Must. Have. Chocolate.

by Emily

Just go ahead and call me Sleeping Beauty (though Rip Van Winkle is probably more apt), I stayed in bed 90% of Sunday and I still had a hard time getting up this morning! A few of my friends are sick and I think I must have caught a touch of something.

I didn’t have it together in the way of food but I did manage to make myself a black tea with skim milk to drink in class #1.

I also grabbed a Revolution Foods Berry Mash Up, which was eaten in class #2,

and a mini box of Quaker Oatmeal Squares (HLS Swag), which were eaten in class #3.

Of course, when your morning gets off to a rough start the rest of your day always follows. In addition to being hungry and sleepy all day, my professor changed the directions on an assignment I had already completed, when my group met to work on a project we found a major glitch in the software we are required to use, and I arrived home to an office full of Webster-shredded papers. I felt like I was holding back tears all afternoon. <– pathetic

Enter chocolate.

I received a free box of Ghirardelli Intense Dark chocolates to sample via the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program and today was clearly the perfect afternoon to try them out. I nibbled and sampled my way to a much better mood.

I know nothing about chocolate, other than the fact that it’s amazing and delicious and we learned about it from the Mayans, so I (loosely) followed the pairing guide included from Ghirardelli.

First up, 86% Cacao Midnight Reverie.

I paired this with a handful of roasted almonds. They recommend trying it with macadamia nuts, fig spread on a baguette, gourmet marshmallows, or fruit jellies.

You could tell that this was good quality because I didn’t find it to be bitter at all. The high cacao percentage meant that, to me, this tasted a lot like unsweetened baking chocolate. I liked the pairing with roasted almonds because the saltiness helped to bring out the sweetness.

Next up was 72% Cacao Twilight Delight.

I paired this with some dried cranberries. They also recommended roasted almonds, a baguette, or other dried fruits such as raisins or figs.

I like dark chocolate but apparently I’m not all that intense because I definitely prefered the 72% to the 86%. This had a milder, sweeter taste. I would eat the 86% in small bits but this I could probably eat a whole bar of.

Finally I tried a new flavor, Sea Salt Soiree.

I paired this with a few bbq chips. They also recommend trying it with sweet dried cherries, candied orange peel, or stout beer.

Unsurprisingly, this flavor was my favorite. Dark chocolate with sea salt and roasted almonds? Forget being able to eat a whole bar in one sitting, I had a hard time not eating the whole darn thing in one bite. The chocolate here is a little more mellow and the sea salt brings out its sweetness even more. The texture of this was nice and crunchy and the almond pieces had a good uniformity of size. I think even a milk chocolate fan would find this to be very enjoyable.

Thanks for the fun, Ghirardelli and Foodbuzz!

While I blogged I finished the rest of the chips.

I also thought about what I have to do this evening:

making our planned dinner is necessary; the recipe involves mashing, chopping, and anchovies so I need to cook it tonight when the husband is home to help!
finishing all of my notecards from last week is nonnegotiable
walking the dog can wait until I’m not so mad at him for peeing under the couch, but it has to happen this evening
and getting in a run is my wishful dreaming

15Sep2011

Oh, Balls

by Emily

Oh. Hello there. Are you here to hear me talk about my balls? Well calm down, I’m getting to that. I do have some exciting ball news but there was lots of excitement today.

Like my discovery of my new favorite smoothie of all time.

I know it doesn’t look like much but this new combination was freaking amazing. I put 1 cup of lemonade and 2 Tbsp of chia seeds in my blender and left them to soak. Five minutes later I added 1 cup of frozen strawberries and then blended like crazy. Here’s an outside picture so you can really see the color –

Un-be-leave-a-bull! The chia seeds mostly blended but still left a nice chew and their nuttiness was the perfect foil to the sweet and sour of the strawberry lemonade.

Even better, my smoothie actually held my stomach through my 4 hour class. I attribute this to the chia seeds. My 2 Tbsp of chia seeds gave my smoothie an extra 140 calories, 5 grams of protein, 11 grams of fiber, and 7 grams of polyunsaturated fats (mostly omega-3s). source

That’s not to say I wasn’t ready for lunch though. We had a “welcome back” department lunch today, complete with food.

I took a slice of mushroom pizza,

a few fresh veggies,

and some amazingly fresh strawberries and watermelon.

I also grabbed a 2nd slice later on.

In other lunch news I finally had an apple month win!

This caramel apple iced coffee from my school’s coffee shop totally hit the spot. I did only drink half of that monster (I thought I was ordering a small) but I definitely made sure to get every last lick of caramel out of my cup.

Fully fueled, I headed to the gym for a L-O-O-O-N-G spells long workout. I had a time goal and a length goal and I ended up hitting my time goal long before my length one; ie I took too many walking breaks and was slow! I did a looong warm up and looong cool down with walk/run intervals in between that ended up being a lot of walking.

In the end I covered 9 miles in 1 hour and 53 minutes. As slow as you can move and still call it running but the distance at least is nothing to sneeze at. P.S. I’m having some issues with the bones in my right foot but my legs feel great; yay!

Alright already, let’s talk about the balls.

S’mores Oat Balls. Click here for the recipe link. I swear to God this recipe was inspired by the S’mores Quaker Chew Bars and not my desire to say the word balls repeatedly after eating and rewatching Schweddy Balls.

The recipe was simple but the end result was delicious yet subtle. Part s’more, part oat, totally acceptable for breakfast! I resisted any nibbling while I assembled but I did eat two balls as soon as they were formed.

Make them at home, I promise you’ll love my balls.

Since we ate dessert first dinner needed to be a 15 minute affair.

I prepared 2 servings of spirals pasta, stirring frozen spinach and peas into the mix in the last few minutes of boiling. Then I made Emily’s Nutritional Yeast Sauce and tossed everything together.

Yum, I thought the nutritional yeast was really good; though that could have been my love for peas with pasta talking. Head over to The Daily Garnish (recipe link) to see all the benefits of nutritional yeast, but suffice to say dinner was healthy.

Adam has a test tomorrow and I have a really hard time sleeping when he’s not in bed (the upcoming surgical rotation should be fun!) so I’m going to stay up with him. Studying, blog reading, perhaps a shower; who knows what I’ll get done.

P.S. I used the word “balls” 10 times in this post. Sorry, Nana!

14Sep2011

Co-Co-Ca-Razy

by Emily

My breakfast this morning was chockfull of coconut.

I realize that these aren’t the prettiest pictures but a certain dog wouldn’t keep his nose out of my bowl. That’s a Liberte Coconut Yogurt with 1 Tbsp of Bear Naked granola and 1 Tbsp of shredded, unsweetened coconut.

The Liberte yogurt is sooooo sweet and thick. I’m coo-coo for coconut!

Speaking of crazy, check out the to-do lists I made on todoist last night.

This semester is not going to be kind to my sleep schedule and working out goals.

As long as we’re looking ahead, here’s what I plan on having for lunch – a serving of baby carrots,

a mini box of raisins,

a big baggie of grapes,

a serving of Quaker Maple Oatmeal Squares (HLS swag),

and a string cheese.

I imagine these will all be eaten by the end of the day.

I’ll be home around 5, but you should stop by the blog at noon for a shopping post!

31Aug2011

Two Things

by Emily

My alarm went off and 5:50 this morning and … I got up! This morning was a little easier because of two things –

The husband was already out of bed.
I knew I didn’t have to go to the gym, I could eat breakfast and read blogs instead!

Of course, with Webster around I didn’t get to do ~~much~~ any blog reading but I did get to eat breakfast.

A yogurt bowl.

I’m still not really hungry this early in the day so I kept my yogurt bowl small. A half serving of 0% Fage with a drizzle of maple syrup, a chopped yellow plucot, and a half serving of Bear Naked granola.

Plus some red velvet tea with skim milk.

I’m not sure about this flavor yet (I love the color!) but I’d like to try it with a little sweetened non-dairy milk.

Have a great day! P.S. I have a fun post series coming up; look for it around noon.

26Aug2011

Lemon Cookie Smoothie

by Emily

Good morning!

<– that’s my pucker face. Two thoughts – 1) Dear God, no wonder Adam never wants to kiss me; 2) Don’t you want to know why I’m making my pucker face at you guys?

This is a pucker post because it’s all about the lemons, baby.

Thanks, Natalie Dee. I disagree though, lemons are fantabulous.

Lemon chicken, lemonade, lemons in tea, lemon sorbet, lemon cookies… but especially lemon cookie smoothies.

Oh yeah, I went there. And I’m so glad I did.

Who here knows about Kath Eats’ Dough Boy Smoothies? Well once upon a time, a reader of hers asked about making a lemon cookie smoothie. I didn’t know anything with the idea then, but I thought “hmmmn, that could be amazing,” so I bookmarked the page.

It was amazing, dear readers, it was, it was.

This had just enough sweetness and lemon sourness to be amazing instead of gross. And just enough of a chew to make you think “cookie crumbles!” texturally.

Lemon Cookie Smoothie, serves 1

1 medium frozen banana
1 serving Oat Revolution cinnamon bun oatmeal, cooked (you could substitute 1/2 cup cooked oats with a bit of cinnamon)
1 6oz container of Non-fat Lemon Chobani Greek Yogurt
zest of 1 medium lemon
1/2 cup unsweetened So Delicious Coconut Milk (any vegan milk substitute would be fine here but I find that cows’ milk gets too frothy in smoothies)

Blenderize. Sip. Swoon.

25Aug2011

Plums and Cream

by Emily

last night

No post last night because no dinner. Adam got home way later than we expected and I didn’t have the will or the ambition to chop kale at 8pm. I love to prepare nice meals for him when he’s home to eat them hot (and to help with the prep!) but I’m not sure how that will go as his schedule becomes more like a doctor’s. I always though I was the type to prepare a nice meal no matter what, but now I think my single girl dinners would probably have been cereal!

Do you cook differently for your significant other than you would when on your lonesome?

breakfast

Since I went to bed without an evening meal I needed a nice breakfast to pick up the slack.

Done and done. This oatmeal bowl rocked my world.

Usually I’m not as oattastic as other healthy living bloggers (especially in the summer months) but I picked up some gorgeous red plums at Wegmans the other day and I knew this meal needed to be made.

A base of Oat Revolution cinnamon roll instant oatmeal with skim milk, topped with sugar plums.

Can I be honest? I don’t actually know what a sugar plum is. But what I did was saute two chopped red plums in a smidge of butter, tossing in 2 tsp of brown sugar towards the end. I don’t know if this is the traditional method, but it was a successful one. My plums had a sweet yet toasty flavor and they were melty.

My lack of dinner was totally forgotten.

Can I be honest about something else? Sometimes I hate the dog.

I know he’s just being a puppy right now, but he’s driving me crazy. Sometimes I pick him up in a hug and then I say in my sweetest voice “you were on sale and no one else will ever love you.”

I’m afraid that may be telling of my future parenting style.

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.