Food rich, cash poor

I may not get paid in cash at my internship, but as you’ve all seen time and time again, I definitely get paid in food!

Before my 11:00 visit this morning, the standard morning snack came out to keep me going until lunch. I had a mug of Earl Grey to accompany my 2/3 cup yogurt with 1/2 small chopped apple, a sprinkle of vanilla-almond granola, cinnamon, and cardamom:

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Immediately after the visit, I ran down to join Inginia for our regular Monday parents’ group. Today was a special day because all of the kids in the group are turning two this month! We celebrated by making play-dough together 😀

Here I am with some ghost children and their moms (confidentiality and all …):

The celebration continued with mac & cheese courtesy of Inginia’s culinary skills. She doctored a regular boxed mix with extra cheese, eggs, oregano, and black pepper:

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I had about two cups worth — it was so delicious! (no surprise there)

The best part of our celebration was cake-decorating!! Right before the group, Inginia baked a pineapple cake.

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We let the kids go to town with vanilla and chocolate frosting.

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I scraped the empty frosting jar clean, of course. It was ALMOST as satisfying as scraping a peanut butter jar clean 😉

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Next up were the sprinkles.

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Two! The finished product, plus the fancy custard-filled white cake one of the moms brought in:

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My small plate was bursting with pieces of each, plus more frosting scrapings from the spatulas.

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We packed up the leftover cake for the families to take home, and then I filled this cup with all the rest of the crumbs and frosting still on the plates and savored every bite.

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(You might notice some suspicious chocolate cake crumbs in that cup that don’t seem as though they match up with either of the two birthday cakes (or you might not). Good eye! I randomly found a bag of chocolate cake crumbs in one of the kitchens at work and thought it would pair splendidly with my cup o’ frosting. I was right :D)

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Afternoon snack (as if I needed it) happened when Jessica brought out her baked batata! I loooooove me some batata, so I had about half of it:

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It was around this time that the best announcement of the day came on over the loudspeaker: “Attention staff: We have collard greens available in Advocacy. Please come down if you would like some.” You know I was up and running at that one!

The food bank delivery had come in for our pantry, but the pantry will be closed tomorrow … meaning that all the extra perishable produce had to go! I went down and Pura hooked me up with two bags. On my way out of the office later, I stopped into the Advocacy kitchen one more time to make sure nothing was in danger of rotting while the department is out “advocating” in Albany tomorrow, and my timing was perfect. Lucia loaded me up with another bag of collard greens, a tightly packed bag of fresh spinach, a bag of radishes, and three enormous carrots!

(Also worth mentioning: I survived the day with only four mints from Belkis’ candy jar! Not sure how much of a sugar success that actually is given that I ate my weight in frosting earlier …)

Straggering under my heavy bags of books and produce (not complaining!), I speed-subwayed the 40 blocks from work to class and made it just in the nick of time. The group presenting tonight did a great job with their topic of addiction … including food addiction. We talked about my blog briefly (as a healthy example, of course ;)), so welcome HBII classmates if you’re reading!

I wasn’t all that hungry for dinner (understandably), so I had about 1/2 cup mix of mac & cheese left from the group, mystery fried rice left from Vianni’s lunch, and mixed-grain salad.

I got hungrier near the end of class, so I also ate my cup of roasted veggies:

And this cup of cantaloupe that was also left from the parents’ group:

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And now, it’s really really time for me to go to bed. I hope I fall asleep quickly tonight — yoga was nice this morning, but I missed my gym-time!

Do you have a morning routine that helps set you up for a productive day?

18 thoughts on “Food rich, cash poor”

Haleigh says:

March 16, 2009 at 10:28 pm

Sounds like a fantastic day full of decorating cake!! I am such a perfectionist though it would probably have taken me the entire day to do one, haha. My morning routine always puts my day in perspective. I usually wake up about 30 minutes before I actually need to, do a little yoga, enjoy my coffee and watch a little crappy morning tv! 🙂

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