Tag: money

No rest for the snowy

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Just as I predicted this morning, today was business as usual (40 minute subway delay aside, grrrrr). By the time I got to work, I didn’t even have time for my usual snack before running out for my first visit at 10:45! I dove into lunch when I got back around 12:30.

The other half of yesterday’s quesadilla, deconstructed :-):

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And a cup of fresh pumpkin yogurt (also with apples, banana, dates, prunes, golean crunch, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, cloves — I clearly went a little ingredient-happy, but it was delicious!):

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The end of my baby carrots (still left from last week’s work meeting) and a tbsp peanut butter:

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Lunch dessert was one prune and one date (saved the others for dinner):

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And a big strawberry lollipop to power me through the freezing, windy 20-minute snow- and slush- walk to my afternoon visit:

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Sadly, the mom was not home. All that sloshy walking for nothing! Except the exercise, I suppose. Maybe it balanced out the lollipop?

I was legitimately hungry from all the “exertion,” so I had this bar around 3:30:

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Again, it was tasty … but too processed for me to want to go out and buy it for real.

At about this point, I realized I had not planned so well for the day. I think I was kind of expecting something to get cancelled along the way (don’t know why since nothing ever does around here), but no go! The only thing that got cancelled was the Monday parents’ group with Inginia, during which I usually partake in one of Inginia’s scrumptious group lunches! With no group and my evening class still on at Hunter, I was definitely short a meal.

I contemplated my food planning failure while chewing on this fruity tootsie:

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I came to the conclusion that there was no way around having to spend some money, which I figure is ok since I only spent $5 on groceries this week anyway (a gallon of milk for yogurt and a can of black beans for the BSI) — though I might need to tend to that now that I see how low on food I really am!

Anyway, here’s the dinner I managed to put together for class:

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I paid $4 for that baby cup of white bean, broccoli, and sun-dried tomato soup from Hale & Hearty:

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Plus my weekly manchego cheese samples from Butterfield Market:

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An apple from home (my last one — what will I do tomorrow??):

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My other prune and date and two Tate’s Bake Shop chocolate chip cookie pieces (also samples from the market!):

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And somehow, Emily couldn’t finish the oatmeal raisin cookie that she brought to class as her dinner, so she let me do the honors.

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Thanks, Emily!

And that’s that! I did a bit more nibbling tonight as I prepped tomorrow’s lunch (think big spoonfuls of pumpkin yogurt and golean crunch falling into my mouth by accident …) which I hope gets me through the day without necessitating any more extra expenditures!

Here are some things that are more noteworthy than my evening nibbles:

1. Spiceaholic at One Bite at a Time is hosting this week’s BSI. Make sure to visit her so you can find out the new secret ingredient! And congrats to Becca for winning last week’s contest with her Black Bean & Avocado Cornmeal Muffins!

2. Comment for a cause! All you have to do to contribute to this food drive is leave a comment for the very generous athlEAT here.

3. Finally, go win some more bars with Strawberry Shortstuff. She has tons to give away!!

Do you ever get tired of free stuff? I do NOT! 😀

The vanishing weekend

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Ahhh, it’s tomorrow already?! How did that happen?

Things kept taking longer than I expected all day long, so I didn’t even end up leaving to go to the grocery store until about 6:30. My body’s used to dinner at that time, so I had a few early evening snacks to tide me over until I could really eat.

Two small dates with 1 tsp peanut butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon:

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The last 1/2 cup of the pumpkin-banana yogurt mix I ate at lunch with 2 tbsp golean crunch sprinkled on top (and 2 sprinkled straight into my mouth :-D):

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And a Sunsweet One:

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Good thing I snacked — due to several complications in the self-checkout line at the store (HATE self-checkout), I didn’t get home until 8:30!

Loot includes 3 lbs apples (only $1.99), kale (for the BSI of course), 2 pears, 1 red onion, mushrooms ($.99), asparagus ($1.99/lb), 5 bananas, 3 sweet potatoes, 1 cucumber, whole wheat 8-inch pizza crusts (free thanks to my coupon from the Carrots ‘N’ Cake scavenger hunt prize pack), fat free feta, eggs, tomatoes on the vine, crunchy peanut butter, canned wild salmon :

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Total: $25.62!! Great price, even by my impossibly strict standards.

I set right to work cooking … and cooking … and cooking for the BSI. I nibbled the whole time I cooked, of course, so I wasn’t all that hungry by the time I was done — and it was 11pm by that point anyway. Still, I had no choice but to sample the finished products. Kale-Crust Pizza and Stuffed Kale Leaves:

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They were both MUCH more successful than I had anticipated! I wanted to eat a lot more after these bites, but I restrained myself because I am definitely not hungry and it is l-a-t-e.

For dessert, I broke out the next truffle in line from the BSI: Spinach prize Brandi sent. I present to you the Sassy Mango-Lime dark chocolate truffle:

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Inside:

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Mmmmmm, it was SO good. As a general rule, I love anything that combines fruit and dark chocolate. And the citrusy pep from the lime perfectly complemented the bittersweet richness of the dark chocolate. I actually only ended up eating half because I don’t want my fun with truffles to end! I had the half along with some Italian cookie chunks:

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And conversation hearts:

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OK, I’m off to see how much longer my eyes can stay open. Tonight will be round 2 of eye-masking, and I hope it is just as successful as last night! Tomorrow’s plan is homework, homework, and more homework. You’ll get to hear all about it — how did you ever get so lucky, right? — since I’m sure I’ll be eating the whole time :-D.

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep

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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:

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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.

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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:

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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:

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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!):

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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)

(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:

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

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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!

Ethically sound

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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:

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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:

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

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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):

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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.

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

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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:

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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:

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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!

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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!

Cultured grapes

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Before I ran out for errands this afternoon, I made myself a little snackie of 1/2 cup grapes and a cinnamon and pb-stuffed date:

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It was so yummy, I felt like I was eating a pint of ice cream all by myself … but better :-D. Dates are the ultimate wonder food.

I was on a mission to use coupons that have been taking up space in my wallet for MONTHS, so I set off in hopes that Target would come through for me on these items. I just missed the bus about four times, so I ended up walking the whole mile and a half to get there. And, of course, Target was overflowing with rude people, the check-out line was wrapped around the store three times, and I couldn’t find what I needed anyway. I went down to the Pathmark and had a litte more success (though it was not what I’d call an efficient trip, either!). Here’s what I got:

img_4021Yogurts and milk for yogurt-making, fat free ricotta for fun, 2 red bell peppers (only $1.99/lb!), grapes (only $.98/lb!), sea salt riceworks (free with coupon — I finally found them!), LiveActive chocolate raspberry granola bars ($1 off coupon). Total: $16, bringing the week’s tally up to $36, still $4 under budget, whaaaaaat!

Side note on yogurt-making: Every 3-4 batches, I use a completely fresh starter (aka pre-made yogurts) to make sure all the good bacteria is thriving. I usually like to mix two types of yogurt so I get maximum culture variety. Therefore, the batch that is incubating tonight includes: l. acidophilius, bifidus, l. casei, l. rhamnosus, s. thermophilus, and bifidobacterium lactis.

This is my first time using Rachel’s brand yogurt, so we’ll see how it turns out. It’d better be good because I had to wait 10 minutes for them to price-check it at the store, only to have the clerk refuse to sell it to me since it wasn’t in the system yet and had no assigned price. I begged and pleaded until he let me scan the cup of Stonyfield again instead.

Three hours after I left, I was back home.

For dinner, I had another slice of pumpkin kibbi (I’m telling you, this is SO good!) with steamed asparagus spears:

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I love asparagus plain, but I sprinkled it with a bit of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper for visual variety.

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Dessert was a treat. I’m generally a plain yogurt kind of girl, but when I buy the little cups to make yogurt like I did today, I often get them in fancy flavors for fun since I only need half (or less) of each cup to use as the starter.  For my dessert, I mixed together the remaining chocolate underground yogurt with the remaining mango pineapple passion fruit yogurt, added about 1/4 cup fat free ricotta, and sprinkled the top with shredded coconut and leftover chocolate-covered pretzel from my blogger secret cupid package.

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And I surrounded the whole thing with grapes and chopped strawberries for dunking:

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I don’t have to work tomorrow, so I’m going to do something completely wild and leave the apartment after 9pm (to walk three blocks and watch TV with Ting and her friend, haha). Have a good night, and good luck tomorrow if you’re going back to your regular routine!