It’s Never Too Late to Be Green

“I don’t want to run anymore. I’ll tell you everything.”

“I wish you would.”

Great lines. Great Movie. Any idea what they’re from?

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So… I procrastinated, and now I have an excel Personal Budget due in my MIS class tomorrow. It’s mostly done except for some reorganization and minor recalculations. However, this results in me probably being even more scattered (and possibly more chatty?) than usual. I’m especially frustrated because my teacher didn’t really give us a desired format, just shouted out some important parts and told us to “create it from scratch.” Crueler words were never spoken.

 

But alas, at least I have something to smile about. Actually, this is probably my favorite day to post every single week. Does anyone else feel that way about What I Ate Wednesday? No matter what else is going on, I love reading all of the WIAWs and getting to chat with some awesome ladies! Plus, the foodie goodness doesn’t hurt either 😉

I didn’t post any special recipes for last week in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day (I know it’s the cool girl thing to say “St. Patty’s Day” but I’ve never heard it called that before this year, so call me old-fashioned!). There were many great green recipes floating around WIAW world, but since it is still March, I’m not late yet.

I also figured what with Winter being over tomorrow (or today depending on when you read this), what better a time to finally post a recipe for soup? It’s “souper” simple. Baha. And is really rather plain Jane, but I just love the combination of vegetables. It’s probably one of my favorites, second only to a combination with kabocha.

Green, Mean, Fighting Soup Machine

High protein, Allergen-Free, Grain/Gluten/Wheat-Free, Nut/Coconut-Free, Egg-Free, GAPS/Paleo Friendly

1 generous serving

Ingredients:

• 1 cup chicken (or beef), cooked
• 1 zucchini
• 1/2 cup sweet peas, frozen or fresh
• 2 cups homemade chicken (or beef) stock (storebought would work too)
• Seasonings: sea salt, fresh rosemary

Directions:

1. Peel and slice the zucchini. Add all of the ingredients to a small pot and heat on high until boiling. 
2. Once the soup is boiling, cover and reduce to low to simmer for 20-30 minutes. 
3. Remove from the heat and let cool for 10-15 minutes. Pour into bowl and serve with sea salt and fresh rosemary sprinkled on top.

Note: This recipe has a good combination of fat from the broth, carbohydrates from the vegetables, and protein from the meat. If you use store bought broth, consider drizzling olive oil or coconut oil onto your soup after it is cooked so that you don’t lose out on all of those nutritious fatty acids! Also, I peel my zucchini because the skin is hard for me to digest. If you don’t have digestive issues, keep the skin on and wish it before slicing.

Shared on: Whole Foods Wednesday, Allergy-Free Wednesday, Gluten Free Wednesdays, Real Food Wednesdays, Wheat-Free Wednesday

Also, in the spirit of everything green, I want to share a few of the cool “green,” eco-friendly diy projects that I’ve spotted on various websites in the past few weeks:

Ombre-Painted Mason Jars for Storing Things:

Spray Painted Cheese Grater = Earring Holder:

More Mason Jar Love with Homemade Soap Dispensers:

Crocheted T-Shirt Rug:

It’s never too late to be green, even if March 17th is past. We still have another week of WIAW to go! 🙂

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Do you know what movie those lines at the beginning are from?

What green food did you concoct to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?

Have you ever made any eco-friendly projects? Share!

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Look soon for an upcoming recipe that I made this past weekend:

Sweets for the Sweetest (WIAW)

Thanks for all of your super thoughtful (and funny comments) on my Marvelous in My Monday post on practical Christmas presents. If you missed it, check it out here to read some ridiculously offensive gifts!

Now to run in the completely opposite direction, I was nominated for The Super Sweet Blogging Award by Liv Lives Life and Scribbles and Sprinkles. I’m so grateful whenever I’m nominated for an award like this. First of all, it makes me happy to know that people are reading and enjoying my blog. Second, it gives me an excuse to fill out fun surveys!

The rules:

1. Give credit to the person who chose to nominate you.
2. Answer the “Super Sweet” questions.
3. Nominate a “Baker’s Dozen (13) blogs.

Super Sweet Questions:

1. Cookies or Cake? How about both? I would pick cookie dough cake, like this one I found on foodgawker:

2. Chocolate or Vanilla? I’m a vanilla girl through and through.

3. What is your favorite sweet treat? Ice cream. No matter the season.

4. When do you crave sweet things the most? When don’t I crave sweet things? I would say that during the morning and at night though I dream most often of pies and muffins and cookies and ice cream.

5. If you had a sweet nickname, what would it be? Whatever I say is going to seem cheesy or self-centered, so for your sake and mine I’ll refrain. (If you’d like to make up a nickname for me though, that would totally be acceptable!)

My nominations:

• Alex @ The Run Within
• Jessie @ Jessie Loves to Run
• Di @ Life of Di
• Hollie @ Fueled by LOLZ
• Sarah @ Picky Runner
• Caitlin @ Chasing Chels
• Chelsie @ Cupcake Inclined
• Carla @ Real Into
• Meghan @ Clean Eats Fast Feets
• P @ Will Study for Food
• Sunnie @ Modern Girl Nutrition
• Jess @ Jessie Bear
• Meghan @ After the Ivy League

Now onto the rest of my “sweet” post involving WIAW, which is ironically not very sweet.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m on the GAPS diet or “healing protocol” as I like to call it. I dislike the negative connotations with the word diet. In no way am I restricting my calories with this plan. If anything, I’m eating more than I have been able to in a long time.

I haven’t posted many pictures, because as you could see on New Year’s Eve, all of my meals basically consist of soup. Broth, vegetables, and meat to be specific. Throw in some coconut oil, olive oil, sauerkraut and some supplements, and you have my grocery list.

Because it is What I ATE Wednesday though, I’m not going to post what other people ate like I have been doing lately (even if their food is way more exciting than mine), but I’ll share a few photos of what I’ve actually been eating.

For my main meals I eat soup with a broth base, either chicken or beef as the meat, and some form of squash like zucchini or acorn. Following the GAPS protocol I also add some type of fat like coconut oil or olive oil, sea salt, and a tsp of sauerkraut juice.

Soup #1: Chicken and Zucchini Noodle Soup

Soup #2: Beef and Squash Soup

For my snacks I cook some type of vegetable with broth. I drink the broth separate with some sauerkraut juice. On top of the cooked vegetables I melt some coconut oil and sprinkle sea salt.

Snack #1: Glazed Carrots

Snack #2: Boiled Acorn Squash

To make the acorn squash I have to peel before cooking because it’s not organic:

Acorn squash is SO HARD to peel though. Look at all of those tiny pieces!

Unfortunately I scarfed down the cooked squash before I had the chance to take a picture, but that’s okay because I have another award to share:

I also was nominated by Liv Lives Life for Blog of the Year 2012.

The rules:

1. Select another blog or other blogs who deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award.
2. Write a blog post and tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.
3. Include a link back to this page Blog of the Year 2012 Award at the Thought Palette and provide these ‘rules’ in your post (please don’t alter the rules or the badges!).
4. Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them.
5. You can now also join our Facebook group – click ‘like’ on this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience.
6. As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…

Nominations:

Same as above!

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Here’s to another great year and many more WIAWs to come!

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Questions for you:

1. Answer one of the sweet blogger survey questions above.
2. Are you a fan of coconut oil yet?
3. Technological question for you all. Whenever I upload and/or try to edit this soup picture, the bottom part gets strangely colored and pixelated. What do you think would cause this?

Things I’ll Never Know I’ll Never Know (And Another FFF!)

If you missed my last two posts, check out my WIAW from Wednesday and my Gluten-Free Vegan Banana Bread from Thurdsday.

Wow! This will be my third post this week. That has got to be some kind of record for me.

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One of the blogs that I follow, Carrots N’ Cake, had an awesome post today about The Mindset List, a list created “to reflect the world view of entering first year students.”

As a student of the Class of 2016, here are a few of the things that they listed for me:

3. The Biblical sources of terms such as “Forbidden Fruit,” “The writing on the wall,” “Good Samaritan,” and “The Promised Land” are unknown to most of them.

I have heard of every. single. one. of. these. stories. Unless you don’t go to church I think you’d have heard of all of these stories too.

13. They can’t picture people actually carrying luggage through airports rather than rolling it.

Ugh. I wish rolling suitcases were never invented. They make me feel weak and incapable of carrying my own things. I normally just carry the darn thing. It brings so much attention when you roll over a bump or crack in the floor!

15. While still fans of music on radio, they often listen to it on their laptops or replace it with music downloaded onto their MP3s and iPods.

Actually, I don’t really listen to music very often, but when I do, it is always on the radio. Never on my iPod touch. There are more important things to take up space on my beloved Apple gadget. Like myfitnesspal. Or Christmas Cookie Decorator…. (Yes, I do realize the  irony of those statements).

20. Exposed bra straps have always been a fashion statement, not a wardrobe malfunction to be corrected quietly by well-meaning friends.

If my friends let me walk around with my bra straps hanging out, I would be so angry. This is still a major wardrobe malfunction in my opinion, and I will always tell someone.

26. Having made the acquaintance of Furby at an early age, they have expected their toy friends to do ever more unpredictable things.

As stated previously, Furbies creep me out. However, one Christmas I did get this awesome electronic dog who could basically do whatever I wanted. She was my first real pet. I was so upset when she broke went to heaven.

27. Outdated icons with images of floppy discs for “save,” a telephone for “phone,” and a snail mail envelope for “mail” have oddly decorated their tablets and smart phone screens.

I remember floppy discs! I wasn’t born yesterday…. I’ve never actually used one, but I can recall the dozens of floppy disks that would scatter my Professor Dad’s desk at any given moment. And sometimes I would even get to keep an “old” one because I thought that they were so cool!

47. Before they purchase an assigned textbook, they will investigate whether it is available for rent or purchase as an e-book.

Again, no. I cannot stand doing homework or reading textbooks on the internet. Hard-copies are and always will be my favorite mode of book reading.

56. They have always enjoyed school and summer camp memories with a digital yearbook.

Seriously? Where do they come up with stuff? I was on the Yearbook Staff in High School, officially in charge of some of the “Club” pages. Yes, we did the work on a computer, and yes, it was mostly in color, but NO. NO. NO. We do not have a digital yearbook. That would have been awesome!

59. They know many established film stars by their voices on computer-animated blockbusters.

Yes. This is a constant competition between my younger brother and me. Whoever names the actor first wins is just automatically cooler. It really impresses my parents when I can pick out an actor just by their voice from the other room…

68. They watch television everywhere but on a television.

True. I don’t have a television in my dorm room so I am forced to watch delayed episodes on the likes of Netflix and Hulu. Oh the horror!

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Today just also happens to be Friday, and another weekend that I am going home. This time, it’s to pick up a few things that I forgot last weekend (tennis shoes and baking powder), and also to get my dreaded allergy shot (for environmental allergies).

Since my first part of this post had nothing to do with food, and since this is a food-type blog, I figured that I should do another Friday Food Finds!

To read more about FFF, here are my past three previous posts:

Friday Food Finds #1 (Mission Accomplished)

Friday Food Finds #2

Friday Food Finds #3

First up is a simple recipe that I used to make all of the time before my food allergies. It comes from Spoonful of Sugar Free. I’ll probably replace the cocoa with carob powder and try to make it vegan. Bitter chocolate cake:

Something off of Neverhomemaker’s awesome list of pumpkin recipes. Maybe a variation on her pumpkin lasagna?

Some type of recipe from Chockohlawtay because this girl knows her stuff! Check out her post today on her food allergies and let’s gaze fondly at one of her cookie dough recipes:

The last recipe idea for today features vegetables because I feel obligated to share something green and nutritious:

Zucchini bread muffins (with some substitutions) from Talk Less-Say More:

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Any recipes that have caught your eye lately? Let me know!

It’s really hard for me to find recipes that don’t need adapting, so any tips are appreciated. Here are my criteria just in case you have a recipe in mind: MUST BE egg-free, milk-free, gluten-free (no oats), peanut-free, corn-free, celery-free, tomato-free. For the time being, I am also avoiding all nuts/oil/seeds, beans, and a few fruits/veggies that cause me stomach problems.

If you find a recipe that meets some or most of that criteria, post a comment on here! Also, if you see something SUPER AWESOME that is a great “concept” post a comment. I love experimenting in the kitchen!

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Questions:

Go to the Mindset List and find the year that you graduated (or will graduate) from college. Pick one of the numbers and report back here as to why it is totally TRUE or totally FALSE!

What are some of your Friday Food Finds? Haven’t really thought about it? How about next week you post a FFF post, link back here and we can have a food party!!