Give Me Bananas

Yes, literally everywhere. All around the world. Let’s start with this post:

(Please note that the poses aren’t perfect and not correctly done. I had troubles with balancing and I also didn’t wear my comfy yoga pants )

Tree pose next to a tree in front of the Arc de Triomphe, Paris, France

Warrior 2 on a tree on a river somewhere close to Arvika, Sweden

Tree pose in a street in Stockholm, Sweden

And where do you practise yoga?

Aaaaargh! I’ll eat ya.

Good morning everyone. How are you? My Internet finally works again. Selina called that guy from the Internet company and he just laughed at her because apparently it was a problem with the antivirus protection. Well how are we supposed to know? Anyways, the boyfriend came around and did all the hard work and tadaaaa: Everything works again.
However, my glasses are still missing. Have you seen them somewhere? It’s not that I’m running around like a blind chicken but I see everything more clearly with glasses (I guess that’s what they’re made for ).

On an other note: I’ll bring you last night’s dinner.

I’m not really the biggest fan of burgers but I love fries. I don’t feel like supporting stupid companies though and am not thrilled by the greasiness of the food. Plus I love making my own “fast food”.

First course: The burger (The fries weren’t ready yet)

(Sorry, the lightning sucks).

WW toast with mustard and a little bit of ketchup, a veggie burger plus some lettuce and tomato.
The veggie burgers are made of quorn and were really tasty but the ingredients list is not that amazing. I also don’t know where the eggs in the quorn products come from.. . I rarely eat quorn products these days though so it was ok.
The burger was amazing. Especially the lettuce. Ha!

By the way: Check out my kitchen. Now, do you still think that your kitchen is small???

Next up: Fries!

Sweet potato fries (cutting them was brutal. It probably sounded like I’d demolish the apartment. What did the neighbors think? )

I love sweet potato but I have to admit that I’ve never had them before I discovered them on the blog world.

These fries were tossed in a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and baked at 180°C (350°F I think) for a looong long time. I made tons of them so they took some time to bake.

I added some country cuts seasoning and dipped them in ketchup. That’s the way I like it.

Question: Where is the mistake in the picture below?

Correct, never leave the spatula in the frying pan. It might start looking funny after a while.

PS: Check out my sexy 80ies aerobic cooking outfit. Yes, that’s how I roll.

Have a great day everyone!

Today’s lunch was beyond amazing and thrown together in less than 10 seconds.

Doesn’t it just look mouthwatering?? Ok I’m kidding.. But I prepared everything last night which saved tons of time this morning (I’m often the person who chops veggies in a hurry – 5 minutes before I have to leave the house.)

It ended up looking like this:

It’s a bit shiny which looks really weird but I swear, it wasn’t that bad in “real life” . In the salad went: iceberg lettuce, 1/2 yellow bell pepper, 1 tomato, 1/4 of a huge cucumber, 1/2 zucchini + goat cheese. It was enormous. I walked past my colleague and he just said “woooow”. Yes I like huge salads, thank you very much. People always say that there’s no way salad can satisfy you (”You need a real lunch, sweetie!”) but it just depends on what you’re putting together.

Aaaaaah love! ♥

And because every workplace needs a fabulous mouse mat:

I can’t wait to leave work today. We’ll have burger and fries for dinner. You’ll see what I mean

Hello there!

My Internet at home still doesn’t work which is really annoying. I hope we can fix it tonight.. What shall I do without the Internet? lol.
Well yesterday was weird. I skipped pilates but did some workout DVD that came with the newest issue of Shape after dinner. (I was starving and waited 2 hours after eating so I wouldn’t feel completely sick ). The workout was ok. A bit silly but ok.

Yesterday’s dinner was really interesting. In a positive way .

The star of the meal was:

I told you it was interesting.

I’ve never heard of black rice noodles or even black rice before but i definitely need to do some research! I love discovering funny food.

Tonight’s dinner wasn’t Asian though. I decided to cook them like spaghetti with some zucchini. All in one pot of course because I only have two stove tops, yes indeed. Desperate times call for desperate actions.

It worked though and dinner was amaaaazing. Topped with a fried egg.

I was in the mood for plain noodles so I just added some vegan margarine and pepper.

See that bowl in the background? Well my mum gave me some cabbage that she bought at the Thai shop last Sunday. It’s kind of flat and looks funny but boy is it delicious! Just add some self made salad sauce and you have a healthified coleslaw.

Strange, isn’t it?

The salad was easily made. I just chopped it up and added it to the salad sauce, mixed everything and let it rest for 15 minutes or so..

Don’t you just love my Hello Kitty salad servers? Yes I’m 6 years old.

Oh dear winter, you’re right around the corner even though I wish it was still summer.

To be honest: I’m not the biggest fan of winter. I adore staying inside with a cup of tea and a good book or going snowboarding but winter often brings a mix of rain and snow and annoying walks to the office. Also: it brings less sunshine and the flu.

Now, how can we fight off the germs?

I am not the most fragile person around but I’m not immune to colds or flues either so I tend to feel a bit under the weather every once in a while. This is why I decided to pay more attention to boosting my immune system.

Hot drinks

Kicking off your day with a glass of warm water with lemon juice is a great way to cleanse the body. It also stimulates the kidneys and liver and is alkalizing.

An other fantastic drink is ginger tea. Ginger boosts the immune system, soothes sore throats and is all in all a fantastic weapon against flues .

Boil 4 cups of water and add an 1 inch piece of ginger (peeled and grated or sliced thinly). Let it cook for 10-20 minutes depending on how strong you like it.

(I didn’t peel the ginger because I was super stressed this morning )

Pour it into a thermos bottle so you can easily take it to work !

Eat the good stuff

Comfy food starts calling my name more often in winter and it’s easy to just give in and eat whatever I want. Nevertheless it’s important to eat a balanced and nutritious diet as carbs alone won’t help your immune system and will likely leave you “unprotected”. Soups or stews for example are great and  keep you warm in the colder days… which reminds me: I should really make a veggie kedgeree soon.

What is your secret weapon against germs?

Good morning! Sorry for being mia this weekend but my Internet at home didn’t / doesn’t work. Instead of being annoyed I just simply ignored my laptop and spent some time with my family and friends. Good times.

But it’s Monday again which means: Back to work! (hooray! or not..)

Monday started off with a great message though. It’s possible to buy New Moon tickets in advance (hooray no. 2!!) so I got 6 tickets even though I’m not really sure who wants to come, hehe.

Twilight is a huge guilty pleasure of mine (even though I’m a little bit more obsessed with True Blood right now) and I’m currently re-reading book no. 1.

Muahahaha.

There’s just something about silly vampire romance that makes me happy. I love being girly and giggle about this and that and chat with my friends about fictional characters as if they’re friends of ours. However, my mom is probably the biggest twilight fan I know. She’s on the verge of being almost annoying as she’s constantly talking about the series. I got her the New Moon soundtrack yesterday .

What is your guilty pleasure?

I have to admit that I love guilty pleasures because they’re so silly but cheer me up all the time. An other huge guilty pleasure of mine is.. Spice Girls! They were the first band that I loved and so they’ll always be special to me. Oh the 90ies..

Oh boy, what’s up with those French-German translations today? (And I’m not even a translator..)

I decided to take a break and make myself a sandwich for dinner with what I found in the office’s fridge.

Hummus, tomato, iceberg lettuce.

My most creative sandwich creation so far (jk )

I leave the yoga studio at 7:50pm and the film starts at 8:15 so there’s really no time for getting dinner. You’ll probably see me running through Bern tonight .

My jivamukti yoga class is called “Thank god it’s Friday” (obviously on Fridays, hehe) by the way and that’s exactly how I feel. I can’t wait for the weekend!!

I don’t have that many plans though.. just bodypump tomorrow morning and a little yoga in the afternoon & the again postponed dinner with the boyfriend. On Sunday I’ll probably go on a short run and spend the entire day watching DVDs and studying.

Ah I love relaxing weekends!

What are your plans?

We walk down the road see a McDonald’s sign there and a Burger King advertisement here and read about the newest diet trends in a magazine but we rarely stop and think: Hey we’re lucky.

Yes, are lucky. We even get to choose what we want to eat but mostly just take it for granted. I sometimes do too because I have to admit that it’s difficult to keep in mind that there are people who starve when there are restaurants and huge supermarkets all around us. It isn’t meant to be evil or mean and absolutely not by purpose but we all get wrapped up in our little lives and forget about the important things.
Companies lure us with their advertisements and it seems like everything is so easy to get. It’s just around the corner. Everything seems so easy. For us.
So yes, we’re lucky. We can eat and we can go to bed without an empty stomach.

But today is World Food Day and we have to think of the people who are poor and suffer from hunger.

Did you know that there are:

• 1,018,601,935 undernourished people in the world right now?
• 26,981 people who died from hunger today?
• 8,208,744 people who died from hunger this year?

And did you know that:

• More than $104M is being spent on weight-loss programs and products (only) in the USA today?
• Only more than $5M is being spent on global food aid today?
• 124,931 tons of food got wasted in the USA today?

(source)

The numbers are constantly increasing by the way.

Other facts:

• 80 – percentage of harvested corn, grains and soy beans fed to animals in Europe and North America
• 78 – percentage of malnourished children who live in countries with food surpluses
• 90 - percentage of hungriest nations on earth that are net exporters of food to rich nations (36/40)

There is something that you can do as well!

We tend to think “oh those poor people but there’s nothing that i can do about it!”. That’s wrong! Babysteps change the world.

Some ideas:

• Produce less waste and plan you grocery trips! (Don’t we all find stuff in the fridge that went bad because we didn’t use it soon enough?)
• Donate food that you might not use to local charities who distribute it to the people who don’t have the money. (Google it! I’m sure there’s some organisation in your town)
• Be a vegetarian for a day. (You see the numbers of the harvested corn, grains and soy beans..Even a day changes things)
• Eat with moderation. Cherish every meal.

What I’m going to do:

Well I can certainly improve my behaviour. My sister and I live in a 2 persons household and rarely have waste. But we still do.. I’ll try to buy less produce on one time and try to buy fresh products every other day.
My bad habit is eating lunch in front of the computer or having dinner in front of the TV. I do appreciate my food but I’ll try to be more.. thankful. So I’ll eat at least 2 meals per day on without “disturbance”.

What are your ideas for world food day?

The beverage that I love the most (besides water) is tea. I’m as obsessed with tea as other people are with coffee. So tea is basically my coffee (or like Edward would say “You’re my favourite brand of heroin” haha).

I love it in all colors and flavours (ok, except for vanilla and cinnamon.. Weird I know) and today is the typical tea-day: Cold and windy, which automatically calls for some tea.

I adore my little tea breaks at work even though you really can’t call them “breaks”.. It’s mostly just me holding a cup in the left hand and the mouse in the right. But  I should make room for tea time again which is why I’m having a real break with a cup of yogi tea right now. All together with a bite of a spirulina bar:

Now isn’t that a feast?? I should make more tea time breaks at work.

Do you take morning/afternoon breaks at work?

I hate the weather!

Last week it was 20°C (68°F) and this week it’s 7°C (44.6°F).
Are you kidding me?

Now, it’s sunny and nice and all but (enter rude word here) freezing! Drastic temperature changes aren’t very nice because they don’t allow the body to adapt to the new temperature slowly (which kind of annoys me, hehe). It feels like someone threw you into cold water.

But  whining and complaining is useless. We just have to accept these temperatures (but still.. can’t we have normal autumn?)

Wednesday brought our dear little running-cooking-baking tradition and I got out my winter gear:

(Posing like a pro!)

The clothes were warm and toasty while the air was crispy. Yesterday was a fantastic running day and we ran a quick and lovely 9k. It was a much nicer run than last Sunday’s (although I must admit that running one day after bodypump is quite a bad idea.. My poor little legs!)

And now the ultimate WE LOVE RUNNING!! photo:

(Sweaty post-running faces. Always a crowd pleaser. Edited to add: Why is it that only I look so sweaty?? Unfair!!)

Good stuff good stuff.

However..

The evening didn’t continue as planned. After a long waaarm shower I kind of got dragged to a friend’s place where everyone watched the Switzerland-Israel football (soccer) game together. It was the most fascinating game ever (it ended with 0:0 and I’m obviously joking ). So there was no time for a stunning risotto and a mouthwatering bread. But we would never ditch our tradition and decided to postpone it until tonight.

So stay tuned!