TGIT

That’s right, Thursday is the new Friday! Okay, that was lame but you’ll forgive me right? As you can probably guess, Thursday is the last day of my school week (and that means only TWO full weeks left and a 1-day week!) It’s going to be another long day, so here’s a preview:

Breakfast was overnight muesli again, this time with avocado and raisins. I now have no raisins left after last night’s snack attack – what was up with that? Sometimes I wonder about myself… I just crave food, sometimes I don’t even think I care what I’m eating as long as I’m eating. Weird! Anyway, that’s a bit off topic, so back to breakfast…

I’ll be at school all day, so here’s my portable lunch that I’ll probably eat in two stages. Since I have a class right at lunchtime, I would ideally like to eat half before and half after. Usually I eat it all before class and regret it later though!

Carrot sticks(2 medium carrots) green pepper strips(1 small pepper) and a whole wheat roll that I toasted to make crispy bread rounds, all to be dipped in some homemade bean hummus. I’m glad I went rooting through the crisper drawer of my fridge because that pepper was on it’s last legs! I hate to waste good food, so I’m happy I caught it in time.

I was out of chickpeas, so I used pinto beans instead. There’s no real recipe per se, just beans mashed with a bit of tahini, olive oil, S&P, garlic and lemon juice.

I’ll be in class from 8:30 to 10:30, then over to the gym for some weight traininguntil noon or so, then a quick bite to eat and off to computer science lab. After that, I’ll have to make a quick trip home to drop off gym clothes and books and pick up other stuff including my supper, which may or may not be eaten at school, depending on how long class goes. Just in case, here it is:

Leftover “Tinbucktuna” from my freezer stash, before I decided to put it in a plastic container. I’ll try to do a post tonight with anything else I add!

Pita Pockets

As promised, I made my own pitas! They are 100% whole wheat and they tasta a bit wheat-y, but I added just a touch of honey to the dough and they are divine. In my opinion they are 100 times better than any store-bought pitas I have ever tried

I should warn you that I’m not an expert bread baker, but here’s my recipe and procedure:

Pre-ferment:

- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/5 tsp instant yeast

Mix together, cover and let sit in a warm place 12 – 16 hours. When you next see this mixture it should be all bubbly.

Dough:

- Pre-ferment
- 3/4 cup flour
- salt
- 1/2 tsp honey

Add all remaining ingredients to pre-ferment, starting with only about 1/2 cup of flour. At this point, it’s hard to explain because I basically just threw the other 1/4 cup of flour on the counter and incorporated it into the dough as I kneaded it.

Divide dough into 4 even balls (~75 grams each)

Roll out each ball into a circle about 1/8 inch thick, brushing both sides with flour to prevent sticking.

Cover with a dishcloth and let rise about 30 minutes. They only puff up a little bit but don’t worry!

Preheat oven to 500*F. Yes, it needs to be hot.

Right before you bake them, flip the circles over onto your pan. I’m not sure how this helps but I was afraid not to do it!

Bake at 500*F for 5 minutes. When you take your pitas out of the oven they will be all puffed up, like this:

This is a good thing – it means the pocket has formed

I then placed them between two dish towels to cool so that they would be nice and soft when I’m ready to eat them.

Finally, here’s the final product that I ate for my evening snack, with carrot sticks and hummus:

I’ll probably have another small snack right before bed too because I think I sleep better with a small amount of food in my stomach. I’ll try to remember to post that with breakfast

An experimental salad

Well, so far so good – I went to class (ate breakfast during the break around 9:30), went to the computer lab and then I went swimming. I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped at the computer lab, only one problem! Now I’ll have to go back sometime so I can catch up.

On to lunch: I made a huge salad and had a whole wheat potato bun (Kath’s husbands recipe) with a bean hummus (sorry, no recipe for now since I just threw whatI could find in the food processor!) I titled this post an experiment because of the salad dressing. I was trying to branch out from my usual balsamic dressing so I tried to make an asian one. The final verdict is that it’s missing a few things: some sugar (didn’t have any) and some spice (didn’t think of it in time).

Here’s the whole plate:

And a close up of the bun and “hummus” YUM!