Lovely Lentils

Hola, chicas! Today was a good day. Started with a lovely breakfast, involving an apple, and this apple pie parfait.

I layered 3/4 cup of plain yogurt, 1/2 c apple sauce, 1 whole grain graham cracker and cinnamon in bowl. Nummikins. As my.. third course of breakfast, I had some simple PB&J oats. I was going to just use blueberries instead of jam, but I barely had any left. So I microwaved what we did have to make 'em mushy, and added a bit of cran apple butter on top.

I then went off to a nice, two hour ballet class. My calves and toes are in serious pain right now! But a good pain, like I've worked them well. The body checking stuff (or lack there of) went pretty well! At the bar, I was kind of concentrated more on holding my leg out at a 120* angle than I was on how "fat" I looked. When we went out into the center, I started to scrutinize myself in the mirror. ED didn't cut in and start calling me fat though. Instead, I had an EPIPHANY (love that word)! I am not fat! I am dissatisfied with how the weight I gained distributed. None of the weight I gained went to the upper half of my body, so I have twig arms and gross ribs, but a lot of it went to my legs. But I used the rational side of me to think that I am normal sized, and some parts of me look bigger because the rest of me is ridiculously small. Ooooh I wish I had my old body back. Back when I didn't feel like I had to limit my food or exercise to feel good about myself.

Anyhow, for lunch my sister wanted to go to the mall food court. I hate fast food, you can make something much healthier, tastier, and cheaper at home. I had to go anyway. Subway is one of the few fast food restaurants that I'll eat from, so I went there. I ordered a 6" veggie delite. It annoys me how it's delite, not delight. I got provolone, lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, pickles, black olives, and olive oil on mine. T'was very salty tasting. Hate fast food grumble grumble.
Then when I got home I had an apple and almonds.

For most of the day today, I've just been chillin' out (maxin' relaxin' all cool while shootin' some b-ball outside of the school). I started to do a little craft-y jewelry project that I'll post if I ever finish it. For dinner, I made brown rice and lentil casserole. I heart lentils! I've made this a couple times before and it rocks socks. This time, I accidentaly spilled some broth out of the casserole dish so I had to approximate how much spilled out and replace it with water. I think I put too much water in though, because it didn't stay together like it usually does. Delicious anyway though.
With garlic toast! And an unpictured clementine.

Oh yes, I made more pudding! Using CCV's basic pudding recipe. After the base cooled this time, I stuck it in the blender with 1 tbs cocoa powder, half a banana, and 1 tbs sugar. Chocolate and banana is one of my favorite combos. Here it is, in my beautiful tupperware container.
And Shelby, you asked whether I used agar flakes or powder. I use flakes. I got it to be really creamy by putting my blender on the puree setting for a long time, rather than on the blend setting for a shorter time.

Today I was thinking of how my ED/recovery have expanded my food choices. Pre-ED, I was a pretty picky vegetarian, and wouldn't eat anything that sounded to much like hippy health food. This means quinoa, couscous, seitan, dark chocolate, and lots of fruits and veggies were off the list of things I'd eat. I ate a pretty processed diet, lots of faux-meat stuff. But one of the positive things that I've gotten out of recovery and my preoccupation with food is a lot more healthy variety in my diet. Now I'd say that I'm an adventurous eater, and like to cook up new foods. Has having an ED changed you girls' diets for the better, too?

Hope you all had wonderful Saturdays and enjoy your Sundays!

Tigger Glows In Florescents

I realized that I title most Friday posts either TGIF, or Thanks goodness it's Friday. Now that has changed because I've come up with a new phrase for TGIF to stand for! Tigger glows in florescents. I feel like I spelled that wrong, but oh well.

Again, thank you all for the support! I feel like I say that all the time but it's because you girls are just so amazing and give wonderful advice! The thing about coming to a compromise with my dad is that he doesn't really know I still have food issues. When I started recovery, I was so relieved that I didn't have to starve myself and overexercise anymore that I just.. ate, with no problem. There were a couple meals where you could tell that I was having trouble eating, but I have never flatly refused to eat something. And since I'm manipulative and plan a lot of the family meals, there isn't really an opportunity to see me have trouble eating. All the challenge foods I eat, I mentally prepare myself for so I know I can eat whatever it is. So to say the least, my dad would be very surprised if I said that I didn't feel comfortable eating his darn enchiladas and could I please eat a bite and then have just some salad instead? I have a feeling that this is going to happen anyway but the thought of it makes me want to bang my head against a brick wall. BANG!

Okay okay, ze eats. Breakfast was the last of the banana muffins :[, eggy doodle, apple and antioxidant oats. Blueberries, chopped almonds (plus 3 for garnish) and dark choco chips. Yum-o.

Lunch was usual PB sammich, yogurt, carrots and oatmeal bar. As part of my snack this afternoon, I had a big pile of lentil dip with whole wheat cheddar bunnies. I have pretty much been eating this dip non-stop since I made it. My dad and sister haven't eaten any, possibly because of the color, but that means more for me!

Din dins was rainbow chard with figs, garlic, pine nuts and feta. Dried figs and feta are two of my favorite foods, so I was really excited for this one. From looking at the other reviews, I was expecting that it would knock my socks off but it didn't. Maybe it was the chard? I picked this recipe because I though chard was in season now, but no, that's kale. I can't keep it straight. It was pretty good though and I'll try to make it again this summer. I put mine over smart taste pasta.

I am so happy that it's the weekend! I pretty much only had one and a half days of school this week but that was more than enough. I've got ballet tomorrow, so hopefully the mirror-body checking stuff will go alright. Hope you all enjoy your Saturdays!

PB Loco!

Evening, all. First of all, thanks for all the advice you ladies gave me about telling my parents about my blog. My mom left for Florida this morning to visit her parents, and it would be a lot easier to me to talk to her rather than my dad. So I'll just wait until she's back on Monday, then I'll tell her!

School was delayed for two hours this morning, but the school day still seemed soooooooo long! It was the first day of a new semester so we got new schedules and classes. It's going to be a miserable five months, because I don't have friends in any of my classes except for one, pretty much. In all my other classes, the kids are... I don't want to say ghetto, but yeah, pretty ghetto! You'd think that because I'm such a gangsta we'd get along pretty well but that's not what happened :[ And I can't change my schedule around, because what would my excuse be? "I have no friends in my classes and I'm lonely"? Arrrg I guess I'll suffer through it.

I said I wasn't going to have as many food pics as I have recently and that's true today. I'll just show you the food highlights of my day! Part of breakfast involved my obsession, chocolate banana PB Loco. The rest of the blogging world can have their Mighty Maple because this stuff rocks my world. I put some on toast this morning. The other slice had cran apple butter but I didn't eat them together because that would taste strange. Sorry the pic is blurry, my arm wouldn't stop shaking!


Then lunch was boring, as were snacks. Dinnah was delectable though. I made Moroccan Chickpeas and Sweet Potatoes. This was one of the best recipes I've ever made! Such a wonderful blend of flavors and textures! Omnomnomnom.
With a piece of French bread

Yesterday I made Apple Pie Pudding from CCV. I wanted to use up some holly nog so I used half that, and half regular soymilk and it came out really well. The "nog" flavor mostly disappeared, but it left the pudding sweet enough that I didn't have to add any more sugar. Another successful CCV recipe!

In other news, the enchilada incident is back. I thought it was gone for a while because we bought the wrong ingredients and my mom was going to be in Florida. But no, my dad went to the store today and got all the right ingredients so he can make it sometime this week. My mom told him that I wouldn't "like" it (because I told her I was nervous about eating it) but he is going to make it anyway. I was really excited about the recipes I had planned for the rest of the week and he's just going to bump one of them so we can have the enchiladas that I don't even want to eat! Flour tortillas, heavy cream, tons of cheese.. it's giving me a headache just to think of the recipe. The worst part is that my mom won't even be home to support me or bail me out if I just can't eat it. Sorry for whining about this again but I just need to vent about how naive my dad it when it comes to my ED. I. Can't. Do. This.

Tomorrow is Friday! Hope it's a good one for all of you.

Freezing Rain Day

No no, we didn't get a snow day. We got a freezing rain day. It's really nasty and freezing and icy outside, so school was canceled. The buses couldn't get out on the roads or something. Hehe it gave me an excuse to wear sweats all day!

So what did I do with my day off, you ask? Not much. Mostly just lounged around and did some blog-commenting. I also practiced my cello, played Wii, and put Pegasus on my ceiling. In glow in the dark stars, that is! I found the star stickers the other day when I was cleaning my dresser drawers. The package they came in had a map of all the constellations so I picked Pegasus and stuck him up on my ceiling. It's sort of impossible to get a picture of them all glowing in the dark, but it's cool, trust me. I quite like the idea of this big, noble horse being above my bed. -End nerd-dom now-

Breakfast featured an apple, an egg, a banana muffin, and berries & banana cream oats. I cooked my oats in "berry zinger" tea. Then I stirred in a couple spoons of plain yogurt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and topped it with half a sliced nanner. Yummay.

Around 11 I decided that I wanted dip in my lunch but we had no hummus. We did have lentils though, so I created lentil dip! Yeah, I realize what it looks like, but it was really good!

1. 1 tbs chili powder
2. 3/4 c dry lentils, cooked (or 2 cups cooked)
   
3. 1 tsp cumin
4. 1 tsp coriander
5. Dash of pepper, pinch of salt
6. 1/2 a plum tomato, chopped
7. 2 cloves of garlic, chopped
8. 2 tbs olive oil

Put everything in the blender with about 1/2 c of the liquid you used to cook the lentils. Blend until smooth.
Naturally, I had to put it on a sammich and grill it! I put the dip and some thinly sliced tofu on WW potato bread and grilled to golden perfect. With a darlin' clementine, oatmeal bar and Rachel's yogurt.

Dinner had been cooking in the crock pot all day, so I didn't even have to do anything! The recipe is called mushroom & barley soup, and is from Home Cooking by Lundberg Memorial Hospital. It's a collection of favorite recipes from my the tiny town my dad used to live in, in Nebraska. The original recipe has beef in it and is cooked on the stove, but we changed the recipe so I'm totally allowed to post it. This soup is what I think of when I think of winter meals, it's really hearty and filling. And you can throw whatever you want into the crockpot.

1. 2 tbs olive oil
2. 2 c chopped onions
3. 1 c diced carrots
4. 1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
5. 1 clove garlic, minced
6. 1/4 tsp thyme
7. 4 c vegetable broth
8. 2 c water
   
9. 1/2 c barley
10. 15 0z. cooked corn
11. 1 large potato, chopped
    

Cook the onions and carrots in the oil over medium heat until onions are brown and carrots are soft. Toss everything into the crockpot and cook on low until you're ready to eat. Normally, that's about 7-8 hours but nothing bad happens if you leave it cooking longer.

Ha, I said I wasn't going to do another monster post! Oh well. I'm pretty certain that I will be having school tomorrow so I won't have so many pictures.

I really want to do Lee's Blogger Valentine's Day Exchange but my parents are currently unaware of my blogging identity. They know that I'm "safe" online, so that's not the concern. I'm just afraid that they'll think that this is just another extension of my ED and will make me stop. Do any of you have suggestions on how to tell my parents about my blog?

Love you all, sleep tight!

Snow Day!!

If you can even call it that. It was a really, really, lame excuse for a snow day! There was about half an inch of snow when I woke up this morning. But hey, it got me out of school so I'm not complaining! Plus, I was having a really bad hair day this morning. I looked like Astro Boy! Except you know, not a boy. And with a shirt on.

I like snow days because they give me a chance to do some baking! So for brekky, I made Spiced Banana Bread from Ginge and the Giant Peach. Except I only had one banana, so I made half the recipe. I used canola oil instead of butter, and half whole wheat and half white flour. Oh yeah and dried apricots instead of mixed dried fruit. I didn't have a small enough loaf pan, so I poured the batter into 5 muffin cups.
Fay, your grandmother is some baker! These were so amazingly good. Perfectly spiced, and very moist. I can't stop thinking about them now.
With a muffin, I had an egg and the most perfect pear I've ever had in my life. My mom got it from the Harry and David fruit of the month club at her office. Soooo good!


And yay more breakfast! S'mores oats! S'morsoats. S'moats. I put lotsa cinnamon in my oatmeal to make it taste like a graham cracker, then mixed in a chopped vegan marshmallow and dark chocolate chips. I cannot even put into words how good this was. Melty goodness.

Lunchtime came, and I wanted soup but we had none. So I made polenta. I mixed 1/4 c cornmeal with 1/4 c water to make a paste and brought it to a boil. Then I simmered it for 15 mins, adding a couple tablespoons of water every now and then to keep it from clumping. When it was done, I stirred in about 1/2 tbs butter and topped it with half a cooked potato and a slice of cheddar. Exactly what I needed on my snow day! With carrots, an oatmeal bar, and a Nature's Promise yogurt.

I thought that I was going to have to eat dinner between my cello lesson and therapy tonight, since that's what I normally do on Tuesdays. But when I got to my cello lesson, my teacher wasn't there and I found out it was canceled:[ . And my dad called my therapist and said that the weather was too bad to drive in. I packed a quesadilla on two corn tortillas with cheddar, lettuce, black olives and black beans; plus the rest of the can of black beans.
I just heated it up when I got home and ate it like that.

I hope I haven't been boring any of you by my marathon posts! It's just that on school days I never get to make such exciting yummy food so I'm taking advantage of that. I promise, once I go back to school tomorrow (or maybe not, it might snow again!), I'll be back to just posting a few things a day. Unless you all like my daily eat posts..?

I'm off to do the snow dance. Sweet dreams, everyone!

P.S. Get a free Quaker True Delights bar here.

Why can't I ever think of clever post titles?

I'm going to be repeating myself by saying this, but thank you all for the support you gave me on my last post! It seriously makes my day a million times better just to read all the caring comments that are left for me. Plus it makes me crack up to here yesterday's event called the "enchilada incident". You girls gave me some wonderful advice about the situation with my dad. Unfortunately, it's really hard for me to "just talk" with my dad and tell him how uncomfortable he is making me. When I was first diagnosed with an., he didn't even want to believe that I really had an eating disorder and insisted that I had just lost muscle mass through ballet. After a while, he got used to the idea of me having a mental illness, but he still cannot grasp the concept of fearing food or gaining weight. I so wish that we could have a nice father-daughter conversation, but that's not going to happen, at least not now. Hopefully in the future though. Thanks again for the suggestions though.

For breakfast, I had an orange, apple + cheese sammie, and a bowl of PB&J oats!

By PB, I mean PB puffins :] My sister is a serial cereal eater. She gets on a health kick, or a chocolate kick, or a honey kick, and then buys cereal accordingly. When she bought the puffins, she was on a health kick, but she's now decided that puffins aren't sweet enough and it going to eating PB Cap'n Crunch instead! Oh well, more for me. And I used cran apple butter.

For lunch, I had a hummus and grilled pesto sammich, carrots, and a chocolate yogurt. The yogurt was sickly sweet, almost like a chocolate shake. Bleh. I made Baked Oatmeal Snack Bars from Kath Eats to go along with it. I subbed orange juice for 1/4 c of milk, almonds for walnuts, and dark chocolate chips for the fruit. Orange- chocolate- almond sounds good, right? Haha. It was not too great. I think that if you take away the natural sweetness from the dried fruit you need to add some white sugar/honey to compensate. So next time, I'll try the original recipe and hope it works out better.

And note to self: Parchment paper is not the same and wax paper. Because I used wax and it stuck, and I'm pretty sure that I acidentally ate a piece of wax paper on my bar!

I had ballet today, and it went somewhat better than it did on Saturday. I was in a space at the bar that isn't in front of a mirror, so I couldn't scrutinize myself at the bar. But then we went out in the center of the studio for jumps and adagios etc., and ED started pestering me. "Look. Your legs jiggle." I mostly ignored him by telling myself that ballerinas need strong legs to do all those lovely jumps. And women need some fat on them to... live healthily! Plus, I really don't even need to look in the mirror. I can feel whether my body is in the right place, and I can hear whether I'm with the music or not. So ED has no place in my studio. Mwaha!

For some after-class fuel I brought along a chocolate brownie pure bar. Oh my, it was so amazing! Very dense, moist, and fudgy like a brownie should be. It was better (and more filling) than a Larabar- don't kill me don't kill me! The wrapper says "Like a good mood in a wrapper" and I certainly felt very happy after eating this.

Dinner was another recipe from Kath Eats! Apple-Cheddar Fritatta (minus bacon). I love this recipe, it's not the egg and cheese overload that some fritattas and quiches are.
I also had a clemmie and a few small slices of multigrain baguette.

I am so not looking forward to school tomorrow. With exams and holidays, I've barely been to school lately, so it'll be a rude awakening to have to stay the whole day! Now, I'm going to enjoy the last hours of my mini-vacation and watch Gossip Girl! Good night, lovelies!

Edited to say: WHY was there no GG tonight? Now I have to wait another week for a new episode? This ruins my life.

Eats + a product review

Good evening, lovelies! Thank you all so much for the support you gave me on my last post. I seriously think that starting this blog was the best decision I've ever made. Because of the support each of you give me, I've recovered far more than I ever could have on my own. I'm so happy that I've "met" all of you, because you girls have improved my life more than you could imagine!

I thought that ED had gone away yesterday, but surprise, he came back today. In my family we make a weekly menu of what we're going to have for dinner every day of the week, and I'm usually always the one to make it. I like being able to pick recipes that I know are healthy and moderate in the calorie department. Today, my dad decided to make the menu for two days this week, without asking me if I would like to eat what he choose. He plans to actually make these things for us too. What he choose was vegetable barely stew, which I'm okay with, and something along the lines of "creamy double cheese enchiladas". I looked at the actual recipe and it involves 2/3 cup heavy cream, 2 cups cheese.. Something broke inside of me and set ED loose, and I went crazy. And by crazy, I mean sitting on the floor sobbing, screaming into a pillow, and curling into a ball.

My parents were upstairs and somehow didn't hear any of this! My dad came downstairs a bit later when I was calmer and saw my tear-streaked face. He asked what was wrong and I said that I didn't want the enchiladas. I was expecting that he would be understanding and recognize that I've been challenging myself a lot lately, and switch it to something else. But instead he said "What's wrong with it? Are you vegan now or something?" Arg! He doesn't get me, or my ED, at all. He thinks that since I've gained weight, I'm now recovered and expects me to just "eat normally" when I'm not capable of that. Ah, I doubt any of you want to hear this but I just really need a vent.

Okay, breakfast. Breakfast breakfast.
I started with some leftover TJ's butternut squash soup, with half a grilled cheese for dipping. Leftover soup for breakfast is good!







Then an amazing bowl of oats. I cooked them normally, then topped them with 4 pieces of chopped crystallized ginger and a crumbled whole grain graham cracker. The ginger was really chewy and provided a nice spicy kick, and it went perfectly with the sweet graham cracker which turned mushy in the oats.



Around lunchtime I was watching Barefoot Contessa and Ina was making sandwiches with grilled peppers. That sounded good to me, to I grilled up a few slices of green pepper on my George Foreman. I put those in a sammie with hummus and leftover clementine tofu and grilled it. Very yum indeed.

And a couple of you asked what Euro-style yogurt was like. I can't compare it to TJ's greek yogurt because I've never tried that. The carton the Euro-style yogurt comes in says "thick and creamy". Mine was anything but that!
This pic demostrates how runny it is! Almost like Kefir. And it was very, very, very tart! I haven't had Greek yogurt in a while, but I'd say that this is more sour than Greek. I'm starting to wonder if I got a defective carton because all the reviews I've found online talk about how rich and thick this yogurt is. Shall I complain to TJ's and get my money back? :]

For dinner, I sort of made Bang Bang Couscous from See Bride Run, which is now Healthy Tipping Point. I say sort of because I made a lot of modifications. I didn't have enough couscous, so I doubled the garbanzos. I also used green peas instead of edamame because I don't know where to buy that around here. I added chopped black olives too. Last, I used feta instead of goat cheese because that's my personal preferece. So barely the original recipe, but very good! Esp. topped with pine nuts.
Yesterday, I made Everything Nice Banana Spice Pudding from CCV. Unlike my last pudding experiment, this one was a success! I actually used my blender this time and it turned out perfectly. I had to add about a tsp of brown sugar, then it tasted just like banana muffin batter! Delish.
I hope you all enjoyed the last of your weekend. Good luck at school tomorrow, those of you that have it. I don't have school tomorrow because the teachers are working on our report cards, yay! Night night.

Ballet!

Like I mentioned yesterday, today was my first day back at ballet since November. I love dancing, and seriously would dance everyday if I had the time. Apparently I was one of the few who practiced over our break, so it was quite amusing to watch everyone else stumble around!

More on ballet later, so let's start with eats, yes? The other day I gave Fay my recipe for baked banana stuffed french toast because she said she wanted something sweet for breakfast. It's quite a weight-gainer's recipe though, with about 500 cals per serving. Fay had a little kitchen mishap trying to make a healthier version of it, so this morning I fiddled around and came up with a new recipe that works pretty well, and it significantly lower in cals. I give you baked (or not) banana stuffed french toast.

• 2 slices whole wheat bread, on the thinner side
• 1 egg white
• 2 tbs milk
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• couple dashes cinnamon
• 1/2 banana

1. Mash the banana with a fork. Sandwich it between the two slices of bread.
2. Whisk together the egg white, milk, vanilla, and cinnamon.
3. Plop the banana sammich down in the egg mixture and let it soak for about 30 seconds. Flip and repeat.
4. Heat up a small pan sprayed with cooking oil, or with melted butter/oil or whatever floats your boat.
5. Put the french toast down in the skillet, on medium high heat. Cook for 2-3 mins until the egg is set and it's kind of crispy. Flip with a metal spatula and do the same thing.
6. Optional step: Bake at 350* for 4 minutes on each side. I usually skip this step because I'm lazy and don't want to heat up the oven for one thing.
7. 

It's not exactly as good as it's fullfat cousin, but it's still pretty yummy!

So after breakfast + a boring morning snack (almonds) I headed to ballet. Like I said before, the whole dancing part was fabulous. Really, I love to dance so much! No, what bothered me was the mirror. I've been avoiding the mirror for the past few months, other than to do the necessary things like brushing my hair and whatnot. I haven't been standing in front of the mirror letting ED pick apart my flaws and tell me how fat I am. But if any of you have ever been in a dance studio, you know that you are surrounded by mirrors there. Every way I turned this morning, I could look in the mirror and see something I hated about myself. My stomach pokes out more than hers. My face looks so blobby. My thighs touch, oh god, my thighs touch! I know I probably sound like such a drama queen baby right now. But arg I feel like my body has changed so drastically since the last time I was in the studio, and I hate it so much! It really lowered my self esteem, and kind of took away from my actual dancing. My feelings of disgust over my body are pretty much gone now, but I know that they'll come back every time I go back to my dance studio. This was I guess a mini-rant because ED takes away every single good thing in my life, but I'm so scared to stop him.

OKAY! I went to Trader Joe's today, wopee! In that stash is soy milk, TJ's olive oil (amazing), eggplant cutlets, 2 flavored yogurts, big tub of Euro style yogurt, PURE BARS (!), a zbar, fruit leather, and soy frozen orange creamsicles. I also got apples and crystallized ginger too.

For dinner, I made tangerine baked tofu from Vcon. But I had no tangerines, so it was clementine baked tofu. It was good, but my tofu always turns out really mushy. I don't know if it's because I don't drain it well enough, or just because it's not fried.
Also some sweet tater fries, yum! Hope you all had lovely Saturdays and enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Success!

Meaning, I've had a very accomplished day. Aside from eating, I did yoga, practiced pointe for ballet (starts again tomorrow, yay!), finished the book I was reading and finished the last of my puzzle.

Psh, 1000 pieces is nothing. That big chunk of blue sky was quite tricky though. This was a cool puzzle to do because it's like an "I Spy" type thing. There are watches and combs and toothbrushes etc. hidden everywhere. Puzzles are great, they're my #1 distraction when ED is bugging me.

For breakfast, I started with some plain yogurt, and apple, and a warmed up cinnamon raisin Gnu bar. Gnu bars aren't my favorite, but this is the best flavor!

Then a yumtastic bowl of oatmeal. I cooked it with 1/2 c Holly Nog and 1/2 c water, then chopped in a banana a la Kath. I topped it with frozen blueberries.
For lunch I wanted a sammich, but didn't want just peanut butter. So I googled vegetarian sandwich ideas, and came to this page. I liked the sound of the first one for an asian pita, but I had no pita bread so I just used WW potato bread. I used the PB option and only used half the soy sauce. For veggies, I used shredded carrots, spinach, onion and green bell pepper. I wish I had more asian veggies but this was super yummy nonetheless! Great savory sandwich.

Since last week's cauliflower experiment went over so well, I decided that I needed to try another. I made this recipe for Cauliflower and Cheese Puff. It was v. yummy, but didn't "puff" much. I used monterrey jack cheese and whole wheat bread crumbs instead of challah. I lurve cauliflower!
Had it with some TJ's butternut squash soup and toast

Question: How much water do you girls drink? Because I drink like 12 glasses a day, and I don't know if it's normal considering how most people struggle to get in the recommended eight. It seems as if i get thirsty after every bite I eat. It's not a big concern of mine, it was just on my mind. I hope all of you had wonderful Fridays!

TGI... T?

Yes, thank goodness it's Thursday! I don't have any exams tomorrow, so I don't have to go to school at all. Amazing! My exams went okay today, I guess. I had geometry, which I'm okay at. I probably got a high C or low B because there were I couple problems I didn't know how to do. I also had biology, and I know I did well on it. I'm so glad exam week is over!

Not too many pictures today. The banana bread I made the other day was getting stale, and I didn't really feel like having another plain slice. Sooooo I put it in my oatmeal and made blueberry banana bread oats! This was really yummy, the bread got all soggy and the chocolate chips in it melted into the oats.

Lunch was boring as I had just got home from school and didn't want to make anything elaborate. Snacks were boring because I had group and that got in the way of snacking. But dinner, oh dinner... so yummy. My aunt emailed me a recipe for baked potato soup, because she knows I like to cook. I'm not sure where she got it from, so I could be plagiarizing by posting this but oh well. This is just copied from the email, so ignore the non-veggie friendly options. I used white whole wheat flour, tehe.

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 can (14.5 oz) chicken/vegetable broth
• 1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
• 2 large or 3 med baking potatoes, baked or microwaved
• Toppings: crumbled bacon, shredded cheese, sliced green onions

Melt butter in large saucepan over med heat. Add onion; cook, stirring occasionally, 1-2 min or until tender.
Stir in flour. Gradually stir in broth and evaporated milk. Scoop potato pulp from 1 potato (reserve potato skin); mash.
Add pulp to broth mixture. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally until mixture comes just to a boil.
Dice remaining potato skin and potato(es); add to soup. Heat through. Spoon into bowls and top.
It was so creamy and delish! And very filling and stick to your ribs-y. The only downside of this is that I'm not used to so many high fat ingredients at dinner. I don't mean ED-wise, I mean that it hurt my tummy :[ I think I'll have to recreate it with possibly milk/soymilk instead of the condensed stuff and less butter. I now feel as if I've swallowed a rock.

Today's been a good day. ED hasn't bothered me, yet. I'm pretty okay with high fat stuff such as I had at dinner from gaining weight, so that wasn't a problem. Usually I don't eat anything near as high-fat as that, so it can't hurt every once in a while, right? Yay!

Have any of you read The Omnivore's Dilemma or In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan? I've read both of them, and I just thought of them after I saw Pollan mentioned in an article today. If you haven't, I highly recommend them. They've changed the way I think of food. They both emphasize that food should be enjoyed, and not purchased and eaten for it's nutritional value. These books actually helped me break away from ED a lot. I stopped obsessing about whether my food had enough nutritional vaule to be worth the calories, meaning enough fiber, protein, Vitamin D, etc. I stopped buying lots of "foodlike substances" that I only bought in the first place because there were a list of health claims on the box. Instead, I switched to making homemade and healthy meals using lots of fresh ingredients. I started enjoying my food because it tasted good, rather than because it was nutrient rich. Pick up a copy of these books!

Hope you all had fabulous Thursdays!

La prueba fue facil

Grrrrrrrrrrrr I wish I had noticed the thing about the scheduled blogger outage sooner. I wonder how long this is supposed to last, because it's 7:22 and I want to post soon! Mrph.

The Spanish exam was so easy! I didn't even need to spend so much time studying. I think I only missed one or two multiple choices, and I did really well (I hope) on my written section. We were supposed to say what we bought for a party and I couldn't remember how to say soda! So I put beverages of fruit, but it's okay. My teacher will get it.

Only piccies of dinner tonight, because that was the most exciting meal. I made crockpot lentil and apricot soup.

It was pretty good, but not what I was expecting. I thought that the apricots would make the whole soup sweeter, but they didn't even though I doubled them. So basically, it tasted like lentil soup (but v. good lentil soup) unless you got a bite of apricot. Which was like perfection, the apricots got all mushy and oozing.
I had 2 pieces of TJ's French baguette

And for dessert, Eggnog Panna Cotta from BitterSweet! Second try at using agar flakes. I've had a carton of Holly Nog in the pantry since last year and I need to use it up. So I eliminated about half of with this recipe. And it was a really, really good choice. I didn't have any vanilla, for some strange reason, so I used 1/2 tsp maple extract and you couldn't tell since the eggnog was already spiced. It was sooo light and creamy! I topped it with some blueberries in a feeble attempt to make my dessert look as good as it does on BitterSweet. Mission failed :[

It was a challenge to have dessert, as always, but a little less of one this time. ED always tells me that I'll be overindulging if I have dessert, and I don't deserve that. But guess what? I do deserve to have dessert. I deserve to indulge and live life to the fullest without feeling guilty or "fat" about it, and so do all of you. What we don't deserve is ED! I may have made some mistakes in my life, but that doesn't mean ED should be able to take away the rest of it.

Hope you all had wonderful Wednesdays! Remember, it's all downhill until Friday now!