***Have you entered my earring giveaway yet?…***

So if you read yesterday’s post, you’ll know that I was recently given samples of POMx™ Iced Coffee to taste and review.  While I really enjoyed the flavor of the iced coffees, I don’t think I’ll be rushing to replace my morning cup of black coffee with the POMx™ Iced Coffee anytime soon.  Sorry! They’re just a tad too sweet for me to have so early on in the day as my first consumption of caffeine.  Plus, I’m already sweet enough (*sarcasm*)!  So what did I do with the rest of my samples, you ask?  Did I throw them away?  Did I give them to someone else to finish (that would be a bit gross)?  Did I just drink them for the heck of it?  No.  No.  And no!  Since Healthy Chow isn’t one for wasting things, I decided to make good use of my free samples versus just letting them sit and and take up precious space in my fridge.

So, you wanna know what I made…?

Well, if I wasn’t going to be drinking these little ‘wonderfuls’ as part of my breakfast, I figured the next best thing was to cook with them!  Because I love the rich and decadent taste of each of the flavors, I imagined they would be the perfect component in my breakfast foods.  Now, I’m not right a lot of the times, but when I am, I hit the nail exactly on the head (she pats herself on the back)!

Are you ready to find out yet…?

Blueberry Cheesecake Oatmeal POM-erized
Serves 1

• 1/2 cup of dry oats (you can use quick oats or old-fashioned style)
• 1 cup of water
• 1/2 TSP of chia seeds (I used Greens Plus brand)
• 2 TBSP of nonfat cottage cheese
• 1 TBSP of POMx™ Vanilla flavored Iced Coffee
• 1/2 TBSP of chopped raw almonds
• small handful of blueberries, fresh or frozen

1) In a small pot, bring water to a rolling boil.  Once boiling, add the oats and chia seeds.  Stir to make sure the chia seeds are well-blended with the oats.  Reduce the heat to medium/medium-low and let cook for another 3 minutes.

2) Add your cottage cheese and iced coffee.  Stir.

3) Remove oatmeal from heat and pour into a bowl.  Top with blueberries and chopped almonds.

4) Eat with a spoon, but you won’t be able to stop thinking that this is a piece of blueberry cheesecake!

Yum-to-the-O!  This was incredible! The cottage cheese made the oatmeal fluffy (and cheesy) while the chia seeds added to the thickness.  The vanilla iced coffee sweetened this whole little number and the chewiness from the almonds made me think I was eating a graham cracker crust.  And of course, the blueberries accentuated the entire recipe.  If this breakfast was a whole cake, there wouldn’t be a slice left!

POM-errific Chocolate Banana French Toast
Serves 1

• 2 or 3 slices of bread (I used Trader Joe’s Sprouted Flourless Whole Wheat Berry Bread – 2 slices and 1 end)
• 1/4 cup of POMx™ Chocolate flavored Iced Coffee
• 1/3 cup of liquid egg whites
• few shakes of pumpkin pie spice
• few shakes of cinnamon
• few shakes of nutmeg
• pinch of brown sugar
• 1/2 of banana, sliced
• sprinkling of organic dried coconut (I used Woodstock Farms brand)
• sprinkling of cocoa powder

1) Mix the iced coffee, egg whites, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, nutmeg and brown sugar in a shallow bowl.

2) Dip each slice of bread in the iced coffee/egg white mixture.  Let each piece absorb the mixture for about 1 minute.

3) Spray your frying pan or griddler (or in my kitchen, the C.G.) with cooking spray.  Turn your heat to medium.

4) Place your dipped slices of bread on the frying pan/griddler.  Heat each side for about 2-3 minutes or until the edges start turning that nice golden brown color.

5) Flip each piece of bread and cook for another couple of minutes.

6) Serve with sliced bananas, cocoa powder and dried coconut sprinkles.  Devour!

This french toast recipe was so tasty! There was just enough chocolate flavoring from the iced coffee to give this dish a unique flavor without it being overly sweet.  Coupled with the smashed banana slices (the banana was previously frozen) and the dried coconut, this french toast didn’t even need maple syrup.  I wish I had made more than the the 2.5 pieces I inhaled!

Oatmeal POM-tein Pancakes
Serves 1

• 1/3 cup of dry oats (you can use quick oats or old-fashioned style)
• 1/4 cup of POMx™ Vanilla flavored Iced Coffee
• 1/4 cup of liquid egg whites
• 1/2 TSP of baking soda
• few shakes of cinnamon
• few shakes of nutmeg
• 1/2 banana, sliced
• maple syrup or agave nectar

1) In a small bowl, mix together the oats, iced coffee, egg whites, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg.

2) Pour the mixture into your blender.  Add your sliced banana.  Blend until you get the consistency of a thin batter.

3) Spray your frying pan or griddler (or C.G) with cooking spray.  Turn your heat to medium/medium-high.

4) Pour your batter onto your pan or griddler.  Let cook for 2-3 minutes.  Once the pancake can be moved without sticking, flip.  Cook the other side for another 2 minutes.

5) Serve with maple syrup or agave nectar.  Enjoy!

Ohemgee!  These protein-packed pancakes tasted more like banana bread than flapjacks.  They were so delicious and aromatic; I couldn’t believe this breakfast was actually healthy! The vanilla iced coffee and banana kept these pancakes moist and more than flavorful.  I’m glad no one was watching me eat these because I seriously was licking the plate clean.

POM-tastic Banana Coffee Soft Serve
Serves 1

• 1 frozen banana
• 2 TBSP of POMx Café au Lait flavored Iced Coffee

1) Place the  frozen banana and the iced coffee in your blender.  Blend until you get the consistency of soft serve.  You might need to stop the blender intermittently to scrape down the sides and then blend again.

2) Pour into a dish and savor your frosty treat!

Not only did I love this but Patrick seemed to be quite fond of it as well.  He kept asking me what was in his soft serve and couldn’t believe that it was just a frozen banana and a couple of splashes of iced coffee.  The coffee flavoring gave this frozen treat a more gourmet taste than the usual banana flavor.  While we ate this for dessert, it could definitely be a fun breakfast.  After all, it is just fruit and coffee!

When I first tried these iced coffee samples, my first reaction was that they were good.  They were a bit sweet for my liking, but they were definitely tasty.  However, after I began cooking with the iced coffees, I really fell in love.  I guess that goes to show that when life (or Blue) gives you slightly over sweet iced coffee, you need to make perfectly sweet breakfast!

Do you prefer cranberry sauce from the can (the kind where you can still see the indentations from the can) or do you prefer the homemade stuff?  Or are you like me and don’t like either?

***Don’t forget!  You still have until Friday, November 27th at 6pm ET to enter my jewelry giveaway.  After all, we could all use some sparkle in our lives…***

Namasté,
Nicole

Two days after I graduated from college, I started my first real full-time job.  While I was grateful to be employed (and had a hot co-worker whose name rhymes with ‘Hatrick’), I wasn’t making the money I needed in order to support myself.  Thus, I got a part-time job working at J. Crew.  This is where my 60+ hour work week began (and probably where my bunion got it’s start – eew, sorry, I know).  But I needed the money and working in the mall kept me from shopping at the mall (OK, that’s not entirely true).  I often times would run from one job to the other and by the time I got home (which would usually be at 11pm), I was starving.  But because I was too tired to make something of substance to eat, I would usually grab the first thing I could find in my fridge.  Unfortunately, that was usually ice cream.

I know, I know!  How could I? But when I finally got home, my feet were numb from being shoved into high heels, my back ached as if I were pulling weeds all day and my mind just wanted to be turned off.  All I wanted to do at that point was plop myself on the couch and indulge in a sweet treat.  It was my way of comforting and rewarding myself.  And didn’t I deserve it?  Well, I certainly thought I did.

However, that was years and years ago and I’ve wised up some (I said some, not a lot ).  I know that ‘rewarding’ myself with indulgent foods is really not the healthiest route to go.  But sometimes, it is just nice to be able to relax in front of the tv with a delicious, frosty dessert.

A couple of days ago, when I wanted to sit and veg on the couch, I started digging in my fridge and was disappointed that there wasn’t any frozen yogurt or icy cold treat to tickle my fancy (can someone tell me why I look when I know there isn’t any in there?).  But instead of hightailing it over to the 7-Eleven that is literally 100 steps from my home, I decided to take a deep breath and ask myself what else I could make to tame my sweet tooth.  I’m not sure if I answered my own question, but I began yanking things out of my fridge and pantry.  After a few minutes, I came up with this:

Group photo

I decided I would make my own parfait.  I’ve seen so many of my fellow food bloggies make them (Kristen and K)  and rave about them that I realized it was time to get on the bus.  And boy, was I able to catch this ride!  Here are the ingredients I used to make The Have It Your Way Parfait:

• 1/2 cup of Trader Joe’s European Style Plain Nonfat Yogurt
• 1/3 cup of Smart Bran cereal
• 2 TSP of ground flax seeds
• handful of blueberries (absent from photo)
• 1 apple (any kind will do, as long as it’s not candied )

Chop, chop, chop!

1) Wash your apple and chop it up into bite-sized pieces

2) Get yourself a big glass (the fancier, the better – I only had this one ) and start layering the fun (aka the ingredients)

3) I would start with some apple first, then yogurt, then Smart Bran, then some more yogurt, some bloobs, and work your way up until you are out of ingredients and space in your glass.  But you could do it any way you want because after all, you can Have It Your Way!

It's building...

Rhymes with 'Hatrick' thinks the parfait is smiling at him...

4) To top it all off, I sprinkled some ground flax seeds

Can you hear the angels singing?

5) Get yourself a really long spoon and dig in!

Yummy!

Wholesome goodness!

Holy crap on a cracker!  This sucker was truly, truly, truly outrageous!  All the different flavors like the cold, creamy yogurt along with the sweet, crisp apple, the tartness of the blueberries, the crunch of the Smart Bran and then the nutty goodness of the ground flax seeds made my taste buds sing for joy!  It was delectable and quite filling.  I grabbed my bottle of honey to drizzle over the top for some added sweetness but my parfait didn’t need it.  The only thing I did need was a bigger glass, so I could fit in more parfait into my heart-tay par-tay.  This little concoction did its job in soothing my senses.  From the first bite to the last, I felt instantly relaxed.  Now if I would have known about this when I was working at my part-time job, I might have spent more of my money on yogurt than I did on cashmere.

What was your favorite part-time job?  Your worst?

Namasté,
Nicole

Well, the weather this summer in New England (and in many other locations) hasn’t been so stellar.  We’ve had way too much rain and some days, it felt more like October than it did July.  But enough about that, we need to move on.  That said, Patrick, his parents and I decided to test our luck and venture down to Dennis Port on Cape Cod for a long weekend last week.  While we didn’t get the usual torrential downpour, we did get a bit of wind and some haze but mostly, it was a sun and fun filled weekend.

If you’ve never vacationed on the Cape, I’ll tell you that most of the hotels are, to say it as nicely as possible, antiquated.  Now, I’m not trying to say that all of the Cape’s hotels are old.  There are some very new and contemporary ones available but most of the ones that I have seen (and stayed at) seem to think the 70’s/early 80’s need to be remembered forever.  But, I try to lie to tell myself that that’s part of the charm of Cape Cod and the best thing to do is embrace it.  So when we went on our little excursion last week, I tried to not have any expectations of the hotel or weather and just decided I would go with the flow.

My mother-in-law, being the experienced armchair traveler that she is, loves researching vacation spots and accommodations.  She has a knack for finding these hidden gems and thus, we all turn to her when it’s time to book our hotel.  This vacation, she discovered that the hotel, The Soundings, had just completed building a new wing to their hotel and that the weekend we were planning on going down was the first weekend The Soundings was allowing guests to stay in their new wing.  Score!

Gotta love that sign – so retro!

When we arrived, we tried our hardest to check-in before their 3 pm check-in time.  To no avail, we perused their tourist brochures and gladly took their welcome packets to read as we killed some time waiting for our room to be ready.

This is where we sat, read and enjoyed our welcome packets from the hotel…

Hmmm, yummy salt water taffy…

Look at the ad I found in one of the brochures!  I guess the ‘green’ chairs matched the green grass…

Finally, our room was ready and boy, was it worth the wait.  As I mentioned previously, the wing we were going to be staying in was brand spanking new – so new that we didn’t even see pictures and really weren’t sure what to expect.  It’s a good thing I didn’t have any expectations because if I did, they would have been blow away!  Check it out:

Our room (suite) came with two separate bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a complete kitchen that was fully stocked with cooking and dining utensils, a dining area, a sitting/tv area and a balcony that overlooked the ocean.  We felt like royalty in our suite and couldn’t believe what a deal we had scored (the going rate for our same room actually increased by $200 the same day we checked in).

I loved having our own private balcony.  It was such a treat to be able to make our breakfast every morning in our kitchen and have our sliding glass doors open with the crashing waves as the soundtrack to our vacation.  Not only could we eat a more healthy and economical breakfast, but we had the luxury of eating on the deck or at our kitchen table overlooking the beach.  I think I leisurely had about two cups of coffee over two hours.  It was such a perfect setting with the perfect company.  How I miss having my own deck!

Like I said, it was a tad hazy that weekend.  But that’s ok, because we were a tad lazy…

Brekkie on Day 1: Scrambled eggs (cooked by Patrick), half of an egg bagel with a light schmear of margarine, a piece of watermelon & black coffee

Brekkie on Day 2: Bowl of Cheerios with skim milk, fresh blueberries, more watermelon & black coffee.  Gotta love my MIL for bringing all this lovely food – she rocks!

And another fantastic thing about our room was that when Patrick and his dad went for their father and son tradition of jumping into the ocean, my mother-in-law and I had the option of staying in the room.  Because we could see the boys from our balcony, it was as if we were there in the water with them (without having to get cold and wet).  So while they chatted and swam, we ladies did some reading and had some much needed catching-up with one another.

The view from our room, and what a lovely view it ’twas!

Some good reads and some good snacks…

It honestly was the vacation that we all needed.  We were able to hang out on the beach, get some needed rest, take advantage of a ridiculously beautiful hotel room and enjoy each other’s company.  It was a simple and relaxing vacation.  And because I didn’t have any expectations of things such as what our room was going to be like, how the weather was going to behave, what we were going to do and what we were going to eat, everything turned out great.

I have a tendency to ‘expect’ things and to hope for certain outcomes when they are completely out of my control.  Things usually end up working out, but I spend a great deal of wasted energy worrying for no reason.  But I think with this blog and the fact that I’m becoming more aware of what I’m thinking and feeling, I’m finally starting to realize life is more fun (and relaxing) when you are able to live in the moment.  Instead of focusing on what will happen or what could happen or what happened before, it’s healthier to be in the present.  I know it’s much easier said than done but with one step at a time, I know I can get there.  I just need to stop worrying about getting there and reflect on the progress I’ve currently made.  You see, Healthy Chow is getting healthier by the moment!

The Breakfast Club (not sure if I’m Molly Ringwald or Ally Sheedy…)

What do you do to manage your expectations? Or, if that’s too deep, what’s your favorite hotel you’ve ever stayed in?

Namasté,
Nicole

Do you know how they say you shouldn’t go grocery shopping while you’re hungry?  Well, I shouldn’t go grocery shopping while I’m hungry and while I’m on a full stomach.  I luuuuurrvvvee food!  If it looks good, smells good and and tickles my fancy, then it’s coming home with me (oh wait, that didn’t sound quite right…haha!).  Anyways, the produce aisle always seems to get the best of me.  I know fresh fruits and vegetables are great for me but I have to be realistic and understand that I while it’s BOGO right now for a pint of fresh blueberries, I can’t eat an entire shopping cart full of them.  I know freezing these lil’ gems of sapphire bliss can fix my overabundance issue, but you can’t beat the taste of a fresh blueberry.  That said, a few weeks ago I came up with this wacky little creation when Patrick was hungry for lunch.  He wanted a turkey sandwich that ‘wasn’t going to taste like a regular turkey sandwich’.  Funny, isn’t he?  So, this is what I made him.  The summer-sweet blueberries are a perfect match for the herb turkey and the yogurt adds the right amount of creaminess while the greens give it a cool crisp.

I present to you…The Cool Blue Turkey Sammie…

The Cool Blue Turkey Sammie

2 slices of whole wheat bread (I used Trader Joe’s)
3 slices of Applegate Farms Organic Herb Turkey Breast
1 slice of provolone cheese (I used Sargento Reduced Fat Deli Style Provolone – Swiss would be good, too)
small handful of baby spinach leaves
8 fresh blueberries, cut in half (think meatball sandwich – things that are round have a tendency to roll out)
2 heaping TBSP of nonfat yogurt (I used Trader Joe’s European Style Plain Nonfat)
1 TSP of dijon mustard
s&p to taste

Place your bread in the toaster (or toaster oven) and begin to toast.  Mix the the yogurt with the mustard in a small cup and set aside.  When your bread has met your desired level of toasty goodness, take out of toaster and start compiling your sandwich.  Layer 2 slices of turkey (add salt and pepper here if you wish) and spread some of the yogurt mixture over the turkey.  Then, add the halved blueberries (the key here is to make sure the blueberries get stuck into the yogurt mixture so they have better staying power in the sandwich and not on your plate or lap).  Layer the baby spinach next.  Then, add the last slice of turkey with some more of the yogurt mixture spooned on top (I had some yogurt mixture left over after the sandwich was made but I know some prefer a ‘wetter’ sammie).  Finally, top it with the cheese.  Cover with the last slice of toasted bread.  All done!  Enjoy!

Serves 1

Patrick loved this sandwich!  He said it reminded him of a post-Thanksgiving Day sandwich (think turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce) but only lighter and ’summery-er’.  Woot!

I like mixing around ingredients that you wouldn’t normally put together.  It’s fun to see what I end up with!  What’s the most inventive food combination you’ve ever come up with?

Namasté,
Nicole