B ‘n B

Yup, I’m fully blogging in bed right now — in my pjs, under the covers, teeth brushed, mouth guard in place, contacts out, glasses on, earplugs in, and ready to pass out as soon as I hit publish. Can’t wait 😀

But let’s do a little review of the day first, shall we? I walked into the office at 9:20, and the first thing Belkis said was, “Sarah, there’s bread in there.” [Gestures to conference room right next to my desk.] And bread there was!

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Belkis had brought in a whole loaf of bakery-fresh Dominican bread. The thought of saying no never crossed my mind. I cut off a big slab, about an inch thick, and dipped it in my milky earl grey tea. I think that might be a little weird. I dunk everything — cookies, crackers, bread. How do you feel about soggy carbs?

After my big slab o’ bread, I went back for the end pieces:

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I’m not crazy about the heels of regular sandwich loaves, but they’re always my favorite part of any kind of fresh bread or baked good … brownies from the edge of the pan, yum!

After that loaf-fest, I didn’t really get hungry again until about 2pm! As an appetizer, I had two of these little balls that Inginia (of the pumpkin kibbi fame) brought in. She slaved away all weekend making them for a party and wanted to share the wealth:

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This is also from some Middle-Eastern dish, and I’m not sure of the exact ingredients. I think Inginia is going to bring me the recipe, but in the meantime, they were basically fried bulgur dumplings with some ground meat and seasonings inside:

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Very tasty! Once I get the recipe, I’ll see how I can go about healthifying them — I think they’d also be delicious baked.

Lunch was a cup of spinach-chickpea dal:

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And a one-cup mix with 1/2 yogurt and 1/2 pumpkin gingerbread crockpot oats:

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(I sprinkled some of Jessica’s Honey Bunches of Oats on top for visual variety.)

Around 3:00 I had my packed cup of fresh pineapple (same deal with the cereal):

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And then I heard some paper rustling suspiciously. I followed the sound with my eyes and saw this:

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That’s Nydia and Jose bent in deep contemplation over a pile of Valentine’s chocolate!

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I took one of the pink hearts for later 😀

Around 3:45, I had three Kavli crispy thin crackers with 1/3 cup homemade guacamole (1/3 mashed avocado, 2 tbsp salsa, juice from 1/4 lime):

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And the guacamole necessitated a mint (my first of the day!):

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I went into a session a little after 4, and when I got back to my desk after, this sight greeted me:

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Yes, two potatoes mysteriously showed up on my desk. Apparently, I am now the designated recipient for anonymous food drops (but I’m not complaining!). Potato donor, reveal yourself!! Even though potatoes are the one food that I seriously dislike (this rule does not apply to sweet potatoes, obvi), I am clearly the best person to take on the task of finding them a new home. At this moment, I imagine the potatoes are journeying into the depths of Brooklyn with Gina … and I have full confidence in Gina’s ability to use them appropriately!

Because I was planning on running club at 6:30, I decided to have an early 5pm dinner at work. Especially since the club no longer gives free food after (grrrrrr!), I have found that this dinner-first arrangement works well (at least it has worked well all two times that I’ve done it, haha) to keep me energized through the run and not wanting to gnaw my arm off after. The dinner I packed for tonight was 1/3 wheat bagel with 1/4 cup pumpkin-pb spread (1 T peanut butter, 3 T pumpkin) and two black bean-salmon patties:

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I toasted the whole thing in the work toaster oven, and it was so delicious and saucy, mmm:

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Dessert was a given: the Dove chocolate heart from Nydia:

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I followed that advice and had another mint as I walked out the door :P.

Gina, Kate, and I met at 6:30 for running club and did 4 sort of stop-and-go miles in Central Park, including a loop around the reservoir, one of the most beautiful places to run in the city at night! But Kate and I were talking after about how these running club runs just seem to drag for ages. We ran over 9 miles on Saturday with minimal struggling, but 4 miles at running club always does us in! I wonder if it has to do with the time of day …. Anyway, stats for the run: 49 minutes, 357 calories, average heart rate 140, max 156.

In the subway station post-run, I broke out the breadstick and marinara sauce that Jessica and Nydia brought back for me from Pizza Hut because they couldn’t finish it at lunch. Kate, Gina, and I split the bounty between the three of us after Kate and Gina hand-modeled the goods for me:

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I had my final snack of the night when I got home: 1/4 of a broiled banana (the banana also came from Belkis today) topped with 1/4 cup chocolate mousse and a tbsp toasted pumpkin seeds:

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While I was washing dishes and before I was able to drag my mouth to the toothbrush, I may have also peeled off one whipped cream-soaked cookie from Brigitte’s remaining log of birthday cake and eaten one or two pieces of Lindt hazelnut chocolate …

News of the Day:

1. Heather, the queen of raw chocolate-avocado mousse herself, is definitely NOT giving away anything you’d want to try to win here.

2. Neither is Itzy here.

3. There’s a new BSI contest this week, and it’s a good one! Get more info here.

4. I was reading the January issue of Self while I was on the elliptical this morning, and I found a little blurb in there about the dangers of resting your laptop computer directly on your lap — I think it mentioned causing irritation to your thighs and emitting radiation that can lead to cancer (like everything does) and suggested using some sort of lap tray between your legs and the computer. (As I type this, of course, my laptop is directly on my lap.) Does this worry you? Where do you rest your laptop? Do you put something between your legs and the computer?

5. And remember the most important question of all: How do you feel about soggy carbs?

6. There’s a 99.999% chance I’m sleeping as you read this.

Limbs of lead

I woke up with a growling tummy this morning. How is that possible after all I ate yesterday? Empty calories will do it every time, I suppose. I had a giant spoonful (about 1/4 cup) of fruit salad from yesterday’s produce leftovers before heading out for my run around 7.

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I kept the run short — about 2.5 miles — because my legs still feel like lead from the re-introduction of a different strength workout (scroll down to find the “Reach Your Goal 2008 Workout” video here) on Tuesday morning, and I wanted to leave enough time for a thorough stretch with yogadownload’s Gentle Hatha #1. This run was so tedious — my hamstrings just refused to warm up. And I don’t know if my HRM was acting up or if my heart was really going wild at some point along the way, but look at how high it went! Stats: 28 minutes, 212 calories, average heart rate 143, max 216. Coming back in for the yoga (and for breakfast) was a big relief.

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I heated 3/4 cup banana bread crockpot oats and added 1/2 cup yogurt, sprinkles of nutmeg and coconut, and a spoonful of peanut butter.

I had the oats with my soymilky black tea and a flower because I was trying to channel the breakfast romance that Miss Banana Cabana conjurs every morning with her breakfast arrangements:

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(But I don’t think my arrangement had quite the same effect as hers, somehow.)

I was in the mood for more of a mess, so I splattered the pb from my spoon all over the oats to shake things up:

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Speaking of crockpot oats, Abbie at Foods That Fit is working on putting together a blogger cookbook! Imagine: all the recipes that you want to try from all over the internet compiled neatly in one simple location. Check out her cookbook post (that just happens to include my recipe for crockpot oats in the sample photo :-D) for more details about how you can contribute AND get your hands on a copy for free!

I left at 10 to head up to Hunter for the day. I usually have class on Thursdays, but it was cancelled today for Common Day. Hunter does this a few times every year with lectures and workshops on a single theme (today’s theme was racism) from 11am to 7pm. Ummmm, 11am to 7pm?? The other girls in my program and I lasted until 2. Hopefully they still let us graduate .

Before leaving the apartment this morning, I threw together a bunch of random things that I hoped would get me through the afternoon. (If I’m not eating during lectures, I usually end up sleeping.) At 11, I had a snack baggie with carrots from yesterday and a tbsp of peanut butter:

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At 12, I had my last two stuffed kale leaves:

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At 12:07, I had 1/2 cup yogurt with chopped banana, chopped pear, cardamom, nutmeg, and a sprinkle of kashi golean crunch:

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At 12:16, I had another cup of fruit salad:

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I was trying to pace myself, but the minutes were passing at the speed of years, and I had nothing to distract me from my bag o’ food and minimal hunger pangs. I took a little break from eating and then had my first-ever Kraft LiveActive bar at 12:52:

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The bar was fine — it was very berry-y and chocolate-y and tasted like a candy bar — but I doubt I’d buy these again. I only got them in the first place because I had a coupon, and I’d really rather have a piece of real food than a bar any day! But, I can’t deny that bars are good in a pinch, never go bad, and have decent mouth-entertainment value … for about 49 seconds.

After the bar, I took a 15 minute nap in my chair. Until I realized the speaker was calling on a girl directly behind me and the entire auditorium had swiveled in my direction. Awesome. That woke me up for the last 10 minutes. Falling asleep was hard work and made me hungry, so I dug around for my one remaining snack:

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Like I said, we busted out of there as soon as the talk was over at 2 (no small breakout groups for us!) … and again, I hope they’ll still let us graduate! I’m now home and resting my aching hamstrings. I really do feel like I’ve been dragging solid blocks of lead around all day. Maybe that’s why I’m so tired.

[Another giveaway alert: Chocolate-Covered Vegan Katie has some incomprehensibly amazing loot up for grabs. You really should not miss this one!]

Have you ever skipped out on something “mandatory” because you just couldn’t take it anymore?

Run for your doughnut

I spent the morning wrestling with this crazy orange. Well, maybe I only spent 9.34 minutes wrestling with it, but it was enough to make me late for my visit. The darn skin was on so tight and by the time I got it all off, it was past the time when I needed to leave. So I took the orange with me at 10:47 and inhaled it as I speed-walked from the office to the visit, causing me to arrive at the apartment with frozen solid orange-fingers. The offensive fruit:

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I got back to the office at 12:17 and sat down for lunch at 12:41 with all the ladies. (Yeah, I’m totally ballparking all these exact times.) Lunch today was the lunch I had packed for yesterday and forgone in favor of tacos and Inginia’s spaghetti. Four stuffed kale leaves (cold) and half of a baked sweet potato (hot):

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I also enjoyed a bite of Belkis’ colorful and delicious tuna salad:

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And a little over a cup of Mildred’s chicken noodle soup:

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Plus a leaf or two of Inginia’s steamed kale because I can’t get enough, apparently:

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Lunch dessert was another 1/2 cup yogurt with chopped strawberries, chopped banana, and a sprinkle of kashi golean crunch:

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Ummmm, did I just say lunch dessert? I meant lunch part … 7? (I’ve lost count.) Because this was actually lunch dessert:

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Mmmmmhmmmm, just look at that raspberry filling:

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I’ve been saving that guy in my tissue box since Rosalie gave it to me last week, and there are still more where it came from! Looooove chocolate filled with things like that. It’s like a cadbury egg (my favorite candy) … except that it’s a square and dark chocolate and fruity instead of, hmmm, yellow?

3:30 snack was a bag of air:

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Oh, whoops, did I say air? I don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight. I meant to say a bag full of chocolate-drizzled Quaker mini delights:

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They may as well have been air, though. They tasted fine, but my tummy had no clue whatsoever that it had just been fed. Luckily I went into another session at 4, so I didn’t have the chance to pour a candy jar down my throat or do something equally productive.

Post-work and pre-run, while still at the office a bit after 5, I made myself a sweet little 400-calorie “snack” (aka dinner). I picked this bar up (along with approximately five others) during a staff meeting last month:

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And I decided that tonight was the perfect night to christen it (with a few embellishments of course). I heated the bar in the microwave for 30 seconds and almost stopped there … but inspiration struck:

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I placed a Hershey’s Kiss from the tissue box on top of the hot banana nut bar and let it melt:

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And then — are you ready? — I swirled about a tbsp of peanut butter into the chocolate:

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It tasted terrible.

JOKE! It was amaaaaaaaaaaaaazing:

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As I walked out at 5:32, I popped a werther’s in my mouth to “fuel” me through the four-block walk to the subway station:

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Kate and I did four miles at The Club. Stats, including an additional 10 minutes of warmup/stretching: 48 minutes, 338 calories, 136 average heart rate, 166 max. Nike still hasn’t brought the post-run fruit buffet back (grrrr), but I did snag about 10 caramel nut brownie mini-lunas (the only flavor I tolerate). At this rate, my mini-Luna stash is going to outlive me — I eat them so infrequently because they taste like chemicals. On the train ride home, Kate and I celebrated Fat Tuesday with half a donut and half an apple each:

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(The girl who took this picture asked where we were visiting from. I replied, “Oh, we actually live here. I just like to take pictures of myself with food …”)

I did not know today was Fat Tuesday or even what Fat Tuesday really was until I read this post about donuts at Bites of the Day. All I knew was that the nurses (of all people) at my agency were enjoying an unusually exciting meeting in the conference room, mere inches from my desk. When I saw them extract a bakery-fresh box of donuts, my eyes kind of turned into donut magnets and did not let the box out of my sight. The nurses all took off for the day before I did, leaving three donuts remaining on the conference room table to go stale overnight, the horror. I had to intervene. I convinced Nydia and Katty that they needed donuts stat, and I kept the third one for myself (or for splitting with Kate after the run). Here’s my sugar-coated fluffy bundle of joy:

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I was home by 8:26 (yay for no subway drama!). I nibbled while prepping tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch and then ate these from the kitchen table centerpiece:

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And that concludes my day as seen through the lens of food :-).

Also, look at this: a free Kashi meal!

And another giveaway alert: go see what Mara’s got for you at What’s For Dinner?!

Are you still awake?

The most important meal

Well, the eye mask and ear plugs carried me through until 9 am. Which would have been impressive if not for the fact that I went to sleep after 2! I think I was expecting a miracle, but at least I didn’t wake up at 7 …

I put together a slammin’ spread for breakfast:

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Chocolate caramel enchantment chai with soymilk and an Earl Grey Biscotti Bite on the side:

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img_4460This little strawberry Activia yogurt came my way during the big cleanout of the fridge at work on Friday. There’s no date on it, but it was unopened and passed the sniff test, so all systems were go. Fruity flavored yogurts are too sweet for me these days (yeah, yeah, but 5,000 pieces of candy are not?), so I mixed it with two cups of plain yogurt and scooped about 1/2 cup of that blend into into my teacup along with a sprinkle of cinnamon:

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Plus half of a pear with nutmeg and the last of mom’s goodies. I heated them in the oven until they got all crispy on the outside (partly on purpose and partly because I was distracted doing other things), but it worked out scrumptiously because it created a vigorous crunch on the outside and an almost creamy texture on the inside of her phenomenal oat bake. And just look at all of the seeds and grains and the big layer of dark chocolate on top of this kitchen sink muffin heart:

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Thanks, mom! Please continue to send your care packages my way any time you get the urge :-D.

I’ve just refilled a giant mug of tea for the 3rd time (I upgraded teacup size post-picture because big isn’t always beautiful), and I feel sufficiently fueled to buckle down on the homework for the next, errrrr, 10 minutes or so? We’ll see how long I can stay put! What’s your attention span for work that requires sitting still?

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep

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!