Tag: lunch

Influence

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I’m pretty sure that what I’m doing right now would qualify as BUI.

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I joined Gina and the rest of the NYU girls tonight for a happy hour in honor of Gina paying off one of her many undergrad loans. (Congratulations, Gina!) I only had one (very strong) cosmo, but I took an allergy pill before I left to head up to the bar … where I proceeded to fall asleep more than once (which actually isn’t that unusual for me). Coming home, I came closer to missing my stop on the subway than ever before — I somehow fell into a deep sleep at the stop right before mine and didn’t even realize that the train had stopped again, even though my eyes had reopened by this point. And now I’m nodding off. But I’m going go try to get this out first!

Everything is business as usual over here (minus the stress! and plus some alcohol, apprently). For snacks during class, I had an Eggland’s Best pre-peeled hard boiled egg, 1/2 serving of Newman’s spelt pretzels, and 1/2 a chopped apple.

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I did not end up turning my paper in at class today because I couldn’t access gmail to download and print it! Gmail clearly had it in for me. The professor said it was fine and I could turn it in at our last class next week even though it was really due today. She doesn’t do email, so she’d rather I just wait and do it in person. All that rushing for nothing! At least I don’t have to worry about it anymore.

During group advisement after class, I had the rest of my “Ruthie Soup” from Monday for lunch with 1/8 chopped avocado and homemade parm:

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I also had two of my homemade raw macaroons 🙂

And then we got to meet the new baby daughter (10 days old!!!) of one of the other girls in my program. Sooooo cute and perfect.

Snack/dinner when I got home was another portion of cauliflower mangu and my last carrot pudding cake. Do I see another batch in the near future?? I think so.

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And my last mini chocolate birthday cupcake:

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From there, it was up to Union Bar.

Infamous cosmo:

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Cheesy spicy bar snack mix:

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More snack mix:

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I didn’t eat all of that specific basket. But I think I had enough big handfuls from several baskets to equal the contents of this one.

Then, Gina ordered loaded nachos because our heart health is at the forefront of her mind. I ate a lot:

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I think the guacamole looks like ICING.

I also had another chocolate macaroom when I came home 😀

What has influenced YOU today?

Good night!

Can it be true?

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Guess what!!!!!!!!!!!! It’s DONE.

At 11:02 this morning, I officially finished my LAST paper of the semester. It happened way sooner than expected, and I am thrilled. Now, for the next 2.5 weeks, I am completely free of school AND work (except for two more Thursdays of class and one half day retreat for work).

For breakfast while I worked this morning, I had half an apple sprinkled with cinnamon because I still had plenty of food in my belly from last night.

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When I finished, I had a celebration lunch of muffin-cauliflower oat bran. I made cauliflower oat bran yesterday morning (thanks to Heather for inspiration, once again!) and was a fan, so I decided to jazz it up today with some extras. I actually prepped the bran yesterday by immersion blending these ingredients:

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That’s one cup of steamed cauliflower, 1/2 cup raw oat bran, 1/4 cup unsweetened soymilk, and 1.5 cups of chopped frozen pumpkin muffins and bran muffins. These muffins did not make the strawberry birthday cake cut the other day because they were too seedy:

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In addition to the above ingredients, I also blended in 3/4 cup water, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. All of that sat in the fridge overnight.

IMG_9654For lunch today, I scooped out 1/2 cup of the cauliflower-muffin oat bran and heated it in the oven for 30 minutes while I addressed some long-neglected cleanliness issues in the kitchen. My stomach was still feeling confused from last night’s feast, so I decided simple would be better with the bran. All I was really wanted was a big, melty pile of nut butter, so I pulled out yet another gem from Artisana.

When the oat bran was ready to go, I served it to myself on a bed of 1/2 cup plain yogurt and topped it with that big tbsp of pecan butter, lots of cinnamon, and some strawberries:

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Hit the ol’ spot!

I’m off to take care of some other long-neglected necessaries. I have two weeks to get my life under control before it becomes unmanageable again!

What is long-neglected in your life?

Caked

20 Comments

I’ve tried to be consistent with my birthday food theme today (theme = must eat cake at every possible moment). After breakfast #1 (pumpkin pie flax-oat bran), the gym, and breakfast #2 (cake and frosting tasting), it was time for breakfast #3!

IMG_9470While at the gym, I got an exciting idea for carrot cake custard pudding, and I set right to work when I got home. The custard involved two grated carrots, 1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, a chopped package of Peeled apricot-a-lot, and a chopped date:

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The above ingredients got immersion-blended with an egg, baking powder, a couple splashes of soymilk, 1/4 package of silken tofu, vanilla, nutmeg, ginger, and LOTS of cinnamon. I poured the batter into two greased ramekins and baked for 20 minutes at 350.

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IMG_9472To ice the custards, I blended some of the leftover strawberry-cake frosting from earlier today with this baby jar of Artisana walnut butter. Brillllllllllliant! But wait, by the time I finished making my carrot cake custard pudding, it was time for lunch! Hang on carrot cake, I said.

IMG_9495I was excited to eat lunch because I few days ago, Vani dropped off this package of organic wheat Ramen noodles for me to try. She had mentioned the noodles on her blog and offered to donate her other package to me when she saw how excited I got. I was excited because, growing up, I pretty much would not eat anything aside from Ramen noodles. We called it Ruthie Soup in my family because my cousin Ruthie loved to eat them when she was a baby. Whenever I went to a birthday party, I take along a package of Ramen because I didn’t like pizza! I thought the Ramen would be an ideal way to celebrate the first lunch of my 28th year.

While the Ramen cooked, I steamed a broccoli stalk and two sliced carrots and then sauteed them with garlic in canola oil. At the end of all that, I mixed everything together and had half for lunch over a big bed of arugula and topped with homemade parmesan and freshly ground black pepper:

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This healthed-up version was not quite the Ramen I remember, but it was good enough!

My carrot cake custard pudding then became lunch dessert:

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It was incredible!! It tasted a ton like carrot cake, and the frosting was sooooooooo thick:

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I am excited I made two of these!

Now it’s time to head up to class with all my cakes. I hope they get eaten because I do not want to bring any of this stuff back with me. My freezer needs a break!

What needs a break in your life?

One down …

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I’m almost there! Just one more paper due Thursday, and I will be temporarily free. Plus, since I got tomorrow’s paper done already, I will be free to spend my birthday lazing around and feeling sorry for my elderly status before I have to go to class 😛

Today, however, is NOT my birthday (although one premature facebook “happy birthday” seems to have started a chain of people unintentionally wishing me happy birthday a day early). Today is Mother’s Day and my sister Allison’s birthday! Soooooo …

Here I am with my mama in December:

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Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! I love you.

And here I am with my Allie, meeting our first niece, Ella, in 2005:

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Happy happy birthday, Allie! I love you, too 🙂

Unfortunately, I could not spend the day with either of these two ladies, as one is in Massachusetts, one is in San Francisco, and I am in New York! Instead, I spent the day writing a paper and fueling my way through the drudgery in the following manner. (Once again, this is an incomplete representation of all I ate, so don’t start to panic that I’ve stopped expanding or anything. Expansion is still
quite in progress. Excellent.)

IMG_9425Today’s overnight breakfast cookie actually involved the last 2/3 cup cooked couscous-lentil mix from dinner at Quercy. Because the couscous was already cookied and quite moist, I needed to add dry things! Into the cookie went a package of freeze-dried strawberries and bananas from Just Tomatoes (it was sooooo hard to keep from eating all of these straight out of the package — they were delicious and crunchy and perfect), 2 tbsp dry milk, and 1 tbsp homemade pineapple-coconut-ginger peanut butter. My plan worked, and the cookie had firmed up successfully by this morning.

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I frosted my cookie with a mix of plain yogurt and Artisana cacao bliss, and I topped it with fruit salad:

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Later, I had the rest of my spicy spicy Indian food mixed with lots of yogurt and arugula. I sopped up the sauce and yogurt left in the bowl with some pieces of cornbread liberated from the freezer:

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In the afternoon, I had some pumpkin pie flax pudding with a dollop of the two butters of the day:

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I also did some serious baking in honor of the three special occasions going on, but more details will be arriving tomorrow. Just know that I ate a lot of batter.

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“Dinner” at this point ended up being more pumpkin pie flax pudding with oat bran immersion-blended in, chopped strawberries, and the two famous butters once again:

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Are you celebrating special days this month?

Dirrrty

29 Comments

Well. I just ran my first and last trail race.

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(Those were my brand-new shoes. They’re broken in now.)

Erin Gunn, Sarah Whiting, and I spent the morning up at Bear Mountain for The North Face Endurance Challenge. Erin and I ran the 10k; Ting (short for Sarah Whiting) ran the half. To be more specific, while Ting was enjoying a little 13+ mile jog (just kidding — Ting, you’re amaaaaaaazing and I think maybe superhuman!!), Erin and I painstakingly tried to run 6.3 miles of hiking trail through muddy rivers, slimy rocks, and steep inclines.

I’m actually pretty pleased with how I did. I was expecting to end up walking the whole thing because I haven’t really been able to run since pulling all my leg muscles at the end of March. For this race, I focused on keeping my pace verrrrrrry slow, and the treacherous nature of the course forced me to walk for quite a bit of the race to pick my way “over the river and through the woods” while remaining upright!

** Edited 5/12 to add these pictures from the race website.

Feeling energetic early in the race:

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Finish line in sight, yet still so far away (all of 50 feet I think):

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Happy (?) finish line dance:

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I finished the race in something like an hour and 35 minutes (I was second to last!!! I was kind of disappointed when I heard someone else finished after me. If I was going to be last, I wanted to be last), but I finished running! Surviving this race actually gave me a lot of hope for the Brooklyn half at the end of May. Ting finished about 10 minutes after I did (but to be fair, the half did begin an hour before the 10k). Here we are at the end:

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There was a tent with cut fruit and peanut butter. I had many pieces:

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Erin and I were cold and tired and sore and wondering how the heck Ting had roped us into over 90 minutes of voluntary torture. We agreed we don’t have to do this again next year. Ting stuck around with some of her other friends to watch the 50k runners start to come in; Erin and I busted out of there to head to her apartment for showers and lunch. Which leads us to the food …

Featured Contributions: Thursday through Saturday

Thursday’s linner: homemade tortillas with homemade chicken mole and beans left from the Parent & Me cinco de mayo event at work on Wednesday:

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Ginger chew from Beryl on Friday:

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A chopped apple, an orange, cool whip, and peanut butter left from Myrna and Mildred’s afternoon group:

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(I had another orange and seconds of cool whip and pb later, too!)

I headed straight up to Yonkers after work, and Erin Gunn picked me up for some bridesmaid dress reconn at David’s Bridal, followed by Indian food, her treat 🙂

Papadum and chutneys:

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Baingan Bhartha (eggplant):

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Channa Saagwala (chickpeas and spinach):

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We ordered spicy. We needn’t have. The spiciness necessitated lots of tissues and lots of rice:

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Anise crunchies on the way out:

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This morning, I made us pre-race breakfast cookies with the contents of Erin’s cupboards.

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Each cookie included 1/2 cup oats, 1 tbsp peanut butter, 1/2 mashed banana, 1 tbsp chocolate chips, 1 tbsp sweetened coconut, 1 tbsp mixed chopped nuts, and cinnamon.

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The frosting involved plain yogurt and half of this baby jar of heaven:IMG_9396

Our post-run lunch was Indian leftovers with tons and tons of yogurt to cut the heat:

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And a very very exciting treat from work yesterday:

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Rosey’s mom (who I think is Puerto Rican) made pasteles — kind of like tamales but with plantain on the outside and meat on the inside — this past week, and Rosey brought them in to share on Thursday. I missed this first delivery because I don’t work on Thursdays, but Nydia gave me a couple of hers yesterday since it was my last day until June, and they all wanted me to be able to try them! I brought my tied-up package to Erin’s with me, boiled it for an hour in salted water per Rosey’s instructions, and set to unwrapping it.

In paper:

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In banana leaf:

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Finally ready:

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Mmmm, it was yummy. I loved the texture of the plantain on the outside. Here’s the filling:

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I dozed off a bit after lunch, and then Erin deposited me at the subway. Two hours later (grrr, construction), I was finally home.

Now, “vacation” is over, and it’s time to rededicate myself to the finals: one paper due Monday and one due Thursday. Then, I will be free!! (Errr, for two weeks until it all starts again …)

To conclude, here are Ting’s battle-scarred legs:

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Would you ever in a million years choose to spend your day off participating in a trail race?