Day 4 and Doing Better

Before I get started on Day 4, a review of my homemade hot chocolate from last night's snack.

Unfortunately this is the first item where I really didn't manage to make it look nearly as appealing as the BuzzFeed people did.

A little grittier looking than what they had made.

I thought about throwing it in the blender to try and smooth things out but I didn't want to clean another dish. I whisked the crap out of this mixture and this is as good as it was going to get. It's just a cup of unsweetened almond milk and a half ounce of dark chocolate, shaved and melted in the milk. As you could probably guess it was lacking the traditional sweetness of normal people's hot chocolate. But it wasn't too bad and i drank nearly the whole thing. It got to room temperature and weird by the bottom of the cup, so that's why I didn't finish.


Without further delay...here we are folks, Day 4. What I am calling Spinach Day

This morning I was in a bit of a pickle. That omelette looks really tasty, but today is actually bagel day. Every 2nd Tuesday of the month my office gets a bazillion bagels for the employees. I look forward to every 2nd Tuesday of the month like a kid waits for Christmas. This challenge is supposed to be gluten free. Bagels are like rings of gluten. See the pickle?

I decided to take a gander at what breakfasts lay ahead of me in the coming days and decided that I would most likely not enjoy the chia seed pudding they expect me to consume on Friday. I am still going to make it and try it but if it is gross, I'll just make my scallion and feta omelette instead. It's a win-win, I get to have my bagel today and still try all the meals out. 

So this ended up being breakfast: 

Chocolate chip bagel with plain (non-fat whipped) cream cheese. I'm salivating again. 

'Twas delicious and I am very happy I decided not to give up the delicacy that is bagel day. 

Moving onto lunch, it became spinach day. Lunch today was a salad of spinach, quinoa (substituted for the mental lentils), feta, red pepper, and seedless cucumber with the lime vinaigrette dressing leftover from Monday's dinner. So I don't know whether or not seedless cucumbers are a real thing but I couldn't find any in a normal grocery store. So instead of using a seedless cucumber I took seeds out of a normal cucumber. I don't believe I'm just being dumb here because on the grocery list it specified to buy a seedless cucumber, not just to scoop out the seeds like I did. Why would you even buy a seedless cucumber? Like, really, you can't handle eating the seeds of a cucumber? It's not like they're watermelon seeds. 

People who know my eating habits quite well may be thinking at this point, "Hanna, there was a red pepper in that list of ingredients. Are you trying to tell me you actually consumed your most hated of foods?". Yes, yes I am. And it wasn't too bad. I only included half the red pepper it called for and that was plenty for me. I ate each piece of pepper with a piece of cucumber and feta in hopes of watering down or covering up the flavor and it worked! I ate the whole salad, nothing was left and it was mighty tasty. 

I'm still anti-pepper as I can taste it when it has been cooked with something but my eating technique for this salad payed off and I was able to down all of it. I'm so proud of me :)

Snack this afternoon was a chia seed, banana, mango smoothie. It was just those three things with the unsweetened almond milk and a splash of vanilla extract and smoothied together. 

I couldn't detect the chia seed texture at all so it was just a mango banana smoothie and if you don't enjoy that then you don't enjoy life. Again, I finished the whole thing! And it kept well considering it had to be blended at my apartment this morning then just chilled in the fridge at work all day. Score one for the smoothie team!

Next comes dinner. That's how the day usually works anyways. Continuing with spinach day I had another spinach salad except this time with just reheated leftover chicken and roasted fennel root. Now I had no idea what roasted fennel root was going to be like and I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, my picture isn't quite as nice as what the summation picture shows. My spinach didn't really wilt or cook and the juices from the roasted fennel didn't cover everything like the picture shows. Overall it was kinda dry but I am a new member of the roasted fennel root fan club. 

I ended up having to ration out the fennel root so I could have some moisture with the spinach and chicken. Like I said, it was dry and could have used some sort of dressing. But I ate all of it because the fennel was really really good. 

Then immediately after I finished cleaning up I got a hankering for a donut. There is a Krispy Kreme dangerously close to my apartment and I have been known to go out just for a donut. But I am resisting! Instead I'm having some hershey kisses. 

The snack tonight is two dates and two almonds. How the heck is that a snack. And two almonds? Why even bother. So im probably just going to continue with the chocolate. 

Tomorrow's food looks to be interesting to say the least....blueberry, chickpea, and fennel salad for lunch soooooo there's that. Wish me luck!