Simple Savory Eats

Lately I've been showing you lots of sweets. I have also been showing you my full-blown sometimes time/labor intensive recipes. So today I decided to show you how I eat about 75% of the time. Which is either leftovers or dishes that are quick and easy to make while still tasting delicious. These ones just so happen to be spicy and savory because I had a full bottle of amazing new salsa and a food baby from my recent sweets overload.

First up:

Lazy Huevos Rancheros Salad

In the salad mix:
-3 leaves Romaine lettuce
-1/2 Tomato
-Fried Egg
-Sauteed onion (sauteed with the frying egg)
-Fried Polenta (Also in the frying pan)
-Garbanzo Beans
-Sprinkle of Mozarella Cheese
-Salsa, salsa, and more salsa

So easy to make and so delicious.  It's nice to have some warmth in a salad for a change.  It's so easy to grab a medium sized skillet and coat it with olive oil, crack and egg on one half, and sautee onions/veggies/polenta/meat/whatever you can think of on the other side.  It makes a boring old salad into an easy super savory gourmet-style lunch!

Don't let the photo fool you, this salad was HUGE.  We just had no clean salad bowls...thus I had to put my giant salad in an even more giant bowl...making it look mini.

Next easy dish:


Savory Oatmeal

In the Oats mix:
-1/2-3/4 cup cooked stell cut oats
-1/2 cup almond milk
-Little sprinkle of mozzarella cheese
-Fried Egg (sunny side up)
-SALSA
-Jalapenos (for those of you who don't know about my obsession with jalapenos don't worry I know it's not normal to eat them in the morning...or plain...)

This breakfast is so so so so delicious and filling.  Frying an egg takes about .25 seconds so don't whine to me that you don't have time to make this in the morning.  Also if you're like me and cook up a pot of oats for the week and then keep it in the fridge you'll be able to easily make this breakfast.

The best part about this breakfast? The runny yoke. Oh my gosh if you like moist thick oats, this is right up your alley.  The yoke, with the salsa, and the cheese ahhh now I'm hungry again!

I don't know why I've been wasting my time with sweet oat mixes for so long.  Well, on that note, I also had steel cut oats with a crumbled Winter Wonderland Cupcake Muffin on top AND a bowl of oats with a mini slice of Butternut Squash Apple Pie on top.  One of the easiest ways to make boring oats turn into gourmet oats is to crumble some leftovers from baking on top.  It is always a winner!

Anyways the moral of this post? You don't have to make super intense recipes to eat really delicious food! Find some flavors that you like and find ways to play them up.  As in this post- I love rich and spicy food so I basically just put rich food (fried egg) and spicy food (salsa) on top of two of my favorite staples in my diet: salad and oats.  Easy enough, huh?  One last thing, never underestimate the power of leftovers, you can do SO much with them.  But that's for a topic for a whole other post ;)

What are your favorite flavors?

French Toast: How-To

Start with your favorite bread. Or in my case whatever reserves you have in the freezer. (In a perfect world I would be making this with Cranberry Squash Bread or pumpkin bread) If your bread is frozen like mine, revive it in the toaster, if fresh don't toast.


Whip out your carton of eggs.



















Crack the egg and whisk the egg with a fork in a shallow bowl. Then if you have the supplies add milk and spices. (In a perfect world I would have had milk, in a semi-perfect world my roommates wouldn't read my blog solely so I could steal their milk for this french toast without them knowing.) I chose to add my spices at the end (In a perfect world I wouldn't have forgotten to add my cinnamon and nutmeg to the whisked egg...) Dredge the bread in the egg mixture, be sure to get every inch of the toast covered in egg.




















Slap the eggy toast into a heated skillet with melted butter or olive oil coating the bottom. (In a perfect world I would have been able to find my nice skillet so these pictures didn't look so scary in this crusty rusty old skillet.) I had extra egg so I just poured it on top of my toast. Wouldn't want to waste any of that protein!

Cook the toast on one side, and then flip. Unlike my failed omelet yesterday you can flip this toast as many times as you want without it falling apart. Cook until desired "doneness". I like my eggs solidly cooked (unlike my father, who's perfect world consists of raw egg protein powder shakes.) So I let my egg get a tiny bit brown.


Top toast with desired toppings. I chose banana, maple syrup, and cinnamon. (In a perfect world my toppings would have included craisins/raisins and walnuts/peanut butter too).


This was my very first time making french toast, and it turned out DELICIOUSLY. It was a really nice change for breakfast. It combines the sweet from the cinnamon and banana with the heartiness of the egg and bread to satisfy my hunger. Now that is a perfect breakfast even if it's not a perfect world.

What does your perfect breakfast consist of?

Egg Week Begins

In case you haven't been fervently following my blog, let me update you. I have no time in my life to grocery shop, or make complicated meals. Hopefully (for you and I both) after this week I will be able to be making fun muffins and savory soups again.

Yesterday on my way home from class I stopped into a little corner grocery store near my apartment. Now usually I try to stay as far away from this place as possible. It smells like cat litter and everything in the store is way overpriced. Sadly desperate times call for desperate measures. So I shopped strategically, tried to pick out the best looking produce and got foods that I knew I could stretch out to feed me for a week (combined with leftovers). What did I get? Bananas, apples, carrots, dozen eggs, and frozen broccoli. For about ten dollars, not too bad.

This week it is my goal to make it EGG WEEK! (Seriously the options with eggs are limitless). And it is also my goal to finally learn how to make a perfect omelet.

Now this entire week is also for my roommates Shannon and Kate, who do not know how to cook eggs. I'm going to show you how easy it is to cook eggs.

Now here are directions and my first attempt at Omelet making.

Step 1. Whisk together 2 eggs with about 1 TBSP water. Be sure to get all the big egg clumps out (unless you like chunks of white in your eggs)

Step 2. Pour egg mixture into heated pan with some olive oil. (I set my stove top burner to the medium setting).


Step 3. If your living off frozen foods (like myself, I keep them on reserve for weeks like these) microwave the frozen veggies for the middle of your omelet for about 30 seconds to unfreeze them.


Step 4. Add about 1/2 cup or less of veggies to cooking egg pancake. Feel free to add cheese or spices as well- I wanted to add spices but completely forgot!


Step 5. When the omelet cooked enough so it is firm use a large spatula to fold the omelet in half.


Step 6. Cook the omelet until it is cooked all the way through. Flipping as little as possible so it doesn't fall apart (like mine did...)

Mine turned out to be like a scrambled pancake eggs...but I'm not giving up yet! I have 10 eggs left to figure it out.

My Failures:
1. Too big of a skillet so the eggs got too thin.
2. Too many veggies stuffed in the middle.
3. Flipped the omelet too often.

For the other half of my lunch I made spaghetti squash hash browns! I spiced them with a little cinnamon. They turned out pretty good! But now I really crave real hash browns...


I had a perfect little lunch with a side of loose leaf white sunshine tea to warm myself up. It was a little chilly today and my sweatshirt was not warm enough.


I topped my eggs with some salsa (I wanted ketchup but I got grossed out that the 2nd ingredient is high fructose corn syrup. One of these days I'm making my own ketchup, I have a recipe, but not the ambition!) For the hash browns a poured a tiny bit of maple syrup on top.


Sweet and spicy lunch! Yes I know I'm weird but somehow this lunch worked...not like I really had any other choice.

Tomorrow this week will be almost halfway over, yipeeee!

Do you believe in the wonders of the incredible edible egg?

New Experiences Part II

If you missed part one check it out!

So this week I have been a little low on groceries and time, so I have been digging to back of my cupboards to find canned/packaged foods that I bought randomly, didn't know how to cook, and thus are just waiting for me to cook them up! Most of them are "easy" foods I bought for weeks like this one (midterms, student teaching, and so much studio work).

On today's menu? Polenta and some Crispy Chickpea Bites from Oh She Glows.


I tossed the polenta (pre-spiced with garlic and basil) with some Olive Oil, onions, and rosemary and sauteed it on low.





















At the end I added some lettuce to bulk up the polenta a bit. I think I cut my polenta chunks too small, and turned them over too many times. They turned into polenta mush instead of crispy polenta cakes like I wanted :( I will try again later this week! I still have 3/4 of a roll to eat.


The polenta crisped to the pan instead of to itself! Oops.


I put the polenta saute mix over some Spaghetti Squash topped with some Easy Spaghetti Sauce and some peas. I was all about bulking up this dish!


For college I think this is a gourmet lunch!

Now onto those Crispy Chickpea Bites from Oh She Glows.

I followed the recipe exactly but cut it in half to fit in my...


Mini food processor! But sadly this used gift from the BF didn't work :( So into the trash it went.

I used a potato masher and my own two hands instead. Low Impact! Who needs a food processor anyways...


I made a little mess but I still got them all mixed up.


Shaped them into little burger patties and then instead of waiting for 30-35 minutes for them to bake in the oven I just sizzled 'em up in a skillet with some olive oil.


Side note: why is my mint plant dying a slow miserable death? :(


Unlike the polenta these babies crisped up perfectly!


What lil' cuties.


I crumbled about 1.5 of them onto a wrap with some enchilada sauce, lettuce, and hummus. Yes I know it kind of defeats the purpose to make a veggie burger, only to crumble it but I didn't have any bread for veggie burgers!

I think for my first time making veggie burgers these turned out really well, next time I'm going to make some with a little more heft and flavor to them.

Happy Halloween! Hope you are celebrating, I'm going to a CD release show tonight with the BF, can't wait! I celebrated last night as well, I had a very low impact costume as well. I looked in my closet and found a collared pinstripe dress, paired it with black tights, red heels, and old Macy's name tag to make myself into a flight attendant. I also straightened my hair and pulled it back into a nice bouffant type style. I was super happy I had to spend absolutely NO money on this costume. Although I was a little jealous of my friends matching Teletubbies costumes, they all had on fun shiny leggings with a matching American Apparel zip-up, so cute!

How are you celebrating Halloween tonight? Or did you already celebrate/are not going to celebrate?

New Experiences

Yesterday I had zero time in between studying to make healthy meals...but somehow I ate really deliciously all day long! The first thing I made...


Spaghetti squash! I've never tried it before and oh. my. gosh. I am never eating spaghetti again! Spaghetti squash is great for you (whereas pasta is basically a paste that is just begging to constipate you). At only about 50 calories for a cup I could probably eat the whole entire squash and call it a meal!

All I did was cut the squash in half and lay it in a pan with a thin layer of water. Roasted it at 375 degrees for 40 minutes and that's it! This was great because I didn't have to check on the squash while it was baking or stir it like noodles. Which meant I got 40 minutes of studying in while I waited(ok I was probably reading other blogs or doing something equally unproductive...)


Once the squash is done just take a fork to it and clean out the innards. It's actually really fun and looks pretty neat too. Way more fun than chopping up raw squash for roasting- that kills my arms, and I've come pretty close to chopping off a finger...or my hand on several occasions. Ohh the things I do for my love of cooking delicious food.

Once you fork out the innards of the squash it is all ready to be topped with any traditional spaghetti sauce (or non-traditional if that floats your boat).


The spaghetti squash was a new experience...but eating my own food from the freezer was another. Wayyy long ago I made Easy Spaghetti Sauce and I made too much on accident. So I nervously decided to freeze about half of the sauce.

In my head I kept telling myself lots of people freeze food and un-freeze and it tastes just fine. But I kept imagining myself re-heating this sauce an it tasting bland and freezer burnt. Well luckily for my lunch it tasted amazing! It tasted like it was just made today. Aaahmazing.

I think I may begin cooking in major bulk for freezing. On days like today where I have no time to prepare anything labor intensive it would be so convenient. I'm thinking of starting my freezing frenzy with soups, it would be so nice to have a bunch of hearty soups on hand. (Since lately I have started thinking that no canned soups are even remotely good for you.)


Of course I had some veg on the side of my amazing spaghetti. Thankfully I never get sick of raw veggies!

Now onto dinner. I made a healthy vegan quesadilla! I didn't know such a thing could exist. Usually when I think of quesadillas I think of dripping greasy cheese and a tortilla, which means lots of calories and fat and just about zero nutrients. Well take a look at this beauty...


What's in that incredible quesadilla? I started with a great tortilla that I found at the grocery store that has only 50 calories and have a nice basil spice to it. Then I spread Holy Land Jalapeno Hummus and kidney beans on half the tortilla. Microwaved for a minute and a half. Then I topped it off with avocado, tomato, and salsa. Best quesadilla ever! It's more like a veggie wrap but heating the hummus and beans made it nice and warm and gooey, just like a quesadilla. It was very comforting after the cold rainy day I endured today.


Lovely lighting for these pictures huh? Of course this dinner was enjoyed under the glow of my computer screen and desk lamp. After my mid-term TODAY I will be freeeeee of my Ancient Art History flashcards! (Well until next class period when I start taking notes on new ones for the final...) I will be cramming for the rest of the day...but I'm sure I'll have time for some spaghetti squash leftovers, YUM gotta feed my brain right?

Wish me luck!

Is there anything you're looking forward to being DONE with this week?