Saturday: We helped Kurtz + Ann with some cabinet moving [chris] and painting [me]. It was nice to be able to help them get all settled in. We ate lunch at a pop up camping table. I brought some satsumas :)

They bought us subs from Jersey Mikes. Mine was loaded with veggies.

I love their new place! The countertops are poured concrete, very cool. The boys were on a mission to move cabinets that were over this sink/island. You can see in the top left corner where the finish on the wood stops. That is where the cabinets were connected and in the same place on the right of the sink.

They wanted to make the kitchen feel more open and move the cabinets against the wall. Oops, didn’t take a photo when they finished. It looked great though! I was totally impressed that they moved + reinstalled it with not too much trouble.

YOGURT ALERT: I <3 SF Oikos so so so much. My favorite is the strawberry!! However, yesterday at the store I saw the smaller 4 packs and there were TWO new kinds. Caramel + Chocolate!! I had to try the caramel. I can’t express how delicious this was. It would be amazing to add to oatmeal or as a dessert. The caramel flavor was spot on. It reminded me of those little caramel cubes wrapped in plastic. I highly recommend this for sweets cravings. The little cups still have 10g of protein too, nice!!

Ann, Kurtz, and Kyle came over after we finished up most of the work. I was making sweet potato fries with a curry + honey sauce and “in a jiffy spelt veggie burgers” from Angela’s blog.

The sauce for the taters had: olive oil, splash of apple cider vinegar, honey, curry, s+p, dash of cayenne

pre-seasoning

Super yellow due to the curry. I covered them with the sauce and then added about another 2t of curry because when I tried them halfway through cooking they didn’t have enough flavor. I am loving curry!!! It’s funny because I never used to eat or cook with curry until about 4 months ago. Now, I’m in love :)

My good friend Sarah, who lives in Ohio, sent me this awesome 3 bowl server from C+B. I love love love it!! It’s perfect for sauces, nuts, topping assortments, etc. The white-ish sauce is SF Plain Oikos jazzed up with some curry. The red sauce with the green spoon was ketchup spiced with cayenne and the other red sauce was just plain ketchup. They were all great veggie burger toppers. I personally looooved the curry yogurt.

Perfection. Everyone was really impressed with these. They had great flavor and were definitely not dry or cakey. Awesome texture, especially with the slight crunch from the sunflower seeds. I followed the recipe exactly [a rarity!] because I was kind of in a hurry. I could see using different seasonings, like Indian or Mexican style. So so so good and insanely healthy. I loved that they were baked and held together perfectly. Okay, I’ll stop about how good they were.

The only other thing I’ll say is that they were EASY to make. You give a rough chop to all the veggies and then throw in the food processor. I doubled the recipe and probably always would. They last in the fridge for awhile and I’m sure they would freeze great. Before forming into patties, it was hard to tell if the mixture was too wet. Trust the recipe, 3/4c was the perfect amount of flour. It seems a bit wet but totally held together.

It was my first time using spelt flour and definitely not my last.

I love exploring new foods. I did a good job this week with that!

New Foods this week:

Red Kale
Spelt Flour
Mochi
Apple Cider Vinegar [probably have had it, but have never used it in my cooking]

I also ate NO meat this week and have made 3 full on vegan meals in the past week or so, as well. I have been mmmm’ing my way through all of them. [The veggie burgs are vegan minus the yogurt topping, hehe]

Have you guys explored any new foods lately?

I love having friends over and cooking for them. Makes me happy :)

This morning’s oats:

oats + oat bran mix
rice milk + water
cinnamon
1/2 banana
2t chia seeds
almonds
back to nature, pumpkin seed granola
4 berry jam
pumpkin butter
pnut butter

The pumpkin butter is good but a tad on the sweet side. I’m kind of sensitive to sugar and don’t like too much in my oats. It was still super delicious though!

A reader just asked if I get sick of oats. The answer is, not at all. I honestly look forward to them every morning and have been eating them almost everyday for a few years. I have always been a huge cereal + oatmeal girl.

Reasons I love oats: