Monthly Archives: February 2012

On The Hook

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It’s Friday; two weeks of school are officially done and over with!  And 2 days of Vegan Month in, I realize I need to figure out a new eating plan.  Now that our larders are stocked it should be easier, but I’ve been waiting too long to eat and eating way too much.  Not good.

Due to a looming bedtime and the sheer mass of (uninteresting) food, I’ll keep this quick.  Coconut water was consumed during class.

This Jumanji apple wasn’t quite as exciting as its name, but it was sweet and good.

With 2 Tbsp of peanut butter.  Plus a ridiculous amount of peanut butter (3-4 Tbsp?!) eaten straight from the jar.

This Amy’s Rice Macaroni with Dairy-Free Cheese was good.

The cheese was by far the best vegan cheese you could hope for (it was good even on the just cheese scale, without the vegan modifier!).  But I wish I could find the vegan but not also gluten-free version, because I bet it’d be better.

The rice pasta was a little bit gummy.

Jordan Almonds (x2) were consumed for taste-testing purposes.

If you like Jordan almonds then I have got the recipe coming for you!  I’m baking this weekend and hope to post early next week.

Vegan jerky.

A bagel with SmartBalance Light.

An Earl Gray with soy milk during a monster-shopping trip.

A Red Hood Winter Hook was split with Adam when we got home.

And a big bowl of popcorn (with SmartBalance Light) was consumed while watching “Grey’s.”

Holy crap carbs.  I think I’m going to spend tomorrow embracing produce!

Peachy Keen

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Hello, hello!  We’ve reached Friday without me grabbing a diet coke and/or ice cream cone out of a stranger’s hand, I call that a successful week!  Yesterday went well, I did indeed get in bed early – I stayed up pretty late finishing the 10th Temperance Brennan book, but at least I was in bed.

This morning’s breakfast was peachy keen.

But I miss my cottage cheese, this bowl was so hot!  (Hence the foggy photos.)

My scorching spoonfuls contained –

  • 3/4 cup (frozen, thawed) peaches
  • 2/3 cup water and 1/3 cup Silk Vanilla Almond Milk
  • 1/3 cup oats
  • ~2 tsp chia seeds
  • a liberal sprinkle of brown sugar

It was delicious, though I do admit that I’m greatly looking forward to trying a peaches with cottage cheese oatmeal bowl when this month is over!

I’d love it if more of you guys would go back and tell me something about yourself!

11 Things

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I typically don’t do memes like this but one of my good blog friends, Teacher Girl, tagged me and I just couldn’t resist.  Plus, it’s nice to have a little prewritten content for my looong school day.  I’ll be back tomorrow.

The Rules

You must post these rules.
Each person must post 11 things about themselves on their blog.
Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post, and create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
You have to choose 11 people to tag and link them on the post.
Go to their page and tell them you linked him or her.
No tag backs.
No stuff in the tagging section about “you are tagged if you are reading this.” You have to legitimately tag 11 people.

11 Things About Me

I’m going to assume that I have gotten at least a few new readers over the past year or so and I’m going to stick with the basics.  I apologize if these are redundant for any of you!

1.  I was born and raised in the US Virgin Islands, on the Island of St. Thomas.

2.  In the VI, I learned how to drive on the LEFT side of the road.  When I moved to Miami for college and started driving in the states, I had to chant “right is right, right is right” every time I made a turn.

3.  On my sixteenth birthday, I was the first person under-18 to sky dive in the state of Pennsylvania.

4.  I have two tattoos.  A star next to my left hip and a tramp stamp in the outline of a bow.  Both are tiny.

5.  I drew the outline for my bow tattoo myself.  I went in with an idea of what I wanted and when I couldn’t find it in the books at the shop, I quickly drew an example.  I thought my drawing was pretty good and I ended up just using that!

6.  When I’m at home, I’m naked more often than not.

7.  When I was in high school, “Dirty Dancing” played on TBS all of the time.  I fell in love and watched it every time I could, at least 10 viewings in one year.

8.  Because of my love for it, a friend rented “Dirty Dancing” to play at a sleep-over.  As we watched I mouthed along with the dialogue until … we got to a sex scene I had never seen.  I didn’t know that TBS showed an edited version and I’d never seen the full movie!

9.  My celebrity meetings (ie I spoke to them for at least 45 seconds or more) include Mariska Hargitay, Dave Chapelle, and Keanu Reeves.  Keanu Reeves and I actually spoke for 10 minutes or so; when he was shooting “Henry’s Crime” here in Buffalo one of my friends was the liaison between the movie crew and the bank they used for the big scenes.

10.  When I was in 5th grade I went through a major Doc Martins phase.  On an island.  It wasn’t pretty.

11.  When I was a kid, President Bill Clinton drove past our house.  One of the cars in his entourage had to stop because they almost ran over our dog!

TG’s Questions

1. If you could be any character from a book, who would you be and why?

Temperance Brennan from Kathy Reichs’ novels because she is a bad-ass forensic anthropologist (one of my dream careers!).

2. If you were going to move anywhere in the world, where would it be?

In the summer of 2013 I am going to move to                                 , because that is where Adam will be matched for his residency.  If I have my druthers, that blank will be filled in with Miami or Brooklyn.

3. What is something embarrassing that happened to you that you now think is funny?

Last semester, in the middle of a class I spilled a full cup of diet coke.  The cup went flying straight into my friend Kim’s purse!  Thankfully nothing really spilled and her stuff was alright, but my face was so red!

4. What do you do when you have “nothing to do?”

Blog read.  And spend time on Pinterest!

5. What was the last book you read?

One of Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan novels.

6. What are the top 5 songs on your playlist right now?

  1. Sexy and I Know It – LMFAO
  2. Soldier – Ingrid Michaelson
  3. Fearless – Cyndi Lauper
  4. Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living) – The Eels
  5. New Slang – The Shins

7. How many pairs of shoes do you own?

10 pairs of sandals (all Ginger style Reefs), 3 pairs of heels, 12 pairs of flats, 5 pairs of sneakers (including running shoes, Vans, and KangaROOs), and 4 pairs of boots (that includes children’s snow boots and rain boots).  Yikes, that sounds like a lot!  But 99% of them are 6 years old or older.

8. Never have I ever…

Gone streaking.

9. If _____ showed up at my door…

If President Obama showed up at my door, I’d be sure to keep a close eye on Webster!

10. What is something you are afraid of?

Dark parking lots.  If I have to walk to my car alone at night I leap into the front seat so that a creeper hiding beneath my car won’t have time to grab my feet.  And then I thoroughly check the back seat.

11. Tell me something wonderful that happened to you this week (or month, ya know, if it has been a bad week).

We started Vegan Month on Wednesday and I am so excited that the husband is taking the challenge with me.

People I’m Tagging

  1. Food, Sweat, and Beers
  2. Fitness NYC
  3. Meals and Moves
  4. Please Don’t Weigh Me At The Zoo
  5. Bran Appetit
  6. Table for Glasses
  7. Yes, I Want Cake
  8. Turn Towards The Sun
  9. Accidentally Vegan
  10. A Taste of Confidence
  11. The Frozen Pineapple

My Questions to You

1.  You can fly anywhere in the world to eat one item of food.  Where do you go and what do you eat?

2.  How many songs are in your i-Tunes library?

3.  How many states have you lived in?  How many have you visited?

4.  If you could be any TV character, who would you be and why?

5.  If you had to change careers tomorrow, what new job would you want to do?

6.  If you had to pick one food to give up for the rest of your life what would you pick?  What would you pick to have to eat every day for the rest of your life?

7.  How many blogs are in your GoogleReader?

8.  How many children do you want to have?  How many siblings did you grow up with?

9.  (If tv was still good…) would you rather be on Real World or Road Rules?  Why?

10.  Which fashion/hair/make-up trend did you participate in that you wish you’d skipped?

11.  What physical attribute do you love most about yourself?

Readers – pick one or two of my questions to answer in the comments section!

The Whole Dang Day

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It looks like this might be a cranky week!  I’ve just got to roll with it.

Last night’s popcorn turned into fries when I had to leave the house for the cell phone I forgot in the car.

Waffle fries do not make me cranky.

What does make me cranky, is the fact that the shoes I wore to the hospital on Tuesday shredded my feet and left me with big painful spots by each heel.  When I went to put on my sneakers this morning I cried out in pain, so clearly a run was not going to work.  Not only did I have to skip a much-needed workout, but I still had to drive to school at 8am so I could park.  Ugh!

I parked my car for easy access to driving to the hospital this afternoon and headed to the library to do some printing.  (I have some complaints about that too but I’ll keep them to myself!)  Then I stopped by the bookstore for a tall, soy chai latte for the walk home.

Funky mood or not, I have to admit that vanilla soy milk definitely adds a little something extra to a chai latte.  And the warmth in my belly helped me through the cold walk home.

I ate this Crispin apple while I cooked,

but that was the end of the “breakfast foods.”  Instead breakfast looked like this –

I chopped up half a large eggplant and sautéed it in a little evoo and chipotle oil, then poured in some water and covered it to steam.  Then I added in a big handful of chopped okra and ~ 1/2 cup of marinara sauce.

While a bit strange at 9am, the eggplant, okra, marinara skillet is one of my very favorite meals!

This afternoon I have statistics, then clinic, then my night class.  Since it’s a cranky day week, I think I’ll be best served by leaving class at 8pm and hopping straight into a shower and bed.  So I’m sharing my dinner now!

A baggie of grapes.

And a serving of last night’s stir fry.

Topped with dry roasted peanuts because we ran out of cashews.

Should be good.

If anything else sneaks into my mouth I’ll update tomorrow.  See you then!

What do you do to help yourself get over it when you’re having a cranky day week?

Vegan Month Challenge

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Ugh.  Today was day 3 of no diet soda and I’m seriously cranky.  Also, when I woke up there was no food in the house (vegan or otherwise) and I’ve been starving all day.  It was one of those situations where I waited so long to eat that I never got full, even now.  Oh, oh, oh!  And I’m annoyed because I have projects I want to start and we haven’t been given all of the information that we need yet.  Okay, I think that’s it for the complaints!

Breakfast was a smoothie.

I found this Vega Tropical Tango smoothie mix (HLS sample) in the cupboard and blended it with 1 cup of orange juice and 7 oz of frozen soursop pulp.

It tasted better than it looked.

My classes went well, though I was cranky the entire time.  Thinking about my newest reason to love Kristen Bell helped.  I made sure to run to Wegmans for an emergency grocery stock-up the minute class was over!

I ate this handful of peanuts x 3 when I got home.

Dinner was stir fry.

We stir fried a bunch of veggies – frozen brocoli/carrot/cauliflower mix, plus more frozen broccoli, plus canned stir fry mushrooms, and canned baby corn – with stir fry sauce and topped with a few toasted cashews.

Tasty, but it didn’t even make a dent in my hunger.

Next I had a huge (2 cups, aka 2 servings) bowl of Wegman’s Berry Corn Crunch Cereal with Silk Unsweetened Almond Milk.

And a huge spoonful of Dark Chocolate Dreams pb.

And now I’m going to go have some popcorn.  I swear that all of vegan month won’t be like this, it’s just that I waited to long to eat and I let my hunger get out of control!

February = Vegan Month Challenge

We’ve done this so many times now that this announcement feels like it doesn’t require much fanfare.

During February of 2012, Adam and I will be doing a 1-month vegan challenge.  No eggs, no dairy, no meat, no honey, and no products containing any of the aforementioned.  No, we didn’t choose February because it’s the shortest month.  Yes, we are excited.

Over the years I’ve done three different challenge introductions and three different challenge recaps (see the links above) on my blog and I feel like there’s no new way to explain why we are choosing to do this.  Basically –

While I think a vegan diet can be healthy for some individuals, I don’t think it is healthy long-term for everyone.
I think that everyone can be healthier if their diet includes more vegan meals and less meat.
Adam and I have both been in a healthy diet rut recently and a month of vegan meals will force us to spend some time with vegetables again.
1 month is a good way to remind myself that not every dish needs cheese.

Would any omnivores be interested in joining me for the month?

Window Shopping Wednesdays

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I am not much of a shopper, much to my mother’s chagrin. The woman can spend days at the mall, while I start to feel itchy after just a few hours. It’s not that I’m not materialistic, I totally am, it’s just that the thought of adding more stuff to my life makes it hard to breathe. But I like the idea of things. So I’m an avid window shopper. I browse catalogs I’ll never buy from and hold my breathe when I pass the window at J.Crew. So while I’m stuck at school all day Wednesdays, I thought we could have some fun via blog. Let’s window shop!

Here’s what I’m coveting this week –

1.  The warm honey nectar body wash from Upper Canada Soap.

I love the pump bottle for shower goods and you basically can’t go wrong with honey.  They also have a sweet vanilla fig version.

2.  The pins and needles 3/4 sleeve lace top from Urban Outfitters.

I’m obsessed with lace tops but I can never quite find one that is perfect.  I’m not sure about the fact that this doesn’t have a lining, but the 3/4 sleeves make its see-throughness much more sweet than tart.

3.  Maple malted milk balls from Oh! Nuts.

 

Two of my flavors melded into one?  This has to be good.  And I’ve tried a few other flavors of malt balls from this company and found them all to have a good texture and ratio of malt-chocolate.

4.  Tuthilltown bourbon barrel matured maple syrup from Mikuni Wild Harvet.

Speaking of maple, its marriage with bourbon would be a match made in heaven.  This would be good drizzled onto pancakes but divine when cooked into collard greens.

5.  The rolling hills of Scotland color block dress from Lulu’s.

This is flowy like I like, but not veering into pregnancy style like most of the other tunic-y items that I admire.  I’m liking the extra length in the back too.

What’s on your shopping list this week?