Three Day Week Wrap-Up

by Emily

Today is the Fourth of July, and I took Monday off to play with my parents, so this work-week was only three days long for me; woot! Only three days and it still took an embarrassing amount of coffee – with an even more embarrassing amount of sugar – to get me through.

I didn’t do the best job of documenting, but I do have photos of every single lunch and dinner. And I won’t post details, but I do want to check in and mention that I’ve been consistent with my workouts ever since last week’s plea to hold me accountable. Crossing my fingers that I keep my momentum going!

My lunches this week all included free samples from LÄRABAR.

Please note, the RENOLA was sent to me free of charge to review. I was not provided with further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own.

They sent me a box to introduce their new RENOLA – grain free granola made with non-GMO fruits, nuts, and seeds.

I think calling this “granola” may be a bit disingenuous, but it is a quite fabulous fruit, nut, and seed blend. The texture is very pleasing; fantastically crunchy. It did taste absolutely delicious on yogurt and in cereal though, so if you are turned off by your oats getting soggy in milk then this product would definitely be a good fit for you. The pouches are nice and filling, thanks to 2 -3 grams of fiber and 5 – 8 grams of protein for 200 calories.

Tuesday, I had Cinnamon Nut with Cheerios and skim milk.

Wednesday, I had Berry with Fage 2% plain Greek yogurt, Meyer lemon curd, and blueberries.

And Thursday, I had Cocoa Coconut with vanilla bean Greek yogurt, roasted coconut, and blueberries.

The coconut-heavy bowl was my favorite lunch of the week.

Snacks worth noting were all in the chocolate family. A Lindt Dark Chocolate Cookie Bar.

And a Young’s Double Chocolate Stout.

I didn’t have the candy and the stout at the same time but I totally should have. I could not believe how yummy the beer was; it is rare that I finish a whole beer but this one I happily slurped down.

I think four days straight of all meals out with my parents helped get me in the kitchen mood because I managed to make an actual meal every night this week.

Tuesday was more on the semi-homemade side, we ate gussied up bowls of my leftovers from Sunday.

I beefed up my leftover shredded Brussels sprouts with chopped baby spinach, dried blueberries, sweet and spicy pecans, and a dressing blend of evoo, honey, and truffle salt.

With a scoop of lobster mac and cheese on top.

Just so good. And it’s a testament to the “dressing” that I enjoyed the salad bites even more than the lobster mac.

Wednesday we had very monochromatic pasta bowls.

Orecchiette with tons of artichokes – frozen from TJ’s that I sautéed in evoo with lemon juice – and lemon zest, browned butter, and toasted hazelnuts.

I snuck my green into my appetizer.

Nachos! BBQ chips baked with chopped spinach and three cheese blend.

Last night I made a very loosely inspired version of chana masala.

Chickpeas cooked with chopped onion, diced green pepper, garlic, tomato paste, and super spicy tamarind chutney.

Served on brown rice with a scoop of plain Greek yogurt on top. This meal was wicked good! I went back for another bowl of just the veggie mixture because I couldn’t stop thinking about how tasty it was. Go me.

P.S. Happy Independence Day to my American readers!

26Jun2014

Weekly Wrap-Up; By The Day

by Emily

This is a short “week” because my weekend technically starts tonight (Thursday night) – my parents are coming into town and I took Friday and Monday off. Woo-hoo!!

And since I managed to photograph every single thing over the past three days (minus tons of water and diet coke), I thought it would be fun to do an old-school recap and go by the day rather than grouping things into meal categories.

Monday

Breakfast at my desk, iced Americano and fat-free chocolate milk for the win.

Lunch was one of those yogurt bowls I’ve been loving lately.

TJ’s 0% Honey Greek Yogurt with strawberries {that I picked myself!} and some granola from my KIND package. I used Raspberry Clusters with Chia Seeds this week and was a big fan; this flavor had some nice tang compared with the first bag I tried.

It was a fabulously busy day at work and I ran around all afternoon. I’m usually not involved with the Labor and Delivery floor, but I’ve recently started following my Gestational Diabetes patients when they go inpatient so there is better continuity of care. Getting out of the clinic is always nice because it breaks up the day. And it’s good to have a little more time to go over the education when we are in a hospital room and not my office where other clients knock at my door right and left.

I ate some of the green curry turkey salad, straight from the container, the minute I got home.

I was feeling snacky, and there were already leftovers for Adam to eat, so I decided to do a series of snack plates for dinner. First, a Jazz apple with Mary’s Gone Crackers Sea Salt Pretzels and TJ’s Teriyaki Turkey Jerky.

I don’t know how TJ’s gets their jerky to stay so soft, but that stuff is delicious.

Next up was a bowl of cucumber salad.

I let some thinly sliced Persian cucumbers hang out with some sugar (1 tsp of sugar per cup cucs) for a bit then folded in tons of Sriracha and crushed peanuts.

And I ended the night with nachos, aka the craving that lead me to a snack-style dinner in the first place. 2 servings of potato chips baked with 2 servings of low-fat three cheese blend.

The chips were part of the rather embarrassing “reduced guilt” line and they were amazing.

I read the bag very carefully before deciding to give them a try; the chips are made using less oil (I have no idea how) but no scary ingredients like Olestra. The flavor was identical to TJ’s normal kettle chips and the texture was slightly crunchier, which I think is an improvement. I will definitely buy them again.

Tuesday

Astonishingly, I woke up early enough on Tuesday to go outside for a quick run. I only had time for 15 minutes of actual running amid my walking, but the weather was gorgeous and getting out there was glorious. I have been on a total workout hiatus since our move (almost a year ago!!) but starting Saturday I have been making a concerted effort to get back into the habit. <– hold me to that, please!

I was home and dressed in time to blend up this swampy smoothie.

It was only slightly better than it looked. Frozen strawberries with honey, unsweetened vanilla almond milk, and Kiss Me Organics Matcha Powder.

Since Tuesday is my inpatient day, I packed a lunch that didn’t need the fridge.

An apple cinnamon oatmeal bowl with Cacao Bliss and a pear on the side.

I always want to tell you guys more about what I’m doing at the hospital but I like my job and want to keep it so it’s best to follow HIPAA.

I can say that I charted on an impressive 10 patients and I left the hospital a little late which caused me to miss my train. While I waited to get home I purchased some fun snacks. A blackberry mojito tea (sans lemonade) from Starbucks.

And a bag of the new York Patty minis.

I had searched for that stupid candy for weeks and was thrilled when I spotted it at Target. Yorks are my favorite chocolate-based candy.

When I got home I made green curry.

I sautéed shredded carrot, green onion, broccoli, and peas in evoo; then whisked together a can of light coconut milk with tons of green curry paste and a little galangal and brown sugar; then let everything simmer for a while. Served on a bed of brown rice.

So flipping good. And I didn’t even follow a recipe so I’m pretty proud of myself. Adam wasn’t home because he was on nights all week but I watched “Longmire” while I ate which was a nice substitute. Are you watching that yet? It is super good; there was a scene in the 2nd episode of this season that made both of us cry!

Wednesday

I slept in until the last possible minute yesterday so I did another breakfast at my desk.

Coffee and a Dark Chocolate Mocha Almond KIND Bar (former freebie). I’m still completely awed by how wonderful this flavor is.

Back to my old standby for lunch.

Fage 2% Greek Yogurt with Meyer lemon curd, granola, and strawberries.

We have no food because we’ll go out to eat with our guests, so I planned on buying food on my way home but ran out of time for anything but coffee (with skim milk and sugar).

I had to do my best to cobble dinner together. Lean Cuisine stuffed pretzels and baby carrots with hummus.

Not too terrible, but if I’d thought ahead I would have eaten a salad at lunch.

I also ate chocolate-covered gummy bears while I wrote this post.

🙂

Do you guys miss my old style of posting or are you happier with the new wrap-ups?

18May2014

Long Week Wrap-Up; The Perfect Date? I’d Have To Say April 25th.

by Emily

Woah! It’s been almost two weeks; this is going to be a loooooong post, and that’s after I cut out a whole bunch of stuff. I left in lots of coffee, dinners in bowls, and tasty medjool dates. I’ve had a bad case of the Blogging Blahs recently and I just can’t get myself to sit down and write. Even though I’m not talking about it much, we have been eating fancy meals and doing fun things. Like spending last Saturday in Manhattan…

On our way to the theatre!

We saw Bullets Over Broadway and loved it. Zach Braff – one of my idols – played the lead and the show was super funny.

Here is some of what’s gone on {my plate} since I last posted – –

breakfasts and lunches

Amazing hot chocolate and a vanilla almond KIND bar.

Smoothie = frozen banana, dates, vanilla almond milk, vanilla almond butter, cinnamon-maple sugar, and vanilla bean paste.

Yogurt bowl. 2% Fage topped with cooked strawberries, chopped date, and pecans.

Yogurt lunch.

Dannon coffee Greek yogurt,

plus dates with sweet and spicy pecans, and an apple.

Super salad. I packed spring mix topped with blue cheese, sweet and spicy pecans, and chopped apple, then added some Italian dressing from the salad bar at work. P.S. The cafeteria was on point this week; I bought several cheesy slices of pizza and had creamy lobster bisque with giant pieces of meat.

Lunch with Au Bon Pain. They sent me some coupons to try out their new late spring menu.

We tried the Sriracha Chicken Sandwich—all-natural chicken with Sriracha sauce, pickled banana peppers, arugula, tomatoes and lemon aioli on a baguette. Interesting, but not too spicy for the husband.

A Lemon and Sweet Cheese CroisBun – flaky croissant blended with butter bun, filled with sweet cheese and lemon curd.

And an Arnold Palmer with their black currant iced tea.

Everything was really yummy, but we were pretty annoyed because the location we chose was out of the new salads, both of which sounded amazing.

[BBQ Chicken Salad—all-natural chicken marinated in barbecue sauce, romaine, roasted corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, three-cheddar blend and light ranch dressing. Fresh Fruit & Baby Kale Salad—fresh watermelon, strawberries, mandarin oranges, feta and sliced almonds on a bed of baby kale and balsamic vinaigrette.]

I will not be going back to that location, but I will be heading to ABP for a salad asap.

drinks and desserts

Many iced lattes with my magic milk straws.

Also the cookie dough iced coffee from Dunkin is still great.

And this double espresso over ice – with skim milk and sugar – from Café Dada that filled me with joy.

We are officially giving two thumbs up to Rice Dream’s Horchata.

Adam actually liked it even more than I did.

Still working my way through Buzzfeed’s Frozen Treat’s list; #33 was cholado from Las Americas Bakery.

We got Raspado, shaved ice with homemade fruit syrup and sweetened condensed milk.

Caramel date shake – sea salt caramel gelato blended with dates and skim milk.

Frozen hot chocolate from Tim Horton’s. Please note – they sent me a free coupon so I could sample this new product.

It wasn’t as good as the frozen hot chocolate, but it was definitely delicious. We would plan on purchasing them again this summer. The fudge on top was out of control.

This cookie dough candy was as good as you’d expect it to be. <– i.e. if that sort of thing sounds good to you then you’ll probably like it but if you thought“dear god, why would you dip cookie dough in chocolate” then you’ll probably think it’s too sweet. I thoroughly enjoyed half and then was happy to throw the rest away.

Brooklyn Farmacy is officially our new favorite place.

A family restored the 1920’s pharmacy and turned it into a soda fountain heaven. The music, fixtures, and staff wardrobe are all throw-backs to the ’20s but in a way that is touching and kitschy rather than cheesy (think classy, not Johnny Rockets).

We shared a hibiscus float and a maple egg cream that were both indescribably good.

We practically ordered a second round!

dinners

Farro bowls. Leftover farro tossed with soy sauce and rice vinegar / sautéed shiitake mushrooms and shredded carrots / sauerkraut sautéed with Sriracha and sugar / sliced cucumber / and a fried egg.

Here it is before the egg went down.

Pasta bowls.

Whole wheat linguine / spinach and roasted broccoli / sauce made of a raw egg cracked into the hot pasta plus a splash of milk and huge handful of shredded swiss cheese / topped with panko fried with evoo, smoked paprika, and truffle salt.

Burrito bowl at Calexico. Rice / black beans / guacamole / cojita cheese / avocado sauce / and jalopeños.

Old-school burger and fries at Bareburger. Turkey burger – on a bun! – with pickle chips, tomato, lettuce, mayo, and ketchup. Just like a McDonald’s burger from when I was a kid.

Cheese plate! Assembled entirely of items from Trader Joe’s.

Dates, salmon jerky,

orange slices, pear,

rosemary crackers,

and Italian truffle cheese.

The cheese was an early appetizer for our sushi night.

I got a pickle veggie roll and a non-authentic fried stuff roll. Both were only ok. We had sushi a couple of times over the past weeks and none of it has been very good.

A fancy dinner, after our date at the theatre, at Stone Park Café.

We started with a salad of baby arugula, toasted pecans, artichoke hearts, and blue cheese vinaigrette.

And the scallop and marrow tacos. Uggggh. These were insane.

I had seared Catham cod with Odessa eggplant, baby bok choy, and lemon gremolata. Apparently this was the first time I tasted cod outside of fish and chips?! SPC is one of our favorite restaurants in the city so I know this was good, but I wasn’t a big fan.

Adam’s dinner blew mine out of the water. Butternut squash and thyme ravioli with brown butter, pine nuts, and mixed mushrooms.

Thankfully he was very generous with shared bites.

Are you sick of this post yet? That’s all she wrote!

25Apr2014

Weekly Wrap-Up; Eggs And Easter Candy

by Emily

I’m bouncing back from a bad migraine this afternoon so this post might be lacking my usual witty prose (<– just go with it). I don’t want to think that too much sugar may have been a potential trigger for the migraine, but it will probably be hard to convince you otherwise once you finish the post 🙂 Also, upon completion I am forced to note that 90% of these pictures are pretty god-awful. The food was yummy though, I swear!

lunch

Oatmeal Monday.

Apple on the side.

Quaker Summer Berry Oatmeal,

topped with Reese’s eggs.

I read the egg carton further that night and discovered that they contain trans fat, dun dun dun! – so I had to throw the rest out. My only hard and fast nutrition rule is never eat trans fats.

Spicy Sandwich Tuesday. A whole wheat Sandwich Thin with Applegate Farms Herbed Turkey, Fontina cheese, strawberry jam, and pickled jalopeños that seemed to have retained a lot of their heat.

I cooled down with cinnamon applesauce.

And crunched through kale chips.

Worst. Photo. Ever.

Egg Salad Wednesday.

This batch of egg salad was made with tons of caramelized onions, miracle whip, smoked paprika, and raisins. It was fabulous stuffed inside a Pocket Thin.

With the rest of the kale chips and an apple.

Leftovers Thursday.

See more of this casserole down in dinners.

With a wonderfully crisp Lady Alice apple and Haribo colas.

Last of the Egg Salad Friday, aka today.

This time with a slice of Fontina.

dinner

Stir fry night.

Served on top of packaged Kung Pao noodles.

My ‘fry contained edamame, bamboo shoots, straw mushrooms, and pineapples, cooked in pineapple juice and green curry paste.

I usually try to put too much into my stir fries and I end up hating them; this simple version was fantastic.

Stir fry leftovers.

My veggies, plus steamed sweet potato chunks, and fish sauce and soy sauce, cooked in evoo, with an egg at the end.

A winning new recipe.

Turkey Reuben Casserole.

Click here for the recipe.

Plus spinach and baby kale sautéed with evoo and dried blueberries.

Let’s be real, I pretty much choked down those greens.

Chipotle post-migraine.

Brown rice with peppers, chicken, lettuce, cheese, and lots of mild salsa.

snacks, aka Easter candy

I made a Cadbury Cream Egg Cream. What?!

It actually didn’t work all that well, I felt like my eggs got burnt in the microwave, but I salvaged it with a bit of chocolate milk. Adam and I were both pretty pleased with the final result.

Speaking of candy eggs, these Ferrero ones from my basket were sure gone in a hurry.

Just like a Rocher but without the nut in the center.

Grape Crush licorice.

When I veered away from the Easter goodies my snacks went horribly awry. I got an email from Dunkin that a Coolatta would earn me 25 bonus points and, sucker for loyalty rewards that I am, I had to get one.

Disgusting. It wasn’t homogenous at all; the coffee, milk, and sweetener separated into terrible layers.

That was a bad note to end on, but overall it was a tasty week.

31Mar2014

Weekend Wrap-Up; I’ve Got Recipes To Share

by Emily

Like the title says – “I’ve got recipes to share!” I managed to whip up some really great meals this weekend. That accomplishment is even more impressive when you consider the cold I’m working through. <– let’s consider my horn fully tooted, huh? I was talking to my dad on Saturday morning about how glad I was to have missed Adam’s recent bout of illness and by that night I felt terrible. Unfortunately I’ve felt progressively worse since. Hopefully tomorrow will put me on the upswing.

breakfasts and snacks

Recipe #1 – Almond Joy Baked Oatmeal.

This stuff was yummy. Click the link above for the recipe.

Green apple slices dipped in melty peanut butter.

We tried a new type of citrus from Whole Foods, pixie tangerines. They were great; nice and sweet with no seeds.

Healthy or sick, I’m all about the coffee. Iced brown sugar cinnamon latte from Dunkin.

Tall iced vanilla macchiato from Starbucks just a few hours later. I asked for regular drizzle but sugar-free syrup and it was a definite improvement.

And a clover-brewed Kona blend during my last set of errands the next day.

A handful of chocolates.

Adam and I split this Southern Hibiscus and Peach Milk Chocolate Bar. There were little bits of chewy peach embedded throughout.

I made the best milkshake. Dannon Oikos Café Latte Greek Frozen Yogurt blended with chocolate milk and toasted coconut. It rocked my socks off.

I had several sips of the husband’s Polar Vortex.

Usually we don’t have the same taste in beers but we both thought this Dunkel Lager was delicious.

dinners

Our Mexican dinner fell through on Friday. Several false starts later, we ended up at Mint.

I had Jack Daniels Honey with mint, lime, and simple syrup to drink.

On my plate was rice with sauce from Adam’s chicken and a big pile of bhindi-do-pyaza – okra sautéed with onion and tomato.

Our food was good but it was so flipping loud in there that I’m not sure we’ll ever go back.

Dinners at home were much better. Like Sweet Onion, Bacon, Blue Cheese Burgers.

On a slice of buttered, toasted sourdough with a pile of pea shoots on top.

And last night we had shrimp and veggie (white)rice bowls.

I used this recipe as a guide but went with pepper jelly and grapefruit juice.

Plus we bulked our bowls up with roasted broccoli and cauliflower.

Adam said I hit it out of the park! That was the last of our big bag of frozen shrimp and I definitely want to buy more.

Did you make anything great this weekend?

24Mar2014

Weekend Wrap-Up; Snoozy Saturday

by Emily

My predicted “hours in the kitchen” did not end up coming to fruition this weekend. Instead, I got the tail end of Adam’s cold and spent almost all of Saturday and Sunday in bed. Saturday I got up twice to pee and once to eat a huge bowl of cereal and other than that I was under the covers until the husband got home for dinner! I don’t have a ton to share in this post, but at least I got to snuggle with Webster!

Dinner from the Trader Joe’s frozen aisle.

Pad See Ew with veggies and tofu.

And frozen asparagus cooked with lime juice and honey roasted almonds.

The asparagus was pretty mushy, but we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the noodles. Sidenote – I impulse bought TJ’s “Inner Peas” at the store this weekend and was impressed with them as well.

My very last peppermint divinity candy.

I’m sure my parents won’t mind sending me more next December, right guys??

Sushi take-out from Kisso on Saturday.

I got the vegetarian special,

and an order of vegetable goyza.

The dumplings were great. I shared with Adam because they reminded me of the dumplings we were obsessed with from Wegman’s hot bar. Then we shared a bag of Juicy Bears 🙂

Sunday I made it out of bed and off to the store – with very necessary pit stops to shower and caffeinate – so I could make dinner at home. My Turkey Reuben Mac and Cheese.

I subbed in Orecchiette for macaroni and added broccoli and truffle salt.

We had a round of creamy pink grapefruit spritzers for drinks/dessert.

Yum!

Outside of your college years, when is the latest you’ve ever slept in?

21Mar2014

Weekly Highlights

by Emily

I don’t have enough pictures to constitute a wrap-up post this week, but I am going to share some of the highlights. What you’re not seeing is all of the meals that I purchased out – which was pretty much all of them. Also three million pieces of gummy candy, give or take.

This week was very busy; I literally just was not home most nights to cook my own food. And the few I was home, Adam was working at night so my motivation to cook my own food was quite low. One day I had last-minute shopping errands. One day I had a professional development on nutrition for cardiovascular disease (<– it was great!) that kept me in Manhattan until after 10 pm, meaning I didn’t get back home again until almost midnight. And one day I had to go back to the salon to fix my janky hair.

I couldn’t get a good picture, but all of the color bled out of the front leaving me with gray/green pieces that looked highly unprofessional. Now I’m back to boring brown and the purple will be sorely missed!

Here were some of the very best bites from this week…

Rice bowls three days straight? Why not?

A strawberry aloe yogurt drink that I split with Adam.

A fantasmic cup of Quatro Leches (Tres Leches plus dulce de leche) that I found at the grocery store.

A delicious packed work lunch of oatmeal with kettle-cooked apples.

And last, but certainly not least, a Creamy Pink Grapefruit Spritzer. Which, ps, Adam liked so much he actually asked for the recipe and made one on his own.

That’s all, folks! I have looks of kitchen time planned for my weekend so I promise the next wrap-up will have a little more ~~tofu~~ meat.

17Mar2014

Weekend Wrap-Up; Equations With Pie

by Emily

Happy Monday, all! Did everyone else enjoy Pi Day on Friday (March 14 –> 3/14 –> 3.14)? People usually celebrate the date by eating pie and/or pizza{pie}. We went with the sweet variety, though now that I think about it we had pizza over the weekend too.

In random order, here are the eats I have to share…

lunch

Friday at work.

A pepperoni and cheese snack box,

and a GT’s Synergy Grape Chia Kombucha.

We got lunch at Noodle & Co. while running errands on Saturday.

I got the Japanese pan noodles – caramelized udon noodles in a sweet soy sauce, broccoli, carrots, shiitake mushrooms, Asian sprouts, black sesame and cilantro.

I paid for extra veggies, which got me a whopping 3 tiny pieces of broccoli. We were not impressed.

dinner

Easy dinner on Friday to leave room for pie.

Eggs scrambled with kale and corn.

Pizza on Saturday. My half was topped with mushroom.

I got my veggies in the form of Sweet Greens.

Sunday was Chipotle take-out.

I planned on saving half of my meal for Adam (he was working the night shift) but I ended up eating every single bite of rice bowl and chips!

It doesn’t look like much, but my “meat” was sofritas – shredded tofu braised with chiles, poblanos, and spices – and it was delicious.

brunch

Au Bon Pain debuted a new seasonal Spring Menu on March 10th and they sent me a gift certificate so I could review their newest bakery item. – please note: I was able to sample the new items free of charge. I was not provided further compensation for this post. All opinions are my own. –

Adam and I decided to do a late Sunday morning brunch.

Coffee – a skim, iced Caffé Viennese – and a Sweet Cheese CroisBun, aka their new croissant and sweet bun hybrid.

The outside was wonderfully flakey and sweet but the inside was what really shined. The sweet cheese was sooooo moist – the main reason I usually don’t eat Danish is because they tend to get dried out, but this was amazing. There was a sweet cheese and strawberry variety that looked yummy too.

I also got a Sesame Ginger Chicken Salad.

Very good as well. The seasoning on the chicken provided so much flavor. Other options from the new menu include a Chicken Wasabi Wrap and Black Currant Iced Tea that I quite want to try.