blueberry hazelnut coconut oatmeal.

I am here today to introduce to you - delicious oatmeal.

No sugar. Plain oats. Simple things combined to make the classiest breakfast you've probably eaten in a while, unless you have the good fortune of eating at Café du Monde every morning.

But us normal folk tend to either not eat breakfast (bad!!!) or eat breakfast sandwiches or something portable and convenient.

I won't necessarily concede to the fact that this is portable (although it could be! in a paper cup, I've eaten  it that way for two years straight in high school .. while driving. so no excuses.), it is quite easy. If you have ten minutes, I highly recommend this. If you have more than ten minutes, I highly recommend you grab the nearest NYT and read about poor Europe and crossing-the-line NYPD shenanigans while enjoying yo oatmeal.

vanilla browned butter cake with truffle frosting.

It's been a long (very) Fat Tuesday. Fat, because my roommate and I totally went HAM on the bread pudding served at the Mardi Gras dinner at the dining hall tonight. And then Andrea and I devoured half this browned butter cake in approximately 30 minutes, max. Long, because I had an exam this past Sunday and today, and a ton of other things on top of that. Thankfully, that higher power up there was looking out for me and caused the physics page to crash today. And so my physics online homework was delayed! Yay!

And so I proceeded to use the remainder of my time listening to songs about Istanbul & Constantinople (I wish I asked for the title from my roommate), trying to figure out how to say "our" in olde tyme English, avoiding this GIRL who seems to think I am her boyfriend, and researching HTML. Because I wanted to add a Recipe Index to my blog and didn't realize it was so easy! You just go on "Pages" on your dashboard and make a Page of a Million Links (much like the Land of a Million Roofies spoken in an all encompassing accent. Not sure what accent that is, but that's the first description that came to mind).

But here's the tricky part. You need to make sure to SHOW your pages! This is the most difficult part. But I'm warning you guys now. Cause I'm such a tech pro. I'm soo ready to answer questions to work in the computer labs. And also prepared to bake enough cakes until they accept me just for my food.

nutella cheesecake layer cake + truffles.

Remember Andrea? We've made awesome french toast (I actually made her a heart french toast on Valentine's Day morn teehee) & gone secret santa shopping together, and she also decided what my last surprise birthday cake would be. Well, today's her birthday, and that means one thing: make a more awesome birthday cake than the last one.

Which is kind of extremely difficult, considering this was the cake from Andray dray's birthday last year ..

tell me about: Naturally More Peanut Butter!

I really like peanut butter. Freshman year of college, I went through seven jars of peanut butter - the 40 oz (2 lb 8 oz.) ones. Not including all the pb I would eat in the dining hall.

Maybe I should've started out with less disturbing stories. At least I got a lot of protein! And fat .... but protein! I need protein now. These weekly Monday yoga classes are getting to me. As is the hour of gym time I put in directly after each time. And the one hour Just Dance session I had yesterday ... I don't care if you think it's sad that a Wii game affected me, it was intense. 

Need protein to feed all that torn muscle, you know. And this peanut butter has not only protein, but iron and fiber! Yeeeey everything I need. 

There's a blood drive tomorrow. Every blood drive for me ends in disappointment. I guess not eating red meat is detrimental to my blood-donating abilities. Maybe I will eat this entire container of peanut butter right now so my body will be ready to fake enough iron in about 12 hours for me to donate! 

challah french toast. (+ optional steps)

Hey there! It's a fyne Sunday noon, a perfect day for french toast.

But not just any french toast, no no. What I'm talking about is a thick slice of challah bread, doused in a slightly sweet cinnamon egg milk mixture, placed on a hot pan sizzling with butter. As soon as it's cooked through, it's transferred from stove to tray. Brown sugar is crumbled indulgently atop the golden brown toast. Served on a satisfyingly heavy ceramic plate (because I don't want some flimsy plastic plate) with a sturdy fork and knife. Authentic maple syrup, not no Butterworth corn syrup, sits in a cute little jug on the side, waiting to be drizzled and inevitably get everywhere, making every. single. surface. sticky. 

I live for Sunday mornings. 

apple butter bars.

When did there start being not enough hours in a day?

Sleep. Classes. Schoolwork. Meetings. Lab. Club. Eating. Seeing civilization.

The last two get kind of neglected nowadays .. one day, by 3pm, I had eaten Greek yogurt & one of these bars from Dudley's that have 0.8 grams of plant sterols. They're actually super healthy and taste really good. But I learned in my foods class that sterols are cholesterols that are only derived from animal sources, and the way that vegetarians get it is from milk. So how can "plant" sterols exist?

No clue, but I want to ask my cute little Indian professor, I am sure she would know. Speaking of that class, the exam is in two days ... I have yet to buy the textbook. Yeeeeeeeey let's see how bad this week can end up being.

On the bright side, this weekend was awesome!

marbled banana nutella muffins.

I like using the word marbled. I feel like marbled things are fancier, like marbled cheesecake brownies & neapolitan marble cake.

Anyway, good thing Thursday is over. We have passed the major hump of the week! Yay us. And yesterday was such nice weather. I wore shorts. SHORTS, people, on the first day of February! Albeit with tights, but they're so sheer it would be highly inappropriate to wear them with nothing over them (funny story ..) but still. And the day before, I went for a run in just a t-shirt and shorts.

Actually that's how I hurt my calf .. that was no good. It's so annoying to get hurt. Also I don't have ice, but I was considering chilling the peppermint schnapps bottle in the freezer & using that to ice my leg. No one's touched that thing since ... a while ago, anyway.