Tag Archives: chalk

Three Fruits And A Lie

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I love long weekends; I’ve had to remind myself all day that it’s actually Wednesday!  I work five days next week so I’ll take any bit of easiness that I can get.

I had a fun and fancy(-free!) smoothie for breakfast.  Taro milk powder, frozen blueberries, and Blue Diamond Almond/Coconut Milk Blend.

Sitting on top of ……can you see them?

Rainbow boba!  I made extra on Monday and these were a fun weekday morning treat.  Unfortunately the boba were too big for my straw and I ended up throwing out half my smoothie once I got to class, but it was a fun idea in theory!

Class went well.  I got the good news that the assignment I completed a week early was done correctly (booyah!).  My M/W nutrition class is on MNT, aka medical nutrition therapy, and right now we are learning all about oncology.  Our class is covering nutrition for cancer patients as well as cancer-preventative diets, and it is all fascinating.  FYI – Low fruit and vegetable intake is associated with twice the risk of cancer for all sites except the prostate.  Brocoli specifically, has a dose dependant relationship with your cancer risk.

I hung around campus a bit and had lunch with Holly.  It was so great to catch up!  (H, we need to get a picture next time!)  It’s fun to relive my first year in the program.  I packed an apple,

and a leftover Reuben Stuffed Turkey Burger on a Sandwich Thin with 1000 island dressing.

I think I actually like the burgers even better cold!

I did some printing and ran an errand on Elmwood and now I’m settled at home.  We are eating dinner early tonight (I’m submitting my post to something so I’m crossing my fingers for semi-decent pictures) but I did have a few snacks.  A slice of 2% provolone cheese,

and a spoon of Biscoff Spread.

That was the last of the jar; so sad!

My agenda for the rest of the day includes my dinner post, a hot yoga class, a 4-minute workout, and hopefully an hour or two of studying.

FOR FUNSIES – Meghann’s lunch post ended with some super fun “Three Truths and a Lie.”  I adore that game so I’m going to post my 4 “facts” here as well:

  1. I learned how to drive on the left side of the road in an American-style car.
  2. I’ve both skydived and flown a plane.
  3. I got my first tattoo when I was 17.
  4. I swam with sharks for my 20th birthday.

Can you guess which one’s my lie??  Post yours in the comments and let’s all try to guess!

[Food] For Thought

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Food

Hello, hello.  Today’s activities would be tricky (and boring!) to explain so I’ll stick with the food.  One note – My stomach was bothering me all afternoon but the main reason I didn’t eat any veggies is because my bag of green beans had gotten slimy and gross.  Here we go…

Coconut Chocolate Chip Clif Bar.

Turkey sandwich – Sandwich Thin, 2 slices of Applegate Farms Smoked Turkey, 1 slice pepperjack cheese, strawberry jam.

The last of my Mike and Ike’s.

The last of these Barbara’s cheese puffs, about half a serving.  Funny story – Adam had a friend over (just one) on Monday.  He bought two bags of snacks, the cheese puffs and some salt and vinegar chips.  All that was left is what I ate today, and that only survived because he knew I wanted to taste them.

A low-fat coffee yogurt with honey-roasted peanuts and honey.

A dapple plucot.

A cheese sandwich – an onion roll with about 2 oz of melted cheese (a mix of extra-sharp cheddar, 2% swiss, and 2% provolone).

A Reuben Stuffed Turkey Burger with 1000 island dressing.

3/4 of a Jamocha Shake that Adam surprised me with when he came home.

Food for Thought

Since I didn’t have much in the way of content for this post, here are the links to a few articles I think you guys might find interesting:

Stir-Fried Soup

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I made it through the first day of a new semester!  I forgot what day it was and pressed snooze a couple of times this morning, but I did manage to make it to the gym for a quick workout.

25 minutes on the elliptical, level 6 random.

I cut it close but the husband offered to drive me this morning (both walking and driving myself eat up 30 minutes) so I had time to shower and grab breakfast to go.  A Chocolate Dipped Coconut Luna Bar,

and an iced coffee with skim milk.

It wasn’t just any iced coffee.  Do you remember when I blogged about wanting to try Chameleon Cold-Brew Coffee?  They now sell it at Wegman’s!

It was even better than I had imagined.  Smooth, not at all bitter, and I swear with the skim milk I tasted hints of chocolate?!

I breakfasted during my first class and the caffeine boost was much-appreciated.  This semester is going to be hard.  I’m only taking a few classes (the minimum number of credits versus having to petition to take extra credits almost ever other semester) but there is a ton of work and the concepts are all higher level.

Good thing I got some work done in the break between classes and my shift at work.  I also made lunch.

A salad of romaine, flax, light honey mustard dressing, a little shredded gruyere, and a crumbled slice of turkey bacon.

Plus apple dippers.

A sliced Pink Crispin,

with a melted mix of peanut butter, Biscoff, and Heath bits, ~ 1 Tbsp of each.

Delish!

I worked from 2 -7 and then came home and wandered around all evening in a tired, sore-backed haze.  That is not going to be able to happen as the semester progresses.  But overall I think I did a good job of getting things done today.

I even pre-made some of the components for tomorrow’s dinner.  I snacked on a serving of Barbara’s Baked Cheese Puffs while I cooked.

They were an impulse buy at the co-op that paid off; didn’t tasted “baked” at all.

Dinner didn’t happen until 9:30 but it was worth the wait.  Super worth it.  Did you make my Thai-Inspired Coconut Peanut Soup yet?  I hope so, because if you did you are halfway done with this killer spin on it – Stir-Fried Soup!

Stir-Fried Soup, serves 1

Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat.  Toss in cashews and toast.  Add soup leftovers and Sriracha and saute, stirring occasionally, until crispy.  Scramble in egg.  Serve and swoon.

It was the tastiest thing I’ve eaten in weeks, I swear to God.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve done with leftovers?

Yoga Not YOLO

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I hate #yolo.  Every time I see those four letters my brain screams “do you mean ‘carpe diem,’ asshat?”  And you say it when you are doing something dumb.  People who get “carpe diem” tattoos usually do so with purpose and intend to live with purpose.  When people post “YOLO” facebook status updates it generally means they’re an idiot.  Also, this is the funniest thing ever –

Ok, rant’s over, I promise.  I actually had a really good day 🙂

I got to go to yoga!  Adam bought me a 2-month unlimited hot yoga Groupon for Valentine’s Day and I’m finally cashing in.  My goal (my intention) is to go three times a week for the next two months, minus the week I’m in Ohio with my parents.  Today I did a 75 minute flow class.  I’ve never tried flow before, and I wasn’t very good, but I loved it.

“I had to run errands at school after yoga so I decided to make it a cardio day as well” …I breezily say as if I work out all of the time!  I did today though.  40 minutes on the stationary bike at level 10 random.

On my walk to school between yoga and the gym I refueled with a Vanilla Stinger Waffle.

Oh my goodness was it good!  I thought it was going to be some sort of chew and it ended up being a cookie!

And I did feel great during my 2nd workout.  I totally bought more of these at the store today.

When I got home I made this strange but genius drink.

1 cup of cold (double bagged) red velvet cake tea with 1 cup of fat-free chocolate milk.  Adam and I both were big fans of this combo.

I did a couple of errands at school and I kept the productivity going all afternoon.  My most exciting to-done was signing up for malpractice insurance.  We are going to have our very own patients this year so we need to cover ourselves legally.  Thankfully student insurance is pretty cheap and it is fun to start to feel official.

My final errand was grocery shopping.  I got lunch from Wegman’s hot bar.

A jalapeño popper and a bit of macaroni,

and veggies.

We haven’t gotten hot bar in a while and sadly this didn’t thrill me the way it used it.

Along with the essentials, I bought a box of Fiber One Chocolate Chip Cookies on sale.

Super meh, but they were very cheap so I’m glad I tried.  The texture was way to cakey.  They will be good for throwing into my purse before work or class, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be buying more when I finish the six that came with this box.

I also bought chips at the store.

Buffalo and blue cheese ruffled chips.  I took one bite and knew that they were going to be dinner.  So I pushed back our planned meal and bought some dip.

Too much fun.  Adam randomly ate a ton of food at 5 pm so he didn’t need dinner anyway.

I did try to feel healthy by eating two plums for dessert though.

And I probably won’t do leftovers for dinner tomorrow!

What are your thoughts on #yolo?

Gluten-Free Cowboy Oaties for Camille

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Does anyone remember my gluten rant?  While I hate that gluten-free is “trendy,” I deeply sympathize with anyone who has to follow a GF diet for medical reasons.  People like my cousin Camille – one of the smartest, funniest, people I know, who took her new diet completely in stride.  Her sister is awesome as well so clearly my aunt and uncle are doing something right, but that’s beside the point.

Camille occasionally reads the blog and knows that I like to bake.  Awhile back she texted me a request for a GF update to Cowboy Cookies.  I don’t think I’ve actually ever eaten a Cowboy Cookie but I did some Googling and gave it my best shot.  I’m positive that the texture is different but the taste components of Cowboy Cookies are all there – chocolate, coconut, pecan, and oats.

Gluten-free Cowboy Oaties, yields 12 dozen

  • 2 cups pecans
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
  • 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup gluten-free oats
  • 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1/4 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.  Prepare a cookie sheet with baking spray.
  2. Spread pecans in a single layer on prepared cookie sheet.  Spritz with a bit of baking spray and sprinkle with salt.
  3. Toast pecans, about 10 minutes in the oven, watching them carefully so they don’t burn.  Remove from oven and allow toasted pecans to cool completely before moving on to the next step.
  4. Place cooled, toasted pecans into food processor along with olive oil.  Process until smooth, 1 – 2 minutes.  You are looking for a consistency similar to natural peanut butter.
  5. Place pecan butter, sugars, eggs, and vanilla in a large bowl and use a hand-mixer to mix until well-combined.
  6. Use a spatula to fold oats, chocolate chips, and coconut into batter.
  7. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or Silpat mats.  Roll batter into heaping teaspoons and place in evenly spaced rows on prepared cookie sheets.
  8. Bake 15 minutes at 350 degrees Farenheit, until firm.

If you do not have a food processor you could probably substitute 1 cup of store-bought pecan butter for the pecans but I make no guarantees that this substitution will work.  If you are following a gluten-free diet for medical reasons please make sure that the ingredients you purchase are appropriate for your diet.

Chicken Makhani At Home

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Hello, hello!

I managed another morning workout today, though I overslept a bit and didn’t have a ton of time.  25 minutes on the elliptical, level 6 random.

Breakfast was exciting; our teacher kindly brought in bagels!

I had an everything bagel with strawberry cream cheese.

I totally used the cream cheese to “sop up” the fallen sprinkles of onion and poppy-seed.  My friend Hillary and I laughed because when we finished eating her plate was spotted and mine was bare.

We are getting ServSafe certified in summer school and we did our first 8 hours today.  I took the course in college when I worked at the on-campus bar but I mostly seem to remember the strange questions.  For example – When can raw, unpackaged meat be offered for self-service? (answer found at the bottom of this post).

Lunch was tasty, but I went more than a little overboard on the sodium.

3 oz of bread and butter pickle slices.

1 serving of pretzel twists.

2 servings of turkey pepperoni.

Mustard to dip it all in.

I didn’t even finish the last quarter of the pretzels and pepperoni and I joked that I could actually taste the hypertension.

Our new classroom (we switched rooms three times the first day!) was freezing so I also bought a coffee for warmth.

With skim milk and three sugars.

Speaking of sugar… I got a coupon for a free donut from Dunkin yesterday and you know I wasn’t going to turn that down.

That star is an Undercover Black Cocoa Donut.  It was delicious.  Like seriously delicious.  And I actually don’t even like donuts; craving one felt like the strangest thing ever.

And since I don’t like donuts (you know I’m a froyo/Ben and Jerry’s/bubble tea girl) I’m able to say with a straight face that dinner was even more delicious.

Adam and I have been super obsessed with Indian take-out this year, particularly chicken and paneer Makhani.  It tastes fantastic but the habit is expensive and I don’t even want to know how many calories we’re taking in.  We can’t seem to shake the addiction so it seems like the solution needs to be making our own Indian dishes at home.

I’m not ready to make the sauces from scratch but I picked up this Butter Chicken Simmer Sauce from Patak and I think we’re in business!

It was very creamy and just a little bit spicy.  And for 150 calories for a third of the bottle it’s not as scary as the restaurant version!

I started dinner by rehydrating a handful of raisins in hot water.  Meanwhile, I toasted a handful of cashews in a big skillet.  I added the raisins, ~7 oz of chicken, 1 Tbsp butter, and 1 cup of sauce to the skillet and let it simmer for a bit.  I served my portion on top of a pile of roasted broccoli.

Delicious.  Seriously delicious.

Answer: At Mongolian barbeques

Toasted Marshmallow Cheesecake Oatmeal (For Dinner)

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My book and beers were great last night but I woke up in a funk.  Adam and I both just didn’t want to get out of bed.  I snoozed for so long that suddenly there wasn’t enough time to both go to the gym and make the fun breakfast I was looking forward to.  I knew I had to get it together before my bad mood ruined the whole day so I tried to pinpoint what was making me cranky – I was cold, I was tired, I was hungry.

Time to problem-solve!  I decided I would make a mug of hot chocolate (calories, warmth, caffeine), go to the gym (endorphins), and eat my fun breakfast for dinner (anticipation).

The cocoa was pretty weak but my workout felt rewarding.  10 minutes on the treadmill (1 mile) and 20 minutes at level 6 random on the stationary bike (7 miles).

I had to hurry, but somehow my hair air-dried perfectly today!

Often one side curls under while the other flips up so this felt very fortuitous since I had to look nice for clinic.

For breakfast I cashed in the last of my Ashker’s smoothie Groupon on the walk to school.

I got a Lemon Zinger sans ginger; aka a carrot, peach, mango, and lemon smoothie.  It was great!

Lunch included more carrots so it’s a good thing I’m a fan.

Also a Cinnamon Raisin Bagel Thin with two slices of Applegate Farm’s Smoked Turkey and a wedge of Light French Onion Laughing Cow.

And a 120-calorie pack of Skinny Cow Dreamy Clusters.

These were on super-sale so I took a chance and I ended up quite liking them.  The serving was small but the caramel was nice and I liked the bit of crunch.

But I probably should have packed an additional item for lunch because I was inhaling this 100-calorie bag of kettle corn the minute I walked in the door at the end of the day.

My clinical hours today were at a Diabetic Education Course.  The RD let me teach the portion on reading nutrition labels.  She said I seemed knowledgable and confident which is awesome because on the inside I was screaming my head off!  I’m considering becoming a certified diabetes educator (cde) some day so it was neat to get a taste of the experience.

I had to get through night class and then I finally had my much-anticipated breakfast dinner.  What combination was I so excited about?

Toasted Marshmallow Cheesecake Oats!

So flipping good.

cooked: 3/4 cup skim milk, pinch salt, 1/4 cup oats

stirred in: 1/2 cup 1% cottage cheese (cheesecake), 4 toasted marshmallows (marshmallow!)

topped: 1 Tbsp melted Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter (crust)

The toasted marshmallows stirred into the mix and the bowl was like a giant, toasty, marshmallow!

When I originally planned this meal for breakfast I wanted to make sure it was nutritionally ready to get me through the day so I plugged the ingredients into an online calculator –

Not bad, not bad at all; especially for something that tasted like dessert.

What is your favorite decadent breakfast?

Gluten Is Not The Bad Guy

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Hi, there!  No blog post yesterday because work ran late and I had a couple of mini school-related fires that needed putting out all afternoon.  Also, I was working on my difficult assignment.  Not difficult in terms of understanding or content but tricky in terms of time committment and mandatory synthesis of our knowledge.  We had to read an article full of bunk science (promoted by Dr. Oz, of course!) and identify statements that were incorrect and then explain both why the statements were incorrect and identify the correct statements that the author misconstrued to reach his conclusion.  The assignment required the upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy but was also a lot of fun.  And it sparked this blog post.

Notes – this post is not in response to any one person, blog, topic, or product, but is my general PSA to the world, aka my readers, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances.  Also, I am not claiming to know it all.  I am in no way purporting to fully cover the topics, I’m just covering a few of the facts.

Some Facts on Gluten, Gluten Intolerance, and Gluten-free Diets

Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye.

Gluten is resistant to complete digestion by GI enzymes and often travels to the small intestine of healthy individuals partially or fully intact.  This is not a problem.  Gluten does don’t cause inflammation in healthy individuals.

Individuals with Celiac disease (an immune-mediated disorder) suffer damage to their intestinal tracts that can compromise digestive and absorptive functions over time.  In individuals with CD, undigested gluten peptides travel from the intestinal lumen, across the intestinal epithelium, and into the lamina propria; basically, through the intestinal cavity and into the intestinal linings.  Because of the immune component of CD, these individuals have antibodies which react to the specific dietary protein fractions and cause inflammation.

Gluten sensitivity is used to describe individuals with nonspecific symptoms who lack the immune response found in CD.  The term gluten intolerance describes individuals who have symptoms and may or may not have CD.  These GI symptoms include cramping, bloating, nausea, and/or diarrhea.

This next part is so often misunderstood in the healthy living community that I’m actually going to quote straight from Krause – “Patients who experience these symptoms [i.e. may have gluten sensitivity or intolerance] should generally be advised against following a gluten-free diet without having a workup to exclude or confirm a diagnosis of CD.”  This is because there may be an underlying condition for which a gluten-free diet is not the treatment and because following a gluten-free diet for several months or years may make it more difficult to accurately diagnose CD.

A gluten-free diet is regarded by medical practitioners as being generally healthy but it can be very expensive and/or restrictive.

A combination of clinical, laboratory, histologic evaluations is used to diagnose CD.  The gold standard for diagnosis is a small intestine biopsy.

source – Mahan KL, Escott-Stump S, Raymond JL.  Krause’s Food and Nutrition Care Process.  13th ed.  St. Louis, Missouri: Elsevier Saunders; 2012.

Do you know anyone who follows a gluten-free diet?  What is their reasoning for doing so?