The colours of food

So, I was eating my breakfast the other day, sort of just gazing down into the deep dark depths of my...  oatmeal clumps? and got sort of transfixed by the colour the oats had taken on because of the addition of raspberries.

Raspberry cheesecake oats : 1/2 cup rolled oats + 1 thinly sliced banana + 1 handful frozen raspberries + 1 cup almond milk + 1/4 cup water- into a saucepan to bubble away until liquid is absorbed. Greek yoghurt stirred in at the end

It made me think about other foods, their colours and as a result my obsession with them.

As I can only assume with most other people, the more colourful and vibrant and down right out-of-the-ordinary coloured a food is, makes it all the more appealing to me. (Well played Star Burst, well played.)

Of course, you already know that I'm also drawn to all things natural and wholesome, so when a totally natural whole food is naturally a randomly bright and eye-catching colour... I'm sold!

Can you imagine if spaghetti was really like this!

I wanted to find out a little more about the colours of foods and as a result our perceptions of said food. I was intrigued guys!

What I came across was even more justification of the awesome-ness that is nature.
We've all heard before that eating a varied and colourful diet is great for our health. Why? Because nature cleverly created different nutrients to impart different colours into the foods they're in. For instance, the anthocyanins that turn blueberries blue can also keep your mind sharp (hence the brain food reputation)

I also found some stuff out about how colours can affect the way in which we eat a food.  For instance, as shown in the pic above, blue is considered an appetite suppressant and as a result along with using blue plates and having a blue light in your fridge, some diets even go as far as to suggest dying your foods blue!!

Looking at this picture, I kind of get it!

 This is all nature's doing once again as blue is such a rare colour in nature and therefore we don't have an automatic appetite response to blue. Wacko!

And white? Causing over-eating/ snacking. For some reason white makes us forget the food contains any calories at all? Mind boggling!

It's a hard concept for me to grasp- that simply seeing foods can cause all sorts of reactions in your body, firing up the neurons in your brain that control appetite and causing your glands to lose all sense of control and salivate over a glorious edible visual in front of you!

At the end of the day, I concluded that it was just something I had to accept.. and experiment with. Expect some different colours appearing on the blog in the future. Purely scientific, right?

Fun!

Toss some cooked spaghetti noodles with diluted blue food coloring or cook the noodles in blue colored boiling water. (Note: Use only "food coloring" purchased in a grocery stores for these recipes. Other coloring agents are toxic.) Imagine what you can do to the sauce. Don't forget to add a few blue M&Ms for garnish.

^I also have to try this. ASAP! ^

What about you?

Do you ever think about the craziness that is the colour of our foods?

Favourite colour in food? I would say... res/purple. I mean; berries, grapes, water melon, apples etc!

Ever dyed your food a random colour for fun?

Ahhh oatmeal... you really do initiate the weirdest thought processes in me!

Also, chocolate oatmeal, I still love you, even if you're brown colour is considered unappetising :)

Any-who, that's enough thinking for one day (I think exams are really starting to melt away my logical brain)! I hope you all have a fabulous day and eat something awesome (taste/colour wise)! Bye for now!! :D

pineapple

Hello spiky friends!

Wait.

Spiky?

Why yes, spiky, like a...

PINEAPPLE!!

Ok, now that I have sufficiently confused you all with the best intro ever, how about I actually start making some sense. Yes? Yes!

In all actual-blog-post-related-ness, this post is about pineapples. (Surprise!)

I love pineapple. I love it on pizza, in a fruit salad, as a flavour for icypoles/lollies/ lip balm etc. (well when I used to eat packaged icypoles and lollies... and wear lip balm- geez I've changed a lot!) Most of all I love just snacking on a big ol' chunk of the sweet acidic fruit.

So, when I saw some beautiful looking pineapple halves for sale in the grocery store the other day I just had to pick one up and because I seem to have an obsession with buying all different kinds of fruits and freezing them... I did just that with my perfectly ripe coalesced berries!

What did I do with them you ask? Whazzed em' up to make some pineapple/banana fro-yo! 3 words: Y. U. M.

Ooh, hello there sneaky feet, photo-bombing my pineapple fro-yo pick!
Into the food processor went 1 frozen banana + 4 big chunks frozen pineapple + 3 spoons of greek yoghurt- whazzed until smoothy-smooth (scraping down the sides occasionally).

There's one thing about pineapple that I'm quite pedantic about- I love the fresh stuff! The tinned stuff is just a bit too sweet and concentrated in flavour for me. This fro-yo was perfect- perfectly sweet and perfectly tangy!

Breakfast didn't stop there though (even though a big bowl of this pineapple fro-yo would've been juuust fine). On top of the creamy awesome-ness was some peanut/coconut butter granola creating a sort of frozen crumble type thing:

In my granola was oats, oat bran, cacao nibs, cinnamon and pepita seeds, along with some peanut/coconut butter and almond milk too!
Yellow spoon to eat it all up with of course!

I would definitely recommend trying out some frozen pineapple, either on it's own as a sort of all-natural pineapple icypole, in a smoothie for some tropical flavour, or whazzed up with a frozen banana and greek yoghurt for some beautifully creamy and tangy frozen yoghurt.

Very good combination if I do say so myself!

A little bit of summer sunshine to brighten up my cold and wintry day!

What about you:
Are you a fan of pineapple? I know some people can't eat it because of how acidic/ harsh it is on thier mouth.
Favourite way to eat pineapple? I seriously do love some pineapple on a pizza- remind me of my childhood favourite pizza- Hawaiin!
Ever added frozen pineapple to anything?

That's it for today folks, I hope you all have a fabulous day, eat some yummy foods and just enjoy all the wonderful (big AND small) things that happen :) Bye friends!! :D

Seriously though, those moments... ;)

The big race... and a smoothie ;)

 Hip-hip for the weekend!!

Hi friends, how are we going? Good? Good!
As promised in my last post, I'm going to do a little recap of the big interschool cross country race that I have been training for, for a few weeks now (refer to posts here, here and here) how it went etc. So grab your green smoothies, get comfy and enjoy the story....

But wait. What green smoothie?

 This green smoothie!

 Seriously though, this bad boy is sitting in front of me as we speak and oh my it is goood! Perfect re-fueling after an easy-paced 7km run this brisk morning! (I'm still in ma running gear and the heat of exercise is starting to wear off!!)

Super creamy, cake-batter-y, nut buttery goodness!
Step 1. Place around 1/3 cup rolled oats in a bowl with enough milk (I used almond milk) to cover:

 Leave to sit for around 15 mins
Step 2. Into a blender chuck 1 chopped frozen banana, a big handful of kale, the soaked oats, 3 big spoons of greek yoghurt, a handful of spinach, 1/2 chopped frozen avocado, 1 tablespoon nut butter and a splash of water to get things rolling!
Step 3. Blend and blend and blend until smooth!

 This was a super thicky guys! Just the way I like it (spoon is on stand by ;)

 Super filling, tasty and packed full of goodness- what are you waiting for?

 Alrighty, now that everyone is settled with a big jar of green smoothie, let's talk about the race!

So it was on Thursday and because I was running in the open girls division (U/19 both year 11's and 12's- yep that did freak me out) our race wasn't until 12:35pm, so I opted to stay at school for the first two periods (hello, exams coming up!) and meet the team there with two other girls in my race.

Of course I was nervous all morning and concentrating on school work was getting quite difficult, so when we arrived at perry Lakes Reserve I was buzzing! There were sooooo many schools there, so many athletic kids, warming up, running around, stretching and just eyeing up the competition... it was intimidating!

We finally managed to find our school's tent, got our numbers drawn on us and changed into our school's running tank top. 15 minutes later and we were off to marshaling to get our number for our shirts which also held a little chip inside to time us as we crossed the finish line.

Thankfully this year they had changed the course from last year, that resulted in an extreme bottle neck right at the beginning, meaning if you didn't sprint to the front, you would be walking trying to squeeze through. This time, we all just ran! I tried not to look around and get psyched out but I could see in the corner of my eyes a few girls tripping over and no one stopping to help them up. It was literally a stampeded of runners.

I didn't want to look at anyone else. I had to get in the zone and run my own race. So I ran. I ran to a pace that felt good. I will admit I noticed I was getting closer and closer to the front but I couldn't seem to push myself that little bit harder. There was a pack ahead that were the very front of our race and I so wanted to join them but I think my mind just accepted that wouldn't happen maybe? I don't know. i kept up my pace and when we turned the corner into the finishing 100m sprint, I went for it, passing someone at the very end.

I flicked my eyes to the clock and saw 12 mins flat! That beat my PB by 1 min 30 seconds!! Although the 3km course we run at school as a steady incline the entire 1.5km back to school, so I guess that's why. Any-who I was stoked! I did feel a little disappointing because I could tell there was more in me- I could've pushed harder, gotten closer to the front.

But after looking up my position and time on the Interschool cross country website, my face lit up as I saw I came 37th out of the 279 girls in my race and better yet- 200th out of 1571 girls running the entire day!

After the race the girls I'd come in later with and I headed back to school, each grinning with our success and a little wobbly in the legs from a fast run!

Overall it was a great race, I felt good and I could tell all the training at school really paid off. As soon as we got back to school I missed cross country already! Missed the trainings and being part of the team. This is another moment where I wish I lived in America so I could be part of a track team that trained on a continued basis! Ahh well, I guess I'll just have to go back to my solo running until next year! :)

What about you?
Were/ are you part of a running team?
Do you find you do better when training with others?
Ever won a big race?

That's it from me today folks- lots of studying scheduled for this weekend!! (3-days until exams start!) I hope you all have a fabulous day, eat something delicious and usual and give someone a hug, trust me, it'll brighten both of your days!! Bye friends! :D

Thinking Out Loud- The randomness of the week!

Hello, hello there friends, how are we all today?
 (I always feel a little strange asking how everyone feels from behind a computer screen, but I just imagine everyone reading that and unconsciously answering the question with how they're feeling... because that's what I do... and that makes me feel better! ;)

And if you thought that was a random intro, just wait until we get into this weeks Thinking Out Loud Thursday, hosted by the awesome Amanda, from Running with Spoons, who week-in week-out continues to supply us with a healthy dose of random and inspire us to do the same!!

So without further ado- a look into the week that was and all the things that made me think... out loud!

1. Do you remember this post I did a little while back where I talked about how awesome these odd-bunch veggies are that my grocery store is now selling for cheaper prices just because they look a little funny?

 And how they didn't even look all that different to the regular produce? Well I got another bag of those odd-bunch carrots and was a lot more pleased and the crazy shaped carrots in my bag!
For example, this guy:

Thank you for making my dinner more enjoyable :)

It's hiding in there somewhere!!

2. On the topic of dinners (yes, we were on that topic, see dinner picture above :) Segue master!) I just want to mention this one... because it was epic:

Pasta, roasted eggplant + zucchini + mushrooms + capsicum rubbed with garlic, spinach, corn and a chunky tomato pasta sauce.

However it's not the tastiness of this dish that I want to discuss (but just know that it was awesome!) it's the pasta. See I bought a bag of this high protein lower carb pasta (not in the intentions of lowering carb intake, purely for the fact that one serve boasts over 10g of fiber!) and was cooking it up like regular pasta. After about 8 mins (the usual time for my pasta) I tested a piece and it was pretty solid. I let it simmer for another 5 mins, tested again.. still pretty hard!  Another 5 mins- sort of getting there. I went to the packet, looked at the cooking instructions and saw that this pasta requires 18-20mins cooking. Right. Well, the pasta was a little later than the other components, but that's fine :)

3. If you need extra convincing that my carb intake is still in full swing, then check out this epic lunch:

Cold roasted potatoes and sweet potatoes with spinach, cherry tomatoes, capsicum and a torn-up curry veggie patty. This was so, so good and seriously filled me up! Wasn't hungry for ages after this container of yum!

And of course... nothing beats cold roasted potatoes. Nothing.

4. One thing that doesn't fill me up- normal salads:

Carrot, cucumber, beetroot, bean sprouts, spinach, capsicum, tomato and chickpeas

No matter how much salad I make, I'm still hungry a couple hours later. I was still really craving all the fresh veggies though, so this lunch was also delightful!

5.  Whilst cross country practice is still in full swing, I not only have to pack delightful lunches (see above) but also portable breakfasts and my breakfast of choice for the first few weeks seemed to be choc protein overnight oats- super simple, tasty and filling!

However it wasn't long before I got sick of them. Then I made some truffles- in the freezer overnight and then defrosted in my bag while I trained. Also- so delicious and filling!

To change things up yet again I thought I would make some baked granola bars and they turned out great!! I was so set to post a little recap/ recipe of them however when I was scrolling through my photos, this was the only photo I managed to take:

Yep, I know you're salivating over that alfoil!
So instead here's my pre-cross country training breakfast:

Chopped up banana stirred with greek yoghurt... just what I need for a grueling workout!! (beach running wrecks me!)

6. On the cross country note- I'll have a recap of the big race today soon- I am pretty stoked! (no I didn't win!! ;)

I feel like this post is getting lengthier than planned so I'm going to end the random here. If you still want more, head on over to Spoons to see what everyone else is Thinking about!Bye friends!! :D

WIAW #58 Weird but yum!

Hi there friendly friends! Yup, it's Wednesday again (I can barely believe it!) and I'm currently gearing up for my Semester 1 exams (totally just wrote eggs instead of exams.. anyone else think my brain is fried... like an egg?) which are taking place next week!!

So with a brain filled with facts and trigonometric functions and the names of arteries and veins surrounding the heart and the structural formulas of hydrocarbons... I bring the simplicity and comforting vibes of food, WIAW style! As always thanks to Peas and Crayons for hosting this awesome link-up!

Now let's take a look at everything that found its way into my belly on yesterday!
Pre-breakfast: 5;45 am
I had a cross country meeting early this morning instead of training but I still wanted to get a run in before the big race on Thursday, so it was a bright and early start for me Tuesday morning.
On the food note- I had two dates before a 30 min treadmill run. :)

Breakfast: 6:30 am
After my run (which felt pretty good, caught up on a few blogs too!) I quickly put together my favourite breakfast sandwich with my home-made spelt bread, peanut and coconut butter and sliced banana, toasted in a sandwich press:

Warm, gooey and filling, just the way I like it!

Eaten quite quickly as I didn't factor in my shower time/ getting ready for school after my run.

P.S. It was still pitch-black outside!!
Snack: 11:00am
After running around going to the meeting and then my period 0 (period before school starts) and then my next two periods... I was ready for some fooood!

And as usual my little pot of peas did not disappoint.
Lunch: 1:40 pm
Two more periods down (and a heck of a lot of studying- did I mention how much I love exam time?) the lunch bell finally rang and my stomach jumped for joy:

Lunch prepared the night before: rice plus (rice, buckwheat, wild rice, black sesame seeds and quinoa) with some oven roasted beans and lentils, oven roasted capsicum, mushrooms and zucchini seasoned with pepper.

There was also some spinach at the bottom of this severely squished down container of yum!
Snack: 4:00 pm
Usually snack time is just before I have to rush off to my flute lesson but today I knew I had waaay too much study to do and opted to stay in and put my head down! After I had a snack first of course ;)

A delicious plate of fruit (persimmon and red grapes) with a sunshine yellow mug of soy milk. I love the colour yellow, so happy ;)
Dinner: 6:45 pm
Dinner was a mix-matched of random foods to satisfy all of my wants! In other words; perfection!

2 poached eggs over spinach and sliced avocado, topped with hommus with a side of crispy (slightly burnt ;) roasted potatoes and white sweet potato and a small bowl of plain greek yoghurt. Completely random, completely didn't work together... but separately it was pretty tasty!!

Of course I left the potatoes til' last. Best part of the meal!

After dinner I was still not completely satisfied and so warmed up a mug of almond milk until it was nice and warm, sipping on the sweet, creamy milk whilst I let my brain have a day dream after the day of strenuous exercise (in the form of study)

Aaaand that's what I ate. I will admit I probably needed a bit more fuel but I just didn't have the time/ energy/ mental capacity and all in all I was happy after all the delicious foods I nom-ed on this fine Tuesday!

Your turn:
Were you/ are you a studier? I know I am and I guess in reality that's a good thing!
Do you ever leave the best part of your meal until last? I literally didn't touch the potatoes until everything else was gone. I just wanted to savour them!
Ever like a warm mug of milk to end the day? Bring back childhood memories for me.

That's it from me today, I hope you all ate/ are eating something truly delicious and don't forget to head over to Peas and Crayons if you want to see what everyone else is nom-ing on! Bye!! :D

How competition has reignited the running bug!

 Hello everybody!

Around a month ago I wrote a post about how my running was suffering. Or, more accurately, how I was suffering because of my running. I was running ridiculous distances for a ridiculous amount of time and as a result was starting to feel.. ridiculous. I could tell I was become obsessive, addicted, needy to having to run these looong runs every second day.

At first I felt great. My body was coping fine and this shocked me! I remember my injury from last year after running 6km distances- being told that was too far (and it was, at the time) and thinking; 'Psshh, look what I can run now!'

And then life caught up with me. I couldn't outrun the fatigue, the muscle tiredness, the general dreading of going to bed early to wake up before the sun had even considered rising for the day.It became harder and harder to pull myself from my bed, lace up my shoes and then continue to run. And run. And run!

So I stopped.

Well that's not entirely true. I took a short break and then decreased my mileage significantly in preparation for the cross country race (only 3km) that was coming up for school (did I mention I got Champion girl? I'm sorry, I just can't get over this!!)

And then....

MAGIC! My love for running returned!! HAZAAAA

I was running much shorter distances for training (Tuesday and Friday mornings) however the entire hour of those trainings kicked. my. but! They were so intense. Sprint exercises, beach runs, longer runs, intervals etc. It was challenging... but awesome! I enjoyed waking up bright and early (or, dark and early, as was the case) and looked forward to training and sweating and crying and dying and... haha ok, I'm definitely exaggerating here. Slightly. ;)

I don't know what it is but there is something about a little competition flowing through my veins that pumps up my heart, takes over my legs and brings back that feeling of flying that only running can give me.

It sort of reminds me of my dance concerts. After a year of practicing and practicing the same routines over and over again and doing the same tireless exercises, I felt like stopping dancing for good. Then the end of year concert rolled round, I had the time of my life and my love of dance returned!

These events in my life make me realise and distinguish between when I'm doing the things I'm doing because I love them, or when I'm doing the things I'm doing just to... do them? Running has given me so much, but also taken so much from me and I feel like that has to stop. I want to make a promise to myslef that I will keep- I want to promise myself that if I'm ever at the stage again when I literally dread going out there and pounding the pavement, that I won't because from past experience I know this does me no good!

Right now however? I'm lovin' it! The big interschool cross country carnival is coming up this Thursday and the nerves/ excitement are leaving me with a huge grin plastered across my face. In a team with a bunch of awesome girls, running competitively to represent our school... the running bug is back BABY!

What about you?
Do you have periods in your life when running just isn't happening?
Do you take a break in these periods?
Does competition make things 10000X more awesome/ exciting for you?

I hope you enjoyed reading about my experience with this little hurdle of my life and if you have had the same experience/ have an tips/ comments- feel free to leave them below!! Have a fabulous day friends- do something you love :) Bye !! :D