Sick of eating cereal and ramen for lunch and dinner? Want to spend less money eating out and finally start cooking for yourself? Put down that frozen pizza, because HC’s Health Editor, Sammie Levin, is here to share her daily eats so you can get ideas for healthy, satisfying meals that are easy enough for any time-strapped collegiette to make. After you read Collegiette Eats, your taste buds, wallet and waistline will thank you.
Breakfast
I woke up less hungry than usual yesterday (which is weird because I usually wake up a ravenous beast), so I had a lighter breakfast than my typical hearty oatmeal. I put some cottage cheese in a bowl and topped it with grapefruit, kiwi, strawberries and blueberries. Isn't fruit the prettiest? Cottage cheese, on the other hand, is not - I know this from the looks of disgust on people's faces when I eat it in any sort of public setting - so I'm glad the more photogenic, glamorous fruit covered it up.
Lunch
I had a smorgasbord of different foods hiding in my kitchen for lunch (Side note: I just learned I've been saying "smorgasbord" incorrectly my entire life as I just tried to spell it "schmorgasborg" - which kind of looks like a Yiddish rendition of the real word?). I roasted a sweet potato and a bunch of Brussels sprouts and threw them together in a bowl with steamed spinach and lentils. Cutting the sweet potato into chunks prior to roasting was a strenuous task. I counted it as my arm workout for the day. It was also the closest I've ever come to losing a finger. It's okay, because I would be proud to lose a finger in the name of sweet potatoes. That is how much I love them.
To roast the sweet potato chunks, I coated them in about a half tablespoon of olive oil and seasoned them with salt, pepper, paprika, cayenne pepper and cumin (I didn't measure the seasonings; I just added a little sprinkle of each). For the Brussels sprouts, I coated them with just olive oil, salt and pepper. I put them both on a baking sheet in the oven at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes, checking and tossing them periodically. The seasoning on the potatoes was so good - spicy without masking the sweetness of the potato too much. Compliments to the chef.
Dinner
For dinner, I cooked for myself and two of my housemates. Gotta spread the wealth once in a while. I made Moroccan stuffed acorn squash, courtesy of a recipe from The Sprouted Kitchen, a cookbook my mom got me. The final product looked nothing like the gorgeous photo in the book (we decided my version looked like potpourri), but we thought it was delicious. So it was kind of like a #pinterestfail, but a tasty fail.
Took make this meal, you cook quinoa in coconut milk and spice it with paprika, cumin and ground coriander. Then, you toss the quinoa with chopped mint and cilantro and fresh orange juice, add in pomegranate seeds and pistachios and stuff it all in a roasted acorn squash. AMAZING. I have a theory that everything tastes better when you eat it out of an edible "bowl"- soups in bread bowls, mexican salads in tortilla bowls, rice stuffed in peppers, etc. By roasting the squash until it's really tender, you get a spoonful of warm squash with every scoop, which tastes really good combined with the quinoa and other mix-ins. Are you sold? You can find the recipe re-printed here. The only changes I made were not adding cheese and adding a few sliced orange segments since I didn't want them to go to waste after juicing the orange on the quinoa.
Time for class, but if you've ever had an especially good edible bowl, please let me know, because now I'm determined to continue confirming my theory.
