Chili Adventures
Mondays are bad blog picture days for me. Reasons being that I eat VOOs EVERY Monday, out of a plastic container, in the library and lunch are Sunday night’s leftovers. Yeah, boring and not picturesque.
I assure you however that a pumpkin muffin like this one — but not this exact one — made itself into my oats and improved my usual breakfast by 100%.
I can’t take credit for this one though. It was Hannah who made these tasties. Kudos, Hannah, kudos.
I came home from school to study make chili but my stove looked like this
Thanks for cleaning the kitchen Joey but couldn’t you have put it back together too?
As it turns out putting the stove back together was the hardest part of making dinner and even that was pretty easy.
I’ve never made my own chili! Shocking, I know. So imagine my surprise when I discovered it was so so simple and I didn’t actually need a recipe. I used this one but next time I’ll make it up on my own.
I processed 1.5 yellow onions + 2 garlic cloves and 1/2 of a red and a yellow bell pepper
I found this weird thing inside the red bell pepper
This recipe sure used a lot of beans…
Turns out chili takes no time at all to make! All I had to do was cook the veggies in olive oil then add the beans, tomatoes and spices, bring to a boil and simmer 30 minutes.
Dinner simmered while I lifted. I left the apartment then dashed back upstairs to get my camera because there was praying mantis on the sidewalk!
Cool or gross? I’m not sure.
Dinner was delicious 🙂
Accompanied by some beer. Pumpkin beer that is! Joey brought these home as a surprise for me. Hopefully this helps in my endeavour to find a good pumpkin beer 🙂
We opened the Jack’s Pumpkin Spice Ale first.
My taste
The name made this beer sound promising, but it was just a facade. We both agreed it was not good 😦
Oh well, another day another beer!
Are you a fan of pumpkin beer? If not what’s your favorite pumpkin flavored alternative?
Sunday Squash
Even though I spent most of the day doing homework 😦 I did manage to fit some other less stressful things in as well.
Mainly food. Like my new breakfast obsession: Hot oats + cold banana soft serve
Oh by the way these were oats of the homemade Scottish version. Just throw some rolled oats into your processor and blend them to Scottish consistency.
They were a little sticky so I added a milk moat.
Top with BSS, almond butter, peach jam and peanuts
Hidden oats
Hours of reading and paper writing later I was more than ready to break for lunch. I was also so happy I had leftovers because Sunday = no food left in the apartment!!
I popped this burrito half in the microwave then topped with salsa and paired with vanilla Oikos + cocao nibs, honey and cherry vanilla granola.
Hunger squashed.
A few other Sunday rituals were completed (laundry, meal planning, grocery shopping) + more reading (the other day someone told me they wouldn’t recognize we without a book ha ha) and then I decided to take a break.
A running break, that is. Since when did running become stress relief/relaxation. Who am I?!
Pre-run snack = toast + jelly
It was a nice little 4-miler with cool temps and good company 🙂
When we returned we found this little guy perfectly baked, fresh from the oven.
We baked this acorn squash on 375* for 40 minutes with just a little olive oil. When it was done we got busy making the filling, using this recipe from 101 Cookbooks.
Changes we made:
- almond milk instead of cow’s (although I would use plain instead of vanilla next time…)
- whole ear of corn instead of 1/2 cup
- nixed the anise seed
- mozzarella instead of white cheddar (because that’s what we had on hand)
We also had to cook it for a little bit longer than the recipe had predicted, but I’m used to everything taking longer than I expect.
I also managed to cut my finger while cutting the kernels of the corn…
I should not be allowed to use knives.
Despite eating dinner while we watched Dexter (bloody gore and all) I found this meal to be pretty darn good! I wasn’t a huge fan of the skin but the inside of the squash was perfectly soft and flavorful and the “pudding” had an amazing taste!
Good thing I liked it because we had lots of leftover pudding so we dumped it in a ramekin and baked it with the squash for me to take for lunch 🙂
This recipe was apparently supposed to serve 4-6?? Try 2!
On a side not did anyone else read Caitlin’s response to the Marie Claire article. I thought she was poised and well-spoken. So sad to hear about things like this 😦
Just another manic Monday, sighhhh
Ten Mile Saturday
I did something spectacularly epic yesterday.
I ran ten miles. And finished with tears in my eyes. Tears of happiness that is. I hope I’m not an emotional mess at the end of my half marathon in two weeks!
A year ago a one mile run was hard for me. I’m so proud of how far I’ve come. How could I not cry?
So how did it all begin? With a pumpkin pie smoothie of course.
- 1/3 cup pumpkin
- 3/4 cup vanilla almond milk
- ice
- cinnamon
- nutmeg
At mile 6 we stopped for water and snacks in the form of samples I’ve been saving from the Skirt Chaser.
(Source)
Ours were actually oatmeal raisin, not chocolate. I thought it tasted pretty good.
As did these.
(Source)
I don’t, however, think either of these gave me any extra energy 😦 Oh well, judging from my mile splits I didn’t need it.
- 10:13
- 10:00
- 9:57
- 9:54
- 9:55
- 10:05
- 9:54
- 9:51
- 9:59
- 9:37!!
Total time: 1:39:32. Thank you, Garmin for not dying on this run even though you kept warning us that you were going to.
It usually takes a while for hunger to kick in after I run but by 1 I was starving!! Joey suggested Noodles and Co. I suggested I make us homemade mac and cheese for free.
Remember the last time I tried to make vegan mac and cheese?
I do. It was traumatizing. I was determined to redeem my cheesey self.
Place sauce ingredients in the blender.
Blend away.
Add to cooked pasta and let thicken up for 5 minutes.
Successsss!!
Ohhh yessss
The only changes I made were cutting the recipe in half, forgetting the dry mustard (oops), using arrowroot instead of cornstarch and peanut butter instead of tahini.
Once hunger was taken care of I was free to spend the afternoon getting homework done. I have a hectic few weeks coming up and I find that planning and getting a head start on things really helps. It only took 3 years of college to figure this one out…
I also took a small but necessary nap. Upon waking up I ate a banana and some peanuts (only because I finished the cashews off already). Then it was back to homework until date night time!
Remember how I have a new obsession with Vine Street Pub? Yeah well as it turns out there’s two locations in Boulder. Could it get any better? Mountain Sun is the original location and Southern Sun is the newer and bigger Boulder venue. We tried our luck at Southern Sun or as Joey kept calling it “South Side” — turns out there was a restaurant in the same shopping center actually called South Side. Weird huh?
Anyways after a 30 minute wait we sat down and ordered an appetizer because we both needed food asap!
Their daily hummus was curry hummus so how could we say no?
Belive me when I tell you we demolished this entire plate of food!!
Then out came our entrees. I got the cleverly named “Burrito” — rice, black beans, green pepper, onion and tomato minus cheese and sour cream plus vegetarian green chili and salsa and guac on the side.
It was delish and filling (as if I hadn’t filled up enough on chips and hummus already he he). I brought half home looking like this…
Joey had the S.O.B Burger, which he deemed better than the Basil Blue Burger. He cleaned his plate so it must have been good!
I snuck a few fries 🙂
We had plans to go out and see a movie but in the end watching one at home sounded better plus my food baby just wanted to sit in bed. Made it through half of Shutter Island before passing out.
‘Twas a lovely day/night. Hope yours was just as nice 🙂
Lauren Loves Good Food 
