Morning all!

How are you doing today? Yesterday was a fabulous day of mucking about the house, finally unpacking, and grocery shopping to replenish the incredibly lacking stock of food that I left myself with pre-Pennsylvania. I was super impressed to find out that my usual grocery stops had a load of fruit on sale… including this rather enormous strawberry:

Needless to say, all of these finds inspired some goooooooood eats yesterday!

Lunch was an Indian inspired egg salad in a pita. As a kid I never wanted to take egg salad in my school lunches because, like tuna, if you have an egg salad sandwich, people know because they smell it. But egg salad is far too tasty to be discriminated against – especially this one. There’s a quick, more school-lunch appropriate way to make this, as well as a longer (but top-notch) way to make this little creation. I’ve tried both, but yesterday I was a verging on the ravenous end of the spectrum when I got home from grocery shopping, so I opted for the quick version. I’ve included both in this recipe post.

This was accompanied by a great big veggie-packed salad. (Would you expect anything less??)

Mid-afternoon snack was a pumpkin soy milk smoothie with vanilla protein – I think Mr Trainer would approve. Tastes just like pumpkin pie! I added some xanthan gum because I’m on a bit of a thick smoothie craze!

And dinner was perhaps the most spectacular meal of them all. One of my favourite meals (especially for summer) is stuffed peppers. I’ve posted the recipe I tweaked, and I tend to use ground chicken, but this can be made veggie-friendly by subbing in the same weight of black beans.

Cooking up the fillings

During my grocery trip, I found these very cute measuring cups. They were $1.69 – I couldn’t just leave them there.

Blanching the peppers

Ready for cookin!

YUM!

I topped them with salsa… I tend to do that with a lot of things I eat! Apart from the fact that these tasted great and were super filling, I have leftovers! Oh, and they also made my house smell absolutely deeee-vine.

There was one more fab eat… (I think I’ve compensated for the slightly lackluster fare from the weekend!) I had a fruit craving after dinner (actually, not really a craving.. it seems to be more of a permanent state) so I made a little fruit parfait with layers of pineapple, strawberries, blackberries, and peach yogurt.

On top, I piled on a couple of tablespoons of Mom’s Healthy Secrets Vibra Berry Organic Cereal. Have you tried this yet?

I first sampled it at the Can Fit Pro fitness conference last year, and I’ve since seen it in some health food stores near my house. The ingredient list is rather impressive:

Ingredient Declaration:

Organic bran flakes (organic whole wheat, organic wheat bran, organic cane sugar, organic honey, sea salt, organic malted barley extract), organic multigrain squares (organic whole wheat, organic rice, organic corn meal, organic cane juice, organic barley malt extract, sea salt, mixed tocopherols), organic rolled oats, organic raisins, organic barley flakes (organic pearled barley, organic barley malt extract), organic goji berries, organic blueberries (organic blueberries, organic cane sugar, organic sunflower oil). May contain traces of tree nuts and soya.

This morning’s workout with Mr Trainer was great (but a tough one!) I did 45 mins of hills and intervals on the cross trainer before to warm up (see the Cardio page for the workout.. funnily enough, it’s the one titled ‘Hill/Interval Combo’). Today’s training session focused on lower body and shoulders – lots of squats and Romanian deadlifts which I’m sure I’ll be reminded of tomorrow!! Then it was straight home for my latest obsession (well, one of them anyways), my take on the Frappuccino:

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Frappuccino

I posted my recipe a couple of days ago, and added some cinnamon to today’s mix because cinnamon has a way of making things that much better. I also had an omelette with diced zucchini, tomatos, an obscene amount of mushrooms, herbs, and lots of salsa (because I like it HOTTTT!)

Last night I downloaded a bunch of apps for my iPod touch (free ones – yay!), including some great ones for recipe inspiration. One of my favourites is the Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List app, which lets you search for hundreds of recipes, and automatically generates a shopping list for you based on the recipes you select. Very cool! Do you have an iPod touch/iPhone? What are your favourite apps?

Apart from playing around with my new apps and finding inspiration for new eats, today will include cleaning (the boss – aka my mum – is coming to visit next weekend with a couple of my relatives and if she saw the current state of my house she’d be a little less than impressed), running some errands, and preparing the spin workout for the 90 min class that I’m subbing tomorrow afternoon. (PS – for any of my spinners, I’d LOVE to see you there!!)

Finally, here’s a little reading material today if you have a few minutes to spare…  I recently found an article from Best Health featuring 7 top foods for fitness (and I was very pleased to see peanut butter on the list!!) The only 2 I’m not a huge fan of are avocado and chocolate milk.. I don’t know what it is about avocado but I can’t bring myself to like it! That being said, I’d welcome any recipe suggestions that make it tasty!

Oh, and I forgot to mention yesterday, but for any of my spinners looking for the Recipe of the Week, this week’s was Vanilla Pumpkin Oatmeal. It’s super easy to make, and if you’re not big on pumpkin, you can sub it out for an equal amount of mashed banana. I hope you enjoy it!