Avoado Oatmeal & Sautéed Chicken Salad

Sorry I didn't post yesterday! I accidentally left my laptop at work so I couldn't upload my pictures from yesterday's breakfast.

Monday
I know you've all been on the edge of your seats waiting to find out what happened with the leftover 1/4 of my avocado from lunch the other day... and here it is!! Thanks to my favorite blog Carrots 'n' Cake, I got this great idea to add avocados to my oatmeal!

People usually make oatmeal when they're about to eat it, but I simply don't have time to make myself breakfast in the morning... which is why I usually opt for a Zone Perfect bar and a Slim-Fast shake. So for my oatmeal, I'll make it at night, pop it in some tupperware in the fridge, and simply microwave for about two minutes when I'm ready to eat it. This actually works and although it doesn't taste 100% as great as fresh oatmeal does, it's a great substitute when I don't have a lot of time.

Weirdly, you don't even taste the avocado! It adds something nice and healthy to your breakfast, you don't notice it, and it makes your oatmeal this awesome fluffy texture that you don't normally get. Personally, I love adding frozen strawberries to my oatmeal, along with a teaspoon of vanilla extract and just a little bit of maple syrup (usually I add the syrup right before I microwave it... you can taste it more and it helps revive the meal a lot). You can find my original recipe for it here.


Tuesday
For breakfast, I quickly chowed down on a Zone Perfect Fudge Graham bar and a Slim-Fast shake on my way to school. After school, I went grocery shopping. Usually I try to go earlier in the week than Tuesday, but my day off from school/work was Sunday and I worked 8 hours on Monday after physical therapy and classes. I found some really great tips to plan my shopping and save more money while doing it... and it really worked!

Before I went shopping, I looked at Stop&Shop's circular and planned my meals for the week around what was on sale. Besides the grapes and lettuce that I needed to get, I ended up buying some grapefruit, bananas, and blackberries that were on sale, when normally I don't buy fresh produce because it's so expensive. Usually for dinner, I eat a Lean Cuisine at work or eat a turkey sandwich or whatever Brent's mom makes at his house. But one night a week I cook for myself. Usually I make some kind of a chicken and pasta dish because I don't like meat that much except for chicken, and I need protein in my diet. This week, because I looked at the circular, I was able to buy a huge bag of shrimp on sale for $7.99! Normally I spend about $6 on chicken, so I think it was worth the splurge to be able to try something new :)

For lunch, I had a grapefruit with just a little bit of sugar sprinkled on top.

And I had a chicken salad with garbanzo and cannelini beans, with Ken's Lite Ranch dressing. I sautéed the leftover chicken from the chicken and pasta I had last week and ripped the chicken into little pieces after it had cooled.

Since I've been SO bad lately... I definitely needed to finish out the day healthy. For dinner, I whipped up a quick Tuna Fish Sandwich with a side of avocado which was sooooo yummy!! After that, I was still not quite full, so I grabbed a Strawberry Special K bar for the road on my way to Brent's house for the night.

The Perfect Midnight Snack - Peanut Butter & Banana English Muffins

Surprise, surprise... another recipe I got from my new favorite blog Carrots 'N' Cake ... I guess it's not really a "recipe", but this delicious snack is chock-full of protein, potassium, and whole-grains! I used Thomas' Whole Grain English Muffins and lightly toasted them. Then I spread a little bit of Stop&Shop Brand All-Natural Creamy Peanut Butter (actually had the most protein and the least amount of fat/sugar out of all the peanut butters - and only includes peanuts and salt in the ingredients!) on each half. To top my snack off, I cut up about a half of a banana in medium slices and placed them in a circle on the muffin.


I've never really liked peanut butter that much and I actually really don't even like bananas. But I decided to try this snack since I always get cravings around bedtime and knew something healthy like this would be a lot better for me than something I might normally go for. Surprisingly, I actually really enjoyed this snack and will probably be making myself this type of midnight treat a lot more often!

Strawberry-Vanilla Oatmeal

I decided to start doing breakfast posts every once in a while! They probably won't come too often because usually I just start my day by rolling out of bed into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and eating a whole-wheat bagel and cream cheese in the car. I know breakfast is important and believe me even that scarfed down bagel is a step up for me. But after reading an interesting cooking/weight loss book I decided to try out this meal that sounded really appealing and something very easy for my on-the-go mornings.

This recipe is actually a mix between a recipe I got from the September 2010 issue of the magazine Clean Eating and the idea of oatmeal for breakfast from the cookbook The Perfect Recipe by Pam Anderson. I know oatmeal for breakfast is good (and probably better than a bagel - even if it's whole wheat) because it's got a lot of fiber and, depending on what you add to it, the potential for an even more filling and yummy breakfast than you thought it could be. The recipe from Clean Eating was actually a recipe for millet porridge, but I switched it up to oatmeal because of what I read in the other book and because, honestly, I don't know what millet is and I like oatmeal so I knew I'd have a better chance for success with this recipe with it.

I made 3/4 cups of Quaker Old Fashioned Oats following the directions on the back for the "Heart Healthy" portion. While that was cooking I defrosted some frozen strawberries I got at PriceRite over the weekend and cut them into quarters that filled about 3/4 of a cup (looking back I ended up halving the rest of the recipe so I'd probably do a 1/2 cup of berries unless it ends up coming out okay). Right before the oatmeal was done cooking I added the berries and let the juices mix with the oats so that the flavor would spread throughout. When the oatmeal was done, I shut off the heat and added 1 tsp of pure vanilla extract and 2 tablespoons of maple syrup.

Then, I put it in some tupperware and stored it in the fridge to be reheated tomorrow morning before class. I did this for a few reasons. Pam Anderson, the author of The Perfect Recipe, was discussing how she loves this recipe because it's so easy to whip up the night before and so easy to prepare for eating in the morning. I love this because one of my big problems with both weight loss and breakfast in general is that, for some reason, I tend to have a lot of energy to deal with cooking and healthiness at night (but of course 10pm isn't really the best time to be full of self-consciousness ready to exercise and eat vegetables) and then I, of course, lose this feeling quickly and wake up feeling tired and unwilling to compromise with smart breakfast choices. Then, by the time I've made a bad breakfast decision (or no breakfast at all), I'm already 3/4ths of the way to making a bad lunch decision and then (because literally ALL of my bad decisions are always carbs) I'm so strung out and tired from all of these carbs that I just want to curl up with some more of my carby best friends and then snuggle into my bed for a night of watching television before starting the whole unhealthy process again. This book really made me look at where my problems originate, and for me I really believe it's breakfast. Or at least a big part of it is. So tonight, while I was full of hopefulness about my future of size 4 jeans and sleek calves, I threw together this quick and easy recipe that's full of good energy and taste that should keep me awake and attentive for my morning class.

Along, with breakfast, I also pre-made a salad for lunch. A good thing about having all of this positive energy before the next day is that I'm learning to use that in a productive way by pre-making food for the next day. This way, since I already have the healthy decision made, I don't have the option to make an unhealthy choice and I'm being good while barely even realizing it. And it's actually yummy! I washed and dried some romaine lettuce and in a separate container put in some chopped celery, red grapes, and chick peas (all from PriceRite) and mandarin orange slices and chopped walnuts (I found the ones I was looking for last week - non-glazed!).

So now I'm all excited about the potential for tomorrow and all of the healthy non-choices up ahead :)

Strawberry-Vanilla Oatmeal

Clean Eating (Sept. 2010 pg. 64)

Ingredients: Pinch of salt
1 cup oatmeal
1 cup strawberries, quartered
4 tbsp pure maple syrup
2-4 tsp pure vanilla extract
Skim milk or unsweetened almond milk
Directions: 1. Cook oatmeal.
2. A few minutes before oatmeal is done cooking, stir in strawberries so they can stew and release their juices into the porridge.
3. When oatmeal is done cooking, remove from heat and stir in maple syrup and vanilla.
4. Add milk as desired.
(Apples and cinnamon is a good substitute for strawberries and vanilla)