Tag: snacks

Forbidden foods?

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My festive morning continued at the office today without skipping a beat. First on the agenda? Pina coladas!!! You heard read right — Myrna came through at 9am with a giant homemade batch. “But it’s alcohol-free,” she explained apologetically. Fine with me! I had about 1/2 cup, and it tasted just like a tropical island, mmm.

img_6152Then, I noticed Belkis’ son Emanuel sitting in the conference room. She explained that his school was indeed closed for St. Patrick’s day (have you ever heard such a thing) and that he had baked us a cake to celebrate!! Here’s the masterpiece: a yellow cake with vanilla frosting and a cherry smiley face 😀

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Belkis started talking about how they should have frosted it green, and Inginia piped up that we still had green food coloring AND vanilla frosting left from play-dough and cake yesterday. I ran down to fetch the supplies and set Emanuel up with his new project. I also helped myself to two or five spoonfuls of frosting.

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When I got hungry for real later in the morning, I had a cup of cantaloupe, also left from yesterday’s group.

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Katty and I had to leave around noon to head up to the Bronx for a lecture on bilingual language development, so I ate my cup of roasted veggies and drank another half cup of pina colada to tide me over.

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I also packed up a hefty piece of cake for the road. You didn’t think I’d pass that up, did you?

When we got to the institute, there was a sign that no food was allowed in the auditorium for the lecture! I wasn’t about to wait two whole hours until 3pm for the rest of my lunch, so I quickly inhaled my cup of mac & cheese (from group yesterday), fried rice (from Vianni’s lunch leftovers yesterday), and mixed-grain salad (from my lunch yesterday).

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On the subway platform after the presentation, I ate my asparagus guac with a serving of sea salt RiceWorks.

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(Side note: I made this guac on Sunday, and look how green it still is without so much as a stir! I think it’s a combo of the lime juice and asparagus.)

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And finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, my green frosting-slathered hunk of cake:

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Oh, it was sooooooooooo good.

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While I was standing on the subway platform tucking into this ridiculously satisfying pile of refined sugar, I spent some time considering Vani’s Forbidden Foods Challenge. The idea is to demystify a food that you usually force yourself to avoid, whether for fear you’ll lose control and overeat it or for its scary nutrition facts or for any other number of reasons. Vani’s suggestion is that you challenge yourself by keeping it in the house and enjoying it in moderation; in essence, this challenge is designed to help you take control over a food that you feel has controlled you in the past.

So once again, I was standing there eating maybe my fourth giant slice of cake in two days … and wracking my brain to think of an appropriate food for the challenge. When I got off the subway in my neighborhood nearly two hours later, I stopped into the local gourmet shop to peruse the aisles (and sample cheese, roasted duck, and a giant hunk of hard sourdough pretzel). And I realized, nothing is forbidden … as long as it is FREE. The food restrictions I impose seem to boil down to money more than anything else. I examined dozens of delicious sounding organic cookie products, locally produced ice creams, full-fat stinky cheeses, dried fruits, fancy nut butters … and I kept thinking: I can make this myself for less money, more health, and more flavor. And if I don’t make it myself, I’m sure I’ll stumble upon it in sample form at some point 😀 No craving was strong enough to make me want to spend the money on anything except for produce!

But, I love the idea of this challenge and really wanted to participate! And that is when my eyes alighted upon the shelf of fancy spreads … full of chutneys, jams, syrups, etc. And I realized, I never buy condiments. They always strike me as such a luxury and never even cross my mind as an option. Granted, I can make most of them myself, but one in particular caught my eye. Meet my forbidden food:

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I love lemon curd, and I probably haven’t had it since I was 12 and went to traditional afternoon tea at a fancy Boston hotel with my family. OK, maybe I’ve had it since then, but only in similarly rare situations. To me, lemon curd represents the epitome of luxury, class, and sophistication — none of which I have! It’s not something I would ever buy because, not only is it a ridiculously frivolous product, but it’s also full of butter and sugar. Seems silly when I could just mash a banana on my scone and call it a day.

So, $8.99 later, I am the proud owner of my first jar of lemon curd ever. And I am EXCITED. It was pricey, but the Forbidden Foods Challenge is conveniently taking place when I have done next to no grocery shopping due to free produce flying at me from every direction, so I can make it work. And this $8.99 jar is going to last me a while because I’ll be eating it in moderation. Lemon curd of this quality, made only with real and natural ingredients, is bound to pack a powerful flavor punch. A little will go a long way.

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Thank you to Vani for encouraging me to loosen the reins — both financially and nutrionally — in a healthy way!

Have YOU joined the challenge?

Food rich, cash poor

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I may not get paid in cash at my internship, but as you’ve all seen time and time again, I definitely get paid in food!

Before my 11:00 visit this morning, the standard morning snack came out to keep me going until lunch. I had a mug of Earl Grey to accompany my 2/3 cup yogurt with 1/2 small chopped apple, a sprinkle of vanilla-almond granola, cinnamon, and cardamom:

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Immediately after the visit, I ran down to join Inginia for our regular Monday parents’ group. Today was a special day because all of the kids in the group are turning two this month! We celebrated by making play-dough together 😀

Here I am with some ghost children and their moms (confidentiality and all …):

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The celebration continued with mac & cheese courtesy of Inginia’s culinary skills. She doctored a regular boxed mix with extra cheese, eggs, oregano, and black pepper:

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I had about two cups worth — it was so delicious! (no surprise there)

The best part of our celebration was cake-decorating!! Right before the group, Inginia baked a pineapple cake.

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We let the kids go to town with vanilla and chocolate frosting.

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I scraped the empty frosting jar clean, of course. It was ALMOST as satisfying as scraping a peanut butter jar clean 😉

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Next up were the sprinkles.

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Two! The finished product, plus the fancy custard-filled white cake one of the moms brought in:

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My small plate was bursting with pieces of each, plus more frosting scrapings from the spatulas.

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We packed up the leftover cake for the families to take home, and then I filled this cup with all the rest of the crumbs and frosting still on the plates and savored every bite.

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(You might notice some suspicious chocolate cake crumbs in that cup that don’t seem as though they match up with either of the two birthday cakes (or you might not). Good eye! I randomly found a bag of chocolate cake crumbs in one of the kitchens at work and thought it would pair splendidly with my cup o’ frosting. I was right :D)

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Afternoon snack (as if I needed it) happened when Jessica brought out her baked batata! I loooooove me some batata, so I had about half of it:

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It was around this time that the best announcement of the day came on over the loudspeaker: “Attention staff: We have collard greens available in Advocacy. Please come down if you would like some.” You know I was up and running at that one!

The food bank delivery had come in for our pantry, but the pantry will be closed tomorrow … meaning that all the extra perishable produce had to go! I went down and Pura hooked me up with two bags. On my way out of the office later, I stopped into the Advocacy kitchen one more time to make sure nothing was in danger of rotting while the department is out “advocating” in Albany tomorrow, and my timing was perfect. Lucia loaded me up with another bag of collard greens, a tightly packed bag of fresh spinach, a bag of radishes, and three enormous carrots!

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(Also worth mentioning: I survived the day with only four mints from Belkis’ candy jar! Not sure how much of a sugar success that actually is given that I ate my weight in frosting earlier …)

Straggering under my heavy bags of books and produce (not complaining!), I speed-subwayed the 40 blocks from work to class and made it just in the nick of time. The group presenting tonight did a great job with their topic of addiction … including food addiction. We talked about my blog briefly (as a healthy example, of course ;)), so welcome HBII classmates if you’re reading!

I wasn’t all that hungry for dinner (understandably), so I had about 1/2 cup mix of mac & cheese left from the group, mystery fried rice left from Vianni’s lunch, and mixed-grain salad.

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I got hungrier near the end of class, so I also ate my cup of roasted veggies:

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And this cup of cantaloupe that was also left from the parents’ group:

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And now, it’s really really time for me to go to bed. I hope I fall asleep quickly tonight — yoga was nice this morning, but I missed my gym-time!

Do you have a morning routine that helps set you up for a productive day?

No sugar; extra balls (+ laundry Qs answered)

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I met Gina, JQ, and Di this afternoon at Tea Spot, a teashop in the village, to celebrate Di’s engagement. Here’s the guest of honor modeling her tea ring:

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We had to order our teas two at a time so that the other two could guard the table because tables are hard to come by around here. I had been planning to order a regular ol’ pot of earl grey, but Di started asking the guy behind the counter about frappe-y drink possibilities. Good thing she did, becaue the menu gave no indication of the fanciness available!

The guy was very helpful (there’s just something about a man behind a bar, is there not?) and opened several barrels of their loose leaf tea blends to waft the tantalizing scents in our direction. He explained that we could choose to mix any of the blends with fancy tea powder (the kind that is sweet and milky already when you add water to it). Di got almond cookie with taro powder, and I got creme de chocolate with taro powder. When we were through, we sent Gina and Q up to Chris at the bar, and they came back with butter toffee/taro and coconut/taro. We did a little merry-go-round of taste tests — all delicious!

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Also, Beadie’s earrings made their public debut, earning a number of appreciative comments:

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As Chris, our barista(o?), had warned us, the teas tasted strikingly similar to the addictive blend present in bubble tea. I knew in advance that this would be a problem, as I was out-of-my-mind addicted to the tapioca balls all throughout college, thanks to my old roommate Ilin who introduced me to them freshman year. I left the teashop with an uncontrollable craving for the real deal and stopped into Hanco’s, the bubble tea cafe that just opened in my neighborhood (yay! except that it took the place of the Tea Lounge, which was way better) on the way home to satisfy the urge. I ordered an unsweetened jasmine tea (because the bubbles are sweet enough all on their own) with extra balls:

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I saw those flowers when I walked in and chose a yellow straw for color-coordination purposes. Also, inspired by pretty green girl and St. Patrick’s Day (I am part Irish, after all), I greenly saved my cup from the Tea Spot so that Hanco’s could refill it instead of giving me more plastic.

The balls masquerading as a biology experiment:

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I made another stop at the laundromat to check in on the status of my clothes and found that they were, in fact, washing my clothes for me and told me they’d be done in an hour. Total cost? $21 … exactly three times what I pay to do it on my own! Eek! Oh well — it wasn’t in my budget, but this one-time expense won’t break me, and I’ll be more careful next time. Plus, I saved so much money on groceries Friday night that things should balance out. More good news: not only did the laundry man avoid putting my delicates in the dryer, but he actually lectured ME because he could tell that one of my wool sweaters had been dryer-ed in the past! And now everything is folded, so I don’t have to spend tons of time putting stuff away right this minute to keep it from wrinkling.

I spent a good chunk of time tonight getting food and lunches ready for the week. The veggies I scored Friday night got roasted. Before:

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After:

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I used half of this giant avocado to make more chocolate mousse a la Heather. Before:

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After:

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With the other half of the avocado, I made asparagus guacamole, a trick I’ve heard about before but never tried. I needed enough guac for a week (and I knew that half an avocado, no matter how gigantic, would not cut it), so I threw in a bunch of steamed asparagus to make it stretch.

Before (1/4 avocado + steamed asparagus):

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After (post-immersion blending):

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After after (mixed with salsa, the other 1/4 avocado because I like it chunky, lime juice, s&p, and red pepper flakes):

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I had a few bites — the asparagus flavor came through slightly (which is fine with me since I love asparagus), but it’s still definitely guacamole :-D.

I had been planning to eat some of the roasted veggies and guac for dinner, but after the balls and all the nibbling-while-cooking, I wasn’t hungry at all. I almost ate it anyway since it was all prepared and ready to go, but I listened to my intuition (thank you, Intuitive Eating) and realized I just wasn’t interested. I will save it for when I am hungry and can really enjoy it.

It’s past my bedtime as usual, so I’m headed straight to bed!

How do YOU feel about the balls?

Nuts for salad + laundry debacle

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My second PB2 experiment took place this morning when I decided on the world’s best oatmeal combo: pb-chocolate-banana.

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In the pot, I cooked 1/2 cup old-fashioned oats with 1/2 cup unsweetened silk, 1/2 cup water, 1/4 whipped banana, 1/4 chunked banana, dash salt, and 1 packet chocolate pb2. The cooked oatmeal went into the bowl on a bed of 1/2 cup yogurt, and I garnished with 2 sliced strawberries, unsweetened coconut, 1.5 chopped pieces of lindt hazelnut chocolate, and unsweetened cocoa powder.

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Yum! But, I couldn’t really taste the pb2 chocolate and peanut flavors that strongly. If I were to make this bowl of oatmeal again, and I probably will, I would mix cocoa powder into the pot to cook with the oatmeal and save the pb2 to pour on top. Mixing it in led to too much flavor dilution!

For lunch, I had the grilled chicken/chicken parm leftovers salad that I brought home from my coworkers on Friday. I actually only used half of the chicken that was on the salad and saved the other half for tomorrow. I bulked up the salad with the grape tomatoes, radishes, chopped endives, and cheese cubes from Friday night and topped it with a drizzle of Annie’s lite gingerly dressing I found in our fridge + freshly ground black pepper.

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Post-picture, I decided I needed more crunch and added two chopped and toasted almonds to the top 😀

My eyes were bigger than my stomach (as my dad would say), and I made a second course that consisted of the rest of the chicken parm toast with homemade almond-cashew butter + the last cup of Friday night’s leftover fruit salad and a sprinkling of vanilla-almond granola.

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I ate the toasts and realized I felt full, so I held off on the fruit salad for another hour or so until I was ready.

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Here’s another picture, just because I’m not looking forward to going back to my paper as soon as this post is done.

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I’m leaving in a little while to meet the comm girls for coffee in honor of Diana’s recent ENGAGEMENT :D, and then it will be back home and to the books!

In unrelated news, I went to do my laundry this morning only to find the big metal gate down and the laundromat dark and empty. I spotted the manager parked a few cars down and went to inquire. Apparently, the metal gate was broken and he couldn’t get in! He told me to leave my clothes with him and come back tonight to get them. I was caught off guard, so between that and the language barrier, I got flustered and agreed. But now I’m thinking: (1) Is he going to wash my stuff for me and then charge me by the pound (which will undoubtedly cost more than I normally pay to do it myself)?; (2) Are all my clothes going to shrink because he doesn’t know what can go in the dryer and what can’t?; and (3) Was I completely off-base, and did he just mean he would hold onto my laundry until later so I didn’t have to drag it all the way back home, and I’ll still need to do it myself tonight?

Yes, I could just go back over there and check, but I’m feeling lazy and the suspense is more fun. What do YOU think will become of my laundry?

Renewal

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Well, today has certainly been all about recovery after my wild eating spree at the book signing last night! 1pm came along and I still wasn’t the slightest bit hungry. This is highly abnormal for me because I’m usually ravenous within one hour of waking up. I had been up since 7:30! I decided that a run was in order to speed the process along. On my way out, I grabbed a date for healthy sugar power:

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My whole body felt creaky and achey at the beginning of the run, but all my muscles and bones and joints seemed to start communicating with each other more effectively after a few minutes. I was in the mood for sightseeing, so I ran out to the mansions at Flatbush Malls — the most beautiful neighborhood in Brooklyn, according to me — and around the outside of Prospect Park. Stats: 5.75 miles, 61 minutes, 509 calories, 152 average heart rate, 182 max. I totally zoned out during the run and ended up really enjoying it. I felt so refreshed after — but alas, still not hungry!

I sorted my laundry for the ‘mat tomorrow, I dyed my hair, I did some other things on the list … and I finally felt a little bit hungry around 4pm! I did a happy dance and then whipped up the balsamic-strawberry yogurt sundae that I’ve been dreaming about ever since I created these Balsamic-Strawberry Oaties earlier this week for the BSI.

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Also involved in that sundae were 1/2 cup Greek yogurt mixed with vanilla and cinnamon, more chopped strawberries, and a drizzle of homemade balsamic syrup. Yum! Definitely lived up to my fantasy.

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Then, miracle of all miracles, I was still a little bit hungry! I re-toasted a piece of herby chicken parm toast from yesterday and covered it in 2 tsp homemade almond-cashew butter and cinnamon:

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The traces of herby tomato sauce on the bread actually complemented the almond-cashew butter brilliantly. Hmmmm, I wonder what I can do with this knowledge in the future …

I continued to give my body what it needed with a pot of Yogi Renew green tea from the samples I received last week:

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The tea actually tasted a little bit like grass. But, hey, I guess you have to suffer for your renewal, right?

At some point a little later, another mini-wave of hunger hit me. I decided it was time to break out sample #1 of PB2! I cut the packet open and tasted some of the dry powder — hmm, tasted like peanuts.

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The directions said to mix the packet with 1.5 tbsp of water … so I mixed it with 2 tbsp yogurt. Magic:

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My pb-yogurt sauce became the dressing for a cup of last night’s fruit salad:

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(I also mixed in a couple of chopped strawberries and topped it with a sprinkle of vanilla-almond granola.)

The verdict? As much as I did not want to like PB2, I have to admit that I think it has sucked me in. There are so many potential uses! Would I buy it? I’m doubtful, especially now that I’ve mastered the art of making my own nut butters from scratch. But, I have the rest of the samples to go through and an entire jar on its way from the Foods That Fit giveaway, so we’ll see how addicted I get!

In other giveaway news, you can win yet another chance to mix your own granola, thanks to Diana at Soap & Chocolate. I’d LOVE to win this one, but I really think I’ve been too lucky! I can still hope, though …

Speaking of Foods That Fit, Abbie posted a fun recipe for wheatberry salad today that I knew I had to try since I had all of those pilfered cranberries from last night.

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I made a few substitutions based on ingredient availability — I subbed a rye berries/kamut/barley/brown rice mixture for the wheatberries and cooked the grains in leftover whey from making Greek yogurt; dried apple rings and dates in place of the apricots; and chopped almonds in place of the pistacios and pine nuts. I “tested” a couple of spoonfuls when it was done — delicious!

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Just like Abbie said — perfect salty-sweet combo!

The cooking continued because I can’t stop once I start! I combined two recipes to prepare the other half of my tofu block: the coco loco tofu Emily made earlier this week and soy-lime tofu from Eating Well. I soaked the tofu slices for two hours in a marinade of 2 tbsp white rice vinegar + 2 tbsp lime juice + 2 tbsp soy sauce + 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil and then dredged each slice in unsweetened coconut and baked like this. I tested one slice on another piece of chicken parm toast with 1 tbsp almond-cashew butter:

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The coconut flavor was surprisingly strong, and that made me happy. I can’t believe I haven’t thought to put coconut on tofu before. Thanks, Emily!

For dessert, I had about 2 tbsp of half-frozen homemade chocolate mousse (freezing it seems to make it even MORE chocolate-y, if that’s possible) with a crumbled basil-spice meringue kiss and coconut sprinkles:

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Hmm, for a day of no appetite, this has been a surprisingly long post!! My tum is feeling ALMOST back to normal, so I’m hoping for a crazy appetite when I wake up in the morning :-D.

What do you prefer: big appetite or no appetite?