Tag Archives: apple

The 24 Hour Post

by

In order to tell today’s tale I have to start with last night’s.  Adam went out to play poker with the boys until all hours of the night and I stayed at home and watched the first half of several tv shows (seriously, how can “Chuck” be so bad?!?).  I sent him with cookies and everyone raved about them, by the way.

Around 1 o’clock in the morning I sidled up to another bowl of pasta, with some chopped up sharp cheddar and turkey pepperoni added into the mix.

Delicious, and serendipitous because we woke up too late for breakfast.  A middle of the night meal can count as the morning’s breakfast, can it not?

Today, in the day time, I did make myself an orange julius, but other than that I wasn’t quite able to get a handle on at home food.

Tangy and creamy all at once makes me a happy sipper.

Around 3 we headed to the mall on a whim, and took in a showing of “The Dilemma.”  Not ground-breaking, but certainly a cute movie.  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t more jazzed about my movie snack than the actual picture though.

A glorious mix of gummi cola bottles, sour gummi cola bottles, and cherry sour gummi cola bottles.  The gummi cola bottle genre is my very favorite kind of candy; probably why I was able to take down a 1/2 pound’s worth 😉

While we were out we called some friends on another whim, and ended up with a big group dinner at the Cheesecake Factory.  It was great to catch up with people, particularly since I haven’t really been leaving the house the last week!

I had a slice of sourdough. (Why is CF always so darn dark?)

And my favorite salad of all time for dinner.

The fresh vegetable salad – asparagus, green beans, tomato, cucumber, roasted beets, apple, edamame, radicchio, romaine, and white cheddar – with a side of spicy peanut vinaigrette.

It’s insane to me that this monster is an appetizer salad, I’ve got more than half of it left, sitting in the fridge for tomorrow!  I did help myself to many (unphotographed) bites of the husbands spicy cashew chicken as well.

Ok movie, good food, great friends; what more could a girl want?

<

Updated to add – yeah, I totally finished off that salad!

NYC – Day 1

by

Hello from Nyc! Our hotel is lacking internet so this day late post come from the McDonalds across the street.

I’m just using wifi though, we have real brunch plans at eleven.  For now I’m sipping a diet coke and this Tropical Revolution Foods Mash-Up.

Yesterday morning started with a pre-6am shower before we hit the road for our 8hour drive.

I started my car breakfast with an Empire apple, to put me in an empire state of mind.

This was the most sour red apple I’ve ever tasted! It was quite crunchy and good though.

Plus a blend coffee; ie 2/3 (regular) cinnamon hazelnut coffee, 1/3 (sweetened) English toffee cappuccino.

Coffee really fills me up so I ended up having just the apple for breakfast, but I did steal a bite of the husband’s peanut butter Snickers.

Holy yum! Such a good idea, candy manufacturers! Plus, each square has 125calories, pretty good for a dessert with protein.

We had a lot of hours to fill in the car, I poured through magazines and even painted my nails –

pretty good for 70mph! I guess keeping myself pretty is why I’m so spoiled; the husband stayed on driving duty the whole way!

Our hotel is right on 7th Avenue, which is fabulous for the price.  I’m used to sleeping in Brooklyn so it’s fun to dream in a new area.

You better believe our first stop was Pinkberry!

A small original tart with strawberry, mango, yogurt chips, and praline cream.

There were two spoons, but basically for show because I pretty much dominated it.

And our next stop was green juice.

Carrot, apple, lemon, cucumber, and spinach gets a huge smile from me.

Then we spent a couple of hours walking around our old neighborhood in Park Slope. It was fabulous. Sidenote: we are deliriously trying to pretend we are still local, so the underabundance of city shots is not due to a lack of fabulousness.

Among our old haunts was a quick trip to Watana, where we split Drunken Noodles with steamed tofu.

My plate, x2.

This was so good it hurt! Broad rice noodles are hands down my favorite food.

During the 20(short) block walk back to the subway we also shared a Curiosity Cola.

Quite good, like Coke but without the syrupy sweetness.

We are here for the weekend with friends from high school (Ian lives in MA – and his girlfriend lives here – and Gory lives in PA) so our next stop was meeting them at their train. From there we headed to Bon Chon for dinner.

Ian called it “the new hotness” but beyond that we didn’t know what to expect. It ended up being Asian meets fried chicken. With complimentary rice wine to start.

I ate a super spicy chicken wonton,

and for dinner I ordered the Soy Duk Bo Ki, a sweet rice cake dish prepared with fish cakes, scallions, onions and soy garlic sauce.

The fish and rice cakes were super chewy, it was a totally unique texture. Adam thought it was gross, but I happily devoured 3/4 of the plate.

Even better than good food was the chance to catch up with old friends 🙂  I wasn’t drinking, so I was in bed watching tv by 2, but the boys were out past 4!

I’m not sure what the plan for today is, but my ideal itinerary includes cupcakes!

STT; Wednesday Afternoon – Thursday Afternoon

by

As predicted, yesterday afternoon was spent on a swim workout. My mom dropped Adam and me off at Morningstar beach for an hour. We had fun, but also got in a good workout. Adam would swim a distance away from me and then I would swim as hard as I could until I reached him. Repeat.

For dinner we refurbished pad thai leftovers.

Stir-fried with extra veggies – okra, carrot, broccoli, celery – and egg.

We also went to see The Fighter. I got in some fruit with apple slices as a movie snack.

And there was German chocolate cake waiting when we got home.

I had a (big) slice with a glass of skim milk.

Yum, good job mom!

For breakfast this morning I mashed a small banana with cinnamon, and spread it on two mini buns with almond butter.

Made quite the tasty little sandwich set.

The wind has been crazy recently so we spent the morning hiking around The Point and watching the waves crash.

I’ve snacked on a bag of cheez-its,

and split a gingerbread Clif bar with Adam.

Now (after this quick stop at school) the whole family is going for a long walk downtown.  The plan tonight is a belated anniversary dinner, and then tomorrow we fly on home.

STT; Tuesday Night – Wednesday Afternoon

by

One by one, all of our fancy anniversary plans fell through. In the end, we got takeout and played board games with my parents. It was perfect.

Tofu pad thai, cashew chicken, and crab Rangoon.

I did some snacking earlier in the afternoon as well; half a sandwich for lunch was not cutting it.

Apple slices, beer bread with cheese,

and a brownie.

And during board games I showed the husband how much I love him by letting him share my favorite thing on earth –

This candy is basically just a cake of sugar soaked in peppermint oil, it’s fantastic. Minty and crunchy, it reminds you of getting your teeth brushed at the dentist in the best possible way.

Breakfast this morning was 0% Fage with half a sliced banana and a piece of coffee cake.

I also took some gingerbread coffee with skim milk to go while running errands with my dad.

For lunch I toasted a huge chunk of beer bread and topped it with hot pepper raspberry jam and melted swiss.

Yum!

The rest of the day brings a swim (we’ve gotten in a small workout every single vacation day, I’ll be darned if I miss today!), a movie, and dinner.  I can’t believe that tomorrow is our last day here!

What do you do to celebrate anniversaries?

STT; Merry Christmas – Sunday Afternoon

by

I hope everyone had happy holidays!  Adam and I have been feeling extremely blessed.  I’m also feeling busy, I hate how brief I have to make these recaps!

Ok, back to Friday afternoon.  Since we had already paid the daily admission fee, Adam and I headed back to Magen’s beach.  He swam, I read a magazine, and we both clapped in delight over these signs –

On the way back, we had to hit up an island institution.

Going to St. Thomas without making a stop at the dairy is practically criminal!  Adam and I split a Bailey’s Delight, made with rum raisin ice cream, egg nog, and brandy.

Then it was time for the final prep for our big Christmas Eve party.  A family friend who knows we usually just have to scrounge on the 24th brought over turkey chilli with kidney beans for dinner.

The rest of the evening’s eats were indeed party food.  I have no pictures from the actual party, but you can assume I ate at least one of everything, and that it was all delicious!

My hot pepper peach cheese ball.

Baked spinach and artichoke dip.

Baked brie topped with cranberries and walnuts.

Dippers.

Pinwheels.

Fixings for mini turkey sandwiches.

Mini bagels with cream cheese and lox.

Frosted shortbread.

Snowballs, macaroons, and 7-layer bars.

We were also fully stocked with booze.  I spent most of my evening carrying around a tray of tequilla shots – it’s a Christmas tradition!  And while I did manage to skip that particular tradition, I got so wasted on orange juice with Goldshlager (don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it!) that Adam had to pour me into bed.

Christmas morning began the best possible way – with a light workout!  Adam and I ran for about a mile near the beach, then hiked the mile home.  It was a short workout, but considering that we had double hangovers and presents to open, I’m pretty proud of us.

A small glass of egg nog was consumed during stockings,

and then a lovely breakfast before presents.

Sidenote – our family does stockings, breakfast, then presents.  Always.  What was your Christmas morning tradition?

Gingerbread coffee with 2% milk,

a small plate of eggs with red and green pepper and Applegate Farms turkey bacon,

and a 0% Plain Chobani with a slice of coffee cake.

I should have given myself a bigger serving of eggs, I gave away most of my bacon/yogurt/cake.  In spite of our refreshing run, I think my nighttime imbibing had made me a little picky.

Not too picky, however, to turn down a big handful of maple sugar cotton candy(!!).

After present opening (which was plentiful – thank’s mom and dad!) there was lunch.

Apple slices and baby carrots,

and crackers with leftover hot pepper peach and spinach dip.

Plus dessert.

Dinner was consumed at my aunt’s house, with a large group of family and friends.

Plus a slice of garlic bread,

and a slice of delicious yellow cake with blueberry jam and vanilla buttercream.

I helped with the frosting, pulling a recipe from Eat, Live, Run that was to die for.

This morning started with another light workout.  Adam and I walked up and down the beach for 45minutes, then hiked the mill uphill homeward.  I wore my heart rate monitor and was pleasantly surprised that our 1hour, 11minute workout killed 290calories.  It’s nice to know that our sand trudging burned up more than the back of my leg muscles.

Lunch was leftovers. 

Turkey chilli,

 and macaroni and cheese made with swiss cheese, chives, and white truffle flavored oil.

Sidenote – my cousin made the mac and cheese for Christmas dinner and the husband liked it so much he went back for thirds!

I also ate the final serving of Junior Mints,

which helped fuel me up for…. a long nap!

We are at school now, and rest of the day’s agenda is movies, dinner, maybe drinks with friends.  See you soon!

St. Thomas; Thursday Afternoon – Friday Afternoon

by

It’s Christmas Eve! I can hardly believe that 2010 has flown so quickly. My family throws a big Christmas party this evening, so Thursday afternoon was spent on errands and party prep. Lunch was eaten on the fly. Slice of cheese pizza with baby carrots.

Followed by the last of the gingerbread granola, with skim milk, a few hours later.

With one serving of Junior Mint Peppermint Crunch for dessert.

For dinner, Adam and I headed to the Caribbean Saloon. Generally the Saloon isn’t much to write home about, but their buffalo chicken sub is to die for!

I left most of my sub roll and half of my fries, but gobbled up that extra spicy chicken (dipped in blue cheese!).

Later, Adam and I drank some of this strawberry lemonade while watching “Ernest Saves Christmas.”

It was a surprisingly good movie for getting us in the holiday spirit. We’ve got “Scrooged” on Netflix too.

This morning we got up bright and early to get in some activity. If you have a light exercise day, what better place to spend it than this???

We spent an hour walking up and down the beach. The uneven, squishy sand is the equivalent of cranking up the resistance on the elliptical. Disclaimer, we did spend some time taking pictures too –

After an hour of walking, the final leg if our workout was the walk home. We were only a mile away (this distance we could measure with the car), but steep is greater than length. We had to defeat two major hills.

Thank goodness there were things to distract us.

Does anyone have any idea what this is supposed to indicate?!??

And then we were home.

We’ve spent the day on party set up (and naps) so I mostly grabbed bites where I could.

Though I decided to be sensible and grab an actual sandwich (mini, turkey breast, with cucumber, pickles, red onion, and bbq sauce) from Subway before I went overboard on the cookies and dips.

Going overboard on cookies and dips is a party activity 😉

If you celebrate, I hope you have a merry Christmas tomorrow!

St. Thomas; Tuesday Morning – Thursday Morning

by

We’re here. We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!  We’re also busy; this will be a quick recap post.

Tuesday morning at the airport, Adam and I did a good job putting together breakfast from our packed snacks.  We split the Orange Cranberry Cliff Bar,

and shared sharp cheddar, baby carrots, and a gingergold apple throughout the morning.

Our flights went well, and on our layover I found a Salsarita’s for lunch.

(Delicious) chips with spicy salsa,

and a chicken burrito with black beans, a little bit of rice, corn salsa, red onions, medium salsa, and shredded cheese.

So tasty and fresh, especially for a plane meal!  I ate about half of everything.

Before we knew it we were in my childhood home.  Being handed homemade toffee,

and finding gifts on our pillows.

I could get used to this!  The husband and I did some wrapping of our own too.

Before we knew it, it was time for dinner.

Spicy chicken with whole-wheat linguine,

mushrooms and broccoli with sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds,

and mandarin oranges.

We ate all squished together in a clump, because someone decided to start a puzzle at the table 😉

For dessert my dad and I opened up these Klick Halva Truffles.

Adam went out (late!) with some of our guy friends from high school, but I stayed home rereading All But My Life, by Gerda Weissmann Klein and laughing at the notes I wrote in the margins while writing a 15page final paper on it.

Wednesday morning was all about dinner leftovers for breakfast.

And 10minutes of strength and stretch moves.  My goal for vacation is to (at minimum) get in a good stretch every day.

For lunch, we headed to Barefoot Buddha, my favorite restaurant.

I split a passionfruit smoothie with the husband,

and a bagel sandwich with my mother.

Yuuuuuuuum.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on errands, including finding a gloriously huge pile of Achie comics (donated to my mom’s library),

and getting all of our wedding rings polished.

Plus testing saved maple sugar cookies from Thanksgiving.

Out of the freezer, still good!

For dinner we headed to Island Time Pub with my aunt and cousins (2sets, one local, one visiting). The lighting was awful, but the dark did mean we got to enjoy these sailboat sail “trees.”

Adam and I split a Caesar salad, with green peppers and mushrooms added.

And a buffalo chicken pizza.

I had these two slices plus a third.

I also had two black and cokes with dinner.

After that I was the designated driver, so even though we were out with friend until almost 1, I stuck to diet coke.

This morning began with a workout. A good workout 🙂 St. Thomas isn’t exactly map-my-run-able and I don’t have a Garmin, so we are focusing on time instead of distance. We had my mom drive us down to the nearby beach so we could run (not that we ran I’m the sand, just near the beach). In the end we ran for 20minutes and walked for 18minutes. Then we slowly walked up the HUGE hill home; I’ll have to take a picture tomorrow. All total, 60monutes of activity, which felt great.

Breakfast was Greek Gods honey Greek yogurt, topped with some blueberries and banana.

I’ve spent the morning running errands with my mom, including a trip to school so I could write this post.

Christmas Eve is tomorrow, what?!?

What’s the best airplane food you’ve ever had? The worst?

We Liked Them a Latke

by

This has been the perfect sort of evening; exactly what I need before another week of tests!  My night was spent in the kitchen, with my husband, cooking and eating good foods.  We moved from cooking to couching (cuddling) and the whole affair was pretty blissful.

I was famished when I got out of the shower; nuts for lunch pack a caloric punch, but they don’t hold me over as long as I would expect.  Since we knew dinner would take a while to prepare we decided to go with dessert first.  My aunt and uncle sent us this box of fancy chocolates for Hanukkah.

Milk and dark chocolate dipped orange peel, almonds, hazelnuts, and biscuit pieces.

I ate a handful and was in heaven; you can tell this stuff is good!

I also ate a candy cane white chocolate coated pretzel from my Sweet Treats Basket.

Yum!  White chocolate dipped candy cane anything is pretty awesome but the pretzel was especially fresh and tasty.

Dinner was a labor of love, but it was so worth it.

Latkes, homemade applesauce, and roasted veggies.  We spent a long time in the kitchen, but had a lot of fun and the end products were amazing.  Recipes at the end of the post.

The roasted veggies were leftover from Thanksgiving.

We wanted to try our hand at latkes for Hanukkah this year so we turned to my uncle’s famed recipe.  My uncle Brian makes the best latkes on earth, seriously, and following his recipe I think ours turned out pretty great.

We kept things top-notch and made our own apple sauce as well (latkes are traditionally eaten with sour cream and/or applesauce).

The applesauce recipe came from my food lab, my group was assigned it one week and it turned out so well I knew I wanted to make it again.  We didn’t have a cinnamon stick to cook in so instead I topped my bowl with red hots.

That was better anyways!

Such a pleasing meal. 

I portioned out a small bowl of candy for dessert dessert, and told myself that the kitchen is “closed.” 

Hope everyone else had a great Friday!

Best Potato Latkes

  •  5 med. to lg. Idaho potatoes
  • 2 eggs (slightly beaten)
  • 2 tbsp. matzoh meal (or breadcrumbs)
  • 1 lg. or 2 med. onions
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • vegetable oil and butter for frying
  1. Peel potatoes and place in a bowl of cold water.
  2. Finely grate half the potatoes and then more coarsely grate the other half, put in colander and completely drain off liquid.  You want to really press all of the liquid out, persistence pays off.
  3. Finely grate onion and mix with potatoes. Add eggs, salt, pepper and matzoh meal and mix well.
  4. Heat  oil in a large skillet. (Add some butter for flavor.) Drop by heaping tablespoonful into hot oil (draining off any excess liquid). Flatten with spatula and fry on both sides until crisp and golden brown.
  5. Remove to paper towel to drain and keep warm until all latkes are done.

Serve with sour cream and applesauce.  These freeze very well; can be made ahead and frozen and then heated up in hot oven.

Applesauce

  • 2lbs cooking apples
  • 1cup water
  • 6″ cinnamon stick
  • 1/2cup sugar
  1. Core and peel apples.  Cut into quarters.
  2. Place apples in a large pot; pour water over.  Add cinnamon and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat; cover and simmer 8-10minutes or until tender.
  3. Uncover and remove cinnamon.  (I drained the water out here but I like my ‘sauce pretty chunky).
  4. Remove from heat.  Mash apples with a potato masher until smooth.
  5. Stir in sugar.  Refrigerate.