Day One of Four

by Emily

There are several reasons why I didn’t post yesterday, some good and some bad.

We determined that I am injured badly enough from my fall that I should continue to take a few days away from the gym. Aka, my ticket out of Grumpsville hasn’t arrived yet.
The popcorn I had for lunch was not exciting, and I later found out that it wasn’t vegan either! Sidenote – why does the ingredients list need to be split? I didn’t realize “natural flavors” meant “milk proteins” until after I’d (finished) looked at the other side of the bag.
My dinner was exciting, and vegan, but since it was part of a review I agreed to do for a new recipes app I couldn’t share the recipes with you guys. Telling you in retrospect that I had home-made Asian-style slaw and sesame green beans with spring rolls is mean, but showing you the tasty pictures too would have been just cruel.

I technically have a four-day weekend (my school canceled classes on Monday and Tuesday) but since I have two tests and two quizzes next week, today was my last day to really relax. I made the most of it.

We slept in and hung out all morning, then picked up a quick meal from the Co-op hot bar.

I got vegan mac and cheese, cilantro baked tofu, falafel, and a few pieces of Cajun sweet potato.

Everything was good, and I liked the pasta for what it was, but Adam and I both agreed that “mac and cheese” was a pretty generous label.

I also randomly included an orange cream soda with lunch.

My afternoon snacks included a serving of Newman’s Own Pretzel Rods.

Dipped in Cherry Coke Zero, of course.

And a Liz Lovely Lemon Coconut Cookie.

Adam (who has a normal weekend) was at the lab until late so we decided to cash in a Groupon and try out a new place for dinner. Acropolis, a Greek place a few blocks from our apartment, had a 50% off Groupon going that I picked up a few months ago. Tonight was the night.

Tonight was also the night for silly faces.

The lighting was terrible, assume that all the food was 20% better than it looks. Actually, the lighting was great when we walked in but the minute we sat down they put on the awful “mood” lighting. I hate dim restaurants. Even before I had a food blog, who wants to eat in the dark?!

We ended up ordering a bunch of appetizers and sharing.

The only vegan things on the menu all happened to be the only things on the menu we were interested in, so I’m glad we picked this month to try it out.

I ate my fair share of grape leaves,

baba ganoush,

and lavash and pita bread.

The pita was the best I’ve ever had! So nice to go on a date with the husband.

Now I’m supposed to be in bed, but the dog in the apartment below us is going crazy. Instead I’m sipping on this Bolthouse Farms Vanilla Chia drink, and trying to think calm thoughts.

Good night (hopefully!).

7Feb2011

10, 9, 8…

by Emily

I have 10minutes to blog before I have to get back to the husband. My articles were not correct and now he’s helping me scour the medical databases for more. Ready, set, go!

1st, the Sandwich Thin I ate for lunch today was delicious. I loved the oats sprinkled on top. 2nd, I was starving when I got home from school this afternoon so I ate this packet of cashews,

from a Valentine’s package from my parents.

I also had a handful of pretzels that escaped the camera.

Finally, dinner.

I whipped up two servings of my Easy Peasy Peanut Noodles for Adam and I. We used linguine with broccoli and yellow squash. I went ahead and steamed a bunch of veggies to have on hand the rest of the week.

The final dish turned out delicious. This was the first time Adam has tried my peanut sauce and now he is totally smitten!

Minutes to spare!

4Feb2011

Friday Night Frozen Yuuuums

by Emily

I did the Friday shuffle! In fact I shuffled right on through to bedtime!

After class I walked down Elmwood to meet up for lunch with Katie at Wasabi.

I’d like to tell you I ordered a hot water to drink because I’m so mature and healthy, but really it was more of a Japanese waitresses cannot understand me when I’ve got retainers in my mouth thing.

I ordered the lunch special which came with a miso soup (not always vegetarian, fyi, though this one was),

and two sushi rolls.

I got a cucumber and asparagus roll,

and a tempura sweet potato roll.

We had a great lunch and spent a long time catching up.

Then I headed to the Spot to get my study on. I ordered a grande soy latte with two shots of amaretto syrup.

But then I discovered that drinking hot coffee with retainers in is disgusting and threw it out.

Caffeinated or not, I managed to get all of my notecards for the week done, phew!

Adam and I didn’t both didn’t get home until after 7, so all plans of a fancy dinner flew out the window. Thank goodness I had the best frozen meal on earth on standby.

The Tandoor Chef Veggie Pad Thai is ridiculous tasty and vegan to boot.

Yuuuuuuum! It’s nothing like nyc, but this is literally the best Thai food I can get in Buffalo.

I also had some unsweetened applesauce topped with red hots and simply sweet granola.

Can I say “yuuuuuuuuum” again?

Any exciting plans for the weekend?

3Feb2011

Three Courses Worth Waiting For

by Emily

Thursdays are when I have my earliest class, which means they are also my latest wake-up school days. Makes no sense? I’ve decided on MWF (class starts at 11) that I’ll have Adam drop me off at the gym on his way to school so I can work out/come home and shower/walk back to school for classes. But Thursday class starts at 9:25 (and there’s no time for all that) so I can wake up on my own and walk straight to class.

Except today all my plans went out the window because the snow was basically up to my waist. Whoops! I had to hurry-scurry to get in the car with Adam, which meant all of my breakfast and lunch bubbles were quickly burst.

The positive side is that I got to squeeze in my workout before my lab. I did another quick (too quick) treadmill session – warm up + 1.5mile running (14:13) + cool down – 21minutes and 1.85miles.

The negative side is that breakfast ended up being of the not-of-champions variety.

I grabbed the Cliff Builder’s Bar because it was vegan, full of protein, and most importantly sold in the only kiosk without a line.

I gave up on eating the Cliff Builder’s Bar after two bites because it was tasteless and way to tough for my aching teeth.

Better luck next time? I brought the rest of the bar home for Adam and I’m sure he’ll love it because he’s silly.

Unfortunately I had a club meeting on campus at 12:15, so I couldn’t get home to a proper meal until that was over. Then I had to finish/e-mail an assignment before I could let myself eat. I wasn’t about to add ‘shower off the gym grime’ to my wait-time, so you better believe I ate lunch like this –

Before anyone asks – Why yes, I did think the appropriate response to sweaty gym hair was a pair of pony tails.

They’re a pair of ponies, not pig tails. Pig tails come out the sides, the end.

I made up for lost time by rocking my own world with a three-course lunch.

Course 1 – Salad.

I topped a bed of spring mix lettuce with chopped pear, green pepper, radish sprouts, and poppy-seed dressing.

Course 2 – Pasta.

Amy’s Rice Macaroni and Dairy-free Cheeze.

For some reason the gluten free version is the only vegan macaroni Amy’s makes (the soy cheese version has milk proteins in it).

This wasn’t ridiculous good like the dairy one, but it was still pretty darn good.

Course 3 – Dessert.

Banana soft serve (1.5 frozen bananas, food processed with a splash of Vanilla Silk Soy Milk until delicious) topped with crushed pretzels and these adorable vegan marshmallows.

Soooo good. BSS is where it’s at!

It took forever to eat my epic lunch, so I should probably get down to work!

Do you or anyone you know eat a gluten free diet?

31Jan2011

Cracked Up

by Emily

My breakfast this morning wasn’t all it was cracked up to be; when I opened the carton, both of our last two eggs were cracked!

I forged ahead and heated up this package of Allergaroo Spyglass Noodles instead.

Topped with the 50% reduced white cheddar and chives that we supposed to go in my scrambled eggs.

It ended up being pretty tasty, if not all that breakfast-y.

My glass of skim milk with a chocolate milk straw helped.

I went to the gym this morning, so after classes (and my first big quiz!) the day is mine! Adam dropped me off at the gym around 8, and I took my notecards on the elliptical for 30minutes at random, level 6.

What is your back-up plan if your breakfast falls through?

28Jan2011

I Hate Eggs Almost As Much As I Love Them

by Emily

It’s Friday, Friday, Friday! The completion of my first week back at school means that weekends mean something once again.

Typical Friday lazies be damned though, I banged out a ton of work after class this afternoon. That’s what going to the gym in the morning will do… A classmate and I sat at a coffee shop and studied from 12 until almost 4.

I had to go to Talking Leaves (a local, independent book store) to buy my music textbook, so we sat at the attached cafe and had lunch.

Chicken pesto panini.

This bad boy – I ate 3/4 – wasn’t even the whole sandwich, I shared the other half with Janessa!

Plus a coffee with skim milk.

Adam picked me up and I came home and kept the productivity ball rolling; all of my (many!) assignments for the semester have been entered into Todoist.

Plus I made another gourmet dinner.

Walnut-Breadcrumb Pasta with a Soft Egg, from Cooking Light. We only made two servings so we basically eyeballed all of the measurements, and we used panko breadcrumbs, but other than that we followed the recipe for a change. The end results were worth a little obedience.

The soft eggs were perfectly thick and drippy. They were also a pain in the butt. We had an impossible time getting them peeled, and all I can say is that it’s a good thing we made a few extra! We “buy” (I won a year’s worth of free eggs) Eggland’s Best vegetarian-fed eggs and my mother-in-law says the chicken’s low protein diet is what makes our egg shells so hard to peel.

With two perfect clementines for dessert.

These are just so dang good! (thanks Katie)

Have you found the secret to easy peel eggs? Please share!

26Jan2011

My First Long Day

by Emily

So Wednesdays are a bit insane; I get to campus at 11am and I don’t finish classes until 8:40pm! By the time my final class was done I was feeling very, very tired. Sidenote – that tiredness was not helped by the fact that our music teacher does not allow food or drinks in the classroom…..in a 3hour long class……at dinner time. [end rant]

This morning I made sure to eat an extra filling breakfast to make up for yesterday’s missing dinner.

That’s a serving of plain Siggi’s topped with 2 tsp maple jam, 3 Tbsp chunky peanut butter, and a serving of Special K Red Berries.

Delicious, and the (tons of) peanut butter packed a protein punch that kept me full all morning.

Lunch was less exciting. I packed a minneloa from home,

and bought a southwest chicken flat bread from the book store cafe.

My sandwich was tasty, but my teeth have started hurting and I could only eat half of it. Boo!

I have lots of break time on Wednesdays – 1 hour + 45 minutes + 2 hours – but unfortunately I didn’t make good use of it at all today. I’ll have to chalk up the wasted time to first long day tiredness. Probably from now on I’ll go to the gym in my 2 hour break, but I didn’t want to go all sweaty to my first class session.

When I got home at 9 tonight I was beat. All I could manage for dinner was a hot chocolate and a frozen meal.

Caramel Praline Hot Cocoa,

and a Pumpkin Squash Ravioli Healthy Choice.

P.S. This is disgusting. I ate it because I was exhausted and starving, but they were steamed apples in with the squash chunks and the ravioli were sweet and disgusting.

I’m finishing an episode of The X-Files with Adam, and then bedtime can’t come quickly enough!

When was the latest class you took in college?

22Jan2011

Snow Filled Saturday

by Emily

Howdy all, happy Saturday! It’s been chilly and busy ’round these parts. I had lots of errands to run, but more on that later (tomorrow). Basically I have today and tomorrow to tackle this monster to-do list –

Before I got started on my errands I grabbed this coconut aloe juice.

So good, the best coconut (or aloe) drink I’ve had yet!

The weather was insane today, whiteout for miles.

It took me forever to get the five miles to the post office, probably because I was only going 10miles an hour! At least the bad weather meant that this adorable snowflake ended up on my steering wheel –