Sunday, April 25, 2010

Company!

I don't have people over at my apartment very often. I'm busy a lot, my friends are busy a lot. It just doesn't work out usually. So, I tend to cook for only myself most of the time, and it's not very fun. But this weekend, two of my girlfriends from college, Jamie & Laurryn, came to visit and they stayed the night on Friday night. I made them popcorn (on the stove!) while we watched One Tree Hill (a college fave) and then on Saturday morning, I made them breakfast!! :D




I only took the one picture, but as you can see, I made a wonderful breakfast quiche, with spinach mushrooms & onions, an easy cinnamon coffee cake using crescent rolls & pecans, and some cut-up kiwi for the fruit component. I also used my espresso machine to whip them up some lattes and an americano for myself.

Now, we're at Laurryn's getting ready to head off for church and I'm enjoying a bowl of cinnamon oatmeal w/ bananas. Hopefully Panera for lunch. :D

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Earth Day!!

Today is such an awesome day. I'm not generally a traditional holiday person, but I happen to love times that we've set aside to bring special attention to what's happening around us. World AIDS Day is December 1, March is Women's History Month and today is EARTH DAY!



We need to take care of the planet every day, obviously, but I love that we've named today a day where everyone can be reminded of the importance of caring for our environment. And for those of you who don't know, today is actually the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson founded it as an environmental teach-in, meaning that he wanted to use it as a tool, mainly on college campuses, to educate people about environmental issues and caring for the Earth.

I am a self-professed tree hugger. Like, I literally hug trees sometimes. You may think I'm weird, but I've come to accept that about myself. :D I love knowing that I am doing my best to care for the home that God has given me. Not only does it show respect for Him by appreciating His gift, but it also respects future generations who will need to use the Earth as their home as well.

I took a shower last night and I won't take one again until tomorrow morning, so I'm going to try to use as little water as possible today. I also recycle on a daily basis and love buying/eating organic food. What are you doing today to help the Earth??

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Breakfast Taco for Dinner.

I went over to Mom+Dad's last night for our weekly Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution night of fun. I wasn't feeling super well, but I decided to eat some food anyway and then I ended up feeling a lot better after. I always end up eating eggs when I go over there, because I don't keep them around my house much. It doesn't make sense for me to buy a whole dozen when I only eat three or four maximum a week. (Sometimes, not even that much.)

My parents had gone to On The Border the night before and brought back some of their fresh tortillas! I LOVE really good fresh tortillas, and I'm looking forward to trying a recipe that I found on MamaPea's blog. Anyway, here was my dinner last night:



I ended up using the fresh tortillas, egg whites, onion, mushroom, lemon pepper and a generous sprinkle of cayenne pepper to add some kick. These really hit the spot. I was really full afterward, but I didn't really end up snacking later on, which I tend to do throughout the night, especially if I'm watching TV.

Apparently, I'm on a Mexican food kick lately, because I made tacos with some friends on Monday night and I'm going to finish up the leftovers today for lunch. Hopefully, they're still good... :/

The others had beef tacos, but my tacos were black beans+refried beans w/ chili powder, cayenne pepper, onion & garlic. Mom & I went to Trader Joe's & Whole Foods today, and she picked up some heirloom tomatoes, so I'm gonna add some of those, along with spinach and a touch of salsa. I'm really looking forward to them... In fact, I'm gonna go eat those now... :D

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Breakfast with Mini-Me.

I work as a nanny, for those of you who don't know. I get to hang out with an awesome female toddler four days a week, and I almost always feed her breakfast. Since I've been on a yogurt kick lately, I decided to share this yummy breakfast with her as well. Stonyfield Farm makes a whole milk organic yogurt for babies, so I got her this and she's been eating it with a granola bar the past couple days. She LOVES it!! This morning, we had similar breakfast:



SF Black Cherry & a Cascadian Farm Vanilla Chip granola bar for me. Strawberry Banana YoBaby & a Quaker Oatmeal Raisin Chewy granola bar for KO (as we call her). (The Black Cherry SF yogurt was just okay. I prefer the key lime, blueberry or SuperFruits. The chocolate is good for dessert type stuff.)



Beautiful display of granola bars dipped in yogurt. YUMM!!



Since KO is still little (19 months), I broke up her granola bar in little pieces. Despite being called "chewy," these are still pretty hard and I don't want her to hurt herself. When she eats Nutri-Grain bars, I give her the whole thing, and she does pretty well with it.

I took a couple pics of her and even recorded a video of her eating her yogurt by herself. (She's getting the hang of eating with a spoon!) But since she's not my kid, I didn't want to go plastering her face all over the world wide web. Let me assure you, though, she's the absolute cutest kid on the planet. :D If you are friends with me on Facebook, you can check out the video there. (Although, I'm convinced that my mother is the only one who reads this thing...In case I'm wrong, please let me know by leaving a comment!!)

Hope your breakfasts were as fun as mine!! :)

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Meatless Easter

Easter lunch was amazing today!! Mom made some awesome, awesome food.



We had the following:
- fruit salad (made w/ bananas+strawberries+apples+grapes+pineapple)
- ham (ugh, pork...)
- green beans+pearl potatoes
- deviled eggs
- corn on the cob
- bean salad (made w/ white beans, kidney beans, red onion & olives from Whole Foods)



Here's my plate. I had a little of everything, minus the ham. Since, I wasn't eating any meat, I filled up on deviled eggs & bean salad for my protein. The bean salad was unbelievable!! She didn't add any seasonings, but the red onion & olives gave it great flavor. I got to take all the leftovers home. :D



Fruit bowl!! I counted this + some Easter basket candy as my dessert.



To drink, I made a mocktail of POM juice (part of my Easter basket) & Sprite Zero. (My dad keeps this around to mix w/ cranberry juice.) It was really good!! Pomegranate juice tends to be expensive, so I'm gonna get some club soda and drink this a little bit at a time. Plus, it's too rich for me to drink it straight.



Cleaned my plate! The corn & the green beans were vegetables that mom had frozen last summer/fall and we broke them out for today. They tasted as fresh as if they'd been picked yesterday!! Yummy!! :D

I was rather proud of myself for foregoing meat this Easter. That's really difficult to do during the holidays, because it's usually such a main dish.

It's made me think about other substitutions for other holidays. Fourth of July = veggie burgers (black bean burgers are my fave!). Other than that, I can't think of others. Tofurkey is NOT an option in my family. In fact, in my dad's extended family (who we spend most holidays with), eating healthy with lots of veggies is almost unheard of. I wonder what Thanksgiving will be like this year...

Friday, April 2, 2010

Healthy Breakfast

Some mornings, I eat breakfast. Some mornings, if I sleep in, I don't. Most mornings that I do eat breakfast, it's usually something quick, like a pastry at Starbucks or a granola bar. My brain isn't fully functional at 6am, so I don't like to think about trying to make something. Well, I got up at 8am today and decided to have some of my new Stonyfield Organics yogurt.



It was the Superfruits flavor with pomegranate, raspberry & acai. It was delicious!! I don't eat yogurt very often since I'm lactose intolerant and I'm afraid of what it will do to my stomach. But this stuff was great. Plus, apparently with the cultures in yogurt, it's supposed to actually be good for my stomach. So, we'll see.

After the yogurt, I decided to have some of my Trader Joe's Blueberry Muesli.



This stuff is SO good! It's way better than granola and I've never really been a big oatmeal person. I know that oatmeal is the big healthy thing in food blogs these days and my mom eats about three bowls a week, sometimes more, but I just can't get into it. Muesli is a good substitute, I think. It's easier to prepare--just pour some in a bowl and add a bit of milk, like cereal. It's got tons of fun nutritional ingredients (mine even had dried blueberries, which are AMAZING!!). And it's got a sweet flavor without too much added sugar.

Well, I'm off to Calvin Fletcher's Coffee Company to enjoy my coffee for the day. :)

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Food, Inc. + Outdoor Overload

I've been meaning to update and I don't feel much like it tonight, but I'm gonna do it anyway. I apologize if it ends up being lame...



First, I finally got to watch Food, Inc. with the parents & my boyfriend. Dad actually sat through the whole thing and we paused at a couple places to discuss or clarify things. I'm not gonna lie to you: I cried at a couple parts. The way they treat animals is just horrible. Here are a couple things I took away from it:

- Mass-produced tomatoes are picked while green and then ripened with ethylene gas. Gross. My mom and grandparents have grown tomatoes in their gardens, so I know what a tomato is supposed to look like when you pick it and when it ripens naturally off the vine. The fact that they use a synthetic gas to ripen tomatoes totally grosses me out.
- Farms have been replaced by factories. There were shots of industrial "farms" that just treated chickens, cows & pigs as if they were some material in an assembly line. It's all about who can produce the most meat the fastest and it's become something that most Americans choose to ignore, even if they know about it.
- Meat-packing companies "have to" produce a lot of food on a small amount of land at an affordable price. So, they compromise quality and compassion in order to meet the demands of our carnivorous society. I seriously wanted to puke & cry simultaneously after watching this.

So, that's my take on "Food, Inc." Overall, a great movie and I would recommend it to literally everyone, not just people who are already health-conscious. *Everyone* needs to be aware of these issues.

And to the next part of my post, the bf & I went to the Canal (in Indianapolis, which is where I live) to walk and enjoy the beautiful 75* day. It was awesome, but I think I overdid it. I'm not used to being outside a ton, especially since we had a ridiculously cold winter and it just started getting decently warm a few weeks ago. So, I'm sunburned and my head is killing me.

But we did take a picnic lunch to eat and here was my favorite part of the meal:



These raisins are AMAZING!! Whenever my mom gets them, I always mooch a few. They are super plump and uber-delicious. I'm a nanny during the week and I watch an 18-month-old girl. She loves these too. Every time I get them out and start snacking, she's in my lap asking for "mo', mo'." In fact, most Earthbound Organics products that we've had are pretty delicious.

Well, I'm trying to wind down from my crazy day with a cup of Yogi Bedtime Tea. I have two coffee dates tomorrow: one with my bro (and probably the 'rents) and one with my friend Ryan. I can only manage about one cup of coffee a day, so I'll probably end up getting tea for one of those. Maybe if I get up in time, I'll post about breakfast. (with pictures!!)