My blog has needed direction for quite some time now. So I have finally decided that from now on, I’m going to have a schedule! Yay for planning and scheduling and themes for inspiration! Here’s how it’s gonna go down:
Theme for Mondays: Faith and Funnies– since Monday’s are generally the worst day of the week, I figured we could all use a little fuel from God and a laugh or three to start the week off. And some coffee of course, but you’re on your own for that one…
Theme for Tuesdays: Farming– I’m really only throwing this one in here because it’s my major and I feel like utilizing it in one way or another. So this will force me to research agriculture and stay up to date with my degree. And I will get to post some pretty cool pics that Alex and I take around the farms…
Theme for Wednesdays: Food and Fitness– Now that I have my own place- yep, that’s right!- I am trying out new recipes that I will share and rate. And along with most women in the universe, I’m always trying to shrink a jean size so I’ll try to report on fitness trends or what I’m doing that seems to work…or not.
Theme for Fridays: Fashion and Fun– I am a hopeless romantic and always get way too overly excited about anything worth doing- so I’ll post about events for the weekend or the following week, along with some styling, fashion, or decorating digs that might come in handy for all occasions!
The other days of the week I will use for my “fuel” days for material…I might throw in some “freebies”…(by that I mean random tid bits that are off topic but I feel like blogging about anyways- I’m poor…don’t expect anything for free from me. Especially since I’m paying for my own place these days…)
See what I did there? I used alliteration for my themes! Faith, funnies, food, fitness, farming, fashion, fun, fuel, freebies! A theme for a theme! A F’n good” theme! <<< (that was me getting too excited again…sorry. Will try to contain myself.)
Here goes my first Wednesday:
As I said, I am in my own place now. And because of this, I am trying to eat healthier. After living with family of 8 for the last 8 months, there was never a shortage of food (or junk food) in the house. It was easy to open the cabinet and find Oreos, Little Debbies, Golden Flake (my favorite) BBQ chips…basically carb heaven.
In college I always lived with girls. And girls (especially college girls) are always watching what they eat. Occasionally we would bring “goodies” into the house, but they never stayed long. One week my roommates and I had been “overly deprived” of sweets (or so we thought) and extremely hormonal, so what better way to treat ourselves than to use our cut-out coupon for a discounted ice cream cake at Culvers. We brought the choclately-goodness home and ate nearly the whole thing picnic style in our front yard. After that, we swore off bringing sweets to the house….for a little while at least.
The refrigerator in my house currently resembles the ones my roommates and I stocked in college: lite this and low-fat that…with the exception of a few unhealthy choices that are staples simply because I need them. And because I’m afraid that I will scare Alex off if I make him eat only girly foods.
I told him I would cook him dinner last night and he chose spaghetti…”how in the world am I supposed to make this healthy?” I thought. I considered whole grain noodles but mom said sometimes they taste bad. Fortunately I came across spaghetti squash. You can bake, boil, or microwave them until they are soft enough to fork out the stringy insides that much resemble noodles!
My squash was too big for my baking dish so I quartered it and poked holes all in the skin. Then I covered and baked it for about an hour at 375. I tossed out the seeds and pulp and then started raking out the “noodles”. I was wary at first but they are actually good! Honestly, spaghetti is all about the sauce- noodles are more or less a vessel to get the sauce from the plate to your mouth and don’t have much flavor. The spaghetti squash noodles were very comparable to real noodles in terms of the way they feel in your mouth, and they honestly didn’t have much taste. I cut up extra veggies to put in my spaghetti sauce and it seemed like the squash noodles amplified the flavor of the sauce. Alex ate regular noodles, but he tried the squash noodles and even admitted that they were good! Overall, this was a win! Ps- I put lean ground turkey in the sauce instead of beef….so technically Alex still ate healthier, despite his decision to eat real noodles. Shhh!
Two other healthier options that I added to the menu were garlic cheesy “bread” made out of cauliflower and “diet” chocolate chip cookies. (I posted the recipes below.) The cauliflower bread was good but it crumbled apart easily. It was still worth it to tell myself I was eating garlic cheesy bread with my spaghetti—both of which were carb-free! The cookies were good in my opinion, however Alex only ate one. (Here’s your sign…) So note to women cooking for men: maybe you should save this recipe for yourself instead!
Cauliflower Garlic Cheesy Bread
¼ of a large head of cauliflower “riced”, about 1.5 cups (I don’t even know what a ricer is so I cut the florets off, boiled them, drained them, then beat the heck out of them—this was really messy. Stinky, boiled cauliflower all over my kitchen. Next time I’ll use a blender or chopper.)
1 tsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced (I didn’t have garlic so I used a bunch of garlic powder. Still tasted good.)
1 large egg (white), lightly beaten
½ cup mozzarella cheese
½ tsp. dried Italian herb seasoning
Marinara Sauce for dipping (I dipped it in spaghetti sauce, though marinara would have been better…close enough)
Preheat the oven to 350. Line a 9×5” loaf pan with parchment paper and spray (and spray some more) it with cooking spray. (I didn’t have parchment paper so I sprayed foil…I had to scraped under it several times to get it off the foil but it worked….)
While that is cooking, heat the oil in a small skillet over low heat and add your garlic until softened. When your cauliflower is softened, add the garlic mixture, lightly beaten egg white, Italian seasonings, and 3/4 of the mozzarella. (I added all the mozzarella.) Stir and mix well, then spread onto your prepared pan.
Bake until they start to turn golden brown; about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven, flip the loaf over so the bottom side is now on top and add the remaining (more) cheese and a sprinkle more of the Italian herb seasoning. Bake for another 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted and golden.
Diet Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 cup dark brown sugar (I used light brown sugar…mostly because it had the word “light” which I mistook to mean that it was a “lighter” version in the sense of calories and fat, not in color or flavor..oops)
3/4 cup extra virgin coconut oil (I used olive oil because I didn’t feel like going to the store to look for coconut oil)
1 pastured organic egg, lightly beaten (organic-shmorganic)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup of steel cut oats (again I didn’t feel like going to the store so I pulled out a pouch of my quick serve Quaker Oats- brown sugar and cinnamon flavor- and they worked wonderfully!)
1 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour (I used regular all purpose flour….)
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans (obviously this is optional…so I opted not to add them since I didn’t have any…)
3/4 cup semi-sweet dark mini chocolate chips (I may or may not have added a little more…)
I can’t find the original recipe I used…I just have the paper on which I wrote the ingredients, but basically mix it all up and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.
Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of my delicious diet chocolate chip cookies to share, but I do have some leftover (since I’m the only one eating them) if you’d like to come try some! I did however snap a pic of my carb-free spaghetti dinner last night:
Spaghetti squash noodles, garlic cheesy cauliflower bread on seperate plate at the top…don’t you love my silverware!?
As for a not-so-healthy but exciting and interesting way to kick start your day, may I introduce you to the “suicide cereal bowl”, not to be confused with the ever-popular “suicide soda”, of which I still indulge on the occasion….
props to Alex for the idea
That’s all for this Wednesday! Tune in tomorrow for the Farming edition!
Love always,
Addie
“Life itself is the proper binge.” –Julia Child
Breaking out of the Bootheel 