Sources

May 4, 2009February 6, 201526 Comments

Well, one paper down!!! I still have two more to get done before I can breathe for real — one due on the 11th in honor of my 27th 17th birthday and one due on the 14th — but the worst is behind me. The hardest and most tedious part of the whole paper was compiling the bibliography. APA format has made an enemy for life.

Here’s something that made me laugh amidst all the stress:

In honor of finishing paper #1, I present you with a food bibliography of the weekend’s highlights in Expansion-format. Expansion-format does not require exact times and locations, nor does it require total inclusion of all consumed (which would be impossible, given the sheer quantity). For example, I do not need to provide you with photographic evidence of how I stress-ate through an entire bag of arugula like it was popcorn (concerning, but not particularly damaging) or through my freezer stash of Dancing Deer cookies like I found them on the black market (also concerning and decidedly less healthy) among other things.

Saturday’s breakfast: French Toast

Sources: grainy & seedy slice of bread discovered abandoned (possibly by Jennifer) on the conference room table at work last Monday; egg from Eggland’s Best event; banana from Holiday Inn breakfast buffet last Sunday mashed with PB2 from Kath

Saturday’s free treat: Tangomonium frozen yogurt with Ghirardelli dark chocolate bits

Sources: Bleecker St. location of Red Mango; Kate’s tip-off about “free tangomonium with one topping” day [Note: Using my finely tuned dessert translation skills, I decided that tangomonium = tangerine, mango, lemon. I was a fan.]

Saturday’s leftovers: Couscous chicken merguez from Thursday night

Sources: Quercy restaurant in Carroll Gardens, my leftovers, Kareen’s leftovers, Just Veggies from Just Tomatoes

Saturday’s second (pictured; 20th if we were to count unpictured) treat: UliMana raw Chia Moon Drop

Sources: UliMana, maker of the most delicious rawbutyouwoudln’tevenknowit chocolate truffles in the world; Elisabeth at Jogger’s Life who blogged about these treats and made me need some of my own.

Sunday’s snack: Apples and pretzels with homemade pineapple-coconut-ginger peanut butter

Sources: spelt pretzels from Newman’s Own Organics; green apple from Physique 57’s waiting area; red apple from work meeting last week; peanuts from Trader Joe’s, dried pineapple rings from Peeled; magic pineapple powder from Just Tomatoes [note: the powder was out of control pineappley (aka delicious) straight, but it got kind of hidden in the peanut butter, even though I used half of the package. I was disappointed.]; ginger from my cabinet; coconut from my fridge.

Also, congrats to Heather for winning the previous post’s leave-multiple-comments challenge. Heather put the pedal to the medal and left not two, not three, but five comments (plus one more that she accidentally left on another post)!

My blogging format over the next couple of weeks is probably going to be spotty and inconsistent as I scramble to get everything done by May 14. I expect to be back soon, however, with some featured meals [I’m completely phrase/format-stealing from Vani here. She knows what she’s doing!] for the week along with a run down of surprise foods that make an appearance.

What are your featured meals this week?

While I’m gone

May 2, 2009February 6, 201520 Comments

Warning: this is going to be a long post! Feel free to read it in pieces over the course of several days because I might not be back for a while (ahhhhh final papers). You can even comment multiple times if you get overwhelmed. I won’t mind 😉

Yesterday was a looooooooooooong day full of unfixable issues with families. I wish I had a magic fix-it button because some things are not fair. At least my office knows the healing powers of food. I’m way luckier than I deserve! 🙂

Before the office and after the gym, I had breakfast at home and used up some things I’ve had hanging around. I toasted the little piece of ciabatta with tomato pesto (from the sandwich leftovers Emily gave me in class on Monday) and topped it with a hard-poached EB egg (and sprinkles of cayenne and freshly ground black pepper).

On the side, I mixed the apple half I forgot to eat yesterday morning with half of a banana I had languishing in the fridge and topped it with 1/3 cup yogurt-PB2 sauce and cinnamon/cardamom:

I washed it all down with soymilky almond sunset tea and iced white peony tea.

At the gym, I did 20 minutes on the new arm-y elliptical, hips and glutes on the Cybex, and 20 more minutes on the regular elliptical, plus abs/stretching and the walk there and back. Stats: 1 hour and 8 minutes, 339 calories, ave hr 116, max 155.

First snack of the day at work was my yogurt (plus ricotta, flax, and sliced banana) which, if you can recall, I had topped with the other half of my Just Fruit Munchies from Just Tomatoes when I packed lunch on Thursday.

Because I had placed this freeze-dried fruit on top of the yogurt, half stayed crunchy and half got soft. I loved the textural variety! Plus, it got all swirly when I mixed it in:

Lunch was leftovers from my dinner Thursday night. I cooked up 1/2 cup of dry lentils to mix with the cup of couscous I brought home in order to convert it into a nutritional powerhouse. I had about 1/4 cup of the couscous-lentil mix with the little piece of salmon from Gina’s meal:

Along with a cup of the veggie stew:

So good! Leftovers are the best.

Nydia also brought in a TON of beans, rice, and pork for me to taste (made by her very culinarily-gifted mom). These containers were FULL when they arrived with Nydia this morning:

I didn’t want to put off eating the salmon because fish leftovers don’t stretch as long as other foods, so I packed up a bunch of this masterpiece to take home and shared the rest with everyone else. I also had several spoonfuls. So good! You’ll be seeing more of this soon, for sure.

Beryl wanted me to take a picture of her spicy chickpeas from the Indian restaurant, so she let me have a tasty tasty tasty tasty bite 🙂

We ate lunch during the every-other-week optional staff brown bag, so desserts also made an appearance. I had a piece of cinnamon sugar muffin, a piece of chocolate-tangerine cookie (and another piece unpictured), more muffin, and a piece of oatmeal raisin cookie:

Later in the afternoon, Belkis split an extra orange and gave half to Jessica and half to me:

And Carlos came around selling chocolate bars for his son’s school. I did not buy any, but Rosalie (aka my chocolate fairy) bought two and materialized at my desk asking which I wanted: chocolate almond or chocolate caramel. That’s right — she was offering me an entire bar! I opted for half and half, so we split and shared each bar. I had a square of each (no, not the whole thing!):

The rest is now safely in my freezer 🙂

I also ate the orange I had packed. Peeler in action:

At 4:30, one of my favorite announcements of all time came over the loudspeaker: Attention staff, the informal staff gathering in the lobby has begun! I don’t know how I wasn’t aware of this one in advance (especially after the sushi success at the last one), but it was definitely news to me! I grabbed Katty, and I think it took us negative 10 seconds to fly down the four flights of steps. Here’s what was waiting:

YES, homemade taquitos (“por favor, dos por cada persona”), fresh salsa, fruit, cheese, crackers, crudite, chips, cookies …

Here’s my first plate:

And my second plate (don’t tell!):

Check out the expertly crunchy wrappage:

I also had a slice of cheddar. It was so sharp it made my jaw ache. I LOVE good cheddar.

That was obviously dinner, but I still had room for dessert (number 3?) when I got home. I finished off my yogurt (1/4 cup), my chocolate-pb-flax egg custard (2/3 ramekin), and my last bits of Holiday Inn cinnamon bun (1/2 bun). It’s a dessert jungle!

Frostiiiiiiiiiiing:

Perfecto. I spent the rest of the night sipping tea and NOT eating any leftover pieces of Easter candy or anything … Umm, right.

And a late-night snack of 1/2 cup Kashi golean crunch with 1/4 cup soymilk and water:

I’m off to my second (and last) Physique 57 class followed by free tangomonium (thanks for the tip, Kate!). From there, I’ll be disappearing for real into a black hole of final-paper-disastrousness, probably until Monday morning. Don’t miss me too much!

What will you be doing while I’m gone?

P.S. I’m famous!

Time crunch, crunch time

April 26, 2009February 6, 201515 Comments

I had very important hotel breakfast plans this morning.

I hopped out of bed at 7:30, threw on some running gear, grabbed an expandable bag (hotel buffets and I get along very well) and went for a nice and easy jog (1.3 miles, 15 minutes, 128 calories, average heart rate 154, max 165) up to the Holiday Inn Express where my mom and stepdad were staying so I could join them for the breakfast buffet.

While there, I had a packet of instant oatmeal with 1/2 of a chopped banana and a couple splashes of skim milk. It looked so plain that I considered sprinkling froot loops on the top for color but then thought better of it and crumbled some cranberry muffin and warm cinnamon bun (thanks for the idea, Brandi!) on top.

On the side, I had an interesting egg (it almost had a pancake texture, so I bet it the egg batter had flour or something in it as a thickener) that was folded in half with velveetaish cheese inside. I unfolded, removed the cheese, and gobbled up the remaining eggcake:

The dazzling spread:

I stuffed the other half of the cinnamon bun (plus one more for luck!) into a travel cup to bring home 🙂

Yummm, I predict more cinnamon bun oatmeal on the horizon!

Obviously, the cinnamon bun was not all I brought home. With mom’s help, I stuffed the expandable bag with more oatmeal packets, mini-muffins, oranges, apples, lots of bananas, milk, and yogurts. The buffet did have hard-boiled eggs, but I passed on them since I have enough eggs already!

Once my mom and John got all packed, they drove me (and the goods) back to my apartment, popped in for a glass of white peony iced tea and some biscotti bites, and then continued on their way back up to Massachusetts. An endless trip for them (Massachusetts to Georgia and back … in the car!), but a pleasantly short and sweet visit for me 🙂

I recently (as in four days ago) realized that the final paper for one of my classes is due a week from tomorrow instead of at the end of May (panic panic panic panic), so researching for that was first on my agenda as soon as the fam took off. Of course, I kept finding other things to do, like sweep the floor. (Sweep the floor??? I NEVER sweep the floor. Obviously, I’m desperate.)

At some point, I got hungry again. I considered my new “groceries.” I’d brought four Dannon fruit-on-the-bottom yogurts back from the buffet. I don’t really like flavored yogurt, so I opened each of the containers, extracted the “plain” yogurt part, and combined all the syrupy fruit parts in one container that went into the freezer for a future project. I mixed the still-sweet-berry-tinged “plain” parts with my authentically plain homemade yogurt to decrease the sweetness and sugar content per serving.

For my first lunch, I had 1/2 cup of the resulting yogurt mix with the rest of this morning’s cranberry-orange muffin crumbs and a dollop of the PB & Co. crunch-time peanut butter that Vani “forced” me to take home from her lunch yesterday.

On the side, I had an orange:

With white peony iced tea:

A little while later, the next installment of lunch was due. I had just cooked a bunch of brown basmati rice to mix with the leftover coconut seafood curry that my mom and John brought me yesterday (I’ll be using this curry for the week’s lunches). I had about 1/2 cup of the cooked rice left, so I mashed in half of the overripe banana mom brought yesterday along with cinnamon, nutmeg, and a splash of soymilk.

I topped my banana rice pudding with a dollop of part-skim ricotta and another dollop of Vani’s pb.

And, because I was trying to do some work for school and also trying to avoid doing it, I got “hungry” again very soon. I had three little rye toasties topped with sofrito sauce and a sliced air-damaged cheese stick that mom left behind for me. Five minutes in the broiler took care of the damage 🙂 I topped my crispy sofrito-cheese toasts with freshly ground black pepper and cayenne pepper:

Then I brought a slice of healthy cheesecake out of the freezer to let thaw. Well, I actually didn’t quite let it thaw before I started in on it.

I did keep it up on the kitchen counter though, forcing myself to eat it slowly, one bite at a time, over the next hour every time I got up to do something else.

And now, I’m trying to take slow and deep breaths and tell myself that I will get all my work done in time. I feel on the verge of insanity, so a fresh air break may be in order. We’ll see.

Is your crunch today coming from food, stress, or both?

Nuts, balls, and freebies

April 25, 2009February 6, 201524 Comments

So last, night, even through I was all caked up, I managed to have one last little snack before I went to bed: the last 1/2 cup of my chocolate peanut butter frozen yogurt (unfrozen) from a couple nights ago.

So so so so so so delicious. And there’s not even anything junky in it! Maybe I need to start having chocolate peanut butter frozen yogurt at every meal …

This morning, I woke up at 6:30 even though I had time to sleep until 8. I love waking up to sunlight because it’s so easy — I just wish the sunlight didn’t arrive until at least 7:45 on weekends! Around 8, I made a too-much-cake-upset-tummy-settling bowl of oat bran:

On the stovetop, I whisked 1 egg, 1/4 cup soymilk, and 1/4 cup water over low heat until it thickened custard-style. At that point, in went 2 tbsp oat bran, 1 tbsp ground flax, cinnamon, nutmeg, 1/4 cup pumpkin, and a chopped Medjool date. Once it got “mealy,” I immersion blended to make it creamier:

Around the outside is 1/3 cup of yogurt mixed with 1 tbsp PB2 (and sprinkled with unsweetened coconut):

With soymilky celestial seasonings almond sunset tea:

After breakfast, I headed up to Physique 57 for for the first of my two free classes with the coupon that Melissa handed out at the blogger brunch last month. I was quite a bit nervous for this class because I’ve been reading the reviews of it by some of my other NYC ladies — Ashley, Diana, Dori, Missy, Sara — and they scared me with their talk of quivering thighs and name-brand designer gym clothes! But, the class ended up being much more manageable than anticipated. Granted, I had sweat running down my face and I was certainly quivering at points throughout (I was also convinced my legs would burst into flame at any moment) but always had time to recover — and no one laughed at my four-year-old gym clothes from Target 😀 The instructors were helpful, patient, and encouraging, and I really enjoyed the class. I’m going back next Saturday for #2. Thanks, Melissa!

From Physique, I headed up to meet Vani at Penn Station, where we had planned to collect Danielle from the NJ Transit for our lunch date. Collection was successful, and the three of us enjoyed a summery (apparently, there will be no spring in ny this year??) 30-ish block walk from there to Peanut Butter & Co for lunch. Now, I’ve always wanted to eat at PB & Co. … yet I’ve somehow never managed to do so despite living in the city for nearly nine years, four of which were spent within a five-block radius of the darn place!

It was so airy and bright and cute inside:

We ordered our food and then took pictures of it (though I think the best part of this picture is the random crazy child in the background) 🙂

I got a The Heat Is On sandwich with whole wheat bread, spicy pb, pineapple jam, and pieces of chicken breast:

The sandwich came with chips and carrot sticks, but I don’t like chips so I got it with extra carrots instead:

Mmm, simple on the outside but full of bite and zing on the inside. I kept offering Vani bites by accident and then forgetting she was vegan. Even though I couldn’t share with Vani, she shared some of her sampler platter with Danielle and me:

What a great deal — all 8 flavors with plenty of extra to take home! I had some on a celery stick:

And some on a melba toast:

When we finished at PB & Co, Danielle requested we make a pit stop at Tasti-D since she’d never been. While there, I had a sample of their peanut butter flavor (because there’s no such thing as too much pb!).

Vani and I spotted some balls across the street, so we raced over to get in on that action. I ordered an unsweetened almond milk tea. We posed with our treats:

Next, we made a super-exciting stop at CVS so I could buy a box of band-aids since my feet were struggling to adapt to their first flip-flop experience of the season. Once I applied about 30 bandages, we were off again … this time to the Union Square Greenmarket. Somehow, I managed to get my hands on a million samples as we strolled the grounds. I don’t know how that happened. Scoring samples is very unlike me 😛

Vani, caught in the act:

All in all, it was a super fun day full of sunshine, perfect company, and peanutbuttery food.

In your opinion, what are the three most necessary components of an excellent day?

I’m off to take a very necessary shower and get ready for dinner. My mom and stepdad are passing through the city tonight as part of their massive East coast return road trip — Providence to Atlanta and back, all driving, stopping at several points along the way to visit family and friends — and staying overnight in Brooklyn. I need to think of a good place for us to go. Hmmm …

A thousand cakes

April 24, 2009February 6, 201513 Comments

There was more work with eggs to be done this morning!

I made french toast with two slices of whole wheat bread that my coworker Jessica gave to me earlier in the week and a batter that consisted of an EB egg, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and a splash of soymilk. I turned the french toast into a sandwich with a tbsp of the spicy “south of the border” pistachio butter I made yesterday:

Salty, sweet, and spicy … my favorite combination!

On the side, I immersion blended 1/2 cup yogurt, just under 1/4 cup part-skim ricotta, 1/2 cup pumpkin, the usual spices, and one chopped date. Joining the pumpkin yogurt this morning was a tbsp of ground flax and a sprinkle of unsweetened coconut:

One at work, I broke out my Passover sponge cake and, coincidentally, Heather had brought in some farfel kugel that she had made from leftover Passover ingredients as well. Our second Passover took over the conference room. Here’s the view from my desk:

Have I mentioned that the agency where I work was started by nuns?

Moving on, I had some Jewish cake and kugel:

And then I had seconds of each:

Since I sit right there, I kept taking more teeny pieces of each all day long. I don’t even want to guess how much of that is in my belly right now!

Lunch was my last serving of the mushroom agnostuff:

And a couple of spoonfuls of Mildred’s gandules:

And a piece of her bollo, which is made of cornmeal and milk, among other things. The texture was like polenta, but the taste was more like slightly sweet cornbread to me.

And the piece of cheesecake flan that Vianni made and brought in yesterday in honor of Mildred’s birthday. I had asked her to save me a piece since I knew I would miss it!

It was amaaaaazing. I shared a couple bites with Deborah, but mostly I inhaled the whole thing.

After lunch, I headed downstairs to work on an event I had helped organize. Some volunteer moms and their children came to the agency to do an art project with our families. At the end, we had snacktime with oranges and Girl Scout cookies …

I had two plates like that … and then about four more of those little cookies in the background. Out of control, I tell you!

When I came up from the event, Mildred had put out leftovers of her actual birthday cake from her celebration at home. I know, does it ever end? 😀

It was a pineapple cake with marshmallow frosting and sugar flowers. Maybe I’ll be sick of cake someday, but it hasn’t happened yet!

When I got home tonight, I had the final piece of sponge cake (I rescued it from its solitary perch on the conference room table as I walked out of the office) with the pumpkin banana yogurt I brought to work today but never got a chance to eat. The yogurt turned the cake healthy by association.

And to end this post on a slightly healthier note, I did go to the gym this morning. I have special strength plans for tomorrow, so I focused on cardio today with 20 minutes on the Stepmill, 10 minutes on the rower, and 15 minutes on the elliptical (plus the usual jogs there and back, stretching, and abs). Stats: 1 hour and 16 minutes, 536 calories, 137 average heart rate, 174 max.

While at the gym, I did some interesting reading. Did you know that you would have to eat 11 pounds of rhubarb leaves in order to die of rhubarb poisoning? That’s word on the street, according to The Oprah Magazine. I had always kind of envisioned taking one bite of rhubarb leaf and collapsing unceremoniously to the ground. I guess I was wrong. Interesting fact #2 from the same magazine: apparently, the fatty acids that are stored in hip fat aid fetal brain development. So, ummmm, let’s get the fat flowing. Enjoy your cake!

Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition

A Natural(ish) Parenting & Food Blog

Tag: eggs

Sources

While I’m gone

Time crunch, crunch time

Nuts, balls, and freebies

A thousand cakes

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