Month: April 2009

Throw it away

18 Comments

Eek!! Just kidding. You know I’d never ever recommend that you throw anything away. Except for maybe this post. I’m just going to slap down everything I ate today so that I can hurry and get to the main event: my eggcelent dinner! (That was a hint.)

Morning snack was a cup of pumpkin pie flax pudding:

img_8417

I heated it today — still yummy, but I think I like it better cold. It really tastes/feels just like pumpkin pie filling. I guess that makes sense since flax is a known substitute for eggs, and the only thing I’d do differently to make pumpkin pie would be to add eggs and bake …

Lunch was a cup of mushroom agnoblahblah with tempeh and pumpkin-sofrito sauce:

img_8421

Green salad from Inginia:

img_8429

Fruit salad (mango, blood orange, orange, strawberries, blackberries) from me:

img_8423

And a sponge bob santa claus lemon chewy attached to a lemon candy cane:

img_8427

And a mini blue raspberry candy cane:

img_8433

And two gooey strawberry-filled candies:

img_8448

Eeek, what happened today?! Back on the candy wagon! (Not to mention four Newman’s ginger mints.)

I got hungry in the afternoon again and had two kitchen sink mini-muffins heated with just under 1 tbsp homemade sunflower seed butter: img_8435

And two small handfuls of Jessica’s pita chips:

img_8442img_8443

And a spoonful of office pb just before I left:

img_8446

And then I was off to Free Cone Day. Just kidding! I got to the B&J at Rockefeller, but the line was way too long for me to make it through in the 10 minutes I had before my eggstatic dinner event, so I had to skip the ice cream. Tear.

Did you get a free cone today? If yes, what flavor? If no, what flavor would you have liked to get?

Endless groats and clothing mishaps

14 Comments

Breakfast this morning was more prune groatmeal (could that name get any more appetizing?!) with flax oat bran:

img_8396

I added a sprinkle of fruit today to pretty things up.

img_8400

Plus the usual sunflower seed butter and unsweeetened coconut:

img_8406

img_8415And soymilky almond sunet/black tea combo and water on the side.

I love this flax oat bran combination. It thickens up so much over night that it’s almost hard to eat; I have to go slow so my mouth doesn’t get tired! And anything that makes me slow down when eating delicious food is my friend 🙂

img_8414

My pre-breakfast gym trip involved 20 minutes of bicycle, some arms and back on the cybex, 15 minutes on the precor elliptical, stretching/abs, and the jogs there and back. Stats: 1 hour and 17 minutes, 459 calories, 126 average heart rate, 162 max.

Also, for the past two mornings in a row, I have had wardrobe malfunctions that have required me to get out a needle and thread and sew things together that are already on my body while I’m racing arond to get ready. I am not impressed by this, and I hereby demand that my clothes start behaving, especially during the early morning hours. What was your most recent apparel crisis?

OMG, I almost forgot. Today is FREE CONE DAY!!!!! Going to look up closest Ben & Jerry’s now …

If I didn’t have to sleep

39 Comments

Last week, I bought this little bunch of “apple bananas” at a fruit shop near my office in East Harlem.

img_7955

They were the color that I normally love bananas, but apparently partly green is a no-go in the world of apple bananas. I took one bite and thought my tongue had fallen out because I could no longer feel it. Guess they weren’t ripe yet! I let them sit for the weekend and then decided to revisit one for my snack this morning. For size orientation:

picture-002

And I could actually taste the apple flavor in there!

picture-001

Inginia and I had our group this afternoon, and while Inginia put together a fun lunch spread (as usual), I worked some kitchen magic to make blue playdough for the kids:

picture-004

picture-006

For lunch, I had 1.5 thin slices of French-ish bread with Inginia’s mustardy tuna salad:

picture-012

picture-010picture-011

And 1/2 of a mini english muffin with peanut butter:

picture-008

A juntos (minus the extra 1/2 slice of bread and tuna):

picture-007

Some parents brought in an Entenmann’s walnut danish ring (whyyyyyyyy?), so I had two small slices (with another little dabble of pb on the side):

picture-014picture-017

The same parent also brought in a carton of Dole strawberry banana orange juice.  I usually only drink water because I’m a much bigger fan of eating than drinking, but I had to have a sip because I used to love these juices when I was little. My sip did not disappoint!

picture-018

After the group, I relieved my tuna breath with a Newman’s ginger mint, the best breath mint ever.

picture-019

I think I had four of these over the course of the day/evening.

Later in the afternoon, it was orange time! Note the neat edges on those orange peels thanks to my fancy schmancy orange peeler from Myrna:

picture-021

I also had a small handful of these pita chips from Jessica. So salty and garlicky, mmmmmmmmm:

picture-023

I had my first course of dinner right before I left work around 5:20: a cup of the pumpkin-sofrito Buitoni’s mushroom agnosomething and 3-grain tempeh that I made last night.

img_8382

My second course took place in class with variation #2 of flax pudding because Heather was looking for a tofu-free method (and because I was out of tofu AND yogurt):

img_8388

For that pumpkin pie flax pudding, I brought 1.5 cups unsweetened soy milk to a boil with 6 tbsp ground flax, cinnamon/nutmeg/cloves/ginger, and 2 chopped dates. After a couple of minutes there, I immersion blended in 1.5 cups of canned pumpkin and poured the mix into a container to chill in the fridge overnight. For my purposes, one serving equals one cup — so this recipe makes 3-4 servings.

img_8393

It would probably also work without the pumpkin because the flax seems to have incredible gelling properties. It just might come out a little bit looser.

Next up was my snack/dessert baggie with manchego cheese samples from the gourmet deli, two of mom’s kitchen sink muffins with sunflower seed butter for spreading, and sample pieces of Tate’s Bakeshop chocolate chip cookies from the deli:

img_8390

When I got home tonight, I snacked a bit while I got tomorrw’s food ready … as in I shoveled big piles of fruit salad and groatmeal into my mouth too fast to photograph them. What’s a girl to do when it won’t all fit in the container??

I was also super-excited to find that my first issue of Eating Well had arrived! I won the subscription from Brandi a little while ago, and I can’t wait to start reading it 😀 Sadly, I can’t start yet because I have to go to bed ASAP.

What would you be doing right now if you didn’t have to sleep?

Oh, one more thing (about me again, because obviously the world revolves around me) … I got hired!! Thanks to the tireless efforts of Heather, my supervisor, my amazing unpaid internship has miraculously found space in the budget to hire me full-time after the internship ends on May 8. I’ll officially start on June 1. I’ll be able to keep doing what I currently do (and what I love to do!) about 1/3 of the time; the other 2/3 will be a different more paperwork-based job but still good experience. So, not only will I continue to get my social work experience; I will also learn a new system and have a small amount of financial stability to get me through the last year of grad school. Phew!

Right on schedule

17 Comments

Well, everything’s back to normal with a full internship day on the horizon followed by class tonight. I spend 13 hours straight away from home on Mondays, and at least 3 of those hours take place on the subway! Sigh. Maybe I’ll have a car someday.

Breakfast this morning was more creamy oat bran with prune groatmeal topping, mmmm.

img_8356

Since I’m out of tofu, I made the oat bran a little bit differently last night. As usual, I cooked 1/4 cup oat bran with 1/2 cup unsweetened soymilk on the stovetop, but I also added in 2 tbsp ground flax and an extra 1/4 cup water and let it boil for a minute. Once again, it thickened up successfully in the fridge overnight and reheated perfectly in the oven this morning.

img_8343

I topped the groatmeal with a spoonful of homemade sunflower seed butter and a sprinkling of unsweetened coconut:

img_8352

With a soymilked almond sunset/black tea combo on the side and a tall glass of water:

img_8354

I also went to this gym this morning and managed to enjoy it tremendously! My body has clearly missed it the past several days. I jogged there and back — the jogging still hurts, but I tried some of the simultaneous knee/butt kicks that Amy recommended to me last week, and they actually minimized the pain a bit and made me focus on lifting my legs up instead of just throwing them out in front of me … although I probably looked less than sane while doing them. Here are stats from the crazy jog, 20 minutes on the Stepmill at Level 11, two sets each of hip adductor, abductor, and glute machines, and 15 minutes on the elliptical cross-country program: 1 hour and 15 minutes, 588 calories (still WAY higher than normal), 145 average heart rate, 183 max (also higher than normal).

Some extra things to note:

First, biscotti bites are everywhere! Kelsey, winner of the jasmine tea biscotti bites in Meghann‘s bake sale, has received them and reviewed them here!

Next, To Be the Whole Package is hosting this week’s BSI contest. Go check it out and start thinking about your recipe!

Next next, enter the HangryPants Stonyfield giveaway by midnight tonight!

Finally, I’ve been tagged by Mara at What’s for Dinner? to complete this “Survey of 8s,” so here goes …

8 Things I’m Looking Forward To:

  1. income (start date of this is questionable …)
  2. the end of this semester
  3. the weekend!
  4. lunch
  5. Erin Gunn‘s wedding in October!
  6. consistently warm weather
  7. a life of traveling the world saving babies
  8. my next chance to sleep

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

  1. traverse the east coast (or at least the stretch between NC and NY)
  2. eat pancakes
  3. rock in a rocking chair
  4. take 3 trains (thank you, track construction) to get home from the airport
  5. cook
  6. nap on a plane
  7. unpack
  8. blog

8 Things I Wish I Could Do:

  1. live alone
  2. use a car for errands once in a while
  3. run without pain
  4. travel the world saving babies (any ideas?) and eating fun food
  5. move south right now
  6. relax
  7. lie on a beach
  8. live closer to my family

(Note: I just realized that several of these wishes conflict! Hmmm, I am going to have to figure this out.)

8 Shows I Watch:

Is it completely terrible that I stopped watching TV when I started grad school in June 2007? There’s just no time! Sometimes I have the Food Network on for background noise.

8 People I Tag:

Many of you have probably been tagged already, so I’m just going to open the survey up to everyone reading this post! Let me know one thing you did yesterday, one thing you are looking forward to, and one thing you wish you could do (or more, if you feel like it!) 😀


I’m back …

14 Comments

But not forever! My trip to Charlotte was perfect — as has been every trip to the “south” I have ever taken — and I am pretty confident that I’ll be heading in that direction again once I am done with grad school next year.

Wife and I woke up this morning to the sound of coffee beans grinding and pancake batter stirring! Kristin and Dustin were hard at work in the kitchen above us 🙂

img_8297

I topped my two blueberry pancakes with ICBINB and lite syrup:

img_8289

And while we’re on the topic of Kristin and Dustin’s aboveness and beyondness as hosts throughout this entire trip, there’s more! Wife’s car wouldn’t start yesterday when we were on the way to the wedding, so Dustin drove us the 30 minutes to the wedding and dropped us off so we wouldn’t be late. Later, he and Kristin drove back out with both of their cars so that they could leave one for us to use for the rest of the night!

While waiting for AAA to arrive this morning, we all relaxed in the kitchen with our tea (and coffee for the others), our pancakes, and the pretty birds right outside the balcony:

img_8299

Because Wife had to wait for the towtruck (and her car was out of commission, obviously), Kristin had to drive me to the airport. Add another star to the list of aboveness and beyondness!

I am so aware that I keep gushing about everyone on this trip … but between Kath‘s tour guiding and company on Friday, Wife’s willingness to drive up from GA and incur the wrath of the evil automobile spirits to go to the wedding with me, and Kristin and Dustin’s generous and fun hosting, I have never experienced such a hefty dose of hospitality in my life!

Once I got through security at the Charlotte airport, I finally got to enjoy some of the luxurious rocking and free wireless that I kept hearing about:

img_8300

As I rocked and blogged, I oranged with the orange that I had initially packed for Friday’s flight:

img_8302

And granola bar’d with this peanut butter granola bar that Kath and I scooped up from a free samples basket at Earth Fare on Friday:

img_8308

And chocolated with this Ferrero Rocher that Wife brought for me from GA, courtesy of Ted:

img_8309img_8310

An impressively well-rounded airport lunch if I do say so myself!

On the plane, I had a 1 oz. package of JetBlue cashews while I worked my way through Gastropolis:

img_8312

I’m a fan of the JetBlue unlimited airplane snacks deal (obviously). From the two flights, I collected four more bags of cashews and one mini-bag of chocolate chunk cookies:

img_8317

The other goodies that came back with me include a jar of PB2 from Kath and a belated Christmas present from Wife of a cupcake potholder (in the back), key lime jam (!!!) from her trip to Madison, and homemade black raspberry jam from Ted’s aunt. Thanks for the treats, ladies (and JetBlue)!

Due to the usual weekend subway delays, detours, and cancellations, I didn’t get home until about 6 and had to rush to unpack my suitcase, pack lunch/dinner for tomorrow, and make dinner for tonight. With no time to hit the grocery store, I had to rely on the freezer, a can, and a couple of promotional items I have received recently:

img_8320img_8323

While I sauteed the three grain tempeh in a pan with olive oil and minced garlic, I dumped the mushroom “agnolotti” that Foodbuzz sent into a saucepan with boiling water and half a box of frozen peas I found. I mixed everything together at the end (minus the pasta water) and then made a crazy sauce from 1/2 cup canned pumpkin, 2 tbsp sofrito, and a splash of unsweetened soymilk (for thinning). I saved most of it for the week’s lunches, but I had to sample a little scoop topped with homemade parm for dinner:

img_8329

The tempeh gave good texture and chew, and the wild mushroom flavor held its own. Plus, there’s pretty much no way to go wrong with pumpkin or sofrito separately, so why not put them together?

My main dinner event consisted of about 1 cup of fruit salad (mango, blood orange, strawberries, and blackberries), an overturned container of honey Oikos so that the honey took on an “icing” role (loved how this flavor was still plain yogurt with the honey on the bottom of the container), and a tbsp of ground flax with cinnamon:

img_8338

Now I have to race to get ready for bed. This is going to be a week for getting back on track — and it starts with getting eight full hours of sleep tonight!

What’s your goal for this week?