Tag Archives: banana

Humbolt Fog

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Last night’s sleep session was a disaster.  Usually my sleep issues are related to falling asleep but lately if I get woken up I can’t fall back to sleep either.  The dog woke us up in the middle of the night and it took me at least another hour of tossing and turning to get back to rest.  The husband brought home some sort of bug from the hospital and my throat was killing me.

I overslept today and the morning was rushed but I managed to do what I needed to do, mostly.  I was heading to the gym after 9 am so sticking with my monthly goal I ate a small breakfast before I left.  A few sips of strawberry Powerade Zero,

and a half of a Vanilla Almond Luna Bar.

I didn’t have much time at the gym but something was better than nothing.  20 minutes on the elliptical at random level 7.

After a quick walk home and an even quicker shower I made a Lemon Cookie Smoothie for breakfast.

The last time I made it was apparently a dark and stormy night and I wanted a chance to get some better less awful photographs for the recipe page.

It probably wasn’t my best use of time though; I made it halfway through my smoothie before I had to throw it away and rush out the door.  I didn’t have time to pack lunch and having half a smoothie digesting in my stomach just made my hunger stronger all afternoon.

I got out of clinic a bit early and when I spotted a Manhattan Bagel on the drive home it felt like an oasis in the desert.

I was eating the chips that came with my meal before I was even out of the parking lot.

But chips only seemed to anger the beast (aka my stomach) and I ended up eating my bagel on the ride home!

Eating while driving is sort of nice because instead of dreading red lights you can use them to shove food into your face.  And my bagel was quite enjoyable; I got a veggie sandwich on a rye bagel.

Red onion, lettuce, tomato, banana peppers, veggie cream cheese, and a little bit of chipotle mayo.  I thought the veggies were pretty weak but the bagel was super chewy and good.

I had my 2nd to last shift at work this evening and then I came home to an easy salad dinner.

I needed a vehicle for a veggie, a fruit, and this amazing looking cheese, and salad fit the bill.

This Cypress Grove Humbolt Fog Chevre was delicious.  Sadly the blue cheese and goat cheese were in layers and not the hybrid mixture I was hoping for, but both were quite tasty.

Along with chunk of cheese I had romaine lettuce, groats, chopped honey crisp apple, and Stubbs BBQ Sauce for dressing.

Those ingredients sound strange together but it worked.

I’ll see y’all in the am for some running and some baking!

One In The Hand…

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…is worth two the in the bush.  Or $1 if you’re holding a silver dollar.  Or a quick blurb if you’re reading this post.  What I’m trying to say is, pictures in this blog post will be accompanied by a quick blurb.  I’m tired.

Our larders are bare and as I said, I’m tired, so today’s meals were tricky.  My food consumption was very strange, fairly processed, and eaten entire by hand (minus two dishes by chopstick).  I ate small bits consistently throughout the day and that seemed to work.  It wasn’t the healthiest day of all time but for this day I’m pretty proud of how I did.

A Cappuccino Lara Bar.

Always a favorite.  I’m amazed every time I eat this at how well they managed to balance the coffee flavor so that it’s not too intense.

The final two Buttered Rum Raisin Cookies.

So sad to see these good, they are for sure in my top five recipes list.

Note – I also had a large handful of unphotographed Reese’s Pieces.  We used them for a problem in Statistics and then were allowed to nibble.

Trader Joe’s Wasabi Roasted Seaweed Snack.

This was good but super spicy; I was crying before I was even halfway through.  Crunchy, spicy, and a bit strange means this was something I loved; I really wish I had bought more.  And for 30 calories you were snacking for a long while, definitely a volume food.

A Pepsi Next.

This 60 calorie soda is Pepsi’s answer to Coke Zero.  Sadly I wasn’t a fan, it tasted too much like regular Pepsi to me (duh, Emily!).  If you enjoy regular soda but want to cut back on calories you should probably check it out.  I wish they would make a regular soda that simply contained less sugar, rather using fake sugars.  I love the flavor of diet but know that I could do without the chemicals.

A Mango Passion & Banana Buddy Fruit packet.

I love these so much!  One pack equals one serving of fruit and the blend was delicious.

A mini pretzel bagel with some of the leftover cheese from last night’s cheese plate.

It’s hard to go wrong with the pretzel and smoked Gouda combo.  Eating these side-by-side rather than sandwich style felt gloriously simple.

A So Delicious Vanilla Coconut Milk box.

Meh, I prefer the Silk Vanilla Almond Milk.  I like the idea a vegan milk box though and I’ve had this product in chocolate in the past and enjoyed it more.

Dinner was eaten by chopstick and gets no blurb.  Seaweed salad and a brown rice veggie sushi roll.

What can I really say about that?

But dessert?  Oh my gosh, dessert.  A Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Bar filled with Speculoos Cookie Spread.

Why didn’t I buy more of these?!  I am kicking myself now.  The chocolate was creamy and a little bit bitter, the filling was sweet and gritty, and I was basically swooning.  I actually did buy two bars but I gave one to a friend who’s similar obsessed with Biscoff and I’m feeling pretty darn generous right about now.  But I do, at least, have a jar of TJ’s Cookie Butter waiting for me.

What was the best thing you ate today?

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!

Funky Monkey Vegan “Ice Cream” Pie

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Do you like pie?

What a silly question, everyone likes pie.  I know there may be some preference as to the pie variety, but I challenge you to show me someone who hates all pies.  And this is a pie for the masses, vegan or otherwise.

This recipe started rolling around in my head a few months ago, but I made myself wait for Vegan Month to take it from the figurative tip of my tongue to my literal plate.  You guys know how much I like Ben and Jerry’s, right?  Well when I’m not eating Ben and Jerry’s ice cream I tend to peruse their flavors page like a desperate stalker on restraining order.  And from there the idea started knocking around in my head.  What if Chubby Hubby and Chunky Monkey had a little rolly-polly baby.  A peanut butter-pretzel-banana pie baby?  With cinnamon for good measure?

I can tell you now what happens.  You devour that pie baby.

I’m certainly not the first person to add peanut butter to the banana soft serve recipe that took the blog world by storm.  But I’m pretty sure I’m the first person to serve it in a pie.

It was a good idea.  An idea I strongly suggest you try on your own.

Peanut Butter Banana Pretzel Pie, serves 8

  • 2 cups pretzels
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup vegan butter substitute
  • 4 medium bananas, frozen
  • 1/4 cup vanilla almond milk (if using a plain milk substitute just add 1 tsp each vanilla extract and sugar)
  • 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Farenheit.
  2. Place unwrapped butter in the center of a 9-inch pie pan and put in preheating oven until butter is fully melted.
  3. Place pretzels into the bowl of the food processor and process until smooth, 30 seconds to 1 minute.  Add sugar to bowl and pulse a few times until combined.
  4. When butter has melted, pour the crushed pretzels into the center of the pie pan.  Mix the crumbs and melted butter, then use your fingertips to gently push onto the bottom and up the sides of the pan.
  5. Bake crust 10 – 12 minutes until firm.  Set aside to cool for at least 15 minutes.
  6. Wipe out food processor (it doesn’t matter if a few pretzel crumbs get in your filling) and place bananas and almond milk into the bowl.  Process 2 – 3 minutes until smooth, scraping down the sides as needed.
  7. Add peanut butter and cinnamon to bowl and process 20 – 40 seconds more until well-combined.
  8. Pour filling into cooled pretzel crust, using a spatula to spread it in an even layer.
  9. Place pie in the freezer to firm up for 1 hour.  You can make and freeze the pie a few days ahead of time if you like, just be sure to place in the fridge to thaw for 30 minutes before serving.

Peanut Butter Practice

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It’s been a good weekend!  Good food, good fun, good friends.  Not much activity on the school-work front, but we’ve got a 4-day weekend coming up next week so it was hard to motivate myself.  Plus Friday’s 3am session of book reading hit me pretty hard.

I’m so glad I did it though, this was the first book club where we all finished reading on time and we finally got to talk about the book!  So much fun.  I wasn’t an English major/teacher for nothing, I love analyzing literature.

The food wasn’t bad either.  Janessa made vegan 7-layer bars.

And Anna brought this big bowl of fresh fruit that pretty much had my hand planted in it all evening.

My offering fit both the dessert and fruit categories; peanut butter pretzel banana pie.

It got good reviews all around and I’m excited to share the recipe with y’all tomorrow.  But that could have been the booze talking too.

Lemonade, club soda, and Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka (to fit with the book!).  I had that glass x2.

I got home after midnight and was very excited both to get in bed and stay in bed late this morning.

Breakfast was a toasted onion bagel with SmartBalance Light.

Plus a cup of lemonade and club soda.

I left the vodka out today, but had that glass x2.

Today was another round of fancy lunch and easy dinner.  Lunch was healthy, vegan, and included a new recipe to boot.

Roasted French green beans,

pearled barley,

and Smokey Maple Baked Beans.

The beans weren’t quite Southern bbq good, but for quick and vegan I’d say they’re pretty great.  Here’s a link to the recipe.

While Adam and I watched “Grey’s” this afternoon I ate this bowl of popcorn x2.

And then headed to yoga on a full belly.  90 minutes of hot yoga will make you wish you’d done more water and less salt.  This class was the very last practice of my 30-day pass and I’m pretty devastated.  I’ve come to enjoy yoga so much more than I ever thought possible.  I’m still not very good, but every shaky, sweaty minute is filled with glee.

I picked Adam up for a “cookie walk” and we came home with peanut butter cups from the Co-op.

It was good but I wish it had been a bit smaller, even this sugar fiend couldn’t finish her serving.

Dinner was peanut butter laced too.

I promise that bowl was as tasty as the picture is crappy.

Into the skillet with evoo went leftover pasta, leftover (pre-cooked) yellow squash and broccoli, and my peanut sauce.  The noodles get all crispy when you stir-fry them and the sauce forms a crust that’s pure heaven.

Now it’s back to the grind.  Hopefully this weekend of play has left me rejuvinated for work!

Do you love to read?  Do you enjoy discussing the things you’ve read, or would you rather not analyze them?

Tropical Tapioca Panacea

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I love hot yoga but it’s a pain in the neck, literally.  I felt fine on Monday night, just like I might have pushed my back a little too far, and fine all through the day on Tuesday.  But then when I got home from clinic last night I was so sore I could barely move.  I’m not sure why I took so long to feel the pain, but it came on strong.  Even today I still feel pretty awful!

Breakfast was a serving of Quaker Oatmeal Squares with Silk Unsweetened Almond Milk.

Plus a naval orange for vitamin C.

I’ve got my first test of the semester this afternoon and I am not feeling ready.  Fingers crossed!

For lunch I packed a jam jar of one of this weekend’s kitchen efforts, Tropical Tapioca Pudding.

This pudding was inspired by the great vegan tapioca pudding you used to be able to get at the co-op.  I think my version is pretty great too.  The pudding has the perfect balance of chew and cream and the bananas are little pillowy clouds floating throughout!

Tropical Tapioca Pudding, serves 4

  • 1/2 cup small-pearl tapioca
  • 13.66 oz can light coconut milk (aka 1 and 2/3 cup)
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 medium bananas, sliced
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla
  1. Place tapioca in a bowl with enough warm water to cover completely and soak for two hours.
  2. After 2 hours, drain tapioca.
  3. Combine coconut milk, sugar, salt, and drained tapioca in a small pot over medium-low heat.
  4. Cook for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.
  5. Add banana slices to the pot and cook another 5 minutes, stirring carefully.  Cook until tapioca are translucent.
  6. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
  7. Move to a covered container and cool in the fridge for 1 hour before serving.

Have you ever tried tapioca pudding?  What about boba (large pearl tapioca that are placed in cold drinks and sucked up through a special straw)?

Breakfast – Banana Ricotta Won Tons

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Good morning!  My day started off with a difficult trip to the gym.  I forgot my water bottle at home, and when I tried to buy one the machine stole my money.  Ugh.  I knew I couldn’t do much without drinking (I hadn’t even had a sip yet) but I figured I could do something.  Treadmill – 5 minutes walking warm up, 10 minutes running, 5 minutes walking cool down.  20 minutes and 1.6 miles.

Then I bought my Statistics manual while the book store line was still short and walked home.  On T/R I’m going to drive to the gym in the morning and then walk home (and back to school) so that I keep my good parking spot.  When I leave Statistics in the afternoon I only have 45 minutes to get to clinical so I can’t afford having to hike to my car.  Today Adam is home and can give me a ride to class, yay!

Breakfast was another won ton experiment, and a winner.

Banana Ricotta Won Tons

  • 1/2 a small banana
  • 1/4 cup fat-free ricotta cheese
  • 1 tsp honey
  • pinch salt
  • 5 won ton wrappers
  • baking spray
  • cinnamon sugar
  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Farenheit and prepare a baking sheet with cooking spray.
  2. Mash together filling components (banana through salt) until well combined.
  3. Place ~ 1 tsp of filling in the center of each won ton wrapper.  Wet the edges of the wrappers with water and fold into little packages, pressing the sides firmly to seal.
  4. Place won tons on prepared baking sheet.  Spray the tops with baking spray and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.
  5. Bake for 10 minutes.

I also had a juicy pear.

Bring on the juicy fruits; I’m also guzzling water like there’s no tomorrow.

Today is my long day – Stats, clinical, evening class until 8 pm – so I’ll see you tonight for what’s sure to be a cranky post!