My Power Breakfast

I took this picture one Saturday morning because I thought it looked pretty colorful. This is the same cereal where a co-worker walked into my cube and said, "OH - rabbit food." as he stopped by to see if I'd join him in a venture to the cafeteria and that my significant other calls "sticks and twigs". 


On the weekdays I eat this cereal dry, still with the dried cranberries, with coffee - no sugar.  I have to admit, it took me a few tries to get use to the texture of this cereal.  I recall standing in the cereal aisle of the Wegmans in Bridgewater, NJ with my Weight Watchers points scales, trying to see what cereal did the least damage for the most volume.  Because this had such a high fiber content, one serving had the least damage (3 point).  That was a long time ago when, after finishing school and living out on my own, I realized my eating pattern wasn't going to leading to a good trend on the scale.   

So, what's in the bowl? Here we go:

• 1 serving of  Natures Path Organic Optimum Slim (now called Optimum Power Blueberry Cinnamon Flax) because the high fiber content keeps me full for a good few hours, which is where the mid day snack comes in.
• 2 spoonfuls of dried cranberries because it stabilizes blood sugar and prevent me from hunting for something sweet in the morning.  I think I read about that in a Women's Health magazine.

And on the weekend, if available:

• Organic Blueberries as they have tons of benefits. No wonder why they aren't cheap.
• Just enough Organic Skim Milk until the cereal just starts to rise, which I assume is less than a serving, or at most a serving. But if you wait until it just starts to rise, it will be just enough milk to guarantee every spoonful of cereal has its share of milk - try it out.  An old friend in college, Angelo, told me about this when we were having a discussion about eating cereal for dinner during Calculus 2.

And, for the cereal Rendition shown below, some strawberries were added, but only because

1. My normal cereal wasn't available - so this was Nature's Path Organic Flax Plus Multibran Flakes - or "Blandies" as it's coined in my household.  (omega-3, 5g Fiber, 4g protein, 10g whole grain)  and 
2. They had strawberries in the picture on the Cereal box.   

Unfortunately, the strawberries were not very sweet.  Are they supposed to be?  What should strawberries add the cereal experience anyway?  I'm not exactly sure why there always seemed to be such a hype around strawberries.  I remember in elementary school girls would say, "Oh my goodness, I LOVE strawberries." Perhaps those folks only had them when they were covered in chocolate?  Perhaps I'm eating them out of season?

Strawberries look really sweet on the outside, but in reality they're not.  

"Like YOU!" I was told when I shared that thought with my significant other. 

And then I was called a "strawberry" for a good time - it was even drawn on the blackboard on my wall.  They way it was written made it even more amusing to say.

Swindled

Whoever said, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is." was right. Now when such situations are presented to me, I end up asking myself, "What's in it for you if I believe you." But sometimes what's in it for me is not so bad either.

So after receiving some free vacation I was swindled into getting these ChefWorld pot set. We knew we'd probably get swindled, but liking to believe we are capable of some form of objective decision-making, I want to document all the culinary creations that this household infrastructure upgrade has resulted in - I'll tag these posts with "ChefWorld". I also don't feel like doing "real work" right now. So here we go!

Roasted Chicken

So as the new year rolled in, you want to clean things out and start anew. We bought a whole organic chicken and decided to eat all the vegetables we had with it. We rinsed the chicken and skinned it - by the way which would have diappointed me as a child if you gave me chicken without the skin - and put it in the pot with all the vegetables we had in stock, that included a lot chopped up carrots. some chopped up tomoatoes, onions, and garlic. As you can see a few bay leaves in there with other spices - probably garlic powder, oregano, salt, pepper. The chicken was chillin'. Turned on the oven on medium and when it whistled, close the opening at the top and reduced the heat to low for and kept covered for 30 minutes.

Apparently when is whistles, it means that it's 170 degrees, which is the perfect temprature to cook meats and vegetables because it does so without hurting the nutritional components. The sales person cooked carrots and it tasted pretty darn good.

Results

• This combination came out awesome. I really love carrots now and I really love onions when they're cooked this way.
  

Lessons Learned

• Anything vegetable you can spare, throw it in. Everything you throw in it will come out tasting awesome.
  

Varieties

In this example we covered the chicken with potatoes, broccoli, and carrots. Awesome.