So I know I said Monday was the fun day around my office, but things just keep getting better and better 😀 I’ll get to some of the meals I’ve been making myself eventually, but I need to give the job credit for Tuesday and Wednesday first!

Tuesday began with six (one was hiding … in my mouth) more pieces of Goofy taffy from Jessica’s trip to Disney:

And an orange left from Monday’s meeting:

Tuesday is one of my crazy long class days, so I always pack lunch and dinner since I usually don’t get home until at least 10pm. But, the horror, I forgot to pack myself a dinner on Tuesday! Sound the alarm!

I needn’t have worried though. After snacking on a few kettle chips (umm, I thought I didn’t like potato chips?) with the ladies during lunch …

… and a few cherries that I found abandoned in the fridge (I don’t know who they belonged to, but they had been there since last week and were starting to wrinkle and NEEDED immediate rescue):

… Rosalie offered me her remaining chorizo taco, and Belkis gave me half of the salad that Mildred had donated to her! I threw in the carrots, CSA broccoli, and yogurt-mango chutney I’d brought as a snack and, voila, insta-dinner!

Taco con queso blanco:

Ensalada:

Of course, dinner is not complete without dessert. Lillian had given me the other half of her banana that morning.

I mashed it:

And added 1/4 of a banana walnut muffin and 1/2 mini cinnamon bun, both from Monday’s meeting:

Deconstructed (or constructed, depending on how you look at things):

And topped with office peanut butter and almonds:

Yessssssss, it was that good.

It turned out to be a good thing that I had not packed a dinner! Along with a peach and half of Emily’s package of m&ms in class — it’s a three-hour-class, and I have to get through it somehow! — my tum was satisfied 😀

Wednesday started out similarly with the last orange from Monday’s meeting:

Just before lunch, I went downstairs to speak with one of the therapists about arranging an evaluation. Nitza saw me sitting there waiting and called over, Sarah, my dear, listen! There’s a Fairway bag with smoked salmon and cream cheese and yogurt in the fridge down here. Please take it upstairs because I’m going on vacation and it’s going to go bad. Yes, ma’am! I brought it all upstairs and announced that it was in the fridge and available for everyone … but that I’d be taking anything left home at the end of the day to ensure proper management (no spoiling allowed!).

After my packed lunch, I had a few Mike & Ike’s from Rosalie:

I thought that was the end of the food story for the day. I don’t know why I thought that. I’ve been working here for ten months (ten months???), and that has never been the end of the food story …

But anyway, I had four moms with disconnected phones and decided to hit the streets around 2pm in search of them. I located everyone (yay!), got some updated contact info, took care of business, and was back in the office by 3:30 … only to find a plethora of baked goods strewn around my desk and the conference room table. I wondered aloud, What happened here? Jessica replied, I think it’s all from Advocacy. I think there’s more down there. Uh oh.

First, I helped myself to a sliver (x2) of apple pie:

As I rounded the corner to fill up my water bottle, Maria called after me, Sarita, did you get some food?? Clearly, there was more work to be done.

I headed down to the food pantry in Advocacy and loaded up. And that is how I came to arrive home with all of this:

(You may notice that the zucchini muffin — top center — is missing its lid. The zucchini muffin lid was a casualty of my stressful commute home. I left work 45 minutes early so that I could make it to my first dentist appointment in two years, which I scheduled as soon as my insurance became active, because I was pretty sure that I had been missing a filling for several months and was very worried it was going to become a root canal situation. Unfortunately, somebody pulled the emergency brake on the train in front of mine, causing my train to stop between stations for a prolonged period before finally being taken out of service … at which point I had to walk across town to get a different train. And then I had to inhale half of a zucchini muffin as soon as I successfully boarded said train. All of this subway drama meant that I was 20 minutes late for my 5:30 appointment at a dental office that closed at 6. I was sure the dentist would refuse to see me, but he did not! So now my teeth are cleaned and polished, my cavity is refilled, and I am out $200. Ummm, why did I wait until I had insurance to go to the dentist? I thought insurance was supposed to make you pay less?!)

Anyway, topless zucchini muffin aside, my loot included 3 Fage 2%, a giant “cowboy cookie” (it seems peanut buttery), 6 slices of frosted angel food cake, a zucchini muffin, a berry muffin, a maple buttercream-frosted yellow cupcake and a vanilla buttercream-frosted chocolate cupcake, Jessica’s leftover salad from lunch, snap peas, two mangoes, 5 bananas, a turkey wrap/barley salad/bean salad lunch combo, a mini meatloaf, and $17 worth of smoked salmon! Oh, and did I mention frosting?

And you’ll just have to tune in later to see how all of this went to use 😛

Do you ever arrive home at the end of the day (or at the end of a trip) with more than you brought in the beginning?

Mondays are hard, but they are made considerably more palatable by the usual beginning-of-the-week food explosion at work.

I love that conference room table 😀

That is the sight that greeted me when I walked into my 9:30 meeting on Monday morning. Rosalie and Nydia wanted our meeting to have a celebratory aspect, and I was happy to oblige by eating the decorations. I’d already had breakfast, but I figured I might as well have an early lunch part 1!

I had two giant bowls of fruit like this:

Plus the half apple that didn’t make it into my fruit bowl(s), topped with a babybel cheese:

And half of a heated banana walnut muffin with peanut butter:

The pb got all melty and gooey and stick-to-my-mouthy … and I wanted to have 30 more halves like this. But I did not listen to that craving because this was also on the conference room table:

Jessica came back from her Disneyworld vacation and brought the office a bag of Goofy taffy. And it was a health-conscious bag, believe it or not:

The bag claimed easy portion control, so I threw caution to the wind and had at least twice what you see here:

(With the Tinkerbell notepad that Jessica also brought back for me :-D)

Mildred saved the day from sugar temporarily when she gave me the rest of her lunch salad with chicken and avocado:

I added the CSA broccoli I had brought for a snack with some yogurt-mango chutney dressing:

Plus half of a mini cinnamon bun left from the morning meeting:

And that was lunch part 2.

When I got back from my afternoon visits, Deborah instantly handed me 1/4 of the chocolate mint cupcake she had gotten from the advocacy department downstairs:

Mmmmm, Deborah definitely knows how to select a cupcake.

When I opened my email, I saw that Pura had sent out an alert that there were still tons of excess donated goodies downstairs, so I ran down and took up a collection that included a cinnamon muffin, two cream cheese frosted carrot cupcakes, two slices of lemon-iced angel food cake, and a pb&j crumb square 😛

I ate some crumbs and packed the rest up for home, where I promptly chopped them all up into small pieces and added them to my freezer bag … and ate some more crumbs 😛

What is the hardest day of your week, and what makes it easier?

Sunday was another brilliantly pleasant last-chance-to-relax sort of day. (Notice how I’m moving slowly on the recaps here? I’m trying to pace myself so that I have some buffer when work piles up again!)

The project of the day was a variation of Gena’s raw zucchini alfredo since I loved it so much last time I made it.



I started by using a peeler to make carrot and CSA zucchini noodles.



Next, I used a knife to make CSA broccoli-stalk noodles and CSA bok-choy-stalk noodles:



I collected arugula and basil from my balcony garden and added those after a thorough chop.



Then, I figured I might as well throw in as much as I could, so I added CSA boy choy leaves, CSA snap peas, and CSA “braising greens” (which were tender enough to eat raw, incidentally), and sauteed CSA garlic scape. Can you tell I love my CSA?



I mixed my “noodles” with balsamic vinegar, toasted sesame oil, my mom’s herb-infused olive oil, coarse sea salt, lemon juice, and freshly ground coriander and transferred the bowl to the fridge for some marination time.

Meanwhile, I started on the cashew alfredo sauce … but since I had no cashews, I decided to give it a go with these jumbo brazil nuts from OhNuts!:



They were definitely jumbo!! Check out this comparison to a lowly sunflower seed:



I gave a cup of the nuts a coarse crush, covered them in water, and moved them to a fridge for a few hours to soak.

After the soak, I poured out most of the water (to save for later!) and kept about 1/3 cup in the bowl with the nuts to facilitate a heavy-duty immersion-blending session.

Once the nuts were pretty much processed, I started to add everything I could find: juice and pulp of 2 lime slices along with 1/4 cup spicy adobo sauce left from Rosalie and Rosey’s lunch last Thursday at work, 1 tsp date bliss, coarse sea salt, a few packets of soy sauce left from a roommate’s chinese food takeout, toasted sesame oil … is that it?



I blended and blended and blended some more, gradually adding about another cup of water until my sauce was smooth. I finger-licked my way through a few adjustments until everything tasted perfect. I was not sure how the brazil nuts would fare since they are less naturally sweet than the cashews, but this sauce tasted excellent!



In the midst of all the marinating and soaking time for my noodles and sauce, I kept myself busy enough with other things! I started the day with a bowl of my overnight mapley-date-flax oats:



I filled half the bowl with the oats topped with raisins and the other half with yogurt topped with CSA blueberries. I added a spoonful of date bliss and a sprinkle of cinnamon to the top:



For lunch, I sampled my way across the Slope from Union Market to Blue Apron Foods to the other Union Market and then made a quick pit-stop at home for half of a cucumber with hot mango chutney-yogurt dip:



(I know I already talked about how I love the hot hot spicy sweetness of this chutney, but I also need to mention that it has huge chunks of delicious mango in it, too. I’m going through this little jar so fast!)

I finally settled down with a light caramel frappucino at Starbucks (everything else was closed!) so that I could play email catchup:



Then I got home just in time to put the finishing touches on my dinner and settle in for my feast 😀



I guess my final dish is more like a salad than noodles since I added so much, but it’s still delicious!



The sesame and soy flavors really come through and make an excellent cold sauce, and there’s still the spicy heat from the adobo. I may have to plan a day where I just eat this for every meal!



There was dessert, too, but that will have to be the star of another day 😛

Do you say “noodle” or “pasta” or something else altogether? Do you use “noodle” to refer to anything aside from food? i.e. You’re such a noodle … or I spent the day just noodling around … or I love floating in the pool with a noodle …

On my way to the subway for the social segment of my 4th, I stopped into Union Market to inspect the samples and hit the jackpot. Marinated gardiniera veggies (cauliflower and carrots), caramelized cippolini mushrooms, four types of cheeses, and …

… chocolate chip Tate’s Bakeshop cookies and fudgy frosted chocolate cake. The perfect appetizers to my imminent lunch 😛

I got up to my lunch destination around 3:00 for a very special visit with Coco from Balance, Joy and Delicias!. Coco had boldly decided to take a trip to NYC all by herself and set up a whole schedule of things to do while here. Initially, I didn’t think I could meet up with her because I was planning to go to MA for the weekend, but I decided last minute to stick around because of everything I needed to get done at my apartment.

Coco and I met for our late lunch date at HanGawi, a vegetarian Korean restaurant that Coco put on her NYC to-do list after Katie recommended it a few weeks ago. I knew we had made a good choice when we walked into such a peaceful setting. We had to take our shoes off upon entering, and they were stored in cubbies alongside these beautiful and intricate authentic Korean shoes:

The tables were very low, and pillows were arranged around them instead of chairs.

But, I’ll let you in on a secret. If you look closely, you’ll see that every table has a hole in the floor underneath it. That way, we didn’t actually have to sit cross-legged for the whole meal 🙂

Coco ordered the fixed price Mini Emperor’s Lunch … but it was quite substantial!

It came with pumpkin porridge which Coco let me taste — so good! It was sweet and creamy and warm and perfect 🙂

Coco’s also came with vermicelli delight as an appetizer, the same dish that I ordered to start. I was so excited when I saw this on the menu (“sweet potato noodles with seasonal mixed vegetables”) because, ever since I was 17 and my friend Mimi (hi Mimi!) invited me over to her house for a summer party and some of her mom’s cooking, I have been obsessed with these noodles (aka glass noodles or cellophane noodles). The texture, the look, the taste … I love everything about them. Sophomore year of college, I set out on a mission to hunt these noodles down. I lived in Chinatown then and must have purchased and tried preparing every single type of vermicelli I could find, but nothing was the same! I made my then-boyfriend take me to Koreatown in hunt of the noodles, and we finally found them!! See the empty bowl?

Clearly, I was a pro at cleaning my plate eight years ago as well. Yay for 2001!

Saturday’s restaurant was located very near my 2001 success story in Koreatown, so I felt full confidence when I ordered the sweet potato noodles. They arrived just as I had dreamed they would:

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, I want more!

Coco’s entree, the vegetarian stone bowl rice (see above action shot of Coco and food) arrived with my second course (I ordered two appetizers instead of a meal): kabocha pumpkin pancakes.

These were sweet and spicy at the same time and soooooo tasty! I need to try making something like this at home.

Coco’s meal came with two types of kimchi — one spicy and one gingery — and she let me try bites of each:

Next, this mysterious cold apple-ginger-cinnamon tea/soup arrived for us. I was entranced by the pine nuts (and apple pieces) floating on top:

It was delicious, and I drank it all up. I’d been under the impression that this was some complimentary palette cleanser before Coco’s dessert arrived, especially since the lady explained it was “on the house” when she brought it. Our server dropped the check off shortly thereafter, and I flagged him down a minute later to alert him to the fact that Coco had never received the dessert that came with her fixed price meal. He explained that the tea/soup was the dessert and that they had just given one to me on the house so I wouldn’t feel left out. Awwwwwwww. After that, I felt very guilty about my un-zen greediness. Oops.

Coco had been planning to meet up with a friend for the fireworks, but her friend couldn’t make it … so I roped her into sticking with me for the rest of the evening 🙂 We wandered in the general direction of our next destination for a couple of miles. I took pictures of the sunny weather so I’ll be able to remember it when it starts to rain again.

We stopped in at a pinkberry because Coco had never had tart frozen yogurt before. I wasn’t going to get anything … but then I did 😛

(A small original with raspberries, coconut, and green tea powder.)

Erin Gunn & Co. made their arrival from Yonkers around 5:30, and we attempted to enter our pre-selected pre-fireworks location. I was so excited to have found this place in Hell’s Kitchen with fresh fruit cocktails, outdoor garden seating, and yummy healthy snacks! Sadly, I did not call ahead. Had I done so, I would have found that ‘disiac was closed for the Fourth of July. Plthhhhhhhh. Instead we wandered around until we found ourselves a dark, dank Irish pub in which to settle for a few.

(Left to right: Mike (Erin’s fiance), Bryan (Erin’s Australian cousin), Coco, Erin, me)

Despite the darkness, the food was delicious! I wasn’t hungry (HA!!), so I helped myself to some of Erin Gunn’s onion rings and black bean and corn guacamole:

And Mike’s tomato slice:

And most of the hummus platter for the table:

Bryan ordered club soda, and I scolded him for scoffing at the finest tap water the country has to offer.

After the pub, we needed sunlight! Joshua Tree looked perfect.

We snagged a nice spot upstairs by the balcony:

I ordered the Lemon Drop Martini with grey goose le citron, sour mix, and countreau in a sugar-rimmed glass.

It was as refreshing and light and frothy and airy as it looked. Mike took a pensive sip and approved as well.

Finally, the time arrived for us to work our way over toward the Hudson for some fireworks. On the way, we encountered THE DESSERT TRUCK!!!

Kate would be so proud. We moved closer.

And closer:

I was so tempted by the goat cheese cake with rosemary caramel and fresh berries … but I knew I’d have better luck getting the others to help me if I ordered the warm molten dark chocolate cake with olive oil and chocolate center, hazelnuts, sea salt, and vanilla ice cream. So that’s what I did 😀

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh my goodness. I’m not sure there are words! The others definitely helped me (thank goodness) because I would have eaten 15 of these all by myself if I’d had the chance.

The sea salt and hazelnuts really made it unique, mmmmmmmmmmmm. Next time: goat cheese cake!

After dessert, we headed toward the water on 47th street with 50000 of our closest friends.

The fireworks were supposed to start at 9:20, but they made us wait about three extra minutes, the nerve!

When the show started, I had a great view.

Seriously. Every time I tried to take a picture, these two decided to snuggle right in my line of sight.

Due to inevitable crowd shift, however, things eventually improved!

As usual, these Macy’s fireworks were the best I’ve seen! I usually avoid these overly crowded NYC events (esp. parades!) at all costs, but I keep coming back to the fireworks year after year after year.

The show ended after 26 minutes, and we turned to leave.

Oh. I almost forgot we had to wait for our 50000 best friends to leave first.

Coco headed back to her hotel, and Erin, the boys, and I stopped into Emmet’s for one last drink:

It may appear as though I drank this radioactive green thing.

But I couldn’t stomach the liquid jolly-rancher-ness and instead stuck to my water (after eating the cherry, lemon wedge, lime wedge, and rim sugar, of course :-P).

Yay for being social! Coco was even more sweet and exuberant than she is on her blog, Bryan was a hilarious new addition, and any night I get to spend with Erin Gunn and Mike is automatically a success. I had a lovely time, and I’m sad that I’m going to have to dive right back into my grad school bubble this week. Plth.

Social highlight of your weekend?

Another reason I love this weekend: the perfect balance of me time + friend time + zero grad school time!

The first part of yesterday was my new favorite Saturday routine. I started with a mini-breakfast of 1/3 cup overnight maple-free maple oats topped with blueberries and SOTBPPDCS butter:

This teeny serving was perfect to fuel me up for Saturday morning’s hot yoga class. After yoga, I tore back down to Brooklyn to pick up the CSA. Kate is out of town this weekend, so I was responsible for getting the whole share. After the photo shoot, I split everything in half so Kate can come collect her stuff on Tuesday when she’s back.

You can tell summer is finally here by the expanding variety of exciting goods: head of green lettuce, head of broccoli, head of red lettuce, 3 pints blueberries, garlic scapes, snap peas, bok choy, 2 zucchinis, Swiss chard, 1/2 dozen eggs, and “braising greens.”

The most exciting part:

Once all of the produce was sorted and processed, I put together mini-breakfast part 2, this time with 1/3 cup of scary-weight-management-powder-turned-delicious-vanilla-yogurt-chia-goji-pudding.

On the side, I sliced 1/4 of the chayote from Friday night and dipped it into this organic hot mango chutney from Native Forest. The chutney was pretty pretty hot, so it paired perfectly with the refreshing watery crunch from the chayote.

My snacky little spread:

Shortly thereafter, it was time to head out for the social segment of the day, along with some good old-fashioned 4th of July festivating!

What do you crave more on weekends: solo time or social time?