Lifeway Kefir – my dearest love

I have a huge love for Lifeway kefir. It all started in 7th grade when I moved to the States. We drank kefir back in Poland quite often but I don’t remember the brand. Then we came here and started buying the Lifeway brand… these flavors are simply out of this world. They have such a huge variety of flavors, it’s ridiculous – it’s impossible not to find something you like, no matter how picky you might be. Kefir is slightly tart in flavor which is a perfect kick of freshness and complexity to this already delicious high-protein and high-probiotic drinkable “yogurt.” I talked about the benefits of kefir in one of my earliest posts and you’re welcome to check it out if you aren’t convinced of the amazeballs quality of this product yet. They should be paying me for how much I advocate and promote their product haha. Just kidding. Kinda. 😛

Anyway, when I moved to downtown Chicago for college, I came upon Starfruit Cafe. It’s a froyo shop except.. they use Lifeway kefir instead of yogurt. You can only imagine my excitement. I’ve been a frequent customer here ever since. Thank God for Groupon having deals on their giftcards sometimes or else I would be broke like a joke by now! haha

Tuna Kefir Salad (high protein)

Lately, Tuna Kefir Salad has been frequenting my dinner option. I’ve posted about it before in my WIAW and Instagram multiple times but I thought I’d share exactly what it is I put into it. This is a super quick, easy, and filling salad with a big pow of protein!

I’ve been eating a lot more veggies lately and I love it. I’ve been going through two bags of spring mix and spinach in only a couple of days! I feel that when I eat more veggies throughout the day, I feel better and lighter and end up eating less calories than I would otherwise. It’s a win-win!

Strawberry Kiwi Quinoa Muffins

The other day, I went ahead and visited a nearby Farmer’s Market. I’ve been dying to check it out from all that you guys talk about how awesome they are – and how much cheaper all of the produce is! Unfortunately, as I talked about yesterday, the prices were not very competitive, they were actually quite a bit higher than I expected them to be. Not horrible of course, but higher than I thought. Plus there wasn’t as much stuff there as I expected to find either.

I did however find some amazingly flavorful organic strawberries. I paid $6 for a pint and I was in heaven – the flavor of these babies was just as good as the strawberries I remember from Poland. So much flavor in every bite, this sweetness, the delicate tartness… oh man, I just love berries. So much!

I had some kiwi left over from my recent grocery trip and I’ve been getting tired of eating them by themselves. So after mixing and matching with ideas and what I’ve seen all around I put all of the stuff I had together, including the unopened box of Quinoa flakes.

Strawberries, kiwi, and quinoa flakes. I bought the quinoa flakes 2 months ago because I found a cool recipe for it. But you know, what else is new, I lost the recipe. So the box has been sitting there unopened ever since. Until now, that is 🙂 When these muffins were baking the whole apartment was filled with the aroma of strawberries and kefir. Such a nice fragnant scent.

I enjoyed a muffin with a glass of strawberry banana protein shake post workout 🙂

Oh no, a strawberry is drowning!

What I Ate Wednesdays #11

Hello readers! This is the first time WIAW post doesn’t have an additional post name. Nothing too exciting happened today (Monday) so I really can’t name this anything. Well, it was very healthy. Which makes me happy. Ever since I got my Fitbit Ultra, I’ve been really motivated to stay healthy and active which is great! 🙂 I’m also really sore today. But yeah, enough chit-chat, let’s get to the GRUB!

Chocolate PB Protein Pudding

I randomly made this. I didn’t realy know what to expect out of it but oh man, I have been addicted to this creation ever since. It works especially well with the chocolate zucchini protein mini muffins I made a while back (yeah, I’m only now finishing them – the beauty of baking and cooking for one person).

I don’t usually like eating muffins or anything alone. I felt like these muffins definitely needed something on the side. I ate it with plain yogurt a few times but I ran out of yogurt and purchased organic kefir recently so I thought I would use that.

The consistency of kefir by itself is pretty liquidy and it was too liquidy for me to use as a dip for the muffins. So I thought I should thicken it up. Plus, since I always get the plain flavored ones, flavoring it up wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Out came this addicting delicious pudding. Packed with protein. So good!

What is Kefir? Why is it a wonderful health food?

Today I made a trip to Starfruit Cafe, a local frozen kefir chain in Chicago. It’s my favorite frozen treat place, I am pretty much a regular and they know me by name there haha, that’s how often I go there. The only reason is because I love love love kefir. Frozen kefir especially. It tastes like frozen yogurt but is so much healthier. I consider frozen kefir a meal, because of how nutritious it is and high in protein, while I consider frozen yogurt a dessert because it is usually higher in sugar and much lower in protein. I like kefir so much I even did an advertising project on Starfruit Cafe last semester which allowed me to learn quite a bit about kefir’s benefits. And there are many!

Staw-banana frozen kefir with blueberries and raspberries. Mmm

So what are those wonderful properties of kefir, you might ask? Well, let’s do a quick overview!