Natural Food Store Review +WIAW

Yesterday, I fell in love. With a store.

To be fair, it was a cute little store, stuffed to the brim with organic and vegetarian products. I had never seen anything like it near me- the closest I'd come was the giant Whole Foods monolith an hour away in West Hartford. But this was in my very town! Sadly, my new crush and I did not have much time together, since my mom had to go to the bathroom and kept reminding me to 'make my choices and get out'. But I could have stayed for an hour. Maybe two. Just LOOKING at all the possibilities. It was my new health food dream come true.

Maybe if you live down in shoreline CT you should stop by. It's called, quite literally, 'The Natural Food Store' in downtown Niantic. But that's enough of that. Here are some of my new finds, which I'm excited to try out:


Arctic Zero Ice Cream- High Protein and looks sooo good. (If you can't tell, this is the coffee flavor.)

Nutritional Yeast. I've been searching and searching and FINALLY found it!



The Uber-cool bag....



Ultra Energy Bar- with 22 grams protein. You know me and protein. It's good stuff! And look at this! Cookies and Cream! I can't wait to sample all my new goodies!

  On to WIAW. The theme is 'FALL into good habits'. What's my good habit? Well, mine is pretty simple, actually. It's...eating. For those who don't know my story, check out the food philosophy page. In short, though, my eating habits these past few weeks have fallen apart. I've really been giving in to restricting urges and it's time that I took control back. My body deserves to be fed, and it deserves a healthy, balanced diet that can fuel my running and daily activities and not leave me an emotional wreck. So the goal for me this Wednesday, and days to come, is to EAT. More. More calories, more often, more nutritionally-concious. It will be good for me.
 

Today's breakfast started off nice and hearty with some Creamy yOATgurt on the stove (recipe to follow). The flavor I settled on was strawberries and cream, topped generously with some peanut butter to make a little PBandJ yOATgurt.



I may also have had some ah-mazing coffee. Another new obsession. It's fall and pumpkin is everywhere, what can I say? It's simply delicious, and the smell just makes you want to hug someone. Spread the love, won't you?



Lunch included a veggie burger on toasted whole wheat bread, Spicy Pizza Hummus and cauliflower for dipping, and some cocoa roasted almonds to snack on before practice.

Haven't gotten to dinner and evening snack yet, but I'm pretty sure the agenda will include some fresh roasted spaghetti squash and Spinach N Veggie Wraps.



And dessert? Well, I'm thinking that coffee ice cream looks pretty good ;)

Savory Oats?

The idea has always turned me off, quite honestly. I mean, I love my oatmeal and my porridge, but I don't get much savorier with it than plain. I guess that's the natural thing to expect from someone with a huge sweet tooth...I swoon over chocolate, peanut butter, cookies, fruit, and coffee (ok, so that's not really sweet at all. But it deserved to be included). And funfetti. I just devoured ate the final funfetti protein oat cake tonight, and they do get better with age after freezing and then thawing in the fridge, FYI.

Here's that little oatfetti cake again! YUMMY!

I've been eating slowly through my butternut burgers all week, but I was starting to get tired of them. Luckily, when I looked today, there was only 1 left (I usually eat them as a pair, so of course I had to find a different use for it!) What could one do with a little lone veggie burger? The real question seems to be: what can one do with just about ANYTHING?

Oatmeal. The answer is ALWAYS oatmeal.

But for a burger? Really? Was I going there, after all this fuss about keeping my oatmeal sweet and fruity? Apparently....yes. I was.

Because it's me, I had to make it high-protein, to give it even more staying power, but in this situation I doubted vanilla or chocolate protein powder was really going to work. What savory option did I have for a good low fat, high-protein addition to oatmeal? It's another miracle ingredient, folks:

EGG WHITES. Among other things, of course. Enough chit chat, though. Here's what I did.

SAVORY PROTEIN PORRIDGE

2 and 1/4 cups water or milk

2/3 cup rolled oats

6 T. egg whites

1 leftover Butternut Burger

Dash Ginger

S+P, to taste

1. Heat water on stovetop to boiling. Add oats and reduce to medium.
2. Cook until most of the water is absorbed (it may take a while.) Stir every 3-4 minutes to prevent burning on the bottom of the pot.
3. Once liquid has been absorbed, add in egg whites and stir constantly, or you will get some scrambled egg bits in your porridge. Because it is savory, this will be okay, but you want most of the egg to go to making a thicker liquidy part of the oatmeal.
4. After another 2 minutes, and all liquid absorbed, remove pot from heat and turn off stove. Crumble up the burger into it and add ginger and salt and pepper to taste. Stir well, and pour into 2 dishes to serve (or makes one hearty serving, like I did!)

*ANOTHER NOTE. You can refrigerate this for about 3 days after cooking both for thickening purposes and if you just aren't ready to eat it yet. Make sure you heat it up, of course, and ENJOY!

So, it doesn't look very yummy. I'm well aware of that. But it was actually pretty good. I was surprised at how much I actually liked it. I still prefer my sweet oats, but, well...it's worth a try if you haven't been brave enough yet!

Quinoa and Squash Bake (and a note about beauty)

In all honesty, today has been a struggle. My depression cropped up randomly, as it does most of the time, and I just didn't feel like doing much of anything. I felt really detached from myself as I was running and do so even now as well. The eating disorder thoughts tend to come on pretty strong whenever I fall into this familiar pit, so I'm just a little unhappy and withdrawn.

But I'm not going to let that be the end of it. No way will this get me down. Despite that voice in my ear telling me how ugly and fat and gluttonous I am, I will prevail. (I hope.) For anyone reading this, know that I believe in you and the beauty of you. There is something worthwhile in every person. And it is NOT what you look like or what you eat or what you weigh. I just need to practice what I preach now.

And on to lighter things.

Ahh. Time for that funny little grain to rear its head again. I think the only thing better than eating the quinoa is just saying the name. It's so fun! Just try it out loud for a bit! "Keen-wah. Keeeen-waaahh." The first time I heard about quinoa, I had absolutely NO idea how to pronounce it and made a bit of a fool of myself trying. I kept telling my friends about this awesome "Kwi-noh-aa" salad I had, and they were totally stumped as to what I was talking about (then again, I'm not sure they know what quinoa is either so it's all good)

Because it's just so loveable, quinoa gets to be featured AGAIN. Along with some of its squash buddies, Mr. Butternut and Mr. Zucchini, which have been hanging out in the fridge for some time now and were just DYING to get used up. (Okay, so I personify things a lot. We can add that to my Looong list of quirks)

QUINOA SQUASH BAKE,  inspired by Oh She Glows

3/4 cup uncooked quinoa 

1 c. roasted butternut squash, mashed

1/2 c. plain Greek yogurt

3/4 c. milk of choice

Salt and Pepper to Taste

1 medium Zucchini, sliced into thin strips

Basil, to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook the quinoa (boil 2 cups water, pour in quinoa, reduce heat to medium, cover, and let cook for 12 minutes. NO PEEKING :)  )
3. Meanwhile, in blender or food processor combine butternut squash, yogurt, milk, and some salt and pepper. This is your 'cheez' sauce for the bake.
4. Slice zucchini into thin strips and lay out on the bottom of  a small casserole dish. Drizzle with a little but of olive oil and salt and pepper, if desired.
5. Combine cooked quinoa with cheez sauce and pour on top of zucchini. Bake for 30 minutes until everything starts to set and come together a bit. ENJOY!

Butternut Burgers

There is STILL leftover pumpkin from the pumpkin palooza I had the other day, and I was perusing various ways to get rid of use it. One of the more intriguing was in a veggie burger recipe seen here at Oh She Glows, one of my new favorite blogs. But after reading the assessment and careful consideration, I came to the conclusion that I wasn't willing to let go of my precious pumpkin for burgers. It needed to be used AGAIN in some oatmeal :) But I still needed something for some burgers...

To the cupboard! And almost as if it were magic, a BUTTERNUT SQUASH appeared (not really. It was already sitting there, but...) This would do. This would do.

BUTTERNUT BURGERS

(made 8 small burgers)

1 (15oz) can chickpeas, drained

1 stalk celery, chopped

2/3 cup mashed roasted butternut squash (can be done in microwave. Cut squash in half, microwave one half, cut side down, in casserole dish for 8-10 minutes on high and remove seeds. Mash up flesh to use for recipe)

2 T. Flaxseed

1/2 tsp. ginger

Dash cloves

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees 
2. Mash up your chickpeas using potato masher. Add chopped celery and mashed up squash.
3. Grind flaxseed into powder and add to bean mixture. Add spices.
4. Form into patties and place on lightly greased cookie sheet.
5. Bake 10 minutes, then flip. Bake additional 25-30 minutes until the burgers stay together in burger form. ENJOY!