Weekly Wrap-Up; Back At It

I know this post is behind schedule (and I swear, I really am going to share all of the tasty things we ate at the end of our trip!) but the first week back at work after a vacation always feels so looooong.  It doesn’t help that the poor puppy is sick – and it really doesn’t help that he is on 2 weeks of a twice-daily medication, in addition to his twice daily seizure medication!  No matter, he has the fuzziest face on Earth and I wouldn’t trade him for the world.

Here are some of the eats from the week that I wouldn’t trade either…

Coffee, always

A double-strength batch of Community Coffee French Roast served over ice with Hint of Honey Almond Milk.

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Halvah yogurt bowls

Plain Greek yogurt with crumbled marble halvah mixed in and juicy summer fruit on the side.

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Spinach pesto on everything

Mixed with shredded chicken and bow tie pasta (my mom and aunt always serve pesto with bow ties so that’s how I do it too!).

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Next to really amazing salads topped with turkey bacon dressing and balsamic roasted grapes.

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And mixed with shredded chicken atop a truly epic toasted cheese sandwich.

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Chipotle, again, always

For dinner I improved the rice-veggie ratio by serving my bowl on a big bed of arugula dressed with bbq sauce.

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And the leftovers made for the most exciting lunch I’ve ever packed.

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I am so ready for the weekend!

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Spring Vacation 2015

Adam and I took advantage of our joint weeks off and flew home to St. Thomas for a quick visit.  The timing worked out perfectly so that we flew in on Mother’s Day and could celebrate with my mom in person.

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Our trip was short but wonderful!

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We saw some old friends, ate tons of good food, ran on the beach, and visited our favorite spots.  I am missing pictures of most of the action, but here are some of the highlights…

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St. Thomas now boasts several self-serve froyo places (and a Walgreens?!), a fact that seems insane to anyone who grew up in the VI.

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Zest, at the Ritz, also had yummy toddy-brewed VI Roasters coffee, so you know I had to make an affogato.

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With vanilla froyo with caramel and marshmallow.

Dinner at ITP, my family’s favorite pizza spot.

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We shared giant Greek salads and a bbq chicken pizza.

Brunch at Barefoot Buddha, my favorite restaurant on the island.

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I got a Vietnamese iced coffee, as well as a really amazing Cuban coffee to go.  Plus my standard order, the Bigfoot Bagel Sandwich.

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Egg frittata, smoked turkey, turkey bacon, cream cheese, sharp cheddar cheese, chipotle aioli, tomato-onion coulis and fresh spinach on an everything bagel.

Lunch on the water at Fat Turtle.

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The food was meh – we split a Cajun mahi mahi sandwich and a veggie pizza that Adam loved –  but the view was nice.

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And afterwards we got house-made salted caramel gelato from a pop-up booth in Yacht Haven.

My parents made Adam’s favorite dish one night for dinner, Bill Clinton’s Enchiladas.

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Plus key lime pie for dessert for me.

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I scooped a slice of pie onto Greek yogurt for breakfast the next day and it was delicious.

You can’t miss the local dishes at Victor’s.

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That is pan-fried Old Wife, a nice white fish that went well with the smoky creole sauce.  My plate also had veggies, fried plantains, and fungi – a cornmeal paste that has a texture like firm mashed potatoes.

Finally, fraccos, aka Caribbean shaved ice.

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I got soursop and passionfruit with condensed milk and it was one of the best things I ate all vacation!

It was a great trip, and now I’m excited for a three-day staycation in the city before we head back to work.

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Thirsty

As this post goes live, we will be setting off on a fun adventure! The best part of which is the fact that Adam and I are both on vacation and can spend every second of the next 7 days together.  <– squee!

I wanted to get in a quick post of highlights from the past few days, 90% of which are beverages…

Iced coffee and an apple for breakfast.

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Plus a cinnamon iced chai latte when I got to work.

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We threw a surprise wedding shower for one of my dietetic coworkers and that’s where Friday’s lunch came from.

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Plus an orange in my office.

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Yes, it took me less than 2 weeks to kill that plant!

More coffee. This caramel macchiato from Dunkin was not good.

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But this can of salted caramel cold brew was, especially paired with a chocolate pretzel bar for breakfast.

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Coffee yogurt topped with honey and salty peanuts is always good.

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As is coffee beer, like this yummy milk stout from Stone.

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Last night we celebrated the start of vacation with a delicious dinner at Brooklyn Star.

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That’s Dr Pepper with bourbon and bitters.

Spicy duck wings sauced with ground chili, honey, Coca Cola, and fried garlic.  We weren’t sure if it was Brooklyn Star’s superior frying technique or the fact that these were fatty, tasty duck instead of chicken, but these were the best wings we’ve ever had.

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And a smoked escarole salad.

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So smoky and good!  Jonah crab meat, pickled watermelon, Asian pear, heart of palm,  and parsnip chips.

Plus dessert at Milk Bar.

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Cold brew and a cornflake marshmallow cookie. A sweet start to a fun week.

Weekly Wrap-Up

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The five best things I ate this week…

(1)  Coffee boxes

Blue Bottle.

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Stumptown.

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These guys never let me down.

(2)  This snack assortment

Baby carrots, seaweed salad, a Honey Belle pear, and a Pixie tangerine.

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Bonus – I went to a catered seminar on physical assessments for malnutrition and they brought in surprisingly good salads from Smash Burger.

(3)  Oatmeal bowls

Wild Beary flavor with maple almond butter on top and a Gold Nugget tangerine on the side.

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The berries and cream oat bowl I made myself was better though.

homemade oats to go

Rolled oats, malted milk powder, chia seeds, freeze-dried strawberries, and dried blueberries.  Plus sweetened sour cream on top.

(4)  Green curry with bulgar

This was the best thing we ate all week.

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Ground turkey sautéed with garlic, ginger, green onions, and probably something else that I’m forgetting // collard greens and celery cooked in rice vinegar with salt and a bit of sugar (sort of try for the pickled greens served at Pig and Khao) // green curry paste and light coconut milk // served on bulgar.

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Now that I’ve gotten my hands on jarred crushed ginger again my food has gotten so much better.

(5)  Asian-ish rice noodles

This would have been the second best thing we ate, but it desperately needed crushed peanuts on top.

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Ground turkey that had been marinated over night with green onions, ginger, garlic, brown sugar, canola oil, fish sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and maple bourbon // baby bok choy, shitake mushrooms, and red bell pepper cooked with Sriracha, ginger, and a pinch of sugar // rice noodles cooked in chicken broth.

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Marinating the meat in so many acidic things gave it an amazing texture, though I realize that it doesn’t look all that pretty.  I have a bag of the chopped veggies prepped in the freezer so we can quickly make this meal again soon.

The worst thing about this week?  The weather!  Why is it so cold again??

It’s A Miracle! {They’re Alive, Damn It!}

This weekend…

…I tried MiraBurst

Aka Miracle Berries aka Synsepalum dulcificum, a plant whose berries don’t taste sweet on their own, but have a compound (Miraculin) that binds to sweet receptors on the tongue and makes acidic foods which are ordinarily sour be perceived as sweet.

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Please note – I was sent the berries free of charge to review.  I was not provided with further compensation for this post.

You eat the pulp, not the seeds, and the effect lasts about an hour.  They recommend trying the berries 1-2 at a time with foods such as citrus fruits, yogurt and kefir, and vinegar, so we set up a little tasting station.

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It totally worked!!  The limes and plain yogurt were both sweet and delicious.  I could definitely see this working as a great way to get kids interested in trying new foods.  I am excited to have the berries in my freezer so I can continue trying them out on different things.

…I also ate things that were sweet all on their own – cookies!

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Many, yummy cookies.  Like a chocolate chip cookie sandwich from Whole Foods.

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And macarons from the tea place near my work.  We tried milk chocolate marshmallow, Nutella, and cream brulee.

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Marshmallow was the best, of course.

…We went to Smorgasburg

Per usual, we focused on duck buns and iced coffees.

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We also went to Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory – – and hated it.  I have no idea how that place always has such a long line.

…I got a summery green pedicure

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I sipped a delicious cold-brew iced coffee from Bareburger while I got my toes done.

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That cup – squee!

…I ate leftovers that weren’t half bad

I drizzled leftover egg salad with Sriracha, served with leftover roasted green beans and buttered whole-wheat cinnamon swirl toast.

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Roasting veggies is the real miracle, how can leftover green beans taste so good?!

…The dog ate wet food and this happened:

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I tied his ears back so he could eat mess-free.  What a cutie!

Eggcellent Eats

We bought tons eggs and dye for Easter this year, and of course, never did a darn thing with them.  The dye is in our “holidays bin” for next year, but the eggs had to be cooked. And so, I enjoyed hard-boiled eggs as a meal almost every day this week.

I was also all about the Cara Cara oranges and Medjool dates. It’s starting to taste like summer!

stuff

I started Ruth Reichl’s first autobiography on the train and I think I’m in love.

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She is so funny, and I love any story about food!

We were insanely busy at work all week and I’m dying. That’s why this post is a day late (and is short about 10 more coffee and candy pictures), because I did sessions with 18 patients on Friday – many of them with gestational diabetes – and when I got home I just wanted to lie down.

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breakfast

I made an awesome cold-brew blend this week: Community Coffee French Roast and BRC Peru with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pumpkin pie spice.

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Served on ice with S’mores Milk and skim milk.

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So good.

I am almost through my Nonni’s Biscotti sample shipment and I am going to buy more when we’re out.

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They are yummy, even when not dipped in coffee.

I discovered the magic that is dates dipped in peanut butter.

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lunch

Kimchi noodle bowl.

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The Cara Cara was the best finish for my perfectly burning mouth.

I brought TJ’s cashew butter and tahini kale chips and crispy broccoli snacks (<– they’re back!!) to crunch on top of salad bar.

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With a big scoop of macaroni salad.

This tasting plate wins best lunch of the week.

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Dates / turkey bacon / hard-boiled egg / crispy broccoli / orange.

But this triple – chocolate oatmeal bowl wins a close second.

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Rolled oats with a heaping Tbsp of hot chocolate mix, chocolate-covered cocoa nibs, and dark chocolate chips.

And this busy day “lunch” was a loser. Vanilla soy milk at 11 am.

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And Easter candy at 4pm when there was finally a lull.

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dinner

Omg. Kids! I made the tastiest stroganoff-inspired noodle bowls ever. Adam and I could not get over them.

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Served in heaping scoops on egg pappardelle.

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Yummy Stroganoff-ish Pasta, serves 4

  1. Heat 1 Tbsp evoo in a large skillet over high-medium heat.  Add 20 ounces sliced white mushrooms, and a big pinch of salt, and cook until the mushrooms have lost their juices and browned, stirring regularly (10 – 13 minutes).  Deglaze the pan with a healthy pour of cream sherry.  Remove mushrooms from pan and reduce heat to medium-high, adding an additional Tbsp evoo if needed.
  2. Add 1 lb lean ground turkey and two large shallots, chopped to the pan.  Season with pepper and 1 Tbsp smoked paprika.  Cook 5 minutes, stirring regularly and breaking up the meat into small pieces with the side of your spatula.  Stir in 1/2 Tbsp ground garlic, 1/2 Tbsp fish sauce, and 1 Tbsp soy sauce.  Continue to cook, stirring regularly, until meat is cooked through (5 – 7 more minutes).
  3. Reduce heat to low and stir in 3/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream.
  4. Serve on top of pasta of choice.

The leftovers were still great.

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Served on top of spinach salad. Plus, those of us who can eat chocolate had Lindt caramels for dessert.

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We had cobb salad.

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Baby spinach with balsamic / roasted asparagus / turkey bacon / avocado / TJ’s cave-aged blue cheese / hard-boiled eggs.

And egg salad.

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Eggs with shredded carrot, chopped green pepper, mayo, pickle relish, garlic mustard, dill, tumeric, smoked paprika, and s & p.  With great seeded crackers my parents sent us for Easter.

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And roasted broccoli and green beans.

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Egg salad is good – and I wasn’t even tired of eggs yet! – but roasted green beans are always the best part.

Then we finished the week out with Chipotle.

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Enjoy your weekend!

Easter And Onward

This post feels long, and I am le tired, so I will try to be less loquacious than usual.

Very chatty sidenote – how great are some of the words that describe how much a person does or does not talk??  Loquacious.  Taciturn.  Verbose.  Gabby.  Love them!

Real talk though: I somehow caught a springtime cold and I am cranky and sniffling and need to go to bed.  I know I’ve wasted 60+ words on an intro, but I’ll try to let the pictures speak for themselves as much as possible.

breakfast

Vanilla iced coffee with vanilla milk.

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Smoothie #1 – strawberry mint.  Chocolate mint soy milk, frozen strawberries, and plain Greek yogurt.

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Smoothie #2 – blueberry bliss.  Frozen blueberries and dates with plain almond milk, plain Greek yogurt, and a little honey.

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I made another batch of Community Coffee French Roast, this time in our coffee machine.  Traditional/hot brewing did make this a little bitter, but it was still quite drinkable.  Especially with skim milk and a splash of toasted marshmallow coffee syrup or a sprinkle of cinnamon and brown sugar.

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lunch

Subs with the in-laws for Easter.  With chips and hard-boiled Easter eggs.

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Coffee Chobani with Cocoa Coconut Renola and a Cara Cara.  I am very picky about my coffee yogurts and this stuff was on point.

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A half turkey sandwich from the cafeteria with seaweed salad and Easter candy delivered by a coworker.

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I apparently don’t have a photo to speak for itself, but another day I packed a sandwich from home.  An epic sandwich.  Sweet cheddar and extra-sharp cheddar on a toasted English muffin.  Swoon.

This mix was random, but it worked – spicy Thai chili tuna salad, brown sugar and sea salt seaweed, and a Cara Cara.

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snack

Coconut water for rehydration.

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These chips are amazing.

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Coffee, always.

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The husband and I are both obsessed with these two dessert items.

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Plain Greek yogurt with butterscotch peanut butter and chocolate-covered cocoa nibs

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I made How Sweet Eat’s Brown Butter Oatmeal Chunk Cookies for a birthday at work and they received rave reviews.  I subbed vanilla bean paste for cinnamon, subbed dark chocolate chips for chocolate chunks, and made much smaller cookies (for a yield of 40 cookies versus her 15), and I recommend all three changes if you make a batch of your own.

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I’m including two non-edibles that fed my soul.  The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman was like a grown-up version of Francesca Lia Block’s stuff.  It was hard to put down; I read on the train and one night I had to sit in my car in the parking lot for twenty minutes to keep reading.

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This lip-balm smells like my dreams.

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dinner

Easter dinner.

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Dessert was angel food cake layered with a yummy Cool Whip + vanilla pudding mix + shredded pineapple concoction.

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An easy, amazing soup.  I cooked shell pasta in chicken broth then dumped in sautéed chopped bok choy and green onions, shredded cooked chicken breast, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.  My bowl was drizzled with sweet chili oil as well.  Adam absolutely raved about this dish.

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I turned the rest of my never-ending marinara sauce into a bastardized version of Jenna’s Channa Masala.  On top of brown rice and roasted broccoli.  Topped with plain Greek yogurt and sweet chili oil.

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Safe Catch sent me a can of their wild skipjack tuna.

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Please note: I was sent this product free of charge to review.  I was not provided with further compensation for this post.  All opinions are my own.

Seafood is a great thing to include in your diet.  It is a lean protein, a good source of iron, and a good source of omega-3 fatty acids.  Unfortunately, due to the fact that seafood contains mercury, it may not be a good idea to consume it daily, and some varieties are safer than others.  Canned tuna, for example, I have to tell my pregnant patients to limit to </ once per week.  Safe Catch is a new, mercury tested, tuna brand that enforces a strict limit on the amount of mercury allowable in the fish that go into its products (their standards are 90% stricter than the FDA’s mercury safety limit of 1.0 parts per million).  Also important – the fish is caught exclusively with pole and line from managed stocks.

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I wanted to be able to really taste the tuna – we give it two thumbs up – so I made it into a super simple tuna salad.

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Served on a challah roll with a side of roasted broccoli.

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Last night was my sickest, and the husband worked overnight, so I made a(n incredibly tasty!) frozen meal from Trader Joe’s and called it a night.  I also ate a bowl of cereal in bed.

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There were entirely too many photos of my hands in this post.

Oats And Easter Candy

I wrote this post at midnight on Saturday… while I ate dinner/my first meal of the day… it’s been kind of a rough week.  Hopefully I’ll be in a better mood while this is auto-publishing because I should be in the car on my way to Easter celebrating with the husband’s family.

I’m missing a ton of photos from the week (chips and dip!) and posting two days late, so I almost skipped this post, but some of these eats (chocolate + oat bowls!) were just so good.

breakfast

Community Coffee sent me a variety of their ground coffees to try.

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This was a free product sample that I’m reviewing for no additional compensation.  It will take me some time to make it through them all, but I will let you know as I open each bag.

This week I cold-brewed the French Roast.

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Quite nice!  Roasty and not acrid at all.  I am going to make a (hot) batch in the coffee machine soon and I will let you know if that changes my opinion, but for now we give this two thumbs up.

Gevalia almond milk iced coffee.

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The flavor was good but not great.  The 9 grams of protein made it a good breakfast though.

Iced coffee and peanut butter toast with condensed milk from the tea place near my work.

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I threw out my crusts and my office smelled like a peanut all day!

lunch

Banana walnut oatmeal with a minneola and Cadbury mini eggs.

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Cabury mini eggs win for best holiday candy ever.

Wild berry oatmeal with Justin’s chocolate hazelnut butter.

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I 100% bought the oatmeal because it had a bear on the package, but it ended up being pretty tasty.

Turkey sandwich, citrus, and malted eggs.

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That’s a toasted English muffin with Smart Balance and Applegate Farms smoked turkey.

Yogurt bowl.

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2% Greek with pomegranate and marble halvah.  <– my best idea ever

Chicken sandwich from the cafeteria.

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An everything bagel with mayo, mustard, spicy chicken, Munster cheese, and fancy lettuce.

snack

Coffee all day every day.

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Worth mentioning were this short, skim caramel macchiato.

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And the fact that Hungry Ghost has Stumptown cold brew on draft.

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Easter candy.

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Turkey jerky.

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Ample Hills!

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Salted crack caramel + salted honey with honeycomb and chocolate-covered potato chips.

dinner

Chipotle, because heaven forbid we go longer than five days without rice bowls.

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Or salty lime chips, or giant diet cokes.

I made us a huge batch of marinara sauce in the crockpot.

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It was a great idea in theory, but I didn’t season the sauce enough and the end result was very “meh.”  Too bad we ate it three days in row for dinner and still have gallons left.

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The best part of that meal was our side dish –

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roasted broccoli with pesto gouda melted on top.

On a much more exciting night, I had drinks with a girlfriend at my favorite Brooklyn bar – Pork Slope.  No photos, but I had a Keegan’s Mother’s Milk Stout on draft that rocked my socks off.  Then we met up with Adam for dinner at Talde, Pork Slope’s Asian-American sister.

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That’s my Navy Grog {Diplomatico rum, honey syrup, lime and grapefruit juices} and kale salad {cantaloupe, pickled beets, candied almonds, creamy ponzu}.  I am going to be heartbroken when we move on from our national kale obsession.

Happy Easter to all my readers who celebrate.