Tag Archives: banana

Best Ever

by

It’s a good thing I decided not to blog after dinner yesterday because we ended up staying out for drinks!  It was a late, fun night.

We started our evening with dinner at Las Culebrinas, Adam’s favorite Cuban place on the planet.  They have rolls with the best garlic butter.

We also ordered some appetizers to share.

Fried plantain with shrimp in red sauce and mozzarella sticks.

For dinner I got Mahi Mahi crusted in corn flakes and topped with a honey mustard sauce.

It was a little too fried for me but the sauce was so good.

And it came with a side salad with great dressing.

We did lots of sharing (though no one went near Adam’s beef because he was moaning so loudly – and whispering sweet nothings to his chocolate flan – and we were all a little afraid).  I ended up eating the equivalent of 3/4 of my plate.

Afterwards we walked around Coconut Grove for some more people watching.  And somehow ended up at Uncle Moe’s for drinks.  Like the Cow Tipper.

Here’s a shot with my hand for size comparison.

My mom and I split this one, obviously.  It was tasty, but not as strong as it sounds.

Which is good, because I was feeling good this morning.  I decided to skip the hotel breakfast, which was lackluster yesterday, and get in a quick gym trip instead.  15 minutes on the treadmill for a bit over a mile.

I ate my stolen pear for breakfast.

Along with a NuGo Dark bar packed from home.

And we stopped by our old favorite Thai place for a bubble tea smoothie.

Strawberry coconut smoothie with bobba.

So freaking good!

Plus a few peppermints for freshness.

Amid the day’s exploration we also spent some time at the mall. I know shopping seems like a strange vacation activity, but my parents live on an island so it’s more exploratory for them than the beach. My dad shared a pretzel with me while we were there.

I ate about x2 what’s pictured. We were practically frozen so I also bought an earl grey with steamed skim milk.

A few stops later, and we were at my favorite place on the planet.

Where I made the biggest cup of froyo I’ve ever eaten.

Everything chocolate and caramel, smothered in marshmallow.

Heaven. Pure heaven.

And the evening only got better. The plan was to go to Joe’s Stone Crab, but a 2-hour wait scared us away. The disappointment was very serendipitous, because we ended up having a best ever dinner at Joe’s less formal take-away spot next door. You ordered your food at a counter and brought it to the booth yourself and it ended up being just perfect.

To start, Adam and I split a seafood bisque.

It was creamy and tangy with big chunks of fish.

Then the four of us split an order of stone crab.

Stone crab is like the best crab you’ve ever had, on steroids. It is meaty, yet tender and buttery.

I got most of two claws, dipped in butter and mustard.

I drank a spicy bloody Mary with my food but I was too excited about the crab to remember to photograph before a few sips in.

For the rest of the meal, my mom and I split two sandwiches.

The shrimp po boy and the lobster Reuben.

The po boy was good, though I mostly ate the shrimp out of the bun, dipped in remoulade.

The Reuben was out of this world. Everything that’s good about a Reuben but with the added amazingness of lobster.

Everyone kept laughing at me for chewing with my eyes closed but I just couldn’t help it. The big pieces of meat were absolutely perfect.

I thought I couldn’t be happier, but then Adam bought me this t-Rex juice container.

Best trip souvenir ever.

My favorite activity in any city is bike riding, and for the hour after dinner that’s just what we did.

It was so much fun, though our times in the sand basically left my thighs burning! Then we spent another hour walking down the club strip on South Beach for the ultimate people watching. It was the best vacation day ever.  The best.

Miami Bound

by

I’m not sure how this hasn’t come up on the blog yet (because it’s all I talk about in real life), but I’m going to Miami for Thanksgiving!!!  Adam and I are meeting my parents there tomorrow for four days of nostalgic, sunny, fun.  We don’t have any family in Florida (we’re spending Turkey Day at a steak/seafood place) but my parents loved visiting when Adam and I went to UM and they thought it’d be fun to recreate a trip.

I’ve been excited for weeks but I hadn’t actually thought logistics until this morning.  Today’s to-do list includes –

  • packing for myself and the husband
  • packing some sort of “brunch” for the airplane tomorrow
  • painting my toe nails
  • shaving my legs for the first time in at least two months (eww!)
  • putting away tons of laundry
  • dropping the dog off at the vets for boarding
  • lots of random schoolwork

Where are you spending Thanksgiving?

I started my morning with the most decadent oatmeal.

I know a lot of food bloggers use that word a lot, decadent, but this bowl seriously was.  I had to use up the open pumpkin but wasn’t in the mood for its slightly bitter flavor and I just kept adding ingredients to cover it up.

What I ended up with was –

  • 1 cup skim milk (cooked)
  • 1 medium banana, sliced (cooked)
  • 1 pinch salt (cooked)
  • 1/4 cup oats (cooked)
  • 1/4 cup pumpkin (cooked)
  • 1/4 cup 1% cottage cheese (stirred in at the end)
  • 2 tsp butterscotch chips (topped)
  • 1 Tbsp Biscoff spread (topped)
  • 1 Tbsp light cream (topped)

Dang.  And amazingly my least favorite additions were the chips and Biscoff; they strong-armed the other flavors in their bites.  My most favorite was the cottage cheese.  I’ve used that before but I don’t think I realized how much I like it.  I need to put that on the grocery list more often!

Don’t forget, you have until 2pm EST to enter my Duncan Hines giveaway.

Delirious Dinner

by

I’m going to go ahead and apologize in advance for the plethora of typos that will most likely pepper this post.  Between my 4+ hour sleep deficit and wracking my brain all day for answers to two major tests, I’m a bit off my game.  And the husband was on a 24-hour shift last night and he’s wrecked as well.  Our joint delirium made for an interesting afternoon.

But first, lunch.

Despite appearances, that’s not a yogurt.

It’s also not a 6oz container but a big guy, stocked with last night’s roasted dinner leftovers.

These were still good cold, but I had to shovel them in at 10am which felt a little odd.

I want to think my tests went well, but honestly I’m not sure I even remember.  Thanksgiving break is going to be all about catching up on sleep.

When I finished my make-up exam at 3, I picked up the husband so we could do a quick grocery restock.  My gnawing hunger led me to the gingerbread men.

Such a good idea.  Adam ate his buttons, and thought this was so funny he made me snap a picture.

I told you we’re tired.

Except that tired is the understatement of the century.  Between bad luck, Adam’s distraction, and my complete and utter confusion at life, we went to three different grocery stores and somehow ended up with nothing more than a bag of pears to show for it.  Frick.

Some complaining, more confusion, and lots of aimless driving later, and we managed to end up at a Chinese buffet for dinner.

We were totally drawn in by the bubble tea.

Adam and I split this Taro one.

The food wasn’t necessarily good, but it certainly wasn’t bad either.  Not healthy at all and a miserable lack of vegetables, but overall we had a nice dinner.

Green beans, baked salmon, 2 stuffed mushrooms, and a crab rangoon.

Sushi, chicken with broccoli, and some cheesy crab salad that blew my freaking mind.  It was so rich I couldn’t even eat all of what’s shown but I was seriously in heaven.

Tiramisu, pineapple, glazed banana, pudding, coconut gelatin.

I had lost steam by dessert and shared .25 – .5 of this with Adam, but I did devour the coconut jell-o.

I love buffets because getting to try little bits of lots of things makes my soul happy.  If I could find a buffet with actual healthy options I think my heart would explode with joy.

And sleep in 3, 2, 1 …

How do you feel about buffets?  What dish do you always look for on the line?

Hallowed Breakfast

by

Happy Halloween! 

We didn’t have any fun plans this year but I am all about any holiday with theme candy and colors!

I even applied those colors to my breakfast.

orange = pumpkin, black = chia seeds and mini chocolate chips

My (stove-top) base was 1/2 cup each water and skim milk, 1 medium banana, 1/4 cup oats, 1/2 cup canned pumpkin, and 1 Tbsp chia seeds.

With a handful of shredded, unsweetened coconut and 1/2 tsp mini chips for topping.

This was good but I had too much food and not enough time, I’ll probably only finish eating half of the bowl.

spooky snack preview

I don’t have time for “lunch” on Mondays, but I do have a few things packed to snack on during our short breaks.  A gorgeous looking Comice pear,

and a vanilla YoCrunch with candy bits for the holiday.

What are your Halloween plans?  Did you celebrate already this weekend?  Costumes?!

It’s About The Week

by

Since Tuesday was completely devoid of veggies I made sure to fit some into every single meal today!  My life is still so all over the place and some days I don’t even come close to eating the healthiest diet.  I try to make up for those days by getting in extra nutrients on the days where I can.  Healthy living is more how your week looks than any one day in isolation.

For breakfast I got in a massive dose of Potassium and Vitamin K, aka pumpkin.

Into the blender went:

  • 1 medium banana
  • 1 cup skim milk
  • 1 Tbsp chia seeds
  • 1 cup canned pumpkin
  • 1 cup Plain Fat-free Stonyfield yogurt
  • 1 Tbsp maple syrup

I ended up with a massive smoothie!

Lunch was all about Folate, or chick peas.

I topped a leftover half serving of channa marsala with some mango chutney.

I also snacked on this baggie of Combos during my last class.

I didn’t say every food choice was about nutrition, some things you eat just for fun!

Dinner was all about Lycopene (and some others), with baked eggplant in tomato sauce.

This dish was so darn good, even as leftovers!  A billion times better than it looks, that’s for sure.  I’m going to publish the recipe soon as part of a Foodbuzz sample post, it deserves some love.

The other half of dinner was mini rigatoni with sharp cheddar and evoo.

This bowl was delicious and I definitely went back for a full serving of seconds!  Plus a few big handfuls of unphotographed kettle chips; we had some reeeeeeally frustrating things happen at school today and I might have been stress nibbling a bit.

When you eat for health do you tend to look at things day by day or take more of a weekly approach?

Blog Reading for Cultural Expansion

by

I was not very productive today.  Just ask the homework that has to be done this weekend and the run that has to be done tomorrow!  But I cuddled with my puppy, had a good class at school, and got my teeth fixed; so the day wasn’t a total wash.

It’s possible I even started the day off in poor form.  I had to give a presentation in class today so I headed in early.  Sidenote – don’t you love my semi-professional outfit?  I felt like fall!

On my drive to school I realized (for the first time in three weeks of making the same drive) that I pass a Wilson Farms.  WF has my favorite coffee so I knew a stop was in order.  Unfortunately I just kept acting dippier.  First, I got a pumpkin spice latte when it is still apple month!  Next, I walked past at least five signs proclaiming “free 16 ounce coffees for all,” and poured, and paid for, a 20 ounce coffee.  Frick!  The cashier thought I was nuts. 

At least it was delicious.  I did half pumpkin spice coffee (unsweet) and half pumpkin spice cappuccino (sweet) and it was perfection.

And minus my caffeine shakes, our presentation went great.  The class all had to evaluate each other and Janessa and I got nothing but good reviews.  It helps when you bribe them with food!

That’s marble halvah (a sweet, sesame based treat) that we brought in to showcase as one of the foods from our Jewish Food Habits presentation.  A few people found the aftertaste to be strange, but most of the class loved it.  Halvah is one of my very favorite sweets and I ate at least two servings.

During our 10:30 break I also wandered over to the campus Freshens for a smoothie.

I ordered the Maui Mango (Mango, Strawberries, Bananas, Passion Fruit, Juice Blend & Booster) but I think they gave me the wrong cup because all I could taste was peaches.

It wasn’t very good and probably ended up only drinking about half.  I looked up the nutritional info which stated ~300 calories per smoothie, so I still can’t figure out why it was so disgustingly sweet.

Our class today was a lot of fun.  In addition to Judaism there were presentations on 7th Day Adventist, Mormon, Greek Orthodox, Native American, Alaskan, and Rastafarian food selection and restrictions.  I didn’t really learn anything new, but it was all fun info to revisit.  It’s always interesting to me how much cultural background knowledge I seem to have compared to my friends (who know all sorts of things about other subjects that I know nothing about).  I’m not sure if it’s from my interest in Anthropology or from the diverse places I’ve gotten to live.  I grew up with Rastafarians and have read a lot about Native American cultures but my exposure to Mormons has been through blog friends.  Reading blogs has definitely been a factor in introducing me to new things!

Lunch was easy and soft to chew.

I don’t eat a ton of “diet food,” but I actually really enjoy some Lean Cuisine flavors.  The Roasted Turkey is a favorite.

Confession?  The stuffing in there is actually my very favorite of all the stuffings (homemade included) I’ve ever tried!

I also took several soft bites of Biscoff straight from the jar for dessert.

After my teeth were fixed I could finally move on to foods with chew and crunch factor for dinner.

Mango, pineapple, tiny piece of watermelon.

Udon noodles, a veggie eggroll, and more veggies – including some very tasty bok choy – hidden on the bottom.

Note – when I made this plate I still thought I was running or I probably wouldn’t have gone quite so heavy on the carbs.  But then in rolled a big storm and out rolled not being a big fatty.  At least I’m excited to get tackling my to-do’s tomorrow!

Mormon, 7th Day Adventist, Native American, or Rastafarian – do you follow any bloggers who have these backgrounds?

A Smart Breakfast

by

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”  Or so it’s been said.  I’m not sure I agree 100%, nachos are more of a dinner thing, but there are days when breakfast is crucial.  Like when you accidentally eat beef, get really sick, stay up late throwing up, and waste an entire day watching tv and napping.  Our class was cancelled yesterday and I did not use my time well.  And I’ve got an important test today.

Good thing I made time for a smart breakfast.

I don’t have the patience for stove top oatmeal most mornings, but they always reward me when I make time.

This bowl was coconut themed.

I boiled 2/3 cup light coconut milk (plus 1/4 cup of water) and stirred in 1/3 cup oats and 1 medium banana.

My oats didn’t taste as much like coconut as I would have liked, but my toppings more than made up for it.

2 Tbsp unsweet shredded coconut and 1.5 Tbsp Biscoff spread.  Yuuuum!

I hope everyone has good hump day!  Please think smart thoughts for me for my test!