I feel like I’ve been away from my blog forever! I got back from Hawaii on Friday evening, but unfortunately, I’m still more than a little out of it.

The jet lag has been rough! I went to sleep around 3 am the past two nights and woke up at 1 pm on Saturday and noon today. Anyone who knows me at all knows that this is absolutely ridiculous for me. Let’s just say that I amnot looking forward to getting up at 7 am for work tomorrow.

Anyway, I’m really late on this one! But I still wanted to make sure I wrote this post because it’s my first month participating in Foodie Penpals and I loved it! Thank you, Lindsay, for coordinating this every month.

My foodie penpal for July was Nicole of Fitful Focus. She actually lives just one town away from me and it was her first month doing foodie penpals too!

I mentioned to Nicole that I love nut butters, granola, and anything with dried fruit, coconut, and dark chocolate. She definitely took all of that into consideration and totally delivered! Here’s what I found in my box:

Homemade granola, dark chocolate peanut butter, a chocolate-dipped coconut LunaBar, and two bags of Trader Joe’s Organic Ginger Pear White Tea. While I absolutely loved every single thing she put in my box, the absolute highlight for me was the homemade granola!

And yes, I’d already had a good chunk of it when I took this picture. Nicole was even nice enough to let me post the recipe on Sleep and Repeat! So here it is. Enjoy!

Here they are written out!

The goods:

• 4 cups old fashioned oats
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes
• 2/3 cup slivered almonds
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup chopped dried fruit

The prep:

1. Preheat oven to 300°
2. Combine oats through cinnamon
3. Heat oil and honey in a small saucepan over low heat until just combined
4. Pour oil/honey mix over dry ingredients, add vanilla, and stir
5. Spread in 9×13 pan and bake for 35 minutes – stir every 10 minutes
6. Add fruit and let cool
7. Eat like a madwoman! (I added this step myself. )

I will definitely be participating in foodie penpals again in August. Thanks for being my first foodie penpal, Nicole! I loved everything.

Fingers crossed that I’ll be back in my groove tomorrow. I’ll be back with some photos from Hawaii!

Happy weekend!

I have a gloriously lazy day planned today. My only plan for the day is to clear out the fridge and get some cooking done.

Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten started yet despite waking up bright and early at 7 am. My roommate doesn’t usually get up until noon or so on weekends and I try to respect that by staying out of the kitchen since her room is right next to it. In all honesty, it can be a little annoying when all I want to do is get up and at it, but it’s also nice to lounge around in bed all morning. I’m not minding at all today!

I don’t normally wake up hungry but today, I was starving the moment I opened my eyes! I’m always inspired by Lauren‘s gorgeous yogurt bowls and I have a ton of fresh fruit right now, so I put together my own.

In the bowl: half of a blueberry Chobani, blueberries, strawberries, homemade granola, a drizzle of peanut butter, and chia seeds. Yum! I think I’ll be recreating this one tomorrow.

Enjoy your day!

Today was one of my slowest days at work in a while. Some days I’m really busy and want nothing more than one of these slow days, but then when it finally rolls around, I can’t stand it. Having little to do is so much more boring to me than keeping busy! But I think that may just be my type A personality talking.

I meant to write a WIAW yesterday, but never got around to it. I had pictures ready to go and everything, but I was just beat after running some errands after work. So I thought I’d share today!

Breakfast

Love Grown carrot cake granola (so good!), strawberries, blueberries, and a Chobani. Here it is all mixed up!

I’m especially excited to share this one because for once, I had something other than overnight oats for breakfast! My parents just brought two Costco-size boxes of strawberries and blueberries and I’m determined not to let them go bad, so I washed and cut a bunch the night before. I should do this more often.

Lunch

My boss found a place called Energy Kitchen on Hoboken menus and man, was I excited when I saw the menu! Nothing over 500 calories and it all looked delicious. I had a California wrap (hummus, guacamole, roasted red peppers, and cucumbers). Yum! I want to try making this combination at home sometime.

Snack

My building’s cafeteria just put in a Wicked Spoon froyo machine. Mmmmm. This may require a lot of self-restraint.

Dinner

I went for one of my favorite post-workout dinners: veggie protein nachos! I just throw veggie protein crumbles, black beans, and salsa in a bowl and heat it all up. I love that it’s easy and healthy too.

In Hawaii prep news, I just bought an underwater case for my camera online and I think I’ve found the perfect dive shop for my sister and I to go scuba diving with. Off to give them a call back and hopefully book our dive! I’m so excited.

Three monsters today:
1. A monster of a day: I was crazy busy all day! Man, was I relieved when I finally called it a day at around 6. Is it Friday yet?

2. A monster workout: After a crappy workout yesterday, I was determined to get a good one in today. Drained by my long day, I decided to let myself get off to a slow start on the stationary bike. After that, it was leg time! I did this mini-circuit, which I made up as I went:

- 1 minute of frog squats
- 30 seconds of squat jumps
- 1 minute of deadlifts
- 30 seconds of side lunges with rotation
- 1 minute of alternating step back lunges
- 30 seconds of squats with lateral raises
- 1 minute of jump wood chops
- 30 seconds of split jumps

I rested one minute between sets and repeated three times. I felt the burn after this one!

3. Green monster smoothie bowl: It was already 8:30 when I got home from the gym so I wasn’t really feeling cooking for dinner. All I wanted was something lighter so I decided to finally use some of my frozen spinach in a green monster smoothie.

In the blender went three ounces of passionfruit Greek yogurt, a big scoop of cottage cheese, a sliced frozen but very brown banana, two handfuls of spinach, and a scoop of almond butter. But when it was finally blended up, I realized that one very important ingredient was forgotten…

Almond milk! No wonder it took forever to blend. I added about half a cup and pulsed a few more times to get this gorgeous green concoction.

And yes, the left out almond milk had to make an appearance. Also, I noticed that my green bowl and smoothie matched perfectly. Totally broke Women’s Health’s color control rule, but hey, it’s not like I could have overserved myself when dinner was a smoothie.

Topped with some Nature’s Path pumpkin flax granola to add some texture. Tasty!

A nice end to my day. Now I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I sleep until my alarm goes off at 7:15 tomorrow morning.