Tag: Leftovers

Clickity clack clickity clack

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That’s the sound of me typing all day long. Can you hear it?

I’ll give you one guess about the identity of my breakfast …

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Yes, another Fitnessista breakfast cookie! This one was a little bit unconventional, as it involved me repurposing one portion of last week’s pumpkin gingerbread crockpot oats. Last night, I stirred together a cup of the oats, 2 tbsp nonfat powdered milk, 1 chopped square of Lindt hazelnut chocolate, and 1 tbsp peanut butter. It was super wet because the oats were already cooked, so I put it in the freezer overnight and let it thaw for about 20 minutes this morning before I ate it, topped with cocoa powder and healthy cream cheese icing 😀

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With soymilky black tea and extra icing on the side:

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More clickity clack clickity clack until I got hungry around 11:30. Lunch was a hodgepodge of fun treats:

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A bit of Rooms’ black bean salad from linner yesterday mixed with a spoonful of salsa and topped with plain yogurt and pumpkin seeds:

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And an approximately 2 tbsp mix of “overflow” pumpkin gingerbread crockpot oats and yogurt topped with cardamom:

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And the best part: two baby raisin walnut toasts, one with homemade cashew butter (left) and one with homemade almond butter (right):
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That’s right, last night I attempted production of my own nut butters!

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, especially after drooling over Heather’s recent nutty creations. Unfortunately, I think I need to concede defeat to my Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus and accept that I just don’t have the proper equipment for making nut-only nut butter. You can see the crumbly texture in the pictures above — which I love — but these butters are more the press-on-and-smush-down sort than the spreadable sort.

I know I could have added oil to pull things together, but I really didn’t want anything in there except for the nuts themslves! I finally compromised by adding a tablespoon of peanut butter (with peanuts as the only ingredient) to each batch, and the addition made my butters passably smushable — without the extra pb, they were just dry powders! Anyway, crumbliness aside, my homemade nut butters/powders are still delicious and were an excellent topping for the raisin walnut toasts this afternoon.

I was still hungry around 1, so I made a quick mix of 1/4 cup pumpkin, 2 tbsp healthy cream cheese icing, and 2 tbsp plain yogurt — topped with 1 tbsp vanilla-almond granola and 1 tbsp toasted pumpkin seeds:

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And now it’s back to the books.

I have two questions for you today:

1. Are you inside or outside?

2. Does the work ever end???

Restaurant adventure; kitchen misadventure

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As mentioned before, I was about 40 minutes late to yesterday’s lunch. Ack! I am generally such a prompt person that I was almost in physical pain watching the minutes tick by as I waited for trains and connections and door malfunctions. But the crew patiently waited for me, even though it meant we didn’t eat until nearly 3:30!

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Seven of us from college met for this linner because Rooms and Elise were in town for the weekend from DC and Pamela came up from Delaware. Of course, the typical Brooklyn four were in tow: Gina, Kate, Kareen, and me.

In honor of Pam’s vegan-ness, we met at Angelica Kitchen, a vegan restaurant in the East Village that invests in sustainable, local agriculture whenever possible. For my full review of the restaurant — including everyone’s meals! — check under the Reviews tab or right here. For this post, I’m going to stick specifically to what I ate to keep things from getting out of hand. There was a lot of food going around!

I started with a bite of Pamela’s whole grain bread and its accompanying carrot-ginger spread. This bread was delicious, moist, and filling. If you look closely, you can even see the individual grains:

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I had a couple more bites, too, as the meal wore on.

Side note: You may be wondering how I was not ravenous by 3:30 after running 9 miles and buring 850 calories three whole hours earlier? The answer is easy: I made up my calorie deficit in advance of the run with all of my wild shenanigans on Friday! I was worried I might never be hungry again, but some pangs did start to kick in just as the food arrived, phew.

I can confidently say that my meal was the best out of everyone’s! I ordered Man of Lemon-cha: charmoula baked tempeh with cilantro, cinnamon, lemon, paprika, cayenne, and cumin; served with cashew-orange sauce and a millet-teff mix; accompanied by minted cucumber spears, roasted sweet potatoes, and green beans.

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Oh. my. goodness. Everything about this meal was a success!! Perfect flavors, textures, portions everything :-D .

Plus, how can you go wrong with these little guys?

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In the words of the famous VeggieGirl, “SWEET POTATO!!!”

I had a couple little samples and bites of the other girls’ dishes — again, you can see them in full on the reviews page — including two bites of this yummy sweet cornbread Rooms ordered:

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For dessert, Pamela, Kate, and I split two cakes between the three of us.

First was the coconut cheesecake with coconut crust and carob sauce:

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We all agreed that the bites with carob sauce were the best! I loved the thick crust, but I was not crazy about the overly gelatinous filling.

Second was the vanilla layer cake with strawberry filling and hazelnut frosting:

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We all loved this cake! Especially the hazelnut frosting:

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I definitely made sure that no crumbs were left lingering on the dessert plates :-).

Dinner last night was the rest of Wednesday’s packed lunch, finally! I wasn’t sure that I would even get hungry again, but I did … and my leftover lunch portions offered the perfect satisfaction. I heated the cup of spinach-chickpea dal, topped it with two spoonfuls of plain yogurt, and spinkled extra cayenne, cinnamon, and cardamom:

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Dessert was my last serving of “pumpkin plus” yogurt. I froyo-ed it and topped it with a some chopped date pieces:

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I also had a failed basil-spice meringue kiss:

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It tasted yummy, but I can’t hide the fact that something went terrible wrong in the baking process. I’ve made meringues before with a similar technique, but somehow all the sugar actually melted out of the poofy meringues while they were in the oven, resulting in trails of “caramel” all over the parchment and some seriously deflated kisses! Before and after:

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This was going to be my BSI: Basil entry, but oh well. You win some, you lose some!

What have you won this weekend?

A good excuse

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Ohhhhh my goodness, this morning feels like 10 years ago. Thanks for sending so much running energy my way. I really felt it while I was out there!!

Before the run, I had to make sure I was sufficiently fueled of course 😀

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Breakfast was 2/3 toasted sun-dried tomato bagel topped with the 2 tbsp peanut-butter-pumpkin-roasted-red-pepper hummus and 1.5 black bean-salmon patties that I have been carrying around and trying to eat for lunch since Wednesday. On the side, I had 2/3 chopped apple (rescued from work yesterday!) with cinnamon and soymilky almond tea from last night. I actually got two more decently strong pots out of that one tea bag!

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And ok, ok, I couldn’t resist having one more little bite of Brigitte’s no-bake cookies and cream birthday cake log:

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And then it was time for the run!! (Well, it was time for the run about 75 minutes later — digestion is key.)

Kate and I had lunch plans pretty soon after the run, so I worked out a route for us that would streamline the process, allowing her to run the 2 miles from her apartment to mine to pick me up and avoid any subway drama. The weather was absolutely gorgeous. I can’t believe we went from snow to tank-top weather in under a week!

From my place, we did a loop of the park and ran through industrial Brooklyn (breathtaking) to Red Hook. Kate tried to stop and walk after the park loop (to be fair, she had already run nearly 6 miles by this point), but I told her she wasn’t allowed and we would be beginning our downward slope any minute. She powered through like a champ, and her feeling of death became a distant memory.

Kate split off around my mile 6 to run home, and I continued on through the projects and exhaust-filled highways to more charming neighborhoods (including my own) to complete my own 9 . .. or 9.4 to be exact :-D. Yay, I’m so proud that I did it all!! Things got so much easier after the first 4 miles, and mile 7 was actually the easiest of the bunch. I remember thinking that I felt like I could run the whole things three times over and that the half marathon in May would be no biggie! That feeling only lasted for a mile 7, though. The last 2 miles were tough, but I ran by a lot of smiley babies (welcome to Saturday morning in the Slope) that kept me going. Stats: 1 hour and 36 minutes, 848 calories, average heart rate 157, max 178.

When I got home, I settled in for some Gentle Hatha #1 from yogadownload. Wow, yoga never felt so good! I’ve done this class several times, and this is the first time I wasn’t watching the clock and waiting for it to end. And then I ran around like a mad woman trying to get ready and ended up 40 minutes late for the lunch (details to come), whoops!! I used to be so prompt, but at least I had a semi-decent excuse.

What makes you late?

Patty-cake

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But not the kind of cakes I usually fall prey to at work, thank goodness!

Mid-morning snack was more “yogurt of the week,” aka fresh pumpkin yogurt with every fruit/spice under the sun and golean crunch:

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Really one of the most delicious combos in the world. Anything with yogurt and golean crunch (especially when it’s had the chance to get soggy) takes the cake, HA.

And then came the real cakes! Three (yes, three — need to get my apple in somehow!) Sweet ‘n’ Spicy Black Bean-Salmon Patties:

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Lunch was super short on fresh produce since I have none in the house (since I basically decided I didn’t need to grocery shop over the weekend and did not adequately think through the week!), but my coworkers helped me out as usual. In addition to my wrinkly roommate grape tomatoes, I also ate the tomato slice from Myrna’s sandiwich and some of Belkis’ steamed veggies:

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Dessert was a special treat from the tissue box! A dark chocolate caramel Ghirardelli Square from Rosalie:

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And then, throughout the afternoon, I stumbled upon dessert numbers 2 through 5 because Belkis refilled her candy jar and I took a candy with me for moral support each time I needed to leave my desk and/or brave the artic chill outside:

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(Don’t be fooled by the mini-pictures. Those are some sizable candies!)

Mid-afternoon snack was another desperate attempt for produce/protein. I had 3 Kavli crispy thin crackers (in pieces) with a combo of pumpkin, roasted red pepper hummus, and peanut butter that I whipped together from the ends of containers last night (there are about 2 tbsp in that little cup):

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And a later mid-afternoon snack (or another throughout-the-day snack, as it turned out) of toasted pumpkin seeds, two dates, and two prunes

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Which I followed with a little spoonful (maybe 1/2 tbsp) of office peanut butter (aka crunchy skippy):

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I don’t know what the deal was today — I was so munchy! My lunch didn’t do its job, and I don’t have all the produce on hand for snacking like I usually do. What was I thinking?? I don’t have time to go to the store, so I’ll have to scrounge around for something extra tonight.

My final snack of the work day was this 100 calorie candy pack that’s also been hiding in my tissue box:

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I was excited about this pack because Oreos (or any cream-filled sandwich cookie, really) are my favorite type of cookie. But while these candies were filled with that unique chocolate-cookie crunch, the most critical component of the cookie was missing: the cream!! Serious oversight on the part of the 100 calorie people. If that chocolate coating is supposed to stand in for the cream, it does a poor, poor job of it. An Oreo is not an Oreo without the cream.

When I got home, I started rummaging through all my emergency “shelf-stable” food to see what I could rustle up as a lunch supplement for the rest of the week. I’m excited about what I made … but you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the debut ;-).

Dinner was the last of my asparagus, steamed, with a piece of baked sweet potato and a toasted morningstar farms Asian veggie pattie (and a sprinkle of my homemade parmesan of course):

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Mmmmm, love those patties!

Dessert was a return of my favorite combo: 2/3 cup golean crunch (the rest of the box) mixed with 1/2 cup of yogurt. I let it sit and “marinate” while I cooked the lunch food and dinner, so it was perfectly tender when I finally got around to it:

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Ahhhhhh, so good! I could eat Kashi GoLean Crunch for every meal and still be such a happy camper.

Is there a food that you can imagine eating at every meal without getting bored?

No rest for the snowy

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Just as I predicted this morning, today was business as usual (40 minute subway delay aside, grrrrr). By the time I got to work, I didn’t even have time for my usual snack before running out for my first visit at 10:45! I dove into lunch when I got back around 12:30.

The other half of yesterday’s quesadilla, deconstructed :-):

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And a cup of fresh pumpkin yogurt (also with apples, banana, dates, prunes, golean crunch, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, cloves — I clearly went a little ingredient-happy, but it was delicious!):

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The end of my baby carrots (still left from last week’s work meeting) and a tbsp peanut butter:

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Lunch dessert was one prune and one date (saved the others for dinner):

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And a big strawberry lollipop to power me through the freezing, windy 20-minute snow- and slush- walk to my afternoon visit:

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Sadly, the mom was not home. All that sloshy walking for nothing! Except the exercise, I suppose. Maybe it balanced out the lollipop?

I was legitimately hungry from all the “exertion,” so I had this bar around 3:30:

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Again, it was tasty … but too processed for me to want to go out and buy it for real.

At about this point, I realized I had not planned so well for the day. I think I was kind of expecting something to get cancelled along the way (don’t know why since nothing ever does around here), but no go! The only thing that got cancelled was the Monday parents’ group with Inginia, during which I usually partake in one of Inginia’s scrumptious group lunches! With no group and my evening class still on at Hunter, I was definitely short a meal.

I contemplated my food planning failure while chewing on this fruity tootsie:

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I came to the conclusion that there was no way around having to spend some money, which I figure is ok since I only spent $5 on groceries this week anyway (a gallon of milk for yogurt and a can of black beans for the BSI) — though I might need to tend to that now that I see how low on food I really am!

Anyway, here’s the dinner I managed to put together for class:

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I paid $4 for that baby cup of white bean, broccoli, and sun-dried tomato soup from Hale & Hearty:

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Plus my weekly manchego cheese samples from Butterfield Market:

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An apple from home (my last one — what will I do tomorrow??):

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My other prune and date and two Tate’s Bake Shop chocolate chip cookie pieces (also samples from the market!):

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And somehow, Emily couldn’t finish the oatmeal raisin cookie that she brought to class as her dinner, so she let me do the honors.

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Thanks, Emily!

And that’s that! I did a bit more nibbling tonight as I prepped tomorrow’s lunch (think big spoonfuls of pumpkin yogurt and golean crunch falling into my mouth by accident …) which I hope gets me through the day without necessitating any more extra expenditures!

Here are some things that are more noteworthy than my evening nibbles:

1. Spiceaholic at One Bite at a Time is hosting this week’s BSI. Make sure to visit her so you can find out the new secret ingredient! And congrats to Becca for winning last week’s contest with her Black Bean & Avocado Cornmeal Muffins!

2. Comment for a cause! All you have to do to contribute to this food drive is leave a comment for the very generous athlEAT here.

3. Finally, go win some more bars with Strawberry Shortstuff. She has tons to give away!!

Do you ever get tired of free stuff? I do NOT! 😀