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.
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**
Loaded Scrambled Eggs
I got the initial idea to make something like this from the blog “Easy Chicken Recipes”: https://easychickenrecipes.com/loaded-scrambled-eggs/. However I made a few changes 🙂
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…)
To be continued…
Gabriela
I’m also back to my usual schedule again which is so nice. I’m going to the gym in the morning, cooking my meals on Sunday, etc. Normally when I go grocery shopping I go to Sprouts for all of my veggies and then head over to Trader Joe’s for everything else. I did this because I always thought that Sprouts was relatively expensive for things other than produce, but this week I did all of my shopping at Sprouts and it was so cheap! And I bought so many “actual” groceries (which isn’t usually the case). It was so exciting to NOT spend a fortune!
The recipe I followed was from 
Tweaks and all, it turned out really good. Although, next time I will remember to buy crushed tomatoes (inserts face palm emoji). This was great because I felt like I wasn’t going to make enough, but it ended up lasting me the whole week, which typically doesn’t happen. I’ve recently been trying to minimize my meat intake. To be entirely honest, it’s kinda expensive and I never feel like it lasts me long enough. However I’m still going to the gym so I need to keep up my protein intake. The lentils were a great substitution for that.
This week’s soup is SO GOOD. I know Chicken Noodle Soup is the “go to” for when you’re sick, but this is better. The crushed red pepper flakes (which I love) really do wonders on your sinuses. Literally all you need is a spoonful. Also, its soup! Soup and pasta are by far the coziest foods to eat, you can’t really go wrong.
I don’t have a very large soup pot, so I had to modify the recipe so that it would all fit in the pot I was using. I only changed amounts, not ingredients, and I added a lot (not really) of red pepper flakes. I’ve never eaten white beans (I think?) so it was cool to try something new within the recipe. I’ve also never cooked using a can of crushed tomatoes. While they’re not overwhelmingly new experiences, it was still cool to use new things in my cooking!
I’m ~almost~ done. Not in the homestretch yet, but I’m sure this quarter will go by quickly. So far I’m really enjoying my classes and I work well with all of my lab partners. I have a lot of work ahead of me this quarter, but somehow it all feels incredibly more manageable than last quarter. Which is great because I have other things that I’m looking forward to doing this quarter other than just sitting in my library cubicle.
To start off with my New Year’s resolution, I made a Garlic Chicken and Veggie Pasta which I found off of a Facebook video from Tasty (I think). Personally, I think this dish is improperly named. One, because I definitely didn’t taste garlic and two, because I have never used THAT much oregano. But it was still really tasty!
It was a lot of food, but a lot of really good food! I plan on sticking to my schedule of making a new recipe every week, but I definitely can’t wait to try this again. I would highly recommend it! Enjoy!
The recipe calls for 2 lbs. of carrots which I initially thought was A LOT, but to be honest, if I were to make this again I would probably add another pound of carrots. We eat a lot at Thanksgiving, and it’d be nice to have extra for leftovers. I started by washing and peeling the carrots, which normally I just wash them. I never really think to peel them, because I’ve just cleaned them, but they look so much more appetizing once they’ve been peeled. It takes a little more time but I’ll probably do this from now on.
Gabriela Maria 