We Should All Put Chili Over Noodles.

This morning I mentioned that my roasted vegetable chili from last night was a bit too spicy...problem solved. We'll get to that. First a tale of breakfast trial and error.

It's Wednesday already and it feels like this week is going by really fast.

This morning I started my day off with 75 minutes of yoga and I could not even believe how hungry I was by my normal breakfast time. When I run I never feel particularly starving, but my stomach was rumbly today. 


I realized I had an empty jar of peanut butter. Before I started reading food blogs, an empty jar of peanut butter would have meant, "Well, too bad. Good thing there's another jar in the pantry." However, the vast world of wise people who write about their food has opened my eyes to the treasure that is a mostly-empty jar of nut butter, because it means Oats in a Jar (OIAJ) - I have mentioned this before.

However, there are multiple camps in regards to Oats In a Jar. Some only like overnight oats (read: cold) in their jars, some feel that the oats do not adequately clean the jar out unless they are hot. However you make them, let me tell you something I learned from experience: that plastic nut butter jar does not magically become microwave safe just because it's mostly empty and you want to cook oats in it. (Glass ones are kind of a different story, but that's not what we had here.) 


Experience. Yes. Even if you get all the aluminum foil off the top, the jar will begin to melt in the time it takes to cook the oats, and nobody want melty plastic in their breakfast.

This was actually a mistake I made a little while back, so this morning to make my oats in a jar, I cooked them first in a (microwave-safe!) bowl, THEN poured them into my jar. This was actually a bit messy, I think perhaps I need to cook them in something with a spout next time. Anyway, I added toppings - chocolate maple again - stir stir stir and a delectable breakfast it was.

Post-breakfast my morning brought me back to Stell. I remembered my beverage warmer this time - a gift from Mom during college - so I could take hours to drink my coffee and not worry about it getting cold. I got in about 4 hours of studying today; slowly and steadily I think I'm learning things. 

During one of my gazing-around breaks I noted a tiny girl, about 3 maybe, getting pulled around on a leash by her older brother, who couldn't have been more than 5. It was great. 

And finally, lunch: Chili with noodles. I combined about 3/4 cup spicy chili with a cup of whole wheat rotini, and topped with a few shakes of nutritional yeast. This was totally perfect. It still had a good spice to it but my stomach didn't hurt. 

I have no idea if this is really how some people regularly eat chili, but I will be doing this again in the future. For now though, I put it in the freezer because tomorrow I'm off to Santa Barbara for the rest of break. 

I'm still hoping to get some studying done there, but I'll also be visiting friends and boyfriend and I'm excited to have something besides studying to be excited about. There's only so much passion I can muster for celebrating time to study, it starts to get sort of sad. 

Dinner tonight, since I'm leaving tomorrow and don't want to cook, looks like it's going to be a slightly imbalanced and likely overindulgent blend of baked goods and cereal. Sometimes you need one of those. 

And coming up next week, certain people will have received their birthday presents and I can share in more detail about these mysterious baked goods.