Round Up
For some reason I’ve found myself at the end of the week with a bunch of leftover stuff. And by stuff I mean stories, pictures and workouts. Lucky for you all, I’m now writing a round up post to update you on all the happenings that didn’t make the cut earlier in the week.
1. Valentine’s Day Mud Pie
It’s not Valentine’s Day without a big slice of chocolate ice cream, fudge and whipped cream. Joey and I devoured this.
2. New oatmeal glass
I have absolutely no idea what Chimay is but I do know this glass is perfect for oatmeal and really, that’s all that matters.
Gahhh, this was gooood.
And I obviously had too much fun photographing it. It needed time to cool down, okay?
3. Hit salad
As in salads are either a hit or a miss for me in terms of being filling. This was a hit. Or maybe the two pieces of pesto pizza I ate were the hit.
4. Biggest brussel sprout ever
Nuff said.
5. Whole Foods robbed me
Everytime I go to WF and the credit card machine asks “Is this amount okay?” I’m tempted to say no because it’s always more than I expect it to be.
I went to the “Grains, Beans, Greens” bar and got lentils, wheatberries, chard, tomato sauce, asparagus and tempeh.
To be honest, I was really disappointed in this meal, Whole Foods. It was bland and watery. Thank goodness tempeh tastes like heaven.
6. Have you ever seen a celery root??
It’s freaky.
Told you.
I needed it to make a roasted white vegetable soup. Would you like the recipe? Celery root is a beast to peel. Mostly because it didn’t fit in my hand and I couldn’t get a good grip. I kept throwing it on accident!
8. I’m in the midst of a tedious “diet project”
Or so my health and nutrition teacher calls it. We have to keep track of everything we eat and drink for 3 days (Thursday-Saturday) and enter it into a program that calculates the nutrition information of our food. It’s interesting but so much work especially when I have to create new recipes from scratch.
9. Exercise Round Up
Monday: 3 mile run
Tuesday: 2.7 mile run (from my apartment to my car, which I forgot to pick up after Joey took me to dinner on Monday, oops!)
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: hot yoga…sooooo good!
Friday: 3 mile run
I hope the sun stays out so I can get in more outdoor running this weekend.
Happy Friday! 🙂
Salmon and Settings
I had such a lovely Sunday afternoon at my parents’. Okay, let’s be honest it wasn’t just the afternoon, I hung around all day. I may have overstayed my welcome but I can’t turn down homemade meals, especially when I don’t have to put any effort into them. Moms are the best, I tell ya.
Now let me be clear about something here. My mom hates fish. Always has, always will. You would think that she would like all seafood considering she’s form New Orleans but she just can’t stand fish. Even the smell causes her to make some pretty horrible faces and my Dad is forced to cook it outside.
So know that when I showed up for lunch on Sunday and discovered we were having salmon, it was a big deal, although she made sure to sit at the kitchen counter instead of at the table where the odors might reach her.
I’m such a fish novice. I don’t know anything about the different kinds but I do know salmon does smell and taste pretty fishy.
This salad with goat cheese, beets and orange vinaigrette never disappoints, however.
With warm, soft, doughy garlic bread.
After lunch I watched Joey mess around with settings on our new camera. Some of the pictures weren’t half bad.
What, like you don’t have a beaded armadillo bobblehead?
Very Western looking, don’t you think?
“Sepia tone lovin'” <– Gross I can’t believe I just quotes Jack Johnson. I hate him!
Then I had some fun trying to photograph the puppy.
I could get used to being fed by my mom and playing with that puppy all day 🙂
Do you eat fish? What’s your favorite kind? I need to be educated!
Apple Pie Oatmeal Bake & a Cupcake Disaster Story
Remember how good those homemade red velvet cupcakes looked? You don’t? Let me refresh your memory.
I’m drooling, how about you? There are few things in this world better than my mom’s red velvet cake. For years I thought I didn’t like it but then I had a revelation and realized it may be my favorite cake ever. Move over Betty Crocker, you’re funfetti cake has met its match.
Valentine’s Day seemed like the perfect time to pull out the recipe and try my hand at making my own cupcake version.
Friends, I don’t know what happened but it was not good. Upon opening the oven I found a pile of caved in red cake batter. I made these with my mom mind you and neither of us could understand what had happened.
If you’re an experienced baker, please enlighten me. We had a few ideas.
- New oven that we’d never baked a cake in — maybe the temperature was off
- Old baking soda
- Old vinegar — we’re talking years here
- New bag of flour
It occurred to me that I should have snapped a picture of the disaster or at least a picture of my mom and I sitting on the floor in front of the oven as we watched a second batch fall but alas, I never think of these things at the time.
Believe me, it wasn’t pretty. Although I think my mom still ate about 3.
Flour, vinegar and baking soda were all re-purchased and thankfully the second batch came out perfectly fine. I maintain that they worked because I actually had no hand in making them. I must be bad luck 😦
In the end, I had a homemade batch of cupcakes (even if they weren’t homemade by me) and that’s all that really matters, right?
Lucky for me, my Valentine’s Day breakfast was much more successful. I’m much better at baking with oatmeal.
Baked Apple Pie Oatmeal:
- 1/3 cup rolled oats
- 1/2 banana
- 1/2 apple of your choice, chopped
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- 1 flax egg
- 1 teaspoon chia seeds
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 3 tablespoons almond milk
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Mix 1 tablespoon ground flax with 3 tablespoons water and let sit for 5 minutes to make a flax egg.
- Mash banana with the back of a fork.
- Add remaining ingredients and the flax egg and mix.
- Pour into a greased ramekin or any other small baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.
I’ve made a similar breakfast bake before and it came out much sturdier than this one. I thought I’d made a mess when I flipped it out of the ramekin but I flipped it back over and much to my delight it looked completely fine.
Conversation hearts are my favorite 🙂
All this bake needed was some nut butter on top. It was sweet enough thanks to the addition of the maple syrup, although drizzling it on top might be more fun 😛
Melty chocolate hazelnut buttery loooove.
Email me? The messages on these candies are so funny. I wish they had one that said “Comment me.”
Nut butter waterfalls are always welcome.
I’m so glad I got my workout done that morning so I could enjoy my dinner date with my Valentine after work 🙂
P.S. Thank you all so much for the wonderful comments on my guest post. I was glad to see your homemade ravioli fears put to rest 🙂
Hope you’re all having a good day!
Lauren Loves Good Food 
