new eats.

I love food, and I always will. Obviously, it's not as easy to naturally love oatmeal and protein shakes as much as I just love egg's benedict, but I do my best by mixing it up a LOT by trying new recipes and ingredients. I have to keep it fun, interesting, and tasting great or I'll lose motivation.

Here are a couple of my new favorites in my adventures in healthy eating:

Steel Cut Oats for breakfast. On Sunday or Monday night, I'll cook a batch that will last Taylor and I the whole week. I originally just followed the recipe on the bag (bob's red mill steel cut oats) which called for 3 cups water, oats, and a pinch of salt. Then I'd add in my mix-ins in the morning. This week, I tried a new recipe for the base oatmeal from Oh She Glows, which is as follows:

1 cup steel cut oats
2 cups unsweetened vanilla almond milk
2 cups water
1 tbsp. ground flaxseed
1 tbsp. chia seeds
2 bananas, mashed
2-3 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon

1. In a medium-sized pot, bring the water and almond milk to a boil. Add in steel-cut oats and a pinch of salt and reduce heat to low.
2. Stir in the mashed banana (mashing it helps disperse the sweetness throughout), ground flax, and chia seeds. Simmer on low, uncovered, for 20-25 minutes, stirring every 5 mins or so.
3. When the oats are creamy and tender, remove from heat and stir in cinnamon to taste and pure vanilla extract. Serve immediately or allow to cool before transferring into air tight containers in the fridge. In the morning, add a splash of milk and reheat in the micro or on the stove-top.

To this base oatmeal my favorite add-ins are a splash of milk, and a tbsp of peanut butter, then either raisins or sliced bananas. I also have done pumpkin vanilla, where I'll add some canned pumpkin, a little vanilla or vanilla protein powder, pumpkin pie spice (love that stuff) and some raisins.

This is such a good breakfast and so filling!!

I also do a lot of smoothies/protein shakes, whatever you want to call them, for breakfast. My new favorite is this pumpkin pie smoothie I found on pinterest!

(gorgeous photography by Molly Hartley, please call 913-375-0807 to book an appointment. I will come to your house and take stunning pictures of messy looking ingredients after you've already used them)

1/2 banana, 1/3 cup pumpkin puree, 1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt , 3/4 cup vanilla almond milk, few shakes of pumpkin pie spice, 4-5 ice cubes, and a scoop of vanilla protein powder. Blend. Eat the other half of the banana while you wait.

It was awesome!

We also tried spaghetti squash for the first time last night and loved it! I decided to go with the microwave method and it worked great. Taylor made turkey spaghetti sauce to serve on the squash, because he is the king of doctoring up food with his incredibly heavy hand with the spice jars. (It's better if I don't observe him doing it, and just enjoy it after the fact.)

Here are the instructions I used:

1. Set the whole spaghetti squash in your microwave oven and cook it on HIGH power for 3 minutes to make it easier to cut it in half. Use a chef's knife to cut the spaghetti squash in half, lengthwise, as soon as you remove it from your microwave.

2. Spoon out and discard the seeds from the center of each spaghetti squash half.

3. Set the cut squash halves on a microwave safe baking dish with the cut side down and add 1/4 cup of water to the dish.

4. Cover the baking dish with plastic wrap and microwave on HIGH power for about 6 minutes per pound.

5. Scrape the cooked spaghetti squash with a fork to loosen and remove the meat from the shell and transfer to a serving dish.

I was shocked at how easy it was, and how good it really did taste! It heated up nicely today for lunch as well.

Hope you enjoy if you try any of these crazy concoctions!