published!

over this year i've been volunteering with the center for health and wellbeing as a student dietitian at school and a fellow volunteer and i put together a spread for the heath center's student magazine. it turned out pretty awesome.
check out page 9

part of our spread got put into their blog (i need to work on my own layout after looking at this one). it has some great snack ideas.

it's shaping up to be a gorgeous day today so the plan is to get outside as much as possible and soak in some vitamin D and get some physical activity in at the same time (and maybe some shopping on the side!) i need some new running shoes as i've had mine for over 2 years (suggested replacement time, around 300 miles)

i get runner's world newsletters and the most recent one had some portable/quick ideas for food (i'm not so sure about some of the snacks)

made a trip to costco and they had these microwaveable indian dishes of dal palak with basmati rice. it's a box w/ 4 packs and it cost under $8 (so much cheaper than going to indian when i have an indian fix). i'm always looking for foods to pack for school when i'm stuck there all day. it's reduced sodium and gluten free. if i eat an entire pack (which i would, b/c i would be microwaving it at school...why they have to make the serving size 1/2 of a pack is illogical. but for a whole pack it will be 12 g of fat (2 from saturated), 14% of my sodium, 16 g of dietary fiber (oh yeahhh), 16 g of protein, 12% iron and other miscellaneous vitamins and minerals. i'm hoping to try it later today, so i'll give you the scoop on how it tastes

that quaker guy

quick and dirty post before i'm very very late for school. here's my staple bfast these days (until it gets warm enough to transition to yogurt!)- the unsweetened applesauce i think is what makes this really yummy. and one day i'll get around to toasting some walnuts and throwing it in. got in cardio everyday this week but my goal is to get in some strength training to really build up my leg muscles. signed up for milltown 5k for april!

race training

it's 14 days until fitness expo and a little over 3 months until the cleveland half. a fellow dietetics student and i just finished a spread for the student health magazine (it looks awesome, i'll link it when it goes up!) and we focused on eating properly to make sure you can reach your fitness goals and also to fuel it and make sure it runs to perfection.

i love breakfast. i never understand how people's stomach don't grumble in the mornings or they even manage to concentrate when they have glass of juice or coffee for breakfast. not me! give me a full on breakfast and i'm a happy camper:) bfast these days has been oatmeal in soymilk with some fruit (throw some frozen blueberries in after you cook the oatmeal with some nuts!) or yogurt w/ some crunchy cereal and a banana. but today i managed to wake up earlier (and be motivated) to cook an egg (it's extraordinary how accomplished i feel). i toasted a slice of 100% whole wheat toast and topped it with sauteed kale (w/o oil with some cumin and black pepper) and then an egg sunny side up (black pepper). the runny yolk flavors everything to goodness. and now that i have to run off for school i'm grabbing a banana for the road.

happy friday everyone! i'll try an update some more on training and food

butter pecan cookies

eummm. this comes from simply recipes. i didn't have granulated sugar so ended up using light brown sugar in the cookies and for the rolling and sprinkling parts. it's very difficult to get the cookies rolled in brown sugar so it might have been a lighter coating than the recipe calls for. but these are some delicious melt in your mouth cookies. make sure to use a good quality butter as that will be the dominate flavor you get and with the lower grade stuff you'll get less of a buttery goodness and more of a so-so cookie. go ahead and toast extra pecans to eat (i think i ate about a cupful by the end of the day).

happy lunar new year!

yummy lil things

happy birthday to M today! and happy belated to mimi! i feel bad for those birthdays so soon after xmas b/c they get lost in the shuffle.

 this is quinoa wheat bread getting ready for the oven (it's delicious and has a wonderful crunchy texture mixed within soft bread). s4 loves the bread book so that is probably going to get added to our cookbook collection

you can see all the cute quinoa grains sprinkled in the roll!

are these plates not the cutest thing in the world?!?!? they are cb2 plates and there's one more in the group but i have to find the perfect food to put on it, thanks lucy! i especially like the poor guy w/ his tongue stuck to the peppermint stick a la "a christmas story" (which, i didn't see on tv during the holidays. what is the world coming to?)

checked out this raw cookbook from the library. M wanted healthy food for her bday as the holidays were just a back-to-back food fest. i halved the date logs recipe and added in crushed pecans. they are a nice sweet (but not overly sweet) treat. the coconut and pecans are wonderful together. it kind of reminds me of a less sweet halvah that you would get in india.

this is a chocolate swirl yeast bread with a powdered sugar/butter struesel topping which i have to say using powdered sugar for a struesel is a first for me. baked this with mimi (i think the 3 loaves had 5 sticks of butter between them). it was delicious (i will find a link for you!) but i would have halved the chocolate filling and topping amount as we were having difficulty finding places for it to go. but the bread is deliciously sweet. my next goal is to bake stollen as one of my volunteers brought in a delicious loaf of stollen.

happy eating/baking!

xmas eve football spread

 happy day before christmas! i hope everyone is with friends/family.we got homemade nacho cheese, homemade bread and breadsticks (thanks, s4) and some cheese, apples and salami. we also got a malaysian noodle dish that was tasty!

ravens vs. browns worked out perfectly w/ most of the family home. and we got some snazzy food laid out for the game (preparing for tomorrow's feasting...haha). we got lots of different cheeses from costco (the spicy buffalo something made a great nacho dip). the picture above is baked brie, absolutely delicious with some fresh baked bread (stay tuned for more pics of bread baking). take the brie (we cut our large costco size wheel up) and drizzle honey over the cheese. sprinkle with black pepper and nice garlic cloves, wrap up in aluminum foil and bake for about 15-20 minutes at 350 F. Spread onto some bread and enjoy! go ravens!

what's cooking thursday- salad!

not just any old salad! here's some more "lets use stuff in the kitchen and be healthy when we can" kind of salad :) i had to go to the grocery store for the avocado and the roma tomato but everything else was in the house. each salad includes: a handful of mixed greens, arugula, 1 roma tomato, 1/4 of an onion (sliced), avocado (i tossed the chopped avocado in lemon juice to keep the color, hopefully!), carrots, crumbled blue cheese, and a hardboiled egg for each.

all the pretty salads ready for munching.

gobble gobble! i usually don't like raw onion but it really worked with giving the salad a nice kick. finals start so didn't get a chance to cook anything but some baked sweet potato fries, half a cheesy sandwich or warm soup would have been perfect! next time. happy thursday!