WIAW #49 Weird musings

Hidy-ho friends!

For some reason I'm having a completely fabulous day! (minus the monstrous mountain of homework in store for me this lovely evening)
See, Wednesdays happen to be one of my favourite days of the week... and it's the small things that do it for me! For example it's my day when I do speed runs (super-fast..haha... 30 minute runs) on the treadmill whilst simultaneously (like a boss) scrolling through awesome blogs. I therefore have more time in the morning to make a delicious brekky and shower and just breathe, and then choof of to school!
Yep. So in short (after in long) I like Wednesdays.

I also happen to like food. Which is superbly perfect for a Wednesday link-up the food blogging community and I like to call WIAW!! Thanks as always to Jenn for the awesome link-up!

P.S. These particular eats are from Tuesday, because today's dinner has yet to materialise. :)

Breakfast: 7:15am
I was feeling the chocolate. The rich, fudgey, awesomeness that is chocolate. For breakfast. No shame.
And so, I present to you chocolate: In it's awesome-est form!

Chocolate protein steel cut oats with coconut butter.

So. Much. Yum.
Of course rich. fudgey, heavenly chocolate can be a bit much on its own (even at breakfast ;) so I'm thinking kiwi-berry fro-yo is the only way to remedy this:

Frozen kiwi-berries + 3 big scoops greek yoghurt + whaz= deliciousness.

Match made in a chocolate-y frozen kiwi-berry heaven. Strange but good :)

I'm sure some of you who might have been reading my blog for a while now probably still don't understand my love for eating stuff out of cups. Neither do I. Maybe try it and see if you like it too. ;)

Incase you weren't already drooling:

Welcome. :D

Snack-attack: 11:00am

My beloved pot of peas. I don't think this snack will ever change for me. Until I create a pea shortage... which is actually pretty likely at the rate I go through them!!

Lunch: 1:40am
Tasty salad after a lovely ridiculously cold trip to the beach for PE (anyone else get extremely hungry after visiting the beach/ swimming?):

This marvellous tupper-ware of yum involved spinach, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, carrot (quite a lot of carrot... don't know why) and capsicum along with some microwaved roasted eggplant and lentil falafels!

N.O.M

Snack: 4:00am
Snack was....
fruit and soy milk!!

I seem to be capable of changing up my main meals, however my snacks... they're permanent. And proud of it.

A chopped pink lady apple with a big bunch of green grapes (all very different sizes for some reason?) and soy milk:

I do seem to rotate between the cups I like to drink my soy milk out of, however and have gone from coke glasses with curly straws, to tea mugs, to glass jars, to big plastic cups and now to these cute pastel mugs :)

Dinner: 6:45am
Dinner was a hit and also a miss. The hit was the roasted veggies... because seriously how could they ever be a miss. The miss, however, was a new fan-dangle grain thing I found at Coles...

That looks like slop. Alternately named Brown Teff Grain. For those interested, it tasted like slop too.

Topped with veggies (roasted pumpkin, sweet potato, potato, parsnip and swede with fresh rosemary sprigs) with some grilled plain tempeh.

It was all good until I decided to mix the veggies with the brown slop of doom...
Then it was sort of crunchy with a very- natural flavour

Followed by a small handful of raw brazil nuts, to get rid of the flavour... and because I was still hungry ;)

Aaand that's what I ate Tuesday!!

What about you?
Do you like/dislike Wednesdays?
Eat your food out of weird things? Cups/ bowls/ saucepans (it's been known to happen in my house hold :)
Ever tried brown teff grain? Did I do something wrong while cooking it?

Still hungry for more? Head on over to Peas and Crayons to see what everyone else has been eating this fine Wednesday!!

Bye for now friends! :D

Birthday celebrations!

Hello, hello everyone! How are we all today on this lovely Sunday?
Me? I'm already pooped- as is the usual case when I've run for 90 minutes and it isn't even 9:00am yet. But happy, healthy and feeling good none the less!

Especially after a filling and delicious breakfast to fuel up my body after said run:

My favourite bowl of steel cut oats with a big side of water!!

Some almond butter was spread around the bowl, then topped with the oats and dolloped with some peanut butter, because, you know, why not? ;)

Delicious!

So as you all have probably figured out by now, I have this thing for cooking. I sorta like it. A lot. I think the hint was in the title of this blog.

The thing that confuses people the most, however, is the fact that even though I'm a vegetarian who doesn't eat added sugar, tries to find alternatives to wheat and consumes zero cow's milk or cheese- I still love making foods with all these things in it. Yes that results in me not eating it- the part that horrifies people.

I cook/ bake/ create because I love to do that- cook/bake/create. Now, I love to eat too, just other things, that make my body feel good.

Therefore what's a girl who loves to bake and loves all things creative going to do when her birthday rolls round? (It's actually tomorrow, though school/ work sort of make it hard to celebrate)

She creates her own birthday cake of course!!

Presenting my 16th birthday cake:

The cake is alternating layers of white chocolate mud cake and dark chocolate mud cake with either a white chocolate ganache between the layers or a dark chocolate ganache.

Around the outside, there's white fondant, a bow made from pink ready-roll icing, smarties, and of course ice cream!

Well the ice cream may have been some more chocolate cake formed into a ball with a little extra melted butter and then covered in blue ready-roll icing, though it looks like ice cream all the same!

With a few sprinkles on top and of course a waffle cone!

Cake decorating is so much fun! (and pretty time consuming too:D)

So, no I did not eat my birthday cake, but I got to make it- which for me is just as good, if not better!

I did eat my celebratory birthday dinner though (which I cooked for myself as well- guys, seriously, I. LOVE. COOKING. This is like a present for me!)

A big plate of roasted veggies with some spinach and garlic tofu!

The veg was pumpkin, swede, beetroot, sweet potato, potato, eggplant, zucchini, red onion, mushrooms and asparagus all roasted in some olive oil with some fresh rosemary (at varying times) and then gobbled up!

A great *early* birthday with family, love and lots of good food!

What about you?
What is your favourite post workout food?
Do you like to cook on your birthday?
Best birthday cake you've ever had?

That's all for today, bye for now folks! Remember- everyday may not be good but there is something good in every day. :D

Food: why do you have to be so awesome?

Hi my name is Stephanie and I love food.
Hi Stephanie
Wow, that sounds familiar (cough cough)

 Yeh ok, I know...
Anyway- food is just soooo amazing! The way it tastes, smells, feels, looks, and the things that happen when you combine these features, or heat them up, or whip them or bake them or fry them or chop them or... ok you get the picture.
While I was making some meals recently I noticed all of the different things I did to my foods to make something new and exciting and create great flavours etc.

Like with a green smoothie; it's super simple to make, but it's the things you add together and the fact that you blend it right up that make it so tasty! I mean I wouldn't want to eat a bite of bana and then a bite of kale and them sprinkle some chia seeds into my mouth!

 And granola- by first creating a muesli by combining oats, raisins, and nuts and then rubbing in nut butter and baking in the oven you've created s masterpiece.

And further still, combining the two textures of crunchy and smooth and also nutty and sweet, you've got a party right there in your mouth.

I thought about oast and they intrigued me further- raw oats are great, but then adding a liquid and heating them up to create oatmeal- totally different! Then adding flavours and textures... well lets just say breakfast looks pretty inviting:

Chocolate steel cut oats with a side of PB+J yoghurt
Don't even get me started on the beauty of whipping up your own flavoured yoghurts- I'll just show you:

(greek yoghurt, frozen berries and peanut butter)

I've got to say though, it's breads that fascinate me the most- loaves, pizza doughs, flat breads, you name it- I think they're awesome!
So I experimented at dinner last night to create my own little flat bread... wheat free... grain free!

Whazzed up some yellow and green split peas, until I could sieve out some flour, added some chickpea flour and mixed.

Along with some olive oil, chopped chili, crushed garlic and torn basil and water until I got this:

(naturally green from the split peas :)
Flatten it out and place it on a hot non stick pan- flip when golden:

Y-U-M!
So I don't know why this sudden thought of how awesome food is and how far we have come to creating delicious meals with the use of all the things mentioned in my intro, but I'm just glad humans eat food (I guess I'm thankful we're not robots?) and that we also have creativity to make said food special!:)

I'm also super glad it's the weekend and hope everyone has a fabulous one! :D

Athletic eating.

Hello, hello friends.
No don't worry I haven't started eating competitions or stuffing my face in an athletic manner, or taken up sprinting and javelin whilst eating. What I meant by athletic eating was what I ate on the day of my school's athletic carnival :)

You might remember from this post and this post me mentioning that I couldn't run because I did something to my ITB band/ muscle thingy down my leg.

Well, I had signed up for 4 different running events and long jump before this happened, so with the help of my wonderful physio's remedial massage (I have bruises to prove how wonderful) and some acupuncture and some taping... I could compete!

Good to go!

I went equipped with a little chemist in my bag. Voltaren gel, snap ice packs and extra tape. 

The real way I prepared myself for today? A good hearty- DELICIOUS- breakfast:

 Chocolate steel cut oats and berry froyo (frozen berries whazzed up with greek yoghurt)

 Using this method, I heated up 1 tablespoon of cashew butter and spread it round!

Full of protein, complex carbs and good fats- I was ready to start the day!

Chocolate not up your alley?

How does overnight oats mixed with mango fro-yo sound:

 With some bananas split in half and smothered in peanut butter?

 Stirry-stir:

 YUM!

 In relation to how I did in the carnival... not great to be honest :D

I sort of expected it... I didn't lose anything (second last isn't losing!) and I did come 4th in the 800m (out of like 25 girls) so I guess I'm sort of happy, it just means no inter-school this year. I was pushing it competing anyway!

But there you have some great brekky's for a busy/ tiring/ energy requiring day!

What did you have for brekky?

Are you a sprinter or long distance runner?

How do you feel about acupuncture? (I might talk about this in a later post :)

See ya later! :D