Short and sweet

January 7, 2009February 6, 2015Leave a comment

Last night’s lunch preparation with turkey soup (the last of it), yogurt/fruit, two mini muffins (just in case), carrots/green beans, and half an orange from yesterday’s office haul:

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Today’s yogurt had bits of frozen banana from Monday’s windfall, half of an apple, and three blueberries for color:

Breakfast

I was up bright and early again this morning at 5:00 for the gym! I did my favorite routine: 5-minute jog to gym, 10 minutes of arms with free weights on an aerobics step, 30 minutes with Good Housekeeping Us Weekly on the Stairmaster, 10 minutes stretching/abs, and 5-minute jog back home, at which point I put the oatmeal in the oven at 375 for 30 minutes and flew into the shower. Running with an umbrella against the windy rain on a pitch-black January morning in New York is not the best part of my day, but if it’s going to be the worst, I’m glad it’s done already!

Breakfast was a repeat with LOTS of yellow since I’m all out of colorful fruit. Grainmeal with yellow bits of more frozen banana and half of a chopped yellow apple in a sunny yellow bowl:

Topped with yogurt, cardamom, and cinnamon post-oven:

I wonder what dangerous office treats await today …

Temptation central

January 6, 2009February 6, 20152 Comments

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:

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):

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:

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:

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

January 6, 2009February 6, 2015Leave a comment

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:

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:

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:

Topped with yogurt and cinnamon, post-oven:

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:

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

Plugging away

January 5, 2009February 6, 2015Leave a comment

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:

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:

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):

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:

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

Hope you’re having a good day!

Restaurant Review: Garage

January 4, 2009February 6, 20154 Comments

Because I saved so much money by going home to MA for 10 days, I decided it was ok to splurge on a restaurant brunch with the “Comm Girls”: Q, Gina, Di, Feld, and Kate. We all studied communications together at NYU. There used to be more of us, but they’ve fanned out across the country and could not fly in from, say, Athens, GA (hi Wife!) to join us today. We ate at a restaurant in the West Village called Garage where we were serenaded by live jazz music:

I will get my complaints out of the way first:

1) This was a fixed price brunch that came with a choice of bloody mary, mimosa, screwdriver, or orange juice. I did not want any of those. I wanted tea, especially after my tragic tea-less morning. I had assumed it would be no problem to order tea in place of one of the above-listed “complimentary” beverages; after all, if they’re willing to hand out free alcohol, they would surely be willing to hand me a cup of hot water. But they were not. The tea was going to cost me $3.00! I passed.

2) The food, though yummy, was cooked in too much oil. Oil does not look pretty in photographs.

3) No substitutions were allowed. So, even though I fiercely despise potatoes, they had to be delivered on my plate in a big oily lump. I was not allowed to replace them with a few simple pieces of lettuce. Gina tried to help me with my mission of eliminating food waste, but even she could only manage a few bites.

4) When the bill came, half of us discovered that ordering our omelets with egg whites cost $2.00 extra! An egg white surcharge is standard in many restaurants; however, advance notice of the surcharge is even more standard. We felt deceived.

Onto the food:

Q and I both ordered the Farmer’s Market Omelet with egg whites. (I have nothing against egg yolks … when I cook for myself. Restaurant omelets, however, often contain lots of oil/butter and three eggs! I like my eggs one at a time, so it’s safer to order the whites when I’m out.) Description from the website: fresh-roasted zucchini, tomatoes, asparagus, eggplant, and yellow squash, tossed with goat cheese and served with brunch potatoes and your choice of toast. Yum!

The omelet came with a pile of potatoes (which we’ve discussed already), a slice of whole wheat toast (though mine only had half a slice, hmph!), and one itty bitty wedge each of watermelon and orange for garnish (but I ate them, of course):

Kate ordered the Farmer’s Market Omelet with regular eggs (not pictured), Feld ordered the Applewood Smoked Bacon & Vermont Cheddar Omelet, Di ordered the Spinach & Mushroom Omelet with egg whites, and Gina ordered the Famous French Vanilla Bean Soaked French Toast (with sliced fresh bananas and homemade chocolate sauce!):