It’s Getting Chili
When I left the student center today I was greeted with flurries of snow.
Now I’m staring out the library windows at a relentless downpour of snow!
It sure is pretty but I am NOT excited to walk to the bus stop at 7 PM. Especially since I lost a glove today. Yes, that’s 3 pairs of gloves lost in the past couple of months. Don’t judge.
What I am looking forward to, however, is the chili I’ve got simmering away in my slow cooker as we speak.
If it looks like it’s about to overflow out of the pot, it’s because it is.
I used this Cooking Light recipe and realized it serves 15, with 1.5 cups per serving. Party at my place! Each serving clocks in at 124 calories. Bottom line being that I can eat a ton and not feel guilty.
Hope it turns out good!
Breakfast did, at least.
Looks a little bland but I promise it was anything but.
Mix-ins included walnuts and cranberries. I totally take back everything bad I’ve ever said about walnuts. I thought I hated them but it turns out they’re pretty good!
Now about those pecans…
Topped with:
- coconut butter (LOVE)
- maple syrup
- splash of almond milk (because I let my oatmeal sit for too long while I was dicing carrots and it got kinda dry)
This bowl rocked, despite the missing nut butter.
I’m ready for a repeat!
And I wouldn’t mind having another bowl of this soup either.
Joey made this last night. It’s a bean, corn and quinoa chowder, compliments of Emily.
I thought is was so pretty. If soup can be pretty.
This was my first time having red quinoa and I must say I really enjoyed the nuttier flavor. The texture was a little different too or maybe I’m just imagining that.
I’ll be honest, I really wanted to salt this bad boy but I’m trying to cut back on how much salt I eat. I usually add it to everything, including oatmeal, which I don’t think is all that weird!
The best part (well, besides the taste) was that I got to use my thermos!
Heated the soup chowder at 9:30 AM before I left for school and it was still hot when I ate it at 1 PM. Awesome!
Looks like I’m in for quite the adventure getting home tonight. Beanie has been on the bus for an hour and hasn’t gotten out of Boulder yet!! Looks like I’ll be begging Joey to come pick me up 🙂
Happy Thursday.
The Long and Windy Road
I’m feeling especially chatty today. I blame Starbucks.
The long weekend is over but I don’t have class till 2 on Tuesday, so it still felt like the weekend when I woke up after 10 hours of sleep. Ten hours of sleep + coffee = wayyy too much energy!
Energy enough to wipe out breakfast and a run this morning.
Extra banana-y oats because I had one pretty ripe banana left to use up.
Topped with granola, mixed berry compote and lots of peanut butter. Okay, it looks like more than it really was because my homemade batch is super drippy. I’m not complaining.
I’m pretty sure I could have busted out a long run (7-mile route maybe??) if it hadn’t been for the wind. As soon as I turned the corner at mile 1 it felt like I was running into a tornado! I was really proud of myself for fighting through it. Then I turned around and it was like there was no wind at all and I was back to feeling awesome. If only the whole run had been with the wind instead of against it.
Came home and did some vinyasa flow (LOVE) + a few minutes of abs.
Then it was time to assemble lunch and dinner. I’m trying to come to terms with the fact that I’m not much of a recipe writer/creator but I’m pretty good at assembling/pairing things together.
Case in point: The Lunch Salad
Killed two birds with one stone by pan searing some brussel sprouts for dinner and carrots for lunch.
Also in the salad:
- Raw broccoli
- Walnuts
- Raisins
Reasons salads are awesome:
- They’re fast
- They’re easy (just toss anything and everything in)
- They’re versatile
- Great way to use up leftovers
- They take lots of time to eat
- They’re filling and healthy at the same time
I could go on and on.
My tahini was almost out so I just added mustard, balsamic, pepper and a dash of soy sauce right into the jar and shook. Now I have extra dressing for the rest of the week without dirtying another container.
Pour.
And shake. <— Another great thing about salads: They’re easy to coat in dressing.
Tangent: I’m using a laptop I checked out in the library right now and it’s a Mac, which I DO NOT know how to use. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to resize my pictures. Help!
Tangent #2: I’m running out of space for pictures because I didn’t know how to resize until a few months ago. Does anyone know what I’m supposed to do with all my old pictures that are NOT downsized? Eek!
Off to read some theory on music <— Sounds exciting, no?
Glamourous Food
I want to thank you all for being understanding of my lack of motivation yesterday. You all are so supportive 🙂
Surprisingly, I was already ready to blog again today! This is a good sign.
While I was staked out at Starbucks on Saturday I got around to peeking into my new volume of Glamour. To this day, I have NO idea who ordered this magazine for me or who’s been paying for it and I’ve been getting it for at least two years.
I’m not complaining.
Turns out there’s recipes in the back, so I thought I’d give one a try.
What the heck is a tagine, you ask. And how the heck do you pronounce that?
Well, I’m still not sure about the pronunciation but I can tell you it’s a Moroccan stew of sorts, cooked in one of these.
Hmmm, Glamour didn’t mention using any odd cooking contraptions but this dish turned out quite well without one.
Vegetable Tagine
Serves 4
Ingredients:
- 2 T olive oil
- 1 small yellow onion, chopped
- 2 t ground ginger
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3/4 t cumin
- 1 T tomato paste
- 4-5 cups sweet potato, peeled and diced (~1.5 large sweet potatoes)
- 3-4 cups cauliflower, chopped (one head)
- 1/2 t salt
- 2 cups vegetable broth (or a little more if you’re making couscous/rice/quinoa/millet and want some extra liquid)
- 2/3 cup mixed green olives, pitted and chopped
- 2 cinnamon sticks
Directions:
- Heat oil over medium heat in a pot. Add onion, ginger and garlic and saute 5 minutes.
- Add cumin and tomato paste and cook 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add potatoes, cauliflower and salt and mix to coat in tomato mixture.
- Add broth, olives and cinnamon sticks and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered (or fully covered if your boyfriend is cleaning the microwave overhead and you don’t want spaghettio remains in your dinner) for 20 minutes or until veggies are soft.
- Remove cinnamon sticks and serve with grain of your choice if you’d like.
Oh.yeah.
I thought this was delicious and filling without being too heavy.
My favorite part? Gah, that’s hard considering my love for sweet potatoes but I honestly loved the addition of olives. That may have been Joey’s least favorite part.
You can tell I really like something if I eat it for dinner and still want more for lunch the next day. Or that might be a sign that I’m feeling lazy and don’t want to cook up something new for lunch. Anyways, I promise I really liked it.
Post-yoga lunch = veggie tagine with a cameo apple sprinkled in cinnamon.
Believe it or not, there’s still tagine leftover. Glamour says this recipe serves 2 but I had a full bowl last night and Joey had 2!
Way back before all this tagine and apple eating I had breakfast and a run.
Even pictures of coconut butter and cinnamon maple almond butter make me drool.
Do you see that cranberry blood ring?
Scarf.
It.
Down.
After breakfast I went on a 3.2 mile run. I didn’t run with my Garmin but we’ve run that course so many times I know it’s 3.2 miles. I felt gooood, until I remembered I used to be able to run so much longer. And then I remembered lots of people can’t even run one mile and I felt pretty proud of myself.
Runners lunge felt pretty good during yoga 🙂
Back to school, I go!
Lauren Loves Good Food 