It’s That Time of The Week (WIAW)

Hey ya’ll! Of course I am going to participate in my favorite day of the week. What I Ate Wednesday. Who cares if I’m a day late. It is always a party at my place. Sort of. Okay, not really because I’m just a typical nerd always doing my work and what not, BUT this weekend it actually is going to be a party. Today is my younger brothers birthday, so I’m going out and I’m going out on Saturday. Uh oh. Double trouble for this weekend. Anyways back to the subject at hand. FOOOOOOD. Thanks to Jenn for doing this every single week. I don’t know what I would do without having WIAW and getting to stalk a million blogs in one day. Cheers to that.

Lets see what I’ve been eating.

Classic Lindsay oats. Duh. Really though, I’m pretty predictable.
Pumpkin Cheesecake Oats
1/2 c. Oatmeal
1 1/2 c. water
1 banana
1/3 c. canned pumpkin
1/4 c. low fat cottage cheese (1%-2%)
1 packet of truvia
1 dash of vanilla extract
cinnamon
pumpkin pie spice
a sprinkle of chocolate chips

1. Prepare oatmeal in the normal fashion of microwaving water and oats in a container for about 2-3 minutes.
2. Chop up banana into small slices, then place in container and microwave for 1:30 more minutes.
3. Add in everything, but chocolate chips.
4. Sprinkle with a few chocolate chips.

Delicious. The pumpkin provides a contrast to the sweetness of all the add ins, and the cottage cheese gives the oatmeal a creamy flavor that resembles cheesecake. I’ve been on a cottage cheese and oatmeal kick, so don’t worry. I have more cheesecakey recipes coming up in the next few weeks. If you have leftover pumpkin from all the holidays or you want to eat this bowl of oatmeal, I recommend making it as soon as possible. Your stomach will be happy.

Hello newest obsession. Blood Orange Chobani Yogurt. Some people think that it is too tart, but I think it is perfect. When you combine the creamy flavor of greek yogurt with the oranges at the bottom it makes pure heaven in your mouth. It is tangy, so be warned, but those are the kind of flavors I like. Chobani has really outdone itself with its new line of flavors. The apples and cinnamon flavor is also really delicious. I have a passion fruit in my fridge, but have yet to try it. Once I do, I will let ya’ll know what I think. I had been cheating on Chobani with Oikos lately, but with the addition of these new flavors I’m baaaack.

Other new food obsession: Arctic Zero Cookies and Cream. When can you go wrong with cookies and cream? NEVER. I had to sample a couple of bad flavors in order to find this gem. For those of you that don’t know, Arctic Zero is a real low calorie ice-cream that is great when you want a sweet treat, but do not want to consume all the calories from milk fat and what not in normal ice-cream. Now don’t expect a super creamy texture from this ice-cream because obviously it is low calorie, but I like the semi-icy texture and the flavor of the cookies and cream is AMAZING. I topped it with a little whip cream and some mini chocolate chips. Hello delicious afternoon snack. Why thank you, I will gobble you up.

I’ve really been enjoying mangoes lately. While they are super tricky to cut, in the end they are worth it. I’m trying to consume a variety of fruits now instead of just eating apples and bananas because that is boring, plus each fruit provides a different type of health benefit, so why not knock out as many diseases as I can by consuming as many whole foods as possible. I’m smart. Like we didn’t know that. Random nutrition lesson: stay away from pre-cut fruits like mango because those type of foods are not required to have food labels, so you don’t know how these items are being prepared or where they come from. Food safety is so important. You don’t want a foodborne illness – could lead to your death over strawberries or something (that would be a great book title).

My future roomie would probably look down on this, but heck sandwiches are an easy thing to eat before class especially if I’m in a hurry. I’m actually going to attempt to switch to eating tofurkey and go totally pescatarian, but we shall see if I like those products or not. Anyways since I’ve been eating bread in small amounts, these sandwich thins are soo good. They are the perfect size and the bread is really soft. I also tend to always pair my lunch with carrots and dijon mustard to dip them in. Yes, I’m really weird, but I like the bitterness of the dijon.

Things I love in life: Curry, tofu. Curry and tofu. I think I crave it pretty much every day, so instead of shelling out tons of money and buying it from a thai place I decided to make my own. Unfortunately, I’m lacking brain cells right now due to overload from school. Instead of following the recipe, I added a little too much curry. Oh how this was spicy. My mouth was on fire. I think I chugged about 40 oz of water in 10 minutes. While it was really spicy, it was still good. Lesson learned though. Always follow the recipe unless you know what you are actually doing.

Yes my fashion is back. I got so many compliments on this skirt today that I was like I MUST share this with the world. The skirt is asymmetrical and neon pink. I was wearing some black gladiator sandals, but my feet were tired from walking back from class, so I took them off. I promise to deliver more fashion on the blog again and maybe even have some posts only about fashion or maybe how fashion relates to nutrition. That would be weird. I’ll figure it out.

Hope everyone had a great WIAW and has a happy thirsty thursday!

Anyone have big plans for the weekend?
What is your favorite flavor of Cheesecake?

Rollin, rollin, rollin

Hey ya’ll! I hope everyone has had a good weekend. Mine has been pretty eventful for just a studying for finals weekend. On Saturday night, my future roomie and I went to the University of Texas vs Texas State Mens Basketball game. It was pretty fun, even if it was a blowout. It was a sad day because the Texas State team is fine, and they can give me a call anytime they want. While the actual game was not awesome, there were some pretty funny events that occurred during the game. One time they were going around with the camera filming random people in the audience, and they got this little boy who was like shimmying his chest like he was a girl. It was hilarious. I was dying. I wish I would have got a photo. Also at the games there is this balloon float in the shape of a BBQ sauce bottle and it floats around dispensing coupons, so there was this wild mob of children chasing around the float through the entire stadium. I was like where are your parents? Not cool.
For some reason the photo came out really bright, but heck this was a slow night and look how many people are there! I was glad that no one was sitting in front of us, so I could rest my feet up on the head of the seat. We actually got tickets for the mezzanine, but because I’m a sneaky Jew and all, we moved all the way down to the normal section that costs way more than what we paid. Mwahaha. Don’t mess with the Jews, we will outsmart you when it comes to money.

Focus Lindsay, focus. Today I’m going to show ya’ll how to make spring rolls step by step. I really wanted to make this a vlog, but alas I have no one to film me doing this, so I have to do a photo how-to, but I think it is pretty great. Spring rolls are super easy to make, and they are a healthy low  cal option. Plus they are gluten free! Yay for Asians using rice noodles in most of their cooking. No wonder they are so freaking skinny.

1. Set out all ingredients and tools needed to make spring rolls on table: one plate, a pie plate filled with water, rice paper sheets, rice vermicelli noodles, parsley, shredded carrots, shredded lettuce, and meat of your choice (in this case I used shrimp, but you can make it vegan by using tofu)

2. Dip one rice paper sheet into the pie plate of water, make sure you coat it evenly, and let sit for a couple of seconds.

3. Place wet rice paper on the plate, but be careful because the texture will have switched from being hard to being sticky and soft, which means that it will rip easily. Once it is on the plate, start piling all of the inside fillers in the middle. Just don’t overload because the paper will rip or it won’t fold well.

4. The first part of the actual rolling of the spring roll is pulling in the sides. Take the left and right side and pull it inwards, so it is partially covering the food in the middle.

5. Next pull the top of the rice sheet down towards you and tuck it in as tight as possible underneath all of the food. This is the trickiest part because when you are pulling it tight, the paper will want to rip. The one pictured above is a little loose, but as long as it isn’t super floppy then the springroll will hold.

6. Now start rolling the middle towards you until all of the rice paper has wrapped around the springroll. If you did the step of getting the paper wet completely right than this shouldn’t be a problem, but if some of your paper is still hard you can brush it with a small amount of water and it will stick. Tada. Now you have a spring roll to enjoy.

Once you get the hang of making them, you can pop them out pretty quick and they are an easy go to meal of mine because I can put it in my pink bento box and take to school without needing to refrigerate it in between classes and eating it. Go crazy with the combinations of what you can put into it. I have seem some pretty interesting things at a few Vietnamese restaurants that I have been to. I usually enjoy mine with gluten free peanut sauce, but you can make your own sauces with soy sauce, peanut sauce, and a variety of Asian condiments.

Have a relaxing Sunday. I just finished making my own review for my functional foods and neutraceuticals class, and it is about 11 pages. I feel like it doesn’t even encompass everything we talked about in class, but oh well. There is only so much you can do and hope that your brain will just retain everything. Luckily I have a pretty high A in the class, so I can just do average on the final and probably still have a really high A or a mid A. Yes, I’m nerdy and I care about my grades.

What is your favorite genre of Asian food?
What is your favorite Asian food item?

Partying Hard (WIAW)

Hey ya’ll! It is that time of the week again. Another What I Ate Wednesday Post. I should learn how to document my food more, so I actually have more delicious food to post and less of my jibber jabber. Although I do think I’m rather funny, so I subject ya’ll to that more often than I should. Sorry, but not sorry. Anyways, all of us bloggers that participate in this lovely holiday must give it up to the wonderful Jenn for hosting and creating such a great day in the week. Without this day, I probably would not have discovered some great food items out there or met some amazing people. Plus it doesn’t hurt having people stalk your blog more. Enough with the chit chat, lets get to why ya’ll really came to my page, the food:

Baked Apple Pie Oats (Gluten Free)
1 Braeburn Apple
cinnamon
Brown Sugar
crushed walnuts
raisins
1/3 c. Gluten Free Oats
1 1/3 c. Water
1 tbsp of PB2
truvia packet
1 tsp vanilla

1. Prepare oats like the normal method of microwaving, letting sit, and refrigerating the night before.
2. The next day slice up apple into really small chunks, sprinkle with cinnamon and a pinch of brown sugar, put in a microwave safe dish, cover in plastic wrap, then microwave for 5 minutes.
3. While apples are cooling, reheat oats from the night before, then mix in a packet of sugar and a tsp of vanilla.
4. Mix in hot apple mixture, but leave some apples on the top.
5. Top with sprinkle of raisins, walnuts, a little cinnamon, PB2 and a pinch of brown sugar.

Hands down the best oatmeal combination I have come up with yet. Besides tasting good, your apartment will smell of sweet cinnamony apples. For once, I actually liked going out of my room since it smelled lovely. I definitely recommend everyone make these as soon as possible because they are life changing. If you don’t want the oats, I still suggest that you make the cooked apples because it is a super low-cal, healthy, filling, and did I mention delicious snack?

Today I went to the library to study for my Food Science final that is tomorrow. Ah. Yeah, I feel like I’m ready for it, but I just never know. I really just need to get a B on it, so I can keep my A. Enough with that. You can’t go to the library without amazing study snacks. So I brought along for the journey a bag of baby carrots, a bag of berries (strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries), and a bag of special trail mix (almonds, gluten free pretzels, and raisins). I also had two babybell light cheeses, a sugar free vanilla snackpack, and a gluten free marshmallow bar, but I crammed those in my mouth really quickly and didn’t get any pictures. Who wants to see that anyways?

My friend that went to the library with me was getting hungry for lunch, so we decided to take a break and walk all the way to Subway. I have all these giftcards there, so I am always down to get a salad with all the toppings on it. Today I got a turkey and ham salad with lettuce, onions, tomatoes, banana peppers, pickles, and regular mustard. I love subway, and I just discovered that the one we went to is open 24 hours. Hello late night munchies at like 3 am. Haha. No, I actually won’t be going to a Subway that late at night because I would rather eat something sweet or salty. After our lunch, I decided to trek all the way back to my car and go to my apartment because I had wasted 2 hours at the library chatting away and playing words with friends and hanging with friends. Damn you evil IPhone games.

I had pork chops and apple sauce for dinner. What a winning combination. I should always trust traditional southern food, but I actually have never had it before this. All I did to make my pork chops was sprinkle them with tenderizer and let them sit for about 20 minutes before tossing them into a hot pan with some oil. Let me tell you that tenderizer does some amazing tricks. I learned about this secret in my Food Science lab when we did the section on meats. It makes the meat really juicy and tender. I paired it with my famous green beans…from a can. What a perfect meal. Atleast in my mind. Totally unkosher, but thankfully I’m not religious.

Mango is on sale at the grocery store right now, so what did the Jew in me say? BUY BUY BUY. Good choice though. Not just for the pricetag, but mango is a really delicious snack to have at night. The citrus flavor definitely woke me up to study some more for my exam. The only thing is that the darn fruit is really hard to cut, which is no wonder so many people buy it already sliced and peeled in packages.

Who has had one of these before? Gluten Free, organic, super tasty. No complaints over here. One of my favorite gluten free products is this peanut butter with chocolate drizzle rice bar. Satisfies that sweettooth craving, especially when you are wanting something like a brownie or chocolate cake, but you can’t have it. I tend to go through these really quickly because they are so good. They come in 4 different flavors – wow I sound like an advertisement.

It is time for me to get off the internet, so I can get back to some last minute studying. Hope everyone had a wonderful Wednesday and good luck to all of those taking finals right now!

What are your favorite study snacks?
When are your exams, if you have any?

Give me MO-re

Hey ya’ll! Guess what? I’m in Missouri. Scary, I know. My mom decided that we needed to come see my grandparents. Not that I don’t love my grandparents, but the town they live in is the smallest thing in existence. You think I’m joking. No. There is one main road with a walmart on one end, a couple of fast food places, and a grocery store. They have a Chinese place that only has two things on the menu. TWO THINGS. Plus they do not have internet at their house, so I finally decided to go steal some at the only hotel in the town. Thank god for Holiday Inn. Anyways I don’t really have time to write a super long post about everything going on in my life because I am sketchy looking sitting out in the parking lot of a holiday inn, but I wanted to share with you some of the things I’ve been eating lately.

Here we go, one more time, everybody is feeling fine..or maybe that is just me on my meds. Uh Oh

Meet one of the great food groups in the world: BBQ. Obviously you do not know what good BBQ is because you do not live in Texas. The state of good meat. Don’t try to kid yourself either. I pretty much refuse to eat BBQ elsewhere unless I’m in desperation for a little taste of home (this has only happened once and it was in Boston). Let me introduce you to one of the greatest places in Austin: Iron Works.
Beef ribs. OH MY GOD. So good. I try to stay away from red meat, but when I have that craving for BBQ ribs, Iron Works is seriously the place to go. This is an Austin staple. The restaurant looks sort of like an old rusty shack downtown, and once you go inside it has an old western flare. Back in the kitchen they have large smokers cooking up delicious things like beef ribs, brisket, and smoked sausage. This place is even so amazing that you can order online. Nom nom nom. A plate comes with baked beans, potato salad, onions and pickles, and a piece of bread (did no consume). When you stick that rib in your mouth, the meat just falls off and the flavors are so rich, especially when mixed with the barbeque sauce. The sauce adds a sweet tangy effect to the smokey taste of the ribs. If you are ever in Austin, I recommend that you go here immediately. Whenever my friends from Boston come to town this is one of the places I take them for a meal.

What happens when you run out of food and have to make a meal from scraps in your cupboards? The greatest creations ever. Say hello to Quinoa Fried Rice.
Quinoa Fried Rice:
1/4 c. Quinoa
1/2 c. of Water
1 bag individual sized frozen peas
Handful of shredded carrots
1 tsp Gluten Free Soy Sauce
3 tbsp of Egg Whites
3 oz cooked chicken

1. Place Quinoa and water in a microwavable safe dish and cover
2. Microwave for 4 minutes, take out to stir, then place back in to microwave for 2 more minutes
3. Cook egg whites separately in small pan, follow instructions for microwavable pea bag
4. Mix all ingredients together in original dish and now you have a delicious meal

Seriously, this dish is a lifesaver. It contains a large amount of protein, carbohydrates, and vegetables. Not to mention it is really delicious. I brought some to eat between classes on Thursday, and so many people came up to me asking what I was eating and if it was easy to make. Due to all of the nutrients it contains, the dish is very filling for the serving size.

A girl needs to treat herself. What better treat than ice-cream? Actually I can think of many, but in Missouri there are not a lot of options. One of the popular places for the local teens to hang out at is Dairy Queen. It is sad, but why not do what the locals do when in town. My brother and I decided to get dipped cones. They are low in fat, and do not contain a ridiculous amount of calories and other scary things like most of the products sold at DQ. BEST. CHOICE. EVER. He got a butterscotch dipped cone and I got a cherry dipped cone. They do not make these in Texas, so it was the greatest discovery ever. So much better than a chocolate dipped cone. Not even joking. I take my ice-cream very seriously.

I’ll leave ya’ll with a little fashion because lets face it, ya’ll have missed my amazing sense of style. At least someone appreciates the way I dress unlike most people in the state of Texas.

Scarf - f21, dress - nordstroms, belt - f21, socks - target, boots - dsw

I hope ya’ll are having an amazing weekend. I’m really just trying to get through mine because it has been pretty rough. When I’m ready I will blog about it, but until then ya’ll will just be left with a mystery. Peace out, I’m getting weird looks from the people that keep coming by my car in the parking lot. Time to leave before someone calls the cops on me. That would definitely not be a fun time.

Are you doing anything exciting this weekend?
Have you eaten anything special this weekend or do you sort of stick to a routine of foods?