this week. I think they were needed. Plus, walking around an amusement park all day, for example, is plenty of exercise, am I right?!

BAKING.

But of course. Wake up and bake up. That’s what I did today. Rainy days are made for baking. Today was rainy. Case in point:

Coconut Carob/Chocolate Pecan Walnut Oatmeal Bars? Why not?

Sub honey instead of agave, walnuts instead of pecans, and use 1/4 cup of a mix of carob and semisweet chocolate chips and you’ll see exactly what came out of my oven at about 10:00 this morning.

EATING. If that one wasn’t obvious…

Cereal is not going out of style. Why I am eating it like it is, well for that I have no answer.

My cow mug likes to be filled with things other than hot bevs.

Things like cooked oats topped with cottage cheese and jam.

Toasted Vitatops served over plain yogurt with juicy fresh pineapple and strawberries? Yes please!

Smooooooth as silk smoothie iced coffees alongside dinner? A-okay.

Leafy greens and rainbow veggies? Once in a while…

What would you like for dinner tonight? A Mini tofu burgers topped with guac + dijonnaise?

Or how about some nose-on-fire buffalo chicken meatballs?

Oh, you say you need a quick chocolatey fudge fix?
I say you mix 2T sunflower seed butter (or any nut butter for that matter) with 1T honey and 1T cocoa powder. Potentially double, triple, or quadruple the batch.
Freeze it. Wait for it. Eat it. Be in smart fudgy heaven.

I also say that I need to stop neglecting blogging for days at a time. I have no good excuses. Yet I always seem to have excuses a plenty up my sleeves (or maybe behind my ears since these summery days are leaving most of my shirts on the sleeveless side).

So, in conclusion, I have a few new missions now on my hands:

- Blog more often.
- Implement my roller coaster style bravery into everyday life.
- Tone down the useless excuses. They get you (me) nowhere.

There’s a few more I could shove in there but I’ll leave it at that for now.

And on that note… Cheerio!

All in the Genes

February 25, 2010

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13 Comments

Reading Week gone, and the first three days back to the grind has been pretty much all study study studying (with a bit of mundanely exciting hoopla thrown into the mix, as you’ll see throughout this post). I plowed through an assignment and two midterms in the first three days back. Nice welcome back. But now the big guns are done and I’m free for the rest of the week! Phew.

Monday

Might as well start off the grind of the week with a breakfast staple: good old oatmeal. This bowl was sweetened up with some SF Jello rice pudding (I had one last container to get rid of. Too sweet on its own but worked out pretty well in the oats), plus a dollop of peanut butter mixed with yogurt and fresh strawberries.

I spent the morning working on assignments. I could have been a diligent student and actually have done some work during my reading week instead of hiding all of my school books in the depths of my closet but… who does that?! I’d rather suffer by cramming it all into the beginning of the week instead I guess.

I eventually broke to make some Ginger Peanut Tofu Salad, which I discovered happens to be that of a one Miss Broccoli Hut. Thanks Caroline!

Ginger Peanut Tofu Salad
(Serves 1)
* 6 oz. firm tofu
* 1 T peanut butter
* 1 T soy sauce
* 1/2 t ground ginger
* 0.5 packet stevia
* 1 small garlic clove, minced
* dash of red pepper flakes
* green onions, diced

(I also added some rice wine vinegar and water to thin the sauce out a bit)

1. Combine peanut butter, soy sauce, ginger, stevia, and garlic in a small bowl.
2. Place the tofu in a larger bowl and pour the dressing from step one over the tofu. Combine the dressing and tofu with your hands, squeezing the tofu into a crumble texture.

Along with a few spoonfuls of this goodness, I munched on some veg, cottage cheese, and a bit of leftover pasta.

After driving through a lake of slush to get to my afternoon class, after barely surviving the drive home I decided I was not going to venture out again in that mess for my three hour evening class. Turns out my decision was wise since my teacher’s bus ended up being 1.5 hours late and the whole class had peaced out by the time she got there. So I missed nothing. Phew.

Instead of going to class, I used my extra time to:

- Shovel mounds of slushy snow off of our driveway
- Eat a bean medley salad

- Revel in the fact that I now had extra evening hours to cram for my (barely studied for) midterm the next day.
- Actually study for said midterm
- Eat an applesauce mixture HOT the way Jess likes it ;)
( unsweetened applesauce, cinnamon, pb, carob chips + Coconut Chia Granola )

- Study study sleep etc

Tuesday

I had a mini study sesh bright dark and early in the AM before heading to my early morning class (not the one with the midterm), accompanied by some overnight oats (oats, water, flax, banana, yogurt by night, cottage cheese and blueberries joined in by morning) and coffee black as the sky was that early in the morning.

Came home, studied some more. Midterms in the aft are nice since it gives me lots of time to give the info a good thorough last few hours of memorizing. Then it’s all nice and fresh in my mind :)

Study Food – Red pepper tomato soup with a handful of mixed beans and Frank’s stirred in, plus a wee piece of rye bread taking a dip in there as well. Side plate of veggies dunked in some french onion dip.

Study Break – Necessities. I can only stay sane through studying by taking one or two (or a million) breaks. Especially food breaks. Especially new food making breaks.

Hence the birth of this Raw Vegan Cheesecake. I’ve hardly ever experimented with raw-type dessert but they always look so good to me and I always save a million and a half raw food recipes with the hopes of trying them someday. I had all of the ingredients on hand for this one so I just couldn’t not make it.

My piddly weak Magic Bullet just couldn’t quite get a smooth consistency for the top, despite adding a good amount of water to smooth it out, but it still turned out pretty well. Next time I might have to whip out the food processor first. Oh how nice a VitaMix would be..

I guess all of that food work did some good things to my brain, since despite not feeling so super after writing my midterm, I ended up getting 90%. Maybe all those raw food treats are the way to ultimate brain power!

Dinner clearly took the cake though since I finally scored a kabocha squash!!! It’s been SO long since I’ve had one. I could only ever find buttercup for the longest time. I can never really tell the difference when buying them and I rarely find any labelled as kabocha. I had no idea that this was a winner until I roasted it up and was greeted with its kabocha greatness.

Too bad I charred it.

Luckily it was still pretty decent tasting, but I made half of it in fry form and they had a bit of extra burn flavour to them… not the ideal extra something something I would have requested.

The rest of the evening contained some raw tasties…

And some more studying for my NEXT midterm that took place today. Thrilling I know.

Wednesday

Here we are!

Today started out pretty darn swell.

I know. How great is this breakfast right? Looks darn good just like that right? Well wait until you see its buried treasure underneath…

Now THAT’S what I call a decadent breakfast. Why oh why didn’t I start eating Vitatops for breakfast earlier? I was missing out!

Chocolate Vitatop + plain yogurt + cold mushy banana + strawberries + blueberries + flax = beautiful breakfast bliss.

Then I spent the entire morning cramming for my 2:30pm Biopsych midterm. Yummy…

During the process I drank a giant mug of green tea… and felt sick? Has anyone else ever felt sick from drinking green tea before? I don’t know if it was actually due to the green tea but I felt queasy after the mug… maybe it was hunger instead since this was a couple hours after breakfast… who knows.

But anywho, the green tea queasies pushed me to prep a snack/lunch.

Peanut Ginger Tofu (5x that amount), leftover kabocha (2x that amount), cucs, carrots, red pepper, cottage cheese (3x that amount), tomato… I’m really bad at getting food to make it to the plate before it makes it to my mouth.

Then I wrote my midterm (Just found out…90% on that one too! Wooo. Though that is with a “generous adjustment” to the grades of the entire class due to circumstances that aren’t really that important…but I’ll take it. Biopsych is not quite my forte) and headed to the mall for some brief clothes shopping before dinner. $110 later I scored myself 2 new pairs of sunglasses and 4 shirts, two of which are going back since I didn’t have time (or patience) to try them on at the store.
Do you always try stuff on before buying or just buy it if you like it?
95% of the time I won’t buy something without trying it on first. I’d much rather know that I like it on me before getting it home and being disappointed!

When I got home I was starved so I whipped up a quick ginger peanut tofu wrap dipped in some goddess dressing.

Then I worked up more of an appetite by flexing my muscles in my new clothing items, half of which will now be going back.

Like this pink shirt thing. Loved the colour, liked the top part, couldn’t swing the bottom, it’s just strange.

Gun show…cough. Huge tool? Yes.

I blame my tool-itis on genetics.

My bro is currently repainting our basement. Slob.

I guess I’m a slob/slop/even greater tool since I can’t even bake a loaf of Low Carb Sweet Bread without cutting up my hand on a pumpkin can.

Or overcooking the loaf. Boooooo! I used half flax, half chocolate protein powder. Let the dinger continue to ring as I was busy cleaning my camera upstairs. Obviously let that happen too long as this was slightly dry. Clearly that didn’t phase me much since I ate about 1/5 of the loaf within a half hour of it coming out of the oven. Good thing it’s healthy… ehe.

On a final note of farewell for the night, as if you don’t have enough to keep you distracted online already…

Go from Zero to Fabulous in mere minutes! (or much longer if you get as much of a kick out of this thing as I do). Seriously, don’t you all just want to be this Diva-ed up? Seriously.