Moist.

Hellooo from the Lone Star State! Where my hair is curlier and frizzier than ever. And stepping outside is like stepping into a sauna.

Just stopping in quickly to let you know that I'm here (and alive) so don't worry! I know you were. But the past few days have been so insanely busy that I haven't even thought about blogging. Actually, I did, and then I decided that watching TV seemed like a much better idea.

Here are some pics to keep you busy for the next day or two before I write a real post. Enjoy!

Desert

Real Indian food--on the go! 

More desert

The following were taken at a lunchtime BBQ...

Grilled watermelon + veggie burgers

Grilled corn

Some of the spread (minus the meat for obvious reasons!)

My plate: veggie burger + sauteed peppers & onions + cheese + red quinoa salad

I went to a buffet for lunch today and forgot to take pictures. Who am I? Apparently I forgot that I blog or something. I think the humidity is messing with me.

TFG On the Go.

This is going to be a post full of pictures! I am cleaning my camera up and updating my blog with everything before I MOVE tomorrow!

Expect the sporadic posting to commence...now. But, on the bright side, you'll get to see lots of on-the-go snacks!! And moving adventures (maybe)!

But for now, I'd like to show you some things I've made this week.

1. Oatmeal for breakfast. I should have posted this picture on my last post! This bowl was regular hot oatmeal cooked with frozen cherries and chia seeds, and topped with almond butter.

2. Spring rolls!!! This is another thing I've been wanting to make for so long. Once I made it, I was so sad that it had taken me so long to do so. All you have to do is buy some spring roll wrappers (super cheap and easy to find at any Asian store),

and fill them with ANYTHING. Seriously, anything your heart desires. I chose raw cabbage, carrots, and cilantro.

Okay. It's a little weird that the spring roll is on a towel. But I have an explanation.

To make the spring rolls, fill a plate up with water. Then, take out one spring roll wrapper and soak it in the water for literally two seconds. If the other side isn't wet, flip the wrapper around and make sure that both sides have been soaked in the water. Then, quickly & carefully transition the wet wrapper onto a damp towel or cloth. Quickly fill the wrapper with fillings of choice and wrap it up. (Quick is the keyword because the wrapper gets sticky really fast!)

I made a "peanut" sauce by mixing together some sunflower seed butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, water, and sriracha. This is an awesome snack idea because the rolls stay together with no problem whatsoever, and no cooking is involved. Unless you count putting water on a plate as cooking.

3. Speaking of sunflower seed butter, I attempted to make some with the food processor. I had lots and lots of sunflower seeds, so it was only the logical thing to do.

UH. Let's just say that almond butter is a lot easier to make. A lot times 1,000,000. Why? Because it involves processing...and processing...and processing...

Several tablespoons of oil, some brown rice syrup, and 20 minutes of processing later...

...it was still not my creamy dreamy sunflower seed butter. In fact, it was literally like cookie dough.

I shouldn't have ever called my pop'ums cookie dough balls, because they didn't really have the texture of cookie dough. But my sunflower seed butter, on the other hand, definitely has the texture of cookie dough. Unfortunately, it's hard to spread "cookie dough" on bread. I did scoop some onto my oatmeal today. Fortunately, it was still delicious. Like unbaked cookies in oatmeal. How can that ever go wrong?

Speaking of pop'ums...

4. I made some peanut butter pop'ums with the above sunflower seed butter! You know, since the food processor was out already. And I needed more snacks for the road!

I only made one change to this batch from the original recipe. Instead of puffed brown rice I used puffed millet. It gave it a chewier texture, really similar to a granola bar. But healthier! Oh, and I froze them. It was a nice little frozen granola treat. Highly recommend.

I'll stop tooting my own horn now.

But I will leave you with this, because it's not hot enough outside.

See ya from...well, you'll see (maybe)! Vague enough?

TFG recommends: Full-Body Weights Circuit

Stuff I Eat.

Lately I've had questions about what exactly I eat.

That probably sounds odd considering I bombard provide you with tons of recipes. I used to do a lot of "this is what I ate today" posts, but this summer has mostly been spent experimenting with new recipes. So for all of my new readers, this post is for you :).

I start off my day with a filling breakfast. Every. Single. Day. I never skip breakfast because it's my favorite meal! (And because I always wake up hungry). I haven't taken that many pictures of my breakfasts lately, but here are a few examples of what I like to eat in the morning:

Large smoothies (milk + 1/2 frozen banana + frozen blueberries or cherries + a couple of spoonful of uncooked oats + chia seeds + sometimes frozen spinach) topped with granola and/or some kind of nut butter.

Overnight oats (1/2 cup oats + milk + chia seeds + frozen berries mixed and set in the fridge overnight, usually top with nut butter in the morning). Bonus: in a nut butter jar! 

Whole grain toast topped with sunflower seed butter or almond butter + jelly/honey/cinnamon/whatever else I feel like.

I'm more of a carb-oriented person in the morning, although sometimes I do have a large enough appetite to stomach an egg in the form of an omelette!

In terms of my lunches/dinners, you've seen pretty much everything there is to see. But just to give you a few (very few!) examples:

Indian food. Whole wheat chapatti + chana (garbanzo beans) + potato curry + spicy mango pickle

Whole wheat pita stuffed with hummus (bonus: homemade!) and veggies of choice and maybe even a homemade veggie burger. I really like making a salad with lettuce or spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, and bell peppers and stuffing it in the pitas.

Stir-frys of all kinds. Usually served with brown rice or quinoa.

Homemade pizzas with whole wheat crust.

And as for snacks, I eat them all the time. Healthy snacks, of course.

Corn on the cob, so good!

Dates stuffed with sunflower seed butter (bonus: stuff them with some chocolate chips and microwave them for a few seconds!)

Banana soft serve: my go-to healthy dessert

Kale chips. Hmmm... this is a good reminder to make some for myself soon!

Hopefully this answers some of your questions and maybe even gives you some meal ideas for the near future. And also, keep those questions coming, I really like hearing from you!

We be skewin'.

There's this thing I've been wanting to make all summer long, and this weekend, I finally got around to it.

Roasted vegetable skewers!!

But not just any roasted vegetable skewers. Because that's no fun.

I need some spice in life.

Enter:

Tandoori paste. I found this in the Indian aisle at Lee Lee market, but I'm sure it's available at any Asian or Indian store.

I basically followed the directions on the bottle on how to make Tandoori Chicken. But of course I didn't use chicken. Instead, I used a variety of chopped veggies (red bell pepper/mushroom/zucchini) and some tofu that I lightly fried.

I marinated the veggies and tofu in the Tandoori paste (mixed with a bit of plain yogurt) overnight.

Then assembled them on skewers...

The engineer in me has to do everything symmetrically, especially when it comes to cooking. If you haven't noticed already.

Bake in the oven at 350F for 20-25 minutes. These would have been infinitely better had I been able to grill them! But they were still deeelicious.

So delicious. In fact, I couldn't stop eating these! Eating too many vegetables should not be considered a problem.

Pseudo-Indian food is the best! Speaking of Indian food, I learned how to cook dal today! Get excited.

Cannellininini

I knew there'd be recipe requests for that cannellini bean hummus!! Thanks for letting me not slack in the recipe department.

So...I made the hummus in like, three minutes. In other words, I took zero pictures of the process. Fortunately, that means you won't have to look at pictures of stuff in a blender, so it kind of works out?

Cannellini Bean Hummus


aka the creamiest hummus ever


Ingredients:

• 1 can cannellini beans
• 1-2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 2 teaspoons dried parsley
• 1 teaspoon tahini
• 1/4 chopped jalapeno
• salt to taste
• optional: 1/2 teaspoon olive oil

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth and creamy.

Serve with pita bread, pita chips, or pita bread made into chips. Or you could always try dipping carrot sticks, celery sticks, or a SPOON into it!

O-M-G this is some delicious protein.

P.S. I have an unnatural obsession with Pinterest lately. Anyone want to bond about this?

Mishmash.

Sporadic blog posts. I'm good at those lately, huh?!

Sorry friends. You'll find out soon enough why! That, and the blog posts are going to become even more sporadic as the days progress!! Please still visit the blog, though? I like having friends around these parts!

Keeping with the theme of sporadic, I thought I'd put together a mish-mash of things I've been doing/making/eating lately:

1. I did my own nails. In fact, this is the most artsy thing I've done besides trying to make my own t-shirt dress (which became a project of making a t-shirt into pants, which was a fail, by the way).

2. Pancakes. I made really quick healthy pancakes by using regular pancake mix and adding in some uncooked oats and frozen berries to the batter. And then I smothered the finished pancakes with almond butter and (unpictured) maple syrup.

3. Check out this gigantic bar of dark chocolate I found at Fresh & Easy. It's bigger than my head.

4. Cannellini bean hummus. Ever tried it? Ever tried making it? It's so creamy. And if you're into low fat stuff, making hummus out of cannellini beans requires a lot less olive oil than garbanzo bean hummus.

I made it with the new food processor!!! I think the combination of food processor + cannellini beans resulted in SUPER CREAMY HUMMUS! Yum(mus).

Let me know in the comments if you want a recipe. But for now, I'm going to go make some late night popcorn. Yeah...9:00PM is late. Whatev.

Jelly arms.

I don't know how I am typing right now. I have jelly arms.

I went to my first Body Pump class today! I've heard so much about it that it was almost too hyped up. But the class lived up to the hype. It was freaking HARD.

All I lifted the whole time was a 5 pound barbell. And by 5 pounds I mean... 2 1/2 pounds on each side of the bar. I usually lift like 3 times that amount!!! I don't know what it was--probably the insane repetitions-- but I think these Body Pumpers are up to something. Especially since the instructor (who couldn't have been more than 5 feet tall) was the strongest looking woman I've ever seen. That'll get you lifting. Even if it's just 5 pounds.

In other news...

Check this out!

A new and very large food processor!!!! Guess what I made to break the new FP in?

Any guesses? Any at all?!

The second item I made with the new FP was...

Enchiladas. AGAIN. Don't worry, to avoid boring you, I make different enchiladas every time. Actually, I do this to avoid boring myself.

You are probably also wondering how the heck I used a food processor to make these.

Wellll, I blended up a can of pinto beans, a microwaved & peeled sweet potato,

a cup or so of frozen+microwaved spinach, salt, pepper, and 2 teaspoons nutritional yeast. This was the filling for the enchiladas.

I rolled these inside mini corn tortillas, and topped these with enchilada sauce and shredded cheese.

My mom called this "party food" and my dad called this "exotic." I call it easy and healthy!!!

No baking necessary! And these are the perfect post-Body Pump meal if you ask me :).

PS: Check out my Greatist recipe contribution for this week! 

Thai my tie.

Back during my undergrad days (insert chuckles here), my friends and I used to get free Thai food. One of the engineering professors would graciously cook an authentic Thai meal every Friday and we would plan our lunch plans around it. It was awesome. Unfortunately, Thai Fridays turned into Thai Every Other Friday which then turned into Non-Existent Thai Friday. Apparently free Thai food became a little too popular. I wonder why.

I was really disappointed that Thai Fridays ended so abruptly, especially because I'd never had the chance to ask the professor for her recipes.

The other day, David and I had a mini foodie swap. I received some kaffir lime leaves, and I had never seen or heard of them before. After David told me he uses them for Thai cooking, I decided to consult my BFF Google for some more ideas.

At least now I know the difference between green, yellow, and red curry?

And now I know how to make green curry!!

Thai Green Curry

Ingredients:

• 4 kaffir lime leaves, cut into thin strips
• 3 tablespoons frozen lemongrass
• 3 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
• 3 teaspoons cumin-corriander powder
• ~1 cup chopped cilantro
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 inch ginger
• 1-2 green chilis (depending on spice tolerance)
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 block tofu (or 1 block if desired)
• 1 bag frozen stir-fry vegetables

In a blender, combine 2 lime leaves, lemongrass, soy sauce cumin-corriander powder, cilantro, garlic, ginger, green chilis, and 2 tablespoons coconut milk. Blend until a paste forms.

I know. It's not the most attractive looking paste, but it seriously has the most fantastic smell EVER.

In a large pan or tall-walled skillet, heat the vegetable oil and tofu cubes on medium. 

When the tofu has slightly browned, add the rest of the can of coconut milk and the curry paste.

Stir until all of the curry paste is incorporated. Add the other two lime leaves.

Then add the frozen vegetables.

Keep cooking until the vegetables are cooked and soft. Serve with brown rice.

After eating this, I now know that I can have my own Thai Fridays!!!