Splitsville

May 21, 2009February 6, 201518 Comments

As I was contemplating what to make for breakfast that would best use the extra things in my fridge before I leave for the weekend, I read Broccoli Hut‘s comment about healthy banana splits! Just like that, breakfast was born 🙂

My current batch of yogurt isn’t strained, so I needed something to thicken it up: chia pudding! Two packages from Oh!Nuts and Navitas Naturals came in quite handy. These have to be the jumbo-est Medjool dates I’ve ever seen:

I followed Kristen’s holiday chia pudding recipe, but I took out the “holiday” (cloves, ginger, lucuma) because I just wanted vanilla. Also, I halved everything except the chia seeds and added 1/2 cup of yogurt. I probably should have taken out the water completely and only used yogurt because it didn’t get as thick as I wanted, but oh well! For today, I just popped it all in the freezer for a bit to get some firmness.

I split the 1/2 banana I had left and decorated it with my three flavors and some extras:

The vanilla scoop (plain chia pudding-yogurt):

The chocolate scoop (1/4 mashed avocado, 1 tbsp cocoa powder, 2 tbsp chia pudding-yogurt):

The berry scoop (chia pudding-yogurt mixed with chopped blackberries):

Topped with flax seeds, hemp seeds (some seem to have sprouted, hence the green), and cereal (and sided with yerba mate):

Right after breakfast, I’m off to my last class (where I think a last class celebration will be taking place) and, from there, on a bus to Providence. I wonder if Peter Pan will have Internet on the bus again?

What are your three ideal split scoop flavors?

Also, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my brother Mark!!!!! Yay for May birthdays 😀

Breaksert

May 20, 2009February 6, 201524 Comments

Inspired by Hangry Heather, I decided to try my hand at a breakfast sundae this morning.

For the “cone” I put together an overnight breakfast cookie mix of 1/4 cup extra thick rolled oats, 1 tbsp ground flax, 1 tbsp hulled hemp seeds, 1 tbsp goji berries, 1/4 mashed banana, and 1 tbsp Artisana cacao bliss. Rather than flattening the cookie on a plate, I pressed it into a ramekin to make a bowl shape and left it in the fridge overnight. This morning, I popped the cone, ramekin and all, into the freezer because I wanted to be able to extract the cone from the ramekin intact.

For the “ice cream,” I mixed 1/2 cup yogurt with 1 tbsp lucuma powder, 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, 1 tsp honey, 1/4 mashed banana, dash vanilla, and a few peanut pieces. That went into the freezer for the 20-stir-20-stir method.

After extracting the cone from its ramekin, I filled it with the ice cream and decorated with berries, cinnamon, more peanuts, coconut, and a plummy gummy 🙂

This was so so fun to eat and a lovely post-gym treat (with my yerba mate on the side, mmm)!

This afternoon, I’m off to a work event. We’re having a “mission retreat” from 12-5, and even though I’m on vacation, it seems like an important thing to attend!

How do you feel about dessert for breakfast?

Blame it on the men

May 19, 2009February 6, 201522 Comments

I went for a run this afternoon. Oops! It wasn’t my fault, though. The firemen made me do it.

Post-run, I was inspired by Abbie to make a modified (aka quick) raw Snickers bar.

But before I get into the raw Snickers details, back to the run. I was lazing on my couch this afternoon (very busy doing nothing, mind you) when my buzzer buzzed. I found five firemen on the other side needing to come in and do some sort of fire escape inspection.

I did not mind inviting five firemen into my home, as I do not encounter manly men often (or ever) for two reasons: (1) I live in NYC, where men tend to be, err, more “cultured” than most and (2) I am a social worker specializing in infant and parent development. For these reasons, I enjoy the FDNY. They’re good at keeping me safe and, hmmm, putting out fires. Of course, when the men arrived, I was still in my pajamas and surrounded by used tissues since I’ve been plagued by either allergies or a nasty cold (not sure which) since the moment I finished my last paper.

Anyway, one of the men came in and checked my balcony and roof while the others waited outside. After the inspection, all the firemen and their truck were still hanging around outside (I think they were trying to get into the basement apartment) for a long long time. And the urge to go for a run so I could run by them (in running clothes and not schlumpy pjs) and soak up some man energy came over me! Crazy, right? But I’m telling you, it is so rare that I get this chance! I did a rapid-fire costume change and flew out the door like I had somewhere to go, exchanging a few pleasantries with the men on my way before I took off. Seriously, I felt like I was running on clouds. It was amazing. I need to start hanging out by the firehouse.

I had planned to just run off down the block and then re-route to the gym so that I could stick to my no-running plan, but it was so nice out that I kept going for a full 4-mile loop around the park. I left my apartment so fast that I didn’t have time to bother with the HRM, but I felt like I was actually running an 11- or 12-minute mile, as opposed to the 15 that has been standard for me lately. The run wasn’t pain-free, but the pain was very consistent and dull and of the sort that I could imagine handling for, say, 13.1 miles on May 30th, assuming it doesn’t escalate. We’ll see! Anyway, now I’m really not going to run again before the half.

OK, if you’ve made it this far, your reward is that you get to see my raw Snickers again:

My short-cut candy involved a plump Medjool date stuffed with Artisana cacao bliss and some peanut pieces. Oh man, it was so good! Really. Try this.

I’m also pretty sure that there was an Oh!Nuts whole strawberry in dark chocolate involved in the post-run desserting, but who really knows since they’re not all that photogenic (yet delicious enough that you NEED to try them as well).

OK, another day has flown by so fast! I’ve actually felt really busy all day, but I’m not quite sure what I’ve accomplished. Vacation is so strange. Anyway, my stepdad is in town for work, so we’re off to dinner in a bit. I’ll be back with the report later!

Have you done any accidental exercise today? And how do you feel about firemen? And the combination of fruit + chocolate?

Something new

May 19, 2009May 21, 201715 Comments

I woke up super late today (10:00!!) for the third morning in a row — I think my mind is finally recovering from racing all semester long! I’m not sure if this is a good thing, though, since it is going to need to resume racing faster than ever in June.

Because it was so late, I put together a different and very simple breakfast:

I sliced an apple in half, cored it, and baked it covered in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes:

The apple got transferred to a plate, and I filled its core with a tsp or so of Artisana almond butter (which, strangely, tasted sort of chemically to me, even though almonds are the only ingredient. Maybe it’s the rawness?) and then sprinkled unsweetened coconut and cinnamon over the top:

It was sooo yummy and did the trick to hold me over for the hour or so I needed until lunch.

Sadly, I’m out of greens (I ate them all yesterday!) and don’t want to buy more since I’m tentatively planning to go visit my parents in MA this Thursday night through Tuesday. I put together a fun snacky plate on a cutting board so I could transfer it to the couch with me for TV time (oh, this is the life!) post-photo.

The spread included carrot sticks with humbecuemole (2 tbsp my hummus, 1 tsp Country Bob’s BBQ, and 1/8 mashed avocado):

An Eggland’s Best peeled and hard-boiled egg, heated and topped with spray butter and freshly ground black pepper:

And a contribution from these new finds:

Last week, my roommate Tara alerted me to this new fruit called Peppadew that she had discovered in the course of researching catering options for a work event. I found it a little strange that this fruit is actually owned, but I still had to test it out regardless. For now, I think Peppadew is only available from the online store, though the Chop’t restaurants in NY have a salad with it.

Spicy and sweet (just like me, haaaaaaa):

They were both pretty tasty — kind of a pickle-y sweet pepper taste with more of an apricot texture. The spicy one had a yummy zing to it, but I wouldn’t call it hot-spicy. I got adventurous with a sweet peppadew and added it to my yogurt:

But it looked lonely with that hole, so I stuffed it with some Artisana cacao bliss 🙂

The yogurt also had lucuma powder, goji berries, 1/3 sliced banana, blackberries and BRM hulled hemp seeds:

Before this, I had never tried hemp seeds. I was pleasantly surprised. They had a toasty (probably because I toasted them in a dry pan first!) and nutty flavor that I loved. I hope I can get around to some baking experiments with them soon.

What is the latest produce item you’ve tried for the first time?

Missy’s got free bread on her hands! Go check it out 🙂

And Coconutgal has free Coconut Bliss ice cream, YUMMMMMM!

Do it myself?

May 16, 2009February 6, 201519 Comments

Lunch was going to be so easy to talk about … until I got carried away! I had both tahini and chickpeas on hand, and since I already made hummus yesterday, falafel was clearly in order for today!

I loosely used this recipe but of course changed almost everything. I soaked 1/4 cup dry chickpeas in two inches of water overnight. This morning, I drained the chickpeas and then immersion-blended them with the rest of the recipe ingredients. I was making a much smaller batch than what was in the recipe, so I eyeballed/tasted the measurements for everything else. I think I ended up using an overly high ratio of wet things to the chickpeas, so my batter was too wet. I soaked up the extra moisture with about 1/4 cup coarse blue cornmeal:

The resulting mix was still a bit wet, but significantly stickier.

Instead of frying, I decided to bake. I heated the oven to 350 and lined a cookie sheet with parchment. I divided the batter into six balls.

After about 20 minutes in the oven, the balls had flattened somewhat as I had expected they would due to the wet batter.

I let them cool enough to handle and then reformed them into balls, flipped them, and popped them in the oven for another 15 minutes.

And then, for extra measure, I put the falafel under the broiler (minus the parchment paper) for 5 minutes to get them sufficiently crisped.

For the tahini dressing, I mixed the rest of the baby Artisana jar of tahini (about 2 tsp) with 2 tbsp plain yogurt and sprinkles of coriander, cumin, cayenne, and garlic salt & pepper.

I had three of the falafel balls for lunch on a big bed of arugula and topped it with half of the tahini (I’m saving the other half for the other three balls).

They were perfectly crunchy (thanks to the cornmeal) and crisp on the outside and moist on the inside:

It was no Mamoun’s, of course, but it was close!

On the side, I had a mini arugula salad with a couple tbsp tuna humbangu (I was craving that as well) with a dollop of roasted red pepper hummus for color:

Together:

I needed chocolate after this meal, so I went for the other half of my UliMana raw hemp brownie from last night:

I don’t even think brownie is the right word for this. It’s like a solid, perfect, grainy block of dark dark chocolate fudge. Ahhhh. I need to do more research into raw “cooking” and find out how to make this for myself!

I had a few more snacks throughout the afternoon. The rest of my Newman’s spelt pretzels (about 3/4 serving) with 2 more tbsp hummus:

Yerba mate and a plummy gummy:

A raw macaroon:

A hard-boiled egg with pepper:

And a mug of soymilky Numi Emperor’s Puerh tea. Following the instructions on the bag, I brought “regal waters” to a boil and steeped for 3-5 minutes “to capture the full taste of this majestic tea.” Numi describes this black tea as bold and malty, and I certainly needed both of those this evening! I’m still dragging from my restless doggy night last night, and I’m heading out to a birthday party in a few — my goal is to last longer than an hour there. Hopefully, the tea helps. So far, it just tastes like regular black tea. Word is that the party will have food, too, so that’s why I kept my evening eating to a minimum.

What do you want to learn to make for yourself?

Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition

A Natural(ish) Parenting & Food Blog

Tag: Experiments

Splitsville

Breaksert

Blame it on the men

Something new

Do it myself?

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