ricotta cheese

How are you this Saturday morning? Well- I hope!

Me? I’m just dealing with another weekend winter wonderland- full of snow, sleet, rain, and everything in between. However, I haven’t seen any other intriguing icicles worth noting so we’ll just go straight to the food.

Plain Chobani, raw cinnamon raisin granola, and fresh mango.

This combo was so delicious. It’s definitely been added to the breakfast lineup. Believe it or not, something without oats made the cut.

For lunch on Thursday I took some leftover soup to work – Bob’s Red Mill Vegi Soup Mix.

The Vegi Soup Mix comes dry and is packed with green split peas, yellow split peas, barley, lentils and vegetable pasta (semolina wheat flour, dehydrated spinach and tomato). We cooked it in vegetable broth instead of plain water and added a chopped turnip, corn, and our own seasonings. It turned out to be super easy and quite yummy. This would be the perfect soup to serve kids because you could hide loads of veggies in it and comes with alphabet letter pasta.

Come lunch time on Friday I was already home from work due to the weather so I made a little tofu and baked tater topped with ricotta cheese and ketchup.

I marinated my favorite locally made herbed tofu in the Balsamic Maple Sauce from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan and baked it up for a about 10 minutes. So so good!!

As for the sweet potato, I got the topping idea from Miss Eating Bender who once topped her sweet potato with cottage cheese and ketchup. I’ll admit I was a little leery at first, but tried it and really liked it. Yesterday I decided that ricotta would work just as well. And, it did. I actually liked the texture of the ricotta a little better. Seriously don’t knock it til you’ve tried it – it’s super tasty and filling.

I dehydrated some mini snowballs aka raw macaroons for an RVA Food Blogger Meetup.

The recipe I used is from Raw Food/Real World. I was a little short on the pure maple syrup so I used less than what the recipe calls for, but no worries- they still turned out fab. I’ve actually made these before and taken them to a neighborhood party. They were a hit and one of my neighbors, who has been to Pure Food and Wine in NYC, suggested that they tasted just like the raw macaroons sold at One Lucky Duck. This made me smile but makes perfect sense as Sarma is a co-author of the “cookbook” I found the recipe in. Hopefully one day I will be lucky enough to visit the restaurant/shop and taste the creations for myself!

Sadly, I found out later that the meet up is cancelled so I’m stuck with a big container of macaroons (what a shame). Although, it is Isaac’s b-day weekend so I’m sure there will be plenty of people willing to eat some while partaking in this little gem:

Isaac and his Dad made a beer run yesterday for what I thought was a couple of six packs…. they returned with the item pictured above. I guess there will be more people than I expected coming over to celebrate this weekend?!?! Either that or we have a lot of Yuengling to drink.

Last night’s dinner haphazardly came together. I didn’t know what to have and then all of the sudden breakfast for dinner sounded delightful so I popped a veggie sausage patty and some leftover roasted potatoes in the oven and steamed some kale. I stuffed the kale into 1 egg/1egg white omelet and topped it off with some salsa.

Breakfast is my favorite meal so having it for dinner has always been something I loved – even when I was younger. Only back then my mom would make eggs, fried potatoes, bacon, and biscuits drizzled with gravy or if we were lucky, warm chocolate jam! Ahh.. chocolate jam – do any other Southerners know what I’m talking about? One day I’ll have to feature my great grandmother’s recipe for her chocolate jam on here. Or maybe I need to do a post about what I ate growing up. I think you all would be surprised to know that I was raised eating a lot of very Southern, balanced, but not particularly healthy meals. I also ate a vast amount of fast food. In a nut shell – I haven’t always been Eating Bird Food. One of my favorite fast food items totally grosses me out now. I still think back and can’t believe I used to eat them – dipped in sweet and sour sauce or honey nonetheless (hint – it rhymes with Hig Black).

I better stop writing before I deluge anymore of my juicy past…

Have a lovely weekend and stay warm if you are getting slammed with this winter precipitation!!

-Brittany

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Howdy folks!

I hope everyone is enjoying the last few hours of the weekend and relaxing before Monday morning hits. I’m going to start where I left off. As I suggested in my last post, yesterday was Yoga Day. I ended up celebrating by taking a Vinyasa Flow class at a studio I had never been to before, 4025 Yoga. I really liked the atmosphere at 4025. They seemed very unpretentious and welcoming of all levels and body types. And, the instructor was different than your typical yoga instructor- she played music by MC YOGI, danced and made jokes throughout the class. It really lightened the mood and made the class more lively. Of course, she was serious when need be- such as moments of relaxation.

We ended the class with hip openers and head stands. I used to do head stands all the time as a child for fun but have only done it a few times during yoga. It’s a very challenging pose, but for me, it isn’t nearly as hard as the Seated Wide Legged Straddle – Upavistha Konasana.

I definitely can’t stretch my legs out that wide and I could barely get my head 1 foot from the ground in front of me. I asked the instructor after class what I could do to get better at this pose. She said it’s the back of my thighs that will need to be loosened and that it will just take practicing. So this is one of my yoga goals of 2010. To become more flexible in the seated wide positions and to be able to do crow pose. If any of you yogis out there have any good advice, please help a sister out. I’m all ears.

Overall, I was very pleased with my first visit to 4025 Yoga and even though it’s a bit further than the yoga studio near my house I’d definitely be up for going back. Although, I am starting to like doing yoga at home with yogadownloads. And, I’ll let you all in on a little secret- I’m trying to convince Isaac to let me turn the second room into a yoga/workout room for us. Right now I can’t bare to be in there because it’s stuffed with clothes and smells like lizards, but hopefully soon I can amp up the ambiance and create a little workout haven.

Okay, so besides yoging. I also had some pretty delicious eats this weekend.

For lunch: Spinach salad with tofurkey, grape tomatoes, zucchini, and wheatberries.

On the menu for dinner: Roasted root veggies (sweet potatoes, turnips, onions, parsnips, olive oil, thyme, sea salt, and ground pepper), black beans, and brown basmati rice. Simple, but delicious.

I crashed out at 9:30PM last night while watching a movie. It never fails- I always do this to Isaac, but this time we were only 15 minutes in before my eyes started closing. The funny thing is that I slept until 9:30AM. Woo-hoo for 12 hours of sleep!

This morning’s breakfast consisted of regular old stove top oats (which means a combo of oatmeal and oat bran cooked with water, 1/2 banana and cinnamon). I did, however, add a special ingredient- ricotta cheese!

It made the bowl velvety smooth, extra creamy and over the top filling – I actually didn’t end up eating lunch until 2:30.

On the menu for lunch: Spinach salad, with black beans, left over roasted veggies and maple balsamic sauce. Roasted veggies are seriously one of the best salad toppings. Love them to pieces (or chopped chunks rather).

I just got home from the movies with Isaac’s mom. She and I had a little date while he and his dad watched the football games. After having went to the theaters 2 times and having it be sold out, I finally got to see Up In the Air. Although the ending wasn’t quite what I wanted or expected, I thought it was a great movie!

Plus, watching George in HD for 109 minutes was a nice treat.