Mason Jars

Ok, so I am about to change your life.  I can't take credit for inventing this but I will take credit for being the bomb for telling you about it.  Ha ha.  I was on Pinterest all weekend and I finally got around to trying some of the things I had pinned.  I bought a bunch of Mason Jars and made three different things with them. 

First, I made porridge for my breakfast for the entire week.  I added flax seeds and I only did frozen raspberries.  I also stick mine in the microwave for about 40 seconds or so.  I think it tastes like cobbler.  It is SOOOO freaking good.  I eat it with a boiled egg (I boil an entire carton at the beginning of the week and stick them all in the fridge.)

Food Babe's Parfait Porridge

 

 

 

These are the ingredients for one serving:

• ¼ cup oat groats rinsed and drained (I used oats)
• ¼ cup ezekiel cereal, muesli, or ¼ cup steel or rolled oats (for texture) (I used muesli)
• 1 tsp of currants (I didn't use these at all)
• sprinkle of cinnamon
• 4 ounces unsweetened almond milk
• 1 tsp of chia seeds (optional) (I did use them)
• 1 cup fresh or frozen fruit of your choice (Like I said, I used raspberries.  SO good.)

 

Instructions

1. In a "to go" glass container of your choice: Place oat groats, ezekiel cereal/oats, cinnamon, currants, chia seeds, and almond milk in the container and stir
2. Top mixture with fresh or frozen fruit
3. Let mixture sit in fridge overnight or up to three days in fridge

 

 

Ok, so then I made three snacks with the jars.  I put hummus at the bottom of some jars and stuffed carrots and celery in them.  Then I made some with peanut butter and apples and peanut butter and celery.  Honestly, it looked cute but I cut the stalks too short and the apple slices were hard to get out.  I probably won't do this again.  Instead, I will just pack them in baggies and little containers for the dip.

 

Are you ready for the best part?  First of all, the reason that Mason Jars are awesome is because they keep the salad fresher due to the fact that they are glass rather than plastic.  Also, when you pour them out, the ingredients are in order!  BRILLIANT!  Ok, so here is where I screwed up and had to go back to the store, so keep this in mind....the jars for my breakfast needed to be smaller, but my salad wouldn't fit in the smaller ones.  I needed the largest ones. Buy the biggest ones.

 

 

 

So the trick here is that the dressing is at the bottom. You don't have to cart around a bottle of dressing or leave it in the fridge at work.  You create a barrier of veggies on top of the dressing, then add cheese and protein and then the lettuce on top.  When you pour it out, it's all in order!  Right?  Coolest ever.  You can prep a few at a time. I am super picky about salad so just Google recipes or do whatever you want.  This week I did baby kale, pecans, grilled chicken, dried cranberries and a little goat cheese.  I only do olive oil with salt and pepper on my salad because when I eat salad dressing, I then have to eat like a bottle of Tums for the rest of the day and personally, I hate eating chalk.

I also made:

• Frozen Greek yogurt blueberries. Dip the blueberries in Greek yogurt, put them on parchment paper on a pan, stick in the freezer, throw in a giant Ziploc bag and done.  They're so good. 
• Mini turkey meatloaves (in muffin pans), fresh green beans and sweet potatoes....everything baked at the same time.   I put each dinner in a container for the next week for myself.
• I made black bean vegan brownies, which I know sound gross, but they are so delicious!  Totally dairy free (I am lactose intolerant, so this was awesome) AND they have protein in them.  I used dark chocolate cocoa powder and dark chocolate chips.  I will post that recipe later because I had to make adjustments to it. 
• Finally, I made a veggie spaghetti sauce in the crock pot for Lindsey.  She loves pasta but I hate how she completely rejects vegetables, so what I did was finely chop all of the veggies except the zucchini and yellow squash.  I put the squash and zucchini through the Veggetti.  If you don't have one, they are awesome...get one.  You wind the veggie through it and it makes it resemble spaghetti.  So anyway, my idea was that when Lindsey eats the pasta, she will eat the veggies pretty much unknowingly because they are mixed with the pasta.  She likes it and hasn't complained yet. One of my favorite meals is zucchini "pasta" with turkey meatballs and spaghetti sauce.  Of course, the tomatoes make me choke all night because I am probably bleeding from an ulcer but you know, maybe you won't have that issue.

Ta da!  That's it!

Bitches love Pinterest.