What I ate

Cold and crunchy Monday

10 Comments

It’s Monday!  Woot. 

😉 actually today has been a pretty decent Monday thus far.  The office is super quiet since many of my coworkers opted to use our floating holiday today.  I decided to bank mine and take my birthday off (next week) instead.

Hope you all have a fabulous fun/food/framily filled weekend!

The PB2 Giveaway ended last night!!!  Read further for the lucky winner 😀

Breakfast #1

It’s been so hot these past few days, that I was craving something super cold for breakfast this morning.  I decided a fruit smoothie would be the ticket to cooling things off.  I threw the following into the blender:

  • 1/2 cup Almond Breeze unsweetened almond milk
  • 1/2 cup Trader Joe’s Vanilla Greek Yogurt
  • 1 cup fresh frozen strawberries
  • 1/4 cup blueberries
  • 1 packet Truvia (Stevia) all natural sweetener

Once I blended everything up, I opened the fridge to put the almond milk away and saw a lonely half-empty bag of spinach sitting on the shelf begging to be eaten. 

I’ve read lots of posts on the “green monster” smoothies, especially on Julie’s blog, but I’ve never tried one myself… Until today that is!

I grabbed a handful of spinach and threw it into the blender and gave it a good pulse. 

Yes, that is spinach you are seeing

The result:

One huge smoothie with “monster” flecks:

This was surprisingly tasty!  You can’t specifically taste the spinach itself, but it gives the smoothy a hearty fullness.  It also cuts on some of the sweetness of the fruit, so I was glad I used a whole packet of truvia.  I think I’ve officially jumped on the green monster bandwagon 😀

If you’re intrigued — check out the Green Monster Movement.

Stats on the Green Monster:  197 calories, 37g carbs, 2g fat, 12g protein, 6g fiber

Breakfast #2

O…. O…..   mmmmmm…. haven’t had overnight oats in a few days, so I went with the go-to OO Combo: 

  • 1/2 cup oats
  • 1/2 cup Almond Breeze unsweetened almond milk
  • 1 tsp brown sugar
  • sprinkling of cinnamon
  • fresh strawberries

All stirred up:

Overnight oats… oh how I’ve missed you :-*

Stats on the oats:  208 calories, 38g carbs, 5g fat, 6g protein, 6g fiber

Lunch

Keeping on with today’s cold theme, I thought I’d add a little crunch to my lunch with a nice salad.  Last night, I threw together a monster salad that consisted of:

  • 1/2 bag fresh express romaine
  • 1 roma tomato
  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 1/4 cup white onion
  • 1 serving baby carrots
  • 1 link of Jennie O’s hot turkey sausage

Topped it all off with 2 tbsp of fat free ranch dressing:

Stats on the Monster Salad:  295 calories, 28g carbs, 10g fat, 22g protein, 7g fiber

And the winner of the PB2 Giveaway ……………

Drumroll please……

Based on the random number generator, the lucky winner is:

Monique at She’s Going the Distance!!!

  

Thank you guys for taking the time to post on my blog!  I really love seeing what you guys have to say, and as cheesy as it may sound (who doesn’t love a little cheese?) it really brightens my day 😀

Monique – please send your mailing address to:  ferventfoodie@gmail.com

Everyone else – you can purchase PB2 online at www.netrition.com.  Since it’s flat rate shipping, I’d recommend getting some Mama Lupe’s low-carb tortillas, Joseph’s low-carb pita, and some carba nada pasta 🙂

Continue Reading

Recipes

Chipotles in adobo don’t mess around

11 Comments

Since I had a post-work meeting today, I was amazingly proactive last night 😉 .  Not only did I cook up my dinner ahead of time but I also packed a Berry Almond Luna Bar to hold me over til dinner:

This was pretty tasty, and the berry flavor was really strong.  However, the blueberry bliss Luna bar tops this bar hands down.  That is for darn sure!

For dinner tonight, I tweaked and further healthified a recipe I found in this month’s Cooking Light for Spicy Shrimp Salad.  The recipe called for two ingredients I had never used:  bibb lettuce and chipotles in adobo.

For those of you who have no idea what bibb lettuce is, it looks kinda like a little bouquet:

I was just going to use romaine, but this little guy was so cute I decided to give it a shot.

Last night, I grilled up one serving of medium sized shrimp seasoned with salt and pepper.

Then I tossed the shrimp with:

  • 2 tsp lime juice
  • 1 tsp fat free mayo
  • 1 tbsp chopped chipotle in adobo
  • 2 tbsp chopped red onion
  • 1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin

After my post-work meeting, I heated the shrimp mixture up in the microwave and threw it on top  a bed of bibb lettuce and added some tomatoes.  I tasted a bit, and realized it was pretty spicy, so I topped it off with a dollop of fat free sour cream to cool things off.

I consider myself a lover of spicy foods.  Case in point, I put black pepper, red pepper flakes, and franks red hot on  pretty much everything but my yogurt and overnight oats.  Despite my love and affection for hot foods, about two bites into the salad I literally felt like my entire face was on fire!  Chipotles in adobo seriously do not f’ around.

After my mouth cooled down, I tried to give it another go, but one bite in and the insane heat was back in full fury.  I quickly downed half a tomato trying to calm the fire engulfing my face.

Needless to say, I didn’t finish the salad.  I think this could have been really tasty if I cut the chipotles back to 1 tsp and also used a different type of lettuce.  The bibb lettuce was kind of soft and didn’t have much crunch to it.  I prefer a crunchy romaine for my salads.

Stats on the salad I wasn’t physically cable of eating:  205 calories, 20g carbs, 3g fat, 21g protein, 5g fiber

Upon some deliberation of my freezer inventory, I decided my back up dinner would be a Gardenburger black bean burger on a Joseph’s low carb pita with onion, tomato, ketchup, and mustard.

boring

It was ok… but I was really craving shrimp.  Maybe I’ll make a smoothie later to compensate 🙂

Stats on the burger:  210 calories, 36g carbs, 5g fat, 12g protein, 10g fiber

 

Chipotle Peppers on Foodista

Continue Reading

Recipes

Chicken Couscous Salad Salad

7 Comments

Dinner tonight was Chicken Couscous Salad Salad (the food so good they name it twice, right? 😉 )

I stumbled upon this Cooking Light recipe a while back and it sounded really tasty, but I wanted to try and make it a little healthier.  Luckily, I had a great find at the grocery store!  Rice Select Tri-Color Couscous with Sundried Tomato and Spinach, which has about 70 less calories per serving than the whole wheat couscous I compared it to. 

I decided to make up 2 servings of the salad so I’d have something for lunch tomorrow, so I cooked up 1/2 cup of the couscous in 1/2 cup free range chicken broth.  Once the couscous was finished, I fluffed it work a fork and dumped in a bowl to cool down. 

Meanwhile, I got to choppin.  Here’s what I decided to throw into the salad:

That’s:

  • 4 ounces chicken breast (which I cooked up last night with McCormick’s Montreal Chicken Seasoning)
  • 1/2 cup chopped green onion
  • 1 roma tomato
  • 1/2 a chopped cucumber
  • 1/4 cup chopped parsley

 

For the dressing, I mixed up the following:

  • 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/8 tsp black pepper
  • 1 clove garlic minced

Tossed everything together and put in the fridge to chill out while I cleaned up my kitchen.  I’m one of those people who just makes an absurd amount of messes while cooking… Good thing I like to clean 🙂

This recipe made two big servings of yummyness:

This was really tasty!  I love vinegars, so I especially liked the dressing.  I think I’ll actually try some out on a salad later in the week.  Another great thing about this couscous recipe is you could throw pretty much any vegetable into the mix and it would taste great!  Two thumbs up!

Stats on the chicken couscous salad:  277 calories, 40g carbs, 4g fat, 17g protein, 4g fiber

 Don’t forget to check out the PB2 giveaway!!!

Continue Reading

Fitness, What I ate

Running in the Rain

1 Comment

I started this lovely Monday morning off with Day #2, Week #2 of interval training.  It looked pretty grey outside, but after consulting the local radar on my weather channel app, I determined I could definitely get 30 minutes in before any rain approached.

Whelp, I was about 15 minutes off on my calculation…  Half way through  my normal route, a torrential downpour started to erupt from the sky!  Running in the rain is actually pretty fun, and I would have kept right on going had I not JUST got a new iPhone to replace the iPhone that suffered water damage last week.  So, I threw my iphone in my sports bra to keep it dry and took shelter under a nearby tree for about 15 minutes until the rain let up.  Standing under the tree in the rain was actually pretty peaceful and relaxing!  I’m sure I looked like a creeper though 🙂

Breakfast #1

I’m really loving the grilled fruit and nut butter wraps I’ve been making for breakfast.  Today, I made one with half of a banana and Smucker’s Organic Peanut Butter atop a Mama Lupe’s low carb tortilla.  I wrapped everything up and threw it on the george foreman for about 5 minutes.

(I’ll have to post the pic later.. left the stinkin cord for my old camera at home!)

Soooo delicious!

Stats on B#1:  218 calories, 23g carbs, 11g fat, 10g protein, 7 g fiber

 

Breakfast #2

I was still pretty hungry after B#1, so I decided to overload my overnight oats.  Last night, I put 1/2 cup quick oats, 1/2 cup Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze Almond milk, 1 tsp brown sugar, and some cinnamon in a bowl in the fridge.  This morning, I overloaded the oats with blueberries, strawberries, the other 1/2 of my breakfast banana, and some Barbara’s Bakery Peanut Butter Puffins for crunch.

Yum-o.

Stats on B#2:  308 calories, 61g carbs (hello excessive carbs), 6g fat, 8g protein, 10g fiber

 

Lunch

After all the carbs at breakfast, I was glad I packed a salad for lunch!  Today’s salad consisted of romaine lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber, a sliced up Trader Joe’s Spinach Fontina Roasted Garlic Chicken Sausage, with 2tbsp Hidden Valley fat free ranch dressing.

Couldn’t get the flash to go off for the life of me… haha… need to spend some time playing with the camera! 🙂  I’m really liking the Trader Joe’s sausage!  I wish I would have picked up more than one kind… oh well, guess I’ll have to go back 😉

Stats on Lunch:  239 calories, 22g carbs, 8g fat, 19g protein, 6g fiber

Continue Reading

What I ate

(good) Case of the Monday’s

1 Comment

It’s Monday, and I am surprisingly cheery today!  Even despite the gray and dreary weather we’ve got going on outside. 

nice and gray outside

 

Maybe my good mood is due to the delicious Trader Joe’s coffee I had this morning on the way to work…  That Trader Joe… Sure knows how to put a smile on my face 🙂 

Almond butter sounded good this morning, so I went with a toasted Pepperidge Farm Deli Flat  (that I had leftover from the turkey burgers) with Trader Joe’s crunchy almond butter and a little smear of Smucker’s Blackberry preserves (my favorite!  love the seeds!). 

PB & J? Strike that. AB & P!

 

Motivational poster I drew for the BF:  

 

For breakfast #2 I went with a barley breakfast bowl again, which consisted of Stoneyfield Farms Greek Yogurt, Barley, and Red Raspberries: 

 

I still have some leftover barley, so I think I’ll try and incorporate that into dinner somehow…  

Today for lunch I had a very special treat 😀  

Jarrod made me a GINORMOUS salad with romaine, grilled chicken, black beans, tomato, onion, cucumber, and carrots: 

 

He has an uncanny ability for chopping things into perfect shapes 😉 

As I’m eating my lovely salad, I realize that I haven’t really planned anything out for lunches this week.  Do you ever fall into sack-lunch-doldrums?  I know I do.  I’ll have to do some brainstorming and see if I can spice things up this week.

Continue Reading