Tag: Experiments

Sweet dreams

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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.

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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 :-).

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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:

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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:

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

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Inside:

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I had two bites:

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

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

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

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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:

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

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With a cherry inside:

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

New woman

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Last night’s bedtime snack:

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A dark chocolate Godiva heart filled with chocolate goo!

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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:

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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:

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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:

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

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Orange:

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

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

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

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

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Jujyfruits:

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Fangs:

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And … wait for it … a chicken lollipop!!

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

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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:

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

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And my apple:

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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 (Kath 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:

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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:

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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:

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SO.

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GOOD.

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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:

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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

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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!):

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

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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:

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So I had to glue her back together:

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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:

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Cross-section:

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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

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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:

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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:

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And mid-morning snack #3:

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

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YUM!

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

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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!

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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?

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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:

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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!):

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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!

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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:

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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:

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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?

All is not lost

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** I’m bookending this post with BSI reminders since we’re getting right down to the wire! Check here for more info. If you missed my announcement earlier, the BSI prize will include, amongst other things, two boxes of the RARE Celestial Seasonings Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride tea, the best tea in the world. Are you not ridiculously excited right now??? **

I woke up around 8:00 this morning, and Erin and I set out (in her car!) to hunt down a location for our five-mile run (half marathon, here we come!). The first trail we checked was completely covered in snow and ice, but we lucked out with the second: a paved bike trail in Tibbetts Brook Park. The clear-enough-to-run portion of the trail was just over two miles long, so we ran the length and back plus did a little bit extra to make it a full five. While the trail was not completely covered in ice, we still had to “ballet run” over several slippery sections, slowing us down significantly. Stats: 57 minutes, 457 calories, 149 average heart rate, 164 max heart rate.

Back at the condo, I got started on breakfast:

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img_2776I popped two Nutrigrain waffles in the toaster and set out to develop some oatmeal pancakes! I found a packet of oatmeal in the cupboard that I recognized from the post-race goodies we received at Race for the Cure in September. I mixed the oatmeal with an egg, a splash of water, and some baking powder and baking soda. I Pam’d a pan and poured the batter in:

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Flipped when set:

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And spatula-ed the pancake into four pieces when it was done so that we each had two pancake quarters and a waffle. For the topping, I mixed some banana pieces I had saved from my mommy’s group at work yesterday with the last of Erin’s frozen blueberries and 1/4 cup plain yogurt.  A drizzle of real maple syrup and a dollop of berry jam from a local farm joined the yogurt topping:

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Delicious, if I do say so myself!

After breakfast, Erin and I continued our productive streak with more suburban car errands (yay!!). Accomplishments of the day: Erin’s car passed inspection, she successfully redeemed a Bed, Bath, & Beyond coupon, and I found another little mystery goody at Target to include as a BSI prize. Erin, the most generous hostess ever, capped this string of accomplishments with an offer to drive me allllll the way back to Brooklyn (saving me a 90-minute subway ride!), including a stop at Fairway, my favorite grocery store in the world!! If you live in this city, you know that the combination of a car + Fairway is pretty much a New Yorker’s dream come true. I only wish I hadn’t had so much food still left from last week in my apartment — if I had more fridge/freezer space, I would have taken advantage of the car to buy enough groceries for the next six months!

Once we arrived at Fairway, I wanted to capture the beauty of this foodie heaven with a photo, but when I tried to turn my camera on, nothing happened! I may have actually said the f-word (something I never do!) when I realized I had forgotten the battery/charger in the wall back up at Erin’s house. Ahhhhhhhh!! After all of that productivity, I was going to have to go all the way back to Yonkers with her to collect the battery and then take the subway home. DISASTER. Regardless, we forged on with the shopping. Expecting that I wouldn’t be home until at least 6:30 pm, I did my favorite trick of turning samples into lunch. I had cheese, mini pumpernickel rounds with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and one of the best samples I’ve ever encountered: magic pop rice cakes with freshly ground (still warm!) almond butter, peanut butter, and honey roasted peanut butter. I piled the nut butter onto three different magic pop pieces and may have had approximately 1/2 cup of freshly ground goodness before I was through. Obviously too much, but I was feeling stressed and it was soooooooooo delicious.

Post-shop, Erin and I made the quick drive from the store to my apartment so I could at least drop everything off. Once at my apartment, however, roommate Brigitte saved the day– first with an offer to let me use her camera and second with the genius idea to transfer the memory chip from my camera into hers (which seems like an obvious enough solution, but I had been thinking I’d have to wait to get my battery to get all of my pictures back!). Erin, as if she hadn’t been generous enough already, promised to overnight ship the battery and charger back to me on Monday. So all is not lost :-).

I had a successful shop at Fairway (where it is impossible to have an unsuccessful shop). I got a gallon of skim (for yogurt), 5 bananas, 3 lbs Fuji apples, a big bag o’ oranges, Medjool dates in honor of my BSI choice, a baby butternut squash, and tons of grains from Fairway’s bulk bins — steel-cut oats, quinoa, millet, yellow corn grits, and raw wheat germ:

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Total cost: $27. Gooooooooooooooooooooo Fairway!!!

I’ll be back later with dinner. In the meantime …

** SUBMIT YOUR BSI entries!! Deadline is end-of-day Sunday (aka TOMORROW), and I will announce a winner Monday evening. Check here for more details. I’m so excited to see what you all come up with that I bought that container of dates at Fairway so I can try some of the recipes next week :-). **