Speaking of school, sorry for the quick post but the dork in me just can’t resist setting up my binders and getting to bed early!
What was the tastiest thing you ate this weekend?
*Updated to add – The husband just offered to make me eggs and (turkey)bacon; guess I’m staying up a little longer 😀
It’s almost Friday! Weekends have been pretty much meaningless to me this past unemployed year, but now that I’m starting back to school next Monday they are exciting again.
I spent forever running errands today because parking was ridiculous everywhere I went. Also helping orphans catching up on “Make it or Break it.” I managed to make time for some amazing meals though; I’m seriously excited about every single thing I ate today.
Chicken Enchilada Suiza Lean Cuisine.
Frozen meal win, this was delicious. A chicken enchilada with cheesy sauce,
and a pile of rice that got mushed around in the cheese sauce.
With an Orange Zevia (free sample).
I’m usually not one for orange sodas but this guy was totally thirst quenching.
Also, a mini bag of kettle corn.
I spent some time wifing it up in the kitchen, baking some chocolate chip cookies for the husband. I stole a tiny one.
I would have eaten more, but I had already stashed 2T of dough away into the freezer for something amazing. Keep reading…
Dinner was kinda off the hook.
Think tasty leftovers x10billion. I topped a bed of roasted green beans with 1cup of corn, a serving of shredded bbq chicken, and some homemade bbq sauce.
Shredded chicken, corn, and roasted green beans are all pretty big favorites of mine and together they were unstoppable! The balance of spicy-salty-sweet was perfect here.
But nothing was topping dessert.
I’ve had food-processor-envy all year, but tonight I envied no man; tonight, I got to make Gena’s famous banana soft-serve!
Only my batch was extra fabulous because it also had frozen cookie dough blended in.
This bowl was 2frozen bananas and 2.5T frozen cookie dough. Swoon!
Have you gotten to try banana soft serve yet? Thoughts?
First, you’ve got to meet a boy (or girl!).
Trick said boy into marrying you.
Put a crock-pot on your wedding registry.
Place two thawed, humanely raised, skinless, boneless chicken breasts (~1.5lbs) in the bottom of said crock-pot.
Pour in enough reduced sodium chicken broth to cover both chicken breasts.
Do some salt and pepper action.
Set your crock-pot for 8hours on low and walk away.
Meanwhile, join Foodbuzz. Attend the 1st Blogger Festival and bring home a bottle of Maple Barbeque Sauce with Horseradish.
Join the Tastemaker Program and receive a sample of Arnold’s Multi-Grain Sandwich Thins.
Go back to your crock-pot and remove cooked chicken to a plastic container and shred using two forks.
Pour your bbq sauce (approx. 10Tbsp) over the shredded chicken.
Plate.
I recommend serving alongside a green, perhaps some roasted asparagus?
Roasted figs with goat cheese and honey for dessert.
Live happily ever after.
Of course that’s all subject to some personal interpretation, but those are my basic steps! 😉
So this afternoon, after I spent the entire day rocking my running skirt, I got sucked into blogs and didn’t realize until 5:40 that my campus gym closed at 6pm. Fail. I can’t take a day off from exercise, because one turns into twenty, so when I found a post-card in the mail informing me that our old gym membership expires on the 28th it felt very serendipitous. We loaded into the car and set off toward a healthy evening.
I was hungry by then, so during the ride I ate a Banana Soy Joy bar, pulled from my BlogHer stash.
Meh, at the time I didn’t love or hate it.
We didn’t have much time at the gym so I tried to bust my butt the entire visit. “California Girls” by Katy Perry is surprisingly motivating, as is this song. 30minutes on the elliptical, random, level 6. I did a mix of backward and forward pedalling, as well as some sprint intervals. I ended my visit with 10minutes of strength and stretch moves.
As I stretched my legs I felt an unpleasant tightness in the back of my neck. During my sit ups I started to feel nauseous. While we were leaving the gym I could taste that stupid Soy Joy bar through all the water I was chugging. And five minutes later we were pulling over so I could throw up. Mega fail.
We haven’t quite narrowed it down, but basically I have an intolerance for some food preservative(s). I also have a major allergy to some specific preservative that is found in Hawaiian Punch products, but that’s another story. I’ve eaten other Soy Joy bars before without incident, but the Banana flavor is definitely off-limits for me from now on.
By the time I had pulled myself together and Adam had stopped at Walgreens to purchase himself a snack (thanks for the concern, husband!) I realized that I would not be able to stomach the dinner we had planned. No, the only thing that would do was jalapeno poppers, with cream cheese, NOT cheddar. I know some people would feel sick just at the thought of eating poppers, but they were literally the only thing that appealed to me.
I’ll make a very long and sad story short – three stores (and some time on Yelp) later we claimed defeat. Adam told me I had to eat something for dinner, and also to stop whimpering or I was going to be walking home, so I went the Buffalo sauce route, a close 2nd to jalapeno. I was starving at that point, and a bit unreasonable as well, so dinner was a huge buffalo chicken finger sandwich and a huge thing of french fries. Ultra mega fail.
Clearly I hated it.
I managed to hold off my snacking urge all afternoon, but we did decide to switch up our weekly meal plan and head to some take out! Dinner is being repurposed for my lunch tomorrow and my restaurant leftovers are going toward the husband’s lunch so in the end it all works out.
We went with Moe’s, always a good choice.
I was in the mood for a quesadilla but instead I ordered something I was sure to have leftovers with; a rice bowl. I topped my rice with black beans, chicken, mushrooms, peppers, onions, cheese, lettuce, jalopenos, black olives, medium salsa, corn salsa, and cilantro.
The flavor storm was great and as predicted my rice bowl ended up ginormous. I ate about 1/3 and packed the rest up for Adam.
I probably should have stopped there but I got a side of queso dip so I also scarfed a sort of disgusting amount of free tortilla chips.
Soooooo full.
We are currently Netflixing the show “Tru Calling;” we are only 1 episode in but it seems pretty good!
This post comes from back in Buffalo. We made it (mostly) in one piece. More on that later though.
I want to preface this post with recognition of the fact that the husband and I eat very differently than the rest of his family. Our preferences, nutrition goals, and food values are all very different. This means that when we are with his family I have to weigh being rude or being a bother with eating in a way that makes me feel happy and healthy. I try to satisfy myself in a healthy way and also not to offend anyone. I did my best to balance both of those goals this weekend.
When we went to the store Friday night my brother-in-law did warn me that I needed to buy breakfast so I was more than prepared for that. I got to try a couple of new things 😀 – – – Side note; walking through the yogurt aisle in his grocery store practically gave me an aneurism because I was so jealous of the immense Greek yogurt variety. – – – Like Fage 2% with blueberry.
I was so excited for this but I ended up being a bit disappointed. It wasn’t terrible, but the blueberries had a weird bitter taste. The strawberry Fage has such a great balance of sweetness and tang but it just didn’t work here.
I had much more success with Oat Revolution instant oats, cinnamon roll flavor.
The texture was way more complex that regular instant oats, definite upgrade!
Adam and I drove around with his brother helping to pick up things for the party but we also found time to play on the swing set with our niece.
Excuse the closed eyes, swinging as high as I could was glorious but sunny. We swung for an hour which ended up feeling like a bit of a workout. We also worked on handstands and cartwheels. Just throwing it out there – my fitness goal for the next 4months is to be able to do a proper handstand and cartwheel again.
Lunch.
I grabbed two small slices of pizza with ranch and a little serving of pasta salad.
Our niece had an iCarly birthday cake. I requested a tiny corner piece.
It ended up being mostly icing, which was exactly what I wanted!
Saturday evening the grandparents babysat and we went on a movie date with Adam’s brother and his wife. We saw The Expendables which was adequately funny. There are so many movies coming out that I’m excited about. I packed a Toffee Chocolate Power Bar as my movie snack.
When we got home I ate another two small slices of pizza for dinner but they somehow escaped the camera.
This morning I started my day with a Yoplait Plain Greek Yogurt with a grape honey stick.
Everyone was in a hurry to get on the road but we did make time to go to the in-laws’ favorite spot for breakfast. It was a buffet but sadly most of the options were meat based. I ended up putting together a pretty good plate.
Veggies, scrambled eggs, and a biscuit with honey. And a second plate full of fresh fruit.
Why, oh why was 90% of the fruit bar canned in heavy syrup? I would have loved peaches or strawberries.
I had one final coupon to use so we stopped at McDonalds at lunchtime. My coupon was for a premium salad so I got a Southwest Salad with grilled chicken.
I have a lot of issues with some of the offerings at McDonald’s so I wanted not to like this but I just can’t give this salad a bad review. Honestly? It was freaking amazing.
The lettuce was super fresh and the salad was loaded with black beans and roasted corn. The dressing came from Newman’s Own and even if you did slop a lot on there were only 100calories in the pack. The tortilla strips added crunch and the perfect amount of heat. I was pretty much in love! With grilled chicken (and the dressing packet) the salad came out to only 320calories, and it was very filling. Even though I loved it I was so full that I only could finish ¾ of it.
Now we’ve made it safely home and I’m headed off to the grocery store. That was supposed to be a Monday errand but instead I’ll be meeting the glass repair guys to deal with the giant crack that resulted when a rock kicked up by a truck (in the left lane like a jerk!) met our windshield. Here is a question dear readers – do you have glass coverage included in your auto insurance? Repair is going to be a hassle, but at least it’s free. I highly recommend you check out your policy. Fun fact – Adam was actually going to remove glass coverage from our policy on Friday, but while he was on the phone I told him not to. Thank goodness!
Which do you prefer, the icing or the cake? I’m an icing girl! To the chagrin of classroom mothers, when I was a kid I would like the tops off of cupcakes and throw the rest away!
Fun thing # 1 was getting this package –
Soap.com is an online pharmacy/home supply store that lets you order vitamins, face soap, toilet paper and other household essentials. The site is easy to use, and perfect for city dwellers who don’t like to schlep everything via reusable bags. I won a $20 gift certificate and free shipping while at BlogHer. I decided to go a little bit functional, a little bit fun.
Fun thing # 2 is that it’s our niece’s birthday this weekend so we are heading to Ohio for some family time. I got my celebrate on by trying some new nail polish (also snagged at BlogHer).
What? It is a party for a 5-year old girl!
The not-so-fun thing is that our kitchen is currently swarming with fruit flies. My spider repellant actually works and now this?!?! I couldn’t handle my ewwwww-reflex so I quickly packed and fled to The Spot for brunch.
Chicken quesadilla; yum, yum, yum!
I swear I have yet to have a single sub par meal from the Spot, they are always “yum, yum, yum” worthy! The portions are pretty generous too, I ate half and packed the other half up for the husband mid-road trip.
Final fun fact? I’ll cop to the fact that I’m currently wearing jeggings!
Not something I would have bought for myself but my aunt, with two teenage daughters natch, always gets me birthday gifts that let me pretend I’m cooler than I actually am.
I’m taking my laptop with me to Ohio so hopefully I’ll have time for a couple quick posts. Have a great weekend!
Can you read during a road trip or do you get car sick?
I had an amazing time at BlogHer, but it’s always great to be back to reliable internet home! I hate to rush through a recap of a good time, but it’s after midnight and I did miss my husband!
If Thursday night was a healthy living fail, Friday night was a blogger fail – I forgot my camera! We attended an art gallery at BlogHer and then walked down to Lexington Ave for some fabulous Thai food. I stuffed myself silly 🙂 When Camile e-mails me her photos I’ll post some up later.
Saturday morning there was a long lull between breakfast and the first session so we decided to walk over ‘late’ and just pick up breakfast along the way. I got a bagel with egg and turkey bacon, no cheese,
and a Zico coconut water.
Everything was super tasty but I knew the expo hall had samples waiting so I stuck with half of my bagel.
Later in the morning I sampled a new “dessert” line from Yoplait.
So good, I can’t wait until these come to Buffalo.
Lunch was vastly improved over the first day as well.
A bean salad with yellow raisins,
green beans,
and a small piece of salmon.
For dessert I grabbed a Jello Mousse Cup, also good.
Later in the afternoon I also snagged a blondie,
and a baggie of apple slices.
At 5, Camile and I met up with a group of bloggers for some green juice and a power walk.
[thanks for the group shots, Kath!]
I went with spinach, parsley, carrot.
I’ve been missing green juice like crazy since we moved to Buffalo, so this hit the spot!
We walked around Central Park for an hour or so, then hightailed it back to our hotel so we had time to make it back to converge with the group for dinner.
We went to Eatery, which was wonderful.
I ordered the Adobe Salad, which came with grilled chicken, smoked bacon, jack cheese, blue tortillas, black beans, buttermilk dressing, and honey chipotle dressing.
The honey chipotle was out of this world. I ate about half of my salad in total.
We spent some time at the BlogHer Gala (mostly people watching and marveling at the mommy bloggers boogieing down) and then made the long walk back to our hotel. To say we were delighted to find a Pinkberry mid-trip would be an understatement.
Just yum.
I got a small original (tart) froyo, topped with yogurt chips, coconut, and praline crunch.
OMG.
This morning Yelp turned up a brunch spot right down the road with tons of rave reviews, Penelope. It was set up like a country kitchen and the eclectic touches abounded (the coffee cups didn’t match!).
It was too freaking adorable.
And my brunch was out of control.
FBLT – fakin’ bacon, avocado, lettuce, and tomato with black pepper balsamic mayo, served on sourdough with homemade french fries.
Delicious. The mayo put it over the top. It was monstrous too; I only ate a couple of fries but I still could only down 3/4 of the sandwich.
On the way out we stopped by the killer dessert case,
and 7.5hours in the car later I was splitting a peanut butter blondie with Adam.
During that 7.5hours I also consumed a Rockstar.
Camile had read about JP Bullfeathers on my blog and requested that for dinner. I don’t know what is up with me and chicken fingers lately but I went with the buffalo chicken sub.
With blue cheese for dipping, duh.
I spent the rest of the evening showing the husband my swag. Oh gosh, you guys, the swag! I’ve decided I have a mildly unattractive level of excitement about the freebie coupons. Could be a problem.
Do you have a favorite brunch spot in your neighborhood?
Eating Chalk 