Chained to the computer

February 22, 2009February 6, 201514 Comments

Ahhh, technology is driving me insane! Hunter has this big push to make the social work program more “current” and is mandating that all courses have an online component. But the online Blackboard has SO many bugs, and it literally took me four hours to leave a comment about one of the articles I read for class. Gah!

Anywayyyyy, my quinoa salad from Friday night made its final appearance as today’s lunch. With more soymilky chocolate caramel enchantment chai (same tea bag, new water) and a stuffed tomato on the side:

Reassembly of the quinoa salad took place in much the same way as it did yesterday: salad greens on the bottom, warmed salad “substance” in the middle, re-toasted tortilla strips on the top:

I beefed up the salad by sauteeing the quinoa mix with the scrambled egg yolk and kale stems left from last night’s BSI adventures, 2 chopped asparagus spears, and 2 chopped mushrooms. I also mixed in 1/4 chopped cucumber and sprinkled 1/2 tbsp fat free feta on top:

The tomato is stuffed with leftover filling from the Stuffed Kale Leaves I made last night:

I had a little snacky mid-afternoon:

Chopped pear and banana sprinkled with nutmeg (and eaten with a toothpick for fun):

And a banana boat — slices of banana on a sliver of toasted flax and fiber bread with a tsp of pb and a sprinkle of cinnamon:

[Insert 10,000 of the worst expletives you can imagine directed at Blackboard right now, grrrrrrrrrrr!]

For dinner, I finally got to try a substantial amount of each of my BSI: Kale creations. Three slices of Kale-Crust Pizza and three Stuffed Kale Leaves:

I had the stuffed leaves cold and reheated and re-crisped the pizza slices on a pizza stone in the oven.

Both of these were so delicious. I almost feel guilty saying that since they are my recipes, but ahh, I’m so impressed! The textures, the flavors … incredible. I always get surprised when my kitchen experiments work out. Thank goodness for the BSI — if I didn’t need to be creative and crafty, I probably would have been having steamed kale for dinner tonight!

Dessert was an assortment of little tastes:

Taste #1 was half of a small baked sweet potato with plain yogurt and cinnamon:

Taste #2 was a mess with yogurt, kashi golean crunch, strawberries, cookie crumbs, and a chopped/crumbled piece of Lindst hazelnut chocolate:

Taste #3 was Italian cookie pieces and the other half of last night’s Sassy Mango-Lime dark chocolate truffle:

And now, I’ve had it with this online homework disaster!! Sorry, Blackboard, we are going to have to part ways for the night because you’re wasting my time. Ohhhhhh well. Laterzzzz. What’s the most frustrating waste of your time?

Have a good night, and enjoy these few remaining weekend hours!

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep

February 21, 2009February 6, 201513 Comments

9.5 hours!!!

Yes, that is how much sleep I got last night! 10:45 pm to 8:15 am. Normally, I am up at 7 am with the sun, but the eye mask helped me get through that last hour (thanks, John!). I felt SO well-rested when I opened my eyes. After a bit of blog-reading, I launched a surprise breakfast attack through the rose branches:

My breakfast inspiration came from SnackFace during the morning’s blog catch-up session. She’s been going wild with pumpkin yogurt the past couple of days. Reading her posts motivated me to pull myself out of bed and whip up some of my own.

My mix included 1/3 cup of yogurt, 1/3 cup of pumpkin, 1/2 cup chopped grapes, and a sprinkle of Kashi GoLean Crunch!

I also had 1/3 of a toasted (burnt) wheat bagel with 1 tbsp peanut butter, 1 chopped date, and a sprinkle of cinnamon:

I like to eat my bagels in thirds. This is kind of a leftover habit from childhood — the slots in my toaster growing up were too skinny for a full 1/2 bagel. A third at a time is still my preference now, even though I’m sure I could easily fit 1/2 in the toaster. Vani commented on this bagel-style recently, and I thought I’d share my response with everyone! The smaller 1/3 portion not only allows me more flexibility to mix and match the bagel with other foods; it also creates a higher ratio of crunchy surface area to doughy inside. Also, because these bagels are refugees from a work event, I only have a limitied amount. Eating 1/3 bagel at a time makes them last longer. How do you like to eat your bagels?

On the side, I had soymilky decaf sweet coconut thai chai. And fun with matching dishware:

Kate came over a little after 11 for our 8-mile run, and we just couldn’t WAIT to get started (that’s sarcasm). But I found us a charming route on mapmyrun that took us through all of the best Brooklyn neighborhoods — Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights — and the weather was perfect, so our run was quite enjoyable! Stats: 1 hour and 22 minutes, 653 calories, average heart rate 151, max 161. I got home and did my favorite post-run stretch: 20 minutes of Gentle Hatha Yoga.

Lunch was fun to assemble, thanks to last night’s leftovers. I made the cut again and split the salad down the middle (how exciting that the $8 I spent at dinner gave me enough food for three meals!):

To reassemble the salad for today, I pulled all the salad greens out of the mix, including the side salad I swiped from Emily’s plate last night after she packed up her leftover wrap. (Side note: I don’t normally take food off the plates of people I am meeting for the first time, but an added benefit of blogger dinner was that my food companions already knew about my waste-nothing obsession!).

The greens went on a plate to wait. I separated and toasted the tortilla strips in a dry skillet to crisp them up again. While the chips were crisping, I also threw the salad in a pan to heat because quinoa, corn, and beans take kindly to warmth. I added some leftover Chinese food broccoli (after a quick roast to kill off any unsavory lurking bacteria) that my supervisor Heather rescued for me while carrying out her fridge-cleaning duties at work yesterday :-). Once heated, the salad went on top of the greens, and the tortilla strips went on top of everything:

(with water and more tea in the background)

Yum, this salad made excellent leftovers. And I still have more!

And of course, the afternoon also involved lunch dessert:

I had 1/2 of each of mom’s treats that arrived on Thursday, heated in the oven to get the chocolate all melty:

Along with more pumpkin yogurt that I mixed with 1/2 of this banana yogurt, also rescued from the work fridge. The sell-by date was Jan. 13, but unopened individually packaged yogurts seem to last forever. This one passed the sniff test. I topped the yogurt with a mountain of Italian cookie crumbs (still left from the work Valentine’s lunch), a piece of Blogger Secret Cupid hazelnut chocolate, and two conversation hearts:

I know there was still sugar in all of that, but it was very controlled sugar instead of random snacking. I think this may be because, according to SweetiePie‘s comment here, I have sent the sugar monster to her house! Whoops! So sorry SP, but thank you for taking him off my hands :-D.

And now, it’s back to the great blog-catch-up of 2009! I also need to go back out at some point to buy kale so I can figure out what the heck I’m doing for
Beadie’s BSI. Back later!

The sugar monster is back

February 20, 2009February 6, 20158 Comments

Ahhhh, must get a grip on the sugar craze!

My morning snack was this delicious strawberry Trio bar (once again from Tina’s Carrots ‘N’ Cake Valentine’s day prize package).

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This bar definitely tasted as good as it looks … real strawberry essence and packed with satisfying nuts and seeds and crunch: picture-026

In addition to my soup and yogurt, Myrna gave me some of her mangu (salted mashed plantains) and fried cheese, yummmmmm:

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And then, because there’s always something to celebrate at my office, I had three slices of angel food cake with thick thick chocolate fudge icing and chocolate-covered strawberries:

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And that totally set me off on a sugar binge for the rest of the afternoon! Before my visit, I had a Riesen and two big lollipops:

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And after my visit, I ate the grapes I packed and the rest of Heather’s skittles:

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Again, I need to get a grip. Hopefully all the sleep I get this weekend with my new eye mask will help bring back my sanity and self-control!!

Now, I’m off for a mini-blogger dinner with two lovely ladies: Emily of Super Caloric Chalk Dust and Vani from Fit for Free. You can be sure you will hear all about the meal when I get back!

Who has battle tips for fighting the sugar monster??

Ethically sound

February 19, 2009February 6, 201512 Comments

Yes, today was a day of ETHICS. My class had a guest speaker (aka the professor did not want to come in) to talk about ethics in social work for two hours, and then I had to go to a mandatory workshop for another two hours that also happened to be about social work ethics. I love when my days are so scintillating and jam-packed with variety. Ummmmm …

Anyway, I had a cup of green grapes during class at 11:30 to hold me over until lunch at 1:00 (the workshop didn’t start until 2:00). The girls and I (there are only five of us in this grad program) ate together and bemoaned the loss of our afternoon. In addition to my cup of coconut-ginger soup, I helped Emily finish the last 1/2 cup of her Hale and Hearty chicken barley soup:

Today’s yogurt had 2/3 cup yogurt, 2 tbsp pumpkin, 1/2 chopped apple, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cardamom, and a sprinkle of golean crunch:

I had dessert during the workshop: an orange, a Starburst from Lisa, and some m&ms from Emily:

And then I ate this honey graham zbar from Tina’s Carrots ‘N’ Cake Valentine’s day prize package (Thanks, Tina! You sent so much that I think I’ll be thanking you every day for the rest of the year :-D):

I ate the bar because I was a little bit hungry but mostly because I was bored. And then Emily couldn’t finish her m&ms, so I helped. Because I’m in a helping profession, and it was the ethical thing to do:

We got out of the workshop a little bit early around 3:45, and I stopped at Union Square on the way down to Brooklyn so that I could get dinner part 1: oatmeal for $1 at Jamba Juice. I decided I’d had enough sugar for the moment, so I got the banana oatmeal with no brown sugar crumbles:

I considered waiting until I got home to eat the oatmeal, but it was cold and windy out and the oatmeal was hot. In other words, I inhaled the whole cup while walking the two long blocks from University Place to Sixth Ave. This oatmeal is very stick-to-your-ribs-y, just the way I like it. (Vani, you should definitely give it another shot because it hasn’t been watery for me either time!)

There were two exciting packages waiting for me when I got home. First, my free sample of Quaker mini delights arrived! I love free things:

But even more exciting was this care package from my mama!! In addition to two of her homemade Valentine’s treats, she sent two eye masks from my stepdad. I am soooooo going to be able to sleep late this weekend :-D.

Mom’s treats included a chocolate-drizzled oat bake and a chocolate-drizzled kitchen sink muffin heart:

I’ve been anticipating this package ever since she sent me these gorgeous pics of the treats just out of the oven earlier this week:

Thanks for brightening my week, mom! I’ll be thinking of you as I eat these :-D.

Dinner part 2 was a bit of a repeat from last night. I had just over 1/2 cup of heated “pumpkin plus” puree with a toasted morningstar Asian veggie patty:

Are you wondering what’s in the background?? Yes, it’s dinner part 3: the dark chocolate-covered orange slice that Brandi sent as part of my BSI: Spinach prize!

So to review, I ate a lot, learned about appropriate social work behavior, and helped a friend. All in all, an ethically sound day…. Were you ethical today?

I’m off to go finish up some work homework and get into bed. I know I’m behind on blog- and comment-reading, but I will catch up this weekend, I promise.

Also, make sure you check out the amazing granola that is up for grabs at Mon’s Apetit!

Supporting roles

February 18, 2009February 6, 201510 Comments

In addition to the lunch and snacks I packed today, several supporting food items deserve appreciation and acknowledgement for getting me through! It started with a thick chunk of crunchy chocolate chip cookie that I discovered in one of the kitchens while filling my mug with tea water this morning. The cookie chunk became my 9:10 am snack:

My orange came out to greet the world (and my mouth) at 10:30, and lunch took place at 12:30. As an intermediate course (or 3!) between my packed soup and yogurt, I enjoyed (seriously enjoyed) some of Mildred’s Chinese food broccoli:

I love plain steamed broccoli, but there’s just something irresistible about how it’s done in a Chinese restaurant …

Myrna came along with her shrimp (!), beans, and rice, so I had some of that, too:

And several (again, several = at least seven) pieces of Jessica’s cantaloupe:

Then, Rosalie came straight to my desk with a box of Ghirardelli chocolates (!!) and gave me first dibs. I took one of each kind:

They went into my empty tissue box because they’re wrapped and can stand to hang out for a little bit while I work through the unwrapped Russell Stover truffles I snagged yesterday. For lunch dessert, I extracted this from the tissue box:

It turned out to be dark chocolate filled with vanilla cream … yum!

At 2:30, the next round of packed snacks came up for air: green grapes and red pepper strips, just like yesterday. And also, I may have eaten my 3rd of 5 mints for the day:

The real trouble began at 3:30 when Mildred came back into the office accompanied by evil in the form of rich, freezing, creamy, sugary deliciousness:

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I had about 1/3 cup and couldn’t help but crumble a butterfingery Russell Stover chocolate (you guessed it — from the tissue box) over the top:

Ummmmm … and another 1/3 cup:

Interestingly enough, the ice cream did have a positive side effect: it satisfied me enough for the rest of the day so that I was able to resist mindlessly inhaling the Z-bar I had packed :-).

I’m running somewhat behind schedule tonight, but I do know that dinner is going to involve serious experimentation with our apartment’s fall decor (that we finally decided to swap for some springier accessories!):

Results of the experiment are forthcoming!

Things to do:

1. Caitlin is hosting a RoadID giveaway at Healthy Tipping Point, so go check it out!

2. Jamba Juice has coupons for $1 oatmeal again right here!

3. Now that Wednesday is over, do you feel like you’ve really jumped over the hump of the week? I do not …

Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition

A Natural(ish) Parenting & Food Blog

Tag: lunch

Chained to the computer

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep

The sugar monster is back

Ethically sound

Supporting roles

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