Do you like figs?

I wasn't so sure. A big part of me didn't think I did because the word fig doesn't sound very appetizing, but I've heard people talk about how sweet and delicious they are so I decided I was at least open to trying them. I just got the most amazing new cookbook from Williams Sonoma (thanks to wedding gift cards! whoot!) called Eat Well, and I had book marked a bunch of pages (of course), so when I was trying to decide what to make when Jason came over for dinner on Wednesday, Steve suggested we each open the book to a bookmarked page and pick whichever recipe sounded better. I opened to pork tenderloin with fig, he opened to some pumpkin quinoa dish. I won.

This is definitely one of my favorite and probably most impressive meals I've made, but it was actually super easy! Once we decided, I of course had to figure a salad to go with it, so here's what we ended up with!

Salad:
*Arugula
*Toasted walnuts
*Dried mission fig, chopped
*Unsweetened dried cherries
*A generous helping of goat cheese on top

Dressing:
*1.5:1 Red wine vinegar and olive oil
*1-2 sprigs rosemary, stems discarded, finely chopped
*Drizzle honey dijon
*Drizzle plain ole honey
*Garlic pepper

Pork tenderloin with fig:
*12 dried mission figs, stemmed and halves
*1.5 cups dry red wine
*1.25 lb pork tenderloin
*Salt and pepper to taste
*Olive oil
*3 sprigs fresh thyme or rosemary
*1 tbs fig jam (I couldn't find it so I used fig butter)
*1 tsp lemon zest

Preheat oven to 400. Place figs and wine in a small sauce pan over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 min. Remove from heat and let stand for 15 min. Drain figs and reserve wine.

Pat pork dry, trim away fat, season with salt and pepper.

Season a cast iron skillet with olive oil and place over medium heat. Add pork and brown on all 4 sides (approx 5 min total). Arrange figs and herbs around pork and bake for 18-25 min when the meat reaches 155 degrees F (I cooked mine for 21 minutes and it came out PERFECT. Also, I cut the tenderloin in half to fit comfortable in the skillet).

Transfer tenderloin and figs to a platter, cover with tin foil and let rest for 10 min. Add wine, jam, and lemon zest to cast iron and bring to a boil over medium-high heat stirring often for 4-5 min. Remove and discard herbs.

Slice pork diagonally approx 1/2 inch thick. Arrange figs around pork and spoon sauce on top.

My plate:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Oatmeal

Ummm, maybe the best breakfast EVER. I've been looking forward to today's breakfast ever since I had left over pumpkin from my 25 calorie pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. I love pumpkin. I love chocolate. I love oatmeal. In fact I am pretty much obsessed with oats in any form right now--in oatmeal, in cookies, in smoothies, in yogurt--you name it. I can't believe it's taken me this long to discover their amazingness.

Heaven in a bowl AKA Pumpkin chocolate chip oatmeal:

*1/4 cup oats
*1/4 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
*1 tsp milled flax seed
*1/2 tsp chia seeds
*1/2 scoop vanilla protein powder
*cinnamon to taste
*pinch salt
*1/3 cup canned pumpkin
*drizzle sf maple syrup
*optional: spoonful non fat vanilla yogurt
*grain sweetened chocolate chips for topping

Combine all ingredients except chocolate chips in a small pot on the stove, cook until desired consistency, put it in your bowl and top with chocolate chips! They melt just enough so that you have a delicious chocolate swirl running through your oatmeal. Man I should have taken a picture after I mixed it all up. So delicious.

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The 25 calorie cookie

I know what you're thinking. That can't be good. I'll tell you, they are tiny, and I would consider a serving size two cookies which technically comes out to 47 calories according to calorie count, but how amazing does it sound to say I created a 25 calorie cookie? Nevermind the fact that I actually just melded a few different recipes together with my own added twist :O) The truth is, these cookies are not just low calorie, but actually nutritious and I can't wait to add some protein powder to the mix and turn them into breakfast muffins and pancakes.

The idea? Mix a can of pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling!) with a box of spice cake. Mix, bake, done. I'll be honest, this version does not change the calorie count much, but whatever, my version is more fun and more fiberful!

• 2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 cup milled flax seed
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup splenda brown sugar blend
  
• 1/2 cup sugar free maple syrup
  
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 egg whites
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 12oz can pumpkin
• 1 1/2ish cups grain sweetened chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Mix dry ingredients, add wet ingredients. Drop on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes!

"Spring" cleaning

What can I say? We're a couple months late. Okay, I have a confession--in case you didn't already know, I am a messy person. A messy messy person by nature, and I have to fight every instinct inside my being in order to stay at all clean and organized. It's weird because in most other senses I am a total type A perfectionist. I really wish it transferred into this part of my life! Well, about 9 hours later, all my clothes are clean, our bedroom is sparkly, my car is completely void of all marathon scripts, teaching supplies and starbucks cups, and most excitingly, THE PANTRY IS CLEAN!!!! AND ORGANIZED!!!!!

We have this ridiculously enormous pantry that had started to feel so tiny as we shoved more and more crap in there, but nooooowwww, there are empty shelves! There are nice little areas for all categories of things! My numerous baking supplies are in order, and I even found extra containers to store some of my weirdo health nut food that you can only buy in the bulk section and looks really sloppy in those whole foods bags (chia seeds, nutritional yeast, and I transferred my milled flax seed also!).

Are you ready for thiiiisssss????

So first we have cleaning crap, pasta, nuts, tons of sf pudding (love) and two of my favorite foods on earth: oats and cereal.

Next, enough canned food to get us through the apacolypse, and my ridiculous baking stash. Note to self: You do not EVER need to buy the following things again--canola oil, corn syrup (gross--why do I have so much?), tomato paste, cocoa powder, and cupcake liners. Apparently, we have enough to last a lifetime. Oy!

Lastly, and second to my entire shelf dedicated to baking, probably my favorite: A cute little nook for all my cookbooks (including my favorite--"Ari's Recipe Book of Awesome by Heather McQuarrie)! We are hopefully going to get a bookshelf for them soon, but for now, this will do!
The most interesting part of the organizing? Discovery the brown sugar incident of 2011. I'm not sure when or how it happened, but somehow almost everything in our pantry seemed to have a light dusting of brown sugar--even the things shelves above where I keep the brown sugar. Weird. Many clorox wipes later, I think we are finally brown sugar less.

Today was supposed to be goat cheese day, but Steve and I were just too worn out from working on the house all day. I couldn't even get it together to cook dinner. Instead, I had chipotle for the 3rd day in a row. Haha. I just can't get over cilantro lime brown rice!

Alright, I think I'm gonna go open up one of my last delicious blueberry beers and enjoy my clean house!

PS: Coming soon--I just realized I don't think I ever posted the recipe for my skinny mini corn dogs! They are super cute and when I made them, they were downed in seconds--recipe to come!

I feel like we all get stuck in ruts sometimes where we just feel like everyone in the world hates us. No? Just me? Okay, well sometimes I get stuck in a rut and I feel everyone in the world hates me. I'll admit it. Today without thinking about it, I reached out to a friend that I have been meaning to reach out to for a long time--nothing big, just posted on his facebook and told him I loved him (Kyle, if you read this, your kind words to me are basically to thank for my big turn around in mood--even months later they still make my heart happy!) and I realized how much better I felt after just getting over myself and telling a friend they are important.

It's funny, often times when I start to get that feeling like nobody likes me and everyone wishes I weren't around, when I put myself out there and do something to make someone else hopefully not feel that way, I feel a lot lot lot better. I understand that the crappy feelings are mostly fabricated thoughts from my head and not how anyone feels, but the more time you spend inside your head, the easier it is to get trapped in there.

Thank goodness for amazing things like spin class to get me out of my head! There are a handful of things that almost always take me out of my head and allow me to see a clear picture (in other words--feel better). They are an amazing work out, doing nice things for other people, and baking--but only when I give the baked goods away so I guess that falls under the second one. One thing that I have always hated about our society, myself included, is that is so much more socially acceptable to judge others (I would be a big fat liar if I said I didn't do this) than to compliment. I mean there are so many positive things that I really do think of others--strangers, friends, family, acquaintances--that I never say because I feel embarrassed. My goal is to GTFOI and just be a better person. I know it sounds vague, but it is exactly what I need to do right now to feel good about me. Is it weird that I feel better complimenting others than receiving compliments? Man I SUCK at that part. Oh well, one step at a time.

Anyway, I tried the chia seeds in my oatmeal today. Not so sure what I think. I didn't notice too big of a difference while eating, but I felt like they left kind of a strange after taste. Nothing I'm not willing to put up with for the nutritional benefits, but I was just kind of hoping they would taste amazing. Oh well, I do actually think they made a difference as far as the lasting power of my breakfast. Oats + almond milk + water + yogurt + blueberries + peanut butter + protein powder + chia = still full over an hour after a super intense spin class! Works for me!

Word on the street is, the Chipotle by my house now has cilantro lime BROWN RICE!!!! I know where I'll be for lunch time...!

Healthy living blogs

Confession: I have recently become mildly obsessed with reading healthy living blogs. Doesn't that seem like the coolest thing ever to have your job be writing about your food and work outs? I would love that! Anyway, I've gotten tons of great recipes and tips from them, and I wanted to share in case anyone else was as nerdy as me and wanted to check them out. I follow an embarrassing amount but my favs are

Carrots N Cake for many reasons including the fact that Tina is super funny and has the cutest little pug in the world and if there is anything I'm more obsessed with than food, it's puppies!

Kath Eats because she works at a Great Harvest Bread Co!! If you haven't been, you must. So delicious.

Food Fitness Fashion because in addition to her food and work outs, she takes pictures of her outfits and says where she got everything! Also, pretty much all her basics are from places like Old Navy which makes me inner thrifty Jew self happy :O)

Healthy Food For Living This one is purely for recipes. She doesn't post much about her life and I find most of what she writes even about her cooking process not the most interesting, but her recipes are amazing.

So for several reasons I decided to delete what was formerly my "personal life" blog. Mostly because I started to feel a little ridiculous having more than one and was having way more fun writing in this one, but I am hoping to change this one up a little bit to be more of a whole life blog with an emphasis on recipes (isn't that what my life basically is--life with an emphasis on food? haha)

Today after the gym I made a trip to the second happiest place on earth (obviously Disney Land cannot be beat) Whole Foods! Yes you can judge me for how excited I get about Whole Foods, but it's expensive and I don't get to buy things there all that often. It's like the Anthropologie of grocery stores! And I stocked up on some things for a few culinary experiments I'm hoping to try!

1) Chia seeds! Everyone is talking about them. They're supposed to be really good in oatmeal, and I have been on a total oatmeal kick lately ever since trying oats in a jar! I can't wait for breakfast tomorrow!
2) Nutritional yeast. Ok, I'm a little skeptical about this one. I'll be honest, it does not smell appetizing. But nutritionally it has a lot going for it. Before the end of the week I plan on baking my own tortilla chips, cooking up some ground turkey breast with taco seasoning and some black beans and making this sauce with the nutritional yeast for some skinnified nachos. I hope it doesn't suck.
3) Red fat goats milk. Inspired by one of my favorite people on earth (John Moum!) I am going to make my own goat cheese! Steve is excited for this adventure too :O)

That is definitely enough to keep me busy through the weekend. Along with creating lesson plans for Mesa Arts Academy, reading Dreyfus in Rehearsal, seeing the preview of Glee 3D tonight (judge away!), family din on Friday, Wet and Wild on Sat, and some time fitting in 4 hours to watch the finale of SYTYCD!

Lastly, now that I have my mornings free again, I am taking full advantage of the classes at my gym! I am still sore today from Monday's Body Works and tomorrow I'm getting my butt back into Spin!! The goal is a Body Works, Spin and Yoga class every week, 3 days of my own thing focusing especially on my wimpy biceps and shoulders, and one rest day. I am back to feeling pumped and motivated! I hope it lasts!