Hi and happiest of Fridays. It appears that most of the nation is under an arctic freeze today. It was 20 degrees when I left the house to train clients this morning so I moved my run to the treadmill! On the plus side, the cold and gray weather has made for an ultra productive day. I’m about five hours into a long stint at my desk with a space heater blasting away beside me. (My usual work set up…always cold.) I’m looking forward to getting up and teaching yoga in a bit.

Before I get to my eats for the week, my grandmother requested a picture of our tree! Don’t mind that it’s leaning a bit (we’ll say it gives it character) or that the tree skirt is a mess. Does anyone else find it impossible to keep the tree skirt straight with pets? I guess it would help if I had some presents to put under there to hold it down. (So starting on that TONIGHT!)

I also wanted to share this picture of our sideboard. When we packed up my grandmother’s house last year, I took some of her Christmas decorations. Every time I see the NOEL music box and the musical Santa, it makes me smile! It’s so much fun to keep building to my Christmas decoration collection. I love all the memories they bring with them or create.

Onto the eats! Let’s go in reverse order.

Dinner

We received three meals from Purple Carrot this week. It’s a vegan meal delivery service and I’m working with them on an upcoming campaign. I added a protein to two of our meals this week not because the meals were lacking but simply because I wanted the lean protein coming off of the travel I did last week. We loved this Sweet Potato and Chickpea Salad with Spiced Date Vinaigrette. The vinaigrette was mix of date syrup, garam masala powder, dijon, lemon juice and olive oil and SO good. The only change I made to the original recipe was to roast the chickpeas along with the sweet potatoes and to add a little spice to those. I also omitted the onion because I don’t like raw onion and added pan-seared wild Alaskan salmon. Healthy and super filling.

Slow cooker beanless sweet potato chili made with ground lamb.

Let’s hear it for the Jiffy Cornbread! 🙂

Our second Purple Carrot meal was kale pesto cavatelli with crispy brussels and sundried tomatoes. I loved the colors in this dish and the kale pesto was so good. You can find a picture of the finished dish on Instagram.

And our third Purple Carrot meal was tofu bahn mi sandwiches with kimchi mayonnaise and HOLY COW! These were incredible. Add this recipe to your must make list soon.

Leftover chili and cornbread.

Lunch

Our homemade beet burger over a salad with almonds, dried cranberries and avocado at Namastay Kitchen. I ate this two days in a row.

Salad with arugula, spinach, leftover roasted chickpeas and sweet potatoes, radishes, dried cranberries, pecans and avocado.

The leftover banh mi sandwich. (Tanner didn’t eat with me the night I made these…I was so happy because it meant I got to eat two of these bad boys!) I snuck some avocado on this one, not because it needed it but I just can’t help myself with avocado.

I rounded out the week with a leftover kale pesto pasta tossed with arugula and topped with radishes, avocado and hummus.

Breakfast

A delicious holiday-themed smoothie with frozen banana, frozen sweet potatoes, frozen fresh cranberries, spinach, Silk Almond Nog, almond butter and Premier Protein Vanilla Milkshake Whey.

Two scrambled eggs, grapes and a paleo pumpkin banana muffin with cashew butter.

The best breakfast of 2016!

Smoothie bowl with frozen banana, spinach, fresh frozen cranberries, frozen figs, frozen cherries, frozen blueberries, almond butter, Silk Almond Nog and Premier Protein Vanilla Whey.

ETC

ALLLLL the matcha chai spice sugar cookies. Tis the season!