Ending Sandwich Week with a Full Court Press

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Okey doke; It’s Friday night, I have a Modern Family and CSI to catch up on, and a husband waiting on the couch!

I had a ton of reading to do today before class so breakfast at home was a no-show.  I did however get all my reading done, and I learned a lot about nutritive and nonnutritive sweeteners (with and without calories).  Because knowledge is power – The ADA says that

  • There is no definitive link between obesity and sweeteners alone
  • Your body knows no difference between sugars; an apple or a soda, the sugars are all processed the same (that’s not to say that the fiber, and nutrient piece doesn’t matter)
  • There is no proven link between sweeteners and hyperactivity in children,
  • but there is some evidence that suggests a link to depression
  • Stevia has yet to be approved by the FDA

I had just a few minutes after class to pick up my portfolio project (100%) and grab food before heading to a group meeting.

PB&J wasn’t the healthiest option, but it was the cheapest, and not the unhealthiest.

Hours later, when I got out of Anatomy all I could think about was going home.  I was hungry, tired, and cold and the last thing I wanted to do was go work out.  But I told myself if I went to the gym I could buy a cookie, so I did!

We are actually running in a 5k next weekend (what, another race I’m not prepared for!?!?) so I’m trying to be gentle to my legs this week; expect to see a lot of walking breaks on the treadmill.  Today’s workout was all about the intervals –

5minutes walking, 1 running, 1w, 2r, 1w, 3r, 1w, 4r, 1w, 5r, 1w, 5r, 5w.  So, 15minutes walking, 20minutes running, 35minute workout.

Adam picked me up from the gym and we spent forever driving around, accomplishing nothing.  Sometimes it’s nice just to be together.  Plus, we split some chewy Starbursts.

When we got home it was more than time for a salad.

I topped a bed of dressed spinach with craisins, blue cheese, and some almonds from Sahale Snacks.

Divine.

Since it’s the last day of Sandwich Week I decided to go out with a bang –

or a press rather; paninis!

Step 1 – Spread some thin sliced sourdough with dijon mustard and hot pepper peach preserves (or any kind of preserve really, you just want to give it a bit of sweet).

Step 2 – Add a few pieces of thin-sliced turkey.

Step 3 – Crumble on some blue cheese.

Step 4 – Top the cheese with some thinly sliced pear.

Finally – close and press.

This sandwich was fantabulous!  The texture of paninis always drives me wild and the combo of flavors was perfect; a bit spicy, a bit sweet, and bit salty.

Make this at home!  Send me pictures!

We’re going to go find a fountain diet coke and then cuddle up on the couch.  Have a great Friday night!

Alternative Night

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It’s been a strange sort of day ’round these parts.  Very glad it’s almost Friday!

Things started off quite well, with a shockingly good bowl of oats for breakfast.

Cooked: 1/3 cup oatmeal, 1/3 cup each skim milk and water, 1 medium banana, ~1/3 cup canned pumpkin, and a pinch of salt.

Topped: 1 Tbsp each chunky peanut butter and butterscotch chips.

This was ah-MAZE-ing!  I don’t know if it’s the stove top cooking, the banana, the extended cooking time, or what, but my recent attempts at oatmeal have been my best yet.

The texture of this bowl reminded me of tapioca pudding (creamy with bits of chew) and the banana turned into banana clouds of awesomeness.

Awesome as it was, I could not finish this bowl.  Even with only 1/3 of a cup of oats, the banana, and the pumpkin, plus the decadent toppings were just too much.  I ended up leaving a couple of bites behind.

You can be sure I picked all of the banana clouds out first though 😀

And from breakfast things went downhill…..  My Anatomy quiz went ok, and lab was no more frustrating than usual, but halfway through class I was unbelievably nauseous.  I felt like I was going to throw up and I was light-headed and queasy.  The sick feeling continued all throughout the day, at one point in my food lab I actually had to go sit down.

I’m not sure what exactly caused it, because I’m feeling ok now.  Too much sugar for breakfast?  Hunger?  Residual effects from my flu shot?

Call my crazy, but in spite of my quease-factor I pushed through between classes and made a visit to the gym.  What?!  I went to school dressed in gym clothes and I wasn’t about to “waste” a day without a cute outfit!  I did 30 (difficult) minutes on the elliptical, random, level 6.  Those 30minutes were the best I felt all day!

I did feel significantly worse once the gym-high wore off though.  Extra bad news for me, a group in food lab made cheesecake today and I was too sick to eat it 😦  I did have to take a few bites of my group’s experiments, but nothing photoworthy – 3 bites of grilled cheese with different processed cheeses and small bites of puddings made from a mix and whole/2%/1%/skim milk.

I dragged myself home after lab and parked myself on the couch.  Sidenote – I have a deeply ingrained habit of rocking myself back and forth when I’m sick I and it drives the husband crazy!  Around 5, when he was fully ready to throttle me, I redeemed myself by pulling out a coupon for this –

ColdStone has debuted fall flavors!  I got a “small” cup of cookie batter and caramel apple ice cream (swoon!) with some caramel Ghirardelli mixed in.

I know it sounds insane but I felt so much better after I ate this!  I think my nausea at that point was just hunger.

Revived, I decided to do an “alternative” sandwich for tonight’s dinner.

The Wafflewich!

I used a serving of Van’s Berry Boost Waffles as my base, and sandwiched chicken salad (stewed chicken from Tuesday, mayo, pickle relish), a slice of melty Colby cheese, and a drizzle of maple syrup in between.

The waffles got a bit mushy when I microwaved them to melt the cheese, but other than that this was delicious.

Tomorrow?  The final night of Sandwich Week, a ton of school work to make up in the early morning, and some vegetables!

What “alternative” sandwiches have you created?

Jump in De Line, Rock Your Body in Time

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Ugh-dates –

1. The Wegman’s blueberry coffee is just not good 😦  It has a super burnt bitter taste.  I even added sugar (and skim milk) to my second cup and I still didn’t like it.

However, Adam says I can’t buy more until this is gone and there are some holiday flavors I’m excited about so I’ll be slugging this down.

2. The Orgo notes assignment that was due today took up my entire morning.  I was so slammed for time I couldn’t even eat!  Must work on the weekends, must work on the weekends, must work on the weekends….

UP-dates –

1. The husband has been bringing chocolate chip pumpkin squares to school and his classmates like them so much someone even requested the recipe!  It’s not actually my personal recipe (thanks, Martha), but it’s nice to feel like a good wife.

2. I lit a cinnamon pumpkin candle this morning and it brought my Halloween corner of the mantle to life.

Anyway, I didn’t have time to eat so I packed myself 2 servings of Sahale Snacks to munch during Orgo.

After my first set of classes I spent yet more time dealing with transfer credits and my class schedule.  The good news is that I’ve had two victories; the bad is that I call BS on the fact that they won’t accept my writing credits.

I spent so much time that I almost didn’t make it to the gym before lab.  I had to rush rush rush and eat food from the vending machine while I hightailed it across campus.

A pre-gym Rice Krispie treat is better than no fuel at all!

And a short work out is better than no gym time at all.  I did a quick treadmill session.

Lab went quickly tonight – all we were doing was building models – and I was home in time to make a nice dinner.  First though, I made a nice snack.

A Caramel Oikos with canned pumpkin and homemade pb.

I was starving when I got home and I didn’t want to be too hungry to enjoy my dinner.

And dinner was delicious;

I claim the 2nd night of Sandwich Week to be a success!

BLTs.  Rather, TBSTs – turkey bacon spinach tomatoes.  On sourdough with a smear of homemade mayo.

We ate roasted asparagus on the side.

Yum!  And this took all of 10minutes to throw together; dinner really can be healthy, tasty, and quick all at once.

We shelled out a bit of extra cash and bought Applegate Farms bacon; it is so much better than the other varieties we’ve had.

Turkey bacon doesn’t really make ‘bacon grease,’ but it does stick to the pan and make delicious browned bits.  There’s no chance I’m letting that go to waste; I scraped up the browned bits with a scrambled egg.

We got in the October spirit by watching “Beetlejuice” while we ate.  I love that movie, but I don’t think I’d realized before how sad it is.

I’ve got an Anatomy Lab quiz tomorrow to study for (announced at the last minute, arrrgh!), so I’m off!

What do you like on your BLTs, ya know, beyond the B, L, and T?  M (mayo or mustard)?  S&P? C(heese)?

Start of Sandwich Week

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Some bloggers have their dinner posts up before I even eat dinner, how do they do it?!?  We’re on a pretty late schedule here, but it works well for us.

That Paula Red apple was mealy and sad, I traded it off to the husband (he liked it!).  Instead I ate a Crispin apple with a spoonful of peanut butter.

My night class got out super early today, and I completed the online quiz and walked home all before 7; score!  I celebrated with a small piece of pumpkin chocolate chip square.

Btw – the husband has demolished these bars, almost all of them are gone!  He took a container to school today and said all of his classmates freaked out about them as well.

Now, on to sandwich week……

Since it’s already Tuesday into the week, I decided to start things off with a bang.  What’s that?

Oh, nothing.  Just homemade from scratch mayonnaise!

It took team work, and more time than predicted, but in the end we were victorious; go us!  I used the recipe from Katherine Darling’s Under the Table – which is an amazing book in general, I highly recommend it – but you could easily Google a recipe.

The sandwich vehicle for the mayo was Buffalo chicken subs, which came together in a snap.

I slow-cooked chicken breasts in a bit of broth for 8hours on low today and then shredded the meat with two forks.  Then I doused two servings worth in Buffalo sauce.  Next we stirred crumbled blue cheese into two portions of mayo.  Finally we spooned and spread that fantasticness onto split rolls.  Perfection.

Seriously, I can’t even handle this picture.

This was way healthier than a fried chicken sandwich and much much tastier!  Speaking of health, as I told Adam – “I dont’ care that we forgot the asparagus, I’ll be damned if I’m serving blue cheese and mayo but no veggie!”  So we made a quick side of microwaved kale.

Very, very not good.  But I choked it down for the nutrients.

All together, even with bitter, chewy kale, the meal averaged out to be fantastic.

A fabulous start to Sandwich Week.

Do you eat mayo or does it skeeve you out?  Have you ever made your own mayo?  In general I’m not a big fan; I’ll eat Miracle Whip in tuna and chicken salads, but I prefer mustard varieties.  I was pretty jazzed about it tonight though 🙂

I Like the Other Kind of Shot Better

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Whoops, guess I do have time for a lunch post!  I decided that since I’m staying for lab tomorrow 12 straight hours on campus today was a bit much….so I went home!  Plus my arm was sore, but more on that in a minute.

Breakfast was the last of my samples from Zone Perfect,

Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Bar.  I’ll say it again, Yuuuuum!  I was not expecting to fall in love with these, but I totally did; if I see them at Wegmans more will be purchased.  The texture was very pleasing and the pb flavor was perfect.  It was just sweet enough.

I had some time after Library (I always get out early because the assignments are pretty basic) and I manged to get the Orgo notes I missed yesterday copied.  I hate missing class 😡

110’s lecture today was all about MILK.  We learned all about cooking milk, the nutrient properties of milk, and how milk is made into cheese(s), cream, buttermilk, etc.  Nothing about ice cream though now that I think about it.  The lecture was pretty fascinating; I learned a lot more about homogenization and pasteurization.

Pasteurization – or ultrapasteurization which cooks at the highest temp for the shortest time and has the least impact on flavor – is used to kill pathogenic bacteria.  Basically, it takes away all of the bacteria that can make us sick.  The bacteria that lead to spoilage are not affected, which is why you have to refrigerate milk.  Evaporated milk and dry milk powder are processed in a  different way that allows them to be stored for a longer time.

Homogenization doesn’t deal with bacteria – which is why non-homogenized milk is not illegal in most of the US like raw milk is.  Milk is ~ 87% water, and homogenization is the process that keeps the milk solids from separating out.  In the olden days milk bottles had a thicker layer of fat (cream) at the top due to the separation as they sat.  If you are making your own cheese you have to use nonhomogenized milk.

Interesting stuff!

After class I decided to be a responsible adult and get my flu shot for the season.

I think it’s also a responsible adult thing to reward yourself for a sore arm; cinnamon bun latte anyone?

This actually didn’t have a strong flavor (it wasn’t sweet at all), but the scent was delectable!  I sat in the coffee shop near my house and sipped while reading Orgo.

Then I came home and ate my final serving of pumpkin pasta leftovers for lunch.

This stuff just gets better and better as it sits!

I have to get back to Orgo, but I’m going to much on this Paula Red apple while I study –

I have my night class from 4:30 to 7:40 tonight, but I’m hoping we get out early so I can kick of Sandwich Week.

Have you gotten your seasonal flu shot yet?  Do you get a flu shot each year?

Messy Monday

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I was a hot mess yesterday, it did not need documenting!

I woke up with a migraine and ended up spending most of the morning asleep.  I didn’t even go to class (baaaaaad!).

Adam came home in the middle of the day (doctor’s appointment) so I decided to walk him to his car and go buy a drink…..without keys!

After I’d finally made it back inside, we went to Wegman’s Cafe to do some (much-needed) studying.  And when we left I left my favorite Sigg on the table!

Basically Adam spent his day yesterday driving around, cleaning up my messes.

I have my 8am and 7:40pm classes today, so there won’t be a real Tuesday post until late.  I just wanted to come by and remind everyone that it is Sandwich Week; get excited!

Have you ever locked yourself out of your car or apartment?  I’m not going to tell you my number, a lady never tells!  And I’m especially not going to tell you how many times I’ve done it when both sets of keys were still locked in the apartment!

Why Don’t I Accomplish Things on Sunday?!

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I’m going to set a blogging speed record today because it’s bedtime.  Especially with the amount of school work I did today (cough, cough, none, cough), I want to be well rested for tomorrow.

As we went to get in bed last night the husband and I both realized that we were starving.  It was a bit ridiculous.  We ended up getting staying up, getting pizza, and watching the Simpsons’ Halloween special.

Breakfast = beautiful.

Plain fat-free Dannon with canned pumpkin, homemade pb, 1/4 cup gingerbread granola, and a bit of honey.

2nd breakfast (my hunger from last night didn’t wane all day), was more yogurt.

Low fat coffee topped with peanuts and honey.

Lunch was a sandwich from Lean Cuisine, Sun-Dried Tomato Basil Chicken.

Dinner was looking at me!

That fried egg is sitting atop a bed of sweet potato and kale. 

I precooked both veggies in the microwave to cut time, then cooked them in a bit of butter with salt, pepper, and paprika.

More pumpkin?  Dessert was a Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Square.

Con leche.

Goodnight!

Fright Night

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This Saturday has felt very holiday-esque. Technically, it was a holiday –

but I was feeling more Haloweenie. Perhaps because this has been looping through my head all day?

The husband was right, I am now a total “Nightmare Before Christmas” addict!

The day actually started rather early for a Saturday; I signed up to volunteer at a local health fair today and my shift started at 8am. Milkshake for breakfast? Don’t mind if I do.

I made my first pumpkin pie through a straw of the season. Just look at that perfect pumpkin pudding color –

I was pretty jazzed about it, clearly.

My volunteer shift was nice and easy, mostly stuffing gift bags and greeting people.  A lot of the other volunteers bailed so I ended up getting some one on one time with the president of the club; she is a senior in the program I hope to get into so it was great to hear her advice.

Pretty soon the husband picked me up and we headed to the cafe in Wegmans to get our study on. And our lunch on.

Scoop of buffalo and curry chicken salads,

and some green beans and roasted veggies.

I was still feeling super hungry after lunch but I didn’t want to waste any more time eating so instead I bought a coffee.

Half regular and half decaf pumpkin pie with skim milk.

We got a couple solid hours of work done too. And the grocery shopping too. Get excited about my dinner posts next week – I’m doing “Sandwich Week” and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Not so fun? Our apartment is a frigid 64*. I drank a honey vanilla chamomile tea to warm up while I studied.

We had pumpkin pasta leftovers for dinner.

I swear, this stuff is even more amazing the 2nd day.

We ate an early dinner because just after 6 we piled into the car. We had season tickets to Darien Lake Amusement Park and today was the last night of Fright Night.

Adam and I ate a Divine milk chocolate hazelnut bar during the drive.

And I snacked on a serving of Halloween jujus while we explored the “horror.”

(Please excuse the terrible cell phone photos) There wasn’t a lot to it, but Fright Night ended up being a lot of fun.

Our favorite was the haunted house; I don’t scare easily, but they definitely startled me a bunch of times.

The real fun though was the 20minutes we wasted in the parking lot looking for our car 😉

Have you been to any haunted houses this season?