So That’s Where I’ve Been

by Emily

Hello, hello; long time no “see!” I’m fairly disappointed with myself for not making it to the end of my ’30 day blog everything’ goal but what can you do? My absence was a mix of life craziness and being crazy craziness. I’m very ready to go back to school already, I have not been spending this summer in a healthy, productive manner!

To quickly recap what you’ve missed – Adam got sick on Monday night. He’s fine now and didn’t have to go to the doctor or anything so we really don’t know what the problem was but we’re blaming it on the underripe watermelon. Whatever the cause, he spent several hours clutching his stomach and moaning late into the night. We were up past 2, including a trip to Wegmans for bread to settle his stomach, which was a terrible idea. My impression of the hypothetical scenario at the ER due to this terrible idea (“You made him eat bread?! Jesus, fatty, food’s not always the answer!”) was also a terrible idea since apparently laughter was painful. Actually, I made him laugh all night long and we determined that I’m hilarious but evil. I ended up being the one to eat the darn bread, which I dipped in olive oil and spices to fool myself into thinking I was fancy and gourmet and not the loser eating a loaf of bread at midnight. Adam was fine by the next morning but I spent the day in bed eating caramel popcorn and feeling sorry for myself that I was too tired to go to the gym. And I just couldn’t figure out an upbeat way to blog that so here we are.

On a less rambling note, this morning I had a orthodontist appointment and then a trip to Mr. Tire for a state inspection. During the wait I pulled out my phone to search for coffee and discovered that Sweetness 7 Cafe (an old favorite) was only a .6 mile walk away; sweet!

Half of the drinks on the menu are things I’ve never heard of so I decided to pick something and random and go with it. A Vietnamese iced latte.

After some Googling, I found that these are typically made with sweetened condensed milk, but I only saw the barista use a powder. Whatever the ingredients, it was sweet but still had a rich coffee flavor.

I read while I waited.

The Little Book of Forensics was interesting, but not as in-depth or science-based as I had hoped.

Amid errands this afternoon I also stopped a Wegmans for some veggies for lunch.

Southwestern corn salad, chili garlic eggplant, sautéed broccoli, and roasted squash and mushrooms.

Yummy as usual.

Now that I’m home I need to locate some carbs and/or fruit. I’ve realized that I either eat way too much or way too little each day and that it’s probably making me fatter than eating way too much and then a normal amount on other days. My goal for the last weeks before summer is to get better at eating healthy stuff even when I’m not hungry and not getting so much unhealthy stuff even when I am hungry. Make sense?

My other hope for the afternoon is a trip to the gym but since I have to bring the materials for the study I can only go if the rain clears up. Cross your fingers for blue skies.

7Aug2011

Pizza Powered

by Emily

As planned, we ordered a pie from Just Pizza last night and it was fabulous.

We got a Laura’s Old Fashioned – “The way our Mother used to make it. Made with Extra Thick Dough, a special Sweet Pizza Sauce (fresh sliced Onions in the sauce), Mozzarella & Romano Cheese, topped with Mushrooms.”

Not so fabulous was the way I felt after eating 5 slices this size.

Fat, ill, and irritated with myself for noting getting up an eating a salad. On the plus side though, it’s sort of like Adam and I were carbo-loading for our run this morning! If nothing else, our glycogen stores were nice and prepared.

Actually we were prepped all around, this is the run I got to test out my new shoes on.

I’m 90% sure I like them, but I’m going to run in them once more to be sure since my most recent pair sucked so badly.

I also tested out my new favorite shirt;

handmade by ME at last week’s tie dye party.

I think it’s pretty darn cute.

It was a good run to feel cute on, because I was mostly feeling like a jackass that I haven’t worked out all summer. My planned 3.5 miles were tough. We had two 1.75 mile loops around Delaware Park and I’m just glad I finished. I had to take a few walking breaks, but I made sure to run for a least five minutes each time and walk for no more than 2 minutes at a time. 3.5 miles in 40 minutes and 20 seconds. Followed by a 10 minute walk.

The rest of the agenda was shower ~ ice ~ grocery ~ clean the dirty apartment ~ dinner. Thankfully our grocery trip was made much more exciting by our plan to sit in the cafe for a few hours so Adam could study. I got cozy reading Nancy.

Sidenote – I am completely and utterly obsessed with the Nancy Drew books.

And got exciting lunch from the hot bar.

In an effort to save a bit of money, we also supplemented with salads from home.

In the end my meal ended up being arugula topped with carrots, 2 Tbsp of wheat germ, 1/4 cup of roasted chick peas, and 2 Tbsp of tarragon vinaigrette.

Plus roasted veggies, chili garlic eggplant, and veggies picked out of the cashew chicken,

and a few pieces of pineapple and berries.

Delish. I read my first Nancy and munched and was in absolute bliss.

Unfortunately, the grocery took longer than anticipated and once I added in a last-minute walk to the co-op and the task of packing Adam’s lunches, I plain ran out of time to clean the house. Tomorrow. And at least I’m a good wife.

Adam has one rice bowl for each day of the work week. And I took a good many nibbles that escaped the camera while I cooked.

I also made dinner.

Polenta that turned into a fairly intimidating, but tasty solid,

and huevos rancheros inspired tacos.

I scrambled 5 eggs (with skim milk, salt, and pepper) into sautéed chopped onions and green pepper, and then stuffed them into blue corn taco shells with a bit of sharp cheddar. I served Adam and myself 3/5 and 2/5 accordingly.

Dessert was 2/3 to 1/3 in my favor though.

A gigantic cowboy cookie I picked up at the co-op.

My entire right side of my body has ached ever since yesterday’s tennis game, so I’m going to go curl up with a book.

30Jul2011

Goodbye, Katie

by Emily

Today was bittersweet. I did fun things, but I had to say goodbye to my friend Katie. This goodbye was doubly sad because it stinks that friends keep leaving and because Katie was the very first friend I made in Buffalo!

I started my morning with a delicious sounding yogurt bowl.

1/4 cup Stonyfield Plain Fat-Free Yogurt
1/4 cup fat-free ricotta
1/8 cup roasted buckwheat groats
1 Tbsp key lime curd

Sadly, in spite of the decadent sounding ingredients, the components of this bowl didn’t come together very well. I didn’t realize that the roasted buckwheat would taste quite so roasty.

Since it was Katie’s last day in Buffalo we met up for a final lunch date.

I’ve been dying to try Romeo and Juliet’s and I’m glad I got to go with Katie.

I’m also glad that our meal was delicious, since the cafe is owned by a girl I go to school with and I’d hate to have to say bad things. We ate outside and the lighting sort of killed my pictures, but I promise this was one of the best meals I’ve eaten in Buffalo!

The complementary bread was nice and doughy.

And the eggplant parmigiana was the best I’ve ever had (seriously).

It was baked instead of fried and you could totally tell. The eggplant was perfectly velvety and the sauce was rich and slightly sweet. I was pretty much in heaven.

I brought Adam the 2nd half of my meal and he agreed that Romeo and Juliet’s must be one of the very best spots in Buffalo.

For dessert, Katie and I hit up new spot #2, Grumpy’s Ice Cream.

I got a cookie dough and heath bar flurry with chocolate custard.

Meh. It was nice to spend time with Katie, but I won’t be going back.

Once I got dropped off back home, I spent the rest of the day with Adam. By foot and by car we ran several errands, including two loops up and down Elmwood. My afternoon snacks included an unsweetened lemonade iced tea from Starbucks,

and some Nerds.

Sometime during our 2nd trip down Elmwood we decided to stop at Blockbusters and make it a movie night.

“How To Train Your Dragon” is one of our very favorite movies and “No Strings Attached” is one I’ve been curious about for months.

I kept dinner simple while we started our first movie. Roasted green beans and an everything bagel with Smart Balance Light.

Dinner was on the small side because I’m going to dig into a HUGE bowl of popcorn as soon as I hit publish. Have a great night!

29Jul2011

MALTiple Choice

by Emily

I don’t know where my day went this morning but I didn’t manage to eat until way into the afternoon. Actually that’s sort of a lie, a lot of my morning went to this –

Did anyone else read Phyllis Renolds Naylor’s Alice series growing up? I was obsessed, and since the series still isn’t finished (the final book will be published in 2013) I’ve continued to read. My mom knows that there are few presents more exciting to me than a fresh Alice book.

Also exciting is a free coffee from the Dunkin’ Donuts birthday rewards program.

Since it was a “gift” I went all out; a medium iced coffee with skim milk, sugar-free toasted almond, and sugar-free coconut.

Totally worth the headache it left me with all afternoon. I don’t know when I’ll figure out that drinking coffee without eating makes me sick.

However, eating was the next stop on our string of errands (post office, DD, Goodwill, Wegmans).

I snagged several types of chicken – picked through for extra veggies – and some of the chilli garlic eggplant I’m obsessed with.

Is there a more perfect fuel than hot bar?

Adam and I took a walk to the Co-op to finish our grocery shopping later in the afternoon and I grabbed a ‘smores bar from The Spot.

I swear we had plans to make dinner like grown-ups, but Incredibly Alice was screaming my name and I just had to finish it. By the time I returned to the real world it was too late for a real dinner. Good thing I had multiple kinds of malt at my fingertips.

First, beer.

8% alcohol beer in the form of Wild Blue.

I want to love blueberry beers, but I just never do. This wasn’t bad but it was a little too sweet for my tastes. I drank about half of it. What I do love is pouring beer into to-go cups and drinking on neighborhood walks.

I know it sounds rebellious but really I just grew up on an island with no open-container laws and fell in love with walk-boozing before it was illegal.

Malt number two was poured on my french fries.

Waffle fries from ETS plus roasted green bean fries for veg.

Mmmmn, malty!

Malt vinegar on french fries: love it or leave it?

26Jul2011

Easy Eats

by Emily

I accomplished so much yesterday that today was actually a bit boring. I’ll take it though. And I’ll definitely take the fact that I had to skip today’s workout because my abs were so sore from yesterday’s 90 minute hot yoga session. Whoop!

Breakfast was easy and summer-y.

1.5 servings of cinnamon Puffins, .5 serving of oats and honey Bear Naked Granola (which is like a Tbsp, seriously?!), chopped plum and white apricot, and skim milk.

For a mid-morning snack I measured out 2 servings of the peanut brittle popcorn my in-laws gave me for my birthday.

This stuff might be dangerous.

Lunch looked borning.

But looks can be deciving. That’s not pb & j.

That’s a mini kaiser roll topped with Nutty Guys honey roasted peanut butter, crushed up honey wheat pretzels, and a drizzle of honey.

And what goes with a peanut butter (pretzel, honey) sandwich better than milk?

In my fabulous new glass from Anthropologie.

Milk also goes well with cookies.

But those aren’t for me (though I did eat a few cookie’s worth of dough!), I baked them up for The Great Fundraising Act.

Instead of cookies, Adam and I snacked on hummus this afternoon.

Not just any hummus though, Sabra Roasted Pine Nut Hummus that I got to try for free as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemakers’ Program.

Usually I’m too cheap to buy hummus because you can make it easily at home, but I think it’s time to update my policy! Adam and I both thought this was delicious; creamy with a great roasted flavor. The pine nut was a great new twist, though Adam thought it wasn’t as zesty as the garlic variety we used to buy. Plus at 80 calories per 2 Tbsp serving it’s a nutritional steal.

I ate my serving(s) with some baby carrots.

Keeping up the easy eats theme of the day, dinner was leftovers.

I piled the steamed collard greens, millet, and baingan bharta into one bowl, topped with tons of Sriracha.

Easy, like your mother. Ba dum ching!

25Jul2011

I Did What I Curd

by Emily

Go me; I accomplished so much today! I would say I crossed 95% of our household to-do’s off of the list this afternoon. I’m not sure what exactly got into me, but I’ll take it.

One errand took me to the grocery store where I kept my energy levels up with an iced coffee with skim milk.

Sidenote – can I just tell you how much I adore the Wegman’s mini carts with the drink holders?!

I’m definitely choosing my future stroller by the amount of cup holders.

One big accomplishment was making this tasty, healthy dinner.

Can you guess who we are?

I made a batch of Jenna’s Baingan Bharta,

some millet,

and steamed collard greens cooked with maple dill dressing.

This was my first time trying millet and I found it a little dry, but I’m excited to try it again tomorrow with a little plain yogurt stirred in. The Baingan Bharta – basically pureed eggplant, tomato, and spices – was also new to me and I think I’m a fan. I thought it was a little bit sweet but I did extra eggplant so I probably should have done extra jalopeno as well.

For dessert I dug into this afternoon’s baking project.

Key lime curd! Basically key lime pie without the crust.

I dipped a serving of Biscoff cookies into it after dinner.

The ginger and lime combo is a force to be reckoned with.

As soon as I hit publish I’m heading out on a short walk with Adam. What a good day indeed.

Don’t forget – you have until 10:40 EST to bid on my sugar cookie balls.

25Jun2011

Doorknob Ankle Cold

by Emily

Whew, vacation’s not over yet; Adam’s parents are here for a visit! We spent the day running around with them and it was nice to be the one showing off the city for a change.

Before our visitors arrived, Adam and I set out for the farmers’ market. We didn’t find any produce we wanted but it was basically a menagerie down there. Here’s a llama –

there’s a llama –

(and another little llama, fuzzy llama, funny llama, llama llama,) duck!

That song will be stuck in your head for the rest of the day. (Remember this one??)

While we were out we snagged breakfast, straw-style.

Organic 3 Cafe is great about letting you customize your juice orders. This was spinach, carrot, cucumber, kale.

I also grabbed a half-sweet coffee from Wilson Farms.

Soon enough, my in-laws were here and we all headed to Tokyo Shanghai Bistro for lunch.

That’s the a la carte tomago (egg custard nigiri) I shared with my mother-in-law.

The lunch specials (only $6!) came with steamed rice and a cup of soup, I went with hot and sour.

For my main order I got the garlic eggplant with extra veggies.

I’ve been craving garlic eggplant for forever and this totally hit the spot. It was a little bit spicy but not super sweet or fried tasting.

After lunch we took a movie break and headed to the theatre to see Mr. Popper’s Penguins. The movie was a lot better than I was expecting, it was great to see Jim Carrey actually act (not just make crazy faces). My favorite character was definitely Pippi.

We wanted to cash in a Groupon for dinner so we drove out to Hamburg to the Buffalo Street Grill.

The husband and I had trouble deciding so we ended up sharing two dishes.

Tortellinni with portobello mushrooms and pesto,

and grouper topped with crab, brie, and roasted red peppers,

which came with french fries,

and a squash medley.

The veggies were seriously delicious, the best side I’ve had in a restaurant all year!

Finally, we took the parents to Anderson’s for frozen yogurt.

I got a baby twist with marshmallow topping.

Mmmmn.

After we said goodnight to my in-laws, Adam and I took a walk to pick up a few things at the Co-op. It might be 90* in DC but it’s in the 60’s here; we were so cold we ended up sharing a cinnamon dolce steamer from Starbucks to warm up!

A steamer is just steamed skim milk with 1.5 pumps of syrup, but it did the trick getting us through our walk.

Adam is making the opening and closing remarks at a medical school ceremony tomorrow so we’ve got to get to bed and get him his beauty rest!

9Jun2011

Driving Dilemma

by Emily

We love our neighborhood – a quiet side street off of Elmwood, the “cool” strip in Buffalo – but the parking situation here is a bummer. There’s not a lot of parking space to begin with and then the city further restricts residents by only allowing use of one side of the street from 9-5 on weekdays. In the end it’s really not something I can complain about though because we generally end up parking 2 blocks away from our apartment at most and often snag spots right out front. What I can complain about (and do at length) is the fact that parking switches from left MTW to right RF. Which means that if you wake up at 8:50 thinking that it’s Wednesday when it’s actually Thursday you’re out $30. $60 if you have two cars to worry about.

During the school year – when Adam and I have long-houred internships at different hospitals – having two cars will be a godsend. But in the summer – when we barely drive the one car, let alone two – it’s all we can do to remember to move the cars and they become a big, costly annoyance. I try to put “move the cars!!!” in my day planner but since I often don’t check my planner until after 9am this has proved less than helpful. What has proved effective lately though is coupling the task moving the cars with another activity. If there’s one thing I’ll never forgot to look forward to it’s a date with Adam!

For example, this morning we set our alarms for ~~8:20~~ ~~8:40~~ 8:50 and moved the cars before setting out on a walk to get coffee.

We ended up with no tickets, plus (half sweet) coffee as a bonus!

I waited to enjoy my hot coffee until I got home to the ac, and paired it with the rest of my breakfast spread.

A crisp, local apple,

and Greek Gods Fig yogurt.

Yum x 100! If you still haven’t tried Greek Gods then you totally need to get on that.

Coffee always makes me super full, which helped lunch to get pushed back later and later into the afternoon. When a coworker called at noon I ended up picking up an extra daytime shift at work tomorrow which meant we needed to switch around some of our lunch and dinner meal plans. The end result of all this is that it was 2:30, I hadn’t eaten lunch, and I needed to go to the store before I could make dinner.

I’d been craving garlic eggplant all morning – actually I’ve been craving that dish ever since I saw it on the table across from ours at Tokyo Shanghai – so I told myself that if Wegman’s had it on their hot bar then I’d buy lunch there. I haven’t seen garlic eggplant at Wegman’s in months, but apparently crossing your fingers works!

I got a big scoop of garlic eggplant alongside veggies picked out from various containers,

and a few big pieces of sweet and sour chicken.

So fun to find exactly what I was craving right on that day; usually I whine to the husband about tastes I’m looking forward to for days!

No matter how satisfying and tasty though, waiting too long for lunch always means I’m hungrier all afternoon. We had a good array of snacks to pick from; baby carrots with blue cheese,