Tag: Leftovers

Temptation central

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At the agency where I intern, I sit directly next to the conference room. And the conference room table is where my coworkers put all their leftover sugary holiday foods so they don’t have to keep them in their own houses. So, alllllll day long today, I was sitting next to this:

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I restrained myself and grabbed one of these to have for dessert after lunch (they are authentic Austrian chocolates that a coworker bought in Prague over the holiday, so I had to have one for cultural exploration purposes):

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I also managed to score another orange (which I brought home for use at a later time):

-)

if you can't tell, my desk calendar doubles as a placemat at work 🙂

And then, something very exciting happened while I was eating lunch! One of my coworkers (hi myrna!) had extra sancocho, a Dominican soup/stew that seems to have everything under the sun in it, so she let me sample some:

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It was sooooo good. She said the soup is thickened with a puree of plantains and pumpkin, two of my very favorite foods. I am going to have to look into how I can make this myself. Does anybody know?

As promised, I broke into my authentic four-layer Austrian chocolate ball after lunch:

dark chocolate, praline paste (!!!), more chocolate, and marzipan with pistachios (!!!)

out to in: dark chocolate, praline paste (!!!), more chocolate, and marzipan with pistachios (!!!)

And there’s more! A little bit later, Myrna (again) came around with some Godiva dark chocolate-covered almonds. I had these two:

I'm really enjoying my calendar as a photography background!

I must say that I am enjoying my calendar as a photography background.

Dinner will be along shortly …

Same old, same old

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Lunch and breakfast today were pretty much the same as yesterday, so I won’t bore you with too many details. Here’s lunch last night stacked and ready:

turkey soup, yogurt/fruit, apple, carrots/green beans

the lineup: turkey soup, yogurt/fruit, apple, carrots/green beans

Notice there’s no emergency backup snack for today. That’s because I have no evening workout planned. Yayyyy, rest day!

Pretty yogurt:

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Breakfast

Again, today’s breakfast was similar to yesterday’s (1/2 chopped banana, 1/3 chopped apple), with one slight difference: no more cherries! So I used blueberries instead:

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Topped with yogurt and cinnamon, post-oven:

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And I forgot to mention yesterday that this batch of grainmeal mom sent was also cooked with eggs and milk, so it’s got a good protein boost to it :-).

Now, you may have noticed that I rarely use a whole banana in one sitting, and you may actually be worried about all those leftover banana halves and quarters floating around (or you may not care). I am about to put your mind at ease with the most dazzling invention to ever grace the planet, a Christmas gift from my roommate Tara who has long sympathized with my plight. I present to you the Nana-Clip:

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It clips right onto the cut end of a banana, thereby preventing it from turning brown. Brilliant!

Mad dash …

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… in more ways than one!

I ended up eating both of my “emergency snack” mini muffins today around 5pm (along with a Russell Stover orange cream-filled chocolate from the box that materialized in the conference room right next to my desk) because Gina, Kate, and I decided that we would, in fact, meet for our 3.5 mile run through Central Park with the NIKE Running Club. We try to go a couple times each week, mainly because NIKE provides heaps of fresh fruit, bagels, muffins, and pastries after each run. I always stuff as much fruit as I can into my mouth (and sneakily pack more into my empty lunch tupperwares) and intercept the staff as they’re throwing out the leftover bread products so I can hand them to homeless people on the subway.

But tonight, we got bad news: no more food!!!! Gina, Kate, and I looked at each other in horror because that meant we had to run 3.5 miles, not only with no promise of food waiting at the end, but also with an hour + commute on the other side before we could get home for dinner. On the subway ride, we split an orange (also courtesy of the conference room at my work), but needless to say, I was ravenous when I got home at 8:45. But before eating, I had to prep tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch and also deal with this windfall of 13 overripe bananas I scored from a work donation:

bananas BEFORE ... not appetizing, I know

bananas BEFORE ... not appetizing, I know

bananas AFTER, chopped for freezing ... still not appetizing!

bananas AFTER, chopped for freezing ... still not appetizing!

I filled two 32 oz. yogurt containers. I know they don’t look great now, but they are going to make amazing banana bread oatmeal someday … just wait!

I had to think fast for dinner, since it was nearing 10pm. Even though I don’t have to get up at 5 tomorrow since I got my workout in tonight, I still need to be sleeping by 10:30 in order to be functional tomorrow. I stuck a dark chocolate pomegranate VitaTop in the oven for 15 minutes to get the chocolate chips all gooey, and then I sauteed half an apple and half a banana (I found some slightly less mushy pieces from tonight’s haul) in a tsp of canola oil until golden brown:

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pre-work

step 1

step 1

step 2

step 2

step 3

step 3

Everyone knows that VitaTop + yogurt + fruit = brownie sundae!!

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And now it is time for the mad dash to my bed. Good night!

Plugging away

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It’s back to the grindstone today. Thank goodness I still have a couple more weeks until class starts!

As usual, my mid-morning snack was homemade yogurt that I prepared with fruit last night. Yogurt mix-ins at the ready: 1/2 banana (1/4 mashed, 1/4 chopped), chopped small apple, cinnamon, cardamom, and vanilla extract:

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I mixed the above into a cup of yogurt and divided the mixture between two one-cup tupperware containers. The containers had a bit of space at the top still, so I added some grapes and cherries:

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snacks for Monday and Tuesday

Lunch was more turkey soup with an apple for dessert. For a mid-afternoon snack, I packed a snack baggie of green beans and baby carrots. Here it is stacked last night and ready to go to work (the mini-Luna is a back-up emergency snack, but I actually swapped it with two mini muffins post-photo):

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Breakfast:

As planned, I was back on my 5 am wake-up schedule for this morning’s workout: five-minute jog to the gym, 10 minutes of arms with free weights on an aerobics step, 30 minutes stairmaster, 10 minutes stretching/abs, and the five-minute jog home.

I had prepped this morning’s breakfast last night: a half cup of mom’s cooked grainmeal, topped with 1/4 chopped banana, the last five cherries, and 2/3 chopped apple. I put it in the fridge in an oven-safe bowl before I went to bed last night so that all I had to do was pop it in the oven for 30 minutes at 375 when I got back from the gym:

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Topped with a half cup of yogurt and a sprinkle of cinnamon this morning:

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Hope you’re having a good day!

A little too much …

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I wanted to save the rest of the turkey soup from MA to have for lunch this week, so dinner tonight was more fun with crudites! I mixed the cauliflower from home with two Tbsp of herb hummus (also from home), sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and grated homemade cheddar cheese (thanks to my cheesemaking kit):

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I roasted the cauliflower on BROIL until the smoke alarm went off, about seven minutes:

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On the side, I had about a half cup of homemade yogurt (procedure to come :-)) with blueberries and cherries:

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And another mini muffin. All together:

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Dessert was a pile of grapenut pudding:

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I actually was not hungry at all for dessert and probably should have had half as much as I did, but I’m planning to go to the gym at the crack of dawn tomorrow and I don’t want to be hungry while I’m there (and the pudding tasted too good to stop!).

Bedtime!