Good Morning Bloggies!

How are you doing today? Yesterday was highly successful in terms of delicious food, and today’s post is dedicated to telling you about them all! Well, actually not all. Breakfast will remain a secret until tomorrow when I post it as the Recipe of the Week. It really was rather fabulous, especially since the idea was sparked by only one thing:

Feel free to post your guesses!

Anyways, onto the other eats. Last week, one of my readers passed on a recipe for a vegetarian-friendly Quinoa and Chickpea Salad. Quinoa, as you may already know, is a pretty powerful little grain. It is high in protein (12.4g/100g) and complex carbohydrates, is gluten free, and is low in fat. It’s also delicious and provides a nice little bit of variety if you normally reach for rice or couscous as your go-to grains.

I was rather ravenous around lunch time yesterday, so I enjoyed the Quinoa and Chickpea salad over a massive bed of greens.

Quinoa and Chickpea Salad (serves 3)

Yummmm!

Dinner was equally as delicious, and was inspired by this page in the most recent issue of Women’s Health:

At the bottom of the page is a recipe for Raspberry Pistachio Crusted Chicken. I can’t find the recipe online yet but if you’d like the original, just let me know. The recipe on this page calls for mustard, and since mustard is perhaps my most loathed condiment, I began to think of ways to modify it. The directions suggested pan-frying the chicken after coating it, but it turns out I’m not very good at this. Lots of the nice crispy coating came off (maybe I’m just a bit careless when it comes to flipping it), but I’m thinking that baking it in the oven would be a much easier option. Therefore, I’ve posted a modified version, Raspberry Chicken with Crispy Pistachio Coating, with a few adjustments. I haven’t worked out the nutrition values for it yet, but I will get to it, I promise! It was really easy to make, and even though there was a minor mishap with the crust, the final product looked quite nice!

Coating the chicken

And finally, a dessert recipe that tastes ridiculously indulgent but really isn’t. Now, this isn’t a dessert that you’d want to serve to guests because it’s not exactly the sexiest looking, but it is delicious. A while ago I was all about the Protein Cakes, but eventually got a little bit sick of them. My current protein powder of choice is Gold Standard Chocolate Casein Protein, which I like to have at night because it is a slow-releasing protein (for more about what this is and why it is suitable for pre-bedtime snacks, check out this post.) Recently, I’ve been using it to make the following chocolate pudding, which is flippin’ delicious.

In a bowl, mix together:

• 1 scoop chocolate casein protein
• 2 tbsp egg whites
• a pinch of baking powder
• a few shakes of cinnamon
• 1/2 cup water

Pop it in the microwave for 1 minute and 15s. Towards the 50s mark, you will notice that it rises up a lot and will likely overflow if you do not stop the microwave. Open the door and let it fall back down, then continue for the remaining time.

After a few seconds, the puffiness settles and it looks like this:

Like I said, it’s not exactly company-worthy, but it is SO good. You may have noticed that this recipe is almost identical to the protein cake recipe, which uses whey protein. I’m pretty sure that the casein, which is a milk protein, is what changes the texture and makes it more pudding-like. After a few minutes, the pudding is nice and warm and ready for eating. (And if you’re wondering whether or not I add Kashi Go Lean Original as a topping, the answer is absolutely.)

Today

This post is a little later than usual this morning due to some annoying Internet problems (thanks Rogers), and I’ve got a long list of to-do’s for today that I must get to very soon! The plan is….

• Get printer ink and one last thing for tonight’s Try Something New Tuesday 19 dinner
• Clean my filthy kitchen
• Prep for a job interview tomorrow!
• Find a new roommate
• Practice RPM choreography for tomorrow’s spin class
• Since it’s Tuesday, try lots of new things that I’m super excited to tell you about tomorrow!

On a final note, I’ve been getting lots of great email questions about workouts and spinning lately which I plan to post about over the coming weeks. (This blog isn’t just about food – although that has been the emphasis lately!) If you have anything you’d like to ask, fire me an email at eatspinrunrepeat (at) gmail (dot) com and I will do my best to give you a good answer!

Have a fabulous day!