Monthly Archives: July 2010

The Brock Brought It

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I actually ended up passing out without eating dinner yesterday, so that’s where the evening post was.  Do you ever get too tired for dinner?

Today was the first day (of many days) of moving.  Ugh, ugh, ugh!  We’d want to use the moving truck only for things that have to be moved by truck, so we are trying to get all the little stuff over there this week.  Today we made a big dent in the office.  My eats were kind of all over the place, as I imagine they will be this entire week.  At least I’ve found that moving will be a more than adequate workout 🙂

Maple Walnut Cookie Bar.

12oz Jamocho shakes, a la birthday month gift certificates.

Wegman’s salad bar.

Goat cheese stuffed zucchini blossom,

broccoli and wok seared veggies,

sweet and sour chicken.

I quickly realized that I had taken too much food, but the husband was more than happy to finish off the last 1/3 for me.

My greatest creation, another sundae bowl.

Usually I make these with a little bit of homemade key lime pie ice cream and a lotta bit of 0% Plain Oikos, but today’s ratio was the reverse, making it more of an actual sundae.  Topped with blackberry topping and a grumbled graham square.

This was also the last of the ice cream, I’d be lying if I said I’m not a little heartbroken.

Dinner was very late but also exciting; a trip to JP Bullfeathers for the sandwich I’ve been dreaming about the past month.

The Brock – a turkey paninni with cole slaw and 1000island dressing.

It was just as delicious as I’d imagined but 10:30 was a little late for dinner so I ended up eating half and bringing the rest home.

Tomorrow is going to be another full day, we want to move all our storage bins and I’ve got a paper due on Monday.  I hope everyone else is having a good weekend!

Which sandwich topper do you prefer: cole slaw or sauerkraut?

Appetizing Arithmetic

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The baking bug has been gnawing at me lately and I finally ceded to its siren song today (holy figurative language Batman, that’s a lot of mixed metaphors!) –

Maple Walnut Cookie Bars.

The recipe was a mash-up (involving multiplication and division) of several things, I loved it in theory but the execution was a little off, probably because of our terrible oven.  I’ll wait to share until I’ve worked out all the kinks.  Imperfection didn’t keep me from enjoying a bar (or 2!) though.

This recipe is not healthy by any stretch, but if you check out Van’s Blog I have an article there about how Low Fat Doesn’t Mean Low Flavor.

Culinary Confusion

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I ate a sundae for breakfast and breakfast for lunch, how’s that for traditional?  Really though, it doesn’t matter how “normal” a meal is, as long as it is healthy and tasty.  And breakfast and lunch both were!

My sundae bowl yesterday was so wonderful that I had to do a repeat.

0% Plain Oikos, a little bit of homemade key lime pie ice cream, blackberry sauce, and crumbled graham cracker.

I seriously fall more in love with the ice cream every time I taste it!

Breakfast lunch featured some favorites as well, hash browns and pizza eggs.

For the hash browns I chopped up a small handful of baby red potatoes then fried them in 1T Smart Balance with salt and paprika.

Tasty, but next time I’d let them cook longer and get those crunchy brown bits.

Pizza eggs are a favorite, and so simple!  2 eggs + 1oz extra sharp cheddar + 10 slices turkey pepperoni + 1/4 cup marinara sauce = taste perfection

Mmmn-mmm-mmmn!

What is your favorite way to eat potatoes?  Mine is oven baked fries.

Get On The Train

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No, not that train.

The gravy train!  (which is a bit of a misnomer here as well, but just roll with it).

Actually, first I’ve got to go back to that sundae I talked about in the last post.

When I posted I had just sat down to eat my sundae, but I hadn’t really dug in yet.  Oh-My-God!  That thing was insane!  I couldn’t decide what the best part was, everything was good, but together it was fantastical!  Siggis yogurt is so thick that it’s basically firm, the key lime pie ice cream is the best thing I’ve ever made, and something about turning the blackberries into topping seemed to make them practically seedless.  I think it was the combo of just a little sour, just a little sweet that pushed it over the edge for me.  So here is your homework; you pick one but if you do all three you’ll give yourself an A++

  1. Ignore the shockingly high, “what, I don’t have rent to pay?!?” price tag and buy yourself some Siggis yogurt.
  2. Buy the reasonably priced (because it’s such an investment) Pie, Pie Pie: Easy Homemade Favorites, by John Phillip Carrol and make the blackberry topping that is supposed to go on the Blackberry Sour Cream Pie.
  3. Get hitched so you can get an ice cream maker via registry, then make Rachael Ray’s recipe for Key Lime Pie Ice Cream.

Now that you have your homework, back to the gravy!

I told you I had a strange dinner in the works – an open-faced turkey sandwich with gravy.  Very traditional and yet very unorthodox for our house.  I topped a piece of beer bread with thick sliced turkey breast and provolone, put it into a 450* oven until the cheese was nice and melty, then topped the whole thing with fat free turkey gravy.

It was delicious but the flavor wasn’t quite what I was going for, I’m not sure what was missing.  The husband loved it though.

We also had big plates of green bean fries on the side.

Other than okra, green beans are my favorite veggie to roast.

And some Dove dark chocolate for dessert.

What is the most “traditional” meal you’ve prepared lately?

P.S. I don’t know what kept this meal from being filling but Adam and I both got more to eat later on since we were both so flipping hungry!

You’re Like School In Summer*

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*A hypothetical, cracking wise, unseen you; obviously, my blog readers have loads of class!

I did, however, spend this summer day at school.  And I don’t mean online class school – which I’ve been heavily slacking off in, remind me to buckle down please? – I mean literal, classrooms, 18-year-old-make-make-me-feel-very-old students, school.  Yes, today was Transfer Orientation Day.

I’m not going to bore you with the whole recap, but the very exciting points are –

  • I’m not the oldest person in my major; many people seem to be my age and I’m even younger than a few!
  • I think I’m going to adore most of my classmates, Dietetics seems like a fun group.
  • Our program director recognized me.
  • I am so excited to head back in the fall!

I don’t really do the stale donut thing so I packed a Chocolate Chip Brownie Lara Bar sample for breakfast.

Fab-u-lous!  Best damn brownie I’ve ever had, granted, I hate brownies 🙂

Lunch was buffet style and I filled up a pretty good looking plate –

Aaaaand then the fire alarm went off and they evacuated us, which meant I threw most of my uneaten lunch in the trash.  I ate most of the salad and veggies, all of the watermelon, a bite of the macaroni, and none of the cupcake.

He husband dropped me off in the morning, so when orientation finally let out (it was fun, but 8am – 2:30pm, really?) I set off on my 2.5mile walk home.  Once we move I won’t be able to count my to/from school trips as incidental exercise any more since it is a gloriously short 8minute walk to BSC from our new apartment!

I’ve been doing some organizing but my lack of  a full lunch finally forced me to settle down for a snack.  I went with a sundae of sorts.

A container of Pomegranate Passionfruit Siggis yogurt, a little bit of homemade key lime pie ice cream, blackberry topping, and some graham cracker crumble.

I’ve got a super random dinner that I’m quite excited for, I’ll see you then!

What was/is your favorite thing about YOUR college?

Just Call Me Lara Craft

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What a night!  What a night and morning!  It’s been a day, we’ll leave it at that.

I don’t know if it was eating too much rich food or doing my mini workout too close to bed, but within 10minutes of laying down last night I was getting back up to puke.  The husband still feels ok, so fingers crossed that it was just me having stomach issues rather than the end of our Cheesecake Factory days.

I felt fine when I got up today, and immediately set to work being crafty.  I baked up a loaf of Beer Bread (recipe here) as well as a batch of Blackberry Topping (recipe from this book).  I can’t wait to utilize both of these goods in all sorts of yummy ways 🙂

Then I got to work being a bad-ass and battling evil.  Seriously.  I engaged in 15minutes of combat with a spider that just would not die!  I smashed it with a mushed up paper towel at least six times and this sucker just would not let go!  Oh, and did I mention he was a jumping spider?!?!  It was insane.  After five sessions of smashing only to see him scamper annoyingly out from under the paper towel I finally thought I won.  So I carried him carefully and quickly into the trash can.  NOPE!  When I saw him start to hightail his way out of the trash can too I seriously screamed so loud that the neighbors must assume there is some sort of domestic issue (the fact that I was repeatedly screaming “f**k you, you little bastard, get the f**k out of my house” probably didn’t help much either).  I lunged for the can of Raid and 30 continuous seconds later – 30seconds I’m sure I’ll be regretting if I’m ever diagnosed with lung cancer – I was victorious.  UGH.  Sidenote: whenever I’m annoyed with something I say “ugh, ugh, ugh,” a habit which is apparently starting to be something that annoys the husband.

So that’s my epic saga of bravery and screaming like a little girl with a potty mouth.  I plan to keep strong and carry on though.  I’ve got more crafting and bad-assing in my plans, like time spent working on my magazine binders and a trip to the gym for a run.  Where’s the food in this food blog post, you ask?  I’ll eat when I stop gagging.

*****Updated to add –

P.S. I’m not sure how much butt kicking I managed to squeeze in, considering that I was asleep at 7pm!!!  I awoke at 10 and stayed up for a few more hours but it felt strange nonetheless.  Most of today has been spent schlepping the husband back and forth (we are officially a 2-car-family now (ugh) and getting the “new” car registered has been a pain.

We All Scream for a Completed To Do List

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My to-do list took a slight turn, but it’s been a busy, productive day nonetheless.  I did lunch on-the-go while we were at campus doing my printing.  Pink Pineapple Funky Monkey,

and a Carrot Cake Lara Bar.

Yum, on both counts.

I spent the afternoon working and organizing (and marveling at our ice cream maker!) and we decided to move the schedule around and do some moving work this afternoon.  I had to fax something from Office Max so we did a little Target trip and also spent some time mapping out our new rooms.  It stinks to have to double pay rent, but having access to both apartments for the full month of July is definitely less stressful than trying to move all at once.

In the end, we went to the new apartment –> Target –> new apartment –> Bed Bath and Beyond.  We also managed to check every single item off of our to buy list, phew!  It felt really good to get that all done.  Excitement aside, we didn’t finish up until after 9pm so we ended up getting a late dinner at Cheesecake Factory.

I had some of the famous bread with butter.

And then we did lots of sharing.  An endive small plates salad (with blue cheese and pecans) to start.

And entrée split down the middle.

The husband gave me one of his avocado eggrolls,

and we split the spicy cashew chicken.

Mmmn, this is my very favorite thing at CF and it was nice to split so I wasn’t tempted to eat too too much.  We ended up with a nice plate of leftovers for Adam’s lunch tomorrow too.

When we finally got home we had dessert: that ice-cream I’ve been yapping about all day –

We used a recipe from Rachael Ray Magazine, Key Lime Pie Ice Cream.  The husband didn’t want graham crackers so I left them out and sprinkled some on top of my dish.

We enjoyed some Futurama reruns whilst mmmn and ahhhing.

Afterwards (way way too late) I talked him into doing a quick mini workout with me; 10minutes of strength and stretch moves.  Bedtime is imminent.

What is your favorite flavor of ice-cream?  My real favorite is plain (tart) froyo!

A Plumb Post

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Happy Monday, welcome to the week everyone!  I had a free minute and I was feeling the blogging itch so I decided to do a quick stop-by.

We didn’t get much sleep this weekend (hello, new baby in the house!) so I tried to catch up today and happily stayed in bed until 9.  Ever since then it’s been go-go-go, but with some fun in there too.

I made my nutrition cartoon, completing this assignment a whole day early 🙂

I also got started on some ice cream.

I can’t wait until this stuff is finished!  And no, I’m not pregnant, I just have a thing for shapeless shift dresses (at least they’re not shiftless, ahaha).

And I’ve eaten a tasty, pretty breakfast.

0% Plain Oikos topped with 1t maple syrup and 2 chopped plucots.

I adore plums in general, and the plucot just might be my favorite fruit, it is certainly the most stunning!

On the agenda for the rest of the day –

  • going to campus to print off all of my notes
  • lunch?
  • updating our mailing address everywhere (ugh)
  • classwork
  • finishing our ice-cream production
  • a run
  • dinner, with ice-cream for dessert 🙂

Which is your favorite variety of plum?