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!

Pretend wealth

May 1, 2009February 6, 201517 Comments

Last night was the last night of April. Do you know what that means?? The last night of Brooklyn Restaurant Week Month! Gina, Kate, Kareen, and I obviously had to take advantage. I love restaurant weeks because they let me pretend I can afford to live in this city. We chose Quercy, a French restaurant in Carroll Gardens. The decor was right up my alley, and I fell in love as soon as we walked in.

The mismatched chairs were my favorite part.

Unfortunately, despite the empty room and open, airy space, we were seated in a cramped corner between the bar and the kitchen, almost completely cut off from the giant window in front. Weird. Did not make for good picture lighting, as you’ll see. I could have asked to move, but I didn’t have the energy.

Unlike our previous restaurant week selection that offered the entire menu, Quercy presented a special “limited” menu for our discount dining. Despite the smaller menu, however, the options available did not disappoint.

While we perused the menu, our server brought out sourdough bread (!!!) and butter. I had five teeny tiny pieces (including the end — the best part!) with butter. The five pieces together probably amounted to about one normal restaurant-sized hunk.

We had very little selection variety in our dinner choices last night, which suited me quite well because it meant that I had fewer pictures to take 🙂

Gina and I both ordered the French feta salad which came with huge chunks of feta (obviously), lettuce, cucumber, and olives. I had my French vinaigrette on the side and used about half.

Kate and Kareen ordered the goat cheese in puff pastry which involved a luscious (because it really was) disk of goat cheese sandwiched between the pastry layers, all atop a bed of greens.

For the main course, Kareen and I ordered the couscous chicken merquez (I had been debating between that and the salmon), a Moroccan dish that involved a mountain (literally) of couscous with a few raisins in the mix, chicken pieces (maybe a full quarter), and lamb sausage:

But that was not it! On the side, came an enormous tureen of vegetable stew with carrots, zucchini, yellow squash, parsnips, chickpeas, and more!

I knew I had to make the cut immediately before I accidentally ate 12 meals in one sitting. Luckily, there were many dishes involved in the serving strategy, so I was able to shift about 2/3 of the couscous and half of the meat onto a separate plate to remove it from my line of eating. Here’s the portion I ate, all mixed together.

Although couscous chicken merguez will not be entering a beauty pageant any time soon, the flavors were delicious and spicy and unique. I was a fan (and still am, considering how I’ll be eating it for the next week!).

Kate and Gina both ordered the salmon with roasted bell pepper sauce. The presentation of this dish was much more visually appealing with all the colors.

I had a bite of Gina’s salmon. Tasty as it was, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t experienced before. I made the right choice!

I had tons of leftovers, obviously, but so did Kareen, who generously offered to send hers home with me, too. And Gina had a three-bite-piece of salmon left that she couldn’t possibly fit into her stomach, so we added that to my stash as well. Thanks, ladies! Kate joined the clean plate club last night. I’m very proud 🙂

The server probably thought I was crazy (rightfully so), taking home everyone else’s leftovers, but I explained that I was a penniless grad student. The highlight of the night was when I peeked into my massive to-go bag on the way out and found half a loaf of sourdough bread in there, too! I thanked the server, and she told me that it would have gone to waste anyway and she appreciated that I wanted to use everything. That alone is enough to make me want to go back!

At that (stuffed) point, we remembered (or were reminded by the server) that we had yet to eat the dessert that came with our meal! Kate, Kareen, and I all went for the apple tart tatin, another beauty pageant reject:

It was ok, and I ate the whole thing of course, but I have to say that I have tasted better. In fact, I’ve baked better before! My French pastry skills, which are nil, should not exceed those of a French restaurant.

Gina, the rebel, went against the grain (although no one was surprised. in college, Gina’s nickname was the divine priestess of chocolate. mine was the divine priestess of fertility, ha. can you guess why?) and ordered herself the gateau au chocolat, which was a different story all together. I couldn’t stop taking pictures.

That chocolate sauce was like fudge, it was sooooo thick.

I don’t know how Gina managed to eat this whole thing (well, maybe I do), but manage she did! I did my fork Olympics on the plate at the end to make sure that every grain of perfection served its purpose.

Overall, the restaurant was a mixed bag, but more good than blah — Quercy came through where it counted. I would eat there again but only with my wealthy benefactor because I would want to choose something from the real menu!

Where is the first place you would go with your wealthy benefactor?

Why is that thing green?

April 30, 2009February 6, 201522 Comments

As promised, the rest of the recycled balls came into play this morning for breakfast.

I had a small but loaded breakfast cookie. The overnight mix contained 1 tbsp ground flax, 1 tbsp oat bran, 2 tbsp extra thick rolled oats, 1/2 mashed banana, 1 tsp south-of-the-border pistachio butter, and 1 chopped Hershey’s Kiss. This combination made for perfectly-textured dough this morning:

I frosted the cookie with 1/3 cup PB2 healthy cream cheese icing and topped it with 1/4 of Sunday’s Holiday Inn cinnamon bun:

And, of course, the remaining balls:

I brought my cookie to the couch to eat it with the almond sunse/black tea, the white peony iced tea, and The Today Show. I forgot about the apples up on the table and then realized I wasn’t actually hungry for them. They went back in the fridge for tomorrow.

I had to be up at Hunter at 9 again this week for a workshop on government benefits. I thought I was being so clever bringing my laptop up there so I could blog at the same time … but the wireless was blocked in that room!!! The nerve. They actually want us to pay attention. Hmph.

During the workshop, I ate an orange. If you’re not sure what an orange looks like, I ate one on Tuesday, so you can feel free to backtrack if you need the visual reinforcement.

For lunch, I had the last half cup of Thai seafood coconut curry/grilled veggies from Hunter’s lobby mixed with the half cup of chicken noodle soup that also came my way Monday night at Hunter, courtesy of Emily:

You might think that’s a weird combination, but it was actually delicious. I should be using coconut milk more often in my life. Too bad Turtle Mountain ignored my request for samples to review. I could have had an official Thai coconut milk curry vs. Turtle Mountain coconut milk curry face-off. Their loss.

The exact same yogurt/ricotta with flax, Pb2, and banana that I had yesterday followed the soup.

Speaking of samples, I received a package from the more agreeable Just Tomatoes today. They sent me a variety of their products to try, the most exciting being pineapple powder … which seems like PB2 in pineapple form but better than PB2 because it’s pineapple and it has absolutely nothing added. I can’t wait to try it out. Pineapple cream cheese icing, anyone? Ohhhhhh, that would be SO good on carrot cake. But I’m getting carried away.

I opened up the mixed fruit munchies packet and used half for tomorrow’s yogurt (I’m excited to see how the freeze-dried fruit absorbs the moisture from the yogurt overnight) and half for an afternoon snack with a splash of soymilk:

Mmmm, so good. Especially the pineapple flavor that completely pops. I had a few dry, too — also delicious!

Once I recovered from the freeze-dried fruit lovefest, I headed out to the gym. Thursday is usually my outdoor running day, but running has been causing me too much pain lately and I opted for the gym machines instead (this made me sad because the weather was perfect for running). I did 30 minutes on the Stepmill, 15 minutes on the rower, and 15 minutes on the elliptical plus a bit of abs and stretching. I walked to and from the gym and did not jog because, again, jogging hurts! Stats: 1 hour and 40 minutes, 517 calories, 118 average heart rate, 162 max.

On the way home, I stopped into Union Market for samples of marinated mushrooms, Piave cheese, and these two little desserty treats:

That chocolate chip brownie piece was crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. And sooo chocolate-y:

I was hoping the green thing would be marzipan-related, but it was just lime cheesecake. Still, I enjoyed every morsel.

What’s the most surprising cheesecake flavor you’ve ever encountered? Did you eat it?

Recycled balls

April 30, 2009February 6, 201515 Comments

(What kind of blog is this anyway?)

Before we get into the sloppy seconds, let’s start at the beginning …

Yesterday evening, I met up with my favorite Brooklyn bloggers — Vani, Emily, and Diana — at Hanco’s, the latest go-to spot when in need of a ball-fix. The ladies all ordered sandwiches, but I got this beauty of a salad:

My salad contained lettuce, cabbage, cucumber, carrots, grape tomatoes, and mint leaves and was topped with roasted peanuts and fried red onion (though now that I think about it, I’m not sure the salad had any onion at all) with Vietnamese vinaigrette on the side. For $2 extra, I got some tofu on it. I know $2 is pricey for a few little slivers of the ‘fu, but given that the salad was only $4,50 to begin with, I decided I could splurge.

Obviously, we weren’t going to go to Hanco’s and not order the balls. I got an unsweetened (except for the natural sweetness from the fruit) lychee black tea. And then I arranged a color-coordinated photo shoot for it.

We also enjoyed a high level of success with the self-timer:

Once we had worked out way through the teas, Diana came through with themostamazingcookiesever, maple-nut oaties that Heather had sent her.

I had three. Each one looked like this and tasted like perfection:

And then came the ball recycling. Diana had some balls left in her cup, and I wasn’t about to let them slip unappreciated into a landfill! I brought them home, gave them a little rinse, and set a few up in a snack for last night (and saved the others for a more exciting job this morning).

Last night’s snack involved yogurt, ricotta, and PB2 (ummm, is that the third time I ate this yesterday??) with a ball smiley face and overzealous cinnamon freckling.

There were some other exciting things that came home with me.

Diana brought her Newman’s Own mints for me because, while she is partial to gum, I obviously love these mints and eat them nonstop. Thanks, Diana! My supply was running low, but I am no longer anxious about that. Phew.

The rest of the loot is from Emily. I won her book giveaway last week, so she brought my prize to dinner … along with some other fun goodies, like a beautiful big envirosax bag (super handy for an expansion expert such as myself!) and some fun bookmarks. Plus, check out her stationery! Can you tell she’s a teacher (though not for long!) or what?

Clearly, reading is sweet!

What else do you think is sweet? Or, if you’re feeling feisty, when are sloppy seconds ok with you?

Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition

A Natural(ish) Parenting & Food Blog

Tag: Leftovers

Sources

While I’m gone

Pretend wealth

Why is that thing green?

Recycled balls

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