Tag Archives: sandwich

Time to Break the Cycle

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I’m back!  Hell Week part deux is over!

This past week wasn’t a total fail, but I wouldn’t call it a success either.  You see, there’s this cycle I’m trying to break.  I’m really ready to change, but right now it’s basically a schedule that goes like clockwork.  Here’s what goes down on weeks with multiple tests –

  1. I get really excited about all the studying I’m going to do.  I write up an intricate schedule of all the things I’m going to accomplish.
  2. I look at the schedule and get really overwhelmed.
  3. I get so overwhelmed that instead of studying for any of my tests, I stick my head in the sand like an Ostrich and watch Grey’s Anatomy.
  4. I stop going to the gym and I eat a bunch of crap, because I’m “busy.”  Except I’m not busy, because I’m not actually studying.
  5. I feel like crap physically (probably from eating crap) and mentally because I’m disappointed with myself.

This happens every time!  When I was a kid my dad used to tell me that the worst part of procrastinating when doing an unpleasant task is that in addition to doing the task you have to spend a lot of time thinking about it.  I know not to do this, but somehow it hasn’t quite clicked 😉

I didn’t have time for breakfast because I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off (not studying for my tests sadly, I had 4 papers to read for my Nutrition class this morning).  I did manage to warm up with a mug of honey vanilla chamomile,

and to do this –

That’s a good use of time people!

The papers presented in Nutrition today were actually fascinating – the impact of obesity on pregnancy, the benefits of breastfeeding, nutrition intervention in people with developmental disabilities – but I was too wound up to really focus.

We had a block of time before Orgo and I ended up buying a veggie sandwich while I studied.

Meh.  Too much bread, not enough veggie; I ate half.

Then it was time to face the music.  I think the hardest part was that I had the two tests back to back – I literally had to sprint from my Orgo exam to my Anatomy exam.  In the end things went better than they could have gone.  I’m guessing a B/C on the Orgo exam and a C/D (ugh!) on Anatomy.  Moving on…..

I’ve got a weekend of freedom!

Actually, we’ve got some excitement on the agenda tomorrow; Adam, Katie and I are going to run in a 5k!  I’m not even close to being ready for this race (when will I run something I’ve actually trained for?!?), but it will be fun to see if anyone comes in costume.

When I got home this afternoon I decided to dig deep, roll up my sleeves, and start working on breaking that cycle!  I reorganized my binder and got started on Orgo reading.  (go me!)  While I read I ate a crunchy snack.

A sliced cucumber,

and a serving of Sing Buri Cashews that Sahale Snacks sent me.

The nuts were soooo good.

The mix of cashews, peanuts, sesame seeds and dried pineapple was sweet and savory with just a perfect bit of spice.  I never like cashews when they are by their lonesome, but in mixes like this they are divine.

Plus a small vegan pecan pumpkin blondie.

And then it was time for a quick dinner.

(That’s on the small plate from my blondie)  I reheated some leftover roasted broccoli in 1/2 Tbsp of butter, then scrambled in two Eggland’s Best eggs, and topped with a dollop of chunky salsa.

Yum, I love eggs with broccoli!  When I cook eggs I let the yolk and white set separately for a while before I scramble; it gives them the best texture.

Dinner had to be quick because we were meeting a group of friends for a movie.  I packed my own snack, a small assortment of candy from the bulk bins.

Sidenote – when I get candy from the bulk bin I pick and choose the exact pieces I want.  I generally take 1-2 pieces of each candy (that’s 1 jordan almond or 1 gummy bear), it takes at least 10minutes, and I drive the husband crazy.

Anyhoo, we saw “Red” and it was hysterical!  Everyone in the group agreed that it was one of John Malkovich’s best movies.  Two thumbs up.

What is your favorite action comedy?

Facts of Fall

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There is nothing pumpkin can’t do.

The weather in Buffalo today was beautiful!  In lieu of a formal workout, Adam and I took a long walk to soak it in.

Today included too much snacking and not enough studying.

The words in this post are lacking (just wrote “snacking,” whoops!), but I will at least show you everything I ate today; plus some “Fall” photos for funsies.

Arnold’s WW Sandwich Thin, Laughing Cow Blue Cheese, 3 slices of turkey.

Mini Vanilla Tootsie Roll, x2.

Baby carrots and ranch.

Small slice of pizza from the school food court where we were studying.

Leftover Loaded Potato Soup (make it, seriously!).

Waffle fries (more potatoes?!) doused in salt and vinegar.

Allie’s Vegan Pumpkin Pecan Blondies.  Note – I halved the oil, substituted the spices (little bit of pumpkin pie spice, lotta bit cinnamon and nutmeg), and used light brown sugar and these still came out fabulously!

What signs of fall are popping up in your area?  What’s been your favorite pumpkin goodie so far this season?

Ending Sandwich Week with a Full Court Press

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Okey doke; It’s Friday night, I have a Modern Family and CSI to catch up on, and a husband waiting on the couch!

I had a ton of reading to do today before class so breakfast at home was a no-show.  I did however get all my reading done, and I learned a lot about nutritive and nonnutritive sweeteners (with and without calories).  Because knowledge is power – The ADA says that

  • There is no definitive link between obesity and sweeteners alone
  • Your body knows no difference between sugars; an apple or a soda, the sugars are all processed the same (that’s not to say that the fiber, and nutrient piece doesn’t matter)
  • There is no proven link between sweeteners and hyperactivity in children,
  • but there is some evidence that suggests a link to depression
  • Stevia has yet to be approved by the FDA

I had just a few minutes after class to pick up my portfolio project (100%) and grab food before heading to a group meeting.

PB&J wasn’t the healthiest option, but it was the cheapest, and not the unhealthiest.

Hours later, when I got out of Anatomy all I could think about was going home.  I was hungry, tired, and cold and the last thing I wanted to do was go work out.  But I told myself if I went to the gym I could buy a cookie, so I did!

We are actually running in a 5k next weekend (what, another race I’m not prepared for!?!?) so I’m trying to be gentle to my legs this week; expect to see a lot of walking breaks on the treadmill.  Today’s workout was all about the intervals –

5minutes walking, 1 running, 1w, 2r, 1w, 3r, 1w, 4r, 1w, 5r, 1w, 5r, 5w.  So, 15minutes walking, 20minutes running, 35minute workout.

Adam picked me up from the gym and we spent forever driving around, accomplishing nothing.  Sometimes it’s nice just to be together.  Plus, we split some chewy Starbursts.

When we got home it was more than time for a salad.

I topped a bed of dressed spinach with craisins, blue cheese, and some almonds from Sahale Snacks.

Divine.

Since it’s the last day of Sandwich Week I decided to go out with a bang –

or a press rather; paninis!

Step 1 – Spread some thin sliced sourdough with dijon mustard and hot pepper peach preserves (or any kind of preserve really, you just want to give it a bit of sweet).

Step 2 – Add a few pieces of thin-sliced turkey.

Step 3 – Crumble on some blue cheese.

Step 4 – Top the cheese with some thinly sliced pear.

Finally – close and press.

This sandwich was fantabulous!  The texture of paninis always drives me wild and the combo of flavors was perfect; a bit spicy, a bit sweet, and bit salty.

Make this at home!  Send me pictures!

We’re going to go find a fountain diet coke and then cuddle up on the couch.  Have a great Friday night!

Alternative Night

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It’s been a strange sort of day ’round these parts.  Very glad it’s almost Friday!

Things started off quite well, with a shockingly good bowl of oats for breakfast.

Cooked: 1/3 cup oatmeal, 1/3 cup each skim milk and water, 1 medium banana, ~1/3 cup canned pumpkin, and a pinch of salt.

Topped: 1 Tbsp each chunky peanut butter and butterscotch chips.

This was ah-MAZE-ing!  I don’t know if it’s the stove top cooking, the banana, the extended cooking time, or what, but my recent attempts at oatmeal have been my best yet.

The texture of this bowl reminded me of tapioca pudding (creamy with bits of chew) and the banana turned into banana clouds of awesomeness.

Awesome as it was, I could not finish this bowl.  Even with only 1/3 of a cup of oats, the banana, and the pumpkin, plus the decadent toppings were just too much.  I ended up leaving a couple of bites behind.

You can be sure I picked all of the banana clouds out first though 😀

And from breakfast things went downhill…..  My Anatomy quiz went ok, and lab was no more frustrating than usual, but halfway through class I was unbelievably nauseous.  I felt like I was going to throw up and I was light-headed and queasy.  The sick feeling continued all throughout the day, at one point in my food lab I actually had to go sit down.

I’m not sure what exactly caused it, because I’m feeling ok now.  Too much sugar for breakfast?  Hunger?  Residual effects from my flu shot?

Call my crazy, but in spite of my quease-factor I pushed through between classes and made a visit to the gym.  What?!  I went to school dressed in gym clothes and I wasn’t about to “waste” a day without a cute outfit!  I did 30 (difficult) minutes on the elliptical, random, level 6.  Those 30minutes were the best I felt all day!

I did feel significantly worse once the gym-high wore off though.  Extra bad news for me, a group in food lab made cheesecake today and I was too sick to eat it 😦  I did have to take a few bites of my group’s experiments, but nothing photoworthy – 3 bites of grilled cheese with different processed cheeses and small bites of puddings made from a mix and whole/2%/1%/skim milk.

I dragged myself home after lab and parked myself on the couch.  Sidenote – I have a deeply ingrained habit of rocking myself back and forth when I’m sick I and it drives the husband crazy!  Around 5, when he was fully ready to throttle me, I redeemed myself by pulling out a coupon for this –

ColdStone has debuted fall flavors!  I got a “small” cup of cookie batter and caramel apple ice cream (swoon!) with some caramel Ghirardelli mixed in.

I know it sounds insane but I felt so much better after I ate this!  I think my nausea at that point was just hunger.

Revived, I decided to do an “alternative” sandwich for tonight’s dinner.

The Wafflewich!

I used a serving of Van’s Berry Boost Waffles as my base, and sandwiched chicken salad (stewed chicken from Tuesday, mayo, pickle relish), a slice of melty Colby cheese, and a drizzle of maple syrup in between.

The waffles got a bit mushy when I microwaved them to melt the cheese, but other than that this was delicious.

Tomorrow?  The final night of Sandwich Week, a ton of school work to make up in the early morning, and some vegetables!

What “alternative” sandwiches have you created?

Jump in De Line, Rock Your Body in Time

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Ugh-dates –

1. The Wegman’s blueberry coffee is just not good 😦  It has a super burnt bitter taste.  I even added sugar (and skim milk) to my second cup and I still didn’t like it.

However, Adam says I can’t buy more until this is gone and there are some holiday flavors I’m excited about so I’ll be slugging this down.

2. The Orgo notes assignment that was due today took up my entire morning.  I was so slammed for time I couldn’t even eat!  Must work on the weekends, must work on the weekends, must work on the weekends….

UP-dates –

1. The husband has been bringing chocolate chip pumpkin squares to school and his classmates like them so much someone even requested the recipe!  It’s not actually my personal recipe (thanks, Martha), but it’s nice to feel like a good wife.

2. I lit a cinnamon pumpkin candle this morning and it brought my Halloween corner of the mantle to life.

Anyway, I didn’t have time to eat so I packed myself 2 servings of Sahale Snacks to munch during Orgo.

After my first set of classes I spent yet more time dealing with transfer credits and my class schedule.  The good news is that I’ve had two victories; the bad is that I call BS on the fact that they won’t accept my writing credits.

I spent so much time that I almost didn’t make it to the gym before lab.  I had to rush rush rush and eat food from the vending machine while I hightailed it across campus.

A pre-gym Rice Krispie treat is better than no fuel at all!

And a short work out is better than no gym time at all.  I did a quick treadmill session.

Lab went quickly tonight – all we were doing was building models – and I was home in time to make a nice dinner.  First though, I made a nice snack.

A Caramel Oikos with canned pumpkin and homemade pb.

I was starving when I got home and I didn’t want to be too hungry to enjoy my dinner.

And dinner was delicious;

I claim the 2nd night of Sandwich Week to be a success!

BLTs.  Rather, TBSTs – turkey bacon spinach tomatoes.  On sourdough with a smear of homemade mayo.

We ate roasted asparagus on the side.

Yum!  And this took all of 10minutes to throw together; dinner really can be healthy, tasty, and quick all at once.

We shelled out a bit of extra cash and bought Applegate Farms bacon; it is so much better than the other varieties we’ve had.

Turkey bacon doesn’t really make ‘bacon grease,’ but it does stick to the pan and make delicious browned bits.  There’s no chance I’m letting that go to waste; I scraped up the browned bits with a scrambled egg.

We got in the October spirit by watching “Beetlejuice” while we ate.  I love that movie, but I don’t think I’d realized before how sad it is.

I’ve got an Anatomy Lab quiz tomorrow to study for (announced at the last minute, arrrgh!), so I’m off!

What do you like on your BLTs, ya know, beyond the B, L, and T?  M (mayo or mustard)?  S&P? C(heese)?

Start of Sandwich Week

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Some bloggers have their dinner posts up before I even eat dinner, how do they do it?!?  We’re on a pretty late schedule here, but it works well for us.

That Paula Red apple was mealy and sad, I traded it off to the husband (he liked it!).  Instead I ate a Crispin apple with a spoonful of peanut butter.

My night class got out super early today, and I completed the online quiz and walked home all before 7; score!  I celebrated with a small piece of pumpkin chocolate chip square.

Btw – the husband has demolished these bars, almost all of them are gone!  He took a container to school today and said all of his classmates freaked out about them as well.

Now, on to sandwich week……

Since it’s already Tuesday into the week, I decided to start things off with a bang.  What’s that?

Oh, nothing.  Just homemade from scratch mayonnaise!

It took team work, and more time than predicted, but in the end we were victorious; go us!  I used the recipe from Katherine Darling’s Under the Table – which is an amazing book in general, I highly recommend it – but you could easily Google a recipe.

The sandwich vehicle for the mayo was Buffalo chicken subs, which came together in a snap.

I slow-cooked chicken breasts in a bit of broth for 8hours on low today and then shredded the meat with two forks.  Then I doused two servings worth in Buffalo sauce.  Next we stirred crumbled blue cheese into two portions of mayo.  Finally we spooned and spread that fantasticness onto split rolls.  Perfection.

Seriously, I can’t even handle this picture.

This was way healthier than a fried chicken sandwich and much much tastier!  Speaking of health, as I told Adam – “I dont’ care that we forgot the asparagus, I’ll be damned if I’m serving blue cheese and mayo but no veggie!”  So we made a quick side of microwaved kale.

Very, very not good.  But I choked it down for the nutrients.

All together, even with bitter, chewy kale, the meal averaged out to be fantastic.

A fabulous start to Sandwich Week.

Do you eat mayo or does it skeeve you out?  Have you ever made your own mayo?  In general I’m not a big fan; I’ll eat Miracle Whip in tuna and chicken salads, but I prefer mustard varieties.  I was pretty jazzed about it tonight though 🙂

A Few Highlights

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Between a dying camera battery and an unshakable bad mood I couldn’t quite get it together to blog today.  I’ll just share some highlights….

For breakfast I tried out the Zone Perfect Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Dough bar.

It wasn’t as good as Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (because really what is?) but it held its own.  The texture was pure cookie dough and the inclusion of raisins was a lot of fun.  The flavor wasn’t too sweet and this didn’t have any sort of chemical taste at all.  Plus, this variety is a bit lighter at 170calories and 1.5grams of saturated fat.

Lunch was a sad-sack of a Buffalo chicken sandwich.

Highlight of the day was a honey vanilla caramel apple.

I linked to the recipe yesterday, but I’m going to do it again (click me!) because it’s so crucial that you make this.  Seriously.

 What is your prefered color of highlighter?  I’m a purple girl myself.

Rye Sense of Humor

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This is a late lunch post because I ate a late lunch – my oatmeal held me over until 3pm!

I had forgotten to take my planned leftovers down from the freezer, so I settled on a nice sandwich plate instead.

That’s a slice of toasted rye, topped with Miracle Whip and pickle relish, stacked with 3 thin slices of turkey and 2 slices of 2% colby cheese, stuck under the broiler for 5minutes.

I kept it open-faced because I want to really taste the cheese and not just a bunch of bread.  I will say though, I definitely enjoyed having the rye (with carraway seeds!).  When I was growing we always had rye in the fridge; I never even tasted white bread until I was in college!  Maybe that’s why I have such a wry sense of humor….. 😀

Some baby carrots on the side for crunch.

This was the perfect one-handed meal to eat while I worked on my laptop.  I crunched and munched my way through part of a group project.

The plan tonight is an easy dinner, a fun dessert, and hopefully switching out our winter and summer wardrobes.  Oh, and some more school work!

What kind of bread was in your childhood fridge?