Let me bite that.

Open-Faced

I eat a lot of toast. I love toast with butter and garlic and crushed red pepper. I love toast with almond butter and blueberry jam. I love cheese toast. I love toast with Nutella and slivered almonds. I love toast with olive oil and hummus. Whatever my mood, there’s a toast for it. In my opinion, the best bread for toasting, and for feasting on is Food for Life’s Genesis Sprouted Grains and Seed bread. It comes frozen and each slice is hearty and thick and full of natural and earthy flavors. It’s ingredients include organic sprouted wheat, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, wheat bran, soybeans, barely, millet, and sprouted brown rice. Sounds healthy eh? I figured if I’m going to eat toast day and night I may as well get something out of it.

My newest thing to do with toast, is make open faced sandwiches. I don’t need all that much bread in my sandwiches, I prefer the innards. With the adoption of this practice, I am getting fuller flavor from my meals and cutting my carb ingestion in half. Also, eating a sandwich open-faced with a knife and fork allows you to savor each bite and strive to make it as perfectly tasty as you can with equal distribution of components and sauces.

The open-faced egg sandwich is an even newer development in this affair. Usually I scramble my eggs, but after finally (kind of) learning how to fry an egg, I’ve taken to combining egg with anything I can over bread.

Here we have an open-faced egg sandwich with jalapeno havarti cheese, melted by a Morningstar Farms Garden Veggie patty and an over - medium egg, finished off with and a healthy stream of Sriracha.

Beautiful.

With the above egg ‘sandwich,’ my little brother showed me this trick. After frying up your egg and browning your bread, heat up some canned black beans (rinsed) and some fresh spinach. Place atop egg and enjoy as a delicious and hearty breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack.

So Snacky

As I’ve discussed occasionally in this blog, I try to eat healthily if I can. This can be really tricky considering that I am constantly hungry. I don’t eat a whole lot in one sitting, but throughout the day I probably have at least ten sittings. I’ve learned that my body needs to be constantly refueled. In addition to having a persistent hunger, I also love food. Because I know that there is nothing that can be done about the snacking, I’ve had to train myself into snacking on the right things. Today I made myself two healthy snacks to keep around for the next few days, so that when a snack attack comes along, I know that I’ve got something prepared that I won’t feel guilty about later.

First, I ran out to the Martin’s in Carytown. I only had a ten spot so I bought some slivered almonds, ground turkey, and fresh spinach. When I got back, I rummaged around deep into the freezer until I found a bag of frozen shelled edamame. I love edamame. It’s full of protein and fiber and is an excellent addition to salads. I cooked the edamame (I did it in the microwave but stovetop would probably be better). When it was ready I mixed in a bunch of slivered almonds, sesame seeds, and soy sauce. I ate a bunch of it right away and put the rest of it in the fridge to chill. It was deliciously fresh and crunchy and I even felt full when I was done. It also totally satiated the constant salt tooth I have.

I can definitely see myself waking up at three in the morning to hog out on this.

With the ground turkey and spinach I bought, I made a kind of taco salad with taco seasoning mix and a can of black beans. I browned the turkey in a skillet and then drained it. After it was dry, I added 2/3 cup of water and the taco mix. As the water came to a boil and the liquid thickened into a sauce, I added the drained and rinsed black beans and shredded spinach. I cooked it until the beans heated thoroughly and the spinach wilted. I’ve actually made this a bunch of times before. Usually I’ll buy some whole wheat tortillas or blue corn chips and will make myself mini turkey tacos. Occasionally I’ll also buy romaine and mix it all up with a little salsa. It’s also satisfying all by itself. The combo of the protein of the turkey and the fiber of the beans and the spinach also gives you what you need to build muscle and speed up your metabolism.