Great Mornings & Green Monsters

Morning 🙂
The fact is that I am a morning person. Always have been and always will be.

My Dad tells me tales of when I was a youngster, pattering around on his bed at 6 am and exclaiming in his ear: Daddy! It’s not dark anymore! My yearning for the day to start has no bounds 🙂 In college, while most other collegiates lie asleep (and hungover) in their disheveled beds, I had already been to the Natatorium for my workout, had breakfast, and had completed the first page of my latest history paper.

Me looking productive under my lofted bed…Sigh college 🙂

In the mornings, productivity was king and I milked it for all it was worth. During those days I had thought waking up early was a curse just because it made me such a different person from everyone else. I mean, not many people want to go to a farmer’s market with someone early on Saturday morning just to get there before all the good/shiny/delectable produce is gone (I can only think of one and he’s still rolling out of bed for more market ventures to this day 🙂 But the fact has been (and remains) that I do my best work in the morning, I am the best version of myself in the morning (provided coffee is in full supply), mornings hold the most promise, and, gosh-darnet, morning food is the yummiest 🙂

This week I am sharing the latest of my morning breakfast obsessions: oat bran. Before you “x” out of this tab though, let me state a few things:
1. I realize how boring and diet-like oat bran sounds and it’s reputation as being solely a health-nut food certainly doesn’t help.
2. But a food is boring and tasteless only if you want it to be. So, without further adieu, allow me to introduce:

Presenting: a visual guide to making oat bran delicious!!! My personally favorite combos include a half a banana and always always always peanut butter melted at the bottom of the bowl – can you say ooey gooey goodness??? Another idea: PB + Blueberry Oat Bran 

And now, my most recent original creation…

It’s big…

It’s green…

It’s a Green Monster!!! (Under the disguise of oat bran!)

Most of you are probably aware of the popular green smoothies out there. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s basically adding a handful of greens (spinach works best in my opinion) to a fruit smoothie. My personal favorite is almond milk + banana + spinach + PB. And at the end of this long week, when left with a bit of spinach leftover from the week’s worth of salads, I decided to combine my favorite breakfast and my favorite smoothie. And the result. was. amazing. Just like green smoothies, you cannot even taste the greens and it makes your regular ole breakfast THAT more nutritious! Don’t let the greens scare you away!

Green Monster Oat Bran (serves 1)
Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup oat bran
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 or 1 whole banana 
• 1 handful of spinach (if you try other greens I advise you to exercise caution- especially with bitter ones!)
• Toppings! (I like PB, coconut flour, cinnamon)

Directions:

1. In a food processor, combine the banana, spinach, and 1/2 cup of the almond milk. Blend until combined.
2. In a microwaveable bowl, add oat bran, the spinach mixture, and the rest of the almond milk and water. Stir together and place in microwave for 4 minutes, stirring after every minute or so to ensure that the oat bran doesn’t stick to the bottom of the bowl. 
3. Add toppings of your choice and ENJOY some greens in your morning!

Question of the Week: What’s your favorite way to enjoy greens in your daily routine?

Quasi-Colds are Jerks

Last night was a night of blissful repose to be broken only by a bathroom break at 2:50am (it’s me drinking all this water lately, which I’ll get to later) and then my alarm at 5:00am. Now for those of you who know of my sleeping patterns, the latter fact should strike you. I never wake up to my alarm. Yes, despite my awareness of health and what it takes to be healthy, my body only allows me around 6 hours of sleep every night when I really should be getting at least 7. Bad Aly 😦  Believe me, I’ve tried to sleep more, but my body tells me to get up and now I’ve just thrown my hands up, set my alarm, and wake up most a half hour to 15 minutes before the alarm actually goes off.
So, to make a long and boring story short, I woke up to my alarm today and I probably could have slept longer, due to *duh duh duh* my quasi-cold thing going on in my throat. I suppose all that bragging about having a killer immune system had to catch up with me at some point. (Curse you, karma) And now I’m stuck with this annoying, constantly dry, froggy throat feeling all the time and, on top of all that, it’s affecting my energy levels. I now feel like a bottomless pit as far as hunger goes and during my workout this morning (supposed to be entirely cardio) I had to break it up because my body just felt so tired and weak 😦
But naturally I’ve been doing everything it takes to get rid of this thing. Water bottle or hot beverage always on hand, cough drops for emergencies, thoroughly washing my hands, you know the drill. I’d say I’m eating better, but honestly I cannot think of how I could eat better than I already have been, which begs the question: How did I get this little bug in the first place? Maybe it’s just a fluke, but still.
Whatevs.
This weekend should be fun though! Instead of sticking around for booze-fest (i.e. Halloween in Madison) my boyfriend and I are shipping out to Minneapolis, MN for the weekend just to see what we can see. I’m pretty sure the last time I was in Minneapolis was for the sole purpose of going to the Mall of America. Sheesh. We’re taking the bus, so it’s about a 6 hour ride. Hence, I’ve baked up some 4-ingredient oat-nanner bars for the road, can you say nummy?
Anywho, that’s my update for now. Sorry, no new recipes today, but I will share the oat bars concoction just in case you wanted something besides candy to snack on this Halloween 😉

4-Ingredient Oat-Nanner Bars

• 2 large ripe bananas
• 2 cups rolled oats
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/4 cup pitted dates, chopped
• Sprinkled cinnamon (if you’re a cinna-nut like me 🙂

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a baking pan. Mash bananas in a large bowl until all the big chunks are gone (should be liquidy). Stir in the vanilla and then the oats and chopped dates and stir together. Once well combined, plop in dollops into baking pan and spread around to desired thickness. Sprinkle with cinnamon and pop in the oven for 30 minutes (or until sides crisp). 

Question of Day: What’s your go-to cold remedy?

Freezing Pumpkin for Later–oh wait, Just Kidding :)

I didn’t expect a completely original recipe to come to me (originality is being geared toward paper, which I’m still contemplating on writing. No worries, I can skip one paper for this course) but alas, when the spirit of creativity pays you a visit, you don’t shoo him away…
Especially if this spirit mentions pumpkin 🙂
Let’s backtrack though to around 3pm when I decided to puree-up my pumpkin. It was so cute and smooth and delicious, much more so than that canned stuff. It made soooo much puree that I decided to freeze some of it for later use. Or so I thought.
Until just 10 minutes ago when I came back to my room thirsty. I knew I could just be boring and pour myself a glass of water, but as I was about to do just that, I looked at the freezer. And I looked across the room at my ripened bananas.
I looked back toward the freezer.
Than the bananas.
Freezer.
Bananas.
And then it came to me. Incredibly excited, I tore through my little freezer, unburied the pumpkin puree, and checked to see if it was frozen–It was! I then took my small banana from across the room, hurriedly peeled it and stuffed it in my blender followed by dolloping a 1/2 cup of frozen pumpkin puree and a sprinkle of cinnamon.
I pressed “Blend” and watched nummy deliciousness being combined before my eyes.
The result wasn’t quite a smoothie but then wasn’t quite thick enough to be ice creamy, so I don’t know what to call it. But the point is, it was amazing. Banana + pumpkin = the perfect amount of sweetness with a touch of fall 🙂 And it totally quenched my thirst 😉

So here’s the recap, and if anyone has an idea as to what to call this, let me know 🙂
(Oh and by the way, this functions as a light dessert with about 150 calories :O)

• 1/2 cup Frozen pumpkin
• 1 banana (I’m going to try freezing the banana next time to get more of an ice creamy texture. But this was a moment of passion, there was no forward thinking involved)
• Sprinkle cinnamon
• Blend!

This makes a really small amount but then again you don’t need much! If you want to make this go a long way, add ice or some milk or yogurt to make it a full-fledged smoothie!

Blogging for Productivity

It’s Sunday morning which, for any college student, means one thing: homework. And lots of it. I have so much to do and it feels as though this day (day of rest? bahhh!) has to end with me completing most of the things on my to-do list which, in case you were wondering (you probably weren’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway) includes:

• Writing some of a paper on the Civil Rights Movement and how it initially challenged and later rejected New Deal Liberalism
• Reading a biography of Ella Baker (fabulous woman by the way, I really recommend the book!) in order to write said paper in bullet point #1 (I’m only 38% through, so says my Kindle–eek!)
• Doing my various readings for the week, most of which are due on Wednesday
• Writing an annotated bibliography & developing an outline for my sociology paper on childhood obesity solutions (due on Wed)
• Doing the laundry. It needs to happen.
• Making/baking something or other. Because it’s a stress-reliever for me and I like food.
• Compiling a list of items I’ll be making this week. Curious as to what that may entail? 
• Baked Oatmeal Snack Bars –I’ll be adapting a recipe from Kath Eats Real Food
• Sugar-Free Banana Bread –adapted from Chocolate-Covered Katie
• Pumpkin Butter –another one from KERF

Those are just the non-original recipes I’m thinking of at the moment, although those are all subject to change, so don’t hold me to them! Wondering why no main courses? Well this weekend I bought FOUR squash (3 acorn/carnival + 1 spaghetti) and I will continue this week to come up with multiple ways to stuff squash and eat it. These ideas, however, need some time to germinate, and considering the scant amount of mental space I can truly devote to creativity right now, original recipes are getting put on the backburner.

But the biggest news is that I’m back to blogging 😀 and I’m going to make an sincere effort to get pics up with my posts to make things a bit more fun/visual/salivation-stimulating. Check back for a revamped Recipes page soon. I plan on putting in a lot more, adding/deleting portions, etc… 

But as any dutiful college senior should say: “Homework first!”

Cheesy Veggie Pasta Bake + Overnight Oats (Slightly modified Version #2)

You know what’s exciting? The oats I just finished. They were phenomenal.
Not even kidding. They were so spectacular that they transcend the need for exclamation points. But more on my slightly modified (but oh so worth it) overnight oats a little later. To honor chronology, let me begin with my endeavors with the Veggie Pasta Bake last night from Budget Bytes, or, as I like to call it the Cheesy Veggie Pasta Bake.

Ah pasta. Sigh. How I love thy empty carbs and the way you can fill up my hungry tummy at the end of the day. Okay, maybe I don’t love the “empty carb” part but whole wheat pasta is sorta expensive & my family likes the taste of white/regular pasta better (3 against 1, majority rules in this house). While I love just throwing noodles in a pot of boiling water & tossing them with sauce 10 minutes later, I find baking pasta to be really gratifying. Maybe it’s the whole unrushed, I’m-not-cursing-the-deceitful-controls-of-the-electric-stove part, or perhaps it has something to do with the enormous amount of ooey, gooey, cheese that goes into this particular dish. Give it a go and you decide.

Needless to say my love for this dish is not unfounded. This was not my first time using this recipe but it is the first time I probably followed it’s ingredient list somewhat religiously. Here are some of my alterations:

• Used canned diced tomatoes in lieu of fire-roasted–as always, this had to do with availability not preference. Fire roasted would no doubt yield a more flavorful dish (the plain diced tomatoes tend to taste a bit blah in the end) but I bet the same result could be achieved by adding some basil/Italian spices to the mix (will definitely do next time, because I doubt I’ll have fire-roasted on hand)
• No 16 oz. whole milk mozzarella here!–So I appreciate the inherent chessyness of this dish (and I praise it) but dear lord, you certainly only need 8 oz of mozzarella, especially when you’re using parmesan as well! Also, Budget Bytes insists that the “whole milk” part is crucial and I have to disagree. Although maybe it’s because I’m naive to the merits of whole milk cheese, the skimmed frozen version of mozzarella cheese works just fine here.
• Cut back on the cayenne–This reduction was purely because I’ve been notoriously known for adding too much spice to baked dishes (even though I followed the recipe!) and the fam has a hard time with it. In retrospect though, putting in just 1/4 tsp could have been upped to 1/2 tsp and no crazy spicyness, mouth-burning, Aly-cursing would have ensued. Overall, my family and I found that the dish could have used more flavors, but perhaps next time I’ll turn more to the Italian spices than red pepper.

Bottom Line: 4 out of 5 stars (Like I said before, the dish was missing the Italian flavors required of any true pasta dish. Plan on adding oregano/basil next time)

Willingness to Make Again?: Yep! 

Now for my Overnight Oats (Slightly modified but entirely worth it Version #2):

Remember how I said I love my oatmeal super duper thick? Well, I was afraid that switching to overnight oats would mean forgoing all that yummy thickness that I got from cooking the oats. Boy oh boy was I wrong. Last night I devised a plan. A plan to reduce the liquid-to-oats ratio in the bowl to create the perfect thick overnight oats. So, without further ado, here’s what I did (the underlined items were ones where I changed the quantities from my original overnight oats):

Night before:

• Combine 3/4 c rolled oats, 1/3 c unsweetened almond milk, 1/3 c nonfat plain yogurt, spoonful of ground flaxseed and 1 large banana mashed in a bowl, mixing everything together.
• Stick in the fridge and leave uncovered overnight

Next morning:

• Open up the fridge the next morning (it felt akin to Christmas here!) and voila! Perfectly thickened overnight oats!
• Add 1/8 cup Spanish peanuts to the top (or anything you want) for some crunch

[I would have snapped a picture of this beautiful bowl of nummies before I devoured them but my lack of a camera nearby combined with my ravenous appetite stopped me 🙂 ]

PB & Strawberry Banana Smoothie: Quick Post-4 mile run fix

Went on a 4 mile run this morning and the entire time I was thinking of what I wanted to have as a post-workout snack 😛 In the end, when my sweaty self stumbled into the crowded kitchen, I snagged the following ingredients to create my own personal
PB & Strawberry Banana Smoothie:


Ingredients:

• 1 frozen banana, cut up in chunks (the smaller, the easier to blend–I learned the hard way :P)
• 1/2 cup frozen strawberries (no sugar added–which reminds me to ask the all-important question: Why do strawberries need added sugar?)
• 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup milk (I used unsweetened almond milk but really anything will do)
• 1 tbsp peanut butter (I used the stuff I made weeks ago from scratch from spanish peanuts)
• Crushed ice

Put it all in your blender of choice and begin the blend, adjusting the liquid to solid ratio depending on your thickness preference for smoothies. (I like mine SUPER thick!) The total kCal will depend on your choice in milk & peanut butter, but mine was roughly 250kCal 🙂

Enjoy and cherish your post-workout moment 🙂

Banana Buddy Shake: Quick Post-Workout Post

It may be no green monster, but blessed be Natural Noshing, for the Banana Buddy Shake was supremely deliciously and amazingly satisfying after my bike to the Y, run 40 minutes at the Y, and bike back from the Y.
Here’s what it would have looked like, provided I had the patience to pour it in a fancy-pants glass & dress it all up (I was too hungry though :P) :

Changes made? A few:

• Used 3/4 cup of almond milk instead of a whole cup (I like my smoothies to be really really thick and, frankly, the 3/4 cup was the nearest measuring cup within reach–did I mention I was hungry?)
• Used a little less flax, only about a teaspoon (tablespoon was in the dishwasher :P)

Bottom Line: 5 out of 5 stars

Willing to make it again?: Oh yes, yes indeed!