I wanted something sweet for breakfast this week and wanted something new. I always have eggs with sweet potatoes and fruit, which is great, especially after the gym, but I felt it was time to switch it up.
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When I was younger, breakfast was usually a bowl of cereal with some fruit and a glass of milk. On weekends we sometimes had a more elaborate breakfast of eggs, sausage and bacon. Growing up this was alway great and hit the spot. As I got older, this didn’t satisfy the same morning hunger and eventually I stopped eating breakfast all together and just. had a cup of coffee.
As part of the Color Series I am working on, I was looking for a red/pink themed breakfast I could make that would also be practical to bring to work. There were a lot of great ideas online, but very few were realistic to bring to the office. I saw someone blend some strawberries to add to chia pudding and I thought that would be a great place to start!
Full disclosure: I don’t actually like the texture or taste of chia pudding, or pudding in general. Mixing it in with the yogurt was a great way to disguise the chia pudding and still get the benefits.
Chia seeds are a great source of fiber and also contain omega-3 fat, antioxidants, and more.
I’m thinking of also making a blue berry themed chia pudding parfait, but for now enjoy my Strawberry Chia Pudding Parfait and my Vanilla Chia Pudding Parfait. Thear are super work-friendly, easy to throw in your lunch bag, and also very easy to clean at the end of the day (straight into the dishwasher!).
Strawberry Chia Pudding Parfait
Recipe List: Makes 6, 6oz parfaits
2 packs of strawberries
1 pack halved/sliced, 1 pack for blending
4 tbsp chia seeds
1 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1 tbsp honey
Strawberry yogurt
Granola
Recipe Directions:
Prep the chia pudding (I recommend doing this the night prior)
Mix chia seeds, milk, and honey in a bowl and refrigerate overnight
The next morning the chia seeds will have expanded and create a pudding-like texture
Instead of overnight, you can also refrigerate for 4 hours and check, if they’re not at a consistency you like, mix, and let sit for a little longer
Prep the strawberry blend
Add one pack of strawberries to a blender and pulse. You don’t want to make this a think blend. It’s just an extra touch of sweetness to add to your breakfast
Make your parfaits!
Coat base of Mason Jar in strawberry purée
Add chia seed pudding (I did one scoop)
Add strawberries
Add strawberry yogurt (I added enough to cover the strawberries)
Add more strawberries
Add granola
The amount you put for each layer is really up to you based on what you like! These directions are just approximates of what I did to make mine, but have fun with it!
Vanilla Chia Pudding Parfait
Recipe List: makes 6, 6oz. parfaits
1 pack of strawberries, halved/sliced
1 pack of blueberries
4 tbsp chia seeds
1 cup milk (I used almond milk)
1 tbsp honey
Vanilla yogurt
Granola
Recipe Directions:
Prep the chia pudding (I recommend doing this the night prior)
Mix chia seeds, milk, and honey in a bowl and refrigerate overnight
The next morning the chia seeds will have expanded and create a pudding-like texture
Instead of overnight, you can also refrigerate for 4 hours and check, if they’re not at a consistency you like, mix, and let sit for a little longer
Make your parfaits!
Add 3 scoops of yogurt
Add chia seed pudding (I did one scoop)
Add strawberries and blueberries
Add scoop of yogurt (plus a little more to cover fruit)
Add more strawberries and blueberries
Add granola
The amount you put for each layer is really up to you based on what you like! These directions are just approximates of what I did to make mine, but have fun with it!
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I don’t know how you all feel, but this has been a LONG week. I’m feeling very worn out. And this weekend only has more in store for me! I have two tests on Monday and homework, but I also feel like I still have a lot of catching up to do. But I’ll get there. Slowly powering through.
I will say, something that has really helped me stay sane is sticking to my eating and workout schedule. It’s very tempting when I get up, to go right to my desk and get some work done so I feel caught up. But I think that burns me out even more. Doing my workouts in the morning helps me start off the day feeling accomplished, and eating healthy and regularly helps me keep up my energy.
This week I’m going to share what I ate for this week, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Although, I can’t share photos of my dinner because I forgot to take them 🙂 but it was really good! Plus, the blog I got the recipe from has a better picture which makes it look even better.
Quinoa Fruit Salad
Okay, first thoughts: interesting combination…. Second thoughts: wow, this is delicious.
Unfortunately I’m not going to share the recipe because I got it through my fitness app which is paid. The app I use is called We Glow. I personally really like this app, I really like the workout programs, and of the recipes I have tried, I’ve really liked all of them and they’ve been very simple, easy to follow. Added bonus: this dish looks pretty, so I feel like it already gives a boost to my morning. I cooked the quinoa on the weekend, and would cut the fruits in the morning. Sometimes once you cut fruit, it doesn’t last very long in the fridge. It only took a few minutes to cut, so it wasn’t a big deal. 10/10 recommend (also recommend the app or any paid fitness program if your motivation is low, or if you don’t really know what to do/where to start. Paying motivates me because I’m losing money, so I better be using it!).
Buffalo Shrimp Salad
This salad was a winner. This was actually supposed to be buffalo shrimp lettuce wraps, like lunch burritos, except the ~healthy~ version. Yeah. I tried them! They were….boring. And tasted like a mouthful of lettuce. So, I converted this into a big salad instead because I felt that the lunch needed more color and excitement. This turned out really good. I don’t typically finish salads because I get bored while eating them and tend to eat all the goodies first. This is probably the first time that I devoured a salad. 10/10. I also don’t usually like iceberg lettuce because, well, it’s iceberg lettuce, but I think it was actually the better choice for this salad because it let all the other flavors really show. SO this salad was a mix of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, buffalo shrimp, cranberries, strawberries(!!!), olives and balsamic vinaigrette for the salad dressing. it was an interesting mix but such a good mix. It was also a good opportunity to use some ingredients in my fridge that were probably going to go bad soon. Great way to just combine everything and enjoy.
Easy, Creamy Beef and Shells
Yes. This was easy, creamy, and delicious. I found the recipe on Pinterest, from the blog Kitchn. Unfortunately I don’t have pictures! This also didn’t last me very long because it was so good that I just kept eating it. I loved this dinner. It was so so easy to make and it was one of the few recipes that didn’t have a mile long ingredient list or instruction list. There were a few big differences between mine and the recipe I followed. For starters, the recipe calls for a 15-oz. can of tomato sauce, and I bought pasta sauce (which to me is tomato sauce). Looking at the photos in the Kitchn blog, there are smaller cans of tomato sauce that are literal cans. I don’t think there’s a big differences between the two, but mine was a little hard to measure out because it was a full jar of sauce. So I think this made my finished dish more liquidy, but it was still really good. I also didn’t include as much cheese. The recipe calls for 2 cups of cheese, which I had. But after the first cup of shredding, I felt lazy, so my dinner only had one cup of cheese. For me it didn’t make a huge difference, but I’m also not a big cheese lover. if you love cheese, definitely do the full 2 cups. I also used half and half instead of heavy cream, mostly because I couldn’t find heavy cream. This was such an easy and cozy meal. Great to have after a very long day of sitting in front of the computer. It was also nice to have something a little heavier after a lighter breakfast and lunch.
Other than that, not a whole lot going on. I’ve got a lot of work to do…but I also bought a new Switch game soooo, we’ll see. Looking forward to at least taking a mini break today, even if it’s just for an hour. In other news, I hosted champagne tasting with some of the girls last weekend. I think we were all caught off guard by how quickly the champagne hit us but it was still a lot of fun! I also made my first cheeseboard! And to be honest, I’m really proud of it, so I thought I’d share a picture 🙂
Hello! I have been so bad about keeping to my posting schedule, but I’m going to do better going forward. Two weeks ago I was supposed to post, but was behind on my schoolwork so decided that was more important. Then I spent the rest of that week playing catch-up, and then it just got buried under everything else. Initially I was posting every other Wednesday, but my schedule this semester makes that a little difficult. Mondays and Wednesdays are my heaviest days because I have 2 classes plus a 3-hour night class. But then Tuesdays and Thursdays, in between my classes, are usually the days I spend prepping my schoolwork for the next day/class. So I think it would be better for my schedule to switch to a Friday or Saturday posting. So other than this post, that change will take effect going forward!
Honestly, no major updates. Grad school is grad school. Busy, little stressful, overwhelming, all the good things 🙂 This week is my “midterm” week. We don’t really have midterms, I just have exams and quizzes this week. I took one this morning and I think it went well! The questions were really straight forward, so I’m hoping I did well. Later this week I have another quiz in my IP class which I’m definitely a little nervous about. There’s a lot of information and some of it is a bit confusing.
One of my goals for this year was to do more cooking rather than just making dinners. The problem with just making dinners is that my dinner would then also turn into my lunch and then I’d be out of food by Wednesday. So by adding lunch meals to my cooking plan, I now have food to last me the whole week, rather than 3 days. In doing so, I also decided to make breakfast. I think breakfast can be so fun, although sometimes I dread it. When I wake up in the morning, I’m always groggy. The heat is on and naturally I just want to roll back into bed and go back to sleep. I’ve been trying to consistently do my workouts in the morning and then take a warm (cold) shower to wake me up, and this usually helps. But on days when I sleep through my workout, the last thing I want to do is go cook.
Groggy morning, post-studying, but got my egg breakfast!
But it’s been a lot of fun! Cooking in the morning is dreadful, but then eating a really good breakfast seems to make it all worth it. Until you see the dishes that now have to be cleaned – but that’s a whole other thing.
In honor of the most important meal of the day, I thought I’d share some of the egg breakfast recipes I’ve been trying out the past few weeks! **None of the links below are sponsored, just wanted to share them to make it easier for someone to follow-up and find the original recipes**
These were great because scrambled eggs are SO easy to make and really hard to mess up. From the original recipe, I omitted the milk, cheese, and bacon. To substitute for the milk, I instead used sour cream, which I personally really like in my scrambled eggs, and in general. From the recipe and the photo you can see this is packed with veggies. It has red bell pepper, onion, tomatoes and mushrooms, all of which are a healthy way to start off your day! It’s topped with chives and I added some avocado on the side because avocado always makes a good side to eggs. I really liked this because it was quick to make but also because the mushrooms were hidden. I don’t normally like mushrooms, but when they’re mixed in with other veggies or food and I don’t notice them, I love them. Mushrooms can help stimulate the immune system!
Avo Baked Eggs
So this recipe is from an app called Garden Plate. Many of the recipes are free with the app, but some are only available with the full version which is a paid version.
This was really good and really simple, but I am apparently unskilled in the art of making a hole in an avocado. So to make this, you have to make the pit area of the avocado larger so that the egg fits and sits comfortably. I was not good at this. The egg would spill over or there wouldn’t be any avocado left. So I would definitely recommend using large avocados and wish you the best of luck. When it is successful (and even when it’s not) this is really delicious and really easy to make, especially on a groggy morning. It looks small, but it’s deceivingly filling!
Egg Muffins
A roommate in college had made these once and I had always wanted to make them because they looked so easy to make and they made mornings really quick because you could make a bunch at once for the whole week.
For these, I put a helping of spinach leaves, tomatoes, and bell peppers into the cups and then added in the eggs (about 14 eggs mixed). On top of that I added a little bit of salt and pepper for taste, and then put them in the oven for about 15 minutes at 400º. You can essentially put anything into these to make your own version of the egg muffins. I don’t think I would recommend tomatoes. The liquid made the bottom of my egg muffins a little distorted, but the tops looked nice! If you don’t care about appearance, then go for the tomatoes, because they still tasted really good.
The last week I’ve drifted away from eggs for breakfast and tried some other things. Next week I’m hoping to make banana pancakes and will definitely share how those go, although next time I’m hoping to post a dinner or lunch recipe or something I made with my dad while I was home over the winter holiday. Keep an eye out for what’s coming! (Now back to studying…)
Gabriela Maria 