This post was clearly supposed to go up yesterday, but between my first graduate school presentation and grabbing drinks with a new friend, I totally forgot to write and publish this post. Luckily, I am in a super productive mood and have a few hours to kill before checking out the Met today! Y’all love my food posts and so I thought it would be fun to incorporate them into the blog even more.
I definitely have to be even more budget-conscious with moving to the city and living on a graduate school stipend. I don’t want to limit my weekend brunch habits and city exploring, so I definitely have to cut back in other ways. I plan on cooking all my meals during the week and only splurging on the weekends. This was a method that worked perfectly during college, and for now, it’ll continue.
When I don’t have to work all day, I take advantage of cooking at the moment, but most of the meals that I make can be meal prepped and stored for later in the week. I did a whole post about starting out with meal prepping that you can check out here. I also did a post where I talk about what I meal prepped here. It’s one of my most viewed posts and honestly, sometimes I refer back to it when I’m like how the heck did I do that for an entire semester and not get tired.
Breakfast
For breakfast, I like to stick with quick and easy meals. I like to listen to podcasts or news blasts while I’m cooking and making my coffee with my new Keurig! This day, I opted for a bowl of oatmeal topped with chia seeds and banana pieces. Bananas are some of my favorite fruit and are super cheap at Trader Joe’s. I use 1-Minute oats and sweeten them with a packet of Truvia.
Lunch
This was my first time trying the Mandarin Orange Chicken and Vegetable Fried Rice from the frozen section of Trader Joe’s. I was so relieved to find out that these two items are definitely worth the hype. It’s so easy to make; seriously, even the most non-cookers out there swear by these two. I wanted to add some fruit to this so I cut up a plum for a healthy dessert.
Not pictured: my attempt to drink more water. I like to fill up a mason jar throughout the day. Super aesthetic and super hydrated, what more could I ask for?
Snacks
I like to have an afternoon pick me up and I’m always reaching for something crunchy or sweet, or both! The Stacy’s Pita Chips are so so good. I had a bag of the Cinnamon Sugar flavor that I brought from home and I don’t super recommend these because they have a ton of sugar. But when you’re craving something actually sweet, they’ll do.
I also totally forgot to capture it on camera, but I love the gomacro bars for pre-workout fuel especially when I’m headed to the gym straight from work/class. The peanut butter chocolate chip flavor is to die for! I legit cried when I saw they sold them in TJ’s. I haven’t been able to reliably find these bad boys since my summer in California!
Dinner
I normally do sheet pan veggies because they’re easy to prep and have little-to-no actual cooking involved. You literally just pop them in the oven and bake until the peppers and potatoes are soft. However, I realized that I had absolutely no baking sheets {note to self: order them off Amazon immediately}. Improv is my cooking superpower and I decided to sauté them instead.
I seasoned all the veggies with olive oil and some Everything but the Bagel seasoning from TJ’s and threw some chicken in there that I had cooked earlier. This meal was so fresh tasting and was perfect for after an incredible workout.
I’m trying to keep the intermittent fasting in the back of my mind so I try not to eat anything before 9AM or after 8PM. Eventually, I’d like to whittle that down to an 8-hour block, but that’s gonna take some time for me to adjust to.
So, that’s all I have for my What I Eat in a day for the month of August. I’m hoping to also introduce this as a monthly post so that I can see how my meals improve over time and which classics I always seem to return back to. I also got a ton of frozen fruit today, so I can’t wait to make some bomb-diggity smoothies.
keep on keepin’ on,
