The Ballad

How do I love thee weekend?  Let me count the ways!  How are you doing today lovelies?  I slept in till 9:00 this morning and I've been enjoying the day ever since!

I started with a breakfast of a protein pancake, the ultimate indicator that it is in fact the weekend!

• 1/2 cup oats, 1/2 scoop flax, 1/2 scoop protein powder, 1/8 tsp baking powder, 1 eggwhite, new milk substitute
  
• My icing was plain nonfat yogurt with cocoa powder and mango on top
• Perfection

The new milk substitute I'm referring to is this guy:

Trader Joe's Organic Whole Grain drink.  
This drink is similar in calories and profile to almond milk and tastes like almond milk as well.  I don't have a high tolerance for dairy, so this is a great product to use in cooking.  I don't usually drink milk straight up unless I'm trying to fall asleep (it helps!), but if I did, I'd go for this guy.
Along with my breakfast I had a homemade Americano:

We spent the morning at Costco trying not to intentionally run people over with our carts.  I have to exercise my patience in Costco but it's worth it to get our goods.  A girl can't eat without the same exact vegetables she eats every day of her life!

Once unpacking and unloading, I set to work using some of my ingredients and had these potatoes in mind.  I swear I'm not stalking this blogger, but Miss How Sweet It Is knows her stuff!
Here is the finished product:

I modified the recipe by using fingerling potatoes (they make the perfect wedges already) and used paprika, cumin, salt and pepper for spice and threw in one diced clove of garlic for extra stanky breath.  They came out perfectly crunchy and will make a great side for the lunches and dinners hubby eats!

This recipe was not for lunch, I ate this instead:

I had leftover pumpkin spice puree from the ingredients I used to spike some brownies for extra fiber appeal.  Like dried fruit, I also think pumpkin puree will go bad unless I eat it right away.  I mixed some up with cocoa powder, cinnamon, and plain nonfat yogurt.  I also topped it with the rest of my granola.  Also, imagine spoonfuls of raw almond butter on my spoon.  Hubby told me that this looked too creative for his palate.  That means it looked nasty and I loved it.  More for me.


The Ballad
For hubby's lunch, I made an old favorite that doesn't really have a recipe but holds a special place in my heart.  Back when we first started dating, the hubby set out to train for a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament.  For those of you who don't know, this is a blend of submission wrestling.  He was already in crazy hot stud shape, but he needed to cut another 10 pounds for the tournament to get into the upper limit of the lower weight class.  Wrestlers do this to get a competitive advantage of being bigger than their opponents. 
One of our favorite meals to make together was Big Salad, a Bomb Salad, or The Ballad.  The Ballad is a distant cousin of the Mama Pea's Hugh Jass salad, but took on a life of its own and we basically used it to clean out the fridge and make enough food to feed a hungry wrestler and his sidekick (me).  The rules were simple- veggies and protein!

Today I got a request for a Ballad and I was happy to make it:

• Baby spinach
• Hardboiled egg
• Black beans
• Corn
• Steamed broccoli
• Baby bell peppers
• Parmesan crusted chicken
• Guacamole
• Onion cheese from Whole Foods
• Cashews
• TJ's pear vinaigarette dressing

In case you were wondering he kicked majuh ass in that tournament.  I take credit for for each and every Ballad he ate.