Unlucky for you, the Saulsbury sisters do not actually have a restaurant. But lucky for me, they’re amazing in the kitchen and they’re my friends 😀

I went over to Amanda and Meghan’s apartment last night for the second installment of Amanda’s book club, and I was treated to a gourmet dinner in their “bistro.”

To start, we had sliced cucumbers, fresh from Amanda’s boyfriend Willie’s grandma’s garden in Texas, where Amanda visited last week:



Aren’t the speckles on this cucumber adorable?!

While we nibbled on the cucumber, chefs Amanda and Meghan prepared their feast.

Meghan’s delicacy for the night was this Roasted Tomato Caprese Salad from Barefoot Contessa.

I can’t wait to try making this myself! It was soooo good, and I would probably eat it for every meal if I could.



Amanda made some perfectly-crisped-on-the-edges tilapia with rice pilaf on the side.



Here’s my perfectly balanced plate (though I had loads more tomatoes!):



After dinner, we retreated to the “lounge” for our discussion of the month’s book: No Way To Treat a First Lady. We all loved the book and had plenty to say about it, and now I’m inspired to get some of Christopher Buckley’s other books on reserve at the library ASAP!

After the book discussion portion of the evening, I got dessert ready … since dessert was obviously my contribution. Edy’s Samoas ice cream …



(I looooooooooove the consistently creamy and melty coating on this ice cream!)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand … Newman’s Own Organics Chocolate Os!



The best thing about these Os is that they effortlessly split apart to allow easy access to the creamy creamy chocolate filling.



And, the wafers still had the classic Oreo crunch to them. Mmmmmm, I love sandwich cookies.

Amanda and Meghan, thank you for a lovely meal at Saulbury Sisters! I can’t wait for for part 3 😀

In the meantime, check out these two brilliant Tales of Expansion sweeping blogland now courtesy of Krista and Laura.

What was the last restaurant-quality meal you had that did not take place at an actual restaurant?

I just ate breakfast for literally the entire work day. And now I’m about to go to dinner. But that will be another story 🙂

As I mentioned this morning, today was my department’s “monthly” (in quotes because we only do it in the months when we don’t have other events planned … which turns out to be quite rare!) breakfast. We all converged on the conference room (yes, the one right next to my desk) around 9:45 to take stock of what had arrived.

Beryl’s really the mastermind behind these events, so those are her hands cutting Jessica’s omelets over on the left. Here are my selections:

Obviously, you need a tour of my plate.

Here’s the mangu (yayyyyyyy!!!!!!) with ham (?? I always guess because I don’t actually know what kind of meat this is), fried cheese, and vinegar onions, courtesy of Belkis and Mildred:

Pancakes from Beryl:

Half of a ham omelet and half of a plain omelet, homemade by Jessica:

Nitza’s fruit salad and my pineapple:

Corn bread and coffee cake crumbs from Rosalie:

And this most amaaaaazing ever Dominican-style oatmeal — basically blended oats with sugar and cinnamon. It’s almost more of a beverage than a spoon situation, so I drank my seconds and thirds from a cup 😛

The plate, otra vez:

Obviously, because I sit right next to the conference room table where all the leftovers hang out, I had at least another giant plate’s worth of food over the course of the afternoon. Some highlights (in other words, this list is not all-inclusive!) …

More fruit:

Even more fruit, plus crumbs:

The rest of the fruit:

The last bite of mangu:

Corn bread and coffee cake crumbs with peanut butter and fluff:

Mashed together:

(Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm)

A leftover piece of bread with peanut butter and fluff:

(I know, I was really on a roll.)

Uh oh, the fluff is almost gone! How did that happen?

So I scraped the jar clean!

There were probably also some candies from the candy jar, too. Ohhhh, man. I’m still so full … but dinner is calling, so I must be off!

What a delicious delicious day!

On a scale of 1 to 5, how delicious was your day?

P.S. I also brought home Jessica’s leftover omelets. She is an omelet master, I’m telling you!

Yesterday was another all-over-the-place food day! So many random little nibbles that actually required some foraging on my part.

For example, I dug around in Belkis’ candy jar pretty soon after arriving at the office in order to turn up the last three peanuts.



The first 1.5 hours of work were nonstop with little issues that kept unexpectedly popping up, so I didn’t have time for any crazy snacking before I left for my morning visit. I was back at the office by 12 but immediately went into two other impromptu meetings before I could settle down for my lunch of the week: chicken caciatore with brown rice and triticale berries. On the side, I had this battered but delicious peach:



The afternoon had originally looked just as busy as the morning, but a visit cancelled, leaving me with too much nervous energy on my hands! Some more candy jar adventures ensued.





I probably had about 3-5 other little candies in addition to the dots, candy cane, and melon (?) hard candy.

If you’ve been following along this week, you will very easily be able to identify the components of this brilliant afternoon snack:



Any ideas?

Clearly, I’ve had a certain condiment combination on my mind for several days now 😛



Also making an appearance somewhere in the afternoon was the last (for real this time!) of my chia-tapioca pudding.



My pudding experiment has served me quite well this week!

As I was leaving work just after 5:00 to head down for my 6:00 class, something just happened to force its way onto my spoon:



And, if you look carefully in the background, you can see the announcement about today’s department breakfast. I love when we do these breakfasts because everyone brings in something different, and you know how the ladies in my office don’t mess around when it comes to food! Mmm, can’t wait 😀

On my way to class, I stopped into the market for my standard cheese samples … but they did not have cheese last night! Instead, they had a fancy French pepperoni-type thing called saucisson sec. I missed my manchego, but this was pretty durn tasty …



I had two little slices.

At some point after lunch yesterday, Jessica donated her leftover taco embellishments (cilantro, minced onion, adobo salsa) to my cause:



I thought they would mix scrumptiously with Rosey’s mom’s spaghetti that I had brought for dinner in class, and they did!



I always get so antsy in classes (especially in a 3-hour class like I will have all summer and even in an interesting class on child welfare like we had last night), so barely 15 minutes had passed post-pasta when I had to break into my cashew cookie larabar (again, courtesy of the birthday package my sister Allie sent). During a small group discussion later in class, my group-mate Rachel shared a Twizzler and hand-modeled the package:



Finalmente, I got home sometime after 10. (This is going to be a looooooooong summer of Tuesdays and Thursdays!) My first order of business was to hack two pineapples to pieces because that’s what I’m bringing to the breakfast at work today. The grocery store right next to the office has had pineapples on sale this week for $1.99. Around here, a pineapple for $2.99 is an incredible and rare deal, so I pounced on this one as soon as I saw the sign in the window. I bought one earlier in the week, and I bought the second yesterday between work and class. I very nearly impaled half of NYC walking to class with these dangerous pineapple spikes awkwardly protruding from under my arms … but no one seemed to care! They just kept heading straight at me. Sigh, New Yorkers. Willing to risk their lives in order to appear unruffled at all times.



Of course, I nibbled a hefty portion as I chopped!

And, as we all know, there is always room for Samoas ice cream soup.



That’s about 1/4 cup in the ramekin, plus I probably had at least another 1/4 cup straight from the carton. It was melty, and I had to clean the drips … with my spoon! This has to be the most incredible melted ice cream I’ve ever tasted — the texture is literally like melted whipped marshmallows (ooh, consider that a hint — if you even need it — as to the identity of my earlier mystery snack).

Today was my sleep-in day due to my late night last night, so I didn’t get up until 6:15. Because of the department breakfast coming up, and because I clearly can’t hold off until 9:30/10 for breakfast, I kept things light-ish this morning with the carrot cake (topped with the very last of my Artisana cacao bliss, nooooooooooooo!) and 1/4 cup cereal (all-bran strawberry medley + kashi golean crunch) with 1/4 cup soymilk and some berries.

Melted ice cream is my favorite summer soup. What is yours?

I just realized that my two-ish posts per day usually end up divided very neatly between two categories: work food and Sarah food. I always bring my own food to work but am flexible depending on what else presents itself (and a lot presents itself!), but breakfast (and dinner, if I’m still hungry enough) are all about what I want. And, generally, after all my treats at work, what I want is healthy.

In true HEAB eat-what-I-want-for-dinner style, I whipped up a batch of exactly what I was craving last night: spinach oats 😀 Last night’s immersion-blended mix involved 1/3 cup oat bran, 1 tbsp chia seeds, 1 tbsp lucuma powder, 1 cup water, 1 chopped peach (meant for a snack earlier in the day), 3 cups spinach, TJ’s smoky peach salsa (!!), vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cardamom. I topped it off with a spoonful of homemade peanut butter, a spoonful of cacao bliss, unsweetened coconut, and hulled hemp seed:



(Can you hear the spot being hit?!)

For dessert, I had the last couple spoonfuls of chia-tapioca pudding with 1/4 cup Edy’s Samoas ice cream (plus some renegade spoonfuls straight from the carton).



The glow is from So You Think You Can Dance reflecting on the floor, where I carried out the ice cream photo shoot.

This morning was back to the gym for 15 minutes stepmill, arms/chest, 15 minutes bike (and rainy walks to and from!) followed by more spinach oats!



This time, the immersion-blended mix involved 1/4 cup oat bran, 1 tbsp chia seeds, 1 cup water, 2 tbsp unsweetened soymilk, 1 chopped apple, 3 cups spinach, vanilla, and all the spices. I topped it with blueberries, unsweetened coconut, hemp seeds, and homemade peanut butter.



And, in case you didn’t hear me go on and on enough about the half marathon on Saturday, you can now see even more pictures that actually prove I was running during the whole thing right here 😀

When was the last time (if ever) that you ate the same thing for dinner and then again for breakfast the next morning? What was your reasoning for doing so?

Today was such a rush rush rush day, but I was rushing to un-stressful things and didn’t mind! My prediction about having to use a spoon to get more fluff out of the jar came true — that just seemed like too much effort, and I contented myself with three handfuls of peanuts from the candy jar instead. Each one looked something like this:

Or this:



Lunch was the same as yesterday: 1/3 cup cooked brown rice/triticale berries mixed with 2/3 cup of the chicken caciatore mom and I made last week when I was in MA.

I also heard fifth-hand from Deborah about a barbecue happening on the patio outside the first floor, so I went down with her for a quick peek. Sadly, I had to be in like two other meetings at that very moment, so I had to grab and run. I filled a cup with baby carrots, grapes, and a superbly delicious sausage link that Sam had masterfully charred on the grill:

How cool is it that my agency randomly decided to have a mid-day barbecue?! And how sad that I couldn’t stay and take full advantage!

I was quite a sight wandering around with my water bottle, sizzling hot chicken caciatore, and spoon in my left hand and my camera, a notebook and pen, and a cup of grapes and overflowing sausage in my right hand. I was riding the elevator and scouring the stairwell (and trying to open doors more or less with my teeth) all over the place for the people with whom I was supposed to meet. When I finally made it to the room where the psychiatrist was waiting, she probably thought I was absolutely nuts. Then, we dove right into talking about the case, and I really wanted a picture of the sausage before I ate it, so I had to sit with it there taunting me through the whole meeting. Torture!

We finished with that meeting and went right into another, but I did manage to inhale my BBQ goods somewhere in between! Post-meeting dessert was chia-tapioca pudding with banana and berries:



If I haven’t mentioned that I love this pudding, I love this pudding.

Somewhere between the pudding and my next appointment, I had two Now & Laters from Belkis’ candy jar (I had to root around under the peanuts to find them!):



Finally, there was a super random salad in there that consisted of chopped cucumber (previously cucumber spears meant for a snack on Monday), TJ’s salsas (previously meant for cucumber-dipping on Monday), my last hard-boiled Eggland’s Best egg (today was its last day to be eligible for consumption!), and some feta:



Just before I left for the day, Nydia mentioned that Rosey had brought her some spaghetti (made by Rosey’s mom, of pasteles fame) that she wouldn’t be able to eat since she was going out to dinner.



I jumped on that like it was my job and packed it all into my emptied lunch tupperwares 😛 I tasted some when I got home — this spaghetti was sooooo good with all the seasonings, ground beef, and some peppers.



However, I knew I needed to expand it because it would have taken all three cups to make me full! I added spinach, roasted broccoli, roasted purple cauliflower, and feta:



Perfect! It will be ideal for dinner in class tomorrow night 😀

Do you prefer your nuts with shells or without shells? I think I prefer nuts still in their shells. They’re so much more fun to eat because it’s like opening a present each time … especially when I didn’t have to pay for them!