Life Lately- A Little Food, A Little Progress, A Little Thought

Hello, poor, abandoned blog!  I’ve not written in a long time. Why?  For a few reasons.

1. My job has been so demanding that I haven’t had much energy for anything besides getting things done at the office and getting my exercise in.
2. My Post-European Travel Despair has yet to dissipate. Happens every time I come back. Usually lasts until I can start planning my next trip.
3. I’ve been cooking a whole lot less because of the aforementioned things.

Between my bouts of misery and stress, I have, however, still been progressing in living a healthier life and surrounding myself with healthy food.  As I said, I haven’t been whipping up meals on my own as much, but I’ve been seeking out more ready-made or quick to make, no-cook healthy foods.

Oh, and I discovered coffee.  I’m not quite sure how that happened.  For my entire life up until about two months ago, my burgeoning hatred and mistrust for anything coffee-related was a defining aspect of my being, but something changed.  “I think I want to try coffee,” I announced one night after dinner.  My best friend bestowed a few Keurig cups on me, and it was all downhill from there.  At this point, I’ve become enough of a connoisseur to assure you I do hate K-cups, and I’ve developed a preference for medium-bodied varieties brewed in a French press.  Seriously though, I still have barely a clue what I’m doing with coffee.  I just know that our loves deepens with each passing day.

 

My favoritest coffee so far.

I kind of wish I’d discovered it before taking on a healthy lifestyle.  I would have loved to be able to enjoy a pumpkin spice latte in total ignorance of the horrific nutrition facts (even the “skinny” Starbucks version has something like 260 calories for a 12 oz, plus around 4 bajillion carbs and grams of sugar).  Having forever been a pumpkin spice loving, coffee hating creature, I always felt miffed on missing out when pumpkin spice latte season rolled around.  Luckily I found a recipe for a truly “skinny” version, and edited it down into something I could enjoy without guilt!  You can, of course, use real sugar and real maple syrup in this.

Recipe (made in a French press):

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

3 tbsp coffee (hazelnut coffee tastes best, in my opinion)

2 Tbsp Walden Farms Pancake Syrup (or syrup of choice)

8 oz skim milk

2 tsp sweetener of choice (I like Splenda or Truvia, but whatever works)

-Brew the coffee + pumpkin pie spice with 18 oz of water.

Fill the bottom of your mug with the syrup.

Shake the milk until it's nice and frothy, then heat it in the microwave for about a minute.

Pour the hot coffee and milk into your mug and stir in some sweetener if you prefer.

Enjoy your 80 calorie latte!

Other things I’ve discovered:

Quest bars- holy omg.  These. Things. Are. Amazing!  Especially when you heat them up in the microwave (most of them).  The Quest protein chips are amazing, too (though probably not in the microwave).  I’ve been focusing on a more low-carb/low sugar diet recently, and these things really go above and beyond in that aspect.

And continuing my trend of "What Can I Just Slap Together" meals, we have:

Oatmeal and sliced bananas, with coffee of course . . . 

Toast with cream cheese and apple butter, with coffee . . . 

Mom's homemade banana bread with cream cheese, cinnamon apple butter, and...you guessed it....

Scrambled eggs on toast with Canadian bacon...

Oh, and the delicacy I like to call Bachelorette Pizza. It's toast with a wedge of laughing cow cheese, mini pepperonis, and fresh basil on top.  The basil looks fancy and the pepperonis are cute, which makes it not look as sad.

It's not actually all that sad.  It's actually pretty delicious.  

Which brings me to last night’s dinner- beet and apple salad with balsamic vinaigrette. 

My mom’s single apple tree has proven itself to be a veritable orchard unto itself, and we’ve had to get very creative with ways to use up the plethora of fruit.  I have about four quarts of applesauce tucked in my freezer at the moment, along with three varieties of apple butter, two more quarts of applesauce, a jar of cinnamon apples, and a bowl of raw apples in the fridge. Oh, and two bags of dried apples on top of the fridge.  Needless to say, about every meal these days is accompanied by some sort of apple product.

Anyway, it was simple salads for dinner because yesterday was one heck of a day.  For the sake of being a bright-eyed, positive professional, I won’t hash out details, but my work day was rough.  Don’t get me wrong- I love what I do, find it very rewarding, and feel supremely lucky to have found a position that goes along with my degree and allows me to be creative.  That’s not the problem.

The problem, at its very core, I think, is that I’m not Southern.  By all technical accounts, I am, but by all accounts of my behavior, personality, and soul, I am not.  I had a good heart-to-heart with my mom about it, and she reminded me I am still young, and I am still free to chase my dreams.  There truly is nothing holding me back, besides maybe the necessity of keeping a few fluffballs with me wherever I go.  And what has been my dream forever?  When people ask me, if I could do anything, what would I do, what do I say to them?

I have a few answers to that, but there’s a common thread throughout all of them, and it’s that none of them have anything to do with living in rural North Carolina.  They all have to do with being far, far away from it.  Europe, more specifically.  So, what IS holding me back?  I sometimes feel a bit down about being a nearly-30-year-old woman who has never come close to being in a committed relationship, having no kids, having no home of my own, no grand salary or savings, etc.  Ok . . . maybe “sometimes” is an understatement.  I feel pretty crappy, undesirable, and unaccomplished for the vast majority of my waking hours.  But maybe I’m missing the positive aspect of my lack of ties to anything permanent and lasting: I have complete freedom.  And perhaps I’m squandering it.

I can only hope...

I’m not sure what I’ll do next, or how I’ll make it happen, but I think it’s time to get what I really want out of life back in focus.  There is so much pressure- especially in the South and especially in your late 20s- to be stable and have everything figured out, but that seems to refuse to happen for me.  And maybe if I get back to chasing what I really want, it will finally come together.  

Blueberry Basil Grilled Cheese- 110 calorie breakfast

A delicious, quick, and easy breakfast treat!

I don't normally do any cooking for breakfast on the weekdays, but after seeing a recipe for blueberry grilled cheese somewhere out there on the interwebs yesterday, I decided to get up a bit early and try making my own version!

What You Need:
- 1 tbsp blueberry preserves (I used some locally made blueberry-lemon-thyme preserves, but highly recommend Bonne Mamman Wild Blueberry spread as an easy-to-find alternative
- 2 slices Nature's Own Double Fiber Wheat Bread
- 1 slice Borden Gouda Cheese
- 3 big basil leaves
- Olive oil cooking spray

What to do:
Toast the bread slices and top with blueberry spread, cheese, and basil. Spray lightly with olive oil cooking spray and transfer to a panini grill.  Grill until the cheese is melted.  Enjoy!!

Nutrition facts:
Calories- 110
Fat- 3g
Carbs- 19.8
Fiber- 4.5g
Sugar- 6.5g
Protein- 5g

3 Ingredient Banana Pancakes!

I've had this recipe saved on Pinterest for a while:  http://www.recipebyphoto.com/3-ingredient-pancakes/

Looks too simple to be true, right?  I was skeptical, too, but over the weekend I found I really needed to do something with the blackened banana in my kitchen, so it felt like the right time to give this a try.

And OMG....it was SO much better than expected!

146 calories per pancake!

Even as I was mixing up the ingredients and pouring them into the pan, I was still skeptical.  I was skeptical up to the moment I cut a piece off and stuck it in my mouth.  They taste like delicious, moist banana crepes!  I only had some atrociously unhealthy uber-butter flavored pancake syrup around the house from my pre-diet days, so I was worried about having nothing to douse it in, but it turns out these really don't need anything extra.  I put two teaspoons of blueberry jelly on the top of mine for the sake of trying it out, but it would have been just as yummy alone.

Here's what you need:

1 very ripe banana

2 eggs

a smidge of cinnamon (like, 1/2 a tsp perhaps)

Makes 2 pancakes

Cut the banana up, add the egg and cinnamon, mash it all up with a potato masher (or an assortment of ineffective kitchen utensils if you've forgotten you own a potato masher, as I did). Let the mixture sit for about 3-4 minutes to get a fluffier pancake than the one in the picture (I figured this out on the second go-round). Heat a skillet over medium-high heat with a sliver of butter, add half of the banana goo mixture, and watch the magic begin.  Just cook it and flip it like you would a normal pancake.

Nutrition facts:

Calories:  146 without toppings (I did figure in 1/4 a tsp of butter per serving with this- if you use an alternative you could adjust accordingly)

Fat: 5.7g

Carbs: 16.5

Protein: 6.8g

Fiber: 2.4g

Sugar: 6.8g

....and just one is pretty darn filling!

In the true spirit of my cooking style, I did, of course, burn the second one.  Because I didn't add more butter to the pan.  My dear boyfriend still ate it like a champ and turns out they still taste pretty awesome even burnt!

It's an abstract piece, ok?