Eat Teach Blog

Phew, this day has been quite the fun one….

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you may already know that I was an airhead last night and set my alarm for 5PM instead of 5AM.

When I rolled over to look at my phone and saw that it said 7:45AM, I jolted out of bed, panicked and filled with adrenaline. I’ll tell ya – that feeling definitely fuels your ass more than 5 cups of coffee does.

Luckily, today was a professional development day for teachers (no students!) and I was only 20 minutes late.  It was also lucky for anyone who had to interact with me that morning that I prepared my breakfast last night. Trust me – nobody wants to cross paths with me if I haven’t had a proper breakfast. Me without coffee? You can take your chances. But me without breakfast – you might as well just avoid me for the rest of the day. Unless you want someone to bite your head off. I can’t remember the last time I missed breakfast…..for that very reason…

What saved my co-workers lives today?

Overnight oats made with Silk Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk. I was first introduced to almond milk about a year and a half ago. Today, I couldn’t imagine eating breakfast without it! Trust me – even when my fridge gets pretty bare, I will never go without Silk!

Don’t mind the margarita mix – that’s another essential

The biggest thing that drew me to Silk PureAlmond was the nutritional information. 30 calories for one serving?! Back when I was counting calories, I hated the fact that I would be tacking on an additional 100 to make my oatmeal with milk. With Silk, I still get the creamy, thick texture with less than half the calories.

What else can you use Silk in?

Coffee

The unsweetened vanilla PureAlmond is the way to go – tops off my morning cup of coffee perfectly!

Baked Goods

Oatmeal Cookie balls – substituting PureAlmond and bananas for sugar and oil.

Protein Pancakes

And my personal favorite, Cinnamon Protein Crunch

(Sometimes, I think I’m being really creative and developing something new and unique when, in reality, I just combine cereals and call it a recipe).

Detailed Instructions on How to Make Cinnamon Protein Crunch

1) Pour yourself a bowl of Special K Protein Plus Cereal
2) Top generously with Silk Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk
3) Put in the microwave for 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
4) Top off with Cascadian Farms – Cinnamon Crunch cereal.
5) E-mail me and tell me you love me for introducing you to this invention.

I love Silk because it’s convenient. I love Silk because it’s delicious. And I love Silk for being low in calories without sacrificing great flavor. And I’m not the only one who uses it every single day. Some of the FitFluential Ambassadors have teamed up with Silk to create new recipes. I’m talking soups, smoothies, desserts, drinks, risotto?! You can check out the recipes on the Silk Facebook Page. If you like the page, you get a coupon to try it out for yourself! DO IT – you won’t be sorry.

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Your turn!

What is your typical morning breakfast?

Do you use non-dairy milk? Share recipes below, please!  

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FitFluential LLC compensated me for this Campaign. All opinions are my own.

I want to remind readers that I will only post about a product if I absolutely love it and/or believe in it – and I can assure you that I am very much in love with Silk Almond Milk. Every mornin’ without fail! 

Yes, it’s true – you read correctly. I made a muffin in under 5 minutes. With chocolate. For less than 300 calories. I’m not kidding. The recipe is at the end of this post. But you gotta suffer through the rest of the post before you read it (or just scroll to the bottom, but I’m just going to assume you’re not smart enough to know that). 

After breakfast, I set up some guest posts for next week. Since I’ll be up at UniCamp from July 8th-July 15th, I won’t have access to the Internet or Twitter or Facebook or anything social media related! =) But don’t fear – there’s some awesome posts coming your way from some pretty amazing bloggers!

Then, Sister and I needed to head over to the tennis store because she broke her strings last night at the courts. We decided to play tennis on a whim….it’s been so long since I’ve played, but I really miss it. I keep saying I’ll start playing again, but I never do. Maybe I should join some sort of a team or find some people online to play with when I get up north.

The Best Tennis Shop Around!

The plan was to go to the gym after, but we were starving (because Sister’s dumb and ate breakfast at 2:30AM and I’m just always hungry). So we went to get a sammy at Submarina in Costa Mesa. Now that’s the kind of sandwich I like. (Remember? I like my vegetables falling out on all sides?!) 

We ran some more errands and then made it to the gym. Today was a really good workout for me mentally. Reason being is this. In 2009, I kicked ass. I was good at running, at stadium stairs, at everything (okay, maybe not everything. But the 2012 Divya is looking back at the 2009 Divya in awe and thinks she’s pretty effing cool). I was also really competitive back then. When someone challenged me to do something, I did it. When somebody told me I couldn’t do something, I did it. Because I knew I could. I think somewhere between then and now, that confidence has left me. Partially because I am not in the physical state I was back then, but also because I lost that mentality. When I run stairs now, I’m tired. And I have to stop. And it makes me scared that I’m not as good as I used to be. So my natural tendency is to avoid those things because I don’t want to be reminded of a time when I was able to do all this – at a faster speed with much more ease.

But today’s Stair Interval workout really allowed me to clear my mind and think about myself – both mentally and physically. I’m still an athlete. I still get so much joy from pushing myself to the point of exhaustion and sweat and breathlessness. But it will take me time to get where I used to be. And in the mean time, I need to remind myself that stopping mid-workout does not mean that it was a bad workout. It becomes a bad workout when I feel ashamed and stop working out altogether. So today, despite having to stop 3 times, I just kept going. Yes, I stopped but that’s OKAY. And I finished the workout drenched and happy knowing that I’m one step closer to my goal than yesterday.

Okay, as promised, here is the recipe for your Under-300-Calories, Made-In-A-Mug, Delicious-In-Every-Way-Possible, Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins! =) 

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup oats
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon milk (I used almond milk)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• Handful of chocolate chips
• 1 coffee mug (no, not for you to eat)

Directions: 

Mix all of the ingredients together in a coffee mug. Heat in the microwave for 2 minutes. Top with additional toppings if desired (I added a little bit of lite maple syrup). Enjoy!  

I recently started following a bunch of education, health, and fitness blogs because I want new, fun recipes to try out and the network of support from online bloggers (and tweeters) is pretty unbelievable. Julie from Peanut Butter Fingers is probably one of my favorites. I’ve saved most of her recipes and plan on making every single one of them. This morning, I tried out her delicious Banana Bread Protein Pancakes and I was NOT disappointed. When people tell you things like “it tastes JUST LIKE banana bread,” it’s easy to doubt them. No Pudge brownies do NOT taste the same as Ghiradelli. So these can’t possibly taste just like banana bread. I’ve been fooled before, so I went into this experience with pretty low expectations……….

Turns out – Julie was ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. As a healthy-food seeker with trust issues, I can completely vouch for these pancakes.

Check them out here and try them out for yourself!!!: YUMMY YUMMY YUMMY 

Ingredients: 1/2 cup dried oats, 1/4 cup cottage cheese, 1 large egg, 1 banana (half in the batter and half to top with), a dash of cinnamon

Looks nasty, right? Pour it in the blender and have the blender do the dirty work for you!

Kept it in the blender to pour onto the pan. Saves you from loads of dishes and keeps it clean! =)

See how clean my cooking space is?!

Top with 1/8th cup of Aunt Jemima’s Lite Maple Syrup and the remaining slices of banana. I put mine in the microwave for a bit to get it nice and warm!

Can’t believe I had the willpower to stop mid-meal to take another picture. These are DELICIOUS!!!

Related articles

• Protein Peanut Butter Pancakes (eatteachblog.com)

I LOVE pancakes. More than waffles, more than eggs, more than cereal, more than oatmeal. But I never really eat them for breakfast because (1) I don’t really like to “prepare” something that early in the morning and (2) I don’t really see any nutritional value in your normal, typical, IHop kind-of pancakes. But when I heard of people making Sweet Potato protein pancakes or mixing in some protein powder with their batter, I started thinking that I could create a concoction that would allow me to have the same great taste with some added benefits. It was simple, easy, and DELICIOUS:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup oatmeal

1/2 cup cottage cheese

1 tsp. vanilla extract

4 egg whites

handful of blueberries

Directions: 

Mix all ingredients together (I just stirred with my hand, but if you want to use a blender that might be better).

PAM spray the pan and start cooking just like regular old pancakes.

Add your favorite topping! I added a mixture of 1 tbsp. melted peanut butter and a little Lite Maple Syrup. It hit the spot!

YUM!

What’s your favorite pancake topping?