Gooooooood Morning!

How are you today? I hope your morning has been wonderful so far. Mine certainly has – a run, some weights, and a spin class with my fabulous hard-working ladies. I missed spin last week while I was away, but am happy to be back on the bike!

Over to my new things for this week!

1. Recipe of the Week: This week’s recipe was created for my lovely friend and co-worker, Carolyn. You see, Carolyn tells me that she and her boyfriend make at least 2-3 of my recipes each week and love them, but they’ve run out of quinoa ones to try. Not any more.

Since many of my quinoa salads are more summery than any other season, I rounded up some seasonal faves – apples, butternut squash, roasted pumpkin seeds, and cranberries – and came up with a delicious Fall Quinoa Salad with Cranberry Vinaigrette.

Although you could eat this hot or cold, I would suggest letting the quinoa cool after cooking it. The first time I made this, I ate some immediately after mixing all the ingredients together and the quinoa had a mushy texture. Give it some time in the fridge and the flavours will intensify too. :)

2. Oikos organic Greek yogurt. Ok, I will confess, I did cheat a bit on this one. I’ve yet to find Oikos yogurt in Canada, and I wasn’t about to try to smuggle any back from the US on Sunday because I figured it wouldn’t taste so great after a 5 hour plane ride. Therefore, this new thing was tried back in the hotel on the weekend.

On our last day, we went to the Urban Tavern for breakfast, a restaurant in the Hilton in San Francisco. The orders? Continental breakfast buffet, please! There was everything from bagels and muffins, to Chinese dumplings and miso soup, to scrambled eggs, cheese, salmon, and my favourite, fruit!! After eating several eggs, I busted out my Oikos yogurt and used it as a topping for some melon and pineapple slices.

The flavour was vanilla, but it wasn’t a very strong vanilla. It was a nice way to complement the fruit, which was already sweet enough on its own. In terms of creaminess, on a scale of 1-5 (with 5 being plain Liberte Greek yogurt, which is the creamiest fat-free one I’ve ever tried), I’d rank it at about 4.

3. Dry Roasted Edamame. I found this in one of my local health food stores and intended to take it with me as a plane snack last Tuesday. However the SF sights were just so great that I opted to save them for this week instead.

I adore edamame, even plain with absolutely nothing on it, so this was very appealing to me. While running errands on my lunch break yesterday, I snacked on a few handfuls in the car.

Taste and texture-wise, they have a great crunch to them with just a little bit of saltiness. In fact, next time I might opt for a flavoured version just because these salted ones were a bit plain. As far as nutrition goes, they’re a pretty clean snack. Each 1/4 cup serving has 130 calories, only 4g fat (0.5g saturated), 8g fiber, and 14g of soy protein. There are no sneaky ingredients hiding in the bag either, just soy beans and sea salt. They were delicious as a snack on their own, but I’m dreaming up a trail mix combo that just might be coming to a blog near you soon!

Finally, my questions for today:

  • When it comes to yogurt, what’s your favourite brand?
  • Are you looking for a new recipe, or a makeover of a typically unhealthy one? Let me know and it could become one of my Recipe of the Week features. Either comment below or email me at eatspinrunrepeat (at) gmail (dot) com.
Subscribe Button