Lunchbox #5

Ah, Mondays. Longest day of the week in my opinion. Lucky for me I only have two classes on Mondays! Stupid of me, I did nothing to progress my studying over the weekend so I had lots to do today. I ended up being at school (mostly in the library) from 8-5. Got my environmental ethics reading on. Wrote a paper. The usual college stuff. 
But anyway...
Today's lunch was delightful, but a little small. I felt like a genius last night when I attempted to make a non-sloppy, lunch box-friendly, sandwich version of ants on a log. To my dismay, it was an utter failure. Pretty hilariously so, actually. There was more peanut butter on the lid than in the celery and the raisins were clustered in a little corner, as far as they could physically be from the celery. Oh well. You win some, you lose some. 

Top left: Mixed greens salad with sliced farmer's market radishes, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese, and a side of (my favorite!) light champagne dressing. 
Top right: Leftover Indian spiced lentils with vegetarian sausage. So so good. 
Bottom right: Baby carrots and green grapes.
Bottom left: Ants on a log, sandwich style: celery, peanut butter, and raisins. 

Let me tell you bout them grapes. Those grapes used to be "Sour Patch Grapes", meaning they were covered in Cherry Lemonade flavored Jello powder as was suggested by Pinterest and about a million other healthy food blogs. They were, to say the least, gross. The Jello powder was gritty and too sweet and after a few days in the fridge became wet and soggy. That is definitely a DO NOT recommend. That said, the fix is easy: rinse them off with water and voila! Back to normal, tasty, and very well washed green grapes, ready for my lunch and belly. 

Have a great week! 

Lunchbox #4

This morning I had my Ecology class at 9:30. Earliest class all week :) I am starting my fourth year of college and I have never experienced life without 8 AM classes. I don't think I'll have a hard time getting used to this. 

Unfortunately now that I'm getting into the schedule of waking up later than usual, I was still rushed making this lunch. I enjoyed it and I didn't even finish all of it. Maybe next time, less nuts. Yummy nonetheless!

Have a great weekend friends!

Top left: Whole sandwich of Good Seed bread with sharp white cheddar cheese slices and red pepper hummus. 

Top right: A mixture of raw walnuts, raw cashews, and dark chocolate chips. 

Bottom right: Lots of fresh blueberries.

Bottom left: Five ripe cherry tomatoes and some baby carrots. 

Lunchbox #2

Alright so this may seem like a big lunch (I don't know, does it?), but it was meant to last me from 9:30 to 7 at night. 

Top left: Half of a sandwich with Good Seed multi-grain bread, a few slices of sharp white cheddar cheese, and a smear of red pepper hummus, homemade by Corrina. 
Top right: A hard-boiled egg and two Lara bar balls I made. Those tasty little balls were made of cashews, walnuts, dates, dark chocolate chips, cocoa powder, raw cacao nibs, shredded coconut, and about a half teaspoon of coconut oil. Is your mouth watering yet? 
Bottom right: Plain Chobani yogurt with blueberries and a substantial squirt of honey.
Bottom left: Spring mix and spinach with baby carrots, cherry tomatoes and a side of balsamic Italian dressing. 

Lunchbox #3

Yes my lunches are starting to become repetitive already. But what's a girl to do? I have absolutely no excuse to buy the variety of produce I would like to when I'm only feeding myself. Alas, I'll have blueberries and carrots for most of the week. Oh well, can't have too many carrots. :) 

Top left: Sharp white cheddar cheese slices and All Bran Multigrain (and high fiber too!) crackers. 

Top right: Hard-boiled egg and a Morningstar sausage patty broken in half. 

Bottom right: Baby carrots and blueberries (as promised). 

Bottom left: The prettiest apple slices you'll ever see, plus some all natural creamy peanut butter for dipping. 

Lunchbox #1

I am so excited to be back in my college town and apartment. Moving from a home with seven people to three is definitely a change for the better in my mind. It's basically always nice and clean are there are less competing opinions on how to arrange the posters around the living room. It's quiet, the fridge isn't so full, people do their dishes, and our home is happy place. 

I'll be honest though. As much as I was looking forward to a clean house, that amount of excitement was nowhere near my excitement in coming home to a brand-spanking-new lunch box sitting on my bed! I literally looked forward to making my lunch all day and now I'm looking forward to eating it tomorrow! It'll be a delicious start to my first semester of my fourth year (wow!) of college. 

Top left: Leftover Ma po (no clue how to spell that) tofu, broccoli with garlic sauce, and white rice.

Rop right: Inside out carrot cake cupcake with cream cheese frosting filling-made by my housemate and  best buddy Corrina. She tossed it into my lunch box while wishing me a "Happy first day of school!" What a sweetheart.

Bottom right: Fruit salad of blueberries, grapes, and three cherries. 

Bottom left: 50/50 spring mix and spinach salad with cherry tomatoes, walnuts, and light champagne dressing on the side. I'm planning on packing some feta crumbles under the lettuce for some extra yum. Pretty sure the odds are against me for remembering...wish me luck! 

Stir Fry Eggs with Onion

The camp I work at this summer is unique in that it hires many people from outside of the country. This particular weekend I've been lucky enough to have some of the international staff stay at my house for their time off. We've got Tony from Mexico, Michael from England, and Yang from China residing all on the same dog-hair-ridden couch. Yang, as a token of appreciation for the free housing, decided to cook some of his favorite dishes from home to share with us. Of course in China most people eat meat, so the first dish Yang decided to make was Chicken Wings. Lucky for me, he was kind enough to make some additional vegetarian egg dishes that I could eat too!
Here's my favorite of the two that he translated the best he could as "Stir Fry Eggs with Onion".

This dish was so great because it didn't taste like eggs. It tasted like China. Or at least what I would want China to taste like. Soy saucey, gingery, garlicy, and of course, oniony.

Here are Yang's instructions for making this dish.
1. Heat vegetable oil in a wok.
2. Add in chopped garlic, onion, ginger and green onions. Cook for a few minutes.
3. Add in the eggs and cook until about 80% done.
4. Add more oil, ginger and garlic.
5. Cook another minute until done. Add soy sauce and salt.

Fun fact: Apparently the term "wok" means nothing in Mandarin. We silly Americans basically just attached a "Chinese-sounding-word" to a fancy, deep-rimmed pot.

This is a great recipe. I've never eaten a dish that transformed the flavor of an egg so much. I highly recommend giving it a go.

Make sure to thank Yang with your thoughts for his delicious and authentic cuisine.

Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Bites

I found this recipe via Pinterest on this girl's blog. The fact that her URL said to "love veggies and yoga"served as a very quick message to me that this blog was going to hold some treasures. Sure enough, these cookie dough bites are to die for! They are such a great way to get a little taste of dessert in your chomper while not having to feel bad about filling up on butter and sugar and oil. Plus it allowed me to play with my new CuisinArt that I love oh-so-much. Seriously, I've been seeking out recipes solely so that I can use my food processor more often. Is that weird? Doesn't matter. Anyway...

Here's what's in these babies:  

Does that look deceptively healthy to you? Good. Because they are! 

The base is oats and cashews with just a little of the agave, maple and vanilla. 

I don't think I can lie to you and say there aren't a lot of chocolate chips in this recipe...but is that really a bad thing? It's definitely not to me. If I'm going to eat dessert, I'd prefer that it has a nice healthy dose of chocolate.

I also think you should know: the only important change I made to the Averie Cooks recipe is that I used mini chocolate chips. As small of a discrepancy as this might seem....you're wrong and it's not. I'm sorry. I'm getting defensive. The mini chocolate chip idea feels genius to me though. You get quadruple the chocolate-per-bite, thus making it feel more dessert-y and less health-foody. 

Isn't it a pretty little bite? 

The only other difference between mine and Averie's recipe is that I doubled her recipe and made 22 balls. Her single batch made 17 balls. I suppose by nature I like to make desserts with chocolate in large portions. More like 5-10 little bites instead of 2-3. Your balls are your balls though, and you can make them as large or small as you choose!

Makes 22 balls

Ingredients

1 1/3 cup raw cashews

2/3 cup oats

4 tbsp Agave

2 tbsp maple syrup

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Procedure

1. Combine cashews and oats in food processor and blend until a fine powder (like flour). 

2. Add agave, maple, and vanilla into the food processor and continue to blend until the mixture forms itself into a moist ball of dough. 

3. Remove from the processor and mix in the chocolate chips on a cutting board or wax paper. I used a plastic spatula to the mix in the chocolate so that the dough wouldn't stick to my hands. 

4. Roll the dough into little balls and store on wax paper in a tupperware. Refrigerate and eat when hungry. :) 

What's your favorite kind of cookie? I'll try to make more recipes like this in those flavors!