Random things I'm really liking

So yay! Finally came back from Norcal but am super exhausted. We drove since it was a holiday and figured it'd be some good bonding time. But let me tell you, driving for 17 hours in 2 days is no fun! I'm fairly tired still but I still wanted to share some of the random things I've been liking lately before I put up a "real post". I like random blog posts anyway :)

Trader Joe's Chinese Chicken Salad $3.99

GAH, This is so effing good. However I stopped buying them for awhile because if I wanted to eat something that was 650 calories, I wouldn't be eating a salad. I tried the low fat one and its just not as good since the dressing is so artificial tasting, so for awhile I started just halving the dressing since that alone is 300(!) calories. I'm not in to calorie counting but come on...so I thought of a better solution.

Look! 300 calories. JUST FOR DRESSING. So I thought...this is a sesame oil dressing. A lot of oils have 100 cals or so per tbsp. (which is why I avoid cooking with oil as much as I can) so I figured...why not just scrape off the oil? So I carefully scrape off the majority of the oil and boom. Much lower calorically and even without the majority of the oil there's more than enough dressing for the rest of the salad!

 So. Much. Oil.

You can also omit the wonton chips (but I eat them separately because I love fried wonton skin!) and you bring it all down to 350ish anyway :) Without sacrificing any of the taste! Its so amazingly good. The dressing is just so perfectly tart and I love that the salad has whole snow peas, bean sprouts and cabbage to give it a nice crunch.  It really is one of my favorite asian style salads. I take out the water chestnut though since im not a big fan, unless its chopped up in my lettuce wraps! If you don't know what water chestnut is its the little white hard disk you'll find inside. Its kind of like a sweeter crunchier daikon? :x

Spiritual Gangster Magic Carpet hot yoga towels

Here's another admittedly sort of random thing I've been liking- Spiritual Gangster's Magic Carpet yoga towels. As a lot of you already know I've been very in to hot yoga lately, and I don't like sweating all over my mat so I always use a towel for class. These don't have any plastic nubs on it- instead the microfiber is SUPER dense and short, which is what helps it stay in place. Its very heavy weight and sits down nicely on the mat. The only complaint I have is that these are a bit too big for a standard yoga mat, maybe 1 inch or so longer across each border.

It doesn't really bother me now but if I did yoga in a carpeted (aka smelly yellowed sweaty old carpet) studio then I wouldn't want any part of the towel touching the floor. I refuse to pay 40-45 bucks just for a towel so I actually found these at Marshalls! Another place i've started really liking lately. They have SO many knick knacks, most of the time you won't find anything but when you do it's a steal. They were only $16 compared to the MSRP of $55-58. 

So that is all :) Norcal foodie post soon! Hope you guys had a wonderful new year and I'll be announcing the giveaway winner to this video very shortly!

love,
Jackie