Tuesday 29 April 2014

Avoiding diabetes for boards

Everyone has their own plan to survive boards. My friend Lauren seems to be the queen of this: she has pre-made healthy homemade meals (vegetable soups, butternut squash mac-and-cheese) in single servings in the freezer, a fashion theme for each day ("On Fridays we wear PINK!") to keep it interesting, and even a customized daily yoga plan from her yoga teacher. All tricks, of course, to get herself to study every day for five weeks. My role model.

My plan for boards is to not get diabetes. I love to snack, especially while studying, and I recently realized that the bowls of free bite-size candy around school could become a problem given the long days sitting in front of a computer. I also realized that I prefer savory snacks to sweet, but that sweet is what's usually easy and available.

So, for week one, I premade a couple of these kale salads from Smitten Kitchen, which are really good (or I wouldn't repost them). I substituted tomato for dried cranberries, skipped the cheese, and used olive oil and balsamic instead of making a salad dressing, but the real "secret ingredients" that make this salad are the lemon zest (not sour or bitter like lemon juice, but complements the kale) and chopped scallion (pretty subtle). Crunchy, refreshing, and yet hearty with the almonds and quinoa!

I also made these whole wheat English muffins from the NY Times Recipes for Health: not particularly healthy, as they had about half a stick of butter for six (large) muffins, but incredibly delicious. Easy to make, I would make them again in a heartbeat (next weekend?).

Finally, tonight I'm planning on filling veggie tacos with this savory/salty/crunchy-looking avocado-cabbage slaw.

Ever feel like you can't muster the energy to be creative? Board studying is leaving little room in my brain for anything else, including even the most minimal decisions... And this is when it's good to have some trusted recipes to turn to. (Or it would be grilled cheese every night...)

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