Like Ice Cream Topped with Honey

Good evening!  I hope everyone had a great day.  Mine had some hits and misses.  Like apparently I’m missing the gene that allows you to cook kale without burning the life out of it –

My lunch ended up being a tiny plate of roasted cauliflower, boo.

But I hit the nail on the head with my latest layered look –

My great aunt thrifted me this cashmere cardigan when I moved to NYC and I love it.  The buttons are circular except for the one over my heart.

I LOVE little details like that.  I am obsessed with Volcom because they always do nifty things with the stitching and inner patterns.

Classes went ago, I’m a couple of days behind on my Chemistry reading and I was pretty confused in class today.  I’ve got loads and loads of work to do this weekend.

You know that I inhaled a blondie the minute I walked through the door.  I’m making the husband take these to his friends at school tomorrow so they won’t be in the house any more!!

Dinner was pulled straight from the freezer.

I randomly bought this Kashi Mayan Harvest meal awhile ago so I was thrilled to notice recently that it was vegan.

Ok, I know that looks disgusting, but YUM.  I love plantains so freaking much; I can’t believe it’s less than 2weeks until I’ll be home eating them for real.

For dessert I put two blondies on a plate.

And I’ve told my sweet tooth that the kitchen is closed for the night.

P.S. The title relates to nothing except for the fact that I’ve been singing Lady Gaga ‘Beautiful, Dirty, Rich’ all day.

Dreena Burton, I Love You

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!  Can we talk about the fricking Maple Pecan Sticky Blondies?!?!?!

I only had 1/2 as much of the pecan topping as the recipe called for – the best part – and they were delicious.  When I make them again with the full amount I’m pretty sure my head is going to explode.  They are chewy, and almost spongy, the topping is the world’s best mix of sweet and salty and the molasses adds a fabulous layer of complexity.  I had two.

And the minute I woke up this morning, before brushing my teeth, and even before I peed, I ate another one!  Buy Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan.  Do it NOW.  Make these blondies.  If you are worried about the “strange” ingredients don’t be.  I subbed out the ‘regular’ stuff for half of the ingredients in the recipe and it worked out fine.

Gah!  I’m still kind of not over it, but I can’t talk about blondies all day, you want to hear about breakfast. 

Last night I mixed up 1/3 cup oats, 1/3 cup plain skim soy milk, 1/4 cup soy vanilla yogurt, and 1T maple syrup.  I am not a soy yogurt fan but it was leftover from the blondies.

This morning I topped the bowl of with a sliced banana and a spoonful of pb.

Pretty tasty.

I have class this afternoon and leftovers are on the dinner agenda, overall it looks like a low-key day.  By the way – I’ve decided NOT to run before my race.  I am not going to be able to increase my fitness in 10days, but I can give my leg a chance to rest up and heal.

Blondies or brownies, which are your favorite?  To me brownies = ick, blondies = yum.  I will say though, that ALL of my favorite blondies have been vegan.

I Love Green Monsters So Much I Want to Marry Them

I’ll get back to the title in a moment.  First, did you read my last post?  It explains all about the situation with my half marathon.  Please do read it, I would love some input from my wise readers.

This morning I stretched breakfast and lunch out and together across 3 small snack-meals.  First things first, a lemon poppyseed cookie.

Then a small bowl of Kashi Go Lean Crunch with plain skim soy milk.

Finally, my new love – I made my first green monster!

I blended 1 frozen banana with a squeeze of honey, 1cup frozen spinach, and 1cup oj.  Holy yum!  This was tangy and healthy and awesome.

I’ve got to run now to go pick up Adam on my way to school.  He needs the car but he is going to sit in on Anthro with me this afternoon first and I am so excited!  I’m probably going to be late at school waiting for Adam and we have some may-jor cleaning planned for this evening so don’t get to anxious for an evening post 🙂

Have you tried gms yet?  What do you think?

I’m a Chickpea Kind of Chick

I did go to the Spot as planned, but first I had a few other things on the agenda.  Like eat a lemon poppyseed cookie –

And do the quickest gym trip ever: 11minutes (1.14miles) on the treadmill followed by 10minutes of strength training.  I was on a tight schedule and I didn’t want to do much anyways because I’ve got the strangest interval session ever planned for tomorrow morning.

My study session went very well, and while I was there I ended up accidentally ordering a FEAST.

The diet coke was obvious, but the roasted red pepper hummus sounded tasty so I ordered that as well.  I had no idea it was going to be so big!

I ate 3 breadsticks and ~2-3T of hummus, thankfully Adam showed up later to finish off the rest.

I enjoyed a cara cara orange when I got home,

and then I made a delicious dinner, officially checking off all my to-do’s for today, yay!  We had the 2nd half of this box of falafel mix to use up,

but this time we fried the falafels.  Which was hella fun because it meant we got to use our tongs for the first time.

Frying produced such better results than when we baked them.  Our side dish was delicious too, against all odds.  I made Roasted Cauliflower, Chickpeas, and Olives from Cooking Light, but I realized to late that my olives were not pitted.  I went ahead with the dish, sans olives, but I cooked it for about twice as long as the recipe recommended.

All total dinner was a raging success!

Pretty good for a Monday 🙂

What is your favorite way to eat chick peas? I like falafel the best, then hummus, but I want to experiment more with roasted.  That method is taking blogworld by storm and I think if I slow-roast it could become a favorite.

When Life Hands You Lemons

It’s been a packed (but great) day and I have to leave the house in exactly 15minutes to pick up the husband from a hospital shift so I’ll make this speedy.

Our last night of family time was a lot of fun.  We watched “Zombieland” which was actually pretty fantastic.  I did some pretty serious damage on these chips and salsa (2-2.5servings) before I told the husband to take them away from me.

Then I switched to a much more munchable baby carrots.

For breakfast the boys hit up McDonalds, I want to call their food greasy but it’s hard to judge when you ask for a diet coke before 10am.

I was starving so I made up 2packets of oats.

Mmmn!

We streeeeeeetched out our goodbyes but finally got on the road around 11, our trip was an easy 4hours.  When it was my turn to drive I ate a medium french fry from Wendys.

Really quick – the point of the vegan challenge is sooo not to eat french fries but my only options were fast food that I could eat while driving and I was starving.

I can’t even tell you how proud I am of the dinner I pulled together with our empty fridge.

It was so healthy and tasty, rocked my socks!

Quick quick – while the husband cooked some balsmatti rice I marinated 1/2 a package of chopped tempeh in apple cider vinegar and tamari.  Then I sautéed an onion on the stove, and added in a can of collard greens.  Finally I poured the tempeh and marinade into the skillet, added a pinch of cornstarch and cooked.  The bowls were rice, greens, tempeh, + your choice of seasonings.  I did a big dollop of chilli garlic paste.

Perfection!

I had to drop off the husband at his shift and then I did some restocking at the grocery store.  On my drive home I grabbed a  Simply Lemonade.

For $1.50 I was pretty darn impressed with this.

And it was the perfect match with the baking I did when I got home!

Lemon Poppyseed Cookies from Eat Drink and Be Vegan.

I had two and was, as usual, blown away by the awesomeness of the recipes in that book.  Sweet and tangy and yummy.

Now I’ve got to split, I hope y’all had a great weekend!!!

Hello from Ohio

Howdy folks, happy Friday!  Sorry for such a late post, our internet has been going in and out intermittently and this morning it was finally just off.  We picked a great weekend to be at someone else’s house computerwise, right now I’m using my brother-in-law’s internet 🙂

It’s been kind of long crazy day.  I did manage to make it to the gym though.  Since dinner last night looked like this –

I ate a pack of Luna Sport Moons on the walk to the gym.

I then I did a quick 2miles (we were already running late) on the treadmill.  All total with warm up/cool down my stats were 2.3miles and 25minutes.  I was so happy to have gone but now my left leg hurts so badly.  I’m going to do a post soon talking about the running situation.

After a quick shower, and an even quicker packing session, we were on the road.  We got into Ohio right at dinner time so we met the family at a local restaurant.  I was so hungry I ate my fruit bowl before I even remembered to snap a picture.

Even though we were at an “American” style dinner (the rest of the family had bacon cheese potato skins and french onion soup) I managed to find a good vegan meal.

Roasted veggies with terriyaki sauce on garlic rice.  I demolished it.

My sil and niece actually had a small party to go to after dinner but my bil took Adam and I to pick up some movies and games.  We stopped at the grocery store for snacks and booze and I managed to pick up some produce as well.  I have a bag of snacks from homw though so I’m not too worried about the food situation.

As I write this I’m nibbling the other half of my vegan chocolate peanut butter rice krispie.

I might have a few snacks while we all hang out but I’ll do a recap in the morning.  I hope everyone’s week ended well!

What is your favorite diner order?  I order blintzes whenever I can, or a good tuna melt.  I’m also a big fan of handspun black and white milkshakes.

Jump Up and Catch A Kungry

*If you can tell me where the title of my post comes from you will have forever earned my deepest respect.

It’s been a strange day; I slept terribly last night and I’ve been out of sorts all day.  Plus I’ve been soooooooo fricking hungry!  Boo.  My hunger couldn’t distract me out of another awesome layered outfit though.

I know breakfast is a strange time for dessert, but I picked this up at the Co-op yesterday and I just couldn’t wait anymore!

I had half of the Vegan Chocolate Peanut Butter Rice Krispie (on the adorable little plate from my secret valentine).

Even that was too intense though, I ended up bagging up half (so I ate a 1/4) to bring to the husband.

For lunch I had fries and chips.

The healthy kinds!  Kale crisps,

and oven baked sweet potato slices with garlic powder.

How gorgeous are these guys?!?

I should have eaten more calories though because by the time I made it through my first class I was so hungry I wanted to gnaw off my own arm!  The vegan choices at school were less that stellar, I need to always pack a healthy snack.  I had a single serving package of peanuts.

And I split this candy and chips (the unhealthy kind) with the husband.

By the time I got through with my second class my hunger had turned into a dull ache.  Or maybe that was just the aftershock from my terrible test grades.  I knew my sickness (and, ahem, lack of preparation) were going to kill me.  I got an 86% in Anthro (class average was a C-) and an 80% in Chemistry (class average was a 59).  At least they posted semester grade averages with Chem and I still have a solid A.

Now that we are home I’m so hungry that I’m not even hungry any more.  Does this ever happen to anyone else?  I’m so uncomfortable that I probably won’t even eat dinner, I wasn’t the hugest fan of the lentil soup anyways.  The recipe was a total success – Adam was in love with it – it’s just not my thing.  I might make another batch of cocoa though…the husband hasn’t had a chance to taste it warm yet! 😉

Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

Good evening everyone!  I feel exhausted and gross (still?!?!) so I’m keeping this quick in the hopes that I get to bed soon.  I always say that, it never happens, and still I keep on hoping.  It’d be like not clapping for fairies to admit I’m an “early to bed early to rise” loser.

Our grocery trip went well.  The communal coin jar was full and Coin-Starring it paid for our groceries 🙂

This afternoon Adam and did all sorts of healthy stuff like take a long nap and split this Jokerz bar (i.e. a vegan Snickers).

It was good but not great, I’m not sure why they went with mockolate instead of just dark chocolate, I had about 1/3.

For dinner I made Tomato, Dill, Lentil Soup from Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan.  It had a 60minute simmer time though so I had a small bowl of cereal while I waited.

1/2 cup Kashi Go Lean Crunch with plain, reduced fat soymilk.  Two notes here – 1. I know Kashi has honey in it; honey and gelatine are still on the menu here, even during the vegan challenge.  2. Always measure your cereal.  You guys know I am not any sort of dieter, but I always measure my cereal.  Many (healthy) varieties are still calorie dense and it is such an easy item to overeat.

Followed by a small serving (1/2cup) of the aforementioned soup.

I’m not gonna lie, I was saving myself for dessert.

Thank You Angela!  To Die For Cocoa, from Oh She Glows

·         Ingredients:

  •  
    • 3/4 cup coconut milk (full strength, not light!)
    • 3/4 cup unsweetened almond milk (or any milk)  I used plain, fat free soy
    • 1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
    • Pinch of sea salt to bring out the sweetness
    • 3 tablespoons of maple syrup
    • marshmallows and cacao nibs/chocolate chips to garnish (optional)

Directions: Throw all ingredients into a pot and whisk like crazy. Bring to a boil and then simmer on low for several minutes while whisking to remove clumps.

I poured it in one big mug but I’ll probably drink 1/2 – 3/4 and then put it in the fridge for the husband.  A perfect (super) sweet note to end the day! 

What do you do with your lose change?