Eggstatic!

Before I even mention any other part of my day, I must share this triumph with you all.

Tonight, I successfully poached an egg for the first time ever!!!!!!!!!!

Check out my beautiful egg.

Is that not a thing of beauty? Is that not a perfectly poached egg?

Because it is. Oh yes, it is.

And not only did I successfully poach one egg tonight, I pulled off two! Here’s the other little fella:

He’s pretty good-looking too.

This is a time of triumph and victory because I was unsuccessful with my previous poaching attempt. Very unsuccessful, as you can see in the pictures from that post. It so demoralized me that I wasn’t even sure I had it in me to attempt the poached technique again. Afterall, I am normally quite good with eggs. I make beautiful omelets. Great-looking fried eggs. Superb scrambled eggs. It literally pained me that I couldn’t master the poached technique, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to waste the eggs on multiple, futile attempts at conquering the art of the poach.

I’m glad I had a change of heart though because poached eggs are a thing of beauty. Simple food at its absolute best.

I’ll get back to the poached eggs in a bit, but first, I shall go through the day’s eats!

Breakfast

Oats in a jar! Oats in a jar! Three cheers for oats in a jar!

Almost empty vessel of raw PB:

Now filled with chocolate banana oats:

To make my Reeses Peanut Butter Cup oats (they really did taste like that when mixed in with the PB!), I added the following:

• 1/3 cup Coach’s Oats
• 1/2 nanner whipped
• 1 cup water (I’m out of milk!)
• 1/2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
• cinnamon, pinch salt
• 2t cacao nibs

Peanut butter + chocolate for breakfast? It doesn’t get much better than that! And yet, this is actually quite healthy since unsweetened cocoa powder only has about 10 calories per tablespoon. All the sweetness comes from the banana, a natural and nutritious source of sugar.

Lunch

After my AmeriCorps meeting this morning, I was able to return home to whip up a quick lunch. I decided to make a big salad since I wanted to use up some of the veggies in my fridge before they went bad. I feel like I’m always in a battle against time to eat all my fresh produce before it goes south on me!

Here’s my lovely salad:

Composed of:

• Spring mix
• chopped heirloom tomato (local!)
• 1/2 chopped avocado
• kidney beans
• a few shakes of oregano
• kalamata olives
• a few drizzles of EVOO, balsamic vinegar, and honey for dressing

It was a delicious combination of flavors!

Dr. Krackah on the side.

And the last of my berries (i.e. two. Kind of sad actually…).

Pre-workout snack

After I came home from work, I was feeling tired and lethargic, so I decided to whip up a GM for energy!

In the GM:

• 1/2 frozen nanner
• 1/2 cup blueberries
• two handfuls spinach
• 1T Vega Vanilla Chai
• 1 cup water (still out of milk!)
• boatload of ice

I love my GMs!

Don’t try to take it from me otherwise I might give you my feared gangsta face.

Don’t mess, yo.

I slurped my GM right up!

It gave me a nice boost in energy, so I was able to drag my booty on over to the gym even though I really wasn’t feeling like it. For some reason, whenever the humidity gets high like it was today, I just want to lie on my bed all day. All motivation to go outside and do anything is lost. The GM helped me overcome that lack of motivation, thank goodness!

Once at the gym, I walked for 5 min on the treadmill as a warmup, and then did 20 min of HIIT (high intensity interval training). I alternated between 20 sec at 8.5mph and 1:00 min at 6.0 mph for recovery until 20 min was up. I then finished off with 5 min at 6.5 mph and another 5 min of walking to cool down. I was a sweaty beast after that short, but intense workout!

Dinner

Obviously, you know that dinner was my poached egg triumph. I served my poached eggs on two slices of toasted and buttered Ezekiel bread. I enjoyed some roasted frozen asparagus and grape tomats on the side.

My dinner looks like a face, doesn’t it? The eggs are the eyes, the asparagus the mustache, and the tomats the smile. Lol. Maybe it was smiling because it knew that this was my first successful poached egg attempt? Sure….That’s it.

And don’t tell me otherwise.

Pop goes the weasel!

Popped egg yolks make for perfect bread dipping. Yum!

So how, you may ask, did I make these successfully?

I would give you a tutorial, but you can find all the info you need on Ashley’s blog. I followed the directions she posted exactly, and it worked like a charm. I think the key was to create the vortex at the beginning. Or maybe the key was getting the water at the perfect creepy, slow simmer? Or maybe it was the vinegar I splashed in at the beginning? Or….

Okay, who the hell knows why it worked. But it did work. And not only once, but twice! I shall follow those directions whenever I poach an egg in the future, and I suggest you all do the same.

Dessert

I restocked my sorbet and fro yo selections on a trip to TJ’s this evening. This flavor of sorbet from Double Rainbow sounded really good to me on this hot and muggy evening:

The nutritional stats were surprisingly good too! Only 80 cal for a 1/2 cup serving. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sorbet serving so low in calories actually.

The taste, you ask? Oh goodness. It was divine. It tasted like a creamy and dreamy combination of frozen mangos and citrus. It tasted better than actual mango, in my opinion. This will likely become a summer staple for me.

Yum!

I’m heading off to poke around the apartment for a while. I’m planning on driving up to Portsmouth sometime in the morning to meet up with the boy. I would be with the boy tonight, but he’s on duty with his other girlfriend, the Navy, for the evening.. I have to share him. Sigh….anyway, I’ll try to blog when I get the chance. We’re planning on going rock climbing and doing some date night cooking! I can’t wait….

QUESTION: What’s your favorite way to eat eggs?

I’m a big omelette gal, but I might soon become obsessed with poached eggs.