Local or Organic?

I've mentioned in a few other posts that I am taking a class this semester called Contemporary Food Movements. As a vegetarian and self proclaimed foodie I love the topics that we study in this course, however much of the reading does cause a certain amount of indignation.

Today I read an article about corporation organic food. Many organic companies that began as grass roots and local have been bought by large corporations that continue the homegrown story in order to sell products. For instance, Kashi is actually owned by Kellogs, Cascadian Farms by Gerneral Mills, Horizon Organic by Dean's and Odwalla by none other that Coca Cola.

Personally, I don't think this information will change the way I shop though it may cause a bit of guilt knowing that the family farm story on my box of cereal is a straight lie.

For lunch I wanted to try a little something new with my salad

Spinach, raw tofu, cucus,mushrooms,apple, raisins and walnuts with white wine vin and garlic salt. Delicious! I also had a chewy kashi bar... ironically.

And got some great mail today!! 26 oz of almond butter (I was NOT about to go a whole month without it, sorry) and the new and my first Clean Eating magazine... I love today.

Due to my mail, snack was a given

And for dinner I made a ROCKING sandwich. Whole wheat pita with hummus, string cheese, tomato sauce, green olives and italian seasoning.

Like a Mediterranean pita pizza pocket, so good! Plus some steamed broc on the side.

Currently enjoying some PB toast and raisins and maybe a handful of cereal for dessert, see you tomorrow beautiful people!

Peace!

Caitlin

What's more important to you, local or organic?

Cure for the Common Cold

*If you are a Beloit student who happens to be reading this, please contact me via facebook or my school e-mail*

Take two parts oatmeal

For breakfast and lunch

One part 3 hour nap

One part netflix instant watch

Every foodie should watch this movie... prepare to be insanely jealous

One english paper draft (very optional)

One thousand plus cups of green tea with lemon

100000000 bottles of water

1 yoga class (if you're feeling well enough, which I was!)

2 rounds of neti pot

I am already feeling SO much better than this morning! Still super tired but an early bedtime should clear that right up! I also got my taste for veggies back! YAY!

pre-yoga toast w/ cashew butter

Dinner hummus, cucs, dijon and spinach in a whole wheat tortilla

steamed cauliflower, carrots and ketchup on the side

dessert was this x3... I should NOT be allowed to keep my favorite cereal around.

I've also realized I didn't set any April goals!! Well I did in my head but I need to tell you all... in the morning =).

Peace!

Caitlin

What's your favorite cereal?

What are some of your April goals, inspire me!

Fear and BPS

Have you seen Matt's post today? It's a great article, check it out!

In addition to my cold, this afternoon I got hit HARD with a case of BPS

Bottomless Pit Syndrome

I think a combo of biking and hustling around campus causing my normal raging appetite plus my body fighting this stupid cold made me feel that enough food didn't exist in the world...

For lunch I packed a hummus,avocado, nooch sandwich with spinach, dijon and tomato. Plus some grapes and dill pickle cashews

Snacks included

this amazing combo of pumpkin, the rest of the PB2, stevia, pumpkin pie spice and a scoop of cottage cheese... holy yumtastic!

Followed by 2 mini lara bars, a handful of trail mix, a slice of sesame bread with cashew butter, a handful of dates and a few spoons of nut butter.... slight satisfaction.

Eventually I just decided to have dinner<-- yes DINNER not breakfast for dinner!

One of my absolute favorite foods growing up was mac and cheese. In times of restriction this became a major fear food for me. Probably because when I was younger I would kill the whole box as an after school "snack"... yea.

A lot of mac and cheese does not have the greatest nutritional stats but a while ago I grabbed a box of Annie's natural organic, the ingredient list is really legit so I felt good about it!

I jazzed it up inspired by Gabriela with spinach, broccoli and mushrooms. I also added a scoop of yogurt recommended per the box and it was super creamy!

Plus a great amount of black pepper and hot sauce, how I've always done it and clearly always will! It was perfect, comforting and absolutely delicious. I am already excited to have leftovers for lunch! Mac and Cheese, I will never abandon you again.

Plus another piece of toast with sunflower butter and fruit spread.

*Also, I really want to do a Q&A vlog but I don't have any Q's! Please feel free to ask anything about running, weights or myself and I'll answer what I can!*

Peace!

Caitlin

Do you or have you ever had fear foods?

How to you jazz up pre-made meals?

Full Day

Did you see my post this morning? I hope it provided some kind of insight for some of you out there! I didn't post breakfast this morning because I normally eat while I post but today I had a breakfast "date"! That's in quotes because really I was meeting with my bio group to finish a paper we have due tomorrow.

I did have a pita with PB2 and fruit spread before hitting an interval bike workout. 10 min. warmup, 50 min. intervals, 10 min cool down.

I thought about packing some yogurt and cereal in an almost empty PB jar but instead I challenged myself with something I really wanted! We met at my schools coffee shop so I got

Whole wheat bagel topped with butter and cinnamon and a small iced skim latte for protein

Yes that is a checker board on the table

Yes I go to a tiny liberal arts hippie school... I love it =)

Surprisingly the bagel kept me way fuller than even nut butter does! Maybe it has something to do with all of the crack butter toffee almonds that made there way into my mouth last night.

For lunch I packed a small spinach salad with strawberries, cucumbers, a big scoop of cottage cheese and wheat germ.

The star of the show though was these cinnamon roasted chickpeas with almond butter! Last night I roasted 1/2 a can of chickpeas in cinnamon and topped them with about a tablespoon of almond butter when they were still hot. I put them in the fridge overnight and had an amazing lunch treat!

Snack was the rest of my hummus =( mixed with a little nooch and baby carrots.

Dinner was an omelette. I can't believe I made it until Thursday without an omelette! It was actually just two eggs and some garlic, for whatever reason i haven't been feeling cheese lately.

With roasted broccoli and sesame toast with almond and peanut butter (you know I can't choose) and honey.

For dessert I had a fun bowl of PB2, quaker squares some banana and dark chocolate.

I also had two more spoons of nut butter and a little more cereal.

Quote of the day taken from a facebook status of one of PerMa's friends:

"Keep walking towards it"

Peace!

Caitlin

What are you currently walk towards? The status of recovered =)

What's your favorite non-dessert dessert food? Cereal or nut butter! Or both!

Project New Nutrition: Week 1 Update

So this was my first official week of Project New Nutrition. Here are the major updates.

Success

1) My clothes have started to fit a little more snugly! They are not too small because most have them had gotten too big so now I guess I should say my clothes are fitting!

2) I have done a fairly good job not calorie counting or measuring. I have only measured for recipes and oats. I have tried a couple of times to count calories in my head but I have beaten those thoughts down.

3) I have been having many fear foods more frequently

4) I have more energy Goal Success: I curled 15 LBS on Friday morning!

5) I went out on Friday night for the first time all school year

Now that my clothes are fitting again and I am feeling so much better I am not making it so much of a point to get as many calories as possible in the day. I am not opposed to gaining a little more weight but it is no longer a primary goal.

Needs Work/ What's Next

1) Honestly, I am still working on following my hunger cues. For the weeks when I was trying to gain I simply ate all of the time. I am now transitioning to not counting calories and trying to maintain my weight... something I have never done.

2) I am trying to figure out what works best for me in terms of big meals vs. a lot of snacks. I'm thinking it really is going to depend on the day, which classes I can have snack in etc.

3) I am having a problem incorporate desserts into not gaining and not counting. I do not want to restrict myself but I feel that if I am not counting I'm not sure if I have "room" for dessert. Something I really need to overcome. *I'm just going to try and remind myself "moderation"*

4) I keep going back and forth with fat talk and positive self image talk. Sometimes I look in the mirror and really think I do look better and sometimes I think that all of my "hard work" was undone so easily.

I did a lot of home work and blog reading today... hey there rainy Sunday.

For lunch I had an awesome wrap of avocado, hummus, spinach and artichoke hearts. Along with an apple, cottage cheese and cinnamon.

I decided that I was for sure going to yoga at 4. Around 3 I thought I could get some reading done during a really easy bike workout. Since it was going to be an easy though long workout I had a hearty snack to get me through. Sesame toast with a bunch of almond butter and a little jelly.

By the way, I brought this back from spring break... I don't want to turn my back on Barney Butter but this stuff is GOOD.

My hearty snack totally did the job! I was only a little hungry when I got out of yoga and my friend was selling green tea smoothies for a fundraiser for Japan so I stopped and got a mango one. It was just green tea and frozen fruit but really good!

For dinner I made a really quick mango-veggie stir fry in a tahini sauce. And had it with a side of brown rice. I'll post the recipe tomorrow!

I'll probably have something with nut butter a little later =)

Peace!

Caitlin

What do you do on rainy days?

Opinions on rest days vs. "recovery workouts"?

How I Jam

Recently my workout music had not been doing it for me. In fact there have been a few time where I've biked for an hour with no entertainment... painful. The other day I splurged (just a little) on iTunes and got some new tunes. I made a new playlist and it totally powered me through my run this morning!

In a running song I look for:

A good beat: Ke$ha does a great job with this

Motivation: 'Till I Collapse, Heart of a Champion and Lose Yourself are my favorites.

Something fun: Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga... enough said

Snackage

Triscuts, banana and dark chocolate dreams plus the rest of the banana

un-pictured apple and a few almonds

Dinner was my take on Carrie's lucious bowl! Do you read her blog? She's amazing!

Spinach, mushrooms, broccoli and yellow pepper topped with a vegan boca. I made a sauce out of tomato sauce, hummus, red pepper flakes and garlic salt all mixed with some water and microwaved, it turned out really well! The sprinkled it all with nooch.

For grain contribution I had a brown rice wrap with a little fruit spread on the side, straight off my desk... all class.

Peace!

Caitlin

What do you look for in workout music?

What's top on your playlist right now? Born this way! I know I'm not alone!

Mail Time

Personal Catch-Up

Do you ever feel like your life is as much work as your work/ school life? My afternoon class was canceled today giving me an extra two hours. Instead of relaxing I celebrated the fact that I could finally catch up with things in MY life instead of school. I did things like

E-mail my grandparents and some friends

wash my hair/shave my legs

Read your blogs (finally!)

Update my iTunes

Paint my nails

and even some homework that's not due for a while so I wasn't stressing

About 30 minutes after breakfast I had this (granola crisps and PB)

Then 45 minutes later I was starving but I couldn't eat my lunch because I had some stuff to do so right before I left I made an almond butter and jelly wrap to go.

I was into seeing people celebrating before noon =). There was also a guy with a beer at 8:30 this morning... in the gym... lifting weights, I laughed out loud.

For lunch I broke the eat your colors rule to honor the holiday! I had a huge salad with spinach, asparagus, cucumber, broccoli, lima beans, sweet peas, snap peas and avocado. Dressed in dijon, white wine vin and garlic salt. It was a very good salad!

One thing I had to do this morning required me to go to the dining hall where I found fresh made, vegan, gluten free chocolate chip cookies! I totally had to grab one to go with lunch. It was delicious! A great soft texture, sweetened (at least partly) with honey and I even detected some banana. Points for my school!

Snack plate

I had more crackers and raisins than this, the crackers were dipped in cream cheese right out of the container

With dips on the side

I've also had

a big handful of cereal, more strawberries

A few handfuls of butter toffee almonds (does anyone know if I can make these? They are too good to not have around 100% of the time)

some cashews

while I had the peanut butter out some sweet potato chips made their way into it as did the rest of my pretzels (can we talk about how I killed a 3/4 pound bag of pretzels from Sunday until today... no shame)

One of my cookies from last night

Told you I've been eating a lot!

Dinner was vegan "cheesy" Mediterranean lentils (recipe posted tomorrow!) with sweet potatoes roasted with evoo, apple cider vinegar cinnamon and paprika and cucumbers with more hummus.

Peace!

Caitlin

What would you do with two extra hours?

How was your holiday?

Hump, Sun, Sandwich, Cookies, Boys

It took mw a hot minute to get over the hump today! Running back and forth between the library and my room to get my report to print, hustling to class and work meeting all after breakfast and before lunch! Lunch was half of this bag

Beefed up with eggs, honey roasted peanuts and a bunch of veggies drowned in Bragg's liquid aminos. It was an awesome combo, like fried rice! Plus an orange. See what's under my lunch?

Grass! I ate outside in the sun today!! My friend Patrick found me alone doing homework over lunch as usual so he and his roast beef/frito sandwich actually joined me!

One snack plate of a few. I also had the same snack as yesterday because it was so good and some sweet potato chips.

Dinner was a veggie chik'n pattie (the grilled kind instead of breaded like a normally get, I really liked it!). On sesame toast with cheese, hummus, tomato, dijon and ketchup. Best sandwich I have made in a good while!

Also a spinach, red pepper, mushroom salad with superfruit berry dressing and a pickle.

mmmm.... cheese

Main dessert, more nuts and chocolate were had as well. I've gotten SO much work done this week that around 7:45 I really felt it un-necessary to keep going to I took more advantage of my new toaster!

Cookies!! Basically this recipe but slightly adapted because I don't have everything. I used some stevia and a mix of agave and honey with more than it calls for in place of both sugars. I also changed the mix-ins to dark chocolate chips, raisins and cinnamon. I had 1/2 of one and they are good! I actually could have used more PB but still delish!

I only had 1/2 of one because I'm hoping to save the majority in case someone is interested in them. One of the benefits of Project New Nutrition is a re-newed interest I have all of a sudden been having in boys ( I was way not into for a while). My lunch friend today is one example but a better one is my bio buddy, super cute and on the track team (runner!!!!). I have bio again Friday so some of the cookies have to last until then, I hope he's not allergic to PB.... which would be a deal breaker anyway!

Watching the new Glee and about to eat probably a few mugs of cereal, hopefully will be on a more regular blogging schedule soon! Love you all!!

Peace!

Caitlin

What's your favorite cookie to eat and bake? I love to bake peanut butter cookies and sugar cookies that are fun shapes. I have recently been craving shortbread so that is clouding my favorite eats answer.

How did you like this weeks Glee?