Life on the farm

February 8, 2009February 6, 20158 Comments

In other words, I’ve been grazing all afternoon! Have I done any more work for school??? NO!!!

How does this happen every Sunday? I start cooking one thing, and then it is suddenly five hours later and bedtime.

As usual, I snacked all afternoon long as I cooked. I ate the peel of the sweet potato that I used for making Pumpkin Kibbi from a recipe my coworker gave me.

I also ate some of the clusters of amazingness from the top of my new box of Kashi GoLean Crunch, the best cereal ever. Three in my palm and two in a capful of soy milk:

2 with a capful of soymilk

I made pumpkin pie crockpot oats (nibbling plenty along the way, too) and ate the scrapings from the crockpot bowl:

Plus half a piece of the kibbi (again, in addition to “taste-tests” as I cooked!):

And a dark chocolate Godiva peppermint patty:

And then I was still hungry, so I had my last vitatop (tear). Dark chocolate pomegranate VitaTop with peanut butter and a chopped date:

And now I need to quickly pull everything together for tomorrow and get my behind into bed!

Are you ready for the week?

Sweet dreams

February 8, 2009February 6, 201512 Comments

I decided it was time for dinner about an hour after I had lunch. I’d been formulating a plan to make a variation of the Date, Feta, and Toasted Nut Stuffed Butternut Squash that my mom submitted for last week’s BSI. Of course I didn’t have her exact ingredients, so I improvised as usual.

I used 3/4 of the baby butternut squash that I bought at Fairway last weekend (the other 1/4 is for butternut squash fries tomorrow!). For the stuffing, I mixed the remaining half cup of ravioli filling with some of the squash and with the spices recommended by mom. I topped it all with five chopped toasted almonds, two chopped dates (the end of my supply), and some of the squash’s seeds (I seasoned and toasted them in the oven while the squash was roasting). Ahhhh, it was soooo good. Not a surprise since my mama’s a genius in the kitchen :-).

If you didn’t notice already, I had the squash over a bed of 1/4 cup Vianni’s vegetable rice and 1/4 cup brown basmati rice:

After dinner, I headed out to meet up with the ladies: Gina, Kate, and Pam. They’d gone to a Thai restaurant for dinner, but my bank account couldn’t handle that so I skipped the meal and joined for them a movie after. We saw He’s Just Not That Into You, and I actually liked it! I laughed, I cried … the whole thing. It’s been ages since I’ve enjoyed a movie, so I’m glad this one came through. When we finished with the movie, we went across the street for dessert at Sweet Melissa, a local patisserie of which I am quite fond. Here we are displaying our treats:

Gina and Kate each got the Chocolate Peanut Butter Indulgence (layers of rich chocolate cake, peanut butter, and ganache):

Inside:

I had two bites:

Gina got vanilla ice cream for the side, and I ate many bites of that:

My dessert was the Toasted Lemon Meringue Tart (sweet tart lemon curd in a pate sucree crust topped with a dollop of toasted meringue):

Mmmmm, it was deeeeeelicious. The crust was so buttery and crumbly and shortbready:

I’m back home now and setting up a new batch of yogurt for overnight incubation. My roommate’s boyfriend is eating this Chipwich and it’s killing me:

So I’m going to eat this Godiva dark chocolate:

With a cherry inside:

And quickly brush my teeth so I don’t eat any more. Night night!

New woman

February 6, 2009February 6, 20159 Comments

Last night’s bedtime snack:

A dark chocolate Godiva heart filled with chocolate goo!

YUM!

Onto today! Not only have I been taking pictures with my very own camera again (Erin, thanks again for sending the battery to me!), but I am also blogging from my very own computer! That’s right — my new adapter arrived today, so I could finally charge my latop again. My roommate Brigitte’s camera and computer have valiantly kept me afloat this past week (thank you, Brig!!), but it’s so nice to be back to my own gear. I feel like myself again!

I started this morning with my favorite 5am workout — 5 minutes jog to the gym, 15 minutes arms with free weights on an aerobics step, 30 minutes stairmaster, 10 minutes abs/stretching, 5 minutes jog home. Stats: 1 hour and 12 minutes, 422 calories, average heart rate 126, max heart rate 157.

Breakfast was more gingerbread spice crockpot oats:

For this morning’s oats, I actually stirred in the egg yolk that was left from ravioli-making last night and then baked it at 375 for 40 minutes. Nothing goes to waste around here! With 1/2 cup healthy cream cheese icing, two crumbled graham sticks, and more powdered ginger:

I love love love gingerbread oatmeal. I would make it every week if I could. Come to think of it, why can’t I??

I ate lunch around noon, right before the parents’ group. Kale and date curry with brown basmati:

Yogurt with apple, banana, raisins, cinnamon, ginger, and grumbled graham stick:

Orange:

I ate the equivalent of one more orange in the group :-O.

Jessica restocked Belkis’ candy jar, and it was suddenly full again today:

I found (and ate!) some pretty crazy stuff. I had the standard three pillow mints of course:

And a wild apple bubble-gum lollipop and a tootsie roll:

Jujyfruits:

Fangs:

And … wait for it … a chicken lollipop!!

So weird, right? It actually tasted like canned peaches with a bit of heat to them. Here’s another angle:

I might die tonight from the ingredients, but I think I’d be ok with that since at least I got to experience candy chicken on a stick first:

After my final visit of the day around 4:30, I dug out my broccoli trees and hummus:

And my apple:

And with that, the week was over!!! Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh …

After work, I met Vani from Fit for Free briefly for a little impromptu tea exchange. She stopped by to pick up her participation gift from the BSI: Dates contest I hosted last week (K ath and I decided to split the tea portion of her winnings amongst the participants since she’s drowning in tea as it is!). Vani was so sweet (and beautiful!) in real life, and she brought me a little treat, too:

Inside the package, I found an array of very useful tea types considering my frenzied pace lately. Calm bedtime tea, peppermint tea, pink lemonade emergen-c, organic Indian vanilla creme tea (wicked excited for this one!), and TJ’s pomegranate white tea:

Thanks, Vani! I’m so excited to try these new flavors:-).

For dinner, I had the other half of my BSI Spinach entry: Citrus-Berry Spinach and Goat Cheese Ravioli with Balsamic Glaze:

SO.

GOOD.

Thanks for choosing spinach as the ingredient, Brandi! Eating this was so fun :-).

Dessert was a chocolate fig vitatop with peanut butter and chopped apples:

What a satisfying food day!

Tomorrow’s going to be a busy one, too … but fun busy (finally!). Among other things, Kate and I have a 7-mile run planned as part of our Brooklyn half marathon training, though HangryPants Heather has passed a rumor my way that the Brooklyn half is no longer happening??? I am off to go check into this now!

Frantic

February 5, 2009February 6, 201515 Comments

Ahhhh, how does every night end up nonstop activity?? I have to be fast for real now! I got home from school around 3:30 expecting my camera battery to have been redelivered, but even though the mail had arrived, there was no battery, grrrrrr. I tried calling the post office a million times but kept getting the busy signal, so I decided I might as well head over there anyway since I had to send off my Blogger Valentine’s Day Exchange package. I needed a snack first, so I had 1/2 cup of chopped apples and melon with cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and nutmeg (love my spices!):

ravioli-001

As an afterthought, I filled my empty ramekin with the rest of my frozen carrot cake because I was so crazed:

ravioli-003

I was running around like a crazy person trying to do 12 things at once to get ready to leave, and I knocked this poor little girl off my shelf:

picture-041

So I had to glue her back together:

ravioli-008

I actually managed to get my battery from the post office (wow, something worked out!), and then I raced back home so I could get started on my work homework (that was really supposed to get done yesterday!). Because stuff falls and breaks when I rush around, I took a mammoth spill on the sidewalk coming back. There wasn’t even any ice, so I don’t know what happened! And it was one of those falls that just keeps going and going. I kept thinking it was about to be over, and I kept going down more. By the end, I was totally splayed out on the ground with my arms stretched out in front of me. I tore my gloves and my jeans, but no skin, yessss!! The lady walking her dog behind me was horrified, but I reassured her I was ok and resumed my mad dash (will I ever learn?).

I banged out the rest of my stuff for work while also getting several things going to make my BSI recipe. I don’t have time to post the recipe tonight, but here are some visuals to whet your appetite:

ravioli-004

Cross-section:

ravioli-006

It was SO good!!! I’m thrilled about how it came out because I’ve never made ravioli from scratch before, and this particular ravioli was sizzling with flavor complexity :-). I’ll post the full recipe tomorrow night.

OK, back to my frantic whirling. Still have a few more things to do before sleep, and my bed is worried I am not going to give it enough attention tonight!

Sample day

February 4, 2009February 6, 20159 Comments

Today, I ate everything I packed … plus more! I was so munchy all day long. Both of my visits today were completely in Spanish, so I think the extra mental-energy-burning made me hungry :-).

When I ate my mid-morning orange, I decided to try something crazy that I’ve seen Meghann do: top it with peanut butter:

It was ok, but I still prefer pb on apples, bananas, and carrots!

Inginia brought in tastes of a healthy-ish sweet potato pie she made, so I had some as mid-morning snack #2:

And mid-morning snack #3:

After my lunch (kale + date curry and yogurt/fruit, exactly as planned), I also tasted a bite of Mildred’s homemade lasagna:

YUM!

At 3:30, I dug into the carrot sticks with my peanut butter and raisins:

I’ve never been a fan of celery, so this is my version of ants on a log. While I was eating it, I kept thinking of the story that my sister Emily told me about her trip to the Amazon and eating ants from the lemon trees there. I wonder if it is anything like eating raisins stuck to carrots with peanut butter?

At 4:10, I couldn’t hold out any longer and finally broke into the Quaker True Delights bar that I’ve been carrying around since Monday!

The nuts in this bar were plentiful and evenly distributed, and there were loads of cranberries … but only cranberries! Where was the rest of the berry “mix” implied by the title?

Honestly, this bar tasted kind of on the blah-side. Your regular run-of-the-mill granola bar. My favorite of the three has definitely been the dark chocolate raspberry almond bar … even though it only had one almond. I stick to my initial analysis that Quaker should drop the “almond” from the bar’s title because that would leave nothing to be disappointed about when the eater notices that it is almond-less!

Just before I left work, Inginia heated up her dinner, and I had to go investigate. As my last official bite of the work day (except for candy #6 from Belkis’ candy jar that flew into my mouth next), I had a taste of her tilapia with sofrito, garlic, and lemon juice:

I think I need to do a coworker kitchen tour. They keep bringing in foods for me to try with the most delicious seasonings! And I love days like this that are full of such a variety of flavors. It was like sample day at Whole Foods :-).

When I got home, I put together a pretty odd dinner (accompanied by sugar cookie sleigh ride tea!):

I sauteed the rest of the yellow squash (rescued from Hunter Monday night) with minced garlic, cilantro, canola oil, soy sauce, 2 tbsp of Vianni’s rice from yesterday, raisins (!!), and a fun twist: wasabi paste!

I was in the mood for spicy/sweet/salty all in one dish, but I was apprehensive about how this mishmash of random things would taste:

It was kind of ridiculously delicious.

For the side, I made an open-faced Banana Fudge Vitatop sandwich (one vitatop sliced down the middle) with a tbsp of peanut butter and sliced banana. I oven-ed the whole thing for seven minutes at 400 to make everything melty together:

I want another one right now!!

But I’m trying to restrain myself. I may need to have a bite of frozen carrot cake in a minute though :-). We’ll see!

Do you prefer days full of random bites or days full of separate and complete meals?

Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition

A Natural(ish) Parenting & Food Blog

Tag: dinner

Life on the farm

Sweet dreams

New woman

Frantic

Sample day

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: