MIMM #2...on Tuesday

So I know I'm a day late on this, but I was up until 3 last night studying 0_0 so I didn't exactly have time for this post. But since my first genetics exam is now over, now I do! 
I am so happy to be done with my first round of exams for this semester...back to a more normal routine where I actually have time for some things I enjoy :)
Even though I was in studying-mode yesterday (and all weekend) I still got some marvelous things in.
My study break this weekend was going grocery shopping. I'm a total nerd for grocery shopping...I love it! I love doing it and I love having a fully stocked fridge afterwards!

Yay!

 I skipped work yesterday so I could get some extra studying in, and while home I got some food prep in while studying. Well, it didn't prove to be an effective way to study, but I'm still very happy I got a bunch of it done...it will make the rest of the week much easier.

Roasted veggies

Big bowl of homemade hummus...a girls best friend ;)

My first attempt at kale chips...I love it.

Chicken + tilapia...I need new tupperware -_-

Iced coffee for the week

I also got to enjoy some delicious meals with my love <3

Southwest egg cups + toast

My love made me dinner while I was studying...so sweet of him. Feta & turkey meatballs with spaghetti squash and garlic pita bread.

An amazing new snack I came up with: PB and "jelly" cottage cheese. "Jelly" = mashed blueberries

 Over the weekend I fell head over heals in love with a new dessert concept...homemade fro-yo! I was inspired by stacieeleep on instagram. So far I've made 3 different fro-yo concoctions and every one has been delicious!

My first, and so far favorite, attempt. Pumpkin Pie fro yo! Greek yogurt with vanilla protein  powder topped with one of my pumpkin pie blondies and almond butter. It tasted like pumpkin pie!

Tropical fro-yo: greek yogurt with mango, pineapple and coconut. Topped with fresh strawberries and Trader Joe's-O's

Greek yogurt with vanilla protein powder topped with a Kashi chocolate square and PB2

 I can't wait to try more combinations...there is just no turning back after you've made your own fro-yo :)

Lastly, on Friday my love surprised me when I came home from work and he started painting our room. When we moved in here our room was hideously painted green and purple...we called it the hulk room. Awful, just awful. Well, he went out and got paint and surprised me. He finished in Monday and it looks SO much better!! I will post pictures later, but this was definitely a marvelous surprise this weekend.


Well, that's it for now. I suppose I should get some sleep, seeing as I only got four hours last night ^_^


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

Recreated Vietnamese Pancake

Yesterday I asked my love what he wanted for lunch and he said he wanted a Vietnamese pancake from our favorite Vietnamese place, Lemon Grass Grill. Instead, I suggested that I make it at home for us since we pretty much had all the ingredients. A Vietnamese pancake (aka Bahn Xeo) is basically a fried omelet/crepe (it's more like an omelet but the egg mixture has rice flour in it to thicken it up) with shrimp, pork, bean sprouts, onion, and it's dipped in fish sauce. Here's a picture of a typical Bahn Xeo:

Bahn Xeo

For myself I decided to just do it omelet style, so I used 1 whole egg + 2 egg whites. For my love I used 2 whole eggs plus some flour and water to thin it out. The egg pancake part is the easiest, it's the filling and the fish sauce that really makes this dish. Also, we didn't have pork so I just used chicken that we already had cooked.

Serves 2

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup shrimp, chopped (I used fully cooked and frozen, but any will work)
• 1/2 cup boneless skinless chicken breast, chopped (again, my chicken was already cooked from my food prep that week, but you can use raw as well, just cook a bit longer to cook through)
• 3/4 cup bean sprouts
• ~1/4 white onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• Eggs, depending on how you want to make your egg pancake

Directions:

1. Add garlic and onion to the pan, saute for 2-3 minutes.
2. Add bean sprouts, chicken, and shrimp to pan and saute.
3. Liberally sprinkle garlic and onion powder. Add salt and pepper to your liking.
4. Stir occasionally. Continue to cook until the onions have wilted and all the ingredients have had time to mingle with each other! (~5 minutes).
5. Remove mixture from stove, set aside.
6. Whether you want to use just eggs or the egg +flour mixture, this step is the same. Add egg mixture to a medium-sized pan (make sure to use cooking spray so your eggs don't stick!)
7. Cook until the top of the egg pancake is almost cooked through, but still a little runny, ~2 minutes.
8. Flip the entire pancake over and cook for another 1-2 minutes. 
9. Add half of the mixture prepared earlier to each egg pancake (I made our simultaneously in 2 separate pans). The mixture should only cover half of the egg pancake. Flip the empty half of the egg pancake over the mixture half.
10. Plate the pancake!

Serves 4

Adapted from here

Ingredients:

• 1 cup water
• 4 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 packet Truvia (or other sweetener/sugar)
• 5 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• Chili garlic sauce, amount depends on how spicy you want it

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. (FYI, the original recipe calls for the water to be boiled, I think so that the sugar will dissolve, but we didn't do it)

And here's the finished product:

Recreated Bahn Xeo

That's it! It was pretty easy to cook this, and I thought it was just as delicious as in the restaurant. I like that it wasn't greasy and fried like the one at the restaurant. We both enjoyed this healthier creation :)

With love,

Tuffy

Some good news and rambles

I made a new recreation today, and will be posting the recipe shortly! But first I need to ramble a bit :)

First off, I was very disappointed I didn't get to post WIAW this week. I had taken all my pictures and was ready to go post it...and our internet wasn't working -_- WTF cox cable >=| And then I was going to do it on Thursday instead. On Thursday it really wasn't working. But as of this morning, it just might be permanently fixed. For the past 3-4 months our internet has been on the shitty side. It would cut out randomly and then come back. Cox sent out technicians. The first one had no idea what was wrong so they sent out a more experienced one (I guess) who kind of figured out what was going wrong, but could not figure why or how to fix it. He did manage to figure out that if you went and wriggled this one wire outside, it would at least temporarily fix it. So that is what my love has been doing at least once a day. Until last week when it stopped fixing it. So this time Cox sent out a new contracted technician who isn't actually employed by Cox. Apparently he knew what he was doing and it looks like this good man has figured it out. So far today our internet hasn't cut out at all. We are keeping our fingers crossed that it continues this way.

Anyways, enough with that ramble. And on to this one, which includes very good news for me! So it's 2 weeks into the 6 week recovery period for which my Dr told me no weight lifting, and I kind of mentioned to my mom (who is a nurse) how I was sad I couldn't lift weights. She asked me why and I reminded her of what my Dr said. She responded with "What?! No way. You're definitely healed by now. There's no reason you can't lift weights". I sat there with my jaw dropped, staring at her. Really?!? Are you sure???! She told me that it probably took me a week to heal and there's no reason I shouldn't be able to go back to my regular gym stuff. At that point I had the hugest smile on my face. And as much as I love my mom and value her opinion, I couldn't just take her word on it. So I googled it. According to an article I found written by a Doc, she recommended taking it easy (nothing strenuous) for the first week, but after that you can start slowly working in your normal activities. At this point I was just beyond ecstatic and a little annoyed that my Dr was so off in what he told me. It makes sense that he was wrong though, because when I asked him how long I had to wait before doing weights and what not, he looked like he was searching for an answer and just kind of landed on 6 weeks. But I was mostly just happy! I could start actually working out again! I'm sorry but cardio/yoga/pilates just doesn't feel the same as going into the weight room. I definitely enjoy yoga and pilates, but I also definitely crave something more intense. So today my love and I went for a nice chest/tri session. It was wonderful :)

Also, I ran! For 2 miles! I used to run almost every day, 3 miles minimum. And then my knees started bothering me. At first braces helped. And then they didn't. So, much to my dismay, I stopped running. Which is a shame because I really do enjoy it. Every time I've tried it since I stopped sometime last year, my knees start hurting by the time I hit the 1 mile mark. Today I got to 2 miles and had to stop due to knee pain. I really enjoyed those 2 miles and was really sad I had to stop, but I'm just glad I got those 2 miles in. It was a reminder of how much I miss it though. I'm thinking about trying a different type of knee brace. I think the kind I have isn't really meant for my knee pain and I'd really like it if I could continue to run :)

On another note, I started school this week. So far so good, but the first week is always the easiest so that doesn't really mean anything. Ha! This semester I'm taking Molecular Genetics and Nutrition. Genetics is a required course and I'm really excited for it. I find DNA and genetics fascinating, but admittedly I don't know much about it. I'm sure it will be a challenging class, but I'm really excited to learn and I think it will be really interesting (plus it will definitely be useful for my job). Nutrition is not at all a required course, but I needed another class to maintain my part-time status and I've always been interested in nutrition. It should be pretty cool to learn about nutrition from a more scientific stand point. So I'm expecting to be a busy little Tuffy this semester, but I will just have to manage my time properly ;)

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

Marvelous Monday #1

Unfortunately my internet was out last night so I wasn't able to make this post, and I was really looking forward to making my first Marvelous Monday post! So rather than postpone it another week I'm posting it on Tuesday :)

My busy Monday was spent reminiscing my lovely weekend. My weekend was kicked off Saturday morning by going to coffee with my love and our pups. Treating ourselves to coffee is one of our favorite things to do on the weekend, and we recently found a new place that is quickly becoming our new favorite place. It was opened up by a young family who was tired of the only coffee place in their neighborhood being Starbucks (sounds like our type of people!). So they opened up their own place. They have good coffee, they're super friendly, and it's just a very good and inviting atmosphere.

My love and our pups. Duddy up top, Chloe on bottom.

Me and our pups. I love the look on their faces.

After coffee I headed to the gym for some cardio and my first 1.5 hour yoga class. I loved it. It was challenging and relaxing and just wonderful. Will def be going back for it. After the gym I made the most delicious protein shake...black forest cake. Omg it was seriously so delicious. I got the idea from Joneacie on InstaGram to use tea as a smoothie base. So I used cherry pomegranate tea by Good Earth and some unsweetened vanilla almond milk. I added a scoop of chocolate whey protein, frozen cherries, ice, spinach, and some oats. And this was the finished product:

Black Forest Cake Protein Shake

Once I downed my shake, it was time to go to one of my favorite places for our friends birthday dinner...Fire Fly.

My love and I, on our way

Us with the birthday boy and his girl <3

Berry infused vodka martini (mine) + Watermelon Mojito (his)

And the very best part of all (other than spending the night with our friends, of course):

The food!

From top left: eggplant cannelloni (eggplant stuffed with goat cheese), stuffed dates (my favorite!), Tierra y Mar skewers (chicken, shrimp, chorizo), and lastly tuna tar tare (oh my this is seriously amazing...reminds me of Poke bowls from Venice Beach...mmm!). 

And that's it...Sunday was just a chill day for us. Did some grocery shopping and hung out with our families. I hope everyone else had something marvelous to think about on Monday as well :)

With love,

Tuffy

How upsetting

At first I wasn't sure if I wanted to post this on here...I usually tend to not share personal things very openly. It's not that I don't want people to know about things...I don't know I'm just not necessarily one to go out of my way to share it. But since this will be a pretty big challenge for me, I decided that I wanted to put it up here. 

This week I had to accept a pretty big (mandatory) temporary change to my workouts. I'm just glad it's only temporary. So I went for a short doctor's appointment on Monday before I had a minor out-patient surgery on Wednesday. At my appointment my doctor mentions to me, "oh yeah, by the way you can't do any strenuous or high impact activities or workouts for a while". My first question was "W-w-w-what?! Well what exactly can't I do? And for how long can't I do it?!". So he tells me that you know, I can't do stuff like lifting weights...or just anything that would be too strenuous on the body and proceeds to ask exactly what I do at the gym. When I tell him I usually lift weights and do the spin bike he says "oh yeah, I used to spin. You definitely can't do that". Well great. The only thing my workout is is high-impact and strenuous. And I can't do those things. What the hell am I supposed to do then?! He then tells me that I can do the elliptical and things like that and as long as it isn't strenuous he doesn't care. And when I ask how long? He says "oh, I don't know. At least 6 weeks". Well isn't that just wonderful -_-

Initially I was pretty upset. For the past month or so I've really started to get back into the gym and lifting weights consistently. I was just getting my routine down and really excited about it. And boom. For a month and a half I can't do any of it. The thing is, I know that this is the best thing for my health. There is no question I had to go through with the surgery and I know that I have to give my body time to recover from it. It's just annoying and aggravating (plus, there was one other restriction that was bad enough as it was...but then to add this whole wok-out thing just made it more annoying). 

At least I don't have to give up the gym all together. So, after being upset for a few days I decided that I would take this as an opportunity to do other things. I figured I'd stick to the elliptical, walking, or the stair master (this part I was never too upset about...it's the no lifting weights part that killed me). But I don't want to just do cardio for the next 6 weeks, so I figured I'd supplement it with a lot of pilates, yoga, and any other classes along those lines that aren't too strenuous. Luckily I actually do enjoy yoga and pilates...I would usually try to do yoga or pilates once a week before, but if I ever had to chose between yoga/pilates and weights I would definitely chose weights. So it'll be interesting to take on fitness from a very different perspective. 

I'm definitely excited to see any changes that might occur with 6 weeks of yoga and pilates...with my body, mind...anything at all.  They say that your diet is more important than the type strength training you do (or something like that), so I'm excited to test that theory out! With 2 yoga classes and 1 pilates class behind me I'm definitely enjoying it so far...I just hope I don't get bored of it.

With love,

Tuffy