a quick, healthy lunch and halloween sugar cookies

I love making themed holiday treats! I'd been wanting to make Halloween cookies all week but finally found time for them yesterday.



But first, let's talk lunch. Yesterday's lunch took just a couple minutes to throw together and was pretty darn delicious :)

First I steamed some broccolini in a bowl with a tablespoon of water and saran wrap over the top, keeping one corner uncovered.





Then I added some leftover Harvest Grains Blend and already opened alfredo sauce.



I microwaved this for a minute or two then added some shredded smoked cheese blend, stirred and enjoyed :)







To be honest, the best part of this lunch was that it only dirtied one dish and sometimes that counts for a lot!

Now on to the sweet stuff:

Halloween Sugar Cookies!! 





I used this No Fail Sugar Cookie recipe from Lovin From the Oven. I've used a few of her recipes before and she always delivers! Her Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies are still Matt's favorite cookies I've ever made.

I used a new technique of rolling out my dough between two sheets of parchment paper with a bottle of wine since I didn't have a rolling pin.



This worked really well! Especially since before I would flour the surface and rolling pin and everything would STILL stick and the cookie dough would end up too crumbly by the end from too much incorporated flour. I will definitely be using the parchment paper technique from now on.

I lightly floured my cookie cutters so that they wouldn't stick. I used a washed out PB jar lid for a circle since I didn't have a circular cutter.









Even though I halfed the recipe, check out how many cookies I made!





To decorate, I made a thick slurry of powdered sugar and milk that I piped out of the tip of a ziplock bag and outlined all of my cookies with it so that the next layer of icing wouldn't drip over the edges.



Next, I mixed up a more liquid version by using more milk to make white, yellow, orange and red icing.







The next step was pretty messy and I kind of did it in a hurry. I attempted to color in the lines. Clearly my cookie decorating skills need some work, hahaha!







What a delicious mess! I used the leftover parchment paper from rolling the dough out to spread the cookies on for decorating to make clean up a breeze. We had friends over last night before going out and the cookies were a hit! I'm not looking forward to the four miles I have to run today :/ But I AM looking forward to the West Hollywood Halloween Parade!!! I'll try to take some good pictures to post.

witch's cauldron oatmeal

Witch's cauldron oats aka green smoothie oats are the big sister to the green monster smoothie, same basic genetic makeup but a little more grown up. And oh boy, is she a looker - NOT!

This recipe starts with a simple green monster:



Mine included one and a half cups of nonfat milk, half a banana, two handfulls of raw spinach and a half a scoop of chocolate protein powder. Pour into a pan and bring to a boil.



Stir in a cup of oatmeal.



Reduce heat to medium and stir, stir, stir.







Somewhere in the middle of this process, I haphazardly stirred in 2 heaping spoonfulls of nonfat cottage cheese (approx. 1/4 cup). Then I plated it and topped it with peanut butter and a drizzle of maple syrup.





Not for the faint of heart but it sure was tasty!

Witch's Cauldron Oatmeal:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups nonfat milk
• 1/2 banana
• 1 cup raw spinach
• 1/2 scoop chocolate protein powder
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1/4 cup cottage cheese
• 1 tablespoon peanut butter (optional)
• maple syrup, to taste (optional)

Directions:

Blend milk, banana, spinach and protein powder in a blender. Pour into a pan and bring to a boil. Add oats and cottage cheese, reduce heat to medium and stir continuously, cooking for about 5 minutes until thickened. Add toppings if desired. 

This makes two portions so if you can't find someone brave enough to eat green oats with you, you can always half the recipe or save half for tomorrow (what I did). 

 For those who are curious, here are the stats for one serving:

shredded brussel sprouts salad

I have been on quite the brussel sprouts kick lately! I feel like I missed out on them all my life because they got such a bad rap and I was scared to try them. Now I eat at least a bag a week, I have to put forth effort to eat other vegetables! Truthfully, the reason I haven't blogged more this past week is because I thought you would get sick of seeing roasted brussel sprouts.

Well, as you can imagine, I nearly squealed with joy when I saw the Shredded Sprouts Salad post on How Sweet It Is! A new way to eat brussel sprouts? Yes, please!!!

I started by shredding my sprouts...



Notice anything missing? Like... the blade? Imagine my surprise when nothing happened.



Much better!



You want them shredded, not pulverized!

Then, saute them with olive oil and garlic over medium heat



After they start to brown, add a glug or two of vinegar and a few dashes of salt, cook for a couple minutes more. DONE! Easy, huh?

I had mine with a Trader Joe's chicken burger and an unpictured slice of Matt's Trader Joe's frozen four cheese pizza which I thought was unimpressive, but like they say, even when it's bad, its still pretty good!





Oh ya, and a healthy sprinkle of Romano cheese right over the top. I didn't have any bacon, but I bet it would be amazing with :) Head over to Jessica's blog for the full recipe.

harvest grains blend stuffed green peppers

Tonight, I made a twist on my previous stuffed green peppers recipe. This version featured something new that I picked up at Trader Joe's a few weeks back and have been itching to try.





Harvest Grains Medley!

This medley was so goooooooood :) Although it called for butter, I used a glug of olive oil. I think I may have to buy another package to bring to Thanksgiving in Miami, it was just that good!

While the grains were cooking away, I microwaved two hollowed out green peppers a la Matt's mom to make the cooking process go by faster (I was hangryyyy after a good sweat sesh and yoga). Soon, it was time to make the stuffing.





My stuffing consisted of approximately two cups of cooked Harvest Grains Blend, two heaping spoonfulls of cottage cheese, two heaping spoonfulls of roasted garlic hummus, a small handful of Trader Joe's smoked cheese blend and a few dashes of garlic salt. Somehow I made the EXACT right amount. I placed the two peppers in the oven on a baking dish at 400 degrees for approximately 20 minutes.



I grilled up a piece of Trader Joe's marinated mahi mahi for some added protein.







And all gone...



This was one tasty meal, not to toot my own horn. I like the Trader Joe's smoked cheese blend because it is VERY smokey and therefore a little goes a long way. Otherwise I could just drown myself in cheese. I really could.

Today was listed as a "Strength and Stretch" day in my workout plan. For the strength portion I did three rounds of The Fitnessista's latest bootcamp using the new free weights Matt picked up for me the other day.



I used the 5 pounders the whole time and was definitely feeling it the most on the lateral lunges with overhead press and, as usual, burpees were killer!

After I sweated up a storm through the "Strength" part of my workout, Matt and I headed over to the gym where he lifted weights and I took a yoga class. I'm usually pretty unimpressed in general by gym yoga classes (not that I have tried a studio, but still) but this teacher was really amazing! Apparently he even has a Facebook where you can follow him and make requests. Someone had requested hips so, oh boy, did we get our hips stretched out. I felt pretty clumsy and uncoordinated in the yoga class but that just motivates me to work on it more, especially since I left feeling very limber :)

Goodnight, my bleaders (blog readers, I think that's from Julie and Julia)!!

vegan mexican hot chocolate pudding

This post is going to be short and sweet. Pun intended.

It was supposed to be a "vegan 3 ingredient pudding" recipe so here are my three initial ingredients:



I blended a block of firm tofu in the food processor with 1/4 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder and a couple tablespoons of agave syrup. Afterwards I felt like it needed a little "kick" so I added a tablespoon of maple syrup and a dash of cayenne. Hence, the "Mexican hot chocolate".







This had an interesting texture and taste but it satisfied my sweet tooth and craving for chocolate while still being pretty healthy, for pudding that is.