oatmeal berry bars (vegan; can be gluten-free).

Looking for the perfect breakfast item or healthy summer dessert? These berry oatmeal bars can serve as both. There is zero fat (no oil, butter, or eggs), but enough ingredients to keep these bars extremely moist and also satisfyingly delicious.

veggie beet burgers (vegan, gluten-free).

Drops of liquidy red stipple the counter .... the remains of some recent mess are evidenced by the now diluted pink water in the mugs sitting in the sink .... a pair of hands working hard nearby are deeply stained with red.

Is this a murder scene? Some crime show? 

NOPE. It's all the result of working with beets! And messy as they may be, they make for great veggie (and vegan) burgers.

carrots, with black sesame + ginger.

I made up a new diet plan.

I know there are tons out there - Atkins (do people still do that?), Weight Watchers, low carb, low fat, high-protein, low calorie, Whole30 ... that last one strikes me as really controversial. I understand all of it except for the no legume/soy thing. No peanut butter?!?!? C'mon.

Anyway, my diet is called: the don't be lazy diet. It has 2 rules: Don't be lazy. Cook your own meals as much as possible, and only eat what you cook.

peachy breakfast quinoa.

Oatmeal definitely gets all the attention for breakfast. Whether cooked in a bowl with some flax and sunflower seeds, or crumbled with cinnamon, butter and clumped over apples, it's always oatmeal.

I recently got Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbook It's All Good ("all iz well" what up movie reference, what up superwoman reference). In it, she talks about how she was really feeling the ill effects of her stressful, crazy lifestyle, and so went about eating better. The cookbook is a culmination of mostly vegan, pretty simple recipes with basic ingredients.

healthy fig bars.

At this point, I've tried almost every single flavor of Nature's Bakery fig bars. They're like a fancier fig newton. Although I dislike how the nutrition facts are for one bar vs. one package (contains 2 bars, which I find incredibly easy to devour), I just can't get enough of these bars.

In recent efforts to cut down on the amount of refined products I consume, I have been looking for snack options I can make myself. So the next time I was at the store, instead of buying a few more packs of these fig bars, I bought a pack of dried figs. After getting home I Googled around, and these are what I came up with.

vanilla strawberry chia seed pudding. (paleo, gf, vegan)

Have you heard of chia seeds? I reviewed them before. They have an insane amount of fiber, and make their presence known by texture more than taste. Dry chia seeds are crunchy. When soaked, the seeds absorb the liquid and develop mucilage - which just means they get a little polysaccharide gelatinous coating.

This property is vital in order for chia seed puddings to work. In all the variations I've found, chia seeds are mixed with a non-dairy milk (probably to retain the vegan aspect), and let sit, with occasional stirring. After a couple hours (or overnight), the mixture has thickened substantially, forming a "pudding." Fruit, purees, nuts, and flavorings are added afterwards.

whole wheat carrot zucchini muffins.

The two busiest weeks of my senior year ended today, and I cannot be more at peace. Before 9pm, I had washed my face, brushed my teeth, climbed into bed, and was watching a movie, and IT WAS GREAT.

I figured I would blog since I had the time, even if I made these muffins a while ago.

(three-ingredient) spinach smoothie.

I am FINALLY finally finally blogging about these smoothies. I've been making them pretty regularly for at least a year, and make it a point to buy spinach and steal bananas from the dining hall purely for this.

Green smoothies are nothing new at this point. It feels like between every 10-12 butter laden or themed food items on foodgawker, there is a new green smoothie recipe. Well, here's another.

It might be sad to admit that I am really fond of these. They're just too healthy and easy. There was a period of two weeks where I had one everyday. Then I stopped because spinach was expensive that week ... and I think my digestive health was a little too healthy.

thai turkey meatballs.

I'm running a 5K in six days. I thought I'd share how I am preparing for this, as I consider myself an elite athletic guru.

1. Don't run for several weeks. In the meantime, stay up late both because you are hanging with yo buds and because you overcommitted yourself, so you have lots of responsibilities to take care of.

2. Make lots of tasty treats, like german vanilla cake. Also, don't hold back on dem Thanksgiving mashed potatoes and gravy.

3. Randomly force yourself to run one day. Run so much after such a hiatus that you feel very sore (but good sore) the next day.

homemade pumpkin puree.

I've had two baby pumpkins forever (only one is shown above .. the other was already chopped). They've been waiting patiently on the counter for about a month, while I've been watching them decline into what was soon to be foul fish-smelling, melting, rotting orange flesh (I hope none of you have ever experienced a severely neglected pumpkin).

Fortunately, recently I was able to come back to the apartment in time to make dinner! A rare occurrence mind you. 

And before I starting sauteeing onions, mushrooms, corn, and alfalfa sprouts with farro and egg, I prepared these pumpkins for a nice toasty visit to the oven.

open-faced garden sandwich.

I'm a fan of the "super healthy meals, indulgent desserts" lifestyle (at least until my metabolism completely breaks down). Lately, actually, I've been pretty on top of cooking almost all my meals or eating salads when I do go to the dining hall. Desserts are at a minimum. And I've exercised three mornings in a row!

But there's always that one day that trips you up. The week leading up to that day could have been long. You might have been stuck in a 3-hr lab killing live fish with scalpels and smashing snails with rusty wrenches before massacring their bodies in search of teeny tiny parasites (and disappointingly not finding any :( ) An odd allergy season may have descended.

On these days, you eat a sandwich like this one. And then you go out to Brother Jimmy's with the girls to share a swamp water and the best pulled chicken nachos you've had in a long time. It's okay. It happens.

sesame ginger noodles.

Why are people so wary of self-reflecting? I enjoy it .. it's not like I do it every second I get and look forward to it with longing, but if I find myself, say, on a 5.5 hour bus ride, with nothing but my iPod to accompany me, I let my mind wander.

And eventually, after thinking about how excited I am to bake again, speculating on my relationships with people, and still trying to get over the $14,000 on-campus apartments at BU, my mind turns to me. I don't know about everyone else, but I like seeing how much I have changed and the amount of experiences I've gone through for the past couple years. It makes me more appreciative.

strawberry banana milkshake.

So much pondering going on lately.

Like whether I should buy hot pink lipstick (Persian Melon sounds so enticing). 

Why there are no science classes available next semester.

What to do for my RU Dance Marathon Board of Director presentation.

And about what to bake. I've finally been eating healthy on a more regular basis, which means not a lot of baked goods. As a result, I barely crave them anymore. Which technically is good, but so sad! I feel like I've lost my inspiration for baking. 

Milkshakes aren't baking, but I've been making them a lot recently. They're not your indulgent it's-really-just-melted-ice-cream with sugary fruit syrup drink. They're pretty light. And they're great for reasons more than just how they taste, too.

quinoa patties.

These are just the most delicious little things. I'm growing an affinity for quinoa. It's so versatile, and if made in big batches, it can be incorporated into a ton of things. You could make pilaf with quinoa, rice and lentils. You could toss them into soup for texture and protein. Or you could make quinoa cakes, or patties, like I did here.

I didn't follow a recipe, and I don't think you should either. I wanted something really healthy for lunch and figured these would work. They did.

single serving, guilt-free molten lava cake.

Have you ever had those mornings where you wake up super early, for seemingly no reason?

You're dreaming and then suddenly, you just drift into awakedness. You don't want to open your eyes for fear of losing your chance of falling back asleep, so you keep your eyes squeezed shut and try to think of the most boring things ever .. like taxes and school.

But eventually, you can't take the suspense anymore, because really, what time is it anyway? Is it acceptably late enough to wake up yet? So you open your eyes.

And it's pitch black darkness. You hear your dad in the shower, and you know your dad wakes up at 5:30am everyday. Damn it.

fall harvest salad.

Rainy days are so annoying. Unless you're sitting inside doing nothing all day, well then they're beautiful. You get to be lazy, bum around, and snack all day. It's pouring outside today, but I tried to make an effort to change up my usual rainy day diet of snacks and cookies.

tell me about: chia seeds!

I love these suckers.

Have you heard of them? Do you like them? Do they look too much like ants for you to try?

I'm here to tell you about these crunchy little seeds. I feel like a MythBusters host, or these guys, writing that. 

whole wheat breakfast muffins.

I'm in that mood. You know the one. Where you lay in bed, headphones streaming music from the iTunes playlist dubbed "Mellow" (the Drake & Linkin Park songs that belie the actual mood) and thoughts, instead of focusing on the relaxing chilling session earlier with the bestie, cannot progress past ce;swlfuehsfi;.

It may've been eating dinner so late (9:30 pm). It could also be something else.

It's probably the dinner. Weirddd. These muffins are weird, too. They have so many random (super healthy) things in them, because I made the recipe up totally by myself. I'll keep the focus on the muffins.

baked cinnamon mini doughnuts + cream cheese glaze.

I'm really excited about these. They're mini doughnuts. Everything is better mini .. well, most things.

They're adorable, healthy (baked, not fried), and virtually fat-free. I usually don't like cinnamony things, but I love these.

The texture is perfectly fluffy. I could pretty much drink the glaze on top, and the way in which it settles and slightly soaks into the top of the doughnut ... you are going to need to try these.

crazy brownies.

These brownies are crazy. Why? Because there's crazy things going on with them.

As a corollary, there have been lots of crazy things going on with me, too. Corollary .. coronary .. artery .. heart attack.

That's my train of thought, without fail, when I hear/see/say corollary. I guess heart attack is kind of depressing. But doesn't everything lead to cancer anyway?