Being Nancy Drew and TVP (no Oats) Granola

the mini TVP granola mountain, floating atop a lake of peach yogurt, lovely imagery, no?

What a day!

It began well enough. My roommate and I have’t been to the gym together in a while, something we used to do religously and thought we should do a much needed group class. We did this class called “Burn Bliss” which was supposed to be a low impact strength training and core conditioning class. We figured we’d do the class and do a little cardio after. The class was good, but one pedal on the elliptical afterwards and our thighs were screaming, “please! give us a break! you killed us in that class”. Yep they were numb, so we cut our cardio and headed straight to the locker room. If your bored from this post already, this is where it gets juicy.

A quick backstory before the juicyness, I had about twenty bucks missing from my wallet a few weeks ago. I though maybe I was losing my mind. So I went to the gym a few days after and left a single dollar in there, to confirm I wasn’t really losing it. I mean, I nourish myself these, so I am not THAT prone to forgetting things. Indeed I was right, that dollar was stolen, but this high class gym burglar left everything else: credit cards, phone, my actually more expensive purse (which although is Marc Jacobs, I got it at Lohemans cause I dont like paying full price, cue my Jew-ness).

From then on I brought a lock when I ventured to the gym. I never used a lock before because as you may remember, this is a high class gym (remember the Renee Zellweger side boob run in?) and most of the people there make ten time more than I have my whole life so they have no intention to steal.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Back to our tale.

So as I was give my coif a blow job (I’m nasty like that), my roommate comes out of the shower with her towel turban and spots this woman rummaging through her bag.

WTF?

heres how the conversation went:

Roomie: “Um, that is my bag …..”

Burglar: “O, o it is…isn’t it?? O I left my black watch in here…..did you see it?”

Roomie: “Um thats weird, did you tell the front desk??”

Burglar: “Yea, they said I should in the lockers”

(Roomie, grabs her bag out of Ms. Burglar’s hand)

Burglar dashes off

So a switch off in my mind and my roomie and I started talking about maybe this was the person stealing my cash? Another young gym goer overheard our convo and jumped in saying shes a waitress and that all her tip money was stole at the same time last week. Juicy, right?

We told the manager who was perplexed a little about what action to take. He was asking us for a description of her physical appearence and that inner major bitch wanted to yell out “she could loose a few!”. But I am sensitive to weight so zipped my lip as tightly as I could about that.

We spotted her on the gym floor working with a trainer. Well, now we know where the money is going.

Anyhow, we will file a report and hopefully something will come out of it.

Alyson made granola the other day and I thought I’d make my own minus oats, cause me and oats are not friends. I never liked oatmeal much, and in treatment, I made the mistake of ordering oatmeal and a side of all bran (because we needed two grain servings) and since I had an egg as my protein (no milk or yogurt) I needed a wet factor to eat the all bran with. So I dipped the goopy oatmeal in the all bran.

I had a brick in my stomach for about a week. It turned me off oats for a while.

it comes looking like so....

But what I have discovered is the cheapness and versatility of TVP! Texturized Vegetable Protein is basically just soy flour. Its used a lot in meat substitutes like veggie burgers and veggie “ground meat” because its high in protein and looks like meat when rehydrated. But when its unflavored, its pretty bland tasting, hence a perfect avenue to be versatile. So to mimic the uber crunchyness one craves when reaching for granola, dry TVP works great! To infuse some flavor, a mixed about half a cup of TVP with some honey (or u could use liquid stevia or agave), a little water to thin it out vanilla extract, and I used a little coconut oil. I actually made two batches of this, one with the coconut oil and one without (I forgot I even had the coconut oil the first time!) and the one with was worlds better. I mixed it up with cinnamon and baked it at 350 for 10 minutes. Since dried TVP is already dry, it will burn easily so keep an eye on it. You just want the sweet flavors to toast up a bit. There you have it! Alyson had the fantastic idea of adding more bulk to this buy adding some puffed millet which it a great idea, but I didn’t have any today. There is so much creative stuff you can do with this. You can sprinkle some of your favorite raw nuts and seeds, cocoa powder, coconut flakes, carob or chocolate chips, and although TVP is very high in protein, you could boost the flavor and protein content by adding you favorite protein powder!

new manicure guys! I'm so NOT a pink girl, I was hoping it would make me more bubbly, it fail miserably in that dept

I’ll probably use this in some savory dishes later on this week, so stay tuned.

I’ll keep you posted about my “gym” case as well! I’m gonna mess that bitch up (yep, all 5’2 of me is bad ass like that).

O and dont forget, tomorrow is the last day for the giveaway!