Hayley: More Than Just a Salad

My favorite meals are made up of a vegetable base with some kind of protein (goat cheese, nuts, meat, beans, or seafood) on top, but I wouldn’t call them salads. “Salad”, for me, describes a raw vegetable creation, while I prefer the taste of cooked veggies.

For the creation above, I cooked kale, mushrooms, onions, and beets in coconut oil until they were tender. I added the kale at the very end so that it wouldn’t get too wilted, and I sliced the beets very thin to speed up their cooking time. For protein, I chose chickpeas and goat cheese– two all-time favorites. I also added a tiny drizzle of maple syrup, which tasted especially good with the beets. The flavors were sweet and earthy all at once. Dwight Schrute would have loved it.

Cold vegetable salads can be refreshing and delicious, but sometimes they just don’t have the depth of flavor that you get with warm, roasted vegetables. I would rather season a pan of vegetables with oil, salt, pepper, herbs, garlic, or other spices and make the veggies themselves become flavorful instead of pouring tons of salad dressing over raw vegetables and getting flavor that way.

Last week Rebecca came home from work holding this:

I love cooking vegetables, but Squashy is still sitting on our kitchen counter because both of us are too intimidated to touch it. We might need a bigger oven and a sharper knife.

Hayley: The Best Thing I Ate All Week

Grilled carrots.

Grilled onions.

Avocado.

Corn OFF the cob. Not grilled.

(Try it raw. It’s sweet and crunchy and not too squishy and doesn’t leave corn “shells” in your teeth.)

LIME JUICE. Freshly squeezed.

–A poem*

*Shrimp and kale not included because they were not important enough.

Hayley: Like a Mammal

I remember learning in an anthropology class that humans are unique in that we spend the majority of our days being pretty active. We’re awake, we’re going to school, we’re going to work, and we’re running errands. Lots of us exercise and lots of us do things at night after the daily tasks end.

Other mammals have better things to do, like eat, sleep, and lay around in between. Besides getting a few more small tasks done to prepare for Denmark, that’s mostly what I did today. Anyone think the title was referencing “doing it like they do on the Discovery Channel?” If so, sorry to disappoint.

Breakfast. Toast with a salted + peppered egg, 1/2 can of chickpeas with salsa. I also had a banana, I think because I was trying for a more breakfast-like breakfast. It kinda just made it weirder.

Lunch. The last of my arugula dressed in apple cider vinegar, a few grilled asparagus spears and red onion strips, 1/2 avocado, cucumber, and a Sunshine burger with dijon mustard.

Apple cider vinegar is an alkaline-forming food (err.. liquid?), meaning it has a high concentrations of minerals and the ability to bring the body into a more balanced state. Most vegetables are the same way, which is why you feel pretty great after eating a lot of them.

Lunch had an appetizer that I almost forgot about:

Chips are highly processed and do not alkalize, but they taste good with hummus and look cute in that bowl.

Dessert happened, too:

Dark chocolate m&ms, blurred from the breakneck speed at which they approached my mouth.

Before I even knew it was happening, I was cooking dinner. The best part was those red potatoes, which I sliced and cooked on the stove top with walnut oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and parsley. The kale cooked in more walnut oil and was topped with humbecue tuna (tuna mixed with hummus and barbecue sauce).

Enjoy the long weekend! Mine will be busy, especially when compared to my day today.

Rebecca: Amiable Courageous Women

A little snippet of a feminist poem to start the post out right:

Amiable Courageous Women

Be proud, your presence here is testament to your tenacity

This misogynistic culture will not break or demean you

And fuck the proposed ivory tower of complacency

Your sexuality does not need taming

Women Make Your Stand

History cannot forget you

So stomp those feet and pump those fists

Celebrate your femininity and the love for your body

Our beautiful woman president

-Tito Torres

Today has been a roller coaster of emotions. I had to find my inner strong woman and tell a man that I won’t take the hurt anymore and I won’t be his woman friend.  Earlier today I was broken, but now that I’ve stood up for myself (something I needed to do a long time ago). I feel free and beautiful.  I know I will still have ups and downs, but I also know I did the right thing and I feel fabulous about it.  I feel finally, again, on top.

I have lacked in the blogging area recently with all the wealth of emotions I have dealt with in the past few days (make that the past month), so, let me begin by showing a random dinner I made quite a few days ago that I absolutely loved.

Rice Pilaf, Toasted Kale with Feta, and Sliced Tomatoes with Olive Oil and Garlic Salt

This meal was amazing.  I can’t get over toasted kale. I just place it in the toaster oven and then crunch away.

It is hard for me to eat when I feel strong emotions but my mommy bought me a sub sandwich from Safeway that I finally finished off by the end of the day.

Sub

It had chicken, mozzarella, artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and lettuce.

I liked it, but not my fav. thing ever.

Tonight for dessert I finally had what I had been waiting for. My freezer experiment.

Frozen Greek Yogurt

My frozen treat proved to be difficult to eat, but once I got a crevasse going I was off and running.  Add a little maple agave nectar and I was basically eating ice cream but better.

The crevasse

I wanted to show you the hole I dug.  It took lots of hammering with that spoon.

I am feeling good now, but starting to fall again.  I remember the end with the last man. The emotions in ending relationships are indescribably intense.

Alas, I feel strong and ready to accept whatever may come and love my self and body along the way.

Hayley: My Favorite Breakfast

Good morning. The day is off to a lovely start already thanks to a delicious breakfast that I have found myself preparing a lot lately. It’s healthy, it tastes good, and it keeps me full for a long time. All important criteria for a breakfast of champions, no? First, the key ingredients.

Kale and Eggs.

Call me crazy, but I am a huge fan of kale and sometimes wake up excited to indulge in it at breakfast time. I’m pretty sure that about a year ago, I didn’t even know there was a vegetable called kale, and look at me now. This particular bunch came from the farmer’s market, and so did those eggs. The farmer’s market in Boulder happens on Saturday mornings. This means that I purchased these beauties after getting four hours of sleep in a bed that was not my own, donning a variation of my outfit from Friday night.

Coconut Oil.

If you don’t like kale, try cooking it in coconut oil. It adds a somewhat sweet flavor that’s really good at masking the bitterness you sometimes get from kale. Cook your eggs in it, while you’re at it. I did.

Cook Away.

I did not grow up in a family that cooks. After moving out of the dorms, I went through months of scraping eggs off pans that were a combination of burnt black chunks and raw yolk. I learned to remedy this by first actually greasing the pan, but more important, covering it. No more split personality eggs. No more daily smoke detector headaches. (I didn’t say no more smoke detector headaches at all. Maybe someday.)

Admire those eggs. Add the kale.

Assemble.

Although it hasn’t gotten as much attention and is hiding in the back of the photo, the avocado toast is a key component to my current favorite morning meal. I like to take half of an avocado and smash it onto a slice of bread with sea salt sprinkled on top. It’s better than butter. Not that I don’t like butter.

I polished off breakfast with an apple and the rest of my coffee from yesterday that I had been saving in the fridge. If I’m going to pay $4 for coffee, I might as well make it last, right? No sexy barista (are they still called baristas even if they don’t work at a Starbucks?), but no one has it all.