Tag Archives: cottage cheese

Miami Bound

by

I’m not sure how this hasn’t come up on the blog yet (because it’s all I talk about in real life), but I’m going to Miami for Thanksgiving!!!  Adam and I are meeting my parents there tomorrow for four days of nostalgic, sunny, fun.  We don’t have any family in Florida (we’re spending Turkey Day at a steak/seafood place) but my parents loved visiting when Adam and I went to UM and they thought it’d be fun to recreate a trip.

I’ve been excited for weeks but I hadn’t actually thought logistics until this morning.  Today’s to-do list includes –

  • packing for myself and the husband
  • packing some sort of “brunch” for the airplane tomorrow
  • painting my toe nails
  • shaving my legs for the first time in at least two months (eww!)
  • putting away tons of laundry
  • dropping the dog off at the vets for boarding
  • lots of random schoolwork

Where are you spending Thanksgiving?

I started my morning with the most decadent oatmeal.

I know a lot of food bloggers use that word a lot, decadent, but this bowl seriously was.  I had to use up the open pumpkin but wasn’t in the mood for its slightly bitter flavor and I just kept adding ingredients to cover it up.

What I ended up with was –

  • 1 cup skim milk (cooked)
  • 1 medium banana, sliced (cooked)
  • 1 pinch salt (cooked)
  • 1/4 cup oats (cooked)
  • 1/4 cup pumpkin (cooked)
  • 1/4 cup 1% cottage cheese (stirred in at the end)
  • 2 tsp butterscotch chips (topped)
  • 1 Tbsp Biscoff spread (topped)
  • 1 Tbsp light cream (topped)

Dang.  And amazingly my least favorite additions were the chips and Biscoff; they strong-armed the other flavors in their bites.  My most favorite was the cottage cheese.  I’ve used that before but I don’t think I realized how much I like it.  I need to put that on the grocery list more often!

Don’t forget, you have until 2pm EST to enter my Duncan Hines giveaway.

Moe’s Who?

by

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?

Goodness

by

I ended up not having a bowl of ice-cream last night – though I did have two handfuls of dark chocolate almonds – mostly because I was so excited about this bowl:

I’d been excited about breakfast for 12-straight hours and I was not disappointed!

I started by whipping up a double batch of stove top banana oats.

That’s 1/2 cup oatmeal, 1/2 cup skim milk, 1/2 cup water, 1 banana, 1 pinch salt.

After I removed tomorrow’s serving (I’ve got an oat smoothie in the works), I stirred in ~1/3 cup low-fat cottage cheese.

Plated (bowled?), topped with strawberries,

and a Nutella spoon.

<– Goodness!

My ‘nana-berry-cheese-nutella oats were muy bella.

I’m loving the texture of that cottage cheese and you really can’t go wrong with nutella.

And now I’ve got a warm/full belly for my 20* walk to school!  I have a couple of meetings, my final Anatomy class, and a trip to the gym planned before my Orgo Lab shut-down at 6pm.  I made an ice-cream date with the husband, which means he’ll be picking me up; thank goodness!

When it’s snowy and icy outside do you walk or drive?  If you are normally a walker, what temperature drives you to your car?

We actually have a 2nd car now, but I didn’t purchase a parking pass for my school so instead it’s turning into a snow drift.

Deck the Halls

by

Christmas time is here…

Well, not quite, but we are watching “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and we decked the halls so it’s feeling pretty festive around here.

We don’t have much in the way of decorations (and we didn’t even put them all out), but even a few little touches will help you feel seasonal.

Even my breakfast felt a little special.

I made the traditional stove top oats (with 1/4 cup oats, 1cup skim milk/Silk almond milk, a pinch of salt, and 1 banana) and stirred in ~1/3 cup each canned pumpkin and low-fat cottage cheese.

Topped with some coconut “snow.”

Yummy, yummy.  Although somehow I made waaaay too much; I left almost half of it in my bowl.

We’ve got a lot of work and fun on the agenda, got to get to it!

Have you decorated for the holidays yet?

P.S. Don’t forget to enter my OhNuts! giveaway!

Nibble While You Work, da da da da da da da

by

It was another fabulous Spring day!  Sorry for another late post, but it was a busy day too.  I had 8am lab this morning so I packed up breakfast last night.

Cottage cheese and berries in a pre-fab to-go cup.  Last night I topped the last ~1.5serving of cottage cheese with some frozen berries and left it to defrost in the fridge.

This morning I just had to grab and go.

We did a qualitative analysis – a series of tests on an unknown sample to determine what its chemical components are – in lab today and it was actually a lot of fun.  The real fun came when the husband picked me up; we spent a fabulous afternoon exploring.

We dropped the car off for breaks/oil/tires and slowly wandered downtown on the walk home.  We saw several pretty things,

discovered an exciting candy store,

and we got a few fun things to go, like this candy bar I won’t be tasting –

and the husband bought a candy Tiffany’s box.  For $1.50 it was made of white and milk chocolate and stuffed with hazelnuts.

My bite –

(If you are wondering why MY Tiffany’s wedding ring isn’t on my damn finger in the picture it’s because I don’t wear jewelry to labs in which we use strong acids and strong bases)

Later we stopped in at Pearl Street for lunch.  Pearl Street makes microbrews in-house and is a ton of fun.  I love their glass options –

I went with a Split (10 oz) of the seasonal raspberry brew.

And for lunch I ordered the Fresh Apple and Pear Salad.

Apples and pears sautéed in rum and brown sugar served over mixed greens and topped with toasted pecans and fresh goat cheese.

I had brown sugar rum vinaigrette on the side.  However, the salad was so packed and tasty that I went with the fork dip method of adding dressing, rather than dumping it on.  So yummy!  I snagged a few of Adam’s fries and they were pretty tasty as well.

Not gonna lie though, the big diet coke we picked up on the walk home was my favorite part of lunch 😀

All total we walked ~2miles in beautiful weather and it was an absolutely perfect afternoon.

Once we got home, I spent a couple hours working on Anthropology.  I was having a major snack attack; sometimes nibbling on something helps me to keep my focus, but I’m not sure you can call these snacks brain food.  Pb M&Ms (these are gone now, thank God),

and a vegan blondie I brought home from ‘Snice.

We had gym plans but our “long” walk left my leg feeling like today was not the day to brave the gym stairs, and I’m in a bit of a funky mood so making dinner didn’t sound fun.  So now we have plans to shower, eat popcorn, and cuddle up in front of Buffy.  Sounds like the perfect evening to follow a perfect day.

Do you snack while you work?  Does it improve your focus or serve as a distraction?

Eating Like I’m on Vacation

by

It’s been a good day of family fun.  Sadly I had a ton of school work to do so a lot of my time was spent with my nose buried in a book.  I managed to sneak in a few a few strength training exercises as well; I packed a resistance band for just that purpose.

For breakfast I arranged a little bowl.

4oz of 2% cottage cheese, medium sliced banana, Multigrain Cheerios.

And for lunch I roasted up a huge plate of veggies.

Broccoli and cauliflower.

I made some for my sister-in-law too; she’d never tried roasted veggies before and she ended up loving them.  I guess I’m influencing all sorts of people!

I dipped my hand into this two or three times as well!

We ended up going to an all you can eat Chinese buffet for dinner.  I’m not the biggest buffet fan and this one was seriously lacking in veggies but I made do.  I ge that people want to eat crap (and I ate my fair share of it), but I don’t understand having such a variety of food and not managing to squeeze in a single veggie!  I was glad I ate a produce-heavy lunch.

Plate 1 –

I ate all of the (not so good) green beans and half of the chicken.

Plate 2 = a bunch of fried stuff.  I’m not sure why the camera randomly ate this picture, I guess my Sony likes crab rangoon.

Plate 3 –

My favorite!  I was mmmning and yumming through this whole plate of fruit.

There were some tasty looking desserts but we planned to go to Rita’s after dinner.

I’ve been so excited about trying to find one of these because the menu is a lot like Jeramiah’s in Orlando and the husband totally came through and spotted one today.  I got a small gelati; mint chip italian ice and twist custard.

So good, I was basically swooning.

Everyone else is eyeing the board games but I have a ton more work to get through tomorrow so I think I’ll turn in soon.  Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

What’s your feeling on buffets?

Slopped on Bagels and Secret Buffalo

by

Hi y’all, sorry for the late post!  It’s been a long (but good[ish]) day.  Adam and I stayed up way too late watching tv last night.  Catching up on “Modern Family” was amazing, but oversleeping this morning meant I didn’t have time to pack up like I’d planned.  At least I found at outfit that thrilled me –

My new blue chinos ($18, love love loved the Orlando outlet malls!) feel like Spring!

I drove the husband to school because I had an 8am coffee date with my friend Kate; “Free Pastry Day” at Starbucks was just too good to pass up.

I got a tall, skinny (i.e. small, nonfat and sugarfree) cinnamon dolce latte,

and a low-fat banana chocolate chip coffee cake.

I wanted to like the pastry, I really did, but it just tasted “diet.”  I prefer diet sodas to regular but anything else, yetch!  I ate about half of it so that I’d have something in my belly for breakfast.

Katie went to class around 9 and I ended up working on my Chemistry lab instead of reading; my mind just did not want to study for today’s test!  My desire for a good breakfast (and a need for caffeine to study with) fueled my lunch selection from the cafeteria.

Huge diet coke and a blueberry bagel with strawberry cream cheese.

I don’t want to complain, because the bagel was delicious and the cream cheese had real strawberries in it, but “deli-prepared” bagels always piss me off.  The cream cheese on my bagel was literally less than half of the amount the man wanted to put on.  Why?  Slopping on 3+ tablespoons of cream cheese is wasteful, unnecessary, and unhealthy.  I don’t understand why stores do this but I always make sure I ask for ‘half of what you usually use.’

My Anthro test went less than well, let’s just leave it at that.  Since I did poorly on both of my recent tests I know that I need to buckle down for the rest of the semester.  In fact, in between my test and my 2nd class I got right to work on the reading for the next class 🙂

After class (6:30) I had to pick up the husband, finish my lab, and un/pack my stuff for tomorrow.  I ate a small snack while I worked; pineapple and low fat cottage cheese.

Then, finally it was time to make dinner.

Buffao Chicken Baked Pasta.  I wish I could share the recipe with you guys but it’s my entry to a contest.  It was delicious though.

I’m going to do a quick quick (5-10minute) strength/stretch session and then I’ve got to hop in the shower.  I have a pilates video in my plan for tomorrow and I’m so excited!  Tomorrow will be another late(ish) post, I’ve got 8am lab and then a doctor’s appointment.  Cross your fingers for me that I’m actually able to schedule my bone scan.

What restaurant practices piss you off?

Sleepy Sunday

by

We overslept (what else is new?!?) so waking up was a stressful, frustrating affair; but I tried to make breakfast as soothing as possible.

A serving of leftover carrot cake pancakes,

with 1/3cup 1% cottage cheese topped with a honey tangerine.

I’m loving all the citrus options lately!

I’ve got to get cracking, see you for lunch.

What is your favorite kind of citrus?  I enjoyed the Ugli fruit a lot just because it was so unique, but clementines top my list due to their lack of seeds.

P.S. Check out this girl’s first giveaway!