Tag Archives: berries

Happy Valentine’s Day

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Strawberries and chocolate breakfast?

Heart earrings?

Red shirt?

Themed nails?

Yep, it’s Valentine’s Day!  Adam and I don’t really do Valentine’s Day, but I’m down for any holiday with theme colors.

Now back to that breakfast.

I made chocolate-covered strawberry oatmeal.

1 cup water, 1/3 cup oatmeal, and 1 cup (frozen, defrosted) strawberries simmered on the stove and then were topped with 2 Tbsp Peanut Butter Co’s Dark Chocolate Dreams.  The pb lives up to its name, it is dreamy.

What are your Valentine’s plans this year; singles night, couples night, or burning pictures of your ex and eating bon bons?

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?

Strawberries And Cream, Squared

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Adam stayed up later than planned last night which meant I stayed up later than planned last night.  At least it meant I got to catch the dog building a cave.

That is one of the very cutest things that he does!

I also ended up having a snack.  A small but amazing cookie,

and a big pile of grapes.

I may not be a med student, but I did manage to wake up with the husband this morning too.  By 6:30 am we were in our cars and I was heading to the gym.  45 minutes on the elliptical, level 6 random.

I left my car on campus so I could drive home this afternoon, and hurried home on foot for breakfast.

This bowl puts my last attempt at Berries and Cream Oatmeal to shame.

  • 1/2 cup each skim milk and water
  • ~ 1/3 cup (frozen, defrosted) strawberries
  • 1/4 cup oats
  • ~ 1 cup 1% large curd cottage cheese
  • ~ 2 Tbsp strawberry cream cheese

The strawberry cream cheese really helped put a bow on the berries and cream theme.

Have a great start of the work week!

The Pizza Problem

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About last night …  After all of my excitement,

the skillet cookie didn’t pan out (ba-dum ching!).

It was more of a cookie cake, which I hate. But the husband ate it. And now I’ve got this cool little skillet.

But I was left without dessert.  And after my first hour of complaining about wanting a cookie, I realized that what I actually was, was hungry.  For food.

So we set out.  As we left the house at 8, I said to the husband “we’re going to drive around for hours and not get food, and you’ll be mad and I’ll cry.”  That statement wasn’t entirely correct, but mostly.  Instead of tears, we came home at midnight with pizza.  And we watched “Bride Wars” and stuffed our faces and all was right with the world.

This morning it felt like breakfast should be nutritious.  We had errands to run so we were looking for an on-the-goal meal that was packed with vitamins.  Enter smoothies.

Into the blender went frozen blueberries, strawberries, a bit of orange juice, and a handful of ice.  I blended, but instead of a smoothie all I got was rock hard fruit chunks sitting in a pool.  So I continued to blend, adding in a bit of club soda to move things along.

But it seemed that no matter how much liquid I added, I just couldn’t get the substance in the blender to reach a liquid state.  And that’s how our smoothies came to contain two cups of club soda.

They were disgusting.  Shocking, right?

I made myself drink a bit more than half for the nutrients, and ate a piece of pizza when I got home.

And now I never want to see another piece of pizza ever again for at least week.

Primed to Party

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We have got –

a) a problem
b) a packed to-do list
c) a party
d) a profound preference towards alliteration
e) all of the above

If you guessed (e), you’re correct!  Adam and I have the problem of being crazy people because we stayed up past 2am doing absolutely nothing.  This morning got off to a late, rough start, but our day was packed full of to-do’s to prep for tonight’s party.  We are almost set up and I’m all packed for tomorrow to boot.

Today was a double smoothie sort of day.  First, another round of berry chocolate mint.

For two, 2 cups chocolate mint soy milk, 2 cups frozen strawberries, 1 scoop chocolate protein powder, and 6oz 0% plain Greek yogurt.

My second smoothie was a (soy) nog delight.

For one, medium frozen banana, 1 cup Silk Soy Nog, 3 Tbsp malted milk powder, and a handful of ice.

Plus nibbles while we got ready for the party.

I’ll see y’all on the other side, from St. Thomas!

Note – I will probably be blogging every other day or so on vacation (my parents don’t have internet).  If my first post is Monday morning, that doesn’t mean my plane crashed.  But thanks in advance for thinking safe thoughts for me!

Some Merriment

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Amid doing lots of errands and eating lots of crap, I managed to squeeze in some merriment.

First, chocolate berry mint smoothies.

For two, I blended 2.5 cups frozen strawberries, 6 oz 0% plain greek yogurt, and 2 cups of peppermint chocolate soy milk.

Adam and I both love this Jamba Juice knock-off.

Dinner was especially merry.

Cottage cheese gingerbread pancakes! 

My ingredients for 2 servings (which ended up being more like 1.5 servings!) –

  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp baking soda
  • pinch salt
  • 1/2  cup buttermilk
  • 1 tsp gingerbread syrup
  • 1 large egg
  • 2 Tbsp melted butter
  • 1/3 cup low-fat cottage cheese

Whisk together dry, then wet, then fold the two together just before griddling.

I topped my serving with Smart Balance Light, syrup, and sprinkles.

On the agenda for tomorrow?

eggnog bread
chocolate Biscoff bars
cinnamon oatmeal cookies
bacon horseradish dip
bagels with lox

Presenting ..

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I had an important test today (it didn’t go well, but that’s another story) so I got up early to do some studying at Starbucks.  Just as I was about to head out, Adam called.  He’d left his pager at home and needed me to wait for him.  At first I was annoyed; I needed every minute of studying I could get.  But then I realized that he had a pager because he’s going to be a doctor, and that’s amazing.  So I got over it.

When I finally did get to Starbucks at 6am I got myself a gingerbread latte.

Actually, I ordered a plain non-fat latte and added 1 Tbsp of gingerbread syrup from home.

Shhh.

When I left at 7:30 I did buy an actual fancy drink though, a short, non-fat, salted caramel hot chocolate.

The flavors in this feel very complex and gourmet for a coffee joint, but it’s pretty rich so the short size is perfect.

I also ate some leftover fruit salad.

Then I failed took my test, got myself in a tizzy applying for several jobs and internships, and did my group presentation on cultural food patterns.  Our country was Ireland so we all dressed in green.

We also brought in Irish soda bread for the class to try.

In addition to my slice I ate a Peppermint Stick Clif Bar.

This flavor was good, but not great like I was hoping it would be.

After class I had so much nervous energy I needed to burn off that I actually went to the gym!  30 minutes on the elliptical, level 6 random.

I got home at 3:30 and had to unpack, shower, change, and eat dinner before my 4:15 orthodontist appointment, so this meal was quick but good.

My amazing turkey sandwich was 2 slices of toasted rye with cranberry relish, 2 slices of Applegate Farms roasted turkey, and 1 oz of reduced fat cream cheese.

Cream cheese on a sandwich is where it’s at.

I also had a pile of roasted green beans on the side.

I had less than 8 minutes to shovel my food in and this still tasted good!  And I’m glad I did an earliest bird dinner because my teeth don’t feel like chomping with my new retainer set.

Webster and I are going to take a walk down Elmwood to pick up a friend and then she’s coming back here so we can work on yet another presentation.  Exam week won’t be fun, but I still going to be so relieved when we have our last class of the semester on Thursday!

Which “fancy drink” are you going to Starbucks for this winter?