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Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Crazy for... cocoa?

Good evening! What a day, a typical Wednesday hump day. Oh well, at least I started my day well:

Egg over easy (Look dad, I actually cooked this one through!), my fave wheaty toast with almond butter and an orange.
I followed it up with homemade hot cocoa. How could I resist?
My mid-morning snack. I was actually in a really bad mood when I ate these. They were good, but I definitely gave in to emotional cues, and it didn't really make me feel better. I actually stepped away from my desk for a few minutes, which worked much better at adjusting my mood.

Lunch rolled around a little while later. I must have been on autopilot, because I completely forgot to snap a pick of my first lunch. It was about a cup of Jambalaya, which I also had for dinner.

Late lunch:
A little salad of spinach, cucumber and carrots with vinegar and a bit of sugar. It was kind of like what one would use to 'pickle' chopped cucumbers. This was surprisingly tasty, so I will most likely try this trick again.

Best creation of the afternoon day week:
Very Cherry Banana soft serve with an oh so ripe banana (frozen), a little bit of almond milk, 4 cherries and ~tsp cocoa powder. SO GOOD (and so messy, but whatever, it was worth it). The bananas and cherries provided more than enough sweetness to cancel out the bitterness of the cocoa while highlighting the awesome flavor behind chocolate. I will be making this again and I recommend trying it if you can!

Later in the evening, I went for a jog/run. It was maybe 2 miles, and I cut it short from what I intended to run because one muscle near my knee was not feeling happy. I headed back home and before deciding not to go to the gym, I ran into my neighbor. We ended up talking for a long while, long enough for me to get hungry, so I ditched the other gym plans and ate dinner:
Jambalaya! I ate about 1.5X this, since there was just a little bit left. This was a really fun recipe, one that I'd like to make again, but I think I would cut back even more on the meat and throw in more veggies and beans (and watch the rice more carefully. It burned a little, oops!)

And made some tea to warm up and enjoy while typing up my post, yay!
Decaf Vanilla Hazelnut tea with a little milk

Question: What's your favorite messy food to make/eat?

Also, continuing my thoughts from yesterday, I'm a total preserve snob. That is to say that I like my jam to have lots of berries/some portion of the original fruit- no jellies for me! I'm especially into blueberry or red raspberry preserves.

What's your preference? Jelly, jam, preserves, marmalade? Store-bought or homemade? Favorite flavor?

I look forward to surprising you (and myself) with new eats tomorrow! Goodnight!

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Fun Filled Tuesday!

Hi again! Here's today's recap with more surprise eats!

I woke up at 6:45, ready to eat and ready to swim.
First breakfast:
This was the same piece of toast from above, with blueberry preserves. This jam was so good- it literally had whole blueberries in there, not just the blueberry juice- awesome!!!

I got to the pool at around 7:40, so I had a little under and hour to swim. I tracked that I swam 52 pool lengths, so I swam about 1300 meters, most of them in 4 pool-length sets.

I went to work and started on my second b-fast
Pineapple-sunflower granola bar with a handful of cherries.

I missed the memo that we would be having a little office party. My manager brought in home-baked goods, chips, cookies and ordered us pizza. However, I brought lunch and was determined to eat it.
Chicken Cordon Bleu, cooked broccoli, and cucumber. At first, I was thinking about grabbing a slice of pizza, but abandoned it for this:
The bottom was a cookie, topped with a brownie and I'm certain there were chocolate chips in there. A little while later I grabbed another piece about this size. While I would have preferred to have less, I didn't go CRAZY and this was the perfect indulgence.

After work, Phil invited me over for dinner again, this time for burritos, yum! Our spread:
Refried beans, salsa, guac, sour cream     Spicy chicken- barbeque sauce and chipotle, seasoned rice  
Burrito with a little bit of everything
Burrito unwrapped.

Food coma? nah. Guilt- not really, because it's better than eating a small dinner and snacking too much later on. That's all for now! (Although, I think a homemade hot cocoa is calling my name.... we'll see!)

Goodnight! I'll catch you tomorrow!

When Bad Days Turn Around

Good evening! Here are my eats from yesterday.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I knew it wasn't a day for swimming. So I caught up on rest and made a good breakfast:

Toast w/ almond butter and cocoa powder

Lunch:

Salad mixed with cucumbers, carrots and a slice of mozzarella. That was my first half of lunch. The second half was 3/4-1 cup of Jambalaya and another orange.

Post work snack:
Banana soft serve with green tea powder. I promise it tasted better than it looks! I ended up fussing with it so much that I ate half and put the rest in the freezer to refreeze. I had a not-so-fun day at work, so I was very happy when my friend Phil asked to hang out. We went to Hollywood video (closing so their videos were on sale) to see what they had and then I helped him go grocery shopping. Even though I had premade food at home, I was happy to join him for dinner and even helped prepare some of the dishes:

I was so proud of the guac! It tasted very good even though I didn't add everything in the pantry. This had 2 avocados, 1/4-1/2 white onion, 1/2 tomato, pinch of salt, pinch of dried minced garlic and 2 tbsp spicy salsa.
Dinner plate: buttery green beans, corn, guac, cheesy scalloped potatoes X2 and 1/2 kickin chicken. So good! I was stuffed after this meal, and I didn't end up going to the gym, but I had a really good time hanging out with my good friend. Sometimes you need to just chill our to get on track, y'know.

We watched The Devil Wears Prada, and then I went home and made a homemade hot cocoa before heading to bed.

My work day was pretty rocky, but by the end of the night I was feeling much happier. Normally, I probably would have freaked out about my: bad day/ not going to the gym/big dinner, but instead of doing that I just took it easy, and I think I felt so much better today for that.

Anyway, stay tuned for today's recap! 

Monday, June 28, 2010

Cooking Marathon

Hey, I'm back with sunday's recap! You'll soon see why this took so long to post, but for now breakfast!

Toast and strawberries. Ralph helped me with the strawberries, but I finished off most of them.

Ralph putting jam on his toast ( and letting me take a nice pic of him!)

After breakfast, we lounged for a bit then ran some errands. When we got home we refueled and finished our Lasagna-style ziti in record time.

I was then ready to start baking/cooking for the week:
Mixing 2 weeks worth of granola bars:

And made 2 types:

Chocolate chip                                                  Pineapple and Sunflower

Closeup. Delicious no?

After putting the granola in the oven, Ralph and I started preparing our separate dishes for the week

His:
4 cutlets of cordon bleu sans bread crumbs, with mozzarella and Gouda instead of swiss, + italian spices

Mine:
Jambalaya w/ turkey sausage, no file powder

Ralph and I snacked on our dishes throughout the whole 2 hr cooking process(probably at least 2 granola bars worth + some tastes of the Jambalaya), so we weren't hungry for dinner around the usual time. We relaxed for a bit, then went for a bike ride. On our ride home, we stopped for bubble tea (ok, not so much tea. It was more like a peach slushie with tapioca beads on the bottom)

After our ride (and despite our pit stop for bubble tea) we worked up an appetite. He had a piece of chicken and a side of Jambalaya. I wasn't as hungry, so I just had a bowl of Jambalaya.

It took a while to cook, but I'm just glad I won't have to cook as much this week!

Catch you later with today's recap!

Lazy day

Good morning! Here's my recap of saturday's eats:

So much food I couldn't even finish!

Ralph and I then went out for a ~2 hr bike ride- a little under 10 miles

Then snacked for lunch:
Ralph picked up these veggie chips- a mixture of spinach and garlic, beet and onion, carrot and mixed vegg? chips.
Close up. All in all the guac was very good, but I wanted something else.

I made us thick banana-peanut butter smoothies.

We chilled for a few hours since it was supposed to rain in the afternoon. It didn't end up raining, but we still enjoyed hanging out and watching tv.

For dinner:
Like I said last night, we based our recipe of this one. However, I started with a homemade pasta sauce.
 Sauce ingredients:
1 Tbs olive oil
1/2 white onion, diced
1 red pepper, diced
1 zucchini, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup cooked green lentils
16 oz can crushed tomatoes
1 Tbs oregano
1 Tbs basil
salt and pepper

Heat a large skillet with the olive oil. Add the onions, red pepper, and zucchini and cook until softened. Add the garlic, stirring for 1 minute. Add the crushed tomatoes and lentils. Bring to a boil then let simmer for 10 minutes. Add the spices to taste. Add a pinch of baking soda if you still find the sauce too bitter.

Once the sauce was done and the pasta was cooked we, put a light layer of sauce on the bottom of the baking dish, the topped with the pasta. We put the rest of the sauce over the pasta, sprinkled a little bit of parm and the layered with mozzerella.

Tada!
Around this time we (6:30 on sat) we got through close to 3/4 of our 9x13 pan of Lasagna style baked ziti!
Since we hung out all day (and wanted ice cream) I suggested that we walk to a local ice cream shop that makes homemade ice cream. The ice cream place was about 2 miles away. It took us a little while, bit it was so worth it! I got 2 scoops of chocolate marshmallow and Ralph got a cone of cookies 'n cream. I will upload the pic of my ice cream later if I can extract it from my phone!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Two Yolks?

Good evening! Sorry for my disappearance, I've been enjoying my weekend so far. Anywho, let me start off with my weird/awesome observation yesterday morning:

Two yolks in one egg! Have you ever seen this happen before? Ralph said he has, and he also says it means that the chicken who laid the egg must have been very healthy since the egg laying process is so energy intensive. Awesome!
Another smiley face? A smiley face with sunglasses.

After bfast, I went for another swim. I really didn't want to go for some reason, but I pushed myself and it was good. But it left me hungry again:
 I made myself wait until noon to eat my guacamole sandwich though:
 And was still hungry around 2 so I had a kind bar:
It was actually really good. I liked how it was soft and gooey!
Matzo with buttah when I got home. Yes, I still had an unopened box of matzo from Passover and as I'm not (really) one to waste, I've been slowly going through it. I find it a very good alternative to chips for dipping into anything things like hummus, guacamole, etc.

For dinner, I really wanted to make a BIG pasta dish that would last all weekend. I wish I took pics of the whole thing because it filled a big baking dish (and we have already eaten 3/4 of it since last night. NO JOKE Ralph has eaten about half the dish although I don't think he will admit it.)
This was a "Lasagna Style Baked Ziti" based off of this one. We made a bunch of changes (added lots of good things) so I'll post that later.
This dish X2. Ralph's was approx mine x3.5-4 - which is totally cool- that's why I wanted to make it. Whenever I cook for the two of us, I tend to make less because I'm afraid of having too many leftovers, not being able to freeze it, then seeing the food go bad. Luckily, I never have this problem when Ralph's around!

After dinner, I convinced Ralph to go on a short bike ride with me. It was so much fun!

That's all for last night's meals. Stay tuned for today's recap! 

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Holy Guacamole!

Good evening!

I have been so hungry for most of the day. My pre lunch muffin:
Gouda coated lunch, so yum!

Finished the smoothie while making the guac, then ate the guac sandwich.
This Guacamole had EVERYTHING in it. I mixed:
One smushed avocado
One small seeded and chopped tomato
1/8 chopped red onion
2tsp lime juice
1/8 tsp salt
1 seeded and chopped chipolte pepper in adobo sauce
1 tsp chili powder
1 garlic clove minced
An after dinner chocolate for an extra happy factor

This was the meal I was looking for. It finally filled my insatiable appetite. One thing's for sure: guacamole will never let you down!

Goodnight!