That One Quinoa Disaster (Guest Post)

This post is by Lynette, who blogs at Life’s Better in Yoga Pants. Even though I am a vegetarian, I love how this recipe features bacon! Hopefully you’ll enjoy the nice change. 🙂

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My fellow SPA sister Becca asked me if I was interested in doing a guest post for her blog. Of course I said yes, or you wouldn’t be reading this right now. Figuring out what to write about took a lot of brainstorming. Since Becca mostly writes about running, I decided to write about food. Obviously because you need to fuel your body in order to go for a run. I based my recipe off of The Diva-Dish’s Tomato Basil Quinoa Salad.

Ingredients:

2 c. prepared quinoa

1/2 can chick peas, drained/rinsed

Chopped up tomatoes

2 c. spinach

1 c. packed basil

Bacon

Dressing:

2 TB. balsamic vinegar

1 TB. olive oil

2-3 cloves garlic finely diced

zest of one small lemon

salt and pepper to taste

Parmesan cheese

My first task was to cook the quinoa. Simple yet I failed. Apparently the 2 cups of water per 1 cup of quinoa was way too much so it came out extremely watery. I was told by friends using ¾ cups of water is highly recommended. While the quinoa is cooking/settling, mix up the dressing. Stir together the balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, lemon zest, salt and pepper.

According to The Diva-Dish she used a food processor to chop up the spinach and basil. I preferred to just add it the way it is. But if you want to chop, go for it! This is also where I cooked the bacon. Instead of using a frying pan I tried this new thing by placing 2 pieces of bacon on a baking pan, tossing it in the oven, THEN turning it on at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. No oil splashing in my face and it drained a lot of the fat.

After you cut the bacon into bite size pieces, in a large bowl combine quinoa, beans, tomatoes, chopped greens, bacon and dressing.

Lastly, top with Parmesan cheese, cover and place in the refrigerator until you’re ready to serve.

Since my quinoa was a major fail and I didn’t want to waste the mixture, I ate it on crackers such as wheat thins or Kashi. It was actually pretty great! This recipe I’m sure is 100% fantastic if you don’t have a quinoa fail. It’s great for a meal or snack and this recipe is enough for a couple of days. For more information on me, or if you have any questions, check out my site at LifesBetterInYogaPants.blogspot.com.

Xo,

Lynette

Superbowl Weekend

I realized I never shared some of the fun we had this past weekend, since I was writing about the Tackle The Miles Virtual 5k yesterday.

Backing up…

Friday I left work at noon and met up with my mom. We drove down to the Philly suburbs to see a concert. We had a great time taking our time driving down (and stopping for lunch along the way). The concert was great, dinner was great, and vegging in the hotel room afterwards until I drifted off to sleep was great as well. What is it about those hotel beds?!

Saturday morning we both pretty much slept until we woke up, which seems to be about 7:30 for me lately. Lame right? Anyhow, after a quick shower and breakfast we started our drive home. Along the way we stopped at some outlets and I managed to pick up a new Coach purse for work (it was $115, original price $350!). I have been waiting to buy a new purse and was so glad to finally get the opportunity to do so, and at such a steal of a price! I also grabbed two tops and a new pair of jeans at the GAP outlet, and some chocolate truffles at the Lindt outlet. YUM.

We got home around 5 on Saturday, after again taking our time shopping, stopping to eat and enjoying ourselves. I love road trips where you don’t have to rush home!

Sunday revolved of course, around the Super Bowl. When I woke up Sunday morning I saw that it had snowed a lot the previous night, and the temperature was hovering around 18F.  I had 8 miles planned so I took it downstairs to the treadmill. 8 miles on the treadmill was far from ideal, but I watched The Switch on my Kindle Fire while I ran, and half way through ran upstairs to refill my water. It helped to break it up at least. I felt great when I was done!

I threw veggies, beans and broth in the crockpot to make a vegetarian version of this awesome Olive Garden Pasta Fagoli and then the hubby and I got to work on a fun project.

Every year our friends have a Groundhogs Day Party where they encourage people to bring a food shaped like an animal. Last year we made Turtle Pizzas. This year I searched on Pinterest (the perfect source for ideas for this type of thing). We decided to make these Silly Snake Dogs. We changed the recipe slightly to make them a little simpler. We used crescent rolls instead of breadsticks (we couldn’t find the breadsticks at our grocery store). We also used cloves for the eyes and carrot matchsticks for the tongues since I had a bunch leftover from the Pasta Fagoli.

The hubby came up with the creative name: Snakes on a Plain…Dog. We also had some made with veggie dogs too. They came out really cute. I swear though, next year we are taking the easy route and buying animal shaped sandwich cutters or something.

After the Groundhog’s Day party, we spent the rest of the day eating the soup from the crockpot and watching the SuperBowl. Can I just say, Beyonce looked awesome! Regardless of it she was lip-syncing or not, I love how she embraces her curves and isn’t afraid to show a little sweat!

A few easy, great tasting recipes

I’m off to Bird In Hand for packet pickup for the race today. In the meantime I wanted to share some recipes that I’ve had a lot of recent success with.

I don’t consider myself smart in the kitchen at all. It’s hard for me to just “throw some things in a pot” and wait to see what happens. In addition, I don’t have a lot of time to cook from scratch every night after work. But it is important for me and the hubby to eat healthy, fresh (and obviously vegetarian) foods whenever possible.

I’ve come across three great recipes – two of which are relatively healthy – that I wanted to share.

Loaded Quinoa Veggie Burgers

Recipe and image from Can You Stay For Dinner?

These Quinoa Burgers were my first try at making homemade veggie burgers! They were super easy to make, full of fresh ingredients (black beans, quinoa, carrots, scallions). They tasted great, and had a slight crunch from the quinoa which the hubby and I both loved. We ate them with melted cheese, and typical buger condiments. We skipped the buns though – they weren’t needed. These are a great week night meal.

Slow Cooker Beef & 3 Bean Chili

Recipe and image from The Chic Life

I am a huge fan of slow cooker meals. I love to put them together on a Sunday morning so that Sunday’s dinner is taken care of early in the day, and there’s tons of leftovers for weekday lunches. Since the original recipe uses ground beef, I just substituted in Quorn beef crumbles. The beef crumbles were delicious, and the tons of beans gave the chili a lot of staying power.

Now for something sweet…

Carmelitas

Recipe and image from Lulu the Baker

Oh my gosh. These are awesome. I made these last weekend and was a little nervous. I have never worked with caramel before so I had no idea how they would turn out. But they were quick to make (the hardest part is being patient while the caramels melt into the heavy cream), and taste DELICIOUS. They may not be as healthy as the other two dishes but everyone needs some sweets in their life. 🙂

A weekend full of sweat

Good Afternoon 🙂

I hope your weekend was fabulous!

Mine was pretty stinkin’ good. I have no complaints!

Friday I met a friend for dinner and drinks. My drink was super fruity and not too strong which was exactly what I was in the mood for.

Saturday I spent most of the day at a church retreat.

I’m not a super religious person but I was glad that my mom convinced me to go. It was a great way to kind of “reset”. I came out of it feeling really really refreshed. So refreshed that I decided to bake… or rather no-bake.

I made No Bake Granola Balls. They are awesome. I found them thanks to Pinterest (what else is new…) The original recipe is here. I made a few slight modifications – I used a little less oats than the recipe calls for because I ran out, and I used ground flax seed instead of hemp seed. They came out DELICIOUS, healthy and they fill you up to0. They are perfect for a snack when you need a little something sweet. I will definitely be making these again… and again.

Sunday was the day of sweating lots of sweat! In the morning I went for a long run with my dad – 5 miles in a little over an hour. The run was awesome – it was one of those runs where you feel amazing, and I was on such an endorphin high when I got home. It was great. 🙂 After some foam rolling, a shower and eating lunch, I headed out again for a Zumbathon! This is my second one and it was a blast! Though by the end my legs were definitely feeling the effects of my double work out day. When I got home I had plans to make some soup for dinner but instead the hubby and I decided to order a pizza. 🙂 It was the perfect end to a really good day.

Here’s what my workouts this week look like:
Monday – Hot Power Yoga
Tuesday – Zumba
Wednesday – 4 mile easy run
Thursday – Rest
Friday – 4 mile tempo run
Saturday – Rest
Sunday – 6 mile long run

I hope your week is off to a good start!

Turtle Pizzas & Andes Mint Chocolate Cookies

Saturdays are the best day ever!

But first lets back up.

The groundhog day party was so fun, and our food was a huge success. For our food-shaped-like-an-animal we made Turtle Pizzas! We took some pre-made pizza dough and shaped it into small turtle shapes.

We covered the “shells” with the pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese and chopped green peppers. Then we put an olive sliced in half on the head for eyes

.We popped them in the oven and they came out so nicely!

They looked cute and tasted awesome too!

Yesterday was an amazing rest day on the exercise front. I needed a day off and it felt great to take one!

This morning I woke up and ran for an hour. I felt good and there were some great parts of the run where I definitely felt strong and a little bit fast.

After running and a shower I decided to bake another Pinterest find. Andes mint chocolate cookies. They go from looking like this…

To this!

YUM. They are so easy to make too (only four ingredients). They taste a little bit like thin mints but are super fluffy from the cake mix and thickness of the cookie.

Well, I’m off to watch some stuff on the DVR and relax!

Enjoy your Saturday!