Well, It's the start of Holiday Break and the school semester has gotten the better of me again. It's been months since my last consistent set of blog posts. I won't even tell you how much I've filmed or how many pictures I've taken that are still just stuck in my camera. It's also been kind of strange because one of my art classes has a blog that we post our progress on as well, so I was posting consistently, just not on this blog... ahaha. Maybe I'll just start posting on both, for my own reference, because I don't know how long those other blog posts will stay up. 

You may have seen my food/health struggle in my past blog posts... especially with final projects in the mix of it all, it wasn't pretty. But I did my best, went to the gym as much as I could, and I found most of my motivation (when I did have it) from one of my favorite YouTubers, Niomi Smart. But I still wasn't healthy, I knew that I wasn't treating my body right, and I could feel it in the form of fatigue and headaches, and see it in my skin and nails. 

After one night of particularly disgusting food consumption, I watched one of her videos in my Youtube binging despair. And I'd considered buying her book for a while, but my distraught state of mind finally made me take the plunge. 

Her recipes are all plant-based, but she doesn't write toward a vegan or dieting audience, rather anyone who is seeking to improve their physical and mental health through food. Though her recipes are actually quite a lot easier to achieve than some health recipes I've seen out there, they are still sometimes a bit out of the university dorm-living student's range. So, I cook with adaptations. 

Breakfast is probably one of the hardest meals for me to eat healthily, probably because I'm not really a morning person, at least not during winter. It's so hard to not just grab whatever you find in the pantry/fridge aka dad's leftover fried chicken or a sugary bowl of cereal (when I can't even drink milk).  So, I'm looking for something that I can throw into a pot, set a timer, and run back up to my warm bed until it finishes. Yay porridge!

Her Recipe actually calls for raisins (don't like the texture), maca powder (too expensive), and almond-milk (ooh, fresh out of it)... So, too make up for it I added coconut oil, toasted almonds, and honey.

1c rolled oats

handful of sliced almonds (~1/8 c)

1 tsp coconut oil

1c water

1tsp cinnamon

1 ripe banana

drizzle honey

Since, I'm missing a lot of the ingredients that are supposed to give the porridge flavor I'm creating my own flavor using a granola technique of toasting the oats, almonds, and cinnamon in coconut oil first, and then adding the honey. It smells ridiculously good. If you can get the edges of the almonds to burn a little without burning the oatmeal it tastes amazing.

 And then I'll just dump in the water. Put it on Med heat and set a timer for 10-12 mins and run back up to wait in my warm bed.
 (Leaving you cooking unattended is not encouraged. Unless, maybe, you are in a house so cold that the warmth from a cooking fire is welcome.)

She puts in half of the banana to cook with the oatmeal but I like to let the residual heat cook the bananas so I have chunky pieces. Serve with a glass of water to hydrate in the morning.

I'm definitely more of a grazer than a big meal eater so I'll actually just eat a few bites before a morning workout (if I have one) and then munch through the rest while I'm working all the way to lunch and I'll have around half leftover. I'll stow that, make lunch and repeat the muching process. I eat the rest of it after dinner as sort of dessert/snack because I get really hungry at night and I haven't kicked the habit of eating late yet so until then... it might as well be something healthy and full of fiber. 

The next Breakfast Recipe I really want to try: Swiss Bircher Muesli