WIAW & Grape Juice Green Smoothie

Happy Wednesday! It's an especially happy one for me since I'm on my spring break from my teaching job this week. As I like to say, I'm having lot of  "Ash & Avery Time".  You'd think my food might have changed since I'm on break, but it's pretty much the same. I'm a creature of habit so I'm still getting up around 5 AM so I can get my workout in before Avery gets up (which I'm sure other moms can relate to is priceless!). I doubt my "early streak" will last all week, but for now it's working. This way when Avery does get up, I feel like I can actually enjoy playing with her and getting other stuff done around the house.

Time to move on and talk about this week's WIAW, and to go with this month's "going green" theme, I've got a new green smoothie recipe below.




 Now onto this nursing mama's gluten-free, vegan food for the day.... 

5:00 AM Just woke up snack: 1 bowl of Rice Chex cereal
and SO Delicious Sugar-Free Vanilla Coconut Milk.

Workout: 1 hour run/walk intervals on the treadmill. My interval is simple: run 2 minutes, walk to 2 minutes for the entire hour. So simple, yet so effective. Love it.

7:30 AM Breakfast: Chocolate Ice Cream Smoothie
Spinach, rice milk, raw cacao powder, chia seeds,
hemp seeds, frozen bananas, and frozen strawberries.

10:00 AM Morning Snack: 2 gluten-free, vegan pancakes
from The Cinnamon Quill blog, with Maple Agave Nectar
as my syrup.

Since I've been off this week for spring break, I've been trying to convert Avery to love pancakes like I do . Unfortunately, she'd rather break them up into little pieces and drop them on the floor for me to clean up instead of eating them.

Rockin' some "bed head" while eating her pancakes.

11:15 AM 2nd Morning Snack: 1 organic Gala apple

12:30 Lunch: "Lentil and Vegetable Stoup" made in the
pressure cooker from the blog: A Healthy Slice of Life.

2:00 PM 1st Afternoon snack: 1 organic orange

2nd afternoon snack: 1 "Barbecued Black Bean and Tofu Burrito",
recipe from Vegan on the Cheap.

5:00 PM 3rd Afternoon Snack:
" Grape Juice Green Smoothie"
See recipe below...

I've been loving grape juice lately, any other fans? Brandon added it to a smoothie one night and it gave me some inspiration...then this yummy creation came to be!

Grape Juice Green Smoothie

Ingredients:
1/2 cup grape juice
1-2 hand fulls of spinach
1 Tbs. chia seeds (optional)
1 1/2 frozen bananas
4 frozen strawberries

Blend and enjoy the grape-green goodness!

Then we headed over to my parents house to hang out for dinner and to watch the finale to The Bachelor. We enjoyed some playtime outside before eating dinner.

Doing her new "hello hand" move.

Saying her new favorite word: Dog!

Hanging out with grandma.

7:00 PM Dinner: "Broccoli Skillet" with brown rice, broccoli,
carrots, red pepper, onion, tomato, curry powder, and
Braggs Liquid Aminos.

Avery's favorite part...the broccoli.

Always on the lookout for my parent's two dogs.

Oh good ol' rice...it's nice on the tray, but not fun to clean
off the floor. Glad she likes it though!

Dessert: "Genius Chocolate Chip Blondies"
from Chocolate-Covered Katie. Chickpeas have
never tasted so good!

Before we go, how do you store your recipes? I print recipes off quite often from books I've checked out from the library or that I've found from other blogs. The only problem with this is that I've accumulated quite a bit of recipes over the years, and although I've cleared out the ones that aren't my favorite, this folder began to burst. Even worse, when I was looking for a recipe to use for cooking dinner I would have to flip through every recipe in the folder to find what I was looking for...no fun!

My old recipe folder.

 Time for a new solution...a binder (and a cute one at that!).

Instead of one big mound of papers, they are now divided into sections based on the type of meal, such as: pastas, soups and stews, Mexican, sweets, etc.

Tabs to divide each recipe into a different category.

Still a lot of recipes, but at least now it's much easier to find!

How do you keep store and organize your recipes? Share below!

See you next Wednesday!