It was tough getting out of bed this morning, I was not thrilled to hear my alarm. Getting back into the grind after a 3-day weekend can be tough and today was especially tough because I think I’m still in summer play mode, I’d rather be outside being active than sitting in an overly air-conditioned office. Today was an especially beautiful day, sunny and not too hot, and it kept me thinking about being back at the lake, hiking in Tahoe or running a scenic trail. Sigh.

I did have a wonderfully sweet and filling breakfast smoothie.

Trader Joe’s Very Cherry Berry Blend is awesome in smoothies adding a rich sweetness that goes perfectly with SunWarrior Vanilla Protein powder. This smoothie also has spinach, red cabbage, chia seeds and a carrot.

I spent lunch helping my mom babysit my hyper nieces again today and somehow found time to create this plate.

Spinach salad topped with hemp seeds and Annie’s organic dressing with orange-lentil leftovers.

Yesterday I found an opportunity to try something new – sprouting my own quinoa following the instructions in Ani’s Raw Food Essentials.

I soaked the quinoa for 4 hours, drained it in a nut milk bag and set aside to sprout for another 5 hours. Ani recommends consuming as soon as possible after sprouting, but noted that it’ll keep in the fridge for 1 day – an option I had to exercise with my work schedule and have it for dinner tonight. One of Ani’s serving suggestions is to roll in a nori wrap with favorite sauces and veggies. So I created her almond-based “peanut” sauce in the Vita-Mix and decided to try my luck at rolling nori wraps again.

I layered the sprouted quinoa, sauce, carrot strips and red cabbage into the wraps and chickened out of cutting them into neat little sushi rolls opting for nori burritos instead. The tangy sauce livened up the quinoa nicely and hubby suggested adding a wasabi sauce to it for more kick. This would also be great with Gena’s Curried Cashew Spread.