Give Me Bananas

   

Oh boy I am so exhausted! We just finished work and I can’t wait to go home and rest my feet. I made plans to go to a beneficial concert tonight but it already started (though the second band is set to play at 10pm) and I honestly don’t know if I can stand on my feet any longer.

Now, it might sound like I’m whining but it’s a good exhaustion. It was such a fun event and everything (well, almost everything) went very well. Since I’m still laptop-less I am writing this post on the work computer. Oh that dedication!

Last night we just wanted to make a nice dinner and relax. We made some bulgur with arrabiata sauce and carrots, almond and sesame tofu, a salad and some soup on the side.

God was that heavenly! Especially the bulgur and the tofu! And the salad! And the soup!

 

And then we felt like seeing a film. I know, I go to the cinema all the time but I just can’t say no to a film date night! We saw “The Men Who Stare At Goats” which was hilarious! It’s definitely my kind of film and I really enjoyed seeing it.

This morning, before work, Silvio and I went on a nice and easy 1hr run. It’s so lovely to start the day being super refreshed! Post-run I was craving cereal big time..

Well, I mixed it with some apple/cinnamon granola because I felt like being uber-creative!

And now I’ve got to run! Sorry that my post is so damn lame and short but I just wanted to pop in and say hi. I hope you’re all enjoying your weekend! Let me know what you did!

 

It’s official: Technology hates me. Yesterday I was all excited about blogging from home because my sister bought this super cool laptop off her boyfriend and I thought that setting up the internet was easy peasy. Well, I was wrong.

I tried to be all zen about it but I was swearing up a storm on the inside. In the end I gave up and did  lunar flow yoga à la Shiva Rea. 1 hour 13 minutes later I was a relaxed person again .

(Though I was secretly still a bit pissed that things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to.)

Sorry that I’m being such a horrible blogger.

 

On an other note: Thank you for all the lovely comments! You are the kindest people on earth . Things are back to normal and I’m somehow glad that this happened. Is that weird? “Bad” experiences always remind me to live my life at the fullest – which includes fun times, as well as solving problems and dealing with issues. Only this will prevent me from getting stuck. I never want to stop learning new things – no matter how big or small they are. The thought of becoming a grumpy, narrow-minded grandma scares the hell out of me.

Anyway. Yesterday I wanted to write a good old traditional food blogger post and show you every little thing I ate. Too bad that the laptop was on strike. Do you mind seeing everything today? I hope not

I decided to go to the gym first thing in the morning because I did no strength training last week. (Cough). I grabbed a almond butter & fruit spread whole rice waffle on the way out.

The entire workout took me 1h 15 min (10 minutes on the cross trainer & 5 minutes of stretching included) and afterwards I had a hard boiled egg & a shake.

Behold.. The prettiest shake EVER:

I was out of non-dairy milk so I used regular 2% milk and protein powder.

Afterwards I headed to the health food store because I still had some time before work. I was in the mood for some earthy teas and so I bought some rooibos and pu erh tea.

My tea stashes at work and home are getting out of control.. but I like variety!

Mid morning I snacked on a banana that looked super beaten up.

Lunch was a fabulous salad and some black sesame crackers & a hard boiled egg

And then I ate more crackers. They’re incredibly addictive and I have no will power at all.

Work was good and busy and I managed to get a lot done.

At one point I had some apple and peanut butter.

After work I basically flew back home because I was starving. I had some tomme and edamer cheese while I was washing the dishes.

For dinner I was craving breakfast. Porridge, to be precise. However, I wanted to use the buckwheat flakes instead of oats that I got from the health food store in the morning.

 

The porridge turned out to be bran-like and I loved it!

Of course I couldn’t miss the usual toppings..

For some reason I was still hungry afterwards and so I also had a piece of toast with vegan margarine and some chocolate.

I skipped pilates because of the computer troubles but it was good to get some yoga in. I love lunar flow yoga and the one of Shiva Rea’s Yoga Shakti DVD is so relaxing. Shiva Rea’s classes need some getting used to at first (if you’re not very used to creative movements and “letting go”) but I like them. I haven’t done any yoga with DVDs in ages but today I dug out an other yoga DVD of Shiva (Creative Core Abs) and flowed for 35 minutes . Today isn’t going to be much of a work-out day but it was good to get some yoga in.

Oh I almost forgot.. I also made some protein bars à la Averie last night! I changed the recipe a bit because I had to work with what I had on hand.. (No major changes though. Only dates/apricots instead of raisins and no chocolate chips…). Check out her blog for the recipe .

I just had one and I highly recommend them.

Xanthan and Guar Gum seems to be quite popular in the blog world but I knew that there was no way we could get them over here. We’re lucky enough to have goji berries and hemp seeds!! It was a huge surprise when I saw Guar Gum at the health food store yesterday..

Of course I had to use it for breakfast. I’ve never made smoothie in a bowl before and so I knew that I had to make some for today’s breakfast.

In the blender went:

• 1 cup soy milk
• 1 banana
• 1 scoop chocolate whey protein powder
• approximately 1/4 cup frozen blueberries
• 1/2 tsp guar gum

Tadaaaaa…

I can’t believe that it made such a difference!! It was like eating a runny mousse . Unfortunately I couldn’t finish it all – it was way too much.

But now that I’ve tried it with guar gum I wonder what a difference some added xanthan gum would make…

Tonight I’ll meet up with my friend Daniela and we will go and see “An Education”. I adore Nick Hornby books and I’m looking forward to seeing the film. God, there are so many great films at the cinemas right now.. I also can’t wait to see “The Men Who Stare At Goats” – Jeff Bridges and Ewan McGregor are such cool dudes .

Q: Have you seen a good film lately that you can recommend? The last film I saw was “A Single Man” which I really liked. I was a bit sceptical at first because Tom Ford (yep, the former fashion designer) is the director but the film was beautiful and very artistic. Colin Firth was also fantastic in it and he truly deserved his Oscar nomination.

Q2: Have you tried xanthan / guar gum? And to those who did: what exactly does xanthan do to the smoothie? I only see bloggers using both guar gum and xanthan gum but I wonder if that’s “necessary”.

Something extremely groundbreaking happened today.

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 I made different oats!!! Seriously. I’m not kidding. I know it’s a shock to you all.

This morning I got up super bright and early and rushed back home (stayed the night at the boyfriend’s), changed clothes, yadda yadda and decided to be experimental.

Ok, maybe not that experimental because I made these oats all the time when I was blog-less. Anyway, I present you all a change from the usual oatsies that was pretty darn fab.

Chocolate oats! (1/3 c oats, 1 1/3 c water, 1/2 banana, 1 scoop chocolate protein powder) Topped with some Crunchy Quinoa mix and drizzled with almond butter.

PRETTIEST BROWN BOWL EVER!

 

Seriously. It was awesome.

~~~~~~~~~

 

Post-breakfast I went and played with my Hello Kitty snow globe. Just like any other 22yo would do.

 

And at work I injured myself.. Whoever said that working in an office isn’t dangerous was completely wrong. Ever heard of paper cuts? Huh?

 

I’m sure Bella has.

 

So maybe you’re one of those poor people who have to work on Saturdays but I’m a super normal Monday-Friday employee and am SO glad that it’s Friday. I stayed at work until 9 PM yesterday which simply wasn’t that sexy.

But tonight is all about playing! I’ll meet up with my friend Christine and we’ll go and have a fab time with these guys:

Jude kinda looks like a hyena in this picture…

The thing is.. The film starts at 8 PM. And yoga ends at 7:30 PM (although it’s usually 10 minutes longer). I would make it in time but I would be without dinner (gasp!) and couldn’t take a shower (GASP!). So I think I’ll skip yoga class today but go on a run instead and do some yoga after my movie-date.

That’s all for now. I will save my superbe news for my next post. Muahahaha.

Q: What’s your favourite film? That’s a tough question, I know! As you all probably know, I love going to the movies / watching DVDs… And so it’s pretty difficult to choose my favourite film of all times. But some of my faves are: Star Wars (I’m a nerd, I know), Amélie, Girl Interrupted, LotR, A Knight’s Tale, Shaun of the Dead, The Boat that Rocked, As It Is In Heaven, Across the Universe, … and approximately 3984298 more.

Hi guys! I’m posting this a little bit sooner than usual because I’m going to have dinner with my family (Korean!) and then go and see “You’re not in Kansas anymore. You’re on Pandora” AVATAR. Yes I like seeing films twice at the cinema. Feel free to call me a nerd! (But to be honest: My parents want to go and see it and they threatened me to drag me by my hair to the cinema if I refused to come. Seriously! I mean, come on.. You wouldn’t want to get your jacket (and hair!) ruined either, would you? ) +For people who don’t understand my weird sarcastic humour and are scared of my mum and dad: I was kidding.

Other great news of the day: I’m going to see MUSE again! I got the tickets for their show in Bern this morning and I’m very very VERY excited.

+Cheers to you guys for all those tips! I think I need to eat a bigger afternoon snack and something light before those late classes. I’m not a huge fan of eating afterwards because I usually get back home around 10 pm..

 

I had a very hard time getting up this morning. Something about warm blankets and cold winter days I guess. Eventually I got up and did some yoga. I was having fun doing planks so I did 2 one minute planks. I think I could have held it longer but my goal was just to reach one minute.. Tomorrow will be 1:05 and then I’ll add an other 5 seconds every day until I reach 2 minutes. Wonder if I can do that.

Breakfast was fantastic. I seriously wonder why people sometimes don’t bother with eating breakfasts – it’s my favourite meal of the day!

I had some whole wheat cereal, hemp-nola, soy milk and a kiwi.

 

At work I snacked on a clementine and was super busy until I realized that it was time for lunch.

I had lots of leftovers so I grabbed two small WW wraps and stuffed one with about 1/2 cup of spinach quinoa and 1/4 avocado. The other one had some plain yogurt (about one TBSP) and the last veggie sausage slices. Very good and filling lunch!

 

And then my sweet tooth kicked in. So I decided to go to the groceries store and buy bananas (which I needed anyway). After I got back I still wanted something sweet and so I grabbed two mini Basler Läckerli’s. We always have sweets in our office but it’s not too hard to resist them (because I most often don’t like them that much ).

 

In the afternoon I snacked on a banana. It’s absolutely impossible to take a good photo of a whole banana (have you ever tried snapping one?). So here’s a weird one:

 

I’m actually typing this on my work computer (but not at work ) but I’m heading out now for some fun time with my fam. See ya!

Bonsoir mes amis.

Sorry for my absence but life kind of got in the way. I just got back from seeing Avatar (in 3D). Wow. Such an amazing film! But anyway, it’s 11:45pm now and I just wanted to stop by and say hi.

“"Hi!”

Ok. Now we got that done .

The weekend was truly lovely and I was completely restless yesterday. I went out on Saturday night but only drank water and tea (it looked very cool – drinking tea in that club. Kind of badass. ). I got up without problems (aka no hangover) and headed for the gym where I did 30 min on the elliptical and 30 min on the bike with some ab work in between. Afterwards I went to my parent’s place as I had plans to go running with my sister and dad. I was tired but felt great during the run. However, it was really cold and started snowing. It was my first real run with my sister and I’m so proud of her! She has a great endurance even though she “only” does pilates.

Work has been kind of like a madhouse today, I guess people want to get everything done before Christmas break. Time flew by and when I got home Selina was already cooking dinner. Hooray! She made a pasta dish with veggies and cream. Not going to complain, it was great

 

The film started at 8 pm and we still had some time so I wanted to make some chocolate covered dried apricots! We have them every year during Christmas season and I honestly don’t know why we make them more often. They’re so easy to make and so so good!

We just used dark chocolate and dried apricots and got started.

I never melt chocolate in the microwave or in a pan but only in a bowl over a pan (with boiling water in it). This is a great way to prevent burnt chocolate.

 

Just check out these gorgeous chocolate covered apricots! They’re such an amazing treat and don’t take that much time to make at all.

I made them with Silvio which was rather stupid. I swear, he ate half of the batch he made.

 

Ok I’ve got to go to bed now. I just wanted to leave you with these gorgeous babies We’re going to make cookies on Wednesday. Yay!

 

Question: I’m still looking for great cookie (or any other sweet treats) recipes. What are your favourites??
Come on, I need ideas!

 

Howdy people! Please excuse my absence yesterday but I didn’t really have the time to sit down and write a post.. I got to work early this morning though so I hope I can publish this post before 9am… which is in 10 minutes. Ah, I doubt it. Well maybe I won’t be too busy today and can use a few minutes or so for blogwork, muahahahaha. I also really need to catch up with everyone’s blogs, I feel so bad for neglecting them. Anyway, let’s back up a little.

 

Tuesday night (so long ago!)

..Rushed back home and made a super quick dinner. While cooking I nibbled on some rice cracker.

 

Dinner was a very weird combo. I also cooked too little pasta. The serving sizes were ridiculously small which is weird because I generally always cook too much.

Pasta + 2 scrambled eggs + Cheese. Told you it was a weird.

Served with a side of bad lightning.

My sis and I met up with Christine at 7pm at the concert venue where we steered to the bar and got some beer. Now that’s my kind of evening .

The Editors had two supporting bands and I generally don’t really like it when there are two bands prior to the “main” band.. It just takes so much time until the main act gets on stage and I’m often a bit impatient at concerts . However, both supporting bands were really good. It was a little bit strange though because the first band’s lead singer sounded like Placebo’s Brian Moloko and the second band’s lead singer like Elvis Presley.

 

The Editors were fabulous. I think there’s no way they would ever play badly live.. It was very stuffy in that hall though.

So we decided to go back to the concert hall to prevent some embarrassing fainting

 

Got back home at 11:30pm and slept until 7:30 yesterday morning. So much for my kick ass yoga practise in the morning.

Wednesday

I lounged around a little until I had to rush to work.. I had some bread & PB & apple there. Sounds familiar? Yes, I already had that on Tuesday..

Oh and today as well. But with banana. Ain’t I creative?

 

Work was a madhouse yesterday and I literally had no time to sit down. Ok, except for lunch when we had sushi. Mmmmm…

Busy days are good though – makes the time fly by at work. I got back home at 6:15pm and decided to squeeze in my missed yoga practise. I did 60 minutes of vinyasa yoga and it was brutal. I think I cried out loud a little as well. However, it felt glorious afterwards and I’m a bit sore today. If you fancy standing splits, crow pose and all the fun stuff check out 60 minutes Mixed Level Vinyasa of 10 march 2008 by Grace Yoga Podcast by Arlene Bjork on iTunes.

I then made a fab dinner that I haven’t had in a while..

Inspired by this video by Tara Stiles. So good.

After dinner I met up with some friends for the Lady’s Night at a cinema – we saw Zweiohrküken which is the sequel to Keinohrhasen (I wrote about it some time ago..). It was good .

I actually wanted to go to yoga class this morning but couldn’t leave the bed. I was glued to it I swear!

Ok, I should really stop making excuses and get up earlier. What’s wrong with me? It didn’t used to be a problem.. I’m probably lacking discipline.

It’s 9:45am now and I wrote this post with a couple of breaks (I have to work after all ) – not that you’d think that I’m a slow writer. My typing speed is super fast.

 

Question: When do you get up and how do you motivate yourself to get up early?
I used to get up at 5:30-6am every morning but am “sleeping in” (until 7am) all the time these days.. I also have zero motivation to get up early even though I want to work out and always have the best intentions before I go to bed (“Tomorrow I will get up early…”). Still.. I’m really lacking motivation over here.

 

Bonjour friends, I hope you liked yesterday’s post . But let’s get back to food and the good stuff in life.

 

Thursday

There’s this fantastic vegetarian buffet-style restaurant in the train station of Berne called tibits. It’s actually by the owners of Hiltl (remember?). Their food is amazing and their buffet offers a great variety of dishes. However, for lunch on Thursday I decided to get the olive vegetables sandwich which was scrumptious.

Mmmm! All that arugula!

 

Thursday is actually our squash-day but two of my friends were busy with school stuff and I persuaded my friend Karin (yes an other Karin) to skip squash and have dinner instead. I didn’t really feel that great and wasn’t sure if I could spend 45 minutes running around in a room like an idiot . We decided to go to an Italian restaurant where I continued my carb-party.

(Hey It was thanksgiving after all so I had to indulge a little ).

The picture really doesn’t do it justice. It was enormous and so tasty! I didn’t eat it all though. Obviously..

I truly have the best friends ever. Honestly, I have no idea how I deserve them! Anyway, Karin surprised me with this:

Gaaaah! She knows me so well! Thank you so much my dear Schlanklori!

I was almost dancing with joy! (Yes I know, it’s “only” a measuring cup but it made me so happy – food lovers understand.. ).

 

Friday

For breakfast I decided to try the infamous PB&J with a twist of course. I used almond butter and blueberry jam. Why haven’t I tried that before?? It is so good!

I had it with some dried apricots, an orange and a camera-shy boiled egg

 

(insert enormous salad for lunch here)

 

Dinner was.. interesting. It didn’t turn out the way I wanted but it was good nevertheless.

Cauliflower zucchini casserole!

I first sautéed a head of cauliflower, one zucchini, 1/2 onion and one carrot in a little bit of olive oil for about 10 minutes

In the meantime I mixed 1/4 cup soy milk, one egg, half a ton nutmeg, salt and pepper.

 

I used a tiny casserole form because I was eating by myself

 

I transferred some veggies into the casserole form and poured the egg mixture over it.

Then I put it in the oven for about 20 minutes on 180°C (350°F)

Afterwards I topped everything with a little bit of parmesan and goat cheese

..And baked it for an other 10 minutes.

It was really good but too dry! I should steam the vegetables instead next time.

I then had some vegan chocolate mousse (had it in the freezer and thawed it). I love that hint of avocado, it goes really well with the cacao powder.

(Sorry, not the prettiest picture ever )

 

Saturday (As known as: Today)

I bounced out of bed, did yoga and through my lame morning routine and made a green monster

(3 cups steamed kale, 2 tbsp dried goji berries, 1 tbsp almond butter, 1 cup soy milk, ice, 1 banana, squirt of agave)

I put it away after one sip because it was too thick and warm! So I mixed everything again with more ice and water and put it in a thermos cup. I will have it for lunch along with the leftover veggies from yesterday’s dinner.

Instead I had an orange, bread with vegan margarine & honey plus some goat cheese. Oh and an other camera-shy hardboiled egg.

 

And yep, I’m at work now but honestly don’t really have much to do. So I’ll probably spend the day doing stuff that has been a bit neglected (cleaning my desk, sorting files, books, etc…). Fun! (Or not..)

 

It’s almost embarrassing to say but I’ll go and see New Moon (again!) tomorrow with my mum. She called me on Thursday and said that if I’ll go and see New Moon again, I’d have to tell her when. Because she’s super flexible. And I half joked “what about Sunday?” and her response was “Perfect! I read that there’s a screening at 3pm!”. Haha. She planned it all (but obviously would deny it). She then asked me if Selina comes as well and I declined. Her answer was “Oh well, she can come with us when we’ll go and see it the 3rd time. Or the 4th. Or the 5th.”. Love her.

 

I hope you’re all having a relaxing Saturday!

 

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!

I hope you’ll have a fabulous time.

 

 

Back to yesterday..

Indian food is so unbelievably good, I could definitely live on it.

We kicked off last night’s dinner with some “drinks”. I had a martini (which looks like water on that picture..)

We had to celebrate New Moon after all (or something like that) .

For dinner I chose okra curry. I am a huge fan of okras but can’t seem to find them around here! But they must be out there somewhere..

They served it with a side of rice and a little dal.

I ate all of the dal and okras and 1/2 of the rice. Plus some bites of my family’s curries. So so so so good! (So so so so stuffed..)

Oh and I also had a piece of garlic naan.

And an Indian beer which was really good.

 

What a fabulous dinner! (Thanks mom and dad!)

 

Afterwards we went next door (literally) to see New Moon.

 

You know.. quite seriously… I honestly didn’t expect it to be so good! The film is so much better than Twilight (which is probably mostly due to the bigger budget and the new director). Some shots were absolutely fantastic and the script was so much better! The conversations were just flowing and not as awkward as in Twilight. And don’t get me started on the make-up.. (especially those eyes!! Such an improvement in the contact lenses department!).

It was overall a great film and very well adapted. I also thought that it was so amusing to be in a cinema with tons of women. All that whistling and screaming cracked me up. Though I guess that people in Switzerland aren’t really as obsessed with Twilight (what I’m really glad for) as America is. (I also bet that most women were also constantly reminding themselves that Taylor Lautner is only 17.. ).

Can’t wait to see it again!

 

 

The next post will be about how to stay healthy while travelling long distances.

Stay tuned and keep on dancing!

Hi. How are you?
I am so damn excited that I’ll see New Moon tonight!!!!! good.

This morning I skipped out of bed (or something like that) and made a fantastic breakfast.

 

French Toast!

I can’t believe that I haven’t had it in forever as I LOVELOVELOVE french toast! We had some stale bread which I used – it turned out perfectly. I drizzled it all with maple syrup and had banana and apple on the side (as if you couldn’t tell…).

 

After work I’ll get my eyes tested again and then meet up with my family for an Indian feast! We’ll have dinner at a new (to me) Indian restaurant and I’m really looking forward to it. Indian food is my favourite – all those spices and flavours! Amazing…

Afterwards we’ll go and see New Moon. (!!!!!)

You know, I really tried to be super cool about everyone’s New Moon posts but I honestly thought that it’s absolutely unfair that we had to wait FIVE MORE DAYS! Ok maybe it’s not that dramatic but I was still a bit annoyed (just a teeny tiny little bit – in the back of my head.. yeah..). Oh well, it will be 9pm soon enough.

 

All the Americans are probably too busy looking forward to Thanksgiving but I still work until Friday and continue to type my little heart away. You know, in case someone reads this blog anyway .

 

Have you seen New Moon or aren’t you interested in Twilight at all?
Twilight is my little guilty.pleasure. It’s so cheesy and unrealistic and I have a weak spot for all things cheesy and unrealistic.