We Cook, We Eat, We Feed.

I took my first nutrition class at Cal Poly this quarter- FSN121. The Fundamentals of Food.

As the first official Food Science & Nutrition class on my path to becoming a registered dietitian, it was a lot of fun and was the perfect course to start off with. 

I had a great group of lab members--Kendal, Peter, and Matt. Even though we always finished late, we always had a ton of fun cooking and eating and singing to music together in class. I'm really glad that we ended up in the same group because it wouldn't have been the same without them.

We learned how to make a ton of different food in the class. There's nothing better than being able to taste and eat while you cook. The best day was probably the day the huge chocolate wheels were brought in. You know we definitely ate TONS of that stuff. SOOO DELICIOUS! 

My favorite thing we learned to make was pasta. I had always wanted to make homemade pasta because I love pasta so much. It was so easy and so fun, and I really really want to get a pasta rolle now. We even went extra and made fettuccine on top of the ravioli we had to make. Go team!

The best part of the class was that we had it for 3 hours right before/around dinner time. So we were always well fed on Wednesdays because we got to eat everything we made in class :) And of course there were always leftovers for us to take home with us too!

The SLO Life | Locally Made Ice Cream

We finally found Von's here in SLO! 

It's honestly not that far away, but between all the closer grocery stores we've seen and been to, we just never made the trip to Von's until a couple days ago. Walking in there and shopping in there honestly just made me feel like I was at home. I love Von's and it's probably always going to be my favorite store, so being in there felt so familiar and comfortable. 

But the best part wasn't even that we found the Von's. The best part is all the delicious local ice creams they sell there! We couldn't resist and bought a few (or 4) but we really had the HARDEST time even picking which ones to get. We went for a few different local brands, including the one made right at Cal Poly (which was delicious by the way). I'm definitely going to be buying more of these little guys in the future. Because we all know I love ice cream. A LOT.

Friday Favorite | Pinkberry & Nordstrom

So since I've moved to SLO, there's a couple things I really wish were here that weren't (besides family and friends of course.) But there's no Nordstrom here, and there's no Pinkberry here! I mean there's obviously a bunch of other clothing stores (but no real mall) and a bunch of frozen yogurt places. They're just not Nordstrom or Pinkberry. So this Friday Favorite is dedicated to these favorites of mine that I won't get to go to for a while (unless I drive pretty farrrrr to get to them).

Also, I'm sooo happy it's Friday! My first week of classes if officially done, so today I got to sleep in a little more--does 8:30am count as sleeping in?? Oh well, it does to me! 

Happy Friday!

Super Simple Smoothie

This is the smoothie I made this morning. Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely LOVE smoothies. Love love love love love them. They're sooo easy and quick to make. They taste delicious. You can put anything you want into them. In one smoothie, you can potentially put all your daily servings of fruits and/or veggies in case you don't have time to eat them that day.

The smoothie I made today only contained 3 ingredients. Raspberries, banana, and a touch of honey. It could have been a 2 ingredient all-fruit smoothie with just the raspberries and banana. But the raspberries were a little more tart today, so the honey cut down the tartness a little bit.

I'm a big big fan of fruit smoothies. Especially all-fruit ones. Vegetable smoothies, not so much. Blended up veggies?? No thank you. I can handle 98% fruit, 2% vegetable smoothies though. You know, the kind where you sneak just a little bit of spinach inside. Just a little bit though. But if you try adding beets or carrots, forget about it. I'm not on that level yet.

Also, I'm super loving this new little blender I got off Amazon. I didn't want to cart off my huge Ninja blender to SLO with me, so I got this little one. And it's perfect for helping me not make the perfect amount of smoothie, just about 1 tall glass, each time. Plus, it's also my favorite color :)

Movie Night & Homemade Popcorn

This past weekend, we had a movie night at Aunt Cherie and Uncle Yvan's house, where Trisha, Arianne, and I finally watched the masterpiece SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

Of course, no movie night is complete without popcorn. But we decided to make it ourselves. 100% homemade and 100% delicious. Sure store bought bags of popcorn are easier, or even the kind you buy and stick in the microwave. But they're full of butter and sugars that you don't really need/want. Plus if you make it at home, you can create your own flavors and basically customize the whole thing. Popcorn is actually a pretty healthy snack, but we decided to splurge a little and make some chocolatey concoctions for the movie night. Of course, this would be just as delicious without the chocolate (believe me, we tested it!) haha.

We made 3 different flavors based on what everyone liked. We popped a whole bunch of the popcorn kernels in a little bit of oil, then mixed in the different toppings. We melted up some dark chocolate We didn't add any butter, and just a little sprinkle of salt.

Flavor 1: Dark chocolate (for Dylan who's allergic to nuts and doesn't like cinnamon)

Flavor 2: Dark chocolate with cinnamon (my favorite one!)

Flavor 3: Dark chocolate with chopped up Twix bars and crushed almonds (for the milk chocolate and caramel lovers)

The popcorn was delicious and so simple to make. So simple even Dylan and Kaia helped us make it!  This is probably one of my new favorite snacks to eat. Next time if I want a healthier version, I'll probably just make it plain with cinnamon. And the movie was really really good too. Suspenseful, kinda creepy, but I actually didn't find it to be scary at all. Probably because I can deal with scary movies that involve psychotic killers and gore, but I really cannot handle paranormal scary. I can never ever do paranormal scary. I literally can't sleep for weeks after watching one of those.

Caramel Apples, But Not.

I love apples, but I'm not always a fan of eating them if that makes sense. It kinda gets tiring eating a plain apple after a while. 

For breakfast this morning, I really wanted to eat apples though. But not plain apples. Oh no. 

So I made these apples, drizzled with lots of melty peanut butter and sprinkled with cinnamon--two of my favorite things ever. And I ate the whole plate without getting tired of it. Success! 

They kinda remind me of caramel apples, but healthier. And I don't like caramel that much anyways. Side note: these would also make a really delicious and easy snack too. This takes like 2 minutes to make, tops.

Friday Favorite | The Special Ratatouille Pasta Sauce

I love to make this sauce. It's sooo yummy. It's basically the recipe that my mom and aunts used to make spaghetti sauce when I was younger, but I added my own twists on it over the years. And somehow it became this sauce! It's a good pasta sauce for basically any type of pasta, or even if you love eating sauce alone (like me!) or with some French bread. My aunt and uncle say it's similar to a ratatouille, so now I'll just call it the Ratatouille Pasta sauce. I'll take that as a compliment because my uncle is French so he would know his French food. It's definitely not vegetarian like real ratatouille though because my family loves meat and really meaty meat sauces. The only issue I really have with making this sauce is that I ALWAYS make way too much because it's so hard to make only a little bit of sauce. But this is a good thing because the only thing better than this sauce when its fresh, is this sauce as leftovers for another meal or a snack.

The Ingredients:

Note 1: We like our sauce spicy and this sausage is definitely spicy, but you can use non-spicy sausage. You can actually use any type of meat you prefer: ground beef, ground turkey, etc. and then just add spice later if you like.

Note 2: You can add any vegetables you like into the sauce too. And any type of jar sauce. Basically this sauce can be tailored to suit anybody's taste buds.

Surprise! When I was cutting open the bellpepper, there was a mini little bellpepper inside. 

Cut everything up to around the same size!

Cook low and slow. The longer the better. I let this pot cook for just under 2 hours. If you need it done faster, it'll still taste good after 30 minutes. But it will taste even better if you leave it to cook for longer. 

AND IT'S DONE. 

Friday Favorite & Not So Favorite | Trader Joe's Snacks

We love snacks and we love Trader Joe's. So we went to Trader Joe's to get snacks this week.

We got a TON of snacks. 

What we bought:

Crispy Crunchy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Triple Ginger Cookies

Fat Free Blueberry Muesli

Belgian Butter Waffle Cookies

Soft Bite Mini Almond Biscotti

Some of them were more delicious than others. My favorite was definitely the Crispy Crunchy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. I loooove Oatmeal Cookies minus the raisins--they're my absolute favorite type of cookie. These ones said they had raisin in them though, but they were mini cookies so I couldn't resist buying them. And I'm really glad I did because they're delicious! They're the perfect size to munch on so you end up eating a bunch instead of just a couple. And you don't even taste the raisin in them. PERFECTION.

My not so favorite of the bunch was the Mini Almond Biscotti. You can definitely tell there's almond extract in them, which kind of leaves a weird aftertaste in your mouth. And they really smell like almond extract (that super flowery almond smell) and I really am not a fan of that. They tasted alright, but I would definitely pick a different flavor next time. 

Until then, I'll just keep eating my little Oatmeal Raisin cookies. YES.

Tea,Tea, Makes You Pee*

Gabby, Kirsten, and I had a lot of spots of tea today! Sooo much that it definitely made us all pee*. A LOT. We were down for the pound though.

We went to this really cute little place called Marlene's. It really made us miss London, with all the tea and scones and cute teacups. Nothing better than a reunion with tea! I should definitely do a throwback post (or two) to our time in London.

The scones at this place were so amazing that it should be illegal. I would have been happy just getting 100 of those scones and some tea. I'm definitely going back just for those scones! But honestly, everything else (besides the cucumber sandwiches) was SOO delicious too. The tomato soup, the mini beef wellingtons (and I don't even like beef that much!), the chocolate macarons OMG. SO GOOD. And there was so much more--we could barely finish. We tried some really good tea (like 3 pots! haha) and would have tried more but we were just so stuffed. But we probably won't be getting that blueberry tea again. Sorry GG, Kirsten and I aren't down for that pound.

It was a successful day of yum yums and reunion-ing and pretending to be classy. We're definitely going to go back there, and go back to London one day! Oh and have a picnic too. In London. xx