Agave, Chia, Quinoa

So, I went to part of my stake women's conference last Saturday. (I only went to part because it started at 7:45 am or something ridiculous like that.) One of the classes I attended was called "Word of Wisdom Cooking".

The class was basically about healthy eating, and I am giving myself a pat on the back for my recent decision to start eating plain yogurt with cranberries and honey or agave as opposed to the really sugary stuff that comes in cups. I tried a "healthy" brand of yogurt once that I hated because it had maple in it, but I've discovered it's not that bad to mix it myself. (Especially when my husband is in charge of doing the dishes, and hence washes my daily yogurt Tupperware that I bring home from work. Yes, I eat breakfast at work.) I am also giving myself a pat on the back for already owning agave and chia seeds. I am drinking a chia fresca right now. :)

Anyway, as a result of the class, I finally bought some quinoa that I'm going to experiment with. The teacher was also really big on green smoothies. I thought I would experiment with those too, but I couldn't will myself to make one after my run. It seems like so much effort. Mix everything up, wash the blender, blah blah. I just ate a banana with peanut butter instead, and I will eat my spinach in a salad at dinner.

Even though I am jumping on the quinoa bandwagon, I'm not becoming a health nut. The lady that taught this class gave us a bunch of links to healthy eating blogs,some of which I thought were clearly over board in part. For example, who has heard this idea that we need to make our bodies more alkaline and hence purify our water with reverse osmosis, remineralize it, then ionize it? Also, I never plan on making my own mayonnaise. Life is far too short for that type of nonsense.

What I Ate and I Need Help

By the way, this is what I made for dinner tonight. Sorry that my blogging skills are lacking. It's just going to have to remain sideways. The lighting in this photo is lacking also--but the stuffed shells weren't. Clint said they were better than his mom's. I'm impressed with myself--even though I got the recipe from a book. The salad was ok: spring greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, pepperoncinis, and some goat cheese that I mixed with kalamata olives. It was a good "welcome back to running" meal. (I didn't run all last week because of my cold.)

Here is another good food picture: just kidding. It decided to go all the way to the top. I need help. Anyway, this was a fabulous butternut squash soup that I made like a year ago. It was very delicious with the accompanying spinach, feta, cranberry, and green apple salad. However, it was an epic battle dealing with the squash. How does one cook and peel a butternut squash in a sane fashion? My whole kitchen was orange afterward.

P.S. So if anyone has skills with using photos in blogger, please demystify me. Also, if you ever happen to notice any typos or grammatical errors, please let me know. I hate seeing things on blogs like "skin graphs" and other such nonsense. Though, not to toot my own horn, but I think I am far more susceptible to simple typos or spelling mistakes than that type of egregious usage error. So call me an English teacher or something.