I hope you came prepared for the amount of food pictures your about to encounter. As the title implies, these are most of my recent eats - meals and snacks I think are fun and exciting and delicious and worthy of a spot here on the blog. I'd bet you'd also be surprised to find out just how popular posts about my day-to-day eats are. Shocking, guys. Shocking.
For starters, these are kolachkis - a Polish cookie made with cream cheese and jam, pretty much. The dough is delicate and creamy, and the jam is so sweet. We made them in one of my nutrition classes for an event on campus - over 1,200 cookies made!
This is what breakfast usually looks like - waffles are rare, but when they do happen, mmmmm. I think I used a Bob's Red Mill whole-grain mix here and added in some chocolate chips, and ate it with some Greek yogurt (this is my favorite) and sliced banana for a post-workout/pre-long-day-of-classes breakfast!
This... this was good. A bowl of roasted spaghetti squash mixed with marinara sauce and chicken, topped with steamed kale, goat cheese, and cilantro (pretty much the only herb I regularly have in my fridge). Spaghetti seems to be one of those stereotypical college meals - easy to throw together, inexpensive, etc., yet it's one that rarely hits my plate. That just might have to change after a bowl like this.
One of my favorite lunches, not only for the taste (and nutrition, duh) but also for the eeeeeease of preparation. Those are beet and black bean burgers made with ground Hippeas instead of flour because I'm so resourceful like that over a bed of mixed greens, and alongside some chopped veggies and avocado. And yes, that is barbecue sauce as "dressing" - don't knock it 'til you try it. If I'm feeling hungry, I'll add a hard-boiled egg or two. Protein!
More spaghetti squash because those things are pretty much never-ending sometimes (or so it seems). Here, I made a small dinner of spaghetti squash with a serving of my Sheet-Pan Chicken, Chickpeas, and Veggies and topped it off with just a tiny bit - sense the sarcasm there? - of sharp white cheddar cheese. S O G O O D.
I'm on campus for somewhere around 8-10 hours on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I make darn sure to bring pllllllenty of food. Snacks are good, but I don't usually feel satisfied (especially on long days) off of crackers and fruits and nuts and whatever else I consider a snack food, which is why I pack actual substantial meals like these. For lunch, I threw together a couple items from Hungry Root - cooked quinoa, sauteed brussel sprouts, lemongrass tofu, and some Thai peanut sauce with greens. For dinner, I roasted a hefty white sweet potato (so much better than the orange one) with a Bilinski chicken sausage, steamed some kale, and packed it all up with a little hummus. Easily one of my favorite weeknight meals.
Aaaaand for another weeknight favorite - pulled pork sandwiches! For real though, I could not stop thinking about pulled pork for like a week until this. My friends probably went with me just to shut me up. These are from Old San Luis BBQ and are, by a long-shot, the only sandwich that can make my mouth water when I'm in anatomy lab staring at muscles on a cadaver. We all had a pulled pork sandwich and then split some sweet potato and regular fries. The thought of all of this is now making my mouth water, so let's move on.
Ahh, vino. Call me cheap, but I LOVE this Charles Shaw white zinfandel. Apparently, it's known as "two-buck Chuck" in the wonderful land of Trader Joe's. Whatever. It's friggin' good and I'm not in the position to drop $12 on a bottle of wine.
Are you as tired of seeing my roasted sweet potatoes as you are of hearing about classes? I hope you aren't tired yet of either. My parents graciously gifted me with a Lodge Cast Iron skillet for Christmas, so take a guess at the vehicle in which I've been cooked e v e r y t h i n g lately. Don't ask me how it's done, but the skillet just makes sweet potato wedges so perfectly crispy-on-the-outside and tender-on-the-inside. Sometimes I eat just the potato if it's a big one or I'm not hungry enough for an entire meal, and other times I love it with chicken or eggs or whatever I have.
Round 1 of enchiladas! Success? Ehh. There's a first time for everything and this was most definitely and clearly my first time making my own enchiladas. With the veggies and the chicken all cooked, and all the other fix-ins laid out, I still found myself confuzzled about what to put in first, how to layer and roll, etc. Good thing enchiladas taste so dang good, otherwise I wouldn't be very motivated to try again. I'll have a recipe up here soon - perfection takes time, my friends.
After four years of taking pictures of my food, one might think that stopping what I'm doing to snap a quick picture wouldn't feel awkward at all. One would be wrong, in that case - it's still awkward. Anyway, this is a snack plate from a friend's bridal shower! Eeeep I know a bride I know a bride I know a bride! We spent the day just hanging out and giggling and eating and sharing memories of little Phoebe back in her single days. Then I went home to study because... well, you know why.
Oh, and we drank mimosas! These aren't the best pre-study beverage, but I'd still recommend - balance, right?
Remember those long days on campus I told you about? Those are when Perfect Bars feel like my best friend. My class schedule throws off what would normally be dinner time for me, so I end up eating something during what you might call "happy hour" on the weekend but is more like "stress hour" or "cram hour" before anatomy lecture. And because I want something sweet after dinner/something to munch on in class, I bring one of these. Favorite? Ummm... probably the Dark Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter OR either of the new flavors. Worth every penny.
Coffee is so much more satisfying than tea, in my opinion, but when it's 3 PM and my wiser instincts remind me that coffee right now will keep me awake when I'd rather not be later tonight, I reach for tea usually in the form of kombucha. And when kombucha is too expensive or just doesn't sound fantastic, I reach for this! Tazo is my go-to and this bottle of iced tea was above and beyond any other iced tea I've had before - sweet, but not like juice or dessert in a bottle, you know?
Speaking of dessert, I've been so into little bites of chocolate lately. My mom bought me a couple of these from Taza Chocolate and I think I found love at first bite. The texture is so unlike any other chocolate I've had - it's almost like you can feel like sugar granules, but yet the sweetness isn't overpowering. I can't describe it, so you should just try it.
The people around this table mean so much more to me than any food ever could. We all met at last year's Expo West and bonded unbelievably well, so a reunion this year was, like, a given. JJ, Alayna, Connie, Winnie, and a couple new faces - Jeannette and Kelly - and I shared a bunch of food from Sage Vegan Bistro in LA and left absolutely stuffed. Everything was delicious and I couldn't have asked for more!
Less than an hour into my day at Expo West, I was already searching for a kombucha - a clear representation of how overwhelming and exhausting of a day was ahead of me. I met the people behind Humm Kombucha and could've easily just hung out with them for the rest of the day - hilarious, welcoming, genuine, and makers of some of the best kombucha I've tasted! I will certainly be stocking up on this stuff every week.
The next morning, I dropped Jeannette and Kelly off at the airport before the sun was even up, so I packed a snack-ish breakfast - banaynay and one of the best peanut butters everrrrrr. It wasn't the easiest to eat while driving, but I made it work.
And when I came home to a ten-feet-tall pile of homework and studying to tackle, I was beyond thankful for leftovers of the pasta dish I made just before I left for Expo - cashew tomato sauce with Banza chickpea shells (pretty much the only pasta I buy for myself) and sautéed red bell pepper, topped with fresh basil and some sharp white cheddar. Comfort food meets nutritious food meets college-friendly food.
Okay, last one I promise. Here's another stupidly easy weeknight dinner - roasted broccoli and red onion (season with whatever you like), baked chicken breast (thighs are still my preference), and whole-grain bread with herb cream cheese and some avocado. My weeknight dinners usually involve roasting because it allows me to toss everything in the oven for 40-ish minutes and leave it there while I squeeze in some time to study.