Balance

Balance is something I am striving for this semester. It will be a challenge - 16 of the busiest weeks of my college career condensed into 10, preparing for Relay and aiming for our first ever pacesetter award, and keeping my sanity and personal life intact. I'm working hard to find things that make me happy and healthy and incorporate them into an INSANE semester. We'll see how that turns out. For now, a few of my favorite recipes:

Theme: Nachos and yogurt (huh?).

My sister and I got a hold of a booklet that had 50 nacho recipes. So we decided to combine two of them due to lack of some ingredients and we created:

Sopaipilla and chocolate banana nachos


Sopaipilla:

1 tortilla
3-4 T. vegetable oil
4 T. sugar
1-2 t. cinnamon

Heat oil in shallow pan. Mix sugar and cinnamon together. Slice tortilla into wedges (we got about 6 wedges). Brown each side of the tortilla slightly. Remove from pan, place on a paper towel and immediately sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar mixture.

Top sopaipilla with one thinly sliced banana and 1 T. chocolate sauce.

Serves 1-2 people.


This next technique is something I use often for a lot of my cooking.

Greek yogurt


Place a coffee filter inside a pasta strainer and place the strainer on top of a bowl. Scoop desired amount of low fat/fat free plain yogurt in coffee filter. Let sit in the refrigerator overnight. The liquid from the plain yogurt will drain out to create a thick yogurt, very similar to greek yogurt.

Dill veggie dip


1 c. Greek yogurt (recipe above)
1/4 c. chopped dill (I used a lot since I LOVE dill)
1 t. paprika
1 t. garlic powder
sprinkle of salt.

Place all ingredients in bowl and stir. Serve with your favorite veggies.

Tzatziki


1 c. Greek yogurt (recipe above)
1 cucumber, peeled
2 cloves garlic
juice from 1/2 lemon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roast the cloves of garlic for 15-20 minutes. Slice cucumber long-ways and use a spoon to carve out the seeds. Cut into small chunks. Place cucumber slices in food processor. Pulse cucumber to a near puree. Add to yogurt in mixing bowl. Smash roaster garlic into the mixture and squeeze the juice from 1/2 lemon into the bowl. Stir everything together. Best if you let it sit for a few hours before serving. Serve with pita bread or chips.

Homemade pita chips


1 whole wheat pita pocket
3 T. olive oil.
1 T. oregeno
1/2 T. Herb de Provence
1 t. garlic powder
sprinkle of salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Slice pita in half and peel apart the two sides of the pocket (yielding 4 quarters of pita). Slice into wedges. Mix oil and herbs together and brush on to pita. Bake for 10-15 minutes

Greek Nachos


Homemage pita chips from 1 pita pocket (recipe above)
store bought hummas
3 T. tzatziki (see recipe above)
sliced black olives
diced tomato
crumbled feta

Top pita chips with all remaining ingredients.

That's all the recipes I have for now!

As for the running, my goal for 365 miles this year hasn't been going so well. Still at 1/2 mile...

BUT, with my striving for balance, I've reserved at least 2 days each week for running. Maybe at the end of the week I can add to my total.

Keep cooking and loving!
Cheers