Lunch does not grow on trees, part 2

February 2, 2009February 6, 20157 Comments

Note #1: Check out all the amazing BSI: Dates Submissions here. The winner will be announced tonight!

Note #2: Heather and Mark are giving away free almond butter at HangryPants!! Go check out the contest here.

Note #3: Biz at Biggest Diabetic Loser is giving away the 30 Day Shred DVD. Enter here.

Note #4: Thanks to Victoria at The Idle Loaf for posting this coupon for free rice crackers!

Onto lunch …

I love how joining the blogworld has motivated me to be even more creative with the food I make. My lunches for this week were inspired by Meghann’s BSI Submission. The idea of incorporating dates into a savory dish — and especially into an Indian curry — intrigued me, so I followed Meghann’s basic procedure for the Kale & Date Curry, adjusting for the ingredients I had available and un-perfect-portioning her recipe so I’d have enough for the whole week. My curry included kale, red cabbage (steamed ahead of time), tomato sauce, onion and garlic (sauteed first in canola oil), chicken and vegetable broths, seven jumbo Medjool dates, 1 cup dry lentils (cooked ahead of time), homemade garam masala seasoning, tons of curry powder, coriander, cinnamon, freshly grated ginger, one grated Fuji apple, and maybe that’s it?

I simmered everything for a looooooooooooong time until it was very tender and then took my immersion blender to the mixture:

This made a little over six cups of curry:

For lunch purposes, I’m using 3/4 cup curry atop a bed of 1/4 cup brown basmati rice. You can sort of see the layering effect here:

As I mentioned last night, I ate a lot of this curry as I was cooking it to get the spices just the way I wanted them, so I know how delicious lunch is going to be. I can’t wait!

Here’s the rest of the lunch spread in order of planned consumption from top to bottom and left to right:

giant orange for mid-morning snack, date + kale curry for lunch, greek yogurt with apples/bananas/cinnamon/ginger for lunch dessert, broccoli trees with roasted red pepper hummus for afternoon snack, apple with a tbsp each of pb and raisins for evening snack/dinner in class, Quaker True Delights bar for evening snack/dinner dessert in class

As you’ve seen in recent weeks, my food plans have a way of evolving based on the food I encounter throughout the day, so this food plan is only tentative. If other food that I need to eat appears in front of me, I’ll just keep this lunch for tomorrow. But I hope I get to eat it today because it’s all so yummy!! I’ll be back later (I hope) to report on how things panned out and to announce the winner of this week’s BSI: Dates contest!!!

BSI prize sneak-peak (!!) plus cracker pizza

February 1, 2009February 6, 20155 Comments

Ahhh, what a day. And I’m not nearly done with all my reading for class tomorrow! I’m going to try to make this post quick (although whenever I say that, the post ends up going on for ages and ages).

Make sure to submit your BSI recipes by midnight tonight! Scroll down to the previous post for more details and list of entries thus far.

While I’ve been working all day, a pot of chocolate caramel enchantment chai tea with unsweetened Silk has been keeping me company. Clearly the teapot is struggling to stay afloat just like I am!

(I think something exciting might be happening with the Superbowl? I’m hearing lots of “Oh my god!” shouts coming from the apartment downstairs.)

For lunch, I made leftover cracker-pizzas. On my pizza stone, I placed two Kavli Crsipy Thin Crackers:

Tomato sauce:

Roasted veggies and tofu left from last week’s lunches:

The last of Thursday night’s cheese and butternut squash seeds:

The stone went into the oven at 450 for about 12 minutes. And then it came out:

On the side, I had the rest of the roasted veggies that did not fit on the crackers:

I ate the pizza taco-style:

This was SO good. I’m really excited I finally found a use for these crackers! I’ve had the box sitting on top of the fridge since September. Expect pizza crackers to be appearing again at some point.

For dessert, I had a jumbo Medjool date stuffed with goat cheese (Fitnessista-style) and sprinkled with cinnamon (expansion-style ;-)):

Ahhhh, this was delicious, too! Perhaps next on the agenda is a date & goat cheese cracker pizza??

I also had a few more bites of frozen cake:

Because I ate all this so late (around 4:30 I think), I never really got hungry for dinner and contented myself with lots of tasting as I worked on cooking my lunches for the coming week. But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for details on that. Can you stand the suspense?

In honor of tonight being the last night for BSI submissions, I decided to give the BSI prize a test-drive. Here’s my sugar cookie sleigh ride tea (and some sort of apparition riding out of it) with two Earl Grey Biscotti Bites:

As “toasty” on the bottom as they are, these bites were delicious — even better today than last night! I hope the winner likes them. I’m always a little bit apprehensive about feeding other people my healthified and substituted-to-death desserts!

OK, off to take care of some more loose ends and prep for tomorrow … and hopefully bed by 9. Can’t wait to see the rest of your submissions!

All is not lost

January 31, 2009February 6, 20152 Comments

** I’m bookending this post with BSI reminders since we’re getting right down to the wire! Check here for more info. If you missed my announcement earlier, the BSI prize will include, amongst other things, two boxes of the RARE Celestial Seasonings Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride tea, the best tea in the world. Are you not ridiculously excited right now??? **

I woke up around 8:00 this morning, and Erin and I set out (in her car!) to hunt down a location for our five-mile run (half marathon, here we come!). The first trail we checked was completely covered in snow and ice, but we lucked out with the second: a paved bike trail in Tibbetts Brook Park. The clear-enough-to-run portion of the trail was just over two miles long, so we ran the length and back plus did a little bit extra to make it a full five. While the trail was not completely covered in ice, we still had to “ballet run” over several slippery sections, slowing us down significantly. Stats: 57 minutes, 457 calories, 149 average heart rate, 164 max heart rate.

Back at the condo, I got started on breakfast:

I popped two Nutrigrain waffles in the toaster and set out to develop some oatmeal pancakes! I found a packet of oatmeal in the cupboard that I recognized from the post-race goodies we received at Race for the Cure in September. I mixed the oatmeal with an egg, a splash of water, and some baking powder and baking soda. I Pam’d a pan and poured the batter in:

Flipped when set:

And spatula-ed the pancake into four pieces when it was done so that we each had two pancake quarters and a waffle. For the topping, I mixed some banana pieces I had saved from my mommy’s group at work yesterday with the last of Erin’s frozen blueberries and 1/4 cup plain yogurt. A drizzle of real maple syrup and a dollop of berry jam from a local farm joined the yogurt topping:

Delicious, if I do say so myself!

After breakfast, Erin and I continued our productive streak with more suburban car errands (yay!!). Accomplishments of the day: Erin’s car passed inspection, she successfully redeemed a Bed, Bath, & Beyond coupon, and I found another little mystery goody at Target to include as a BSI prize. Erin, the most generous hostess ever, capped this string of accomplishments with an offer to drive me allllll the way back to Brooklyn (saving me a 90-minute subway ride!), including a stop at Fairway, my favorite grocery store in the world!! If you live in this city, you know that the combination of a car + Fairway is pretty much a New Yorker’s dream come true. I only wish I hadn’t had so much food still left from last week in my apartment — if I had more fridge/freezer space, I would have taken advantage of the car to buy enough groceries for the next six months!

Once we arrived at Fairway, I wanted to capture the beauty of this foodie heaven with a photo, but when I tried to turn my camera on, nothing happened! I may have actually said the f-word (something I never do!) when I realized I had forgotten the battery/charger in the wall back up at Erin’s house. Ahhhhhhhh!! After all of that productivity, I was going to have to go all the way back to Yonkers with her to collect the battery and then take the subway home. DISASTER. Regardless, we forged on with the shopping. Expecting that I wouldn’t be home until at least 6:30 pm, I did my favorite trick of turning samples into lunch. I had cheese, mini pumpernickel rounds with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and one of the best samples I’ve ever encountered: magic pop rice cakes with freshly ground (still warm!) almond butter, peanut butter, and honey roasted peanut butter. I piled the nut butter onto three different magic pop pieces and may have had approximately 1/2 cup of freshly ground goodness before I was through. Obviously too much, but I was feeling stressed and it was soooooooooo delicious.

Post-shop, Erin and I made the quick drive from the store to my apartment so I could at least drop everything off. Once at my apartment, however, roommate Brigitte saved the day– first with an offer to let me use her camera and second with the genius idea to transfer the memory chip from my camera into hers (which seems like an obvious enough solution, but I had been thinking I’d have to wait to get my battery to get all of my pictures back!). Erin, as if she hadn’t been generous enough already, promised to overnight ship the battery and charger back to me on Monday. So all is not lost :-).

I had a successful shop at Fairway (where it is impossible to have an unsuccessful shop). I got a gallon of skim (for yogurt), 5 bananas, 3 lbs Fuji apples, a big bag o’ oranges, Medjool dates in honor of my BSI choice, a baby butternut squash, and tons of grains from Fairway’s bulk bins — steel-cut oats, quinoa, millet, yellow corn grits, and raw wheat germ:

Total cost: $27. Gooooooooooooooooooooo Fairway!!!

I’ll be back later with dinner. In the meantime …

** SUBMIT YOUR BSI entries!! Deadline is end-of-day Sunday (aka TOMORROW), and I will announce a winner Monday evening. Check here for more details. I’m so excited to see what you all come up with that I bought that container of dates at Fairway so I can try some of the recipes next week :-). **

So complicated

January 31, 2009February 6, 20154 Comments

Complication #1 involves my camera, and you all were thisclose to not finding out what I ate yesterday. But since I’m determined not to ruin anyone’s weekend by keeping my food secret, I have found a temporary solution! More on that eventually …

Complication #2 involves my computer. After nearly 4.5 years of flawless charging, my power adapter has decided it wants to ruin my life. It’s been steadily declining all week but has reached a new low today. Because I have to hold the cord to the computer in a crazy gymnastics formation, I am forced to type with only the index finger of my left hand … and I’m a righty. I never learned how to type correctly, so my pointer finger is the only one that knows where all the keys are. So please forgive me for making this post light on words and heavy on photos!!

Rewinding to Friday morning …

7:20 am breakfast – last cup zucchini-lime cheesecake oatmeal, 1/3 cup healthy cream cheese frosting, 2 chopped strawberries, two crumbled graham sticks unsweetened coconut, cinnamon:

12:30 pm lunch –

GC baked tofu + roasted veggies:

Yogurt with ricotta, apples, banana, strawberries, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger:

Veggies from Thursday night:

Half cup tabbouleh salad from coworker Nitza:

Two candies from the candy jar:

2:30 pm snack – apple with pb:

4:30 pm snack – giant orange (look at all the babies in front!!)

I lost my mind for the last hour of work while I was catching up up notes and engaged in a little candy madness. I’ve been overdoing it on the candy this week, but there’s an explanation! Before Christmas, I stashed/hid a whole bunch of candy (left over from the parties we held for the families) in the empty tissue box on my desk and immediately forgot about it … until I accidentally discovered it again this week! And ate it all. Here’s SOME of what happened yesterday afternoon:

Now that the tissue box is empty, the candy problem should be solved …

(Ahhhhh, my computer charger now will not work AT ALL. I hope the new one arrives soon! Switching to roommate Brigitte’s computer …)

6:30 pm dinner – Pizza & Brew

After work, I subwayed up to the Bronx where Erin Gunn and her boyfriend Mike picked me up and took me out to dinner (thanks, guys!!) at Pizza & Brew, an Italian restaurant in Yonkers. I was ravenous and ate the lemon wedge from my water AND the lemon wedge from Mike’s water:

I know you’re not supposed to eat these lemon wedges in bars/restaurants anymore because they’re full of germs, but when hunger calls …

My entree came with a side salad that had chickpeas — how exciting!

I ordered Bluefish Marechiare (fresh fillet sauteed with capers, olives, and mushrooms in pomodoro sauce served over linguini) but asked for it with polenta instead of pasta. Yummmm, it was so good! And enormous:

I almost cleaned my plate, except for a little sauce and some of the olives:

Oh wait, never mind. I DID clean my plate. Crusty bread always saves the day:

I really don’t know how I finished this. I was a bottomless pit yesterday!! It was probably enough food for three meals, but I didn’t even feel stuffed when I was done — just perfectly satisfied.

Erin got Fettuccini con Funghi (homemade noodles with sauteed assorted mushrooms in a light pink cream sauce):

And Mike got Catfish Caruso (sauteed fresh fillet with vodka lobster sauce and baby shrimp served over rice primavera):

Erin and Mike could not finish their meals (lightweights) and had to take over half home.

We had initially planned to go to bowling and karaoke, but our lazy grandma-ness set in (and Erin’s car getting a flat tire validated our laziness) and we just wanted to do nothing. While waiting for AAA to arrive at Erin and Mike’s condo, we watched Mike do some yoga on Wiii (is that the correct number of i’s?) Fit:

And I shared my next Quaker True Delights bar with them: Toasted Coconut Banana Macadamia Nut. This one had much more even (and heavy!) distribution of nuts, though I think chunks of real banana would have been a good addition (instead of what seemed just some essence of banana spread throughout):

so many nuts!

look, it's glowing!

Later, when Erin went out to meet AAA and get her tire taken care of, I snuck into the fridge and found a jar of Hershey’s Hot Fudge which I quickly put to use with a bit of pb:

Isn’t that a beautiful sight??? We were in bed by 11:15, and I ended up sleeping for over eight hours for the first time in … well probably since the last time I was at Erin’s since she always sets me up with light block curtains :-). It was glorious. To be continued …

Ding ding ding ding!

January 29, 2009February 6, 201515 Comments

(That’s the sound of the food jackpot bell ringing.)

*** Hurry up and submit your BSI: Dates entries! The contest is open to everyone, even if you don’t have a blog. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, check here for more information and a running list of submissions. Please help by spreading the word on your blogs!!***

And welcome to all of my new readers! This is my first time at the computer since I left this morning, so it might take me a couple days to get to everyone’s comments. It’s past my bedtime!

I’ve been on a free food roll this week, and it shows no signs of slowing down. Excellent news for the budget, but I don’t know how long I can keep up this pace — I feel like I’ve only had about 30 waking seconds in my apartment all week. I’m going to work on zooming through today’s food recap. It’s a long one!

I left class on the Upper East Side at 1 to head to a doctor’s appointment in Bay Ridge for 3 (basically opposite ends of the earth, if you’re not familiar with NY). Since I was going to be switching trains at Union Square anyway, I decided to turn my oatmeal-for-$1 coupon into lunch at the Jamba Juice there. With tax, the oatmeal actually came to $1.08, but since I found $1.50 on the ground in a subway station yesterday (I know!! Who drops $1.50 in quarters and dimes and leaves it???), I’m considering it free. I got the banana oatmeal with brown sugar crumble:

Needing a place to sit and eat, I strategically maneuvered myself (and my oatmeal) over to the Whole Foods next door where I knew side-dish-potential would be high. And oh my goodness, did I hit the jackpot!! I sneakily collected samples in a container meant for the fresh-ground almond butter and then parked myself in the cafe upstairs to enjoy my complete and balanced meal. Clockwise from top left: maple ham, veal scallopini, grapefruit slices, orange slices, ginger snap pieces, lemon snap hearts:

And the real winner: drinking chocolate!

Because I like to live on the wild side, I retrieved the peanut butter from my stash of what-if-I-can’t-find-free-food backup snacks (carrots, apples, pb, and raisins).

Can you guess what I did??? Banana brown sugar oatmeal + pb + drinking chocolate:

Yum yum yum yum yum yum.

On my way out of WF, I discovered that two new samples had surfaced. I didn’t want them to feel left out, so I got one of each. Pumpkin-seed black bean burger and buffalo chicken with blue cheese:

I hopped back on the subway to continue the odyssey to Bay Ridge. At the doc’s office, I had a blue raspberry mini candy cane from the receptionist’s desk to mask my buffalo-breath:

After the doc, I headed back into the city (eating my carrots and apples on the way) to meet my friend Rami for tea at Grey Dog in the village. Rami and I became friends in an NYU elevator in September 2001 when I discovered he was studying abroad here from Australia … where I was planning to study the next semester! Here we are dancing at his wedding this past summer (he’s second from left):

boys

And here’s Rami’s grilled chicken press:

And my Earl Grey with skim and 1/2 pack of sugar in the raw:

If you know any baby boomers in need of boomer-related services, Rami can help at Boomerater.com :-). And, a special shout out to Rami’s wife Ali who also reads the blog. Hi Ali!

When Rami and I finished catching up, I met Gina and Kate a few blocks away for yet another NYU Alumni event: a workshop on age-defying fitness by Marilyn Moffat. In the interest of time, I’m going to skip a review of the talk’s content and just cut right to the food. My plate included broccoli, grape tomatoes, red and yellow pepers, cauliflower, carrots, pineapple, strawberries, grapes, blueberries, cantaloupe, almonds, triangle of swiss cheese, 3 cubes of cheddar, goat cheese crusted with freshly ground black pepper, and raisin walnut bread:

plate #1

The goat cheese and the raisin walnut bread were definitely the stars:

So I spread one on top of the other, added the final backup snack of raisins, and had three more slices:

Plus plate #2 (bread pictured is part of the 4 slices total):

I ate several more handfuls of unpictured produce plus this cookie that made me miss fall:

And since I’m always thinking of the future, here’s what I brought home:

goat cheese, cheese chunks, almonds, bread (now in the freezer), carrots/peppers/cauliflower for work snacks tomorrow, and zucchini for cooking

So like I said, it’s been a long and busy day — academically, socially, gastronomically, transportationally, etc. — but I’m no poorer than I was yesterday!!

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to post tomorrow since I’m going straight up to Yonkers after work to visit Erin Gunn (one of my oldest friends from home and my other half-marathon-training partner) for bowling, karaoke, and a Saturday morning 5-mile run. I’ll be back with a full report later on Saturday, along with a special announcement about the prizes I have selected for the BSI contest. The submissions list is growing, so get your entries in ASAP!

Tales of Expansion: Baby Butternut Edition

A Natural(ish) Parenting & Food Blog

Tag: snacks

Lunch does not grow on trees, part 2

BSI prize sneak-peak (!!) plus cracker pizza

All is not lost

So complicated

Ding ding ding ding!

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