Yesterday, I discovered picnik. Yesterday, I spent an hour playing with pretty fonts in picnik. Yesterday, I realized picnik is being shut down in 3 weeks.
That was pretty much like giving a kid a brand new toy and then ripping it from his hands saying you changed your mind, he can’t have it. I kind of wish I could throw a tantrum like that (imaginary) kid probably would.
Not cool Flickr.
Anyway, enjoy the short lived pretty fonts. Hopefully they’ll distract you from the fact that I completely forgot to take a picture of lunch. It was fabulous. A salmon burger, spinach, arugula, (<—see! lots of green finally) tomatoes, red cabbage, hummus and sriracha wrapped up in a whole wheat tortilla the size of my head. Apples and pb on the side.
Backing up to breakfast…look familiar? It’s been done before. I really wanted hot oatmeal actually but considering I overslept by about 30 minutes thanks to the 5th smoke detector battery in our house that has decided to crap out on us at 3am in the morning, I needed something quick that didn’t require standing over the stove for 10 minutes. Can I just take a sentence to say how much I love Van’s waffles? They’re relatively cheap and they stay crisp unlike some other ones I recently bought on sale (looking at YOU Kashi), a very important factor to be considered when constructing the waffle stack breakfast.
Here’s a lunch visual:
+ 
Yummy.
Now, these were yummy. That was sarcasm up above, this is not in case you didn’t catch that (I frequently find myself in situations with the whole sarcasm thing not coming across in written form). When in doubt people, I’m being sarcastic. It’s pretty much my truest personality characteristic.
Katie posted these lemon poppy seed no bake cookies yesterday morning and they immediately caught my attention.
1. No bake
2. I had most things on had
3. It’s impossible for me to go a week without a ball snack of some sort
4. As much as I love chocolate, I have just as big a weak spot for lemon poppy seed muffins. I really don’t discriminate when it comes to sweets. It’s one of my better qualities.
These are awesome. I ended up subbing chia seeds for poppy seeds because I didn’t have any and since I don’t have unflavored protein powder I used 2 tablespoons coconut flour and 2 tablespoons vanilla protein powder instead. I also added a few tablespoons of coconut milk to get the dough to the consistency it needed to be to roll into balls.
They still have that amazing lemon poppy seed muffin flavor and they’re full of protein.
(posting the recipe here since Katie’s site is no longer live)
No Bake Coconut Lemon Chia Balls
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup almond flour
- 2 tablespoons vanilla whey protein powder
- 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons coconut flour
- 1/4 cup melted coconut oil
- Juice from 1/4 lemon
- 1 tablespoon Lemon zest
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 6 drops liquid stevia
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1 tablespoon chia seeds
- 2-3 tablespoons coconut milk
Instructions
- Add dry ingredients (flours, protein powder, chia seeds, salt) into a bowl and mix to combine.
- Melt coconut oil and coconut milk in a microwave or oven and add in lemon juice, zest, and vanilla.
- Pour coconut oil mixture into the dry ingredients and stir very well until a dough is made.
- Roll into balls or flatten into cookies and place on a cookie sheet or plate and put into the freezer for 10 minutes or so.
- Keep cold and enjoy!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Look! Natural light in a dinner picture! It actually takes me longer to edit pictures on my iphone, email them to myself, upload to Flickr and then download into the blog than it does to take a regular picture with my camera so I’m kind of overly happy about this 7pm sunset time.
I was alone for dinner last night, so I experimented. The picture says it all, literally…ha. A roasted, stuffed portobello with a side of hard apple cider. Not a bad dinner and some green to end the month of green for what I ate Wednesday.
Gina Matsoukas is an AP syndicated writer. She is the founder, photographer and recipe developer of Running to the Kitchen — a food website focused on providing healthy, wholesome recipes using fresh and seasonal ingredients. Her work has been featured in numerous media outlets both digital and print, including MSN, Huffington post, Buzzfeed, Women’s Health and Food Network.
That salad looks so juicy — if juicy were a way to describe a salad accurately.
Love chia seeds! These sound like a perfect treat!
This post is making me drool.
Happened to me with picnik too. We had a short fling, and now I’m just waiting for the end to come. Its kind of painful…I don’t know if I can talk about it yet.
Those lemon chia balls sound so good! I’ve actually been making a lot of your balls (sounds so dirty!) recently, Im sure my roommate thinks I’m a bit silly with the fridge packed with the little suckers! I also found and fell in love with Picnik- but like Ashleigh mentioned above, Picmonkey is very similar and I have been using that!
haha, you can never have enough balls on hand! ;)
We need to get to know eachother on a personal basis. So, I can call you up and say, “Gina, I’m coming over what are you making for ________ (lunch, breakfast, snack, dinner…)?” ;) All of those meals.. very delicious!
If only we weren’t across the country from each other! ;)
I was sad hear Picnik was leaving as well but then I discovered PICMONKEY, it is almost identical though there are less options right now they are adding more! Try it out, see what you think!
Totally did that same picnik discovery two weeks ago. Sad :(
These are so fun and creative, Gina. Love your chia balls recipe. However, I’ll admit it was difficult to concentrate on anything else after that mouthwatering photo of fruit-covered waffles! Holy yum.
The little balls look so good and light and bright and perfect!
What software/app did you use to “write” the picture, the Waffle Stack pic, and then the ingredients list one?
Hey Averie, I know your question is meant for Gina but I do the same thing and just use Photoshop’s text tool. That’s just one option. Hope that helps!
Averie- I used Flickr’s Picnik like I mentioned at the beginning of the post, but unfortunately it’s going away in 3 weeks! :(
Sorry I mis-read and thought you had found something to replace the picnik but no, darn. Because yes, it’s going away. Guess I will need to figure out Photoshop once and for all :)