March Eats & Other Events

So, March has been full of good food & lots of work. I tried out a new place for my birthday--well, it was the reincarnation of a restaurant, now called 'American Craft' in Brookline. The beer was good, but the food was just so-so.

After dinner, Tyler and I took a little trip to JP Licks. The hard yogurt at this place really is what I will miss most about Boston.

I got a medium with three flavors: peanut butter, oatmeal cookie, and Oreo. Mmmm...satisfying. So delishus!!

Okay, so some of the great things I've had over the past few weeks are:

Enchanted Broccoli Forrest

This recipe is adapted from Molly Katzen's cookbook, 'Enchanted Broccoli Forrest'. Its a vegetarian cookbook and I highly recommend it. The recipes are full of vegetables, healthy, and can easily be modified to be lighter. When I'm craving meat, I just add some. This is basically a casserole of rice, mushrooms, onion, and any other veggies. Then the broccoli is put on top to create the 'forrest'.

For breakfast, I've been eating a lot of Green Monsters lately:

-3/4 c. milk

-1 small frozen banana

-2 big handfuls of spinach

-1 scoop chocolate protein powder

Topped with 1/2 c. Fiber One and eaten with a spoon.

So good--I'm officially hooked.

This is Tofu Pad Thai that I made a few nights ago. Its from Clean Eating Mag and I make it a few times a month at least. Its made with chewy brown rice noodles, tofu, cabbage, carrots, cilantro, peanuts and home-made pad thai sauce. I think next time I'm going to add more vegetables to make it more filling, but Tyler always scarfs this down.

This is a Honey Almond Loaf that I made last week. Its made with quinoa flour and almond meal. Its ultra dense, so I ended up eating it too slow and it went bad before I thought to freeze it. I toasted it and topped it with just a little honey and it was so good. I got a breadmaker for my birthday, so I think I'll be making more bread in the future.

This kitchen scale is another gift that I got for my birthday (from myself). It was only $25 on Amazon and can weigh in oz, g, kg, or lb. It has a tare function so I can add things to a bowl or plate, too. I don't weigh all of my food by any means, but its a good tool to have for baking and when you want to very very precise.

Speaking of my kitchen, these are the before pictures. I've been working on making it a little nicer and brighter, and I'll have some 'after' pics up soon.

I thought I would put a little tutorial up about how to make the valentines that I sent out. The full instructions are here. First, I had a picture taken of me standing against  a blank wall. I printed a bunch out and inserted a Dum Dum in my hand, and added a very personal message: Happy Valentine's Day.

Hope this gave you some good ideas and something to look at. I leave you with this image of Zen: