I know this post is behind schedule (and I swear, I really am going to share all of the tasty things we ate at the end of our trip!) but the first week back at work after a vacation always feels so looooong. It doesn’t help that the poor puppy is sick – and it really doesn’t help that he is on 2 weeks of a twice-daily medication, in addition to his twice daily seizure medication! No matter, he has the fuzziest face on Earth and I wouldn’t trade him for the world.
Here are some of the eats from the week that I wouldn’t trade either…
Oh man, has allergy season hit us with a vengeance. I feel just horrible! My throat hurts, my nose is runny, and my head is an achy, foggy mess. All of that complaining is to say – I missed a lot of pictures this week, many of them of candy and/or coffee because I pretty much had to have a liquid or hard candy in my mouth 24 hours a day. That said, I got to go on several mid-week dates with the husband and it was actually a pretty great week.
breakfast
Smoothie. Vanilla almond milk, frozen banana, blueberries, raspberries and dates, chia seeds, and a scoop of vanilla pudding mix.
Adam prefers his smoothies creamier than icy so I thought the pudding would help with texture but it gave the smoothie an offputtingly sweet taste.
Breakfast date at Doughnut Plant!
I got a tres leches doughnut (the best one on the menu),
and a horchata, a specialty menu item for Cinco de Mayo.
Plus a latte from Gorilla.
Mmmmn.
lunch
Soup for my sore throat.
With a Lady Alice apple.
Guava-cheese empanada.
With a grapefruit soda.
A sandwich from home.
Low-fat cheddar, mayo, and Applegate Farm’s bbq spiced turkey on TJ’s whole-wheat Tuscan pane.
Turkey sandwich from the cafeteria on yummy olive bread.
Plus dried nectarines a coworker brought in.
They were even better than dried apricots.
snacks drinks
Lavender milk tea.
Good but not great.
This “Simply Red” from Pork Slope was amazing.
House-infused hibiscus vodka, mint, lime, and soda. I am obsessed with mint lately.
Low-fat machta latte.
I told you there were going to be a lot of drinks!
dinner
Rice bowls.
For a super authentic Cinco de Mayo.
Date night at the new-ish Luke’s Lobster in Park Slope!
My lobster roll was heavenly.
And then we got a flight at Ample Hills for dessert.
It came in an egg tray and was amazing and delicious and I was basically dying.
Baby carrots, seaweed salad, a Honey Belle pear, and a Pixie tangerine.
Bonus – I went to a catered seminar on physical assessments for malnutrition and they brought in surprisingly good salads from Smash Burger.
(3) Oatmeal bowls
Wild Beary flavor with maple almond butter on top and a Gold Nugget tangerine on the side.
The berries and cream oat bowl I made myself was better though.
Rolled oats, malted milk powder, chia seeds, freeze-dried strawberries, and dried blueberries. Plus sweetened sour cream on top.
(4) Green curry with bulgar
This was the best thing we ate all week.
Ground turkey sautéed with garlic, ginger, green onions, and probably something else that I’m forgetting // collard greens and celery cooked in rice vinegar with salt and a bit of sugar (sort of try for the pickled greens served at Pig and Khao) // green curry paste and light coconut milk // served on bulgar.
Now that I’ve gotten my hands on jarred crushed ginger again my food has gotten so much better.
(5) Asian-ish rice noodles
This would have been the second best thing we ate, but it desperately needed crushed peanuts on top.
Ground turkey that had been marinated over night with green onions, ginger, garlic, brown sugar, canola oil, fish sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and maple bourbon // baby bok choy, shitake mushrooms, and red bell pepper cooked with Sriracha, ginger, and a pinch of sugar // rice noodles cooked in chicken broth.
Marinating the meat in so many acidic things gave it an amazing texture, though I realize that it doesn’t look all that pretty. I have a bag of the chopped veggies prepped in the freezer so we can quickly make this meal again soon.
The worst thing about this week? The weather! Why is it so cold again??
From the Redux team: Go through your pantry, cupboards, freezer, or fridge; what ‘treasures’ have you found? Pick an ingredient/spice/condiment that’s been hanging out for a while and give it the attention it needs. Share a healthy recipe made using your new-found pantry prize.
One thing that is always present in my pantry is boxes of (whole grain) macaroni and cheese. Yes, the old-school kind with the powdered cheese. We like that the pasta is already portioned out – three to four servings-worth versus a 1 lb box – and only takes 6 – 15 minutes to cook depending on the brand, making it almost too easy to bypass to turn to take-out. We always have spices/sauces on hand and frozen chopped vegetables in our freezer, so we are always prepared to gussy up a box of mac for a quick and easy dinner.
Typically I like to pair the mac with canned smoked fish (another item that is a pantry must-have for us), but since I wanted to share this “recipe” with the wider Redux audience I decided to go vegetarian this time with a can of beans.
The great thing about this dish is that it is so easy to customize to accommodate what you have on hand. I tested the recipe with canned items but obviously you could sub in fresh varieties no problem. If using fresh broccoli, just precook it and add it with the other vegetables. I recommend ignoring the directions for adding milk and butter to make a cheese sauce and using sour cream instead, but if you don’t feel like buying sour cream this would still work if you made the sauce according to the back of the box.
Mexican Mac & Cheese, serves 4
6 oz box macaroni and cheese
2 heaping cups frozen broccoli
1/4 cup low-fat sour cream
15.5 oz can low-sodium black beans, rinsed and drained
Cook the pasta according to the package directions. When 3 minutes remain in the cooking time, stir in the broccoli and cook it along with the macaroni. Strain the cooked pasta and return to the pot.
Add sour cream and cheese packet (no milk or butter!) to the pasta. Stir in sauce, along with olives and chiles. Carefully fold in beans.
We bought tons eggs and dye for Easter this year, and of course, never did a darn thing with them. The dye is in our “holidays bin” for next year, but the eggs had to be cooked. And so, I enjoyed hard-boiled eggs as a meal almost every day this week.
I was also all about the Cara Cara oranges and Medjool dates. It’s starting to taste like summer!
stuff
I started Ruth Reichl’s first autobiography on the train and I think I’m in love.
She is so funny, and I love any story about food!
We were insanely busy at work all week and I’m dying. That’s why this post is a day late (and is short about 10 more coffee and candy pictures), because I did sessions with 18 patients on Friday – many of them with gestational diabetes – and when I got home I just wanted to lie down.
breakfast
I made an awesome cold-brew blend this week: Community Coffee French Roast and BRC Peru with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pumpkin pie spice.
But this triple – chocolate oatmeal bowl wins a close second.
Rolled oats with a heaping Tbsp of hot chocolate mix, chocolate-covered cocoa nibs, and dark chocolate chips.
And this busy day “lunch” was a loser. Vanilla soy milk at 11 am.
And Easter candy at 4pm when there was finally a lull.
dinner
Omg. Kids! I made the tastiest stroganoff-inspired noodle bowls ever. Adam and I could not get over them.
Served in heaping scoops on egg pappardelle.
Yummy Stroganoff-ish Pasta, serves 4
Heat 1 Tbsp evoo in a large skillet over high-medium heat. Add 20 ounces sliced white mushrooms, and a big pinch of salt, and cook until the mushrooms have lost their juices and browned, stirring regularly (10 – 13 minutes). Deglaze the pan with a healthy pour of cream sherry. Remove mushrooms from pan and reduce heat to medium-high, adding an additional Tbsp evoo if needed.
Add 1 lb lean ground turkey and two large shallots, chopped to the pan. Season with pepper and 1 Tbsp smoked paprika. Cook 5 minutes, stirring regularly and breaking up the meat into small pieces with the side of your spatula. Stir in 1/2 Tbsp ground garlic, 1/2 Tbsp fish sauce, and 1 Tbsp soy sauce. Continue to cook, stirring regularly, until meat is cooked through (5 – 7 more minutes).
Reduce heat to low and stir in 3/4 cup reduced-fat sour cream.
Serve on top of pasta of choice.
The leftovers were still great.
Served on top of spinach salad. Plus, those of us who can eat chocolate had Lindt caramels for dessert.
We had cobb salad.
Baby spinach with balsamic / roasted asparagus / turkey bacon / avocado / TJ’s cave-aged blue cheese / hard-boiled eggs.
And egg salad.
Eggs with shredded carrot, chopped green pepper, mayo, pickle relish, garlic mustard, dill, tumeric, smoked paprika, and s & p. With great seeded crackers my parents sent us for Easter.
And roasted broccoli and green beans.
Egg salad is good – and I wasn’t even tired of eggs yet! – but roasted green beans are always the best part.
Adam and I had a pretty great weekend… in spite of me misplacing my – expensive! – favorite sports bra and spending half of Saturday in mourning. Seriously – I don’t change at the gym, I didn’t pack it on a trip, and we are very careful to check the machines for runaways when we do our laundry – where the frick is it?!! But when we weren’t checking and rechecking literally every drawer in the house, we did manage to have some fun.
highlights…
Homemade S’mores Milk
It’s official, I’m a genius. I put it in coffee, obviously.
S’mores Milk, makes 2 cups
Inspired by Tosi’s Cereal Milk. This recipe requires you to strain the solids out of the milk, you can use a fine mesh sieve but I used my French Press and that worked really well too. Smooshy marshmallows will not work for this, you need crispy ones; if you can’t find the Mallow Bits I recommend picking the marshmallows out of Lucky Charms!
2 cups skim milk or milk of choice
1/3 cup Jet Puff Mallow Bits
4 squares graham crackers, crumbled
2 Tbsp hot chocolate milk
Place all of the ingredients together in a container and stir to combine. Cover and store in the fridge for 8 – 16 hours.
Strain, discarding solids. Milk can be stored, covered, in the fridge for up to 1 week.
Cheesy Spicy Eggs
Coming up somewhere just behind coffee, diet coke, dulce de leche, and popcorn, corn cooked in scrambled eggs is one of my favorite meals.
This plate was TJ’s frozen fire-roasted corn, chopped spinach, and sliced shishito peppers (<– so much spicier than I was expecting!) cooked in coconut oil with eggs scrambled in and chunks of Kerrygold Skellig sweet cheddar tossed in at the end.
C’est Cheese in Port Jeff
C’est Cheese is always worth the drive up Port Jefferson for dinner.
We shared a beer sampler. The Framboise was my favorite.
A cheese plate. Adam loved the Tallegio and I was all about the 7-year Gouda.
And a grilled cheese with blue cheese and a raspberry-cranberry relish on marble rye. The cheese and jam combo made for the best bites of the night.
Snacky in Williamsburg
This weekend one of my lifelong best friends celebrated her 30th(!!!) birthday.
After the party, the husband and I had dinner at Snackys, one of my favorite Williamsburg spots. We shared a seaweed salad and a Chinese big bun stuffed with pickled vegetables.
And did rice bowls for dinner. I know the photos aren’t much, but my Spicy Korean BBQ Chicken Bowl was great, yummy sauce and big bites of kimchi.
Our 1st Smorgasburg of 2015
NYC people – if you haven’t done Smorgasburg yet you need to get your life together. They added a few new vendors this season and it is happy, foodie, perfection. We couldn’t find the Snowday truck but you can bet I’ll keep an eye out from now on.
Buns from Bite Sized Kitchen. I got red curry chicken with peanuts, cilantro, and fried garlic and shloots (topped with loads of sweet chili sauce).
And beer-battered cheese curds with truffle cheese sauce from Curd’s the Word.
Remember this post? The stupid sports bra is the fourth item I’ve ever lost… which would be a really good track record if 2, 3, and 4 hadn’t all been within the last year!
This post feels long, and I am le tired, so I will try to be less loquacious than usual.
Very chatty sidenote – how great are some of the words that describe how much a person does or does not talk?? Loquacious. Taciturn. Verbose. Gabby. Love them!
Real talk though: I somehow caught a springtime cold and I am cranky and sniffling and need to go to bed. I know I’ve wasted 60+ words on an intro, but I’ll try to let the pictures speak for themselves as much as possible.
breakfast
Vanilla iced coffee with vanilla milk.
Smoothie #1 – strawberry mint. Chocolate mint soy milk, frozen strawberries, and plain Greek yogurt.
Smoothie #2 – blueberry bliss. Frozen blueberries and dates with plain almond milk, plain Greek yogurt, and a little honey.
I made another batch of Community Coffee French Roast, this time in our coffee machine. Traditional/hot brewing did make this a little bitter, but it was still quite drinkable. Especially with skim milk and a splash of toasted marshmallow coffee syrup or a sprinkle of cinnamon and brown sugar.
lunch
Subs with the in-laws for Easter. With chips and hard-boiled Easter eggs.
Coffee Chobani with Cocoa Coconut Renola and a Cara Cara. I am very picky about my coffee yogurts and this stuff was on point.
A half turkey sandwich from the cafeteria with seaweed salad and Easter candy delivered by a coworker.
I apparently don’t have a photo to speak for itself, but another day I packed a sandwich from home. An epic sandwich. Sweet cheddar and extra-sharp cheddar on a toasted English muffin. Swoon.
This mix was random, but it worked – spicy Thai chili tuna salad, brown sugar and sea salt seaweed, and a Cara Cara.
The husband and I are both obsessed with these two dessert items.
Plain Greek yogurt with butterscotch peanut butter and chocolate-covered cocoa nibs
I made How Sweet Eat’s Brown Butter Oatmeal Chunk Cookies for a birthday at work and they received rave reviews. I subbed vanilla bean paste for cinnamon, subbed dark chocolate chips for chocolate chunks, and made much smaller cookies (for a yield of 40 cookies versus her 15), and I recommend all three changes if you make a batch of your own.
I’m including two non-edibles that fed my soul. The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman was like a grown-up version of Francesca Lia Block’s stuff. It was hard to put down; I read on the train and one night I had to sit in my car in the parking lot for twenty minutes to keep reading.
Dessert was angel food cake layered with a yummy Cool Whip + vanilla pudding mix + shredded pineapple concoction.
An easy, amazing soup. I cooked shell pasta in chicken broth then dumped in sautéed chopped bok choy and green onions, shredded cooked chicken breast, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. My bowl was drizzled with sweet chili oil as well. Adam absolutely raved about this dish.
I turned the rest of my never-ending marinara sauce into a bastardized version of Jenna’s Channa Masala. On top of brown rice and roasted broccoli. Topped with plain Greek yogurt and sweet chili oil.
Safe Catch sent me a can of their wild skipjack tuna.
Please note: I was sent this product free of charge to review. I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.
Seafood is a great thing to include in your diet. It is a lean protein, a good source of iron, and a good source of omega-3 fatty acids. Unfortunately, due to the fact that seafood contains mercury, it may not be a good idea to consume it daily, and some varieties are safer than others. Canned tuna, for example, I have to tell my pregnant patients to limit to </ once per week. Safe Catch is a new, mercury tested, tuna brand that enforces a strict limit on the amount of mercury allowable in the fish that go into its products (their standards are 90% stricter than the FDA’s mercury safety limit of 1.0 parts per million). Also important – the fish is caught exclusively with pole and line from managed stocks.
I wanted to be able to really taste the tuna – we give it two thumbs up – so I made it into a super simple tuna salad.
Served on a challah roll with a side of roasted broccoli.
Last night was my sickest, and the husband worked overnight, so I made a(n incredibly tasty!) frozen meal from Trader Joe’s and called it a night. I also ate a bowl of cereal in bed.
There were entirely too many photos of my hands in this post.
Who else has obsessively binge-watched their way though the entire first season of “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” already? We finished the whole thing over the weekend. We loved it! I’m considering a rewatch. I hate the two trial episodes – I thought they were god-awful, truly some of the worst television I’ve ever seen – but I adored everything preceding them. The 10 second concept makes my life. Unsurprisingly, this is another smart and funny win from Tina Fey.
The theme song has permanently ear-wormed its way into my brain.
Related, Lisa – Born Round was amazing!
I read it on the train and then would sit in my car in the parking lot for at least 20 minutes each night to keep reading. I’m pretty sure Bruni should be giving TED Talks for all would-be crash dieters, emotional eaters, and aspiring journalists.
breakfast
I did the chocolate milk and iced coffee combo two days in a row.
Paired with a Special K protein bar both days.
Not the best bars – for taste or ingredient list – but they were free in the cafeteria and I had some extra morning hunger this week.
Another day I did hot chocolate mix in hot coffee with a lot of milk on top.
So basically just the lukewarm version of my chocolate milk and coffee.
My breakfast plan for St. Patrick’s Day was a green smoothie. Then I hit the snooze button and the plan was iced coffee with green dye in my milk. Then I hit the snooze button five more times and I barely managed to get coffee, ice, and boring plain milk into my cup.
…and then I also got Starbucks once I got off of the train.
I usually don’t let myself do two coffees in the morning, but I had stayed in bed until literally 10 minutes before I needed to be in the car so clearly it was a double coffee kind of morning. And yes, mom, I fixed my hat hair before I saw patients.
lunch
Thankfully the cafeteria totally came through and helped me get some green-theme on St. Paddy’s Day.
My bagel was topped with pepperjack, sliced turkey, mayo, mustard, and frisee lettuce. Plus baked onion rings on the side.
Blood orange Fage with Nature’s Path Heritage Flakes and blackberries and a fresh mandarin orange on the side.
I can’t believe I had only ever eaten canned mandarins up until this year, they are my new favorite citrus.
Tart cherry Noosa with coconut butter, homemade butterscotch peanut butter, and a Pinata apple.
We are loving the new 4 oz Noosa packs. Noosa is Adam’s top favorite yogurt – in fact it’s one of his favorite foods in general – but the original packages were a bit too large to enjoy on the go.
Vanilla-caramel yogurt with blackberries and 18 Rabbits caramel apple granola.
I loved the flavor of the grass-fed yogurt but I’d still be a little nervous about trying it plain.
snack
Popcorn / all-time best Easter candy / beer…
All good.
A small but gourmet sandwich.
Toasted whole-wheat with Applegate Farm herb sliced turkey, mayo, and leftover carmelized onions.
Weird pasta salad from the cafeteria.
Why do they keep putting croutons in pasta??
An Austrian iced coffee.
Aka coffee (delicious Grady’s cold-brew in this case) with ice, (skim) milk, and (vanilla-caramel) ice cream.
dinner
Asian-style baked shrimp bowls.
From the bottom up, I filled my casserole with quartered bok choy, sliced wild mushrooms, chopped orange and yellow bell pepper, shrimp, fish sauce, rice vinegar, soy sauce, canola oil, and Sriracha. Then I baked it for 15 minutes at 425 degrees.
Served on top of brown rice cooked in chicken stock.
Leftover bbq salads.
Spicy, local arugula topped with bbq sauce, cucumber, avocado, bell pepper, caramelized onions, and TJ’s fire-roasted corn cooked with turkey bacon.
These were some of the best salads we’ve made in months.
The next night I did a 180 from salads and made my grandma’s recipe for an awesomely retro chicken and rice casserole.
Complete with condensed soups, chow mein noodles, and crushed chips on top. I swapped half of the rice for shredded cauliflower but otherwise did not healthy it up at all.
Served with green beans baked with fish sauce, honey, Sriracha, and evoo.
We ate casserole the next night too.
And we will probably been eating casserole the next few nights as well!
Hope everyone has a great weekend, good luck getting that song out of your head!
Eating Chalk 