Something Fishy

I don’t think it’s just a Monday thing, there is definitely something fishy going on with my head-space.  I’ve been falling asleep more easily, but waking up multiple times a night, often just before my alarm goes off (often causing me to reset the alarm to a later time).  I’ve been totally distracted – my to-do list was practically untouched today – and getting out of bed feels like waking the dead.  I felt like I was peeling myself up at the late hour of 9:30 this morning.

My late wake up hour couldn’t interfere with my trip to the volunteer services office at the hospital though.  I ended up throwing jeans and a jacket over my nightgown!

I’m probably the classiest class-less person you know 😉

I wanted to speak to the volunteer office in person because I had to tell them I still won’t be volunteering until after May 7th.  I can only get to volunteering via a longish walk, and I’m pretty much useless there unless I’m running things up and down the stairs.  I felt badly, especially because I’m probably done with volunteering once summer school starts, but my leg was killing me on the walk there which helped me know it was a good decision.

On the way home I stopped into the gas station for a coffee.

I went with my usual half/half method – equal parts vanilla creme (unsweetened) and English toffee cappuccino (sweetened).

I want to say the caffeine gave me the study boost I needed, but it was more like I stared at my Chem book without moving for 1.5hours, grrrrr!  I did make an inspired sort of lunch.

I topped a everything bagel thin with 1 microwaved egg and a slice of buffalo wing cheese.

And I burnt some kale chips for a side.

Tasty, and I did manage to take some notes while I ate.

I need some advice.  This is my new $19 one piece from Old Navy –

Nevermind the fact that I clearly have been eating too many nachos, please tell me this suit doesn’t look completely ridiculous in a sport-swim capacity??  I’m planning on heading to the South Campus gym pool this Wednesday to make like a fish.

I had to pick up some stuff – dry cleaning and the husband! – but I ate another egg for some pre-workout protein.  This time hard boiled.

Today’s workout was less ‘exotic,’ by exciting in its own rite.  I slooooowly hiked up the gym stairs so that I could have a stretch/strength workout using actual equipment.  The gym was packed and I hurt my leg on the stairs, so we ended up working out for about 15minutes, but it was a nice idea!

After our “work out” we did take a walk.  Our tax refund came today and we were pretty pleased, so we took a trip to the bank and for some celebratory ice-cream.  I waited all winter to try out Sweet Tooth.

It was adorable, they had awesome looking cookies, and even had serving sizes that were ACTUAL serving sizes; we’ll be back!  I got a “baby” cup of cannoli ice-cream.

Delish.  It was marscapone flavored ice-cream with chocolate chips and pieces of cannoli dough.  I’ve never actually eaten a cannoli (I know, I know!) but I loved this.

Post-shower (and another intense staring off into space session, wtf?!?), we threw together an Easy Peasy dinner.

  1. I boiled 7oz dry rotini pasta according to the box directions.  In the last 3minutes of cook time I stirred in 7oz frozen artichoke hearts and 1cup frozen peas into the pot.  Then I drained the pasta/veggies and returned them to the pot.
  2. Meanwhile, I sautéed 1 chopped onion over medium heat.  When the onion was browned I added 2T butter,2T  flour, and 2T half and half to the pan.  I stirred and gave the mixture time to thicken.
  3. Finally I poured my onions and sauce into the pot with the veggies and pasta, along with10 oz boneless skinless canned salmon, and stirred to combine.

It doesn’t look like much, but for how simple it was this dish was tasty and healthy.  (Note – this recipe makes 4 servings)

As soon as my teeth are brushed I’m going to curl up in bed with a magazine and hopefully fall asleep pretty quickly.  I do not have time in tomorrow’s agenda for sitting/staring.  Sweet dreams.

Have you ever had a cannoli?  What’d you think?

New York, New York

My apologies that this post is delayed, but I knew it was going to be a loooooong one.  On Monday, after a weekend in PA with my in-laws, Adam and I traveled “home” for a day in New York City.  I grew up in St. Thomas, went to college in Miami, and currently live in Buffalo, but the 2 years and I spent teaching in East New York and living in Park Slope are the ones I am always homesick for.

It rained, hard, all day but nothing was able to dim our spirits.  We ended up not being able to do the trip we had originally planned – on the agenda was a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge – but it was a fabulous day nonetheless.  We skipped all of the tourist stuff, and instead did all most of our favorite things to do when we lived in the city. 

Physically it probably wasn’t the healthiest day: we walked too much on my hurt leg and ate way too much sugar.  But mentally it was just what I needed.  I Love New York.  All of the reasons people complain about the city – the crowds, the noise, people walk too fast, you can’t drive – are all of things I love best about it.  I adore the crowds of people, and it helps that I’m naturally a fast walker and a walk lover.  I think New Yorkers are friendlier than the rest America and the ‘concrete jungle’ is my definition of beauty.  I was obviously raised to love the beach, and I can see the magical quality of the dessert and the allure of the fairy-like sense of the forest, but the city is where I feel most with serene.  I love the buildings, the gardens, the graffiti.

Adam and I got into the city around 10am.  As soon as we hit the Verrazano Bridge we both started to smile.

We actually parked the car in ‘our spot’ in our old neighborhood for the day.  We didn’t have a car until we moved to Buffalo so when we lived in Park Slope we did a lot of walking.  Most days when I got home after school I would walk the 8+ blocks from my subway, then the 8+ blocks the other direction to Adam’s subway, and then back home, in addition to the walk in the morning and making at least one trip out at night.  7th Ave feels more like home to me than our apartment did!  So our first item one the itinerary was a long walk down 7th Avenue.

We stopped at Pinos pretty much the second we got out of the car.

Pinos used to be our spot for pizza, we had it at least once a week for two years.  In fact, it was such an institution that I mentioned watching Scrubs and eating pizza in my wedding vows!  I split a plain slice with the husband.

And he saved me his crusts to dip in my diet coke.

Delicious!

I think Park Slope is one of the most beautiful spots in the city.  There are so many interesting and beautiful things to look at.

Just to give you an idea of how much we walked, we covered 2.5miles before we even left our neighborhood!  All that walking made us thirsty, so we headed to ‘Snice, our favorite vegan spot.

We split a vegan malted milk-less shake before we headed to the B Train.

Then we headed uptown for a walk in Central Park.

We were statues for a little bit,

before we headed inside Whole Foods for a break from the weather.

I managed to resist the pull of the salad bar but we did a little sampling.  I had about 4 shot glasses worth of food, but was told I couldn’t use my camera in the store?!

Next we headed to Delancy.  We cut the ambling a bit here because we had a mission – Sugar, Sweet, Sunshine!  SSS is our favorite spot in the city.  They have cupcakes – delicious, crumbling, innovative, wonderful cupcakes, for a $1.50, unheard of in the land of Magnolia Bakery.  We always used to bring our visitors here.

Honestly I could not decide on my flavor, I ended up getting two!  It took a lot of willpower, but I cut them in half and shared with Adam, ultimately eating only one full cupcake.

Strawberry with cream cheese frosting.

This was a seasonal flavor that I’d never tried before and I am so glad I decided not to skip it.  Cream cheese frosting is always a favorite, but what made this was the actual chunks of strawberry in the cake.

Pistachio.

This.  This cupcake is my favorite thing on earth.  I don’t even really like cake, usually I lick the icing off of cupcakes and am done with it, but the cake part of this is even better than the icing.  It is pistachio perfection.

In an absolute sugar/love cloud we hopped on the F Train and headed down to Cobble Hill, an artsy little area of Brooklyn.

As we walked around we spotted a bar with an Abita sign (my favorite) so we stopped in for a beer.

I drank most of my Christmas Ale, then switched with Adam and polished off his Turbo Dog.

Our real destination in the The Hill was Trader Joe’s.  My parents requested 10gagillion #s of unsulphered dried fruit and we picked up a few staples for ourselves as well.

Carrying multiple jars of TJ’s Sun Butter = so worth it!  I also bought a honey Greek yogurt to get a little protein into my day.

And we stopped in at Starbucks for some calorie-free rehydrating.

Our final stop was back to Park Slope for dinner with Lana, one of my oldest friends.  We hit up Beet.  If you read my old blog and saw all the Thai food we ate at Mango, Beet is its brother restaurant.  I love how funky all of the restaurants are in the city.

And Beet was totally artistic; my diet coke had a straw wrapper rose in it and Adam’s scallop fried rice came in the shape of a star.

I ordered the Pad See Eiw with veggies and tofu.

Buffalo has been totally unable to satisfy my Thai cravings, but this hit the spot!  The Pad See Eiw I’ve had since we moved can’t even compare to how good this is!

We were sad to say our goodbyes to Lana, but it was 9pm and we had a 7+ hour drive ahead of us.  You know how that turned out already, but I will add in the fact that Adam drove the entire way home and basically deserves ‘Best Husband of the Year.’

All in all, it was a fabulous day in the city.  The husband and I both gave it a 100%.  The rain might have been frustrating, but the temperature was perfect and we were comfortable all day.  It sucked that my leg hurts, but I managed to walk a TON.  We did exactly what we wanted to do and came home feeling invigorated.

Have you ever been to NYC?  Love it or is it not for you?

Slopped on Bagels and Secret Buffalo

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?

Spring Has Sprung

Hi folks, I hope everyone is having a fabulous weekend.  Is it spring in your neighborhood yet?

I couldn’t go on the nice long walk like I would like so I celebrated the start of spring via wardrobe today –

I’ve waited all winter to break out that headband 😉

Between Adam’s flu and my broken leg our grocery trip was long and harrowing.  We got the essentials though, and put them home in the fridge in time to head to the mall for an early dinner.  We stopped to get gas and I grabbed a coffee to tide over my hunger.

I tried a new trick to get tasty, healthy coffee.  2/3 snickerdoodle coffee (flavored beans) and 1/3 English toffee from the cappuccino machine (sweetened).  It made the perfect blend.

We can’t not go to Jack Astors.

I ordered the vegetable pad thai.

The sauce was nothing like pad thai, but there were tons of veggies (zucchini and carrots) so I was happy. 

I ate about half, most of the veggies and eggs, not a lot of the noodles (leftovers) –

And then Adam and I went to the movie theatre for Alice in Wonderland.  Carrol is one of my all-time favorite authors so I was so excited for this movie!  I was a little worried because I always prefer the books (and I did this time too) but overall I was pretty impressed.

Adam’s sickness means we are turning in early, which means I’ll see you all in the morning 🙂

Have you seen “Alice” yet?  Thoughts?

13 Miles = Ice Cream

You guys!  Thank you so much for all the congratulations on my race.  I truly appreciated all of your comments, they meant a lot to me.  My leg is painful but I’m still so happy about the race.

We spent most of the day laying around but finally I managed to get ready for dinner.  Royal Thai was our pick for this evening.  I wanted to try to pack in a few calories so I started with a Thai iced tea.

For meal I ordered Pad See Eiw noodles, with tofu subbed in for meat.

I am just not hungry still, I only ate about half of my meal.

Not hungry, however, did not mean I couldn’t make room for Jeramiah’s when we drove by  😀

I went with small gelati; mint chip ice with twist soft serve.

Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum!  I’ve told Kristen about a million times that I’m moving in with permanently!

We are going to watch a bit of tv, and I am going to do some more stretching, and then it’ll be early bedtimes all around.  I hope everyone else had a great weekend!

What is your favorite icy treat?  Other than soft serve I actually don’t really like ice-cream.  I am a much bigger fan of froyo or gelato.

Packed Snacks Save the Day

It’s been a great day of family fun.  Bowling was great; especially because we had the bumpers up so I scored more than a 40 for a change!

While at the alley I snacked on a Buddy Fruit pouch.

Mushed fruit pouches are kind of my favorite thing but I never buy them because of the packaging waste.  However, the road trip seemed like a good excuse and it was a nice treat.

I tried to eat this Chocolate Green Superfood bar.

Eeeeeeyuck!  I had a bite, and I regretted it, the flavor tasted way off to me.

Unfortunately the superfood bar had been my main plan for the evening and I was starving by the time we made it to dinner.  I had a slice of bread (x2).

I’m not 100% that this was vegan but I was starting to feel faint by the time we sat down.

For my meal I ordered a plain veggie wrap.

Another failure; the wrap was chunks of cold lettuce with cooked peppers, which I hate.  I demolished the fries but couldn’t even choke down half of the sandwich.

Thankfully I had a better back up plan for dinner.  I’ve been eyeing these Allergaroo packages for months and I was glad to have an excuse to buy one.

The nutritional stats were pretty impressive and the meal was super tasty and ready in under a minute.  It would be super easy to stir in some veggies to this too.

All total this was probably my hardest day of the vegan challenge.  I am still pretty hungry (starving actually) and will definitely do some snacking this evening.  We are heading home tomorrow so I’ve got to soak in some family time but I’ll do a snack recap in the morning.  Good night!

What “for kids” foods are you a fan of?  I kind of love them all 😉

Mini Explosions

I did not have another mimosa last night, but did make a decidedly Northern dessert.

Mmmn.  However, today was NOT feeling as romantic.  It seemed like everything I touched today exploded!  I was cleaning up messes and putting out (metaphorical) fires all over the place.

For starters I was running late for volunteering so I made my breakfast smoothie a bit smaller than usual.

1cup frozen mixed berries + 1cup plain fat free soy milk + 1T fat free sugar free jello powder.

It was super tasty, but I spilled 1/3 of it all over the counter 😦

I managed to clean up the mess and get to the hospital on time though.  And they actually had a lot for me to do at volunteering which was nice.  Not nice, was 30minutes after my shift when I was still there and I started panicking about getting home in time to make my important phone calls.  No worries though, it’s President’s Day, no one was open.  Boo 😦

And I was supposed to submit my college application today but since there was no one to help me override the system I have to wait until tomorrow to imput my Caribbean high school into the online form.  I did some major damage on this bag of chips during the whole 2hours of failure.

At least they were vegan!  Next I tried to recreate last night’s dessert, only to have it explode all over my microwave.

On the plus side, now my microwave is sparkling, and I put it to good use on a late lunch.

Tandoor Chef Vegetarian Pad Thai is seriously my favorite frozen meal of all time and it’s super awesome that it’s vegan too.  If you see it at your grocery store, buy it!

I had hoped to go to the gym today finally but I’m feeling just under the weather enough still that it seemed like a bad idea.  I would kill for a diet soda so maybe I’ll at least get in another walk (I walk to/from volunteering).  Other than that the plan is dinner and bed.  See you then.

Anything explode on you today?  I’m all ears if you want to gripe about it?

Carb Craving

When my hunger did finally hit this afternoon it did so with a vengeance.  All I wanted was carbs.  We can just pretend I was carbo-loading for all that intense working out I do, cough cough 🙂

I had a bowl of Adam’s pasta topped with 2% colby.

And then a single-serving bowl of Frosted Flakes.

With some Kashi Go Lean Crunch to finish off the milk.

Around 5 we headed out to The Spot to do some studying.  I did dinner there.

Fountain diet coke and a Mike’s (egg and cheese) Bagel Sandwich.

I told myself that if I worked out once I got home (after 10!) I could eat a cookie, so I bought a cookie at the gas station on the way home to ensure that I wouldn’t shirk out on my work out.

I Netflix’d Crunch: Pick Your Spot Pilates.  I did abs, buns, and thighs for a 30minute workout.  As much as I enjoy this DVD, I think it is too easy for a “real” workout, I’m going to try to incorporate it more for stretching or mornings.

And now I’m enjoying this hottness before shower and bed-time –

FEST Check-in, Day 4:  Most of this is N/A since almost fainting is clearly never in the plans.  I am proud of myself for getting in a work out though, no matter how small.

What is your favorite kind of carbs?  Mine is definitely NYC bagels, yum!