Hello again!

Well..I am quite excited to begin blogging! Just so you know, to be more obvious with my allergy-free recipes and meals, I will be putting letters by each of them, and then explaining how you could alter or substitute in various things to make them even more allergy-friendly:
– E : no eggs
– N: no nuts
– GF: gluten free
– D: no dairy

Let me know if you’d like to see any more allergy alerts…these are my main “stay away from” foods, so that’s what I’ll be sticking with for now. Anyhoo…

Breakfast (E, N):

Of course, I totally forgot to take a picture of my ACTUAL breakfast this morning (bad blogger), but hopefully I will get better at it. I had a bowl of Weetaflakes topped with a banana (second time I’ve eaten a banana this week without gagging! Maybe I’m getting over that…?), and with a mixture of rice and skim milk.

Ok, so, these Weetaflakes are AWESOME! My favorite cereal in the U.S. is Special K, but it being about 3 pounds per box over here, I’m not going to buy it unless it’s on sale. This box of cereal was less than a pound at the 99p store! (The 99p store is like a dollar store. Oh, and 1 pound = roughly $1.61! Yikes!) High fiber and protein, low fat and calories, and whole grain? Sure! If you wanted to make this breakfast gluten free, you could easily swap Corn Flakes, Rice Chex, etc. in place of this cereal, and if you wanted to make it dairy free, just use only rice milk.

Snack (E, N, D):

Dried apricots + some unpictured pretzels

Workout for the day: about 60 minutes of P90X Yoga. I love P90X! The reason I cut it short was because I still had to finish a paper…whoops.

Lunch (E, N):

Ham, cheese, and sliced Granny Smith apple sandwich. Normally I grill this up like a panino, but since I was running late, I just popped the bread into the toaster instead.

I also had some frozen mixed veggies on the side. Oh, and that’s margarine on top of that bread.

After lunch and a shower (and finishing my essay) I headed to campus. My plan was to print off two papers, and take one of them to the Writing Center they have here to get some advice. Honestly, I don’t know why I even bother. Because I’m used to American citation types (especially MLA), learning a U.K. citation style was difficult and I had questions. The Writing Center was unable to answer any of them, not even my questions about the actual essay. Urgh.
I had my British Life & Culture class from 3-5, and then I came back here, where I re-heated dinner (leftovers from last night).

Dinner (E, N, D, GF):

Taco Salad!

To make:

1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 green bell pepper (or any other color of your choice), chopped
1 pound extra lean ground beef
Taco Seasoning (you could make your own using spices like cumin, chile powder, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, etc.; I think buying a packet from the store ups the risk of it containing gluten. However, because I don’t have access to those spices, I DID use a store bought pack in this recipe. I cheated – don’t hate me! If I was at home I would have made it from scratch)
7 oz red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
8 oz no-salt-added corn, drained and rinsed
Salsa

Saute the onion, green pepper, and ground beef in a frying pan until the veggies are tender and the beef is brown and cooked through.  Sprinkle the taco seasoning on top (sometimes it’s helpful to add a tablespoon or two of water). Add beans and corn, heat through. Put around a cup of the taco meat on some romaine lettuce, mix in some salsa, and enjoy!

This would be super yummy with some cheese and corn chips sprinkled on top, but since I had neither, I made do with what you see. Still good though!

Dessert (E, N):

Weight Watchers Double Chocolate Chip Cookies. Do we have these in the States? The nutrition stats are pretty good for a serving (two cookies)!: 85 calories and 3.5 fat. Not bad for some delicious cookies.

You will find that I might not be taking pictures of every meal. If that’s the case, it’s probably because of one of three things: 1) I forgot, 2) you’ve already seen that meal/it is boring, or 3) the lighting is bad and the picture would look verrrry unappetizing. I always think that food looks better in natural light, and because it is dark here around 4:30 (and I mean DARK), the pictures wouldn’t come out as well.

Well, I’m off to do some homework…whoopee. I will leave you with this gorgeous picture from my trip to St. Fagan’s in Cardiff:

Have a good night! 🙂