The official month of snowmen, gingerbread men, eggnog, candy canes, and good cheer is finally here!
I rung in the season with a festive oatmeal bowl.
Stovetop: 1/2 cup each water and skim milk, 1 large banana, 1/3 cup oats
Stirred in: 1/3 cup 1% cottage cheese
Topping: 1 Tbsp Biscoff Spread, 1 Tbsp light cream, a sprinkling of sprinkles
Delicious times delicious times delicious!
Gingerbread, peppermint, or eggnog; what’s your poison?
So, this morning I looked like this –
and now I look like this –
I like it, I think!
I always sort of hate my hair whenever I get it chopped, but I’ve gone short several times now so apparently that’s not holding me back! I ended up having 14 inches to give to Locks of Love, which is great.
A friend and I went during a long break between classes and it was fun to see people’s reactions when we got back. “Wait, didn’t you have a pony-tail this morning?!?” I surprised Adam too. He picked me up from school and his mouth fell open when I walked out to the car!
BC (before the cut) I ate half of this Coconut Chocolate Chip Clif Bar for breakfast.
And AC (after the cut) I bought a great green juice.
This was blend of spinach, kale, carrot, and cucumber; from a new spot just blocks from my apartment.
This was so good, and “only” $4. I predict I’ll be there more often than I can afford!
Adam picked me up after school so we could make a quick grocery trip. We each picked something from the cookie bar for funsies before we did boring stuff like toilet paper.
I chose cinnamon nut rugala and I’m now on the hunt for a rugala recipe to make at home.
While I was fixing Adam’s dinner I snacked on some canned pineapple over 1% cottage cheese.
My dinner was supposed to be some of Monday’s “leftovers,” leftover.
A heaping bowl of pasta, shredded chicken, and tons of peas, topped with parmesan, cranberry relish, and a drizzle of evoo.
I love this bowl so much more than I do anything I eat on Thanksgiving. But I got up to do something halfway through and when I came back there was a dog face in my bowl! Webster’s sort of an asshole.
Instead I ate this Smart Ones Brocoli and Cheddar Roasted Potatoes.
Not as good as the dinner I shared with the dog, but not as bad as it looks either.
Have you ever given to Locks of Love? If you have long hair – how many times have you gone short?
I’m not sure how this hasn’t come up on the blog yet (because it’s all I talk about in real life), but I’m going to Miami for Thanksgiving!!! Adam and I are meeting my parents there tomorrow for four days of nostalgic, sunny, fun. We don’t have any family in Florida (we’re spending Turkey Day at a steak/seafood place) but my parents loved visiting when Adam and I went to UM and they thought it’d be fun to recreate a trip.
I’ve been excited for weeks but I hadn’t actually thought logistics until this morning. Today’s to-do list includes –
Where are you spending Thanksgiving?
I started my morning with the most decadent oatmeal.
I know a lot of food bloggers use that word a lot, decadent, but this bowl seriously was. I had to use up the open pumpkin but wasn’t in the mood for its slightly bitter flavor and I just kept adding ingredients to cover it up.
What I ended up with was –
Dang. And amazingly my least favorite additions were the chips and Biscoff; they strong-armed the other flavors in their bites. My most favorite was the cottage cheese. I’ve used that before but I don’t think I realized how much I like it. I need to put that on the grocery list more often!
Don’t forget, you have until 2pm EST to enter my Duncan Hines giveaway.
It’s been quite a night for a Thursday, quite a night! In addition to making a banging dinner and a revolutionary dessert, I also managed to get some school work done; booyah!
On the agenda for tonight were quick and easy quesadillas.
But you know I did some snacking first. Adam and I split some fun – a snowman cookie from Sweet Tooth,
and a Weyerbacher’s Imperial Pumpkin Beer.
Both were quite tasty; I ate a little less than half of the cookie, and a little more than half of the beer.
Wokka, wokka, wokka, wokka…..
In between sips, I sautéed up 1/2 cup each frozen corn and black beans in some tomatillo salsa.
This was delicious, and what didn’t fit on my quesadilla was eaten out of a bowl with a bit of sour cream.
I topped a tortilla with my veggie mixture and 1.5oz of sharp cheddar, folded, and gave a quick spin in a greased frying pan.
To die for! This was cheesy and melty and salty, all while still being healthy. I previous thought that nothing could top Moe’s, but this was definitely better!
Dessert was pretty darn good too.
That would be low-fat cottage cheese, topped with half a banana, drizzled with caramel sauce.
Sometimes I even impress myself.
Eaten whilst watching “Modern Family,” which seriously slays me with how funny it is!
What do you put on your quesadillas?
I ended up not having a bowl of ice-cream last night – though I did have two handfuls of dark chocolate almonds – mostly because I was so excited about this bowl:
I’d been excited about breakfast for 12-straight hours and I was not disappointed!
I started by whipping up a double batch of stove top banana oats.
That’s 1/2 cup oatmeal, 1/2 cup skim milk, 1/2 cup water, 1 banana, 1 pinch salt.
After I removed tomorrow’s serving (I’ve got an oat smoothie in the works), I stirred in ~1/3 cup low-fat cottage cheese.
Plated (bowled?), topped with strawberries,
and a Nutella spoon.
<– Goodness!
My ‘nana-berry-cheese-nutella oats were muy bella.
I’m loving the texture of that cottage cheese and you really can’t go wrong with nutella.
And now I’ve got a warm/full belly for my 20* walk to school! I have a couple of meetings, my final Anatomy class, and a trip to the gym planned before my Orgo Lab shut-down at 6pm. I made an ice-cream date with the husband, which means he’ll be picking me up; thank goodness!
When it’s snowy and icy outside do you walk or drive? If you are normally a walker, what temperature drives you to your car?
We actually have a 2nd car now, but I didn’t purchase a parking pass for my school so instead it’s turning into a snow drift.
Christmas time is here…
Well, not quite, but we are watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and we decked the halls so it’s feeling pretty festive around here.
We don’t have much in the way of decorations (and we didn’t even put them all out), but even a few little touches will help you feel seasonal.
Even my breakfast felt a little special.
I made the traditional stove top oats (with 1/4 cup oats, 1cup skim milk/Silk almond milk, a pinch of salt, and 1 banana) and stirred in ~1/3 cup each canned pumpkin and low-fat cottage cheese.
Topped with some coconut “snow.”
Yummy, yummy. Although somehow I made waaaay too much; I left almost half of it in my bowl.
We’ve got a lot of work and fun on the agenda, got to get to it!
Have you decorated for the holidays yet?
P.S. Don’t forget to enter my OhNuts! giveaway!
It was another fabulous Spring day! Sorry for another late post, but it was a busy day too. I had 8am lab this morning so I packed up breakfast last night.
Cottage cheese and berries in a pre-fab to-go cup. Last night I topped the last ~1.5serving of cottage cheese with some frozen berries and left it to defrost in the fridge.
This morning I just had to grab and go.
We did a qualitative analysis – a series of tests on an unknown sample to determine what its chemical components are – in lab today and it was actually a lot of fun. The real fun came when the husband picked me up; we spent a fabulous afternoon exploring.
We dropped the car off for breaks/oil/tires and slowly wandered downtown on the walk home. We saw several pretty things,
discovered an exciting candy store,
and we got a few fun things to go, like this candy bar I won’t be tasting –
and the husband bought a candy Tiffany’s box. For $1.50 it was made of white and milk chocolate and stuffed with hazelnuts.
My bite –
(If you are wondering why MY Tiffany’s wedding ring isn’t on my damn finger in the picture it’s because I don’t wear jewelry to labs in which we use strong acids and strong bases)
Later we stopped in at Pearl Street for lunch. Pearl Street makes microbrews in-house and is a ton of fun. I love their glass options –
I went with a Split (10 oz) of the seasonal raspberry brew.
And for lunch I ordered the Fresh Apple and Pear Salad.
Apples and pears sautéed in rum and brown sugar served over mixed greens and topped with toasted pecans and fresh goat cheese.
I had brown sugar rum vinaigrette on the side. However, the salad was so packed and tasty that I went with the fork dip method of adding dressing, rather than dumping it on. So yummy! I snagged a few of Adam’s fries and they were pretty tasty as well.
Not gonna lie though, the big diet coke we picked up on the walk home was my favorite part of lunch 😀
All total we walked ~2miles in beautiful weather and it was an absolutely perfect afternoon.
Once we got home, I spent a couple hours working on Anthropology. I was having a major snack attack; sometimes nibbling on something helps me to keep my focus, but I’m not sure you can call these snacks brain food. Pb M&Ms (these are gone now, thank God),
and a vegan blondie I brought home from ‘Snice.
We had gym plans but our “long” walk left my leg feeling like today was not the day to brave the gym stairs, and I’m in a bit of a funky mood so making dinner didn’t sound fun. So now we have plans to shower, eat popcorn, and cuddle up in front of Buffy. Sounds like the perfect evening to follow a perfect day.
Do you snack while you work? Does it improve your focus or serve as a distraction?
It’s been a good day of family fun. Sadly I had a ton of school work to do so a lot of my time was spent with my nose buried in a book. I managed to sneak in a few a few strength training exercises as well; I packed a resistance band for just that purpose.
For breakfast I arranged a little bowl.
4oz of 2% cottage cheese, medium sliced banana, Multigrain Cheerios.
And for lunch I roasted up a huge plate of veggies.
Broccoli and cauliflower.
I made some for my sister-in-law too; she’d never tried roasted veggies before and she ended up loving them. I guess I’m influencing all sorts of people!
I dipped my hand into this two or three times as well!
We ended up going to an all you can eat Chinese buffet for dinner. I’m not the biggest buffet fan and this one was seriously lacking in veggies but I made do. I ge that people want to eat crap (and I ate my fair share of it), but I don’t understand having such a variety of food and not managing to squeeze in a single veggie! I was glad I ate a produce-heavy lunch.
Plate 1 –
I ate all of the (not so good) green beans and half of the chicken.
Plate 2 = a bunch of fried stuff. I’m not sure why the camera randomly ate this picture, I guess my Sony likes crab rangoon.
Plate 3 –
My favorite! I was mmmning and yumming through this whole plate of fruit.
There were some tasty looking desserts but we planned to go to Rita’s after dinner.
I’ve been so excited about trying to find one of these because the menu is a lot like Jeramiah’s in Orlando and the husband totally came through and spotted one today. I got a small gelati; mint chip italian ice and twist custard.
So good, I was basically swooning.
Everyone else is eyeing the board games but I have a ton more work to get through tomorrow so I think I’ll turn in soon. Hope everyone is having a good weekend!
What’s your feeling on buffets?
Eating Chalk 