No-Bake Peach Crumble & Liebster Award!

I was all set to meal-prep on Sunday, but on Saturday, my church friends gave me a bunch of awesome food because there were leftovers after potluck. They tend to worry that I don’t have time to cook and will starve, so they gave them all to me, saying that if I didn’t take them, they’d go bad! (They know me well. I can’t say no to that. :O )

Most of the people at my church here are vegetarian, so they’ve got me covered for Meatless Monday!

Since it’s Meatless Monday and I accidentally got my several of my meals covered for the week, I figured I’d suggest a couple vegetarian favorites that I’ve made over the years! :]

• Pineapple Fried Brown Rice
• Creamy Coconut-Peanut Shirataki Noodles with Veggies
• Curried Chickpeas & Spinach
• Vegan Peanut Butter Pasta
• Quinoa & Black Beans
• Tofu Scramble

I also thought this would be a great time to suggest a quick + nutritious snack to my elf (Kiki @ Glitz and Blitz) for Week 1’s Elf 4 Health, since she mentioned that meal planning was probably one of her greatest challenges. (I’m working on something for that! :D Stay tuned!)

Back when I randomly obtained 45 peaches and started making all sorts of peachy recipes (e.g. Caramelized Peach White Chocolate Oatmeal Skillet Cookie Pie + Healthy Peach Cobbler), I asked A Balanced Table for some recipe inspiration.

A Balanced Table is a group led by Ellen as a place to share meal and snack ideas/inspiration so we’ll be more inclined to eat balanced, nourishing meals. At the time, she was studying to become a Nutrition Therapist and needed sample humans (hehehe to counsel on nutrition and healthier diets, which I didn’t feel that my med school curriculum adequately covered, so I volunteered! She has since passed her test! You can check out her site here and she’s also on twitter! Ellen is an awesome lady (+ one of my pole instructors!) and spends her free time doing volunteer wildlife rehabilitation at the Wildlife Center of the Silicon Valley. <3 This super quick and healthy snack was her suggestion!

No-Bake Peach Crumble

• 1/2 to 1 large peach, sliced
• 1 tsp coconut oil
• 1/4 cup Nature’s Path Peanut Butter Granola (or your choice of granola)
• 1/8 cup 0% Fage Greek yogurt (mixed with dash of almond extract [optional])
• pinch of cinnamon

Instructions:

1. Melt the coconut oil in a pan over medium heat and add sliced fruit.
2. Cook, stirring occasionally, then transfer to a bowl and top with granola + cinnamon.

I was also re-re-nominated for the Liebster Award by Montana! :D! (Here’s the first one and the second one!)

Yay!

These are the 10 questions she gave me! (I’m sorry that I write so much. ._.)

• What’s your favorite quote and why does it resonate with you?
  I have a whole bunch, but here’s one of them! Perhaps it’s idealistic of me to think this, but I’d like to think that your life is really what you make of it. (Channeling Terminator here: “There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”) Yes, there are many factors that play into it, but in the end, I want to believe that if you have dreams and goals that you set out to accomplish, you’ll be able to do something good with your life, and no matter what kinds of obstacles and challenges you face, just keep that dream/goal in mind and keep pressing on!

• If you were stuck on an island with all your basic needs provided for you (food, shelter, water, clothing) what 3 additional items would you bring with you?
  I guess I have to go ahead and assume that there won’t be any electricity, soooo I’d bring:
  -A really ginormous notebook
  -A neverending pen
  -An adventurous close friend, if that’s an option/they want to come (because s/he might as well come explore with me! :P )
• What’s the last movie you saw?
  I was watching X-Men: Days of Future Past while I was waiting for Isaac and Sean to be done with their exams last week, but it crapped out on me when I was about 1/5 of the way through. ;_; Divergent is the only 2014 film I’ve watched (last Saturday night). I tend to be a fan of dystopian-future-type storylines, so I enjoyed the first two books (not so much a fan of the third, but meh), and I think the movie did a pretty good job of following the books. I really liked Four’s character in the books and there is a chance that I have more than one celebrity crush now. Jensen Ackles will always be my favorite, but oh hello, Theo James. :o Not gonna lie, I am a total sucker for chiseled features.

• Do you have a favorite workout item? Running shoes, clothes, fitness equipment?
  A squat rack with a barbell and plates…or a pole! I love em’ both, so it’s a toss-up between the two.
• What’s the most unique workout class you’ve ever taken?
  I’ve taken about a billion different classes, from Brazilian dance to BJJ to archery to Bikram yoga to salsa to Zumba to abs/back conditioning to cardio kickboxing to aerial silks/hoop to…Alright, I’ll stop. :P I would’ve loved to post a picture of me doing silks or hoop, but I unfortunately don’t really have any. (sigh. :[ ) So instead, you get one of me doing a half-Jade back in 2011!
  

  It took approximately 1 week for the bruising on my hip to start fading. That smile is actually a grimace of pain. :O

• If you had to go without one modern convenience for the rest of your life, what would you give up and why?
  TV! My parents actually banned us from watching TV when we were fairly young, and I never actually got into it. (It’s hard to miss something you’ve never really experienced?) I did get a small dose of X-Men, Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles though, so it wasn’t an altogether deprived childhood! :P
  

  A little wisdom from High Expectations Asian Father!

• Which relative are you closest to?
  My brother! He’s one of my best friends and we work together on lots of stuff and have a lot of similar interests. I think he’d be an awesome travel buddy, but I will probably never have a free day in my life again, so I guess that’s not gonna work out so well. (I’m kidding. I’m sure I will have free days. Just not anytime in the next 9-10 months or so. :O )
• Would you ever do an obstacle course race? If you have done one, which one did you do?
  I was actually all set up to do Tough Mudder in northern CA with my friends back in September of 2011…but then I got into grad school and moved across the country to New Jersey, so there went that. ._. I suppose the whole higher education thing was a tad bit more important.I was at TKD/BJJ on Thursday evening and talking to my instructor, Phil (a wonderfully awesome human being)! I’m not sure if I’ve ever talked about Phil here, but he is a wonderfully awesome human being! (Hold it! I did! Twas when I accidentally smashed up my knee. :x )I met Phil in mid-August when I started taking lessons at his martial arts academy, and he continually goes above and beyond for his students, both on and off the mat. When I mentioned I was worried about my car registration expiring, he made a bunch of calls the next morning to a local judge, the town sheriff, and a few other contacts to see what my best options were (so I could avoid being scalped by the state of Kentucky).

  Mike and I have ended up staying after class ends for another couple hours on multiple occasions because he’s just really awesome to talk to.In any case, I mentioned that I wanted to do a Tough Mudder, and he said he’d been toying with the idea of getting the whole academy (the adults, anyway) to do the one in Louisville. :D! (Montana, if you happen to be free then, it’d be so awesome to meet you! :) When Phil saw my eyes light up at that, he said, “Guys, let’s really do this! Farrah has her heart set on it. I’ll talk to everyone on Tuesday and see what we can do about getting everyone there.”It’d be a great team bonding experience, and an awesome way to whip us all into shape, yes yes? I’m super excited, and I’m really hoping we can successfully convince everyone to join in on the badassery. It’s all about the camaraderie, right!? (Mike and Corey were less than thrilled. Haters.) I’m also hoping they’ll go for the one on Sunday, since I kinda wanna volunteer on Saturday so I can get a fat discount. :P Times are tough! (Thanks for that tip, Montana! <3)

  

  Phil & Relson!

• What’s your guilty pleasure?
  Watching Vampire Diaries and/or happy-sappy chick flicks that renew/re-devastate my faith in humanity. Before you go and start judging me, I’d just like to throw out a disclaimer and point out that the Vampire Diaries is all Keat’s fault.
• What’s your best/happiest childhood memory?
  Sleepovers at my family friends’ houses! The mess of us used to be super close and we’d hang out at each other’s houses every weekend and hang out on playgrounds, play video games, catch up on each other’s lives (we moved to the other side of town, then they moved to another city, etc.), but then life happened, and I don’t actually really talk to any of them all that much anymore. (It probably doesn’t help that we’re scattered all over the country either.) I don’t presently have any pictures of us as kids (that was before the dawn of digital cameras and before scanners were really a thing), so we’ll have to make do with these!

Here’s “The Brotherhood” (yes, myself included)/Chongs!

The entirety of our Asian Mafia gatherings would take up a whole ton of tables at restaurants, so we’d have a “kids'” table all to ourselves.

If you’re reading this and want to just answer one/some/all in the comments, go for it! Don’t feel that you have to do these, but I’m nominating…Genevieve from Gratitude & Greens, Giselle from Diary of an Ex-Sloth, Kelly from Tortured Toes, Olivia from Uniquely College, Corinne from The Feminist Feline, and Amanda from Adventure with FitNyx!  Here are my questions!

1. What’s your favorite comfort food?
2. What’s a recipe you’ve come across recently that you’d love to try/make?
3. What’s a super irrational fear that you have?
4. If you could win an all-expenses paid trip to anywhere in the world, where would you go and what would you do?
5. What accomplishment from 2014 are you most proud of so far?
6. What’s your favorite way to treat/pamper yourself?
7. What was your favorite childhood book?
8. Favorite movie that you’ve seen this year? (…I’ve only seen one 2014 movie thus far, so I’m trying to figure out where to start! X-Men, Captain America & Mockingjay are already on my list!)
9. What are 3 of your favorite posts from your archives?
10. What are you most looking forward to in the coming year?