Artichoke Experiences

Monday Monday! Soo…let’s see…three weeks from now I’ll be a brand new Haffie momma 🙂

Speaking of becoming a Haffie momma, I had to totally distract myself from eBay this morning with this lovely bowl of figgy plum oats. Fun fact? eBay must be  in the dictionary, since spell check doesn’t underline it. Figgy, however, is not.

The Base:

• 1 T. Wheat Bran, 2 T. Bob’s Grains & Nuts, 3 T. Bob’s Peppy Kernels
• 1/2 c. water, 1/2 c. PureAlmond
• 1 chopped dried fig
• 1/2 plum, chopped
• drizzle maple syrup
• 1 T. chia seeds

Topped with:

• chia-flax icing
• chopped cashews
• homemade cashew…uh, spread
• and a chutney of the rest of the plum and a dried Turkish fig, simmered in some almond milk and maple syrup.

Oh, yes – with my hands busy spooning this into my mouth, there was no way I could bid on a beautiful dressage saddle I could kind of afford but shouldn’t if that makes any sense. It hurt my heart, but I’m doing okay now.

Coffee helped too – in the form of Green Mountain’s Rain Forest Nut. After crashing at 9:30 I was pretty ready to start the morning without it – but who would want to do something like that?

Thanks to everyone who offered up nut butter thoughts!! I guess I just didn’t do it anywhere near long enough – I didn’t even process for 5 minutes I don’t think! Next time I’ll go a little longer, but I don’t want to completely burn out my blender. I’m pretty happy with what I ended up with, for my blender being what it is. Hey, it tastes pretty darn good if I say so myself, and at least I can spread it, right? Next up will definitely be figgy peanut butter. I’m pretty pumped. And I’ll definitely let it go for a longer period of time.

Nommage packed for the morning included some homemade Laraballs and a banana…

I challenge you to find someone who says this isn't just plain adorable.

…and for lunch, I ignored last night’s experiences of having too much bread for my chickpea cutlet and used bread again today. I’m sorry — but logistically, I just could. not. use a wrap when this delicious, fresh loaf of seeded multigrain was sitting in the bread basket. I think it’s against the law or something. So, I compromised – I had the heel end of my loaf from last week and decided that itty bitty piece might not be too much for it.

I did, however, go minimal on the add-ons. I think the ranch really overpowered it moreso than the bread – so today I just mixed a little bit of apricot-mango jam, dijon, and greek yogurt together, and spread on, in addition to some local lettuce. I grabbed a gala and a caraml oikos was good to go! I guess I sort of lied just there, though. I just spread on all those ingredients separately. I did no mixing beforehand, who do I look like here? Honestly.

This was the perfect combo! I remembered Katie’s post in which she made a sauce like this, but with chicken. I found apricot-mango jam (last time I copied this, I didn’t think I had any) and everything went perfectly together. Yum!

In between lunch and my afternoon snack, I sipped a gargantuan Hazelnut iced coffee. We were hoppin’ at work today, so it was definitely necessary! It was one of those perfect days, where you’re working along like crazy and then look at the clock and realize about three hours have passed since you last glanced. I kept wondering why I was hungry all day, and then realized it wasn’t that it was different than usual – but time just kept flying! Love days like these – reminds me of why I love my work!

Know who else I love? Nicole for sending me these Prana and Boomi Bars!

I tried the Apricot Pumpkin Pranabar today with enzyme power! Enzyme’s, say you? I think that’s a future post topic! I don’t know much about them and feel some research is necessary 🙂 The stats: (click to enlarge)

This bar was awesome. It was definitely a different pumpkin flavor than you typically find, and I love the unique flavor combo. Since the pumpkin came from pumpkin seeds, not pumpkin puree, it had a lovely crunch to break up the soft goo from the date paste.

Pros:

• unique flavor
• great flavor and texture (though messy – we’ll get to that)
• loved that the pumpkin came from pumpkin seeds, was a nice change from most pumpkin flavored bars that are reminiscent of a pumpkin pie
• awesome ingreds and stats
• pretty sure the wrapper sings for itself!

Cons:

• I felt it would be perfectly sweet enough without agave as the second ingredient, or at least less agave. Towards the end it got a bit overpowering.
• very messy and stick. I think I’d probably drive into the ditch if I ate this in the car.

I would certainly say the pros outweigh the few cons, no?

Before I knew it, I looked at the clock and it was 5:30 – time to gooooo, and my stomach agreed. I was glad to remember I had dinner mostly waiting for me.

I prepared an artichoke yesterday while I was making my dinner so that all I would have to do was re-heat it. I paired it with some leftover chickpea mixture from the other night, and when I got home thought I’d like some broccoli, too – which I was able to quickly roast (!!!!) via toaster-oven.

I’m not going to lie. I wasn’t sure if you eat the whole artichoke leaf of just pick at it with your teeth. Rather than google this, I decided to just try eating the whole leaf. Uh, weird…but okay. Do it again. Think maybe you ought to google the subject – I mean, it’s called an artichoke. I didn’t want to eat something that would potentially kill me. Realize you are, in fact – just intended to scrape the stuffing off with your teeth. Whoops.

Hopefully, my stomach isn’t screaming at me later. I guess it’s not bad, just incredibly fibrous. And after my first artichoke experience, I think I’ll just stick to the canned hearts. It wasn’t bad…but the canned hearts are soo gooodd.

Someone make me feel better and tell me your stories of kitchen mishaps.

The first time I had a mango I didn’t bother peeling it.

I swear, I wasn’t even dropped on my head as a baby, either.