A new turn on eggs

Scrambled eggs with spaghetti squash and basil.

Note to self: When you cook spaghetti squash you end up with tons of leftovers. And by a lot I mean that I still have about 5 cups still sitting in the fridge.

I predict the dogs will be enjoying many spaghetti squash snacks over the next couple of days.

I decided to use a bit of it today in my breakfast.

While the eggs, spaghetti squash and basil were delicious on their own, I decided to punch it up a notch.

I ended up drizzling some marinara sauce on top and then adding a dusting of Parmesan.

This was an incredibly delicious breakfast. If you go for eggs and the savory - this is definitely one you will love.

Happy Sunday!

Baguette and eggs

I had another restless night last night. 

What to do when sleep seems to be an unreachable goal? 

Make bread, of course!

My French baguette.

I find making baguettes a bit of an intimidating task. And while my baguette ended up looking more like a loaf of bread rather than a baguette - the bread did have decent texture.

And I do have to say, it would be hard to pick a more delicious way to start the day than a slice of warm bread straight out of the oven.

I poached two eggs and made a simple hollandaise sauce by mixing Vegenaise, yellow mustard, lemon juice and almond milk.

The baguette came out crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

The yolk and sauce soaked into the warm bread and made each bite better tasting than the next. Yum!

Oranges on the side.

If you want to try making a baguette you can find the recipe I modified here. Basically, I halved the recipe and only let the dough rise once (I did fall asleep for about 3 hours - hence only one rise:-).

Now I am going to try and get some sleep. Happy Thursday all!!

Early mornings and seaweed

Quinoa with cashew *cheese* over a bed of shredded cabbage.

I am finding the cashew *cheese* fairly addicting. You can find the recipe here. I changed the recipe quite a bit - I am still tweaking it to my liking but I will post my version when I get it just right.

Self control won out this morning and the cashew *cheese* was off the breakfast menu.

Miso soup, quinoa and seasoned nori.

I was reading about potential dietary deficiencies that can occur when eating a plant based diet. It seems low levels of iodine can be a problem.

But I doubt this will be an issue for me since I almost always eat some form of seaweed everyday. 

For some reason I woke up very early this morning. It was so early that the dogs didn't even bother to wake up.

What do you do when you wake up hours earlier than everyone else? You make miso soup, of course! (you can find my basic process here)

Assembling the soup was easy - 

Cubes of tofu and some wakame went into the bottom of a bowl.

 Then I poured the miso soup on top.

It was a bit of a seaweed bonanza this morning. I used Kombo seaweed to make the dashi broth, wakame seaweed was in the finished soup and the small bowl of quinoa was a wonderul excuse to enjoy tons of seasoned nori.

Yes, I do believe my iodine levels are just fine.

I am looking forward to watching the Oscars later this afternoon.

Happy Sunday all!

Sweet potato medallions with quinoa coleslaw

Sweet potato medallions with quinoa coleslaw.

While I am dancing with the "plant based diet" I have been surprised by the overwhelming number of vegan cookbooks/websites that are heavily focused on desserts.

Anyone who has ever read this blog knows that anything sweet or dessert focused is not my thing.

And if the vegan (cookbooks or websites) are not hyper focused on desserts/sweets they are incredibly heavy on the chickpeas. 

I know - it sounds odd - but it is true and the fact that I am aware of this is a sad testament to how much time I spend reading and NOT writing...

So, in rebellion I refused to make the typical tofu scramble/oatmeal or hummus - Instead I made sweet potato medallions for breakfast...

 
 - with quinoa and cabbage coleslaw.

No recipe this time. I am still easing back into the whole blogging process.

The coleslaw did incorporate quinoa, cashew *cheese sauce*, green cabbage, red cabbage and red bell pepper.

The slices of sweet potato went into a 375 degree oven for 45 minutes (I flipped them halfway through).

It was stunningly delicious! 

The dogs got to enjoy the extra slices of plain baked sweet potato. And, yes, they are giving the veggie centered madness a big thumbs up:-)
 

Waking up hungry and NaNoWriMo

It is almost NaNoWriMo time!!!!

What is NaNoWriMo? It is a crazy event people commit to every November. Everyone that enters tries to write 50,000 words by the end of the month. 

50,000 words = about 200 written pages.

Yes, it is a pretty insane endeavor - but it is also really fun. 

I have been doing it each November for the last 3 years. If you have the time and inclination I encourage you to try it.

But back to the important thing - my breakfast:

Breakfast coleslaw with hard boiled eggs, jasmine tea and half of an orange.

Some mornings I am not that hungry but this morning I woke up ravenous. I don't know about the rest of you but when I get that hungry I know I need a big volume meal.

My easiest big volume breakfast I make is coleslaw with chopped up hard boiled eggs. 

All I need to do is measure out 2 cups of pre-made bagged coleslaw, toss it with some yogurt, mayo, vinegar and sugar. I almost always have some hard boiled eggs sitting in the fridge so I just chop up one whole egg and a couple of egg whites.

Easy protein slaw

Serves 1

Ingredients:

2 cups of pre-made coleslaw mix
1 whole egg and 2 eggwhites, chopped
1/3 cup of chopped apple
1/2 tsp of rice vinegar
1 tsp of Greek yogurt
2 tsp of Vegenaise
1/8 tsp of sugar
1/8 tsp of dijon mustard

Instructions:

Mix all the ingredients together and enjoy. This slaw is also wonderful made the night before and eaten in the morning because the flavors get a chance to really meld together. 

I feel like Jackie O

I did my run in Central Park!!!

What was meant to be a leisurely 3 mile run turned into a 7.5 mile run because I have zero sense of direction and I ended up running in loops. But it was no matter because I had tons of company for the whole run.

In addition to the buckets of runners there were lots of people exercising their dogs.

I entered the park at 5th ave and ran through most of the park to get to the Jackie O reservoir.

It really is a great running path - it has a dirt/sand surface that is easy on the knees.

To back track a bit - I woke up at around 5:45 am because I was so excited about running in Central Park - I know, I am a goof.

Since I had to wait for the sun to come up before I could head out, I ordered a quick breakfast:

A poached egg and crispy hash browns.

Coffee

I did discover some surprising things on my run.

I had no idea that there was a zoo in Central Park - a really teeny tiny zoo but a zoo nonetheless.

The seal pool - Yes, there were seals in there

There are statues and surprising touches all throughout the park such as this:

It is a statue of a crouching panther and it sits on top of a boulder that is right beside the running path. It really looks like it is ready to pounce:-)

And I found places that I would not dare to go even in broad daylight with lots of people around:

Happy Wednesday!

 

Jet lag and waffles

I only managed to get 4 hours sleep last night. It always takes me a day or two to adjust to the time difference.

I was up at 6:15 am local time and I headed straight for the hotel gym. I managed to get 25 minutes on the stair master and my sister walked into the gym towards the end of my workout. 

When I got back to the room I made a post workout snack using this cool item I found at the store last night:

It is a multigrain hot cereal that comes in these convenient individual packets.

I only used half a packet because if I eat hot cereal I am really only able to finish about 1/4 of a cup.

I popped it in the microwave with some water for 1 minute and added in some soymilk and chopped green apple.

After I showered and dressed, I headed back down to the lobby to meet my siblings and hopefully scrounge up some protein.

I ate two pieces of the melon before my sister cheerily reminded me of the recall. Hopefully this was a listeria free melon...

The eggs were OK but I wasn't quite sure if they were made from a powder mix or fresh.  

My sister was kind enough to do a demonstration of the waffle maker. I need to head down to the lobby soon so no picture captions but you will get the gist :-)

And, no, I didn't eat a waffle. That one is my brother's waffle which my sister doctored up with everything at the waffle bar:-)

I am off - Have a great Thursday everyone! 

How Cheez-Its can improve salmon

Salmon cakes with a special ingredient.

I will admit to all of you that Cheez-Its are my downfall. If I ever kept them in the house on a regular basis I am sure my skin would turn orange and I would need a crane to move me off the couch.

So, now I only buy the smallest bags and then quickly proceed to eat the whole thing - in one sitting.


But this morning I showed restraint. I wanted to make cheesy salmon cakes but I didn't want to add any cheese.


And so enters the Cheez-its:

I adapted a recipe I found here.

I used about 3/4 cup of canned salmon (drained and flaked). 

The salmon mixture with a healthy dose of dried parsley.

Most salmon cakes include chopped onion but I don't really like it that much so I left it out.

I coated each patty in bread crumbs before they went into the pan. 

A few minutes in a skillet over medium heat (with 1 Tbsp of olive oil) and they were nice and brown.

Salmon cakes with a dollop of Miso Mayo on top.

I really liked how this recipe turned out. The salmon cakes were still moist in the middle.

Every once in a while I would get crunchy, cheesy burst when I bit into a piece of Cheez-It - Yum!

Salmon Cakes for one

Serves 1

Ingredients:

3/4 cup of canned salmon, drained and flaked

1/4 of one beaten egg (about a Tbsp)

2 Tbsp of Cheez-Its chopped into small pieces

3/4 tsp of Worcestershire sauce

2 tsp of dried parsley

1/2 cup of bread crumbs

1 Tbsp of olive oil

cracked black pepper to taste 
1 tsp of nutritional yeast *forgot to add this in the initial post*

Instructions:

Combine the salmon, egg, Cheez-Its, Worcestershire sauce dried parsley, nutritional yeast and cracked black pepper in a bowl. If mixture is too dry add in a bit more of the beaten egg until you can form the mixture into patties.

Form two patties and roll them in the bread crumbs.

Heat a skillet over medium heat and add in the olive oil. When the oil is hot, carefully place in the patties. Let them cook until brown on one side, then carefully flip them over.

When both patties are brown on both sides, take them out of the pan and plate them.

Enjoy!

Birthday breakfast

Breakfast bruchetta with two poached eggs and potatoes.

A very busy day.

I celebrated my sister's birthday with a breakfast with my other sister and my brother.

He chose this:

Vegetable omelet.

The birthday girl chose this:

Egg beaters eggs with a side of fruit.

They initially brought her home fries but since her stomach is very sensitive to fat levels, she asked for boiled potatoes (which was listed on the menu description).

A short and sweet post, I have more busy days ahead...