How to Create a Perfect Snack {In a jar!}

I think if there was to be a theme in my life right now it would be work. Everyday follows a similar pattern: I work in the early morning, get home in the early afternoon, nap chillax the rest of the day, repeat. I nestle my daily workouts into my commutes, taking a standard bike ride into the city in the morning and then a more lengthy (and sweaty!) ride on the way back. With this new routine came a lot of adjustments, particularly when it came to the question of “when and what to eat?” 

To break it down, I eat my oaty breakfast around 3 am which I’ve engineered to last me until 9-10am (some egg whites and ground flax help), when I usually get my break. It was this period of hunger that confused me at first. I mean, 6 hours inbetween meals is a long time so my body is naturally eating itself starving, which makes me want to just eat a lunch then and there. Buuuttt around that time I’m not exactly craving my kale salad- instead, my belly (yes, it speaks) says “Where was that mid-morning snack I look forward to?” And so I had a conundrum in my gut on my hands: what could I eat at 10am that would fill me up just enough to make it to 1pm, when I got off work, so that I could have a decent lunch?

And I think I finally found it: the perfect mid-morning snack that tides me over. 

And the best part is…it’s in a mason jar. 

Actually, in all seriousness, the best part is probably the fact that this snack does it all. It has a whole grain, a fruit, a little milk (if you so choose), and some nuts to round it off. That means you get a whole ton of fiber, a bit of protein, and a bit of fat, which, when united, provide the perfect satisfying snack to quench your belly’s demands. 

Have fun with your jar by mixing different grains (bulgur, oats, couscous, brown rice, quinoa, etc…), fruits, and nuts! See my own combo below 🙂

Perfect Snack {In a jar!}

Ingredients (from bottom to top)

1 cup cooked whole grain (I used bulgur above)

little bit of milk of choice (I used organic soy- I find it makes it more cereal-like and adds more protein!)

dash of cinnamon

1/2 cup diced fruit of choice (strawberries are above)

1 small handful of nuts (I used almonds)

Directions

Layer and love 🙂

What are some of your favorite snacks?

Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup

“Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going to fast-you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.” 

–Eddie Cantor

Let’s stop for a moment, take a breath, and slllooowww doowwwnnn.

And I mean wayyy dowwwnnnn.

So often we perceive that everything associated with the kitchen has to be quick, easy, fast. A wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of thing. You’re in and out and that’s that. And I know that’s our society these days. I get it. I need to get things done as much as the next person: bills to pay, floors to sweep, workouts to work, er, out? 

But whatever happened to enjoying something in the moment? Or, as Michael Pollan states in his book Cooked, why can’t chopping an onion just be about chopping an onion? 

I think that there are times where we just need to consciously slow ourselves down. Break our routines. Yes, break them, even though for me that sends my mind into a flurry. My routines are everything somedays. When I eat my breakfast. How far and fast I bike to work. Planning dinner hours in advance. Now, I’m not saying these things are bad, in fact, I would be so bold as to say that these are good habits to have (Miss Modesty, I know :P) BUT I think that when we rely too much on routines we turn on our autopilot and completely miss all the small beautiful things that surround us.

This recipe is made to help you slow down and appreciate the simple things in a few ways:
A. It will allow your mind to be free from worry re: what’s for dinner because all you do is the prep work. (ah, the beauty of the slow cooker)
B. It will make you realize that simple ingredients and simple spices can come together and create, well, simply a great meal.

Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup (serves 3)

Ingredients
1 pound chicken breast
1/2 can tomato sauce
1/2-1 cup water
1/2 can diced tomatoes
1/2 a medium onion, chopped
1/4 cup red bell pepper, chopped
1/4 cup green bell pepper, chopped
A few small red potatoes (optional – I thought this would be weird, but it turned out pretty good!)
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms (I had a portabella on hand so I used that)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili powder
Red pepper flakes, sprinkled on to taste

Directions
1. Put all ingredients into the slow cooker. They don’t have to be in any particular order, just make sure the chicken breast goes on last so that it sits on the top, making it easy to shred later.
2. Set your cooker to low and let it cook away for 7-8 hours.
3. During the last half hour of cooking, shred the chicken with a fork and then turn the cooker on high.
4. Serve with blue tortilla chips of course!

Do you have a go-to slow cooker recipe? What are ways that you make sure to slow down in your daily life?

{Chilly!} Sunday Gratitude

This morning made me reminisce about autumn. Walking around on our chilly hardwood floors, feeling the refreshingly crisp breeze blow through the window, sipping hot tea/coffee constantly, and piling on layers to bike to the farmer’s market are all hallmarks of the upcoming season (my favorite!). All that’s missing is the winter squash 🙂

But that’s okay, fall can wait a couple more months because I’m way to busy soaking up all this great summer produce!

 These are some pics from the Wicker Park Farmer’s Market I tend to go to whenever I cannot make it to the Green City Market (due to work- shmeh :P) on Saturdays. It’s quite quaint and always has a beautiful selection (even eggplant with odd appendages!).

And afterwards…coffee at this cute hipster coffeehouse Ipsento – how else could one possibly wish to spend a chilly fall-like day? 🙂

Feel the warmth!

The boyfriend and I love checking out new and interesting cafes throughout the city. If it weren’t for our proclivity towards brunch, I’d say that’s “our thing” (or “thang” if you prefer). BUT, due to budgetary cuts in our limited expenditures department, cafes are currently taken precedence. All that being said, I plan on starting a collection of all these different coffee cup sleeves and putting them in some kind of scrapbook that I’ll compile someday. It will be a sort of “our relationship as told by coffee sleeves” theme. Yeah. 🙂

All this fall and future talk also reminds me about my impending school year, which I am very excited about! Along with cooking and eating and reading and coffee/tea sipping, school supplies shopping is definitely on the list of Things I Would Do on My Perfect Day. Everything about it makes me giddy. The notebooks, planners, binders, and gadgets offering limitless amounts of ways to organize tiny spaces – swoon sigh. I cannot wait to get started, although, I’ll admit, shopping on such a limited budget takes a bit of the fun out of things. Ah well, whenever my poorness gets me down, I’ll just watch this (another reminder of fall) 🙂

But I suppose I should actually get to the point of this post, the many thanks to the folks who inspired me this week!

First up, as alluded to earlier this week, I whipped up a batch of this spectacular Blended Lentil Soup by none other than Kath herself. I adjusted the recipe a bit by leaving out the celery (not a fan) and doubling the carrots, but, as always, it was fantastic. Find out how to whip up a batch yourself here!

Next (and last) is a man I feel like I owe so much to, Mark Bittman. These are his “Spicy Autumn Burgers” as printed in his book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. When food-prepping, I needed a burger and a way to use up the kale in my fridge. This recipe satisfied both needs quite well and you can find the recipe here. 

Check out those recipes and be prepared for some more yummy goodness coming your way this week…including chicken!

What is your favorite way to spend your Sundays?

Weekly Reflection: Good Eats #1

To balance out the serious posts, I think it might be grand and refreshing to just take a step back and see what my eats looked like this week. Maybe you’re curious, maybe you don’t give a crap, but hey, I need a way to justify me taking pictures of everything I eat and I run this thing. So there 😉

I would say “Let’s start with breakfast, my favorite meal of the day!” but the truth is you & I would both be disappointed for a myriad of reasons:
1. I eat breakfast somewhere between 3-4am. AM. (I’m not crazy, I just open a cafe almost every day.) This is before the sun, birds, worms, boyfriend, roll over and wake up. What does this have to do with pictures? No sun = no natural light. So all my pics look depressing and vaguely like they belong in a horror flick.

Strawberry-Banana “Fluff” Oatmeal

 See? *shudder* Yeah…nobody wants to see that.
2. I rarely change my breakfast routine. I love eating the same thing for breakfast every day, and, if I’m going to be honest, could probably eat it all day. It grounds me and gives me something to rely on and depend upon. Sound like I’m too sentimental about my breakfast? I probably am. But what can I say, oats do that to me 😉

So, with all that said, let’s start with lunch 🙂

As mentioned in a previous gratitude post, I’m really digging the bean burger + grain salad scene. It adds some chew to my crunch and some really interesting spicy flavors to boot! Pictured above is the black bean burger, thinly sliced swiss chard, and bulgur (not pictured due to being eaten: carrots, green pepper).

There’s a burger hidden in there underneath the steamed broccoli and “hummus dressing” I devised by adding 1 tablespoon hummus + 1 tablespoon water and whipping together. Drizzle & voila(!)– hummus for everybody!

And then Wednesday afternoon I made a sweet potato/kale/oat burger (courtesy of Bittman) which is pretty swell, especially when wrapped in halved swiss chard leaves spread with hummus. Noms! And what’s left but the main meal: DINNER 🙂 Oh yeah. This happened. This is a blended lentil soup recipe I’ve been using for awhile and it. is. fabulous. and definitely a dinner my boyfriend swears he could eat every day. Maybe all day. TBR (to be revealed) on Sunday Sometimes I like to KISS…You know, keep it simple stupid, when it comes to dinner. Above is roasted eggplant, zucchini, and onions tossed in a tomato sauce and garnished with homegrown basil.  This is pizza night for us! Polenta pizza to be precise and yet another Bittman standby we worship use here. Toppings include tomato sauce, fresh basil, green peppers, mushrooms, and mozz (for my portion ;). And then the mother of all special weeknight dinners: a Whole Foods salad bar bowl. Can you think of a better way to end a long day of work downtown? (We couldn’t!) We like to put a layer of greens at the bottom and then let our imaginations run wild with toppings! Tonight’s included sauteed corn, lots of Indian-spiced dishes (major NOMS), some detox salad, raisins, oh and 2 rolls of the seeduction bread that is oh-sooooooooooooooooooooooo amazing 🙂 (and that “soooo” is no exaggeration). Hope your week went well! What’s your favorite meal of the day? Do you have something that keeps you grounded and doesn’t change from day to day?

Strawberry-Banana "Fluff" Oatmeal

Oats. 

For many, the word merely conjures hazy images of horses, farms, the rolling hills of the countryside.

For me, I feel comfort at the slightest utterance.

Oats have been with me since the inception of my healthy-eating/kick/diet  that never ended. I cannot recall the precise moment in time when I swapped my breakfast of bran flakes for a steamy bowl of the good stuff, but boy, when I did…Little did I know that I was opening a million doors- a million little “oat” doors, that is, of possibilities! 🙂

The fruit, the toppers, the butters, the melters, the spices = so many combinations to explore!

This week I decided to switch up my oatmeal routine which, if you know me, is a pretty big deal. Don’t get me wrong, my melty-banana-half addition was (and has been, and ever will be) amazing, but I wanted to take advantage of the plethora of strawberries I had found at my nearby grocery store ($0.75 per pound- say what???). I could see a compromise could be had and, unlike the outcome of most compromises (let’s be real here), this one ROCKED! 🙂

But, wait a sec, what’s with this “fluff” bit?

Oh, did I forget to mention the simple ingredient that makes your oats DOUBLE in volume without adding more oats?
That’s DOUBLE the pleasure.
DOUBLE the fun. 
DOUBLE the thickness.
DOUBLE your enjoyment of your morning.
What magical ingredient could perform such a feat?

Why egg whites silly. I add in 2 (from large farm-fresh eggs) and interrupt the microwave cooking process a couple times to make sure they don’t solidify on me. You will be oh-so-amazed at the outcome.

You can thank me later 😉

Strawberry-Banana “Fluff” Oatmeal

Ingredients
1/2 cup rolled oats
dashes of cinnamon
1 cup water
2 egg whites
1/4 banana, chopped
1/2 cup sliced strawberries
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed (optional)
1 tablespoon cashew butter (optional but not really)

Directions
1. Combine the first 2 ingredients in your oats bowl.
2. Add the water and egg whites and whisk together until uniform in consistency.
3. Stir in banana and strawberries.
4. Cook oats as you normally would, whisking occasionally and adding in the flaxseed and nut butter halfway through the cooking process. (I prefer to leave the butter till the end, and I make it sink to the bottom of my bowl because it’s awesome to get a huge spoonful of gooey nut butter 🙂

What are your favorite oatmeal add-ins/flavors/combos???

Meal Plan Monday & Late Gratitude

This past weekend was really just a blur.

Wisconsin sky

Lovey-Dovey Tree

Random vegan hummus wrap

Cake. 🙂

A long, beautiful, green, sunny, refreshing, comfy, fuzzy blur.

I, along with my family, boyfriend, and friends, celebrated the wonderful union of my cousin and his fiancé wife and it could not have been a more marvelous day to be in Fond du Lac, WI 🙂 I did not take a ton of pictures but suffice it to say that I had a great time, ate raspberry cake, danced like I was on Broadway (I’m more into the interpretive dance thing- No grinding for this girl! ;), and watched as two best friends took a big leap together. Sigh. Aren’t weddings grand? (Answer – yep 🙂

I was so granded out that after our long ride (courtesy of Greyhound) back to Chicago I could not summon enough energy to compose a gratitude post for last week. So here I’ll insert a cliffnotes version:

Burger + catsup (why on Earth is it sometimes called catsup???)

Hats off to Vibrant Bean for providing such a delish black bean burger recipe! I’ve never made black bean burgers that actually stayed together, tasted good, and had some chew to them (you know, like a burger is supposed to have). And these did the trick and more 🙂 Click here to make them yo-self 🙂

And, well, I think that’s it for this week’s inspiration – I guess I’m more creative than I thought! :O

NOW it’s time for some planning. Meal planning. Oh yes. Feel the power.

Meals this week (July 22)

Breakfasts:
Strawberry-Banana Oats with melty cashew butter (recipe to come…)

Don’t judge! Nothing looks great at 3am!

Snacks:
Doughy Banana Bread Smoothie (revised and scaled down a bit to just satiate and not over-satiate me)
The-most-delicious-fruit-on-the-planet Cantaloupe
Red delicious (emphasis on delish-ous) apples

Lunches:
Black Bean burgers (leftover from last week- see above link) + chard salad with “hummus dressing” (recipe soon…) + steamed broccoli

Sans broccoli. It excused itself and took up residence in my tummy 🙂

Dinners:

Blended Lentil Soup (to come in next week’s gratitude post…)

WILDCARDS! (dinner is where I allow my creativity to shine, so I’ll keep you posted on what I dream up throughout the week) 

Hope your Monday was swell!

Do you plan your meals out or prepare them on the fly? What are you planning on cooking up this week? 

Weekly Reflection: Insecurity

“Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.” -Francois de la Rochefoucauld

I love a lot of things in life. I love my family, my boyfriend, my friends, my job, my life, the food I make, the food I eat, ice cream, crisp apples, oatmeal, falafel, fresh-baked bread- the list goes on and on. And yet, the one thing that has been hardest for me to love over the years is (regrettably) myself. 

The desire to achieve perfection in everything I do has been with me since I was small. I am the oldest of four siblings and am the classic “eldest child” in many respects: I have an innate sense of responsibility (or bossyness if you ask any of my brother/sisters), a keen sense of honesty (with a guilt-complex to boot), and, sometimes unfortunately, a drive to achieve perfection in everything I do. This drive has always led me to do great things in school and other endeavors that are easily measured. I would know that I had achieved the best I could when I got all As or scored high on a difficult test.

But when I began my healthy lifestyle, there was no “you have arrived” line drawn. No measure to tell me I was good enough, that I had done well. And my perfectionism got the best of me. Suddenly, everything was not good enough and I felt myself comparing my body to everyone else’s. How much would I have to exercise to get skinny thighs like hers? How many miles should I run? How fast should I run? How long should I be able to hold a plank? Is biking to work enough? 

How much is enough? 

Or, rather, when would I ever be enough?

A couple years ago I was ten pounds lighter. I was going to college, had 24/7 access to a gym within walking distance (included in my tuition) and exercised in a lot (maybe too much) of my free time. My thighs were skinnier, my muscles more toned, my body more athletic-looking, and I was able to wear sizes that I never could before. My transition to Chicago brought me to where I am today: well within a healthy weight range and yet that 10 added pounds feels an awful lot like failure. I look back on those days and pictures with envy, thinking in retrospect that THAT was when I was enough. I mean, I was so fit, how could I NOT have been happy? 

My journal entries from those days, however, tell a different story. They reveal that even then I wasn’t content and insecurity about maintaining my low “perfect” weight plagued my mind constantly. Nothing was ever “enough.”

This post is not meant to be self-pitying though, as most discussions of this nature tend to be. It is meant to shed light on the fact that unless we can wholly accept who we currently are, faults and all, we will never be satisfied. It is my belief that satisfaction and contentment do not have origins in tangible materials or external influences. That tube of cream, running regimen, diet pill, or elliptical will never make you look younger or feel better about your body until you feel better about yourself.

I’m not saying this is easy- clearly I am struggling with it right now- but I believe that a focus on living well and enjoying life to its fullest will help me find peace with this inner perfectionist. It is my goal and hope that one day I’ll be able to stop comparing myself to others and celebrate the person I am- who is good enough. 

Until then, I’ll focus on looking in the mirror. And smiling 🙂 

Bulgur, Eggplant, & Mozzerella Bake

Eggplant is one of those vegetables that has always begged me to love it. (And I’ve complied, quite willingly 🙂 Our introduction to one another was almost formal at first. Years ago I waited for weeks on end in the sultry summer, just dying to catch it at my local farmer’s market and see what all the fuss was about. Or, rather, lack of fuss. Prior to that time, the time when I transitioned to a plant-based diet, I had never tasted eggplant, never touched it’s shiny, mauve, and tight skin or witnessed its truly spongelike nature in cooking. I knew nothing and my burgeoning culinary instincts craved to know all about this purple veg. So I excitedly bought one on a Saturday morning. I remember biking home feeling great because I had an eggplant – a vegetable that had stubbornly eluded most of my local farmers until August. Once home, as the shopper’s high began to fade I realized I had no idea what to do with this thing, this eggplant. So I stuck it in the fridge while I contemplated this issue by exploring all that the internets had to offer. As a direct result of my efforts, the next day I made some roasted eggplant, tomato, and parmesan rounds for lunch on a whim. I was blown away. The flavors intermingled, fused, and added to each other in ways that I had never before encountered. It was all so naturally…elegant.

Suffice it to say that eggplant has forever remained a staple in my fridge, especially around summertime when fresh veggies abound and usher in new possibilities. I have continued in the tradition of making any eggplant dish a decidedly “Italian” one- that is, including basil, parmesan/mozzerella, and other savory veg such as mushrooms and zucchini- and usually just layering one veg on top of the another does the trick at 375 for 30 minutes. 

But last week, when confronted once again with the question “What to do with this eggplant?” I engineered a different (and spectacular-if I do say so myself) concoction. Yes, layers were involved, but this time I included a grain: bulgur. Bulgur and I have been seeing each other for quite some time. I love how well it performs in raw and cooked dishes alike, always yielding the same nutty flavor. (The nuttiness even pervades the air as it cooks. It’s the reason my BF is drawn into the kitchen on my food prep nights 😉 And deep inside my foodie self I knew that it would be especially good with eggplant.

And it was.

Bulgur, Eggplant, & Mozzerella Bake
(serves 2)

Ingredients
1 eggplant, sliced into rounds (the thicker you make them, the longer it will take to cook) & then sliced in half
1 onion, sliced
1 can tomato sauce (or diced tomatoes, although it won’t be as creamy)
2 cups cooked bulgur
1 tsp dried oregano
1/4-1/2 cup shredded (or fresh) mozzarella
Handful of fresh basil, to garnish

Directions
1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees (F). Spray a casserole dish (or dutch oven) with nonstick spray, I used TJ’s Coconut Oil.
2. Mix the cooked bulgur and oregano together and then put in the bottom of the dish, evenly spreading it out.
3. Then, slice your ingredients.
4. Starting with the eggplant, layer one layer of each veg on top of one another (eggplant, onion, eggplant, onion), separating each with a thin drizzle of the tomato sauce. (eggplant, drizzle, onion, eggplant, drizzle, onion)
5. Top it off with the mozzarella and toss in the oven for 30-45 minutes.
6. Take out and happily consume 🙂

Sunday Gratitude

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” – Melody Beattie

Every week, I create dishes, dinners, smoothies, lunches, most of which, I’m not ashamed to say, taste pretty good. However, it would be a grand misconception to say that all these ideas are completely original, that I operate within a vacuum. Far from it. Instead, I feed off of the musings, inspiration, and ideas of others and I’ve decided recently that I need to start giving some credit where credit’s due. While I don’t always follow recipes to a T, I thought you all would benefit from seeing where exactly I get my ideas throughout the week. Enjoy!

Roasting Cashews
Early on in the week, after receiving my 5 pound bag of raw cashews, I decided to make my first batch of cashew butter ever. I was ready. I had waited weeks for this shipment and I yearned to know how cashew butter tasted. Much to my chagrin, however, blending this raw butter took f.o.r.e.v.e.r. I needed to let my food processor “rest” in the freezer multiple times so I would not blow it’s little engine.
But the results were perfectly satisfactory- the butter didn’t melt into a gooey pile at the bottom of my oats though so I wanted to try something that would allow the oils to run a little more freely…
Enter roasting cashews. And thanks to the folks at The Kitchn I was able to produce a great batch of melty cashew butter yesterday! Click here to see their article on how to roast nuts.

Green Smoothies

My “Banana Bread” Smoothie concoction

Ah the green smoothie. Way back when (okay, it was just a couple years ago) I started my journey with green smoothies after visiting Oh She Glows’ “Green Monster Movement” website, which gave me loads of ideas to experiment with and a platform to jump off of, so to speak. See where it all began here. 

Chickpea Salad
Most days raw, undressed, un-anything salads just aren’t the beez kneez for me anymore. There, I said it! I have no idea how I used to do it but my stomach just churns with the thought. But that is no reason to give up the greens altogether! Instead, I cook my veg ahead of time via steaming, sauteeing, roasting, etc…and make some sort of pastey goodness (with plenty of flavor) to go over the top! This week I went with a chickpea salad from Clean Green Simple and it was delish 🙂 Click here to add a boost to your lunchtime noms 🙂 

Turkey & Bean Chili

And then there was last night.
This past week I decided to embrace my omnivorous inclinations and buy some ground turkey from a farm in Indiana called Gunthorp Farms. (Their website is pretty cute) But without the time and the energy to look up a recipe for it throughout the week, yesterday morning I decided was the day for turkey! After transferring it from freezer to fridge to defrost I looked up something, anything to do with it. And came up with this lovely chili from Cooking Light. Great solid recipe- I only altered it by using a jalapeno instead of a poblano (don’t touch your eyes, nose, or lips without washing your hands 15 times!) and using water in lieu of the broth. It had a good kick to it and paired well with my BF’s cornbread 🙂 Click here to see the recipe yourself. 

And that’s my first week of gratitude 🙂 Thank you to all who inspired me this week and have a great and relaxing Sunday everyone!

Weekly Reflection: Optimism

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Talking to a fellow coworker today led to the inevitable banter about which one of us was:

more tired

more overworked

more poor

more stressed

etc… (you know what I mean)

I feel like we all lead these conversations so often absentmindedly and in that same vein, these conversations can skew how we see our world. Instead of being blessed with a steady job with great coworkers, we are fighting to see, well, whose life sucks more? And what’s weird is that we’re both trying to win! There was a moment when I realized this in mid-conversation and I said, quite frankly, “You know, this is not really that bad.”

I try to live my life looking through rose-colored glasses. As I see it, being an optimist is a survival strategy in a world plagued by various social, political, and economical ills. What is the point of letting all the ugly, bad, filthy get in the way of the beautiful, good, and pure? Yes, it is wrong to ignore that problems exist, but the way we approach such problems must be in the optimist vein: How can we make this better vs. Man, this just sucks. 

The way I see it, I’m only living one life. For me, every day will only happen once. There are no do-overs. No redos. No second-chances. So why waste any of that time on feeling anything but the greatest? When around negativity I can just feel the energy being sucked out of me, the light going out of my day. Negativity has a way of acting like a black hole: swallowing up all the light and goodness and taking me with it. And, just like the fruitless conversation mentioned before, nothing good ever comes out of negativity. Nobody feels better. Nobody wins.

The exact opposite is true whenever I find myself around dreamers and doers- around people who don’t start their conversations about their day with a negative comment but instead begin with “Today, I discovered…” or “Today, I was inspired by…” or “Today, I learned…” or “Isn’t it great that I…”These people feed energy to everyone because they radiate it. Whenever I have a  meeting with the registered dietitian I’m interning for I always feel this way. She is constantly aiming to make everything I dream a reality and approaches every obstacle with a smile and a determined attitude. Working for her has made me realize that dreams and goals don’t have to be these fluffy ideals but, if planned accordingly, can be actual realities. 

One day I will start my own educational family farm where I will teach parents and children alike where their food comes from and the importance of knowing where their food comes from. This is my dream. And, gosh darnet, I will move forward every day with a smile on my face and a spring in my step in order to make it a reality. 

Who inspires you?