Jelly belly

February 9, 2009February 6, 20157 Comments

In other words, get ready for lots of candy and lots of beans. I can’t believe the day is finally done! Now I get to wake up tomorrow morning and do it all again. Except I’ll be replacing the class portion of the evening with a movie, haha. Not SO incredibly draining :-).

Mid-morning snack happened at 10:30 with my sugar cookie sleigh ride tea and some yogurt:

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This was 1/2 cup plain yogurt with 1/3 banana, 1/2 chopped apple, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and 1 tbsp kashi golean crunch on top:

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I put the Kashi on when I packed the lunch last night because I love how the soggy/chewy texture it gets from sitting in yogurt. Almost like oatmeal, which we all know is a major addiction of mine.

Kind of like candy. I bought myself these sugar-free mints hoping they would slow me down on the candy front because I’d actually rather eat real sugar than fake sugar. But it did not work because I had four of these today:

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Which would not have been so bad had I not also discovered this candy tin in the 2nd floor kitchen at work during the parents’ group:

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I think I ate about four candies from that? Ohhh, right, and two giant lollipops, once of which was another candy chicken:

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I really love these chickens, though. It gets spicer as you go because of all the chili powder inside. I tried to capture the texture in that second picture. Can you tell? It makes me want to try grilling peaches with cayenne pepper or something. And, um, I’m pretty sure I also ate another chewy strawberry fang. So the sugar-free mints were not effective. They were a complete failure.

Someone brought these mini pumpkin muffins in from Whole Foods. I was tempted, but the first ingredient was sugar. In a pumpkin muffin? Come on, WF! And, errr, since we all know how opposed to sugar I am, I did not eat any of these.

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Except that there were crumbs left in the muffin cups when the muffins were gone:

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And since I have this compulsion about not letting anything go to waste and all …

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Yeah, I might as well have just eaten a muffin. I know.

Then it was time for the parents’ group. I had packed a lunch (of course) since you never know, but I’ll just save it for later in the week (there’s a rumor afoot that Vianni’s bringing me more food tomorrow). But anyway, Inginia made the lunch for the parents’ group. I had about 1/3 of this bowl of the crispy rice from the side of the pot. Yes, it was white rice, but do you see how perfectly crispy it is???

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I had two bowls like this for lunch:

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I made a soup salad combo, so one side was for these amazing beans cooked in pork broth:

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The other side was veggie soup (with the best shiitake mushrooms in it!):

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I followed the bowls with another cup of steaming hot beans, mmmmm:

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And (maybe 5 cheez-its and) a graham cracker:

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My 4:30 pm snack was this orange:

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And samples of manchego cheese and hot chocolate at 5:45 while on the way to class:

At about 6:45, I broke into my dinner: 1/2 cup of kale & date curry (still delicious!) and 1/2 piece of the pumpkin kibbi I made last night (both recipes are on the sidebar):

My last bite of the night came in the form of this apple around 7:15:

I left class at 8, got home at 9, blogged till 9:30, and now it is bedtime. I’m tired. Are you tired?

Refuse

February 9, 2009February 6, 201510 Comments

As in trash. Not as in I won’t do it. Today is trash day in my neighborhood. On the way to the gym, I passed a giant rat and a toilet. Awesome.

I did arms on the step and the StairMaster at the gym. Stats: 1 hour, 7 mins; 424 calories, 131 average hr, 177 maximum.

For breakfast, I had my first serving of the pumpkin pie crockpot oats I made yesterday, along with the vanilla creme tea from Vani and soymilk:

I topped the oats with 1/2 cup yogurt, 2 crumbled graham sticks, 1 crumbled Earl Grey Biscotti Bite, cinnamon, and nutmeg:

I’ve got class tonight after work, so it’s going to be another looong day. I’ll be back at the end of it with a full report!

Life on the farm

February 8, 2009February 6, 20158 Comments

In other words, I’ve been grazing all afternoon! Have I done any more work for school??? NO!!!

How does this happen every Sunday? I start cooking one thing, and then it is suddenly five hours later and bedtime.

As usual, I snacked all afternoon long as I cooked. I ate the peel of the sweet potato that I used for making Pumpkin Kibbi from a recipe my coworker gave me.

I also ate some of the clusters of amazingness from the top of my new box of Kashi GoLean Crunch, the best cereal ever. Three in my palm and two in a capful of soy milk:

2 with a capful of soymilk

I made pumpkin pie crockpot oats (nibbling plenty along the way, too) and ate the scrapings from the crockpot bowl:

Plus half a piece of the kibbi (again, in addition to “taste-tests” as I cooked!):

And a dark chocolate Godiva peppermint patty:

And then I was still hungry, so I had my last vitatop (tear). Dark chocolate pomegranate VitaTop with peanut butter and a chopped date:

And now I need to quickly pull everything together for tomorrow and get my behind into bed!

Are you ready for the week?

Breakfast + breakfast

February 8, 2009February 6, 20156 Comments

I finally got down to business this morning with homework. I still have lots more reading to do, but I finished a paper proposal that I need to turn in tomorrow, yay! While I worked, I had soymilky chocolate caramel enchantment chai and 1/3 of the seedy bagel I rescued from work last week toasted with a tbsp peanut butter and 1/3 sliced banana:

With cinnamon sprinkled on top of course:

After I finished the proposal, I went out for some errands and stumbled into several cheese samples and this bite of cherry pie, mmmmm:

I didn’t mean to do a big grocery shop and actually went into the store just for one thing, but I found all sorts of sales! Here’s the haul:

Two boxes golean crunch, unsweetened Silk (free with $8 purchase of the 2 goleans), 2 white grapefruits, pitted dates, morningstar asian veggie patties ($3.50 sale), grapes ($.99/lb!), asparagus ($1.99/lb!), 2 boxes frozen spinach ($.86 each!), yam, green beans, nonfat cottage cheese ($1.99), mints to refill Belkis’ candy jar, sugar-free mints for me (I’m hoping that the chemical sugar-freeness of them will slow me down on the candy consumption!).

Total: $26!!

Once home, I put together a quick lunch (or breakfast part 2) around 2:30. I had done some freezer maintenance earlier this morning and found tons of frozen fresh herbs that we’ve had in there for at least 16 months. So I made an herby scrambled egg with dill, basil, rosemary, and sage; the grape tomatoes I rescued from Hunter last week; and some freshly grated homemade cheddar and ground black pepper:

I also made butternut squash fries with the remaining 1/4 squash from last night. I tossed the pieces of squash with olive oil, chili powder, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, coarse sea salt, and fresh ground black pepper and roasted them for 15 minutes at 425:

I enjoyed my meal with more tea and more “studying”:

Back to work!

Question: Are your Sundays for productivity or for relaxation??

Sweet dreams

February 8, 2009February 6, 201512 Comments

I decided it was time for dinner about an hour after I had lunch. I’d been formulating a plan to make a variation of the Date, Feta, and Toasted Nut Stuffed Butternut Squash that my mom submitted for last week’s BSI. Of course I didn’t have her exact ingredients, so I improvised as usual.

I used 3/4 of the baby butternut squash that I bought at Fairway last weekend (the other 1/4 is for butternut squash fries tomorrow!). For the stuffing, I mixed the remaining half cup of ravioli filling with some of the squash and with the spices recommended by mom. I topped it all with five chopped toasted almonds, two chopped dates (the end of my supply), and some of the squash’s seeds (I seasoned and toasted them in the oven while the squash was roasting). Ahhhh, it was soooo good. Not a surprise since my mama’s a genius in the kitchen :-).

If you didn’t notice already, I had the squash over a bed of 1/4 cup Vianni’s vegetable rice and 1/4 cup brown basmati rice:

After dinner, I headed out to meet up with the ladies: Gina, Kate, and Pam. They’d gone to a Thai restaurant for dinner, but my bank account couldn’t handle that so I skipped the meal and joined for them a movie after. We saw He’s Just Not That Into You, and I actually liked it! I laughed, I cried … the whole thing. It’s been ages since I’ve enjoyed a movie, so I’m glad this one came through. When we finished with the movie, we went across the street for dessert at Sweet Melissa, a local patisserie of which I am quite fond. Here we are displaying our treats: