Adventures in the Kitchen

Happy Memorial Day!!! I hope everyone had a fantastic weekend!

My friend Melissa and I were in need of some gelato last night so we took a trip to Crisan. I got one scoop of oreo gelato and one mini chocolate covered strawberry. Yum.

I had a very low key day today. I started out with about 20 minutes of yoga. And since it was so nice out,  I had really wanted to go for a nice bike ride, but my bike was locked in the shed and I didn’t have the key, so I could not go. 🙁 I opted for a short 2 mile run instead. It was pretty pathetic. I was tired and it was hot. Oh well. I spent the rest of the day reading in the sun and in the kitchen making fun things!

I had bought some quinoa a while ago and finally made something out of it today! I decided dinner should be cranberry walnut quinoa salad. I sort of went off of this recipe, but I didn’t have much of the ingredients, so I kind of just made it up as I went along.

I boiled 1 cup of quinoa in 2 cups of vegetable broth, according to the directions on the bag. Instead of using water I used organic vegetable broth from Hannaford.

I tweaked the recipe a bit and threw in some olive oil, salad spice, craisins, crushed walnuts and four minced cloves of garlic and let it set in the fridge for a couple hours.

I wanted something else interesting to go along with it for dinner so, since I bought some organic vegetable tempeh the other day I decided to make Caitlin’s Tempting Tempeh! And it was a new and interesting dinner! The tempeh was really good! I love maple and cinnamon together and the coconut made it really sweet! It added a nice crunch to the outside. Instead of using actual maple syrup I used a maple praline syrup that had less calories. I’ve never had tempeh before so I don’t really know what it tastes like on its own but I liked it. This was a really quick and easy recipe, I would definitely make it again, so thanks Caitlin! And the quinoa salad was tasty too. I have tons left over!

Dessert was a cup of soy ice cream that was really refreshing since it was so hot out! I also had a glass of the Naked Wine with my dinner! And now the bottle is gone.

I was in the mood to keep baking so I researched some recipes for home made energy bars. I finally found one that had ingredients that I have in my kitchen, so I used this one. I actually ran out of oats (I only used 2 cup instead of 3), so I added in some flax meal and whole wheat flour so it wasn’t so sticky! I baked them for 20 minutes and they came out really mushy (the recipe says that’s okay), so I put them in the fridge to cool them down so I could cut them. They were still pretty soft, so I’m going to keep them in the fridge until I want to eat them. It might be because I didn’t use the right amount of oats.

I tasted part of one and they kind of taste like a cookie bar, which is alright with me! The only thing I would change next time would be to use natural peanut butter instead of regular, and honey instead of the corn syrup (I actually used light karo syrup.) I am not sure how many calories are in them, but I assume probably about 200-250, since there is peanut butter in it, which is okay by me, since I’ll only be eating them before I run. If I can control myself! 🙂  Hopefully they give me energy!