Tag Archives: salad

Froyo Flavors Playbook

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The husband was out of town on an interview yesterday so I ate a single lady dinner of cookies and popcorn.  Then I ate a big bowl of cereal (with melted peanut butter and vanilla almond milk!) in bed.  <– Shhhhh, Adam would be so mad.

Speaking of skipping posts, exam week is coming and I am flipping out.  I want to try to keep up blogging, since it’s not like I use every last minute of my time studying anyway, but I’m not sure how that will work out.  Exams are in 13 days!  I honestly thought that we had another week and didn’t realize how close they were until I checked my planner in the middle of class and gave myself a heart attack.

Anyway.  When I wasn’t freaking out, I also ate breakfast in class.  A Chobani Honey Banana Flip.

That yogurt is my favorite Chobani product.  The bananas add the perfect amount of texture and sweetness to lighten up the Greek yogurt.

I also had an apple.

And a Target Candy Cane Chewy Cocoa Granola Bar in between class 1 and 2.

I had to hang around campus after lab to work in the computer lab and I ended up buying these Sea Salt Smart Fries as a snack from the book store.

This was my 2nd time trying the Smart Fries and I think I can officially say that I like them.  The texture is a little like a packing peanut but I mean that in the nicest way possible!  They are really satisfying to crunch through and you get a big serving (~65 pieces) for 110 calories.

I had a run errands this afternoon (you might notice that I didn’t actually do any exam studying today) and got a small container from the salad bar around 5:00.  A lettuce mix with some dressing (I don’t remember the flavor but it was sadly really bad) topped with cucumbers, cider glazed carrots, roasted brussels sprouts, and a giant scoop of chicken salad.

The chicken salad scoop was about half as mayo-y as it looks and two times as big as it looks.

I actually just got home a little while ago because I was out with friends.  We wanted to go see “Silver Linings Playbook” and it is only showing in one random theatre here so we made an excursion of it.  An exciting stop along the way…

FroYo Culture had their holiday flavors out!

I got gingerbread, eggnog, and Heath yogurts with crumbled gingerbread, Heath bits, shredded coconut, x-mas m&m’s, and marshmallow sauce.

Too exciting!  The gingerbread flavor was actually too spicy for me but the eggnog was perfect.  I’m pretty sure I’ll be going back to Willaimsville before the season is over.

The movie was worth the drive as well.  All three of us loved it.  The plot was a nice mix of funny, wrenching, and sweet.  Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, and Robert DeNiro were all amazing.  And there’s even a Julia Stiles cameo.  We laughed on the way home that it was funny to watch Julia Stiles play a support role in a dance movie.  <– “Save the Last Dance” still remains a favorite of mine.

And I ate a serving of Sun Chips while I wrote this post.

Food-food instead of snack-food would probably be a good thing tomorrow!

Did you see SLP?  Thoughts??

Chocolate, Croissants, Coffee, and Cuddling

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As my title indicates, it’s been a damn good day!  This is the most time I’ve gotten to spend with the husband in weeks.  Other than my short, 4-hour shift at work, we spent the whole day together.  There was studying I could have done, and I certainly could have eaten healthier food, but I’m calling today a raging success!

We started our morning by sampling last night’s baking efforts.

My Pumpkin Double Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Muffins earn two giant thumbs up.

Next we perfected my drinking chocolate recipe.

Two more thumbs!  I’ll be sharing that recipe on Halloween.

And finally, we settled in for croissants, coffee, “Chopped,” and cuddling.

I had a Wegman’s chocolate croissant,

and a small mug of coffee (cinnamon vanilla nut, brewed with ground cinnamon) with skim milk and sugar.

When we were at the store picking up croissants we snagged pimento cheese samples.

The cheese spread was only ok, but the baguette they served it on was perfection.

Lunch foods were a Cara Cara orange,

and baby carrots with blue cheese dressing.

I should have eaten more food and less chocolate because I was very hungry when I got out of work.  Co-op salads were consumed on the car ride home to stave off hunger and get in some veggies.  Ramen cabbage crunch,

and 5 bean and feta salad.

I had about half of each and handed the rest off to Adam.

A friend was coming over and we had to clean up our hovel, so dinner was snacky.  1.5 oz of smoked almonds with 1.5 Tbsp butterscotch chips,

and (2) 100-calorie bags of kettle corn with 2 Tbsp of melted butter.

I’m definitely not minding the vegan challenge as an excuse to eat up all of the cheese and butter!

While our friend was over, the three of us split this Crispin hard cider.

The Saint wasn’t quite as good as the honeycrisp variety, but it still got good reviews all around.  Not too sweet or sour.

Adam and I finished up the day with bbq and buffalo chicken pizza (from Zetti’s) while we got our Halloween movie on.

“Once Bitten,” aka the 80’s-fabulous vampire movie that was Jim Carrey’s first starring role.  OB always reminds me of my friend Lana Winter and is one of my favorite films for Halloween.

We did something super fun while our friend was over but I’m going to tell you tomorrow because I have to get into bed this very minute.  Good night!

Have you ever seen “Once Bitten?”

Hello, Pumpkin Month!

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I realize that open season on pumpkin began a few days ago, but work with me here.  My first day of the month was so fabulous that I couldn’t skip blogging it, even if a few days have passed.

I did, however, have my giant (soul-crushing) exam that morning so I started my day with a coffee energy drink from the vending machines.

But then I moved on to the juiciest, crunchiest, crispiest Jazz apple of the year.

Once home, I put the first wave into the fridge.

And made myself a salad.

– romaine topped with a heaping Tbsp each ground flax, buckwheat groats, and peanut sauce –

And soup.

– seaweed ramen –

I picked up a short, non-fat pumpkin spice latte on my walk to work.

Adam met me at the end of my shift and we walked over to Blue Monk so I could get the beer I’ve been coveting since September.

Southern Tier’s Pumpking!

It is sweet and squashy and smells like the best dessert you’ll ever eat.  <– which is funny because I actually hate pumpkin pie

And then I was wasted because apparently I’m a light-weight like no other.  In spite of my obnoxiously loud giggles, we forged ahead and got food too.

An appetizer of marinated olives and pickled veggies with sourdough bread.

I ate ~25%.

And we split the veggie burger.

– Artichoke and chickpea patty with fresh tomato jam, cilantro aioli, on a whole wheat bun and sweet potato fries –

I ate 50%, minus most of my bun.

On the walk home we stopped at Spot for fallish desserts.

My caramel apple cupcake was old and stale (I ate ~33%), but it was still a fabulous end to the evening.

….

And then Tuesday was my first clinic day at the hospital and it was ridiculous and I ate all of my meals on the go, with no camera, the end.

Crazy Cakes

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Crazy-cakes is one of my favorite expressions and for the post title I’m using it both figuratively and literally.  It is crazy stupid that I’m blogging at 1:30 a.m. on a Sunday.  Things have been crazy busy and the next two weeks are only going to get crazier.  Finally, I fulfilled a birthday list goal and made a crazy good cake.

The past few days have been crazy on the healthy living front but I want to blog them because I don’t live a healthy living blog, I live my life.  And in my life 90% of what I’ve consumed in the past week has been pizza.  I’ve decided that attempting to work out over the next week would actually be unhealthy because I’m already getting so little sleep (my planner is workout-free until October 10th).  I’m super stressed and not doing the best job of balancing school work with too many hours at my job.  But again, this is my life.

As I prewrote these posts in my head I had a lot to say, but now that it’s been 4 days since I last blogged I think we shall go WIAW-style for the recaps.  Note – there is no recap from Thursday because I took the day off from everything, took no pictures, caught up on “Awkward” and “Covert Affairs,” and ate pizza and Chinese food for dinner.  It was both necessary and delightful.

The Next 2 Weeks

  1. (9/26)  3 homework assignments are due
  2. (9/27)  the 4 major assignments from my community clinical rotation are due
  3. (9/28)  I’m presenting a journal article for my research methods class.  It is a 25 minute Powerpoint presentation and it makes up a large percentage of our grade.
  4. (9/28)  we have our first Microbiology test
  5. (10/1)  we have our first MNT test <– it is going to be so difficult that our teacher recommended that we all quit our jobs if we can
  6. (10/6)  two friends and I are driving to Philly for 4 days for a professional conference  <– fun, but also holy frick, when am I going to pack?!

Friday

Breakfast on the walk to school.  Zico Chocolate Coconut Water.

Muller Blueberry Bliss Frut Up.

Blueberry Bliss Luna Bar.

China Breakfast Tea with skim milk and a pb-chocolate magic straw while at work.

A See’s candy that my bosses brought us back from their trip to California.  (I had never tried See’s before and now I am a fast fan; soooo creamy!)

A caramel apple non-fat latte as I geared up for a late night.  (Cafe Aroma, Buffalo peeps.)

Wegman’s frozen cheese pizza and a sad salad of romaine and 1000 island dressing.

Cake!

One of my goals for my 27th year was to bake a cake from scratch.  I figured I’d only do this once, so I wanted a recipe that was delicious but didn’t call for cake flour.  After much pondering and Googling, I settled on this Hummingbird Cake recipe from Serious Eats.

If you’ve never had Hummingbird Cake before (I hadn’t!), it is a yellow cake with chopped pecans, crushed pineapple, and mashed banana in the batter that is frosted with cream cheese icing.  This combination of ingredients ends up being amazing.

I made the following changes to the recipe and they all worked out –

  • light brown sugar instead of dark brown
  • low-fat buttermilk
  • canola oil instead of vegetable oil
  • 1/3-reduced fat cream cheese

I baked the three cakes when I got home from work on Friday night.  This activity, of course, included a sprint to purchase more eggs at the co-op 10 minutes before it closed.

Then Saturday morning I layered and frosted helped Adam frost the cake.

His surgeon’s hands came in very handy.

It ended up being a big success!

I brought the cake to book club and it got two-thumbs up all around.  If I ever have to make another cake in the future I will definitely think of hummingbirds.

Both of my book club offers were pineapple-based, because I also made my Tropical Fruit White Sangria.

This batch was made with –

  • 2 cups chopped pineapple
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 cup Cruzan Guava Rum
  • 1 bottle Rosebud Gold (a local sweet white wine)
  • 10 oz lemon seltzer water

Saturday

Eaten before my 10 am shift at work because I had been up since 5:00 frosting and studying.  Leftover bbq chicken pizza and sliced apple.

Popcorn with Smart Balance Light.

A Zevia Cola at work.

A pizza bagel on my break.  (The Spot uses the very best tasting marinara sauce; it is super zesty.)

My friend picked me up from work and I immediately guzzled two giant glasses of sangria instead of helping her set up.

Book club food, a slice of cheese quesadilla with guacamole and mango salsa, plus two toasts with shrimp dip.

A slice of cake.

Drunkenly eaten at midnight, my 3rd serving of pizza for the day and carrots with french onion yogurt dip.

Sunday

Homemade cole slaw.

A slice of cake.

A See’s candy at work.

Dinner while grocery shopping.  Sweet and sour chicken plus wok-seared veggies.  (This was randomly really tasty and the best hot bar meal I’ve had in a while.)

A medium, non-fat (no whipped cream) Apple Steamer during our class study-session at The Spot.

Baby carrots and french onion yogurt dip while I wrote this post.

An Important Question

Don’t you think that the dog sort of likes like Oprah when he sits with his arms crossed like this?

Candied Bacon Pancakes

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I know that title drew you in, but a lot of stuff happened before the pancakes; it’s been two days!  It’s only Tuesday, but am allowed to say that this week sucks?  I still haven’t worked out (in fact, I slept through my last unlimited yoga class this morning and I’m so sad), I started reviewing class notes for upcoming tests and realized that I’m starting three weeks too late, and I’m in a terrible mood.  I wish I had a day to catch up but instead I had to go to stupid meetings and tomorrow I have to go on even stupider errands.  Bah!

Yesterday, I had a 0% Plain Oikos with a honey stick for breakfast.

Plus a Mott’s Caramel Hot Spiced Cider.

This appears to be another product so new that it’s not on the website.  It was also the start of an appletastic lunch.

Nature’s Path Apple Pie Crunch Chia Plus Bar (I’m loving these; my favorite parts is definitely the chia seeds),

GoGo Squeez Cinnamon Applesauce Packet,

and Apple Month candies.

Plus more candy in the form of a serving of Caramel Apple Sugar Babies when I got home from work.

They were the best Apple Month Candy yet!

Also when I got home from work, I had a total meltdown and Adam saved the day dinner by remembering our Living Social deal to SoHo Burger.

There was actually some nonsense with the deal and I’m pretty annoyed with SoHo Burger as a business, but the food was good and I need to get to bed soon so nevermind.

Adam and I split a Gimme Smore Spiked Shake.  (I ate 45%)  Chocolate fudge, roasted marshmallow, graham crackers, vanilla ice cream, Bacardi Select Dark Rum.

And an order of the Truffle Tater Tots.  (I ate 30%)  New twist on classic house made tater tots seasoned with truffle oil, parmesan cheese and parsley.

For my meal I did a burger and a salad.

A side Caesar (I ate everything but the croutons),

and a “naked,” aka without a bun, Turkey Burger.  (I ate 95%)  8oz fresh organic turkey breast topped with brie cheese and cranberry chutney.

We shared our leftover burger bites with the dog when we got home and he was very happy to see us indeed.

I got in bed the minute we got home.  Literally; I gave the dog his treats and then handed the husband my dress from under the covers!  And then I stayed there through my alarm clock and didn’t get up until I was an hour late this morning.  And I’m still tired.

Coffee with skim milk and a pb-chocolate magic straw was clearly how I needed to start my day.

Then I had a dipping plate.

2 servings of baby carrots,

in 3 servings (for only 150 calories!) of Cedar’s French Onion Yogurt Dip.

The dip was tangy, creamy, and delicious, and yet another product not found on the company’s website.  <– what is up with that lately?!

And a Butterfinger Pumpkin.

Speaking of unhealthy (but delicious) things, I impulse-bought lunch while I was making a much-needed grocery trip this afternoon.  Mac and cheese and sweet and sour chicken.  I didn’t have my camera and I can’t get the phone photo to format so you’ll just have to take my word that it was ridiculously unhealthy.

Speaking again of stupid but tasty purchases – I bought two more pumpkin beers!

Dinner was a two-course breakfast affair.  First, eggs.

Spinach and bok choy cooked in evoo and salt with eggs with light half & half and crumbled blue cheese.

Then candied bacon pancakes with a little maple syrup.

That picture wasn’t worth the wait, was it?

Let Apple Month Begin!

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When I go more than a day without blogging I do really miss it.  It’s clearly going to be an adjustment a year from now when I have a baby (hopefully) and a job (even more hopefully).

It’s felt like a long week (already!) and I only had time to pack one meal this morning so I went with breakfast.

A 1.5% Pineapple Oikos,

and a granola bar.

Today’s classes went well and I had time to run a few on-campus errands before work.  The mini grill from my confession post was part of a project I completed last night.  One of our clinical community assignments was to create an educational bulletin board on a nutrition topic.  I went with healthy grilling.

I had a friend snap a picture of me with it for my portfolio.

This assignment felt stressful because there is so much going on this month, but it was actually kind of nice to revisit my teacher days.

My options were limited and “lunch” ended up being this bag of Smart Fries.

They were fairly similar to packing peanuts but somehow that wasn’t a bad thing.  The flavor was mild but savory and a 1 oz serving (110 calories) included 60-something pieces.

I came home from work to a package from my mom celebrating the arrival of Apple Month.

Too funny that this box came on the same day that I had already blogged about being ready for apple goodies.  I took a few tastes as a snack.

Plus a few bites of Adam’s (not so good) mango.

I was glad that I didn’t snack too much because dinner ended up being a work of art.

Taste-wise it was art, that is, I know that the pictures are fairly dark and unappetizing.

(Ingredients that follow are listed for both Adam’s and my servings together.)

A bag of fresh baby spinach was steam-sautéed in evoo and chicken broth, then tossed with a big handful each blue cheese crumbles and dried cherries.

An amazing smokey fish salad.

A 6.7 oz can of Trader Joe’s Smoked Herring was mashed with lemon juice, Miracle Whip, smoked paprika, 1/2 cup shredded carrot, and 1 shredded green bell pepper.

We used the small holes on our cheese grater to shred the veggies and they ended up being an amazing addition.

A 1/2 serving of Special K crackers for dipping.

Delicious, delicious, delicious!

Have you ever had to make a bulletin board display?

Rocking Around The Clock

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The upcoming week is going to be busy, busy, busy and apparently today was the start of the craziness.  It’s not a good feeling to leave the house at 8:10 on a Saturday and already be running behind!

While running errands I did stop in at Dunkin Donuts to use a coupon I had for iced coffee.

With skim milk and toasted almond syrup.  The barista (are they still called baristas if it’s Dunkin?) gave me a giant sheet of new, exciting coupons so I’ll probably be back in the near future.

After running errands I ran to work (literally) in the pouring rain.  I packed a Oikos Low-fat Pineappe Greek Yogurt for breakfast.

Holy crap, it was good!  I couldn’t stop mmmmmning.  It was so thick, creamy, and sweet that it almost reminded me of a piña colada.

Adam ate my last serving of eggplant (jerk!) so I got co-op hot bar for lunch.

1 falafel, sesame cashew noodle salad with tons of veggies, 2 grape leaves, and some chicken salad.  The veggies in the noodles and the almonds in the chicken were my favorite bites.

When I got home from work, Adam and two of our friends were on the couch watching a movie.  Patrick and Michelle brought pizza!

I had a veggie slice,

plus a simple salad of romaine, flax, and lite honey mustard dressing.

Buffalo people – the pizza was from Mister Pizza and it was great.  The crust was somehow both thick and crispy and it was loaded with vegetables.

Our friends were over because we had purchased a Groupon together…

for rock climbing!  We climbed for two hours and it was exhausting and so much fun.

This year has been a total bust in the workout department but I actually felt like I did a little better this time than I did the last time I tried.  I mastered one fairly hard wall (ie not a kid’s wall!) and I was so proud of myself when I made it to the top.  At one point my arms and legs were so wide I was practically into a split.  <– bad ass

I’m going to make myself do a 4-minute workout and then I’m going to go pass out.  Good night!

Cheesy Eggplant Bake With Salad

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Nutrition (education, access, etc.) for underserved populations is topic that is important to me.  It’s the reason I quit my job as a teacher and the reason I’ll someday go back to teaching again, though my new lessons will be about healthy eating instead of English.  So, when Romano’s Macaroni Grill contacted me to see if I would write a post about their current partnership with Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry, I jumped at the opportunity.

Disclaimer – I am not being personally compensated for this post, though they will make a donation as thanks for my participation.  This is just a subject to which I am glad to bring awareness.

Here’s how it works – Macaroni Grill is enlisting the food blogger community to help end childhood hunger with a single post. By simply tagging #macgrillgive to a recipe, message or photo of their favorite Italian meal on their blog, Macaroni Grill will donate $50 to connect a child to up to 500 meals.  Readers can go into the restaurant and donate $2, and get $5 off their next meal; OR – share an artist inspired image from our Mac Grill Give Facebook Gallery and we’ll help connect a kid with 1 meal.

Here are some facts from No Kid Hungry –

  • 48.8 million Americans—including 16.2 million children— live in households that lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis. As a result, they struggle with hunger at some time during the year.
  • Food insecurity—the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food— exists in 17.2 million households in America, 3.9 million of them with children.
  • Rates of food insecurity are substantially higher than the national average among households with incomes near or below the federal poverty line, among households with children headed by single parents (35.1% of female-headed households with children are food-insecure) and among Black and Hispanic households.
  • Food insecurity is most common in large cities but still exists in rural areas, suburbs and other outlying areas around large cities.  25 % of households with children living in large cities are food-insecure.

My favorite (homemade) Italian meal is my Cheesy Eggplant Bake. 

It is so cheesy, hearty, and filling; you would never guess that each serving has less than 200 calories.  Being cooked in the marinara sauce makes the eggplant extra creamy and delicious.

What goes better with rich, cheesy food than a nice green salad?

On the side, we had romaine topped with ground flax, buckwheat groats, and lite honey mustard dressing.

It was an easy, tasty, wholesome meal.

Cheesy Eggplant Bake, serves 4

  • 1 to 1.5 pounds thinly sliced eggplant (approx. .25 inch thick)
  • 1 cup tomato sauce
  • 6 slices 2% provolone
  1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees Farenheit.
  2. Layer eggplant and tomato sauce into an 8×8 inch casserole dish; placing tomato sauce as the bottom and top layer.  You’ll most likely end up with three even layers of eggplant if your eggplant was sliced thinly enough.
  3. Bake 40 minutes.
  4. Remove from oven, top evenly with cheese, and return to oven for 10 additional minutes, until cheese is melted and beginning to brown.