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!

Well, once again, I’m glad Monday was such a soft start back to work because the real issues all came back yesterday. And the real issues make me hungry! Thankfully, there was no cake on the conference room table yesterday. Instead, there was:



WATERMELON!! 😀 Maria brought in a huuuuge bowl full of giant cut up hunks. I took another piece (plus all the juice!) from the bowl after that.



Since I was stressed, of course, I found something else in the conference room to distract me just before I had to leave for my visit.



Seriously? Yes. I found a bag of pretzels and a jar of fluff and went to town. Then, I went to my visit … and came back to the office and ate some more! Lunch was 1/3 cup cooked brown rice/triticale berries mixed with 2/3 cup of the chicken caciatore mom and I made last week for my dad and stepmom. We had extra, so I brought a couple frozen containers of it back to NY with me (I’m a lucky girl, I know!). Jessica gave me her leftover salad today, so I dumped the chicken caciatore on top of it.



I had a hard-boiled egg on the side:



And chia-tapioca pudding with berries and banana for dessert:



And, since the pretzels and fluff combo was such a tastebud delight, I decided it would be super smart to fill one of my just-emptied tupperwares with it:



Three times.

There was also a magic lollipop with “changing colors and changing flavors” from Belkis’ candy jar:



And check out the transformation that mysteriously took place in the candy jar later in the afternoon.



So I also had peanuts.

And a baby baby banana that Myrna brought around.



The conference room was definitely rocking the fruit today. Here’s what showed up later:



So grapes joined the party in my belly.

As planned, dinner in class was the giant rainbow salad I made last night alongside a perfect peach, samples of comte cheese I snagged from the deli, and a slice of tart cherry pie, courtesy of the birthday package from my sister Allie:



My 3.5 hour class was actually not so bad, and the professor said she usually tries to end 1/2 hour early, around 9. Yayy! That means I was home just after 10 and in bed by 11:15 after preparing for today and taking a giant spoonful of Samoas ice cream right from the carton 😛 Wednesdays and Fridays are going to be my days off from the gym because there is no way I’m getting up at 5 after going to bed so late! I slept in until 6:15 today and then put together my breakfast of the week: yogurt-cereal-berry mess (with hemp seeds) and carrot cake … with some soymilky yerba mate on the side.

Today should be a much more low-key day of mostly meetings and group supervision (which I need!!). Also on the plus side, I ate so much fluff yesterday that I can’t reach far enough in the jar with a pretzel to get more. That means I need to use a spoon … and the extra effort of a spoon may be enough to deter me. We’ll see!

Was fluff a part of your childhood? I grew up surrounded by peanut butter and fluff sandwiches, but I never ate them because I didn’t like sandwiches. (I pretty much would not eat anything except for pasta until I was 17.) Plus, I don’t think my mom would have allowed fluff in the house!

Since I kept my work snackage to a minimum medium yesterday, I still had room for dinner when I got home last night. Exciting news because I love dinner. I pulled all my veggies out of the fridge and set to work on a rainbow salad that involved my roasted corn and purple cauliflower, grape tomatoes, and cucumbers:



I continued my initiation into the world of tinned fish (that started here and here) with another Cole’s delicacy:



Tinning aside, this one didn’t make me nervous at all. Mackerel has never sent chills down my spine the way that sardines and canned tuna have. Plus, considering how well I did (phenomenal, really) with those scarier varieties, I feel confident stating that the tin is no longer an obstacle. Phew.

I was blown away by what I encountered when I peeled the lid off because the piripiri sauce “packing” (the label lists olive oil, red pepper, carrot, cucumber, laurel, clove, and sea salt) actually contained real, live veggies! Plus, the pieces of fish were intact and not all pre-mashed. Maybe I am misinformed, but this intactness = freshness in my book!



I took a bite of the mackerel … and this piripiri sauce is killer! The mackerel tasted great anyway, but there’s a strong clove-y essence in there with some red pepper spiciness that I looooooooved. I chopped all the fishies and sauteed the pieces in their own sauce with some onion and then tossed that sauteed pan of flavor in with the veggies to create an enormous salad, most of which I packed up (with feta interspersed throughout) for dinner at class tonight.



The rest was last night’s din:

Many of you asked me what the story is on purple cauliflower, so I did some light research and found this. Word is that scientists developed the colorful varieties of cauliflower (which also include orange and green) NOT through genetic engineering but through selective breeding of various natural strains of cauliflower to produce the new colors. As far as I can tell, purple tastes the same as white — it’s just prettier.

Aaaaaand, since I kept dinner so deliciously light, I totally had room for ICE CREAM! Edy’s Samoas ice cream to be exact 😀 I had 1/4 cup on top of 1/4 cup chia-tapioca pudding and some berries for health.



And is anyone else pumped that The Bachelorette is on at 8:00 this season?? I haven’t been able to watch trashy TV in AGES, but this is early enough for me to still make my 9pm 10pm bedtime (because apparently it is two hours long now and I had to stay up until the end!). Mindlessness is lacking in my life, and this was an excellent way to incorporate it 😛

I was up at 5 this morning for another fun workout: 15 minutes bike, cybex legs and back, 15 minutes elliptical. It feels so good to go to the gym without the pressure for cardio cardio cardio that I felt when I was training for the half. Breakfast was a repeat because it was such a success yesterday. Cacao bliss-topped carrot cake and a yogurt-cereal-banana-berry mess:

After:

After after:

I’ll be at work all day followed by my 6-9:30 class, so a blog post tonight is highly unlikely. I will, however, make sure to capture anything noteworthy so I can share it tomorrow!

How does food color affect your interest in eating it?