Blueberry Protein Oatmeal Bake + A Year in Review: Top 5 Recipes

This past Wednesday (June 18) marked the one-year anniversary of my first post to this blog. A year behind me, 50 pounds off of me, and 63 unique, healthy recipes under my (much more loosely-fitting) belt, and many many more to come. :o)

To honor my one-year anniversary in the blogging world, I think it’s time to do a Top 5 list of my favorite recipes to date. These aren’t just the best of the best in my eyes: the five that I’m listing out are consistently ordered and re-ordered by my boot camp friends and coworkers who I help meal prep every week. If I could only eat 5 self-cooked meals for the rest of my life, I’d pick these, hands-down:

Stuffed Nutella French Toast on Ezekiel Bread + Top 3 Kitchen Hacks

Guess what? It’s almost March. Holy. Crap. Can we all stop and rejoice at the fact that SPRING IS ALMOST HERE?! After several “inclement weather” days with temperatures below 30 degrees, ice, and overall unpleasant, parka-worthy conditions, this Arizona-born girl is ready for warmer days. I love the fact that I wore sandals and no jacket to work today.

Last weekend, SEVERAL people decided to take a huge step and tackle weekly meal prep. I can’t even express how much that excited me. (PROUD OF YOU GIRLS — Christina C., Vani, and Kirsty — WAY TO GO!) I’ve found that for me, cooking breakfasts and lunches over the weekend saves me so much time throughout the week. Spending 2-3 hours on Saturday or Sunday to get everything lined out and ready to go is THE BEST way to keep me on track with my eating habits. On top of that, it saves an impressive amount of time, stress, and money throughout the rest of the week. If you’re not doing it, you should plan to give it a shot this weekend. (Check out my post on simple lunch hacks if you’re a beginner trying to learn the meal prep ropes.)

Opinions? Gimme.

On the subject of prep — I know one of the biggest obstacles that keeps people from doing weekend meal prep is the fact that it’s really damn intimidating. It can be HARD to figure out where to start. Being a huge advocate of weekend meal prep (I’ve got it down to a science), I’ve been thinking about leading a mini meal prep workshop for people in the Austin area on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. I don’t have any of the logistics figured out yet, but I want to throw it out there to see if it’s even a good idea before worrying about details. Would any of you Austinites be in? Considering I don’t have an unlimited amount of groceries and I’d want to get stuff for everyone to cook in advance, it wouldn’t be free of charge, but I’d do my best to keep the price low. (I’m more interested in teaching people how to cook healthily than I am in making a profit. Just my two cents.) Chime in if you’d be interested!

Healthy Thanksgiving Recap + Chocolate-Frosted Strawberry Protein Doughnuts

Happy December!

I survived our family’s first-annual Healthy Thanksgiving cooking marathon, which included 10+ hours of cooking and 6+ hours of driving (all packed into 2 days). Needless to say, I was exhausted by Thursday night, but it was more than worth it. Spending time with my family and starting a tradition of healthier holidays was incredible.

Breakfast, Banana Protein Muffins, and an Awesome Viral Article

Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. If you don’t make time for a good breakfast every single morning, well — you’re missing out on lots of bacon and peanut butter, and nobody in their right mind wants to miss out on that.

I start almost every single day with the same basic meal: