Well well well…we are back. Someone recently said based on my blog it looks like I eat rather healthy all the time. While yes, that seems pretty accurate, I also love to eat SO MUCH MORE. I actually have the worst sweet tooth…Haris can attest to it. I am constantly on the hunt for desserts, pastries, ice cream, candy, etc. So this week I figured I would show you some of the sweets I baked this week, as well as two dishes I made from some of the leftover items I had in the fridge.

One week I made WAY too much pasta for myself so I froze a bunch of it and decided that this week I would use it! I threw it in a skillet with some spinach, carrots, garlic, and chicken I shredded the week before. It was pretty tasty and a great way to repurpose some of the little leftovers I had from the previous week. And thats key to meal prepping or to cooking in general…try not to waste food. Americans waste over 40% of the food we buy. That’s a lot of food that just goes into a landfill. If you don’t want to eat the same thing over and over, try to repurpose it! If you make too much one week, freeze it and eat it another week. I’m not perfect at this, but I really try to be good and not let a lot go to waste, and you can too, if you just try.

Now this meal wasn’t entirely repurposed from leftovers but part of it was. Some days you are just really craving something and you have to go get it. In this instance I was craving a salad from Trader Joe’s so I went and got the salad…yes I know, a salad. But of course I then bought so much more because I don’t go to Trader Joe’s often enough. One of my purchases include a bag of frozen gnocchi. It comes with it’s own sauce and cheese and you can make it in one pan which is even better. Here I added some parmesan and some frozen spinach I needed to polish off and it made two servings, one for dinner and one for lunch the next day. But now for the good stuff.

Back in March I went to NYC with a few friends for a Bankruptcy Law competition and though we didn’t win, we did eat awesome cookies including some Lucky Charm Cookies… but now we aren’t there and my friend Katie really wants these cookies. Having not eaten them before myself, I really wanted to try and make them for her, but there are not any recipes for these exact cookies so we are doing a series of trial and error tests until we get it down. Above was our first try. I made a marshmallow frosting (which was a little too runny…oh well) and put it on a sugar cookie and topped it with actual lucky charms. Not the best, but super cool to look at. I think in our next trial and error we will make a cereal milk frosting and try to put the lucky charms into a chocolate chip cookie dough batter minus the chocolate chips, as well as on top. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!

Now one of my favorite treats is a Rice Krispie Treat! For some reason I always forget how easy these are to make, especially since it is so much easier to just buy them at Starbucks or pre-made at the grocery store. As you probably already know, you really only need three ingredients to make these: butter, marshmallows and rice krispies. These were a great go to study snack and taste SO much better than buying the pre-made ones… next time though I’m going to fancy these up and bit and see how much better we can make them. The sky’s the limit!

• 

• 

The last treat on my list is Lemon Bars. Now usually I just buy the box that has all the ingredients and follow the instructions. This time the store was out of the box mix so I had to improvise. Little did I know the only ingredient I didn’t have for these bars was the actual lemons. I will honestly never buy the box mix again. With butter, flour, sugar, eggs, and lemon juice freshly squeezed from two lemons, I had lemon bars that tasted WAY better than the box mix! Never again box mix, never again! This next week I think I’m going to try to make a different flavor of these bars… stay tuned.

In conclusion (lol some bar prep lingo for you all) as you can see sometimes your girl just needs to take a baking break from healthy eating and studying. And boy is it worth it! The moral of the story is to have balance in life. Sure eating healthy is super important to nourish your body, but sometimes your soul also needs nourishing and that type of nourishment comes from treating yo’self. For me that means eating baked goods which can sort of be scary if you are trying to lose weight or feel good about your body but I just have to remind myself… You can always eat healthy again tomorrow.