Author Archives: Emily

Mouth Freedom

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First this happened –

And then this –

Woot!  I’m not officially done with retainers but we’re doing a three-week trial of wearing them just at night.  I’m not gonna lie; it’s possible I got choked up I was so excited to leave my orthodontist appointment without retainers in my mouth.

My first stop was Dunkin, where they apparently do not have soy milk.  What’s up with that?  Then I went to Starbucks.  The ‘bucks never lets me down.  I got a venti iced coffee with cinnamon dolche syrup and soy milk.  Heaven.  I’ve had some coffee during my last year of teen-style mouth-gear, but now I can finally savor it.  Heaven.

And with that exciting-to-no-one-but-me update, I’m back to blogging!

Since I’ve Been Gone

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Some of the things that have happened over the past few days –

I’ve had Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone” stuck in my head.

Adam and I ate pizza.  Whoops!  We’re going to continue the challenge through the 29th, but I think I can conclude that this Vegan Month was sort of a fail.

I had my first patient in palliative (end of life) care.  It was a unique, humbling experience.

“Once Upon A Time” is my new favorite new show.  Possibly an all-time favorite, except not better than “Buffy.”  I watched all 13 available episodes in one day and cried no less than three times during the first episode.

What have you been up to?

Fail Tally

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Today – I’ve got my first Foodservice Management test tonight and I am not ready.

This Week – Workouts.  I decided to take a week’s hiatus from CT10k because of some mild knee pain (the knee is no big deal but at one week in I wasn’t going to lose any fitness so better safe than sorry).  But that wasn’t supposed to mean no gym time at all, just elliptisizing instead of running.

This Month – Vegan Month.  Which apparently should have been named No Carb Left Behind.

This Year – Organization.  The apartment is a mess.  My binder project is spread over every table-like surface.  And what’s more, I feel like a mess.  And I haven’t blogged consistently since Christmas break, yeesh!

Since you’ll be getting nothing of import from me today, I suggest checking out these much funnier fails – http://failbook.failblog.org/

[source]

My 2nd Weekend

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It’s hump day, but my week is just beginning!  I spent Sunday through Tuesday doing nothing more than eating and watching TV.  Seriously, nothing more.  I stuck mostly to popcorn and “Futurama.”  It was great.  It was a good thing I had my “2nd weekend;” we had Monday and Tuesday off for Presidents’ Day.  But I do have to buckle down now to make it through the rest of the week.

I started today by fueling up with a good big breakfast.  I was super hungry and somehow my morning meal turned into a multiple course affair.  First, Amande Coconut Yogurt.

Made with cultured almond milk, Amande makes the best vegan yogurt I’ve ever had.  Adam is completely obsessed with and swears he’s never eating regular yogurt again.  I topped mine with a crumbled Bananas Foster Bar.

And another bar found its way into my mouth too.

Plus an apple.

And a bun with SmartBalance Light.

Now, what’s for lunch?  🙂

See If They’ve Got Any Chocolate Bananas, Foster

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Did everyone have a fun Friday?  I slept through most of mine, hence the Saturday recap post.

I woke up a little bit late(r than desired) yesterday so I headed to straight to the gym.  CT10k 1.3 called for 10 sets of 2 minutes running, 3 minutes walking.  50 minutes and 3.9 miles.  My workout was great, but I cut the time a little too close.  I had to literally jog – ugg boots, purse, push-up bra and all – part of the way back to school to make it to class on time!

I’m glad I made it, we had a great guest lecturer; a local RD who is certified as a Diabetes Educator.  Once you’ve been an RD for couple of years there are all sorts of specialty certifications you can pursue.  I think one in weight loss counseling could be fun.

When the guest lecturer was gone, I managed to eat breakfast during some student presentations.  Leftovers for the win.

The Seven Layer Casserole just gets better and better!  I also had a Goya Soursop Nectar.

Soursop (aka guanabana) is my favorite fruit; it is too exciting that my Wegman’s recently expanded its Goya line.  A guy friend in class joked that I’ve been a Goya groupie lately, (this was only my 2nd item but I think they are memorable because they’re a little outside the norm for class snacking) but it’s the closest thing to what I grew up with.

I stayed at school for a bit to work after class to work in the Dietetics computer lab.  I have to complete a three-day diet analysis as part of my portfolio and I needed to use a program that is only available on the computers at school.  I think maybe my eats during Vegan Month are a little too obscure for the program though; I had to make my best guesses at product substitutes and the program told me that my average intake for the last three days was 978 kcal/day.  I don’t think so!

For lunch, I opened up this So Delicious Greek Style Plain Yogurt.

No.  Just no.  I knew it was a gamble when I bought it but I took the risk because I’ve adored everything else I’ve tried from So Delicious.  Sadly the yogurt was exactly as I’d feared – straight up chemical.  The texture wasn’t terrible but the taste was like licking a counter in chem lab.

Instead I ate the two plucots that were supposed to top my yogurt out of hand.

I almost shed a tear of happiness at the taste of these.  They were still a little bit too sour, but that means that plucot season is right around the corner.

For the rest of lunch I paced frantically waited patiently for my oven timer to ring.

Bananas Foster Bars!!!  If Seven Layer Casserole was #2, these bars are the #1 best thing from last year’s Vegan Month.  I ate three.

I’m not gonna lie and say that my stomach didn’t hurt, but I’m also not gonna lie and say it wasn’t totally worth it.

But since I ate ~700 calories worth of cookies I did keep dinner on the lighter side.  Or I was going to anyway.  The plan was soup, but apparently my hour-long nap – at noon, on the floor – wasn’t doing it because I fell into bed at 8:30 last night!  Yay catch-up sleep.

This morning Adam and I headed straight out on errands.  Probably not my best idea to skip breakfast when I slept through dinner, but I was a woman on a mission.  I got so hungry that I convinced myself that spending $3 on a Synergy Grape Chia Kombucha wasn’t a waste of money.

But it really wasn’t a waste of money because it was delicious!  I loved chewing through it and the flavor reminded me of a grape Laffy Taffy.  Adam and I shared it and even he was a fan by the end.

Our other share wasn’t quite as healthy.

Five Guys fries make my soul sing.  Seriously.  I’ve made a bigger effort this past week to eat less crap, but we’re doing a different challenge in March that necessitates shoveling in FGF now.

Lunch was healthy and tasty.

I love storing leftovers in tupperware because when you are combining you can shake things together to get a really good mix.  This time I shook barley, roasted broccoli, roasted butternut squash, and Wegman’s Thai Peanut Sauce.  Topped with a few cocktail peanuts.

Delicious.  We’ve been trying new things from the Co-op’s bulk bins lately and it’s been fun branching out.

I made myself a really delicious dinner.

But I only got to eat two bites.  All of the sudden, Webster – in the worst show of behavior I’ve ever seen from him – shoved his entire face into my bowl!  Hello, mess; goodbye, dinner.

[Updated Sunday Morning To Add]

The boys came over to play poker, he got even more crazy, and I got so irritated I ended up just going to bed.  So now I need to find a nice big breakfast.

Stupid dog.

Question of the day, from my post title – Name that movie!

By The Clock

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Thank you, Thursday, for being fabulous in a strange and wonderful way.  I was in a good mood all day.  I was busy with easy to do tasks, I had simple but tasty meals, and little bonuses kept popping up.

8:00 – Wake up with Adam still in bed.  He had a study day before an exam and I got to start my morning making a pile with him and the dog.

9:00 – Quick meeting with my Statistics teacher.  All of the homework I’ve done so far has been correct!  Plus she let me sit in on an earlier class session to accommodate a change in clinic schedule for the afternoon.

9:20 – Eat a Cappuccino Lara Bar for breakfast.

This is my favorite flavor LB for sure.  It’s not too strongly coffeed and it’s less date-y than other flavors.

11:00 – See the husband mid-day (squee!!!) when he graciously offers to drive me to UB for the lecture I’m attending.

12:00 – Attend a 1 hour lecture on diabetes mellitus and pharmacology.  We didn’t learn much that we can actually put into clinical practice, but it was a fascinating topic.

13:00  – Stop into Jimmy Johns for a large fountain soda – diet coke with a shot of cherry coke – with ice.  Swoon.

14:00 – Lunch.

My Seven Layer Casserole was the #2 best thing to come out of last year’s vegan month (and I’m making numero uno this weekend!).  It is packed full of veggies but tastes like a big mouthful of tortilla chips.  True Story – the reason we went to Moe’s on Tuesday was so I could take home the free chips for this recipe.

16:30 – Finish the writing assignment (due this evening, whoops) that’s been buzzing around my head all month.

18:00 – Dinner in class.

Holy frick, this sandwich, holy frick.  It’s simple, just a Sandwich Thin with mustard, SmartBalance Light, and raw tempeh, but it blew my mind.  The perfect combo of flavors.

Plus a baggie of roasted green beans.

These are actually sort of embarrassing to eat in class because they are squishy and you end up having to cram them in your mouth.  I own it though.

19:30 – We get dismissed from class 30 minutes early!

20:30 – Blog.

21:00 – (planned) read magazines in bed.  <– heaven

What was the best hour of your day?

Life In Lists

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Some Thoughts from Yesterday

  1. I finished the last published book in the Temperance Brennan series from Kathy Reichs and I’m devastated. There’s a new one coming out this summer but that’s not soon enough! I get really into what I’m reading and when a good book is over it’s like a friend has moved away.
  2. I want to also be sad that this is the final season of “House” but honestly I’m not sure how they’d top this season. The most recent episode was amazing! While I love books (Duh!), I also get really moved by good tv. I always tell Adam and if I had watched more as a kid I probably would have grown up to work in television. I am genuinely awed by people like Hugh Laurie, Emily Deschanel, Joss Whedon, and Hart Hanson. Anyway though, “House,” I’m loving the character development. Thus week House and Chase grew in ways that were both amazing and realistic to the characters.

A Few Things Done Today

  • A CT10k workout. Week 1.2 was 9 sets of 3 minutes walking, 2 minutes running. With 5 minutes of cool down for 50 minutes, 3.85 miles.
  • I met with a friend to work on a group project. Sometime next month we are doing a nutrition education session for a group of preschoolers. Not the age range I’m used to but it should be fun.
  • I bought a Groupon for 2 unlimited months at Evolation Yoga!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I’ll have to wait a bit to activate them (I can’t get as much out of them as I’d like and also put the time I need into the CT10k running plan) but I am so flipping excited.
  • Not my schoolwork.  Like the paper due tomorrow that’s going to ruin my Thursday.

What I Ate Today

1.  Lunch for breakfast.

In the bowl was a concoction just crazy enough to work.  Leftover Smokey Maple Baked Beans, roasted butternut squash, 4 oz of chopped up tempeh, and a dousing of Anchor Bar’s Medium Wing Sauce.

Delicious, but I was crying and snotting after every bite.  I was glad I had this onion bagel with SmartBalance Light to help break up the spice.

2.  Dinner, from Wegman’s.

Veggies with a piece of tofu,

plus a small serving of noodles with cabbage.

And grape leaves.

I had three.  We bought the ‘leaves because Adam tried to order some at his lunch today and they came stuffed with meat and covered in a cream sauce.  Weird!  I’ve never ever seen them offered like that before.  Pretty annoying too that the menu didn’t mention either of those additions.

3. Snack.  I stole the last two servings of Adam’s Somersaults.

Somersaults are his favorite snack item (he basically squealed when we discovered them on sale at Wegman’s) so I want to feel bad for eating them, but they were downright delicious.

Some Questions for You

  1. What is your favorite book series?
  2. Have you ever encountered grape leaves with meat and/or cream sauce?
  3. What’s your favorite packaged snack food?

Window Shopping Wednesday

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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 on Wednesdays, I thought we could have some fun via blog. Let’s window shop!

Can you guess what I’m coveting this week?  I’ll give you some hints – Yesterday was Valentine’s Day.  We are currently halfway through Vegan Month.

1. Salty Sweet Brownies from Baked.

Adam and I had the joy of visiting Baked in person (in the amazing Red Hook area) while we were living in Brooklyn and it kills me that I can’t go back every week.  I have their cookbook and I find myself looking at it again and again.  I’ve never tried the salty sweet brownie, but their hazelnut cake rocked my socks.  And how can you go wrong with anything that’s infused with caramel and fleur de sel?

2.  An order of Cookies and Cream Marshmallow Dream fondue from The Melting Pot.

And I quote – “dark chocolate topped with marshmallow cream flambéed and topped with bits of delicious Oreo cookies.”  I’m sorry, cookies and cream and marshmallow?!

3.  Cookie Butter from Trader Joe’s.

I know it won’t be as good as Biscoff Spread, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to taste it and see for myself!  And I’ve heard rumors of a cookie butter stuffed dark chocolate candy bar.

4. A pint of Caramel Cookie Crunch from Talenti Gelato.

I know it seems like I love ice-cream (and I do!), but really I’m gelato’s biggest fan.  My only complaint is that it tends to be difficult to find gelato flavors with “mix-ins.”  No more.  Crunchy plus creamy is where it’s at.

5.  An assorted truffle gift box from Godiva.

There is never a worse time to be unable to eat milk chocolate than Valentine’s Day.  Yesterday every tweet about a heart-shaped box was like an arrow to the heart.  And this box has hazelnut praliné, double dark chocolate and coconut truffles.

What are you craving this week?