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Walking fruitcake

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That is what I am today! This morning, someone at work very thoughtfully opened the boxed fruitcake — the conference room’s last holiday dessert item left standing — and arranged it with a knife for easy cutting and plates and forks for easy serving. I had a case of sluggish Friday food vulnerability and ended up going back for five slices over the course of the day. I don’t even like boxed fruit cake! It’s way too dry. But I kept going back for more like a zombie. Here’s a photojournal of some of the damage:

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Then, my coworker Nydia shared some of her corn chowder with me:

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Like the M&M mug in the background? The fifth-grader I see for counseling gave it to me as a Christmas gift :-). It kept my Earl Grey (and my fingers!) cozy all day long.

After the soup, Nydia offered me some fancy shaped Fritos:

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I accepted because they looked like pasta, and pasta is my favorite food. Here are my three:

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And finally, I did not eat this, but it was too pretty not to share. Rice, beans, and shrimp that my coworker Vianni cooked last night:

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It smelled amaaaaazing. Vianni said she would write the recipe down for me over the weekend, so hopefully I will be able to try it out soon.

Up next … staff holiday party!

Repeats (plus a guest chef)

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Today’s lunch was pretty much the same as yesterday’s, so I won’t go into details. One tupperware with chicken/okra, one tupperware with yogurt banana, the very last of the green beans, and a mini muffin:

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To make up for the extreme boringness of that photo, I present you with Brigitte’s Pulled Pork from her dinner earlier this week:

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My roommate Brigitte is kind of like a cross between Martha Stewart and Paula Deen. She loves to cook traditional comfort foods, and you will never see her trying something sneaky like replacing the butter in a recipe with olive oil (am I right?). If the recipe calls for 1 cup heavy cream and 2 cups granulated white sugar, that is exactly what Brigitte will use, thank you very much (I, on the other hand, would be trying to concoct some crazy skim milk-banana blend).

Anyway, my lunch today may have been boring, but it certainly succeeded in using up the very last of everything in my fridge. Tonight’s dinner will be some mystery items at my office holiday party (full report to come), and I’ll be food shopping with a clean slate first thing tomorrow morning. I couldn’t have planned it better if I had tried, and I only spent a total of $5 on groceries this week!

Breakfast

Breakfast this morning was predictable, but still delicious. The last of mom’s grainmeal, a pile of frozen banana, and some forgotten wrinkly blueberries I found in the fridge (Brigitte or Tara, if those were yours, I’ll be replenishing my produce supply tomorrow morning, and you can help yourself to what I come up with!):

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Post-oven with yogurt:

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And now that all that is taken care of … new food starting tomorrow!

(Still) running (on empty)

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Because outdoor exercise in freeeeezing weather at the end of the day is just the most super fun thing in the world to do (and because we are now officially training for the 5/30/09 Brooklyn Half Marathon), Kate and I scrounged up the will to meet for another Nike training run through Central Park. We opted for the 3 mile “short” run tonight, but it was seriously like pulling teeth. Sometimes I can run 5.5-6 miles like it’s nothing, and other times, a dinky little 3 miles just does me in (perhaps knowing that I had no post-run buffet waiting for me at the end played a part, too). We did get an almost-exciting surprise when we finished, though: mini Luna bars! Here we are displaying our bounty (in all our sweaty glory):

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I actually managed to pilfer six of these minis, all in Caramel Nut Brownie, my favorite. I don’t eat Luna bars often because (1) they taste a little chemically and (2) they actually happen to be full of chemicals and ingredients removed from their natural settings (surprise, surprise). But they’ll do as a snack in a pinch, and I certainly have plenty of pinches!

For dinner, I was really getting down to the dregs of the fridge. I scrambled a lone egg I found in there with 1/2 tsp canola oil and 1/4 cup of my okra/chicken mixture from lunch today — all that was left after I packed tomorrow’s lunch. I added more sofrito and grated homemade cheddar cheese to spice it up.

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On the side, I had an oven-toasted peanut butter chip chocolate VitaTop with frozen banana (just like banana ice cream!) and real cookie crumbs I secured via my office conference room connection:

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If you look closely, you can see the melty pb chips peeking out from under the banana:

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I had a tall tall mug of jasmine green tea on the side to warm my poor hands — my fingers were all white and numb from the freezing run, and they didn’t regain proper circulation until I got in the shower two hours later!

Sneaky Snacks

The pile of holiday goodies in the office has dwindled, but it is certainly putting up quite a fight. Today, my coworker Jessica brought in a box of dark chocolate truffles that she received from a “secret admirer,” and she very generously shared one with me (a.k.a. reminded me several times that she had a box of dark chocolates on her desk until I caved):

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After the truffles, Jessica broke out a sample of some odd new Ice Breakers liquid breath freshener. She offered me one of the teeeeeeeny balls and helped arrange this photo shoot:

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Sadly, due to the ball’s lack of heft, I accidentally breathed it into the back of my throat and nearly cut off my oxygen supply. I never even got to experience the liquid part of the “liquid ice” (tear).

OK, that’s all for today. Tomorrow is Friday, yayyyy!!

Running low on color

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As you know, my mom’s turkey soup met its tragic end (in my stomach!) yesterday at lunchtime. For today’s and tomorrow’s lunches, I decided to bulk up my okra/rice/barley combo from Tuesday with more green beans and a little baggie of frozen cooked chicken (that I rescued from yet another work function a couple months back, believe it or not). Here’s everything together:

sauteeing in the pan

sauteeing in the pan

tupperwared

tupperwared

Yogurt is not worth picturing today because I’m all out of pretty! All I had left to mix in was more frozen banana, cinnamon, and cardamom. It’s delicious, but all it looks like is a mash of yellow and brown, and you don’t need to see that.

Here’s the lunch line-up of okra/chicken, yogurt/banana, green beans, 2 mini muffins, and the other half of this orange:

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Breakfast

This morning, another tragedy struck! After my shattered teapot and the elimination of food at my running club, I didn’t think it was possible. I got to the gym for my regular Thursday morning 6:30-7:15 spinning class to find that the schedule had changed while I was away! The new class is an hour-long spinning + core class with a different instructor. So sad! Maybe I can try it once classes start in a few weeks and I don’t have to be anywhere until 11. But today I am working, so I just hopped on the Stairmaster for a quick (but seemingly endless since I had been expecting spinning!) 30 mins.

Anyway, breakfast was grainmeal with lots of frozen banana bits, my last apple half, and a few dried cranberries out of desperation for color:

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I topped it with yogurt, cinnamon, and cardamom after the oven re-heat as usual:

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Restaurant Review: Blockheads (plus endless rice)

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Tonight, I met my friend Sarah (great name, by the way) for dinner at Blockheads, a Mexican restaurant on the upper east side. Mexican food is SO easy to make healthy … but it’s also easy to make very unhealthy. I was glad Blockheads was a model of the former. I ordered the “No-Dairy Burrito” — similar to my eggs vs. egg whites thinking, I am not opposed to dairy products (quite the opposite, in fact!), but you can’t control quantities when it comes to restaurant-sized servings. I’m generally a plate-cleaner, so I might as well make sure the fat I’m eating is the healthy kind.

My burrito came in a whole wheat tortilla with brown rice, black beans, and soy cheese. Because I asked the waiter to “Super-Corn it” (yeah, I felt stupid saying it then, too), it also came with guacamole, tofu sour cream, and roasted corn salsa inside. It was ENORMOUS:

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As expected, I cleared every last crumb. Candlelit cross-section:

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My burrito was delicious! Something about the tofu sour cream reminded me of ricotta, so it was almost like a perfectly rich mexican lasagna, yummmm. Sarah ordered the rice and beans burrito, but it was a little too beany for her liking.

The waiter tried to convince us that we wanted margaritas and flan, but we stayed strong and asked for the check. With the check came some mini rice pudding samples, on the house. Here are the rice puddings on a candlelit date with each other:

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Sarah’s not really a fan of rice pudding, so I ate both :-). While the pudding was a nice gesture on the restaurant’s part, it tasted suspiciously like Kozy Shack. Sarah mentioned that the last time she ate there, the complimentary dessert was chocolate pudding. Now, far be it for me to turn my nose up at free dessert … just thought it was worth mentioning that Blockheads may have a special relationship with the commercial pudding industry.

Lunch Addendum

I successfully downed every bite of the lunch and snacks I packed today (when do I not, really?), even the emergency backup mini muffins (they only lasted until 9:30 am). More importantly, though, I had another exciting day of sampling delicious Dominican food, courtesy of my coworker Belkis. She shared some of her homemade rice and beans and a bite of some type of overnight-marinated beef — probably the tastiest bite of beef I have ever eaten:

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I really need to learn how to cook this way!