Lauren Loves Good Food

I woke up to both yesterday morning.

Fact: Joey has a 4-year old Shiba Inu named Tonka.  No, I haven’t been hiding him from you, it’s just that he doesn’t live with us.  Pets cost extra in our apartment complex, plus Tonka is notorious for barking and escaping the confines of any home.  He should be named Houdini.  He’s not the ideal dog for our living situation so Joey’s mom kindly offered to take him in 🙂

We have a love/hate relationship.  It’s 80% hate and 20% love.  And I’m being generous with that love percentage.

Don’t let his cute looks fool you, he’s a trouble maker!  It’s not that I don’t like dogs.  It’s that I don’t like having my shoes chewed up, or being growled at for getting too close to Joey, or being bitten for NO REASON, or running/driving through numerous neighborhoods for hours trying to catch a dog that refuses to be lured in.

All complaining aside, at least he’s well enough trained that he won’t eat my oats as I set them down to photograph 🙂

Saturday Morning Oats for Two:

• 1 cup water
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/2 cup vanilla almond milk
• 1 organic banana (I started buying organic because they keep longer than non-organic), sliced
• 1 organic gala apple
• Toppings of choice: almond butter for me, honey pb for Joey, cherry vanilla granola for both of us

After breakfast we completed our trip to the FM, per usual.

FM Loot:

• green beans
• cremini mushrooms
• butternut squash (FINALLY!!)
• Gala apples
• peaches
• tomatoes

Then we came back for our run.

The Run:

• Mile splits: 9:59, 9:48, 9:44, 9:31, 4:44 (half mile, obviously)
• Average pace: 9:44
• Total time: 43:48

We got back just as the sun was starting to peek out from behind all the clouds.  Good timing!

Crack wraps for two were necessary upon return.

Remember that big bag of peanuts?

I turned in into this

It’s amazing how easily peanuts butterize!  I processed 3 cups of dry roasted Valencia peanuts for about 10 minutes, scrapping the sides a few times and breaking up the ball of peanut butter a few times.  Then once it became buttery I added a few shakes of salt.

But I wasn’t quite done yet.  Not before making Ashley’s Vanilla Cinnamon Peanut Butter.

I used what I had on hand, i.e. vanilla extract instead of bean paste and sucanat instead of pure cane sugar.

• 3/4 cup regular peanut butter
• 1t vanilla extract
• 1.5t cinnamon
• 1.5t sucanat

This was just wonderful.  I cannot wait to use it on my oats 🙂

We had soup planned for dinner, which turned out to be perfect given the gloomy day.

This was supposed to be clam chowder (recipe found here) but in true J & L style we managed to mess up the ingredients and end up with something different.

Started with evoo, 1/2 yellow onion, 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, 2 cloves of garlic, salt and thyme.

 Once those got soft we added the juice of two cans of chopped clams, 1 Idaho potato and a bay leaf.  This is where things got messy (I seem to say that a lot…).  The recipe calls for clam liquid AND clam juice.  We only had the liquid from the canned clams so we added veggie broth.

Then you add milk and flour and it’s supposed to thicken the soup.  The veggie broth may have messed things up because this was not getting thick.  I added extra flour and it finally thickened up.  Then all that’s left to do is add the clams, which look pretty gross but we’re brave and tossed them in anyways.

The taste was definitely off — the broth really changed the flavor, surprise surpise — but you know we ate it right up anyways!

Served with an array of Udi’s breads.  The jalapeno cheddar was the unanimous favorite.

We then proceeded to get locked into the drama that is Intervention.  I may have cried during one episode…

Ahhh, nothing better than days with the perfect blend of productivity and laziness 🙂