But first, thanks to everyone who sent some yoga motivation my way last night. I will try again eventually. Second, the ear plugs were phenomenal last night, yay sleep! And third, breakfast this morning was something old and something new. My last piece of carrot cake:

And spicy cinnamon peanut butter hot chocolate because I needed something to zap me into the Monday spirit!

I made the hot chocolate with 1/3 cup unsweetened Silk, 2/3 cup water, 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 tsp sugar in the raw, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and just under 1 tbsp pb. This was my first time putting pb in cocoa, and it was soooooo good!

And, of course, I hit the gym before brekkie for arms + StairMaster. Stats: 1 hour, 10 minutes; 479 calories; 136 average heart rate; 167 highest.

Lunch

As usual, I did my Sunday cooking yesterday to unwind and get myself ready for the week. I’ll take you right through the process with me.

I finally found tofu for a decent price (at Whole Foods, of all places) on Friday, and I immediately put it in the freezer when I got home that night. When I’m planning to eat tofu in actual pieces (as opposed to pureed or disguised somehow), I always always freeze it first — I find it does wonders for the texture. I took the tofu out of the freezer yesterday, sandwiched it between layers of paper towels and two pizza stones, topped it with more oven-safe heavy dishware, and put it in my off oven (remember, I have a pilot light, so it stays warm in there) to thaw and drain. Once it was thawed enough (maybe two hours later), I sliced it into very thin pieces and returned it to the sandwich setup:

thaw/press part 1

thaw/press part 2

When the tofu was thoroughly thawed and drained, I followed Gliding Calm‘s brilliant tofu rub process. I love tofu cooked in restaurants, but this is the only home-cooking method I’ve found that works just as well. For my rub, I mixed honey, Thai red curry paste, chili powder, olive oil, cinnamon, ginger, garlic, white rice vinegar, and maybe more:

I coated the tofu:

And baked until perfectly crisped:

Or a little too crispy (what else is new?) as I discovered upon flipping:

But still delicious! Meanwhile, I chopped broccoli, kale, red cabbage, and carrot and mixed it with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, coarse sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper for roasting:

BEFORE

AFTER

I mixed the roasted veggies with the leftover sofrito rice/barley/cabbage from the past two weeks (don’t worry, I roasted this also to kill off anything spooky) and the tofu for my lunch “entree”:

Here’s an overview of the entire lunch spread which also includes yogurt with banana/apple/strawberries/spices, an orange, carrot sticks, an apple, tbsp pb, tbsp raisins, and a mini Luna:

Consumption of the apple, pb, raisins, and mini-Luna is entirely dependent on my level of success with nosing out extra food throughout the day that could qualify as dinner since I’ll be in class until 8. We’ll see what happens!