Sticking With It

The brittany gets back her groove plan is going well thus far. I had another green smoothie aka green monster for breakfast yesterday after hitting up the gym for some cardio.

This one was intensely green in color. I guess I added more kale than last time!

Green Smoothie

• 1/2 tablespoon ground flax seed
• 1 frozen banana
• 1 cup kale
• 1 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 4 cubes of ice

Place everything in the blender and blend on high until all flakes of kale have disappeared, giving your smoothie a lovely green color and tons of NUTRIENTS! So simple, yet delicious.

This morning I was all out of kale, had a big container of pumpkin that needed to be used and was craving something warm (our house is an ice box). Pumpkin oats it was. I didn’t get around to carving a pumpkin this year so here’s my attempt to make up for it:

(Can you see where I tired to do a tongue with the better n pb? Yea, it didn’t look right so I added a unibrow instead.)

Pumpkin Oats

• 1/4 oat bran
• 1/4 cup oatmeal
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 1 tsp. ground flax
• 1/4 cup canned pumpkin
• cinnamon to taste

Cook the oat bran, oatmeal in the water and milk (plus cinnamon) on medium heat by stove top. After about 5 minutes, or when the oats get thick enough for your tastes, turn off the stove and mix in the pumpkin and flax. Let the oats sit for a couple minutes, transfer into a bowl and add the toppings of your choice. I love to use nut butters, pumpkin seeds, nuts, raisins or coconut. Enjoy.

So, I’ve been bad food blogger and forgot to get pictures of dinner last night and today’s lunch. To be honest, I’m always less excited about taking dinner pictures because the lighting in our house stinks, the flash makes food photos look awful and nothing ends up looking very appealing. Which leads to my little secret- sometimes if we have leftovers of dinner, I’ll plate the meal again the next morning and take the photo. What a girl will do for a good picture!

Tonight it just so happened that my dinner ended up being rather photogenic. I had a romaine salad with avocado, tomato, cucumber, orange bell pepper, and my new favorite salad ingredient (roasted b-nut).

Topped with a little sea salt and some ground pepper. I had an Amy’s California Burger on the side (as a tribute to where I am headed in less than 48 hours!!!) Amy’s burgers are definitely my favorite frozen vegetarian burgers, besides my homemade bean burgers of course.

Also, I do have something cool to share. I received the Tosca Reno’s Eat Clean Cookbook to review! I was excited to get my eyes on the latest Eat Clean cookbook as I enjoy it’s sister publications: Clean Eating Magazine and Oxygen (although it’s a little too muscle mania for my taste, it does have some good workouts).

Last night I snuggled into bed and did some quality Tosca cookbook reading. What I loved the most is that each recipe has a beautiful photo to go along with it. I’m a picture person and I kind of hate cookbooks that don’t have photos so this feature was #1 for me. I also liked that each recipe has the serving size and nutritional information (always helpful!). This isn’t a vegetarian cookbook by any means, but there are a few vegetarian recipes dispersed throughout and many of the meat dishes could easily be turned into veggie-friendly fare with a few substitutions. The best part is that all recipes are all made with wholesome ingredients and aren’t very hard to prepare, both of which are things I aim for when deciding what recipes to prepare. Since I just received the book just yesterday I haven’t had a chance to make any of the recipes (slacking I know), but after looking through it I’ve marked a few that I can’t wait to try!

If you’re interested in checking out Tosca’s latest cookbook, it’s available for pre-order on her website and should be at all major book outlets now.

I’m off to pack (!!!) and then do some yoga!

- Brittany

Tagged as: amy's california burger, Eat Clean Cookbook, green smoothie, pumpkin oats, salad, Tosca Reno