Happy lunch

January 28, 2009February 6, 20155 Comments

** PSA: Remember that the Blogger Secret Ingredient contest is back in full swing. Submit your date recipes by Sunday to talesofexpansion@gmail.com! **

No gym this morning, so I slept until 7am, whaaaaaat. While I raced around getting ready, a cup of Zucchini-Lime Cheesecake Oatmeal was heating in the oven. Here it is getting steamy with 1/3 cup healthy cream cheese icing and two chopped strawberies:

As you can see, lunch was super-pumped to get eaten today:

Key

Hair = enormous navel orange (I ate all its babies last night while packing)

Left eye = 1/2 cup yogurt with banana, apple, strawberries, almond extract, 1 tbsp part-skim ricotta, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger

Right eye = GC-style baked tofu and roasted veggies

Nose = 1/3 cup Wholly Guacamole (it was 1/2 cup until I ate some while packing) for carrot-dipping

Mouth = carrot sticks

Tonight is going to be another late night full of surprise foods. I’m going to be a mentor at an NYU career services event (because I know all the answers, obviously) and then maybe an NYU alumni happy hourish thing. I’ll be back later to report!

Piece(s) of cake

January 27, 2009February 6, 201510 Comments

But first, a BSI update:

The Blogger Secret Ingredient contest is now up and running, and the ingredient of the week is dates! I love dates. Especially first ones because I generally don’t have to pay for dinner when I’m on them :-). JOKE (sort of). Anyway, Tri to Cook has gotten the ball rolling with a re-submission from a former BSI: Date & Butternut Squash Puree. What are your date tricks?

Now, onto the cake …

That’s right, more cake arrived on the conference room table right next to my desk today! When it rains it pours. I still had last night’s post-sugar reaction in the front of my mind, so I decided to take a moment and decide how to proceed instead of losing my head and going into my free-food survival mode.

The best way to contemplate this type of decision is with a healthy and hearty snack. I carefully sliced my apple into many pieces, spread peanut butter on each individual slice, and stuck the raisins one-by-one on top of the peanut butter as I glared at the cakes out of the corner of my eye and sent them this message via brain waves: Cake, you don’t bother me and I’m in no rush to see you because I am savoring a beautiful snack without your help right now:

ants on apples

I’m sorry, cake. You can’t hold a candle to this crunchy peanut butter bliss:

I thought a little bit harder while working on this mini chocolate ball from Belkis:

And then I stopped pretending that I don’t love cake. Because I do love cake, and I wouldn’t be me if I let this opportunity slip by. I got one plate of cake. And then another. And then another. In the end, I collected three plates of cake (one piece of peach cake and two pieces of real authentic carrot cake):

But score one million for me because these beauties went right into my emptied lunch tupperwares rather than into my belly! Right now, they’re resting comfortably in my freezer so that they are ready for their next assignment when I am.

Lest you think that I’m a saint, immune to refined sugar in all its forms (though how you could think that if you read this blog, I don’t know), this end of a piece did go into my belly:

It is carrot cake, after all. And nothing beats carrot cake with real cream cheese icing … except maybe my oatmeal-turned-carrot-cake.

I followed the carrot cake with a palate-cleansing mini candy cane because I hadn’t already eaten five pillow mints or anything:

Next up was running club, and ohhhh man, did my legs feel like lead tonight! I was lagging wayyyy behind the rest of the group, and this super classy dude to my left kept spitting every 10 seconds. I almost told him to swallow it, but instead, I let myself lag even more to get some distance. Do you know how unnerving it is to have a constant spitting sound three inches away from your left ear? Ick, I’m getting chills thinking about it. At least I finished the run! Stats for four miles plus an additional seven-minute warm-up/jog: 51 minutes, 415 calories, average heart rate 150, highest heart rate 173.

On the subway ride home, I dove into the giant orange I had packed plus my first Quaker True Delights bar sample: Dark Chocolate Raspberry Almond. Before I say anything else, this bar was DELICIOUS. It did not have the vague berry-ness of other granola bars but rather a very specific and natural raspberry flavor enhanced by the visible raspberry (and dark chocolate, of course) chunks:

However, I couldn’t help but notice that this Dark Chocolate Raspberry Almond bar was lacking the critical almond component — I couldn’t even detect any essence of almond flavor. And I was looking! In fact, not until the very last bite did I discover any evidence at all:

Again, the bar was delicious, but it needs either renaming or more almonds (obviously, my preference is the latter!).

After the subway, I raced home, packed (and nibbled on) tomorrow’s lunch, showered, and now it is finally bedtime. This week has been going non-stop, and it’s only Tuesday, ahh!

Good night!

Eating my cake

January 27, 2009February 6, 20156 Comments

Mmmmmhmmmm, there was leftover birthday cake hanging around my office yesterday, so I packed a piece and brought it to class last night to round out my apple/pb/raisins/mini-Luna dinner! I also found manchego cheese samples at the gourmet market next to Hunter, so those made the dinner cut, too. Here’s the spread all together:

Now, let’s talk about this cake for a moment. In social work, we use something called a strengths-based perspective, and I like to apply this perspective to food from time to time … or all the time. As I worked my way through the cake during class, I noted three major strengths: (1) it had pineapple bits!, (2) the frosting tasted like whipped marshmallows!, and (3) the texture of the sugar flowers on the cake reminded me of meringue!!!

The third strength is the most noteworthy, as sugar flowers on cakes can sometimes have a bitter taste and a rock-like texture that indicates they perhaps were not meant to be eaten. But these flowers were so airy and lightly crunchy that I felt like I was floating on a sea of frothy egg whites. Unfortunately, I developed fuzzy, swirly sugar-head syndrome immediately upon finishing and had a hard time focusing on my class for a few. I ate some bites of roasted vegetables when I got home as I prepped today’s lunch, and that seemed to help, but the fuzz didn’t go away for real until I woke up this morning. I just can’t do sugar like I used to!

After the gym this morning (legs and stairs stats: 1 hr, 15 mins; 434 cals; 125 ave hr, 163 highest), I heated up a cup of my BSI entry: Zucchini-Lime Cheesecake Oatmeal. I may not have won the competition — sushi obviously ranks over oatmeal! — but this meal is still a champ as far as I’m concerned :-). I topped it with 1/3 cup of my healthy cream cheese “frosting”:

This frosting is sooooooo good. It makes everything taste like carrot cake!

Lunch/evening snacks today are going to be exactly the same as lunch/evening snacks yesterday … with one exception. In place of the mini-Luna bar, I will be taste-testing this beauty:

That’s right, my Quaker True Delights samples — all six of them! — arrived from Foodbuzz last night. Here they are, marching across my floor:

And there’s no better time to try one out than on double workout day, right? I should probably be trying a different flavor first since Allison at Green Dog Wine already gave this one rave reviews, but come on, dark chocolate raspberry almond??? Who can resist that?

I’ve got another long day with the running club tonight, but I’ll be back eventually to report on any extra nibbles that appear along the way!

Nope, still not a yogi

January 25, 2009February 6, 20157 Comments

Today, I woke up determined to do some yoga. After reading about all the good it’s done for Jenna at Eat, Live, Run and about Meghann’s success with the 20-minute sessions from yogadownload.com at The Inner Workings of a College Graduate, I came to the conclusion that yoga would be an excellent complement to my half marathon training. Sure, yoga and I have had a bit of a spotty past, but I’m not one to hold a grudge, and today’s a new day, right?

When my computer finally managed to download the Morning Flow #1 and the Yoga for Runners #1, I cheerily unrolled roommate’s pilates mat, enlarged the yoga pose guide on my computer screen, and settled in for a life-altering experience. The Morning Flow class started with child’s pose, soothing music, and a pleasant-voiced instructor. I thought to myself, Oh, this is lovely. Yoga and I are going to be fast friends.

Very quickly, however, I started to feel like the instructor was speaking Spanish — I could sort of understand her words, but by the time I deciphered them and the pose I was supposed to be doing, I was five steps behind. I started to look something like this:

This photo may or may not be from a less-than-sober moment in my younger days ...

Not one to be discouraged easily, I switched over to the Yoga for Runners class. But the same thing happened. After seven total minutes of yoga practice, I decided I’d had my fill for the day. Yoga, please don’t take offense. Maybe we just weren’t meant to be. We can try again another day when we’ve both had time and space to think.

With the yoga disappointment behind me, my next task was clear: BREAKFAST! Another slice of carrot cake (I cut this slice into 3 so it would look like more) and Nutcracker Sweet tea with unsweetened Silk (so excited to have my soy milk back!):

This was even better today — the cream cheese frosting was super thick because the cake had absorbed a lot of the moisture:

I’m such an artiste:

I spent the morning finishing up some homework for my internship and dreading the re-start of classes tomorrow night.

I got my work done a little after 2:00 and dove into a yummy yummy lunch. My roommate Tara was making butternut squash soup the other night, so I had her save the seeds for me:

I topped the seeds with coarse sea salt, sugar in the raw, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon:

I put them in the oven at 425 and proceeded to forget about them completely until I realized that the weird popping sound I kept hearing was the seeds exploding in the oven. Whoops:

But I’m not going to let a little bit of char stop me! I heated the rest of my red lentil-peanut soup with 1/2 cup of sofrito rice/barley/cabbage combo (that I’ve been eating all week) and sprinkled some of the still-delicious seeds on top with a dollop of Greek yogurt and two basil leaves for color:

So pretty I can’t stand it!

For dessert, I had 1/2 cup of zucchini-lime cheesecake oatmeal and more tea:

With more cream cheese frosting and squash seeds, of course:

And now I’m off to brave the outside for the first time today. Girl needs some fresh air!

Addendum

January 24, 2009February 6, 20152 Comments

Why stop eating, really?

Tonight, I made Zucchini-Lime Cheesecake Oatmeal for this week’s BSI contest. I did not know that I was making this until it was already made … which is usually what happens when I cook. Obviously, I had to taste test the oats when I finished, so I set myself up with a half-portion: