Confessions
No, not of a teenage drama queen. I’ll leave that to Lindsey Lohan, although I do confess to seeing that movie when it was in the theater. Embarrassing.
I confess that I sometimes write my posts for the day before I’ve even eaten everything I’m posting about. Like right now, I’m about to post about dinner but I’ve yet to eat it or even take pictures of it.
I just assume everything I eat will be good. And often times I have to go back and erase everything I guessed would be true about my future eats.
I confess I got SO much done this morning. Including breakfast.
Standard banana oats topped with peanut butter apples, mixed berry compote and nibs.
I confess that I usually just eat nibs so I can write about nibs because I like the word nibs.
I confess that I had a to do list that looked like this this morning.
- Go to Whole Foods
- Eat breakfast
- Empty dishwasher
- Make lunch
- Finish homework
- Abs and arms challenge
- Clean the horrendous amount of dishes I’ve created making breakfast and lunch
- Post!
I don’t even know what I was doing for 6 hours at work on Wednesday considering I didn’t get any homework finished. This includes blog homework.
I confess that I never wash my quinoa.
I made Angela’s Mandarin & Maple Spiced Quinoa and I confess it would have been much better had it not slightly tasted like dirt…
I also confess that I never wash my quinoa because I don’t know how. It’s too small to use a regular strainer and when I use paper towel it just sticks and I make a huge mess. A little help?
I confess I gobbled up a good 2.5 cups of quinoa despite the dirt and plan on making this again.
I planned on heating up the quinoa then adding the oranges later but I thought it tasted just fine at room temp.
I confess I only spent $5 at WF today. Impressive, no?
I confess that I left my apartment at 12 pm and my to do list looked like this
Go to Whole FoodsEat breakfastEmpty dishwasherMake lunchFinish homeworkAbs and arms challengeClean the horrendous amount of dishes I’ve created making breakfast and lunchPost!
I confess that I’ve totally forgone eating my own homecooking on Thursday nights and rely solely on my mom to feed me. Thanks, Mom.
Say you’re having crab cakes and I’ll promise to be knocking on your front door.
Say you’re serving Udi’s potato salad + asparagus in addition to the crab cakes and I’ll even be willing to return your own food processor to you.
Yes, I surrendered the beloved cuisanart to my mom, which I guess is fair considering she’s the rightful owner.
Papers are officially done and all I have to do is make it through 2 classes then I’m on break 🙂
Hope you’re having a great Friday too!
Homemade
There have been numerous homemade food projects going on in my life.
The first being REAL homemade Scottish oats. All I did was toss some steel cut oats in the food processor and blended away.
1/3 cup went into my morning oats.
As well as 1/3 cup pumpkin, 1/2 a banana, 1t flax, pumpkin pie spice and… tombstones?
Or maybe those are just graham crackers topped with peanut butter. Either way they were delicious.
Lunch involved some homemade egg salad. For some reason I’ve been craving it lately but I waited to find a mayo-less recipe. I used one from (never home) maker.
I hard-boiled the eggs the night before then stuck them in the fridge.
Apparently my egg peeling skills are a little rusty. Okay, a lot.
Despite my bad peeling (bad as in a think I peeled away half of the egg with the shell) the recipe turned out good.
Ate it on an english muffin and it totally satisfied my egg salad craving!
I chopped up an apple and carrots and bagged some almonds and cashews for an afternoon snack and by afternoon I mean I ate them at 5 pm and didn’t eat dinner till 8.
But oh was I ever looking forward to dinner!
Chana Masala
(adapted from here)
- 1T olive oil
- 4 cups chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 can crushed tomatoes + juice
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1T ground coriander
- 2t cumin
- 1/2t cayenne pepper
- 1t turmeric
- 2t paprika
- 1t garam masala
- 1 cup water
- 1/2t salt
- juice of 1/2 a lemon
- 1-2t sugar (optional)
Directions:
Heat oil. Add onion and garlic and heat over medium heat till browned (~5 minutes). Turn down heat and add coriander, cumin, cayenne, turmeric, paprika and garam masala. Cook 1-2 minutes then add tomatoes. Add water and chickpeas. Simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Add salt, lemon and optional sugar.
Serve with rice if you want.
Joey made this on Tuesday night and I had the leftovers again on Wednesday. I think I’ve eaten about 2 cans of chickpeas in the last couple of days!
Snacks on the side.
Note that I took this picture at 4:15 yesterday and there is barely any sunlight!!
Off to get some work done!
Any Harry Potter fans going to the midnight showing tonight?? I’ve done it a few times and sitting in the theater for 3 hours with a bunch of HP fanatics waiting for the movie to start is always my favorite part. Mostly, because I can barely keep my eyes open once the movie starts!
Carrots, Green Beans, Asparagus oh my
Joey wakes up an hour before me on Tuesdays but without a phone I had no alarm and just decided to get up with him (although truth be told he was still in bed when I left to go work out).
I was not in the mood for cold or wind at 7:30 am so I just stuck to the treadmill. Have I mentioned my knee has been feeling stiff once in a while? It’s my surgery knee too. Uh oh…
Made it through 3 miles and all of the day walking around before it randomly started hurting around 6 pm. Very weird.
Also completed Day 1 of Week 2 for my abs and arm challenge. 30 push ups and 80 sit ups — I didn’t know I did that many!! Awesome.
After getting in a good sweaty workout is was oat time.
Our bananas are not ripe enough yet so I’ve been mixing in 1/4 cup applesauce at the very end to sweeten and fluff up my oats. I tasted a spoonful today and after mmm-ing and ahh-ing I realized it’s not unsweetened. No wonder it’s so good!
Also in the mix was 1/4 cup pumpkin. I planned on adding some spices but totally forgot. Oh well.
Topped with:
- Mixed berry compote — almost out and pretty excited to try a new jam
- 1T cinnamon granola
- 1t maple syrup
While my oats were cooking away on the stove I was chopping/prepping veggies for lunch.
Tossed in a little olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted on 400* for 20 minutes.
Paired with more pasta nests. I tossed the 3 remaining nests. I’m getting sick of them and getting no help in finishing them off!
Roasted carrots may be one of my new favorite things. Although that’s not really fair because I over roasted the asparagus and green beans and they were more like shriveled veggies than roasted.
After I had eaten and roasted to my little heart’s desire I headed out to get my hair cut.
What do you think?
Yes, I am in my car, stopped at a red light. Don’t judge.
Oh, and I packed some pb and g sandwiches for a pre-lunch snack, which I ate in between classes.
So long, un-poked graham.
I’m off to do some paper writing (again).
By the way, I have a new phone, yay!! It’s ugly gray instead of my old pretty ruby, boo!! Joey has taken to writing me notes in the absence of texting. I think I like it better.
Hope your Wednesday is off to a great start (or finish)!
Lauren Loves Good Food 