Feeling a Little Nutty July 15, 2009

A little fruity, a little nutty, it’s been an uninspired day in the realm of my eats. I’ve been busy doing other things and just went with what was fast and easy.

It started off with breakfast. I enjoyed a slice of my roomie’s parent’s homemade zucchini bread (including homegrown zukes and walnuts from my parent’s tree), cherries, and Amazing Grass Superfood (the regular flavour) mixed in homemade vanilla almond milk. I don’t know if it was just the vanilla fooling my taste buds, but I swear this powder tasted like chocolate, when it was just the plain flavour. And that can only be a good thing, right? Two thumbs up for sure.

Later in the morning I enjoyed some sweet honeydew melon.

And for lunch, leftover sprouted amaranth tabouli, with extra parsley added.

And in the afternoon I snacked on some dates and almonds.

Then a super simple dinner of a kale/pineapple/banana green monster.

And an extra dose of dates and nuts in the form of an awesome Apple Pie Larabar.

I really should make some sort of non-produce, non-dried fruit/nut snacky item to keep on hand without worrying about it going bad. And without a dehydrator. Any suggestions?

Leftovers Galore July 14, 2009

This morning started out with a sweet and tasty green monster. In the mix was lots of kale, a banana, nectarine, and chia seeds.

For lunch I repeated my lunch from yesterday (I just made extra yesterday), with a salad mess of broccoli, zucchini, asparagus, red pepper, and a hemp nut butter/lemon/mustard dressing.

I had the most wonderful snack, a fresh batch of oatgurt with a peach and a tiny drizzle of maple syrup. Absolutely delicious. And you can tell there are definitely bacteria growing when the lid of the container you put your snack in is puffing out when you go to open it in the afternoon. I’m counting on them being good bacteria considering they haven’t made me sick yet 🙂

For dinner I used the rest of my sprouted amaranth mixed with tahini and lemon juice to make a tabouli type deal with parsley, sage, tomato, and carrot. It’s really good, plus there are even more leftovers for lunch tomorrow!

And cherries for dessert.

Non-yogurt Dressing Love July 13, 2009

For breakfast this morning I was happy to blend up a green monster. This morning’s incarnation included a nectarine, a few frozen grapes, chia seeds, and kale.

For lunch I discovered the most fabulous salad dressing. Remeber when I was loving the yogurt/mustard/chives salad topping? This tastes like that (except without the chives, because I didn’t think to add them this morning). It was a mix of hemp nut butter, lemon jice, and mustard. I used it to dress a pile of broccoli, red pepper, and zucchini.

Lunch dessert was blueberries and few brazil nuts.

Later in the afternoon I enjoyed a Coconut Cream Pie Larabar before heading home.

For dinner I mixed up sprouted amaranth with a little lemon and tahini, then stuffed it into delicious collard wraps with a tomato. Not the cleanest thing to eat with tomato juice squirting everywhere despite my best containment efforts, but delicious none the less 🙂 Along side were some cherries. The rest of my blueberries disappeared to, but they were too sneaky for the camera.

Out Of The Fridge And Into The Freezer June 15, 2009

Breakfast this morning was a icy cold due to the use of frozen fruit, since I realized the freezer is starting to get quite full. But it was a welcome coolness since my room was a but warm after my window decided to blow itself shut last night. In the tropical mix was kale, chia seeds, banana, and pineapple with a sprinkle of coconut on top. And along with that I had perfect, giant lychee. Seriously, this lychee tasted exactly like my memories of the awesome lychees I had in Taiwan when they were in season. And to give you an idea of it’s size, your typical lychee is about the same size as that toonie.

For lunch I chopped up a giant salad. It started with romaine, then piles of kabocha, asparagus, red pepper, and cucumber were added. Plus I mixed up a little dumpling sauce for dressing, soy sauce, sesame oil, and apple cider vinegar, delish.

And for snacking I had a big container of strawberries, a peach, and an apricot. Please pardon the slightly mutilated peach, it was nice and ripe (ie. soft), and the pit was not cooperating with my extraction attempt.

Then for dinner I fixed up a stirfry of sorts, I boiled some amaranth, then tossed it in with shitake mushrooms and Europe’s Best Nature’s Balance frozen veggie mix sauteed with olive oil, parsley, thyme, sage, and rosemary, and balsamic vinegar, plus a sprinkle of feta cheese.

And that savoury bowl was followed by a sweet dessert, kabocha with a swirl of hemp seed butter and raspberry jam. This stuff is addictive, I swear.

Goopy Sludge and Recognition June 10, 2009

Let’s try and make this quick, I’ve got some SYTYCD waiting for me 🙂

Goopy sludge # 1 of the day, green brown monster.  On the fruit side I chose banana, peach, and frozen raspberries.  And since I knew the raspberries would muddle the monster anyways, the green side was covered by leftover beet greens that had been hidden in the fridge and almost forgotten about, plus a little spinach, and chia seeds.  1/2 cup of cooked greens looks so small but packs a lot of punch!

My late morning snack consisted of a Chocolate Chip Peanut Crunch Clif bar.  It was good, very cookie like, the peanuts were a nice addition without being in-your-face peanutty like the peanut butter flavour.  I would have been even happier with more chocolate chips though.

I was weird and swapped lunch and afternoon snack in the timing scheme of things since the clif bar did a good job of filling me up.  At lunch time I had a container of honeydew and blueberries.

Then later in the afternoon I dipped my way through goopy sludge #2 of the day.  I food processor-ized black beans, chili paste, PB2, lime juice, soy sauce, and a bit of water for a tasty spread.

And the dippers were carrot, cucumber, zucchini, and celery.

For dinner I started off with more honeydew (it’s a big melon, and really tasty!) and kiwi while I was waiting on the oven.

Then I had a fantastic serving of freshly baked kabocha, to which I added soy sauce when I got down to the  outer skin layer in order to make it super fabulous.

And along side that was amaranth pilaf.  I found amaranth a while ago from the bulk bins, and finally decided to cook it up with onion, parsley and thyme that got caramellized first before adding the grains and water.  They’re so cute and tiny!  And the pilaf had a fun chewy texture.  Although there was a slight bitter taste, so I think I was supposed to rinse the amaranth first, like you would quinoa.  At least I know for next time, and it was still pretty good.

And the recognition part of the day.  Every day I wake up and  look out my window to see a large billbord that is usually adorned with an advertisement for some CTV show.  Last year I wanted to ripe my eyes out a little bit after waking to Addison Sheppard for four months.  For the past few (3?) months the billboard has been bugging me because I didn’t know what show it was advertising.  I figure the title was hidden somehow in the gibberish behind the guy’s head but I could never pick it out.  This morning I was looking at the gibberish again and had a feeling I had seen it somewhere else recently.  I suddenly came to the realization that the advertisment is for The Listener!  Now I’m wondering why the sign has been up for months when the show only started airing last week (although apparently NBC aired it in March)…