Tag Archives: corn

St. Thomas; Tuesday Morning – Thursday Morning

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We’re here. We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!  We’re also busy; this will be a quick recap post.

Tuesday morning at the airport, Adam and I did a good job putting together breakfast from our packed snacks.  We split the Orange Cranberry Cliff Bar,

and shared sharp cheddar, baby carrots, and a gingergold apple throughout the morning.

Our flights went well, and on our layover I found a Salsarita’s for lunch.

(Delicious) chips with spicy salsa,

and a chicken burrito with black beans, a little bit of rice, corn salsa, red onions, medium salsa, and shredded cheese.

So tasty and fresh, especially for a plane meal!  I ate about half of everything.

Before we knew it we were in my childhood home.  Being handed homemade toffee,

and finding gifts on our pillows.

I could get used to this!  The husband and I did some wrapping of our own too.

Before we knew it, it was time for dinner.

Spicy chicken with whole-wheat linguine,

mushrooms and broccoli with sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds,

and mandarin oranges.

We ate all squished together in a clump, because someone decided to start a puzzle at the table 😉

For dessert my dad and I opened up these Klick Halva Truffles.

Adam went out (late!) with some of our guy friends from high school, but I stayed home rereading All But My Life, by Gerda Weissmann Klein and laughing at the notes I wrote in the margins while writing a 15page final paper on it.

Wednesday morning was all about dinner leftovers for breakfast.

And 10minutes of strength and stretch moves.  My goal for vacation is to (at minimum) get in a good stretch every day.

For lunch, we headed to Barefoot Buddha, my favorite restaurant.

I split a passionfruit smoothie with the husband,

and a bagel sandwich with my mother.

Yuuuuuuuum.

The rest of the afternoon was spent on errands, including finding a gloriously huge pile of Achie comics (donated to my mom’s library),

and getting all of our wedding rings polished.

Plus testing saved maple sugar cookies from Thanksgiving.

Out of the freezer, still good!

For dinner we headed to Island Time Pub with my aunt and cousins (2sets, one local, one visiting). The lighting was awful, but the dark did mean we got to enjoy these sailboat sail “trees.”

Adam and I split a Caesar salad, with green peppers and mushrooms added.

And a buffalo chicken pizza.

I had these two slices plus a third.

I also had two black and cokes with dinner.

After that I was the designated driver, so even though we were out with friend until almost 1, I stuck to diet coke.

This morning began with a workout. A good workout 🙂 St. Thomas isn’t exactly map-my-run-able and I don’t have a Garmin, so we are focusing on time instead of distance. We had my mom drive us down to the nearby beach so we could run (not that we ran I’m the sand, just near the beach). In the end we ran for 20minutes and walked for 18minutes. Then we slowly walked up the HUGE hill home; I’ll have to take a picture tomorrow. All total, 60monutes of activity, which felt great.

Breakfast was Greek Gods honey Greek yogurt, topped with some blueberries and banana.

I’ve spent the morning running errands with my mom, including a trip to school so I could write this post.

Christmas Eve is tomorrow, what?!?

What’s the best airplane food you’ve ever had? The worst?

Drilling for Coal

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Ta-ta for now, Buffalo!  We packed in another full day and body, mind, and spirit are all willing and ready for a trip tomorrow to St. Thomas!  Errands of both the boring and holiday variety, elfing, and celebrating are all complete……now I’ve just got to worry about packing!

We started our morning with a little anxiety, and got all the not-so-fun stuff out of the way first.  Brat that I am, whenever someone talks about scares at the dentist I always blurt out “I’ve never even had a cavity!”  Well fate finally decided to shut me up, and today I got my first filling.  My cavity was teeny tiny so it ended up being quick and painless but I about scared myself to death in anticipation.

Fun fact – I was totally dressed as an elf today.  As I said to the husband; “if you’re gonna get drilled you might as well dress in costume!”

Yes that does look like a dressing room mirror, our main errand of the day was trip to the mall!

That crazy Christmas-week-at-the-mall feeling is probably why we thought sharing a mini Reindeer Blizzard was a good breakfast.

This had caramel, pie pieces and toasted coconut so I was expecting to like it more than the husband, but he went to town, practically ripping the spoon from my hand!

Waiting to find a Christmas party outfit until the day before we left probably wasn’t my brightest idea, but I ended up getting 2 super cute outfits!

Also on the agenda was Adam’s belated birthday lunch at Cheesecake Factory.  Sourdough bread with butter.

And one of the husband’s avocado eggrolls.

For my meal I ordered the lunch portion of the barbecue ranch chicken salad.

It was ok, I mostly ordered it for the corn and black beans, but the dressing was lacking the tang I was looking for.

Seriously though, this is the half-portion?!?

I couldn’t even eat half of this monster.  Though I did have room for a couple of the husband’s fries.

For dessert, we split a peppermint stick courtesy of J.Crew.

Honestly JC, you don’t have to bribe me, you’re already my favorite!

I thought I was stuffed, but after lots and lots of mall-walking (maybe those grandma’s in the ’90’s were onto something?!) I was ready for a snack when we got home.

Two servings of Silk Soy Nog with nutmeg.

Leftover cheeseball.

I wasn’t going to share this recipe because it’s both simple and similar to one’s found online, but so many friends raved about it at the party that I figured I should –

Spicy Creamy Cheeseball

  • 16oz 1/3 less fat cream cheese (aka neufchatel cheese)
  • 1/3 cup hot pepper peach preserves (I used Stonewall Kitchen’s)
  • 2Tbsp chopped white onion
  • 1Tbsp chopped long hot pepper (if you use the spicier jalapeno I’d cut back a little)
  • 1/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar
  • 3Tbsp chopped pecans

Allow the cream cheese to soften.  Add all ingredients together in a bowl and mix well to combine; we found it was most effective to use our hands.  Shape into a ball if desired, and store in the refrigerator until serving.

My plan for dinner is the rest of my lunch salad.  I planned on blogging it, but – it’s 9pm now, I still haven’t packed, we have to leave the house at 5:30am tomorrow; you do the math!  Speaking of spotty posting, I just want to give you guys a heads up that my posts will be sporadic during my days in the islands (like anyone cares!).  I’ll recap everything in full, but I’ll be doing fewer, longer posts.

See you from the beach!

Moe’s Who?

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It’s been quite a night for a Thursday, quite a night!  In addition to making a banging dinner and a revolutionary dessert, I also managed to get some school work done; booyah!

On the agenda for tonight were quick and easy quesadillas.

But you know I did some snacking first.  Adam and I split some fun – a snowman cookie from Sweet Tooth,

and a Weyerbacher’s Imperial Pumpkin Beer.

Both were quite tasty; I ate a little less than half of the cookie, and a little more than half of the beer.

Wokka, wokka, wokka, wokka…..

In between sips, I sautéed up 1/2 cup each frozen corn and black beans in some tomatillo salsa.

This was delicious, and what didn’t fit on my quesadilla was eaten out of a bowl with a bit of sour cream.

I topped a tortilla with my veggie mixture and 1.5oz of sharp cheddar, folded, and gave a quick spin in a greased frying pan.

To die for!  This was cheesy and melty and salty, all while still being healthy.  I previous thought that nothing could top Moe’s, but this was definitely better!

Dessert was pretty darn good too.

That would be low-fat cottage cheese, topped with half a banana, drizzled with caramel sauce.

Sometimes I even impress myself.

Eaten whilst watching “Modern Family,” which seriously slays me with how funny it is!

What do you put on your quesadillas?

Sweet Tooth

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My goal for today is to get in bed before 10pm.  I have to shower, pack for tomorrow, look over some notecards, and write this blog post.  Go!

My meetings went well this afternoon and I went to my final class of the semester.  All I have tomorrow is labs, with exams and presentations, and then next week is finals.  This semester feels like it flew by, I can’t belive it’s almost Christmas!

In my break I read Organic in the cafe in our bookstore.  I ate a spicy chicken flatbread from the cafe.

These sandwiches are so good!  When I eat while studying I like to use bites to break up the pages, but with these I end up basically shoveling them in.  I go to set the sandwich down and I just can’t bear it!

Then I had a date with the treadmill –

  • 2mile run (19.08minutes), I had to take a few quick breaks but my time is getting faster!
  • 11minutes brisk walking on a slight incline with my notecards

Finally, I went to the quickest lab check-out ever; I was in and out in under 5minutes!  I did stick around long enough to learn that my lab grade ended up being a 100.25%!  Our lab grade gets averaged into our class grade and I definitely need those points 🙂

The husband picked me up from school because we had a date at Sweet Tooth to use up a Groupon.  I had my heart set on peppermint ice cream – I can’t find it anywhere! – but sadly that wasn’t available.  We ended up getting a fun array of goodies though.

Tonight’s selection –

I ate three big bites of this pistachio cheesecake, which was divine.

And three small bites of this cannoli, which was soggy and weird.

I’m excited to taste our other purchases tomorrow.

I realize that I ended up skipping either dinner or lunch (depending on how you look at it, but I only had two meals today) and I am actually a bit hungry, but I think my healthiest option for the evening is honoring my bedtime goal.  Good thing I’m excited about tomorrow’s breakfast!

Have you found peppermint (or eggnog!) ice cream in your area this year?

Five Little Words

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Huge Anatomy test tomorrow, hurry!

Five(ish) words per line, go!

Southwest chicken flatbread sandwich, mmmn.

Corn, black beans, melty cheddar.

Baked goods food lab today.

1/3 eaten, cookies = dough balls!

Wegman’s to study, and dinner.

Lots of veggies, a little fun.

1chip per 4slides = study bribe.

Class, study, class, study, bedtime.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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I hope everyone enjoyed their turkeys/tofurkeys and had a good day of family time!

We had a great holiday.  We ate with a family friend who hosted the big meal at noon; it seemed a little odd to eat that early, but it was nice to have the rest of the day free.

Adam and I actually started off our day with a little activity; my grandparents live right off of a path so we walked over for a run.  We covered 2miles total (in the rain!) and had a lot of fun.

We kept breakfast small because of our early meal.

A mixed bowl of Frosted Flakes and Blueberry Special K with berries,

and a small glass of oj.

Before I show you my lunch (Thanksgiving) plate, I should probably prewarn you – I hate Thanksgiving!  I like the idea of being thankful and getting together with loved ones, but for all the foods I love, I pretty much hate the traditional Turkey Day fare.  Which I suppose works out because I’m the only one who never leaves the meal feeling stuffed!

Sweet potato casserole, a roll, a deviled egg, marshmallow salad, corn casserole, and a bunch of green beans.  Sans turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes I managed to put together a pretty good meal 🙂

The dessert table was gorgeous, but my pumpkin love affair doesn’t extend to pie!

I did eat a Halloween reject when we got home though.

In the afternoon we took my grandma to see “Love and Other Drugs.”  It was funny and sweet, but *disclaimer* basically just one long sex scene!  So, um, don’t take your grandma 😉 (she enjoyed it!)

Dinner’s feast was much more my scene.

Leftover salad from yesterday,

roasted red pepper and tomato soup,

and the best grilled cheese I’ve ever eaten.

Seriously.  Pumpernickel rye bread spread with honey mustard, topped with 2 slices of extra sharp cheddar and spicy pickles, grilled on a skillet with a bit of butter. 

Oh.my.god!

Dessert was a small slice of coffee cake.

Not gonna lie, I cut this slice out from the middle of the cake so I could get that big chunk of topping!

Good family, good food, good day.

Don’t forget, you have one more day to enter my giveaway.

Three Sets of Cookies

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Man, oh man, has it been an interesting day!  Many ups and downs and LOTS of time in the kitchen.  This has to be an extra long post to fit in all of the crazy!

I started things off this morning with a pot Wegman’s eggnog flavored coffee.

I had two big mugs with a sprinkle of nutmeg and lots of skim milk.

The coffee made me feel so full that I never got around to breakfast, which was a good thing because I spent the morning immersed in Orgo Lab work.  I got so much done that I had extra time to play this afternoon (also a good thing!).

In addition to schoolwork I spent some time in the kitchen.  Many blogs have led me to believe that you can turn this –

into coconut butter with some food-processor loving.  25minutes later here’s what I got –

Not quite what I was hoping for.  This was actually my 2nd failed attempt; the last time I was afraid I didn’t blend long enough so I decided to give it a second go.  Well, today I processed for 25minutes (10minutes longer than all the recommendations I’ve read) and I still didn’t reach creamy perfection.  I did, however, make my food processor very, very hot, so it seemed like time to quit.

I was feeling down about my failure when I realized that I could still turn my pulverized coconut into something amazing!  I got so excited I wanted to get started right away, but that would have meant missing Orgo and Anatomy and since I skipped class two weeks ago to catch up on Grey’s Anatomy that seemed like a bad idea 😉

Instead I grudgingly ate lunch.

Progresso Chicken Tortilla Soup (bought with a free coupon from BlogHer).

This was just spicy enough and very satisfying.  More on that in a minute though…

I also had a small Sweet Tango apple and a serving of Garden of Eatin’ Blue Chips.

Yums all around, the Sweet Tango was so crisp and juicy.

Sadly, lunch ended up turning into a massive fail, as I spent the next 45minutes throwing up  😦  I have an intolerance to some (not yet identified) food preservatives and apparently the canned soup contained an offender.  Side note – if random additives don’t make you puke I still highly recommend the soup!

I headed to class and when I felt 70% better at 3pm I headed to the gym.  I realize that sounds a little crazy, but it’s been practically a month since my last workout (!!) and I’ll be damned if a can of soup is going to keep me off of the treadmill!

I walked for 3minutes to warm up, ran/sprinted until I reached 2miles (17.5minutes), then walked another 5minutes to cool down.  All total – 25minutes and 2.3miles.  All the while thinking of cookies.

I walked home from the gym and wandered down Elmwood gathering my needed ingredients.  After a quick trip to Wegman’s it was time to get baking.

My yellow stand mixer, wedding gift love!

I hunkered down in the kitchen and ended up churning out three different varieties of cookies!  I tweaked/created the recipes to accommodate my pulverized coconut surplus and achieved success!

First, an attempt at Jenna’s macaroons with coconut subbed in for almond meal.

Plus some cinnamon cream cheese frosting.

To make Coconut Mini Macaroons with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Filling (recipe at the end of this post).

Holy creative culinary masterpiece, I am so proud of these cookies!  This was my first time using my stand mixer, my first ever attempt at macaroons, a recipe combo I thought up on the spot, and these little beauties are so tasty!  Mine are not as pretty as Ms. Eat, Live, Run’s, but there is no way hers are any more delicious!

Next, I made a batch of American-style coconut macaroons.  I followed this recipe from Cooking Light, but used 2cups of pulverized coconut and full fat sweetened condensed milk.

They don’t look anything like the original (and they spread a little bit) but the taste was fantastic!  If you like coconut but don’t like the stringiness of traditional macaroons I highly recommend trying this variation.

I had extra batter (just coconut, flour, vanilla and sweetened condensed milk) so I poured in ~2/3 cup of oats to make some no-bakes style cookies.

Coconut Oat No Bakes?  These were awesome as well; I might make a batch of batter again sometime just to create the no-bakes!

I did a meal’s-worth of snacking while baking alone (assume ~2 of each cookie), but I still took the time to make a snazzy dinner for the husband, bazam!

Mushroom and Sausage Ragu with Polenta from Cooking Light.  I used plain button mushrooms and subbed in 12oz of Al Fresco Roasted Garlic Chicken Sausage, but other than that I stuck to the recipe.

Delish!  This was rich and creamy and meaty but not too heavy.  I think the sauce will be even better leftover.

This won’t be as early of a bedtime as I’d hope for my 10 day challenge, but with the amount of kitchen productivity I had today I’ll take it!

Have you ever made macaroons (either kind)?  Are you comfortable going your own way with recipes or do you prefer to stick with the book?

My version of the cooking recipe follows.  I know the instructions seem lengthy, but these are deceptively simple, and definitely worth the effort!

Coconut Mini Macaroons with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Filling, makes about 25 mini sandwiches

for the macaroons

  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 1/2 cup pulverized sweetened dried coconut*
  • 2 large egg whites, room temperature
  • 5 Tbsp granulated sugar
  • 2 drops green food coloring

for the filling

  • 1/2 cup powdered sugar
  • 1/2 tsp cinnamon extract
  • 4oz 1/3 reduced fat cream cheese, softened
  • 1 drop red food coloring
  1. Preheat the oven to 350*.  Line three baking sheets with parchment paper.
  2. Combine powdered sugar and pulverized coconut, mixing to achieve a homogenous mixture.  Whisk if needed to eliminate any lumps.
  3. In a large, clean bowl with the speed set on high (speed 8 on Kitchen Aid stand mixers) whisk the egg whites until they are foamy.
  4. Add granulated sugar and food coloring and resume mixing on high speed until stiff, glossy peaks are formed.  Watch carefully; if you overmix the air bubbles will be destroyed and the mixture will curdle.
  5. Working in two batches, use a spatula to fold in the coconut mixture.  Do not overmix.
  6. Spoon the mixture into a pastry bag, or a large baggie with the tip of the corner cut off. 
  7. Pipe small circles, evenly spaced onto the baking sheets.  Each cookie should be between the size of a quarter and a sliver dollar.  You can use the tip to flatten/spread the batter; peaks or “kiss” shapes will keep the sandwiches from sitting flat.
  8. Bake for 12minutes at 350*.  Do not open the oven door during baking.
  9. Wait 90 seconds after removing from oven, then carefully peel the macaroons from the parchment paper and set aside to cool.
  10. Meanwhile, prepare your filling.  Combine all filling ingredients in a medium bowl and beat 1-2minutes until smooth.
  11. Identify sets of two cookies that are similar in size.  Spread a thin layer of filling on a flat (bottom) side and sandwich macaroons together.
  12. Store uneaten cookies (if there are any left!) in an air-tight container.

Two Down, Three to Go

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I’m 2/5 done with hell week!  I got a B(ish) on my 100 test – booooo – and probably a 100% on my 110 quiz.  Right now I’m poised for a D (or less!) on the next three so I can’t talk.

Breakfast was a layer of Yoplait Honey Vanilla Greek Yogurt,

topped with smoothie – strawberries, water, coconut water, and Original Amazing Meal (free sample, very nice, basically flavorless but added a bit of tang),

topped with gingerbread granola –

Good.

I actually made a breakfast that was good, but I couldn’t finish it because of a rain incident.

Energy drink before test 1.

Southwest Flatbread Sandwich from library cafe (corn, beans, cheese, chicken).

Gym was not as good as usual; I started to run and was so exhausted that I just couldn’t.  I wasn’t about to waste a workout outfit though, I pulled up some Bio notes to distract myself and did some incline walking –

  • 5minute walking warm up
  • 5minutes jogging
  • 20minutes incline walking
  • 3minute cool down

2.07miles.

Pickle.

Serving of crackers with salsa.

Dinner, dipped in ranch.

Roasted yellow beans,

disappointing okra (it was so fibrous I couldn’t chew it!  I only choked down 1),

pizza thin, i.e. an Arnold’s WW Sandwich Thin with marinara and part-skim mozzarella.

Ice-cream sandwich for dessert.

I took this handful of the husband’s peanut M&M’s.  Then I put all but 4 back because I had just had an ice-cream sandwich and M&M’s aren’t even that exciting.

I have an Anatomy exam tomorrow, holy God.

How’s your week going?  Want to fill me in on any blogland gossip I’ve been missing?