WIAW: Tangy Toasted Coconut Fruit Salad & Random Bites

July 16, 2013 by Christine Skari

Howdy everyone! Hope everyone is successfully getting over the humpiness that is Wednesday. My eats on Tuesday were sporadic and pretty random as my appetite wasn’t what it usually is. I didn’t have a very concrete meal except for breakfast (it was delicious, by the way!) As always, thanks to Jenn for hosting!

Side note: This is last 24 hours of my giveaway for a copy of Tasty Food Photography! The recipe you see below was taken and edited using tips from the book. I’ve found in enormously helpful and can’t believe how much it’s already improved my photography (in less than a week)! Click here to go to the giveaway post!

My day started with a quick trip to the gym before breakfast. I played tennis with Kyle on Sunday and to say I’ve been sore would be a huge understatement. Holy mother of the Big Man’s son, my entire back is one big knot! I took the next day off and shook myself out with 15 minutes of incline walking and 20 minutes of stationary biking. Nice and easy. Now, on to breakfast!

I made this cool and creamy fruit salad that was absolutely delicious! Tangy greek yogurt blended together perfectly with the sweet fruit and the toasted coconut brought a delightfully tropical twist to it. I highly reccomend it and have been snacking on it multiple times a day! Here’s the recipe if you’d like to give it a try!

[yumprint-recipe id=’2′]

Since I ended up snacking the entire day, here are a few of my other eats!

I’m in love with a new cup I just recently purchased from Home Goods ($4)! You know that feeling when a cup fits perfectly in your hand and holds just the right amount of morning coffee and you know it was a match made in heaven? No? Just me?

The lemon bars were definitely one of the highlights of my day! The best lemon bars I’ve ever had, by far! I don’t know about you, but I love mine extra tart :).

What’s the best thing you ate today?

xoxo Christine

WIAW #5: Giveaway! Tasty Food Photography eBook

July 9, 2013 by Christine Skari

Hello everyone and happy Wednesday! I’m so excited for this post because

I’m hosting my first ever giveaway!
I can actually show you in my WIAW post how much the item I’m giving away has already benefited me!

I mentioned in yesterday’s Marvelous in My Monday post that I had recently purchased an eBook from the lovely Lindsay at Pinch of Yum and have been thrilled with how much it’s taught me in just a few days. I mean, really, this lady makes it so easy to understand photography and has step by step instructions on how to make your photos stunning! I emailed her thanking her for writing such a wonderful book and, after a little communicating, I became an affiliate and she offered to give one lucky reader a free copy of her eBook!

Here are just a few of the things that come in this easy to read and understand beauty:

Technical Tips: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.
Composition Tips: orientation, composition idea, and movement
Lighting Tips: window hunting, scraping, and folded paper trick
Props and Set Up Tips: prop ideas and organization, set-up process
Editing Tips: photoshop, lightroom, and iPhoto

Don’t know what a lot of these mean? Don’t worry, I didn’t either! But, Lindsay explains them so easily and with so many helpful explaining photos that you’ll pick it up in no time.

To Enter:
a Rafflecopter giveaway

**Want to purchase a copy now? For a limited time, Lindsay is giving a 25% discount using the code newversion25. Click here to visit Pinch of Yum. **

Now, on to the eats!

Breakfast: a bowl of greek yogurt, cottage cheese, grapes, strawberries, blueberries, almonds, and granola!

Lunch: homemade (and healthy!) creamy corn chowder soup with chicken.

Snackage: a delicious and fairly nutritious oreo shake made with a new and exciting find: healthy cookies that don’t taste like poo! And trail mix from Trader Joe’s. Cashews and bebeh PB cups are my JAM!

Dinner: Dinner today was a lazy one. A whole wheat bagel, cream cheese, lox, and onions as well as the last of my kabocha on the side

So there they are! I already feel like my photos have improved dramatically and I’m only on day two of having the book. I’m so excited to learn more!

Kyle will be writing his guest post soon about a guy’s thoughts on how women negatively pick apart their body and what he considers, along with many other men, to be the most important and beautiful aspects of a girl. Stay tuned for his post on Thursday or Friday!

Hope you had some great eats as well!

xoxo Christine

First Self Hosted WIAW!

July 2, 2013 by Christine Skari

Hey everyone, happy Wednesday! I look forward to it every week since I always find at least a couple new awesome blogs to ~~stalk~~ follow! I’m happy to announce that this is my first What I Ate Wednesday as a self hosted blogger! Thanks as always to Jenn for hosting!

Before I get into the food though, HOW CUTE IS THIS SKIRT? $18 at TJ Maxx. Boom. I’m absolutely in love with it and it makes me feel like a princess when I move. I’m 8, I know.

Breakfast: Overnight oats prepared with the cast of characters you see below! Before eating, I topped mine with walnuts, both normal and golden raisins, and some PB Crave in Cookie Nookie! To be honest, I never got the big fuss about overnight oats. For some reason, they were delicious this time around, though. Guess my proportions were off before. Sorry for the bad pic!

Lunch: Lunch was with the boyfriend at a Thai restaurant. I got a stir fry with mushrooms, baby corn (d’aww), celery, chicken, onions, and a delicious sauce. A Thai Tea was necessary, of course. I don’t understand why I pay $3 for one every time I see it at a restaurant when I can make it better at home for basically free. DON’T JUDGE ME, OKAY?

Dinner: Today’s dinner came along really fast and with minimal mess. Win! I cooked a sweet potato and topped it with some Earth Balance and fresh basil, roasted some asparagus, and caramelized half an onion I had lying around. The best part of the meal was the pork chops. I just seasoned them with pepper and Lawrey’s garlic salt and pan fried them So simple, yet so delicious!

Dessert was in the form of a latte and Norwegian chocolate. Honestly, people need to know about how amazing the chocolate in Norway is. The Swiss get all the credit!

What was the best thing you ate today?

Want to try some Norwegian chocolate? (say yes or I eat your first born child)

xoxo Christine

WIAW #4 & Body Fat Percentage LIES

June 25, 2013 by Christine Skari

Hey guys, happy Wednesday! I’ve been slacking lately on keeping up with What I Ate Wednesday every week, but I’m hoping to change that. Without further ado, here’s the daily noms!

Breakfast:

Greek yogurt with tons of fresh fruit before I headed out to the gym for a meet-up with one of the personal trainers there! I actually had a pretty cool experience talking to him and am excited about some upcoming advancements in both my health and fitness education. More on that at the end of the post!

Snackage:

No utensils needed! Go on and just stick your fingers right up in that good goop. Wahoooo!

Lunch:

Kyle and I went to a Thai restaurant for our midday meal and got the usual Beef Pad Thai (OMGSOGOOD) and ordered the chicken fried rice as well. We’re a pretty good sharing team and have switching plates down. A Thai iced tea on the side, of course!

That meal REALLY did me in. I’m basically a baby in that as soon as I eat a big meal, it’s nap time and I get cranky. I honestly don’t even know how Kyle puts up with me sometimes haha.

Post-Nap Recovery Ice Cream

That’s a category, right?

Dinner:

Miso-glazed salmon with brown rice and sautéed asparagus. Yum.

So now that you’ve seen my entire day’s eats, we’re basically bffls for life right? Wait, best friends for life for life? Whatever. We be rollin’ like peanut buttah and jelly, yo.

SO. Back to my day at the gym. Since I just joined up a new one, I get an initial evaluation of fitness goals along with a free personal training session. I’m really lazy about contacting someone about actually using them, so I was lucky when a personal trainer approached me yesterday mid-walking lunge. I felt extremely flattered when he asked me if I competed since I’ve never really considered myself that strong or toned looking. Anyways, he was pretty eager to set me up with an appointment to do my evaluation, which is what I did today. We had a great talk ranging from the importance of strength training for bone density (don’t even get me started, I can rant for hours about it), getting certified as a personal trainer, and even theories about the existence of God/religion in general. It was a pretty deep talk for only having met for 5 minutes the day before haha.

He offered to give me all his study supplies/text books for basically every certification that exists, which is awesome since the tests themselves cost a bundle. His passion for his job is astounding and I had a wonderful time talking about subjects that really speak to myself as well.

I also had a body fat percentage test done, which turned out really interestingly for me. I’ve gotten one done before, and was a bit dismayed over my results, which placed me as average. While I didn’t get caught up over it, I expected to have been placed at least in the “athletic range”. However, as he was taking my measurements he exclaimed that my skin is extremely thick (weird, I know) and so the numbers he was getting were no where near correct. I’ve never noticed it before, but he had me pinch my skin and then his and he’s right, I’m a freak! Woot!

It was exciting to find out that I have a much lower percentage than what my previous results told me :).

So feel free to hurl your insults at me because I literally have thick skin!

What was the best thing you ate today?

xoxo Gossip Girl

WIAW #3

May 22, 2013 by Christine Skari

These last couple of days have been jam-packed with studying for my chemistry midterm today. I’ve been pretty consistent about getting in my workouts, but I always feel like my health suffers when it’s midterm season. There never seems to be enough time for exercise and I don’t get nearly enough sleep and drink way too much coffee. At least my eats have been pretty good! Which brings us to my third WIAW post! Time seems to be flying and I can’t believe I’ve been participating in them for 3 weeks already :).

Breakfast: An egg white omelet with ham, onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, green onions, tomatoes, and nonfat plain greek yogurt on the side in place of sour cream. Along with that I had a banana that I dipped in peanut butter and jelly with plenty of coffee to keep me going.

Kyle was so excited to show me how healthy of a breakfast he had gotten as well. What a cutie! Look at that charming banana smile.

Lunch: I had a late lunch of a Subway sandwich around 2:30. Honey wheat oat bread, chicken breast, and all the veggies they could cram in! Baked chips for the crunch and grapes for a little sweetness. I’m not really too much of a chip person (I know, I’m weird), but I firmly believe that no sandwich is complete without them!

Snack: I was feeling munchy so I sneakily picked out a good amount of M&Ms from Kyle’s trail mix. Yes, I’m that person. Where can I pick up my Best Girlfriend of the Year Award?

Dinner: I wasn’t all too hungry for dinner, so I ended up only nibbling on my pasta. It was good though! Spaghetti noodles with marinara sauce and sautéed italian sausage and bell peppers. Along with that I had a salad with some Thousand Island dressing (I could honestly DRINK that stuff).

Dessert was in the form of a delicious oozy-gooey pumpkin cake which I shared with Kyle. I asked if we should have ice cream or a latte with it, to which he replied with “Why or?”. That’s my boy.

I’m hoping to get in a run today later in the evening after I take a long post-midterm nap.

Hope you had some good eats as well :).

xoxo Christine