WIAW #7

Happy WIAW everyone! One of my favorite days of the week , probably next to Friday hehe :)




Since its pumpkin season right now (well, at least it is if you ask me!), first I want to talk about one of my recent ah-may-zing pumpkin creations:

Stacked pumpkin french toast

I made this for lunch over the weekend...good does not even describe it. When making the french toast I added sugar free pumpkin spice coffee mate, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a dash of ginger to the egg mixture. I cooked it like normal (in a bit of coconut oil). Between layers (and on the top slice) and spread Trader Joe's pumpkin butter and PB2 (which I made using the pumpkin spice coffee mate). And then topped it off with a bit of sugar free syrup. Some easy and delicious pumpkin goodness <3

On to today's eats!

Lunch

This morning I just threw together a bunch of stuff for a quick stir fry: ground turkey, broccoli slaw, spinach, feta, and artichoke antipasta spread from Trader Joe's. I put all that on top of some spaghetti squash and topped it off with some hot sauce at work. You can still see the steam in the picture haha :)

Red Velvet Cafe's oatmeal raisin cookie sandwich

Here in Vegas Red Velvet Cafe makes absolutely phenomenal (mostly vegan) desserts. They also have good food, but the desserts is where it's really at. All of their cakes and cookies are supposedly under 200 calories. I don't know how she does it, but it's incredible. My mom surprised me with one of these at work...it was so good I almost forgot to take a picture ^_^

I got off work early and decided to do some food prep. I got super hungry in the middle of it so I decided to share a few of the things I made with my love.

Zucchini fritter topped with lite mozarella and sriracha

Recipe from Meg

Apple peanut butter protein muffin

Recipe from Vevian

Both were very yummy!

For dinner I made something super simple and inspired by my mommy <3 

My love and I have coined it "Mama V's chicken and rice"

And for dessert we decided to take a trip to Golden Spoon...we got one of those "buy one get one" texts and couldn't resist :)

Pumpkin pie & graham cracker swirl, Pecans and Praline, and Vanilla Malt. All topped off with a bit of graham cracker crumbs.

So happy with this decision haha, I love me some pumpkin flavored anything ;)

I hope you all had an awesome Wednesday!

With love,

Tuffy

WIAW #6

Happy Wednesday! I'm happy to be joining in on WIAW again :D

First off, I just want to talk about how much I've been loving pumpkin lately...and then I'll get to what I ate!

               

On Monday I made a pumpkin pie fro yo parfait, and let me tell you it was phenomenal! I kept seeing amazing looking overnight oat parfaits on Instagram and decided to combine this idea with fro yo. This was layers of: pumpkin spice overnight oats, pumpkin fro yo, apples sauteed with cinnamon and a teeny bit of sugar free syrup, and vanilla protein fro yo. So so so so delicious! <3 

Also, I've been so obssessed with sugar free pumpkin  spice coffee mate and Trader Joe's pumpkin spice coffee. It's so delicious, I highly recommend it to anyone who loves pumpkin and coffe :)

And now onto my eats:

Open faced egg sandwich

I just learned how to poach an egg, and I don't know why I never tried this before. This was a slice of whole grain bread, laughing cow cheese, an egg white, 2 slices of center cut bacon, a poached egg, and hot sauce. I scarfed this down before my exam yesterday...so good. I also had some cantaloupe on the way to class but didn't get a picture...although I'm pretty sure you guys know what cantaloupe looks like ;)

Homemade healthy calzone

Artichoke and Parmesan kale chips

For dinner I made my healthy calzone (Joseph's whole wheat pita, no sugar added pizza sauce, Trader Joe's spicy jalapeno chicken sausage, fat free ricotta, and a bit of lite mozzarella) and some delicious kale chips.

"Dessert"

I love cereal and I love having big bowls of cereal as my "dessert" at night :) Trader Joe's O's, Trader Joe's fiber cereal, diced up apples, and some peanut flour. Recently I've been adding peanut flour to my cereal (it was my love's idea!) and it's such a good combination. It just gives your cereal a slight peanut butter taste, and who doesn't love peanut butter?!

Well, that's it for this WIAW. I hope you all had an amazing Wednesday <3

With love,

Tuffy

WIAW # 5

Happy WIAW everyone :)
First I want to address the theme of this WIAW. Lately I've been inspired by, loving, and craving all things pumpkin. There are so many drool-worthy pumpkin-containing foods being posted on Instagram, it's nuts! I love it. This week I've been loving my pumpkin iced coffees, with pumpkin coffee from Trader Joe's and sugar free pumpkin spice coffee mate. So good! Also, I've made pumpkin blondies, pumpkin protein pancakes, and my oh-so-amazing pumpkin pie fro yo (in previous posts). And I've got a can of pumpkin in my cabinets just waiting for me to do something with it this weekend :)
Anyways, on to my eats today!
Lunch today was:

Baked chicken tenders, roasted veggies, quinoa, and sriracha

Cottage cheese, cookies & cream casein, chocolate PB2, and mashed up banana

Snacks consisted of:

My last quest bar :( Loving these! I almost forgot to take a pic!

Dehydrated cinnamon fuji apples

I love these dehydrated apples from Costco. I don't buy them much anymore because they're kind of pricey, but my mom found a box on the bottom of a cart in the Costco parking lot and thought I would like them. Boy, does she know me well or what! I was pretty excited about that.

For dinner I made pineapple, chicken, and steak cauliflower "fried rice". Yummmy :D

Grated cauliflower

The finished product. Of course, had to add some spice with chili garlic sauce.

And lastly, dessert!

Peanut butter and "jelly" fro yo. Yum yum yummm

Before I added the "jelly" I dipped a strawberry in the PB fro yo...so delicious. For the "jelly" I just mashed together strawberries and blueberries. For the PB fro yo I added 2 TBSP peanut flour to Fage Greek yogurt. I really love homemade fro yo!

Well, I suppose that's it for now....need to get some sleep :)

With love,

Tuffy

WIAW #3

Hello there! Whew, it's been a busy few weeks, between work and school...hence why I've failed at posting lately. I'm working on it though! It's still pretty busy, so this will be a quick one. Real quickly though, I want to just say that I really like the idea behind this WIAW banner. Especially because I'm continually striving to make good choices while stressing out from school and studying and what not. So here it goes!
Lunch:

Fruit, yogurt, and hot sauce!

 Bottom is just mixed fruit. For the first time this week I made a big bowl of fruit so that we can just take some as we want it. I really like this idea because fruit is always there when we want it with no work involved. On top is my plain greek yogurt. Within this past week I've decided to make the transition back to plain yogurt. Until I compared the stats on plain yogurt to fruit filled yogurt last week I never realized how much sugar is in the fruity ones! It's nuts! I'd rather just get plain and then have all sorts of options on how to flavor it myself. So today I added 1 tablespoon chocolate PB2 and 1 TBSP ground flax (+ 1/2 packet of Pure Via for a little sweetness). Yum! Plus my hot sauce for the concoction below :)

Butternut squash, green beans, and a veggie burger

The green beans and squash were left overs from last night. Just grilled up a veggie burger this morning while getting ready and topped it with some fat free cheese. Topped it with hot sauce at work...perfect :)
Snacks while studying:

Vanilla maple almonds <3

 I got these in my monthly package from bestowed. If you don't know about bestowed, check them out. They are an awesome company and I was really happy with my box this month. Hopefully I'll be doing reviews of everything later this month once I've used it all. Anyways, these almonds were awesome. There was only 4g of sugar, which seems really good for almonds that are coated with stuff. They were really tasty though.

Lentil chips

I also got these cool chips from bestowed. These were equally as awesome. They were kind of airy and had a delicious garlic Parmesan flavor. I'd love to be able to buy larger quantities of these.

Also, not pictured was about 30 grapes...but I think everyone knows what those look like ;)

Dinner:

Cucumber feta turkey burger, veggies, salad

I made these turkey burgers on a whim from a suggestion from my love. Shredded some cucumber, added 1 egg white, some feta crumbles, and seasonings. They were pretty good but I definitely plan on improving this recipe. On the side was just a veggie saute (cauliflower, sugar snap peas, bell peppers, onion, garlic, artichoke hearts, feta, and seasonings), delicious as usual. And just a typical salad.

Well, that's my quick WIAW for today. I hope you all had a great Wednesday <3

With love,

Tuffy

WIAW #2

Yay for another WIAW! :) I hope all you other WIAWers had good Wednesdays as well.

Here's my eats from yesterday:

My lunch all packed up and ready to go

Lunch: Salad + yogurt + mixture of blueberries and cherries.

Up close & personal

My salad consisted of: spinach, mixed greens, various veggies (cucumber, onion, tomato, mushroom), lentils (which were cooked with garlic and onion), quinoa, feta, and fat free italian dressing. Plus my Trader Joe's 0% Greek yogurt + 1 tbsp flax and my fruit to round it out :)

Snacks!

I love this chocolate almond coconut Mojo bar...mmmm. Plus, still loving my ranch with hot sauce + veggies <3

Healthy gyro

The other day I had a craving for gyros, and I thought to myself: you know what, I bet I can make gyros healthier. Oh my gosh. I was so happy with they way this turned out. I looked up a recipe to season chicken and to make a healthy Tzatziki sauce. I think I need to do a bit of tweaking before I post my recreated healthy gyros, but considering this was my first go at them I was really happy. My boyfriend even said that this was like a comparable healthy version of his favorite Halal place in NYC (sweet!) and asked that this join our regular rotation of meals. And of course we had to top it with some Sriracha for a little zing ;) I also made a Greek inspired salad on the side:

This was just mixed greens, lots of cucumber, tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke, onion, and feta.

And for dessert I threw together this delicious-ness...

Cinnamon Apple oat bowl

Again, I was really happy with the way this came out. I just kind of threw together stuff that sounded good and ended up with this. My boyfriend even asked for one tonight! I'll eventually post a recipe for this too, once I get it down pat. But it's basically just oats, chocolate pb2, apple, cinnamon, apple saucce, and brown rice crispy cereal.

And that's it for my 2nd WIAW...I was very happy with my new creations yesterday :)

With love,

Tuffy

WIAW #1

I always see this on people's blogs, and I've always thought it sounded fun (after all I do love taking pictures of my food...just look at my Instagram and you will understand ^_^). 

So here goes my first WIAW :)

PB&J Protein Pancakes

This was my breakfast/lunch. PB&J protein pancakes :) I used this recipe from the Fitnessista for protein pancakes (so yummy!). Then I made my own jam by just mashing up raspberries with a fork and topped the pancakes with this. I then took about 2 TBSP pb2 and added extra water, until I had the consistency I wanted. I drizzled pb2 and some sugar free syrup on top. This is my new favorite breakfast...plus some turkey bacon from Trader Joe's on the side...perfect!

Cherry Pomegranate Tea Latte

We got some new tea (cherry pomegranate by...Good Earth...I think), and we had some in the fridge left over from last night. I added a packet of Pure Via, 1 tbsp soy creamer, and ~1/4 cup of vanilla almond milk.

This was kind of a random snack for me. It just hit me that I should add some of my Trader Joe's hot sauce (which, btw, is SO much tastier than tobasco) to ranch for a kicked up ranch to dip my veggies in. I was so happy with this...will def be doing this again.

Salad + White Lasagna

This is one of my favorite meals...the White Lasagna (by Hungry Girl) is a bit of work, but 100% worth it. It's so cheesy and flavorful. I pair it with a salad and it's plenty of food.

I nibbled on a few squares of this after dinner. Mmm, I didn't realize how much I missed dark chocolate until I had some of this.

Apple cinnamon cereal

And this was the last of it for me tonight. ~1/2 cup crispy rice cereal + 1/4 cup oats + 1/2 apple, chopped + cinnamon + walnuts + vanilla almond milk. This was pretty tasty too :)

Well that's all for me tonight...now it's off to bed!

Love,

Tuffy