Tag: colleagues

Todo lo demás

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Because there was nothing all that special about the rest of the day in between cupcakes this morning and dessert tonight (and because I’m running behind on everything in the world … except eating dessert!), I’m just going to do a quick rundown.

Another cup (the last one) of mama’s chicken, kielbasa, and root vegetable casserole:

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Three tomato slices left from Myrna’s tacos:

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Three inches of Mildred’s ham and cheese wheat Subway sub:

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Which I subsquently deconstructed into a ham and cheese half and a plain bread to dip in avocado salsa half (to get rid of the mayo):

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And 1/4 of Mildred’s white chocolate macademia Subway cookie:

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The last cup of my fruit salad with a sprinkling of golean crunch:

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And one final cupcake from Jessica:
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Afternoon snacks were two heated kitchen sink mini-muffins from mom with cashew-almond butter:

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And a blood orange:

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After work, I headed down to Brooklyn to meet Gina and Kate for salads at Chop Chop, a pay-too-much-to-make-your-own-salad takeout restaurant/gourmet deli. I have to admit that the salad was delicious, though!

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I ordered an arugula salad with beets, carrots, cucumber, red onions, sundried tomatoes, avocado, feta cheese, and sun-dried tomato dressing on the side:

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Mmmmmmmm, it was SO good. And then we headed over to Kate’s apartment to house some special desserts Gina scored for us 😀 Details to come! And when did my life become one nonstop dessert, seriously???


Con dulce, por favor

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It’s been another sugary day around these parts!

Someone brought in Whole Foods mini-pumpkin muffins this morning and planted them right on the conference room table (aka an inch away from my desk). These muffins never really tempt me, though, since the ingredient list is right there and sugar is first on it. I always get so disappointed in WF when I see that. I did, however, take up a crumb collection and eat that once all the muffins were gone:

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Just before lunch, Myrna came around handing out a fun new food tool to everyone that Tupperware sent her because she started doing Tupperware sales. I had packed the perfect snack to test it out. Just watch the magic here:

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Pretty amazing, right? So I’m now the proud new owner of an orange peeler 🙂 I shared some orange and ate the rest:

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For lunch, I had another mama creation that came home with me from MA on Sunday: a cup of chicken, kielbasa, and root vegetable casserole.

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I also had another bite of Vianni’s tuna noodle salad:

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And 1/2 cup of Myrna’s rice and beans:

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And pulled a teeny bit of Myrna’s taaaaaaasty saucy chicken off of this bone:

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I also had my fruit salad + yogurt + golean crunch (from MA, too — I go grocery shopping in my mom’s fridge at the end of every visit):

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img_7938The star of the meal, however, was clearly Mildred’s husband’s habichuela con dulce (a traditional Dominican dessert drink that appears between Ash Wednesday and Easter and that I’ve raved about here and here). I definitely refilled my cup three times. The best comparison I can come up with is that it is like drinking liquid pumpkin pie. In other words, habichuela con dulce is delicious beyond your wildest dreams.

Two of my afternoon visits ended up canceling, so I accompanied Mildred on hers. Both happened to take place in excruciatingly hot apartments. When we finished, Mildred decided that she needed ice cream and that I did, too. Here’s my kiddie scoop of Rocky Road, courtesy of today’s sugar fairy:

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Now, I have not had Rocky Road ice cream in forever, and I’ve probably never had it from Baskin Robbins, but I have to say that this was the best Rocky Road I’ve ever had. It was amazingly creamy, and what’s more, the marshmallows were perfect little pockets of fluffiness! Every other time I’ve had Rocky Road, the marshmallows have been so frozen and mixed in that they weren’t even identifiable as such.

Around 3:30, I broke out another of the cheese sticks that mom sent back to NY with me. The m&m mug and I fought over who would get to eat it, but I won of course. It was no contest, really.

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In my final sugar hurrah of the work day, I heard Jessica whispering something about chocolate cake from down the hall. I got up to investigate, and she informed me that it was Cleo’s birthday in Preventive and they were struggling with a cake overage. We went upstairs together to assist.

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Cake rescued; crisis averted.

Umm, this spoonful of whipped vanilla frosting is on my camera for some reason. I don’t know why? 😛

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I got home and prepped a necessarily light dinner of salad, jasmine tea biscotti bites, and leftover almond sunset tea from this morning. Dinner enjoyed the company of my new Easter decorations: a straw bunny from dad and stepmom, a Lindt dark chocolate bunny from step-grandma, and a spread-eagle bunny planter also from step-grandma:

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The salad contained lettuce, arugula, 1 tbsp Newman’s dried berry blend, 1 tbsp peanut roasted chickpeas, grated homemade parmesan, and a drizzle of Annie’s lite gingerly vinaigrette:

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A few more tbsp of the chickpeas went directly from jar-to-mouth 🙂

What sweet things did you eat today?

Nut safety (and a winner!!)

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First things first. It’s time to announce the winner of the Everybody’s Nuts Pistachi-YES giveaway! Random.org has made its selection from the 93 entries (including comments, link-backs, and emails from non-bloggers), and the winner is #78:

Amie: The nut recall makes me sad because then nuts get a bad name. :(

Amie, I will be emailing you soon to arrange for delivery of some safe and disease-free nuts 😛

Onto the food!

As I was sipping my sugar cookie sleigh ride tea at 9:23 am this morning, I noticed one of the nurses set a promising foil-wrapped platter down on the other end of the conference room table, along with a pile of plates and knives. This could only mean one thing: cake. I didn’t want to seem too eager, so I whispered across to Rosey that there was cake in the conference room, and she hopped right up and headed down to get the ball rolling. And it turned out to be banana walnut, yum! Here’s my piece, heated in the microwave and then slathered in whipped vanilla frosting that I found in the fridge:

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The cake kept me going until lunchtime, when I broke out another fun treat: butternut squash, ground beef, and eggplant shepherd’s pie from mom! She packed this big slice in the food bag I brought home from MA yesterday.

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I think there’s kale in there, too? I had it on a bed of arugula. It was perfect and yummy and tasted like mom’s cooking because that’s what it was. I wish I had more!

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I also had a bite of Vianni’s tasty tuna macaroni salad:

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And finished Mildred’s salad for her:

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And two of Mildred’s daughter Adriana’s chicken nuggets:

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I haven’t had chicken nuggets in years! Somehow, they tasted better than I remember …

Post-lunch was a blood orange. I shared half with my coworkers (finally, they liked the looks of something I brought in!) since they were intrigued by the color. None of them had ever seen or heard of a blood orange before.

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I also had some blurry yogurt art made from fruit salad and yogurt that traveled from MA to NY with me yesterday:

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I was hungry again by 2:30 and had a cheese stick, also courtesy of mom:

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The final mom treat of the day came at 4:30. I broke up two of mom’s kitchen sink muffins (she sent me home with a ton yesterday!) and spread about a tbsp of cashew-almond butter over them before microwaving to get it all melty, YUM:

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It’s probably worth mentioning that I left my Newman’s mints at home by accident, so lots of other candies made their way into my belly throughout the day.

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I stayed late at work because I was planning to go to the 6:30 gyrotonic class at Kinespirit with the free coupon Melissa gave out at the blogger brunch last month. I was somehow still feeling a little bit underfed when I left work and knew I would need to last until I got home at 8:30, so I had an emergency spoonful of the office’s extra chunky Skippy:

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That did the trick!

I was very unsure of what to expect from the gyrotonic, but it ended up being just what I needed tonight. I’ll have to talk about it more in my next post because I’m too tired now!

What’s the best exercise class you’ve ever taken?

Theatrical tea

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While Emily napped yesterday (for four hours!), I took care of some business of my own … and snacked of course!

Jasmine tea biscotti bites (with soymilked yogi mexican sweet chili tea in the kitty mug):

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And the last 2 tbsp of my Total Cranberry Crunch sample with splash of soymilk:

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I also got this recipe for peanut roasted chickpeas (from The Peanut Butter Boy) underway after my developmentally delayed chickpeas took nearly 24 hours to cook. I’ve never had that happen before. Once the chickpeas were finally tender, the roasting took an hour and a half (twice the amount of time in the recipe!), probably because my oven is old and slow. They also weren’t tasting peanutty enough, so I added lots of extra PB2 and a big pile of cashew-almond butter.

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They still weren’t all that peanutty once they were done and crunchy, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t addictive! I snacked on about a tablespoon of them. Three or four times.

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I’m pretty sure there was also some straight-out-of-the-jar cashew-almond butter action 🙂

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I roused Emily from her slumber around 12:30 so she could start getting ready for the afternoon while I pulled together a sister lunch for us. We started on arugula salads with Newman’s dried berries, chopped dates, fat free feta, peanut roasted chickpeas, and Annie’s Lite Gingerly Vinaigrette:

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I also made us steak and spinach wraps. I made the wraps from scratch as usual (for 2: 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 1 tbsp olive oil, dash salt, teeny bit of water to pull it all together). I gave the perfect one to Em, but mine got a little extra toasted — fine because I love the crunch, but troublesome because it wouldn’t wrap.

For the wrap filling, I sauteed the last 1/3 cup of leftover steak Nydia gave me on Friday with about 3 cups of spinach, 1/2 a baby onion, and 1 tbsp of the sofrito I made the other day. I split the sauteed mix between the two wraps and added a teeny bit of gouda to each, a bunch of grated homemade parmesan, and a huge pile of arugula:

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For dessert, Emily and I split one of the little tangerines she’d brought for airplane snacking:

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We hung around and chatted for a bit, and then we headed to Gramercy to drop her luggage off at her friend’s apartment. From there, we walked down to the Lower East Side in the general direction of dinner #1 (yes, there was more than one dinner on the agenda last night). We were running a little bit ahead of schedule, so Em asked if I’d like to stop into Whole Foods for samples. She knows me so well!

Pistachio ice cream and camembert (not in the same bite obviously):

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Cranberry granola and maple granola (and unpictured similar cups of blueberry granola and berry medley granola):

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For dinner #1, we met Emily’s friend Yan at Stanton Social. We ate way too much in light of the fact that we were going to head right off to another dinner, but what else is new? I’ll have a full review of the dinner and the expansion coming along shortly.

After that first dinner, we took a walk around the block to “burn it off” and, while doing so, to sample a peanut butter cookie piece and an m&m cookie piece from Sugar:

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We still had about 30 minutes to kill — and I had a camera battery in need of charging — so we stopped into teany for a spot of tea. We ordered a performance by tea #33. Watch the process:

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Fully charged and partially digested, we left teany around 9:30 to go meet Emily’s friends Megan (the birthday girl!) and Aimee at Apizz for another expansion-inducing festival of deliciousness. I’ll have a full review of this one coming along shortly, too. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with my favorite quote of the night. The waiter asked if we’d like more bread for the table, and Megan responded:

Why not? I’m trying to get in as many calories as possible before I turn 40 in an hour and a half!

So we got more bread 😀

I’ll be back with like 10,000 more food updates eventually, so brace yourselves.

In the meantime, what’s the most exciting tea you’ve ever experienced?

And remember to enter this giveaway by Monday for the chance to win your very own stash of safe pistachios!

A number of things

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I’ll start with scenery.

My kitchen looked pretty in late morning sunlight:

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And flowers were blooming out my bedroom window:

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In all the spring excitement, I went for my first real run in about a week and a half, and it was glorious! I ran in capris and no sleeves because Brooklyn decided it would let spring visit for a day. Again, I felt some groin/gluteal (ugh, how much longer am I going to have to say that?) discomfort and found that I had to take much shorter strides than normal, but nothing was overly anxiety-provoking. I ran slowly and carefully and pictured the yoga string pulling the crown of my head straight up 🙂 Stats: 3.83 miles, 46.5 minutes, 352 calories, 145 average heart rate, 171 maximum heart rate. I came home, did the 20-minute Yoga for Runners #1 from yogadownload.com, and then iced for 20 minutes. I’ve got a bit more of a limp now than I did pre-run, but that’s to be expected.

Look what I encountered during my cool-down walk home!

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This is what I love about my neighborhood. We’ve got this unofficial swap system. If you don’t want something, you just leave it out on your stoop. It will be gone within the hour 😀 I went through everything and picked out and washed what I wanted. The remainders will go back out on my stoop. Here’s what I’m keeping:

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(You can’t tell from the picture, but there are nine plates there: 5 with the design, 1 plain blue, 2 white, and 1 clear glass. I feel like I just got back from a shopping spree at Crate & Barrel.)

I had a lovely lunch today. I sauteed the last of my asparagus and portabello with curry butter with spinach stems, roasted red pepper, and 1/4 cup of steak left from Nydia’s lunch at work yesterday. I also added in a tsp of sofrito that I made the other day using Inginia’s recipe (cilantro, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, ancho, onion) and a packet of magic seasoning that Vianni donated. This is what helps all my coworkers feed me deliciously authentic Dominican delicacies 🙂

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Final product:

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I had the sauteed mix on a bed of spinach and arugula with four Newman’s spelt pretzels crumbled on top for crunch:

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Arugula, how I love you.

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I also spent a large chunk of today whipping up a batch of jasmine tea biscotti bites to send to Kelsey, the highest bidder on these in Meghann’s bake auction. Some of the cookie dough did not make it into the oven. Instead, it garnished my dessert: a pile of pineapple with a dollop of plain Oikos and a sprinkle of cardamom (on a new plate!).

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Picture that cookie dough times about 4. That’s probably closer to what I actually consumed.

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I spent a different chunk of today baking a Passover-friendly sponge cake to bring home this weekend. Details on that will come later. In the meantime, there was batter:

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Rest assured, the batter is now gone. Phew. I will let you use your imagination to figure out where it went. Hint: it did not go down the drain. Where did the batter go? And are you in charge of making anything exciting this weekend?

Win some salmonella-free pistachios!