Food/Drink

This thread is brought to you by several balanced breakfasts

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I’ve more than fulfilled my promise this weekend for healthy breakfasts, and even managed to get over my fear of oatmeal. I grew up not really caring for it… and I think in part it might be in how it was prepared for me the few times I had to to try and stomach my way through a bowl. Now that I’m an adult with an overactive imagination and an appetite to apply a small amount of it to I think I’ve managed to actually make oatmeal to be proud of. The above is a mix of chopped frozen black cherries, whole recently frozen blueberries, dried cranberries, sliced fresh banana, pralines, maple syrup, brown sugar, cinnamon and just a touch of salt. It was the right amount of sweetness, and the addition of nuts and berries gave it additional flavor. I was so proud of myself that I decided to do a different variant today:

This one consists of brown sugar, vanilla extract, walnuts, frozen mangoes, strawberries and pineapple chunks, and another chopped banana. It felt nice to have something warm with the taste of the tropics on an otherwise cold morning. I’m thinking of next week of making some breakfast curry of some sort; until then I have these to look forward til hump day.

The one in the middle is a raspberry white chocolate parfait that I plan to bring to work tomorrow. The one on the left is a caramel banana oat parfait (though they all have oats in them), and the one on the right is basically the same thing as the one on the left but with maple syrup instead of caramel, and the addition of walnuts. Oh, and they all have cocoa granola because that just sounds good with any of these. :trollface:

If anyone has good breakfast or any other kind of food ideas you’ve tried recently I’d like to hear it!

Mastering The Zen Of Yogurt

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Sorry, been a busy week and these have really been coming in handy. I never got to put together that caramel banana one I had envisioned; instead I decided to make all of the remaining yogurt parfaits for the week into matcha ones, not that you’d be able to tell or anything due to all of that fruitiness going on.

This mix consists of:

  • Greek Vanilla Yogurt (or your personal preference)
  • Honey or Agave (optional)
  • Blueberries
  • Black Cherries
  • Japanese Matcha sweetened with Monkfruit
  • Pulverized Oats
  • Topped with a fruit and nut granola mix

After eating one of these I was basically set for the rest of the day. I haven’t even had a proper after work lunch yet, and I ate this about 7 hours ago! The sweetness of the blueberry helps offset the tangy black cherries, and matcha mixed in yogurt with fruit not only adds a nice tea flavor but also offers helpful antioxidants alongside the blueberries. I’m not a health nut, but somehow I keep making these choices.

I’ll be bringing another parfait of the same make tomorrow, that one was good enough to have an encore.

Food Thoughts For Thought

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I’ve been continuing to experiment with yogurt parfaits. While I like them they are still very liquid based, including the THICC Greek variants. Adding granola doesn’t seem to help absorb much, though adding pulverized oats to the parfaits thickens them up kinda like a pudding, and I feel even fuller for longer without having to piss like a race horse. The first two days are cocoa parfaits; one is a chocolate cinnamon crunch parfait and the other was chocolate raspberry.

I’m thinking Thursday I’ll make a caramel banana nut oat parfait, then Friday and Saturday will be matcha based. Start the week off with indulgence, and end it with some balance. I’ve also been formulating breakfast plans for the weekend. Last weekend was Japan, the week before was Curry, and I still want to keep it on the healthy side for another week (must… resist… bacon). I’ve been looking up a few ideas on both the sweet and savory side… I’ve even entertained the idea of a vegetable/tomato based yogurt parfait with peppers and quinoa. It would be based off of a Bulgarian yogurt soup recipe I found years ago; Consisting mainly of tomato, peppers, cucumber, walnuts, and a few other ingredients. I was also thinking of adding quinoa into the mix. Despite what you might think plain yogurt mixed with vegetables, tomatoes, herbs and nuts isn’t as bad as it sounds.

i kan haz taro mochi

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One of my Christmas Presents last year from my best princess friend was a box of taro mochi. I’ve had green tea mochi before, but never tried it with taro, which is a root vegetable. I’ve had taro chips before but I’ve never had it in mochi form. I saved opening these up for a special day, and last Saturday was that day. Nothing like starting your weekend with something sweet after all.

Like most mochi, it was nice, delicious and soft. It wasn’t quite as purple as it was shown on the box. Not a big deal or anything, it already looks good enough to eat.

If I were to describe the flavor I’d say it kind of tastes like a pale sweet potato with caramel. I still think I prefer the matcha ones, but this does have a nice caramel like after taste. It would be funny to make thanksgiving mochi! Perhaps take the recipe for this and use pumpkin spice, although I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it exists.

All of the breakfast

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I pretty much have breakfast mapped out for the week. I made some eggs and sausage today with a spicy tomato three pepper sauce, sadly I was too hungry to take a picture. Then later on in the day I made some raspberry and cherry sauces to mix with the parfaits. I have two of them dressed with nutella, a thick, sweet and kind of tart cherry sauce and a crunchy mix of cocoa granola and caramel cashews, the other nutella one has a tangy raspberry sauce, cocoa granola and a three nut mix of praline pecans, honey roasted peanuts and caramel cashews. The parfait in the middle is probably the most innocent. It has a mix of matcha (sweetened with monkfruit), honey, pineapple, mango, strawberries, freshly grated ginger and a mix of honey and fruit granola with my three nut mix leftover from the other parfait.

On the left I made a homemade cherry sauce with frozen cherries, sugar, lime juice, cornstarch and vanilla extract. While the raspberry sauce is runnier and mainly consists of raspberry, sugar and lime juice. These also go nice on ice cream, or if you want to strain the seeds out you could serve the raspberry sauce in some soda, tea or a cocktail. I think the raspberry sauce might even be good for milkshakes or smoothies.

This Sunday Breakfast Was A Little… Different

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It’s 2020 now. Most of us are recooperating from the hectic holidays, trying to lose all of that festive food we’ve packed on over the last couple months. Obviously it makes sense to make a chocolate shake for breakfast. :trollface:

Of course, at first glance it doesn’t look very healthy. But this actually has greek vanilla yogurt, pulverized oats and caramel cashews, one banana, a couple tablespoons of nutella spread, a tablespoon of cocoa powder and almond milk. It did a good job of keeping me full till the afternoon once pizza o clock hit. It was a good way of starting the morning, especially since cleaning was involved. Had to sweeten the morning in some way, and I’ve heard cocoa can help relieve depression symptoms, so I might as well enjoy some cocoa while doing something depressing. :v:

I’ve been reading all kinds of recipes for homemade meal shakes, and wanted to do something different for my special weekend breakfast instead of the usual bacon and eggs combo. I’m also thinking of replacing my lunch shakes with homemade ones. The same chocolate shake mix becomes quite dull after awhile.

I haven’t decided if I’ll have another breakfast shake tomorrow, or if I’ll do something with bacon involved.

No, I’m not making a bacon smoothie. Anyone who suggests that has to go eat a bag of salted dicks.

Eggs and eggs and eggs and steak

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I had that song stuck in my head, and I remembered that there was still some leftover tri-tip in the fridge. So I made a white sauce, then turned it into a brown sauce with a bouillon cube. I sauteed some onions in another pan with the tri-tip to warm that up, and I added that into the brown sauce. Then I scrambled up some eggs and toasted some leftover homemade dinner rolls for a breakfast biscuits and gravy. On the side is more watermelon tea, but this time with white peony swapped out with the Russian Herbal blend. It has a nice light taste to it. Aside from the typical daily pepsi my weekend has pretty much been on decaf, which has been nice. I’ll be taking a firey black tea blend to work tomorrow though, probably going to need it. I also have some more leftover breakfast to enjoy it with.

 

Sauce Bossin’ It

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I woke up today and wanted to make a different kind of sauce for my weekly fancy-ish breakfast. I made a basic white sauce in one pan, and in another pan I fried the bacon, then I fried the onions in the leftover fat, added tomatoes, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce,  Italian herbs and a couple dashes of hot sauce for an added kick. Then I folded it into the white sauce and added smoked gouda. I was quite happy with the results, but I think in the future I might use a Sherry or Marsala, maybe even a type of Whiskey or Vodka to flavor the sauce. I also mixed the sauce with some noodles for lunch. The tea is also a special brew as well; Sweet Watermelon tea mixed with a Russian Herbal tea, both from the same friend! I’ve pretty much been drinking that all day. For extra sweetness I added a little lemon sugar. I like the flavor pattern, would probably taste good iced too.

Spicy Pho On A Cold Day

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I came home from work this afternoon and it was in the mid 40’s, we’ve been having a lot of strange cold weather here and today was no exception. We had leftover tri-tip steak in the fridge from last night’s Christmas feast, and I thought it would be a good idea to turn some of it into some Pho. For those unaware; Pho is a spicy Vietnamese beef and noodle soup made with rice noodles (mostly brown from what I’ve seen). I bought some serrano peppers, cilantro, brown rice noodles and Pho broth. It was quick, delicious, and it cleared my sinuses. I did want something that would warm me in cold weather after all. :v

Some Food To Break The Silence

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It’s my Mother’s birthday today, and since she’s working late I not only made a hot pot of homemade chicken and brown rice soup with black beans, corn, tomatoes and chiles. Something that will be easy to heat back up, and gets more and more flavorful as it sits. I mixed in some smoky chipotle salsa to give it a nice deep flavor.

It might seem weird to server garlic bread on the side, but it actually tastes pretty good when dipped. I bought a couple artisan loaves of garlic bread (with full garlic cloves baked in) and made my own garlic butter to spread on it. I also made a cake for the occasion:

I don’t do cakes too often, so I’m surprised it turned out as well as it did. This is a chocolate cake with a peanut butter cream cheese frosting. I can’t wait to try it tomorrow! I wanted to find some small Reeses to chop up and spread all over the cake but I could only find the big ones, and the consistency just wouldn’t be the same.

Again, work has been keeping me pretty busy this week. I’m expecting the last of my packages tomorrow, so hopefully this will be the weekend where I can finally ship them off to their respected locations. There will also be a video dropping tomorrow, and if I’m lucky some form of livestream this weekend. I also bought the DMC5 Deluxe Bundle during the Steam Winter Sale, and want to have a go at that this weekend. Not to stream, but just to check out. Probably gonna get my ass kicked, but as long as I get to slice and shoot things I’ll be ok. I’m thinking of buying a few other games too, after all I do have until January 2nd to make my decisions.