Features, Recipes

5 Easy Brunch Recipes that use Yogurt

5 Comments

Breakfast is arguably my favorite meal of the day, and lunch, well, I love that too.  Brunch, though?  I just don’t get it.  Seriously, I need to know–is it breakfast or is it lunch?  Do you eat eggs Benedict or do you eat egg salad?  Pancakes or paninis?  Brunch is a big fat grey area, and I don’t like it one bit.  I’m just one of those people.  In fact, I’m morally opposed to breakfast for dinner.

Don’t stone me.

Despite my aversion, this weekend I stepped out of my comfort zone and invited some friends over for a yogurt-inspired brunch.

Take a look at the spread!

8

When preparing the brunch menu, my goal was to cook up a variety of tasty nibblets that incorporated Activia yogurt (since I had some Foodbuzz freebies to use).  Heavy emphasis on tasty, of course.

The mainstay of our meal was my Western Sausage Crustless Quiche:

Continue Reading

What I ate

Loaded Joetato

5 Comments

When I first graduated college and entered “the real world” cooking was not exactly my forte.  Typically, I’d pick one to two meals for the workweek, purchase all the ingredients on Sunday, and then eat the same thing for dinner for the next five days.  Can we say blasé? 

Add this lack of knowledge in the cooking-for-one field to my pure disgust for all things raw-meat and you end up with a meal plan that looks something like this:

  • Spaghetti with red sauce and garlic bread
  • Chicken quesadillas (using pre-cooked rotisserie chicken, of course)
  • Ravioli with red sauce and garlic bread
  • Egg salad
  • Macaroni and cheese (and garlic bread if I was feelin festive)
  • Ice cream
  • Anddddd repeat.

After a few months of this monotony, I started to branch out…. to every local restaurant within walking distance that is.  The food was FABULOUS, and the weight gain was… well… FLABULOUS.

Fast-forward a few years.  I started to realize that Olive Garden take-out wasn’t the best option for my wallet.  And while the Chop House in Cleveland has THEE MOST AMAZING MASHED POTATOES and Fat Fish Blue has fried pickles with hot sauce that rock my friggin socks off, these weren’t the best options for dinner every night of the week. 

Dangit.

I love multi-purpose ingredients, but I HATE eating the same foods day in and day out.  So how the heck do you eat healthy delicious meals but avoid having to eat the same foods over and over and over again?  This is about the time I started batch-cooking basic ingredients to have on hand throughout the week to toss into whatever random concoctions I decided to make each night after work.  Additionally, I changed my approach to grocery shopping.  Rather than buying ingredients for a specific recipe (that undoubtedly made 6+ servings), I simply started purchasing fresh produce and ingredients that LOOKED tasty and then worked on incorporating those things I really liked into as many different concoctions as I could.

And I FORCED myself to get over my repulsion for raw meat.  At first I handled all raw meat with two sets of tongs…  Even this method led to sporadic dry heaving…  Can you picture forming a hamburger with two sets of tongs?!  Trust me… it ain’t easy.

In my house, Sundays are for cooking.  Every Sunday, I cook up breakfast for the entire workweek, wash and chop veggies, batch-cook chicken breasts or turkey sausage, and roast up some veggies.  Not only does this make healthy eating during the week super easy, but it also cuts down on my work-week cooking time. 

Hallelujah.

So where does this lovely story take us?  It takes us to a Loaded Joetato.  Feast your eyes on this puppy:

DSCF3593

This Loaded Joetato consisted of my leftover healthified sloppy joes atop 1 medium sized potato topped off with some fat free sour cream and chopped onion leftover from my chicken quesadilla and some roasted broccoli leftover from my Sunday cookfest.

Ohhhhh Joe. 

Continue Reading

What I ate

Saturday eggs, smoothies, & tuna salad

2 Comments

This morning I woke up bright and early to try and pick up on my interval running (even though I had already decided to take a week off of high-impact excercise)…  I was able to get 1.5 intervals in before my knee started hurting 🙁  Looks like I’m going to be in the walking group at the Healthy Living Summit.

 

Breakfast of champions

After my disappointing run, I wanted a delicious breakfast to perk me up.  I cooked up 1 egg sunny side up, and had a piece of Country Hearth 12 Grain bread with sunflowers and a half a cup of oven baked potatoes:

Why are egg yolks SOOOO delicious tasting?  I find them oddly decadent!

Stats: 250 calories, 37g carbs, 7g fat, 12g protein, 2g fiber

Soon after downing this delicious breakfast, I was already feeling hungry and decided to make a fruit smoothie. 

I threw the following into the blender:

  • 1 container Yoplait Strawberry Greek Yogurt
  • 1/2 cup Almond Breeze unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
  • 1/4 cup fresh blueberries
  • 6 medium strawberries
  • 1 cup fresh spinach
  • 1/2 cup ice

This puppy definitely filled my belly up!

Stats on my smoothie: 199 calories, 32g carbs, 2g fat, 14g protein, 4g fiber

After watching me down my smoothie, Jarrod got jealous and decided he wanted a smoothie too.  So we threw the following into the blender:

  • 1 scoop optimum nutrition whey chocolate protein
  • 1/2 cup frozen sliced bananas
  • 1 tbsp JIF peanut butter
  • 1/4 cup ground-up quick oats
  • 1/2 cup Almond Breeze unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
  • 1/2 cup ice

This doesn’t look like much, but I tried a sip and it was AMAZING: 

Tasted like a shake you’d get at a hamburger stand.  I’m going to try and make a lower-calorie version sometime!

Stats on Jarrod’s chocolate peanut butter banana smoothie: 377 calories, 39g carbs, 12g fat, 33g protein, 6g fiber

  

Lunch

A little before lunch, I headed over to my mom’s house for some quality time with the fam.  Just as I was about to leave, I locked my keys in my trunk…  😯 What am I, 16 again?  When I was younger, I had the joy of consistently locking my keys in my car.  Actually, the day I first got my license I locked my keys in my trunk and had to have my dad come rescue me…. Oh joy….

Once I got the key situation all worked out, I headed home to make a tuna wrap for lunch.  Here’s what went into the tuna salad:

  • 1 can chunk light tuna in water, drained
  • 1/4 cup red onion
  • 1/2 a chopped roma tomato
  • 1 tbsp Ken’s Steakhouse Lite Creamy Ceaser Dressing
  • S&P

Then I added a few slices of a ginormous banana pepper I grew in my backyard garden:

I put the tuna salad atop a Light Flat-out Italian wrap with 1 cup of spinach:

Then I wrapped everything up burrito-style and grilled on the george foreman grill for about 5 minutes:

DELICIOUS.

Stats on the tuna wrap:  282 calories, 28g carbs, 9g fat, 32g protein, 12g fiber

 

I’m hoping to try out a new recipe for dinner tonight.. I have a few ideas in mind.  Maybe a nap will help things come to fruition 🙂

Continue Reading

What I ate

Saturday is for the Chirpy

1 Comment

Hello friends!

Good news!  I woke up this morning, and I literally had a smile on my face 😀  The sun was shining and the birds were chirping (which some people find annoying but I happen to love)…   Come to think of it, that is odd for me considering I have a phobia of birds… 

After my rough start to the day yesterday, we thought the best cure would be Gionino’s pizza and their amazing hot sauce for dinner last night (we will take any excuse for the G, really):

After dinner, I walked 2.5 miles at about a 4 mile per hour pace.  I’m not 100% sure the walking is helping me to rebuild the strength in my knee, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting so I’m going to keep on keeping on!

For breakfast #1 today I decided to make up some eggs.  I swear my body goes through egg withdrawal if I am sans-eggs for more than a couple days!  I chopped up a small potato into bite size pieces, then microwaved for 4 minutes flipping the little guys over half way through. 

Then I threw them into a hot pan to crisp up on both sides.  Once the potatoes were crispy, I added the following mixture: 4 egg whites, some Frank’s red hot, S&P, red pepper flakes, and  a splash of water.  

Served em up with a dollop of ketchup 🙂

Stats on breakfast #1:  215 calories, 36g carbs, 9g fat, 17g protein, 3g fiber

After the eggs, I completed Day #1, Week #2 of my interval training plan which consisted of 5 intervals of 3 minutes walking and 3 minutes running.  No knee pain!  Boo ya!  I got to the 2.5 mile marker in 27 minutes. 

Breakfast #2 today was some overnight oats 😀

Last night I threw the following into a bowl then popped it into the fridge:

  • 1/2 cup uncooked quick oats
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened almond breeze vanilla almond milk
  • 1 tsp JIF peanut butter
  • 1 tsp brown sugar
  • sprinkling of cinnamon

This morning, I topped the oats off with some fresh strawberries.  Mmmm mmmm gooooood 🙂

Stats on breakfast #2:  233 calories, 36g carbs, 8g fat, 7g protein, 6g fiber

You know what I really love about overnight oats (besides the delicious creamy coolness)?  It’s like a little surprise for yourself.  You take 1 minute of time for yourself the night before, and the next morning you have this little bundle of joy just waiting for you! 

Speaking of preparing, I haven’t been doing a very good job of planning my meals out for the week in advance.  During tax season, I am amazing at this (not to brag or anything 😉 ) and not only do I shop for the meals on Sunday, but I also cook EVERYTHING for the week on Sunday.  Lately, it feels like I’ve been going to the grocery store several times a week, instead of one large trip over the weekend.  So, this week I’m going to do my best to sit down and plan everything out.  Speaking of planning… I need to plan out what to make for dinner tonight!

Headed to the yard for hours of glorious yard work 🙂

Continue Reading

What I ate

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

1 Comment
Whenever I think of the word “Sunday” in my head, I automatically hear “Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!” (think football/race announcer guy Jan Gabriel).
 
 
When I woke up this Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY! 😉  my body was begging for three things:  Coffee.  Eggs.  Ham.

So after throwing some coffee on, I got to work on a 4 egg white scramble with leftover deli ham from the jewelry party I had last week.   

4 egg whites, splash o' skim, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes

 

I also had some potatoes on the side.  That’s one of the best things about being at the BF’s — he keeps a GIANT container of pre-baked potatoes in his fridge.  😀   

Glorious!

 

Once the eggs were pretty much done scrambling,  I threw the ham and potatoes into the pan to heat up.  And breakfast was served!   

Sunday morning breakfast

 

After breakfast, I hunkered down and finally posted the clothes I’ve been wanting to sell on ebay.  I’m really glad to have that done with!  All that ebaying made me hungry, so I decided to give the barley breakfast bowl a go.   

My barley bowl consisted of 1/2 a serving of barley (cooked up last night and stuck in the fridge), 1 Chobani vanilla greek yogurt, and some blackberries and raspberries.   

Barley Breakfast Bowl

 

I loved the barley in the yogurt!  It was pretty filling too.    

I must be honest though, and this may be blasphemy, but I actually prefer dannon’s vanilla greek yogurt to Chobani!  I took a minute to compare the stats:   

Chobani has less carbs, more protein, and less sugar — so I’m hoping it grows on me!   

On the agenda today:   

  • Hit up the elliptical (Friday went well)
  • Finish light tent
  • Dinner with friends 😀
Continue Reading