Tag: lunch

Snowbound

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As predicted, the snow started falling this morning, grrrrrrrr. I did not go for my run and instead rushed out to do some Saturday errands (along with the rest of Brooklyn) before it got too messy. I grabbed a kitchen sink mini muffin as I left:

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The grocery store was out of control with everyone stocking up on milk and water before the big storm (eye roll), but I survived. I had to get a lot of food because I hadn’t shopped in three weeks, and I ended up only spending $30 (my self-imposed weekly food budget is $40). My purchases included: 3 lbs. McIntosh apples, pint strawberries, pint grape tomatoes, dozen eggs, crunchy natural peanut butter, yogurt for yogurt-making tonight, 28 oz. canned pumpkin, 4 navel oranges, cantaloupe, cabbage, carrots, old-fashioned oats, 2 bags fresh cranberries, nutmeg, and ginger:

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I immediately peeled and chopped the carrots into matchsticks for snacking next week, chopped the cantaloupe into chunks, and cut the green heads off the strawberries. Food is less likely to go bad when it is ready to eat at a moment’s notice :-). During all of this, I snacked on some cantaloupe shavings:

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I wanted something hot for lunch, so I arranged a bowl of leftovers from last night and reheated it in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes. Wilted salad greens topped with collard greens, baked chicken, and okra gumbo with shrimp:

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Dessert was half the container of yogurt I just bought (I only need to use half to make a new yogurt batch tonight). Ronnybrook Coconut Creamline yogurt with a chopped strawberry and nutmeg:

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OK, I’m off to start the process and take care of some other weekend things …

Walking fruitcake

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That is what I am today! This morning, someone at work very thoughtfully opened the boxed fruitcake — the conference room’s last holiday dessert item left standing — and arranged it with a knife for easy cutting and plates and forks for easy serving. I had a case of sluggish Friday food vulnerability and ended up going back for five slices over the course of the day. I don’t even like boxed fruit cake! It’s way too dry. But I kept going back for more like a zombie. Here’s a photojournal of some of the damage:

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Then, my coworker Nydia shared some of her corn chowder with me:

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Like the M&M mug in the background? The fifth-grader I see for counseling gave it to me as a Christmas gift :-). It kept my Earl Grey (and my fingers!) cozy all day long.

After the soup, Nydia offered me some fancy shaped Fritos:

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I accepted because they looked like pasta, and pasta is my favorite food. Here are my three:

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And finally, I did not eat this, but it was too pretty not to share. Rice, beans, and shrimp that my coworker Vianni cooked last night:

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It smelled amaaaaazing. Vianni said she would write the recipe down for me over the weekend, so hopefully I will be able to try it out soon.

Up next … staff holiday party!

Repeats (plus a guest chef)

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Today’s lunch was pretty much the same as yesterday’s, so I won’t go into details. One tupperware with chicken/okra, one tupperware with yogurt banana, the very last of the green beans, and a mini muffin:

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To make up for the extreme boringness of that photo, I present you with Brigitte’s Pulled Pork from her dinner earlier this week:

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My roommate Brigitte is kind of like a cross between Martha Stewart and Paula Deen. She loves to cook traditional comfort foods, and you will never see her trying something sneaky like replacing the butter in a recipe with olive oil (am I right?). If the recipe calls for 1 cup heavy cream and 2 cups granulated white sugar, that is exactly what Brigitte will use, thank you very much (I, on the other hand, would be trying to concoct some crazy skim milk-banana blend).

Anyway, my lunch today may have been boring, but it certainly succeeded in using up the very last of everything in my fridge. Tonight’s dinner will be some mystery items at my office holiday party (full report to come), and I’ll be food shopping with a clean slate first thing tomorrow morning. I couldn’t have planned it better if I had tried, and I only spent a total of $5 on groceries this week!

Breakfast

Breakfast this morning was predictable, but still delicious. The last of mom’s grainmeal, a pile of frozen banana, and some forgotten wrinkly blueberries I found in the fridge (Brigitte or Tara, if those were yours, I’ll be replenishing my produce supply tomorrow morning, and you can help yourself to what I come up with!):

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Post-oven with yogurt:

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And now that all that is taken care of … new food starting tomorrow!

Running low on color

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As you know, my mom’s turkey soup met its tragic end (in my stomach!) yesterday at lunchtime. For today’s and tomorrow’s lunches, I decided to bulk up my okra/rice/barley combo from Tuesday with more green beans and a little baggie of frozen cooked chicken (that I rescued from yet another work function a couple months back, believe it or not). Here’s everything together:

sauteeing in the pan

sauteeing in the pan

tupperwared

tupperwared

Yogurt is not worth picturing today because I’m all out of pretty! All I had left to mix in was more frozen banana, cinnamon, and cardamom. It’s delicious, but all it looks like is a mash of yellow and brown, and you don’t need to see that.

Here’s the lunch line-up of okra/chicken, yogurt/banana, green beans, 2 mini muffins, and the other half of this orange:

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Breakfast

This morning, another tragedy struck! After my shattered teapot and the elimination of food at my running club, I didn’t think it was possible. I got to the gym for my regular Thursday morning 6:30-7:15 spinning class to find that the schedule had changed while I was away! The new class is an hour-long spinning + core class with a different instructor. So sad! Maybe I can try it once classes start in a few weeks and I don’t have to be anywhere until 11. But today I am working, so I just hopped on the Stairmaster for a quick (but seemingly endless since I had been expecting spinning!) 30 mins.

Anyway, breakfast was grainmeal with lots of frozen banana bits, my last apple half, and a few dried cranberries out of desperation for color:

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I topped it with yogurt, cinnamon, and cardamom after the oven re-heat as usual:

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Restaurant Review: Blockheads (plus endless rice)

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Tonight, I met my friend Sarah (great name, by the way) for dinner at Blockheads, a Mexican restaurant on the upper east side. Mexican food is SO easy to make healthy … but it’s also easy to make very unhealthy. I was glad Blockheads was a model of the former. I ordered the “No-Dairy Burrito” — similar to my eggs vs. egg whites thinking, I am not opposed to dairy products (quite the opposite, in fact!), but you can’t control quantities when it comes to restaurant-sized servings. I’m generally a plate-cleaner, so I might as well make sure the fat I’m eating is the healthy kind.

My burrito came in a whole wheat tortilla with brown rice, black beans, and soy cheese. Because I asked the waiter to “Super-Corn it” (yeah, I felt stupid saying it then, too), it also came with guacamole, tofu sour cream, and roasted corn salsa inside. It was ENORMOUS:

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As expected, I cleared every last crumb. Candlelit cross-section:

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My burrito was delicious! Something about the tofu sour cream reminded me of ricotta, so it was almost like a perfectly rich mexican lasagna, yummmm. Sarah ordered the rice and beans burrito, but it was a little too beany for her liking.

The waiter tried to convince us that we wanted margaritas and flan, but we stayed strong and asked for the check. With the check came some mini rice pudding samples, on the house. Here are the rice puddings on a candlelit date with each other:

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Sarah’s not really a fan of rice pudding, so I ate both :-). While the pudding was a nice gesture on the restaurant’s part, it tasted suspiciously like Kozy Shack. Sarah mentioned that the last time she ate there, the complimentary dessert was chocolate pudding. Now, far be it for me to turn my nose up at free dessert … just thought it was worth mentioning that Blockheads may have a special relationship with the commercial pudding industry.

Lunch Addendum

I successfully downed every bite of the lunch and snacks I packed today (when do I not, really?), even the emergency backup mini muffins (they only lasted until 9:30 am). More importantly, though, I had another exciting day of sampling delicious Dominican food, courtesy of my coworker Belkis. She shared some of her homemade rice and beans and a bite of some type of overnight-marinated beef — probably the tastiest bite of beef I have ever eaten:

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I really need to learn how to cook this way!