Colors of Summer

This morning I managed to do a load of laundry, clean the fridge and pantry, tidy up my entire room (which needed a GOOD dusting and cleaning), grocery shop, and marinate some sirloin steaks all before noon! Not too shabby. I live with two roommates who are both early risers (I'm the earliest, but no one ever sleeps past 8) and the house is usually bustling with activity by nine.

On the way home from Safeway I saw these beautiful summer flowers! I love fresh flowers because my mom keeps tons of potted plants and they remind me of home. Since I'm a college student living on a typical student's budget, fresh flowers are a bit of an extravagance but they fit into today's theme of celebration so well that I couldn't say no.



The OIAJ from this morning kept me full until noon. Even though I had a larger breakfast than usual I used the same amount of oats as I do in my breakfast cookies which leave me hungry by 11. I'll try out hot oatmeal sometime in the future without the nut butter but it definitely might be a winner for mornings when I have class. Since I wasn't very hungry for lunch I decided to make something light, I found my bottle of apple cider vinegar in the cupboard (I have a love hate relationship with it which I may go into detail about in a different post) and decided to use it as dressing on my salad.

In the bowl, three cups of spinach, (15) 1 chopped carrot (30), 1 stalk celery (5) and 1/2 a yellow pepper (20) all drizzled with ACV.



Then the toppings! A whole ripe mango (pre-chilled in the fridge for firmness), (130) half a serving's worth of goat cheese crumbles (40), and the last of a tub of cottage cheese. (for protein!) (120)



Lunch: Vegetables(65) + Toppings (290) = (360). Looked so nice with the flowers! :)



The mango + goat cheese combo goes so great with the flavor of ACV. I like to eat the veggies first, it's a treat to get random sweet bites of mango. Then I eat the rest of the mango with the cottage cheese and it's like dessert!



After lunch I'm going shoe shopping with the BF and we're going to spend a relaxing evening cooking dinner at home and catching up on some Jersey Shore. To complete today's theme of celebration I may even pick up a nice bottle of wine. Who knows? ;)