Tag Archives: sauce

Measure It Monday

by

It’s hard to measure where I am in my sickness because my symptoms keep changing.  I feel much more perky but my congestion and seal-cough continue.  I would say I’m 2-3 days from well?  Hopefully!

One vestige of deathly sickness that remains is my complete and total lack of interest in breakfast.  As a future RD I know the morning meal is important, but I just can’t make myself eat it right now.  I did get a big coffee when I got to campus though.

Grande nonfat latte with 1 pump of Irish Cream syrup, delicious.

As foretold, lunch was dinner’s twin.  A serving of Newman’s Own 4 Cheese Pizza,

and roasted green beans.

Plus some fruit snacks my mom sent during the break between classes.

We’re learning about breast-feeding in my Nutrition Throughout the Life-cycle class and it is so interesting!  The benefits of breast vs. bottle are immeasurable, even more vast than I had previously thought.  Plus we are exploring (just a bit) the socioeconomic factors that come into play.  Fascinating!

Random sidenote – I walked to and from school today in jeans and Adam’s sweatshirt, no coat!  Boo-yah.  The temperature is set to drop again tomorrow but I’m getting very excited about spring.

While prepping dinner I snacked on (an exact) serving of Popcorners.

Do you measure out things like chips, or just eat from the bag?  I only put my hand in a bag of chips if I’m planning on eating the entire thing, which I sometimes do!  Otherwise I always use my food scale to measure out a serving.  When it comes to snack foods like chips, the difference between 1-2 servings in satiety and satisfaction is nill, but the caloric difference can be huge.

Dinner was quick and easy but so tasty and wonderful.

Only 4 ingredients and no measuring required.

Goat cheese tortellini, butter toffee almonds, cubed butternut squash, and balsamic vinegar.

Cook the pasta as directed.

Roast the squash.  Actually, roast the squash, get nowhere, and finish it off in pan with a bit of butter.

Reduce the vinegar.

Combine everything (plus nuts) and fall in love.

This was perfect; a little savory and a little sweet.  Plus, you really can’t go wrong with goat cheese.

I made myself a broiled grapefruit for dessert.

But then I discovered that I hate grapefruit.  Oh well, at least I know.

Instead I had a cupcake.

Not just a cupcake though.  I just took the picture to show you guys how cute and perfect it was.

Instead I crumbled it over a Stonyfield 0% Chocolate Underground Yogurt,

for a much less cute, much more delicious treat.

Say it with me – “Mmmmmn!”

What sort of foods do you measure?  Do you use cups/spoons or a food scale?  I measure cheese, snack items, cereal, peanut butter and maple syrup.  Plus a few other things I’m sure I’m forgetting.

10, 9, 8…

by

I have 10minutes to blog before I have to get back to the husband.  My articles were not correct and now he’s helping me scour the medical databases for more.  Ready, set, go!

1st, the Sandwich Thin I ate for lunch today was delicious.  I loved the oats sprinkled on top.  2nd, I was starving when I got home from school this afternoon so I ate this packet of cashews,

from a Valentine’s package from my parents.

I also had a handful of pretzels that escaped the camera.

Finally, dinner.

I whipped up two servings of my Easy Peasy Peanut Noodles for Adam and I.  We used linguine with broccoli and yellow squash.  I went ahead and steamed a bunch of veggies to have on hand the rest of the week.

The final dish turned out delicious.  This was the first time Adam has tried my peanut sauce and now he is totally smitten!

Minutes to spare!

Success x2

by

So my baking project this afternoon was Jenna’s recipe for perfect chocolate chip cookies.

You know, the one with a whopping 14 Tablespoons of (browned!) butter.  No big.

I actually wasn’t sure I did everything right at first, because the dough was very strange and sticky.  I was so worried about them that I made a few less cookies than the recipe called for and tried my hand at some cookie muffins instead.

The cookies turned out fine fantastic, but the “muffins” were still a damn good idea.

I found the smallest muffin and cookie in the batch, and scarfed one of each before dinner.

Queasy tummy, happy tummy.  Adam says they’re the best chocolate chip cookies he’s ever had.

Rounding out my fun-to-do’s from yesterday, I also made a banging dinner.

Dinner’s inspiration was these snowman pasta my aunt sent us for Hanukkah.

I cooked the pasta, following package directions, stirring in ~1cup of frozen peas towards the end of cooking time.  I also sautéed some chopped baby mushrooms in 1T of butter. <– Best taste ever!  Finally, I whipped up a batch of this Lemon Cream Sauce from Cooking Light. (Note – I only made the sauce, not the rest of the recipe, and I substituted in light cream.)  The end result was fantastic.

I loved how firm the pasta stayed and the sauce added a great fresh flavor without being too heavy.

We also ate some roasted green beans on the side.

Sort of a perfect dinner.

And now I’m about to tuck in to the perfect dessert; a final cookie with a glass of skim milk.  Good night!

It’s All About Your Perception

by

This morning there was an issue with the alarms – Adam actually slept through his first class! – so the big breakfast I had planned couldn’t happen.  We were in such a rush leaving the house it was not until I sat down in the car that I realized I hadn’t washed my face, brushed my teeth, or put on make-up!!!  Thank goodness I managed to grab this PB Cookie Lara Bar for breakfast.

When I got to Anatomy Lab it seemed like bad-news-bombs were just dropping all over the place –

  • we have a homework assignment, and my group’s is due even though the apparatus we were given was broken
  • I only scored a 75% on last week’s quiz
  • we now have a quiz next week (that brings my quiz/exam total for next week up to 5!)

But you know what?  My morning was better than their’s –

It’s all about perception; when things seem bad you’ve got to put them into perspective before you get upset.  By the way – yes, we did a frog lab; yes, it was awful.  I wasn’t bothered by the cats at all but Mr. Hops made me pretty sad.

In my break between labs I did some Orgo reading and ate lunch.  Plums (why did I buy so many of these?!),

and another turkey/Laughing Cow/Sandwich Thin.

Today’s Food Lab experiment was fat cookery.  My group had to prepare deep-fried Pakoda (Indian-style veggie tempura), pan-fried catfish, and fried bread (to experiment with the effects of the quality of the cooking oil).  The small room got pretty crazy with five groups frying, the smell was out of control!  I had to take three (small) bites of fried bread so I could write up my lab report and it was pretty nauseating.  I just took a tiny plate of food at the end.

Next week we are doing fruit, and I am much more excited to sample then!

I actually felt pretty sick just from that small amount of fried food, but I knew that the gym would make me feel better.  30minutes on the elliptical, random, level 6.  I kept my workout short because I was feeling awkward about just how bad I smelled!  My hair and skin are like smell sponges; when I worked at Cold Stone in high school the smell of waffle cones would waft off of me for days!

I took a shower as soon as I walked home (and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed!).  Then Adam and I took a quick fountain diet soda walk and got started on dinner.  I was actually so hungry after our walk that I ate this mini bag of kettle korn while we cooked.

Dinner was three simple steps.  Prepare some quinoa.

Pan-steam eggplant and spinach.

Make a quick curry sauce out of 0% Plain Stonyfield, curry powder, garlic powder, onion powder, and brown sugar.

Serve and consume.

Adam thought this was going to be gross and he ended up pleasantly surprised, and I thought it would be wonderful and ended up underwhelmed.  It’s all about perception!

Have you ever been so tired (or rushed!) that you forgot to brush your teeth?

Peanut Butter Perfection

by

I ended up being too lazy to go get a snack, to the point where I actually didn’t eat anything until my late (8:30) dinner.  In college Adam and I used to joke that I was too lazy to ever get fat, but I guess that doesn’t apply when your apartment is 5feet from a bar with jalapeno nachos!!  😀

Dinner was all about that new jar of peanut butter.

How good does that look?!?  Parsnip fries, OIAJ bases, pasta, is there nothing nut butters can’t do?

I basically made a single serving of my Easy Peasy Peanut Noodles.

  1. Place a pan over medium-high heat.  Add in half a chopped yellow squash, half a chopped zucchini, s&p, and 1/2cup water.  Cover and cook for 5-8minutes, stirring occasionally.
  2. When the veggies are done to your liking place them on a separate plate, taking care to dump out any extra water left in the pan.
  3. Heat 1T evoo in the pan.  Add 1 serving cooked linguine and cook 3-5minutes, stirring occasionally.  You want the pasta to start to brown and get a bit crispy.
  4. Meanwhile, in a small bowl whisk together 2T chunky peanut butter, 1T rice vinegar, 1T tamari, and 1t sugar.  If your peanut butter is very firm you might want to give it 30seconds in the microwave before added the other ingredients.  I like to do this step in my dinner bowl so the sauce that sticks to the sides doesn’t get wasted.
  5. Add the veggies back into the pan with the pasta.  Pour the sauce over the pasta and veggies and carefully fold it in with a wooden spoon until everything is coated.

I ended up with a huge, delicious plate of food.

The balance of sweet and savory in the recipe is spot on.  If you aren’t vegan, I would also recommend scrambling in an egg at the last minute.

I may have been too lazy for a snack, but dessert is definitely on my horizon!  I’ll update later if I end up eating anything else.

*****Updated to add – we had to go move the car so I decided to make a trip to the Co-op to pick up the essentials; i.e. more vegan yogurt to eat watermelon with 🙂  I did also grab dessert.

Rice Dream Mocha Pie, done and done. 

This question has been all over blogworld recently but it fits with this post – what is your favorite way to eat peanut butter?

Attitude Adjustment

by

Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical.  ~ Yogi Berra

Baseball, running, swimming, whatever your physical activity of choice, I’m convinced that Yogi had it right.  Proper fueling aside, the success of any given workout really comes down to your attitude.  Today’s swim, for example, had all the makings of a bad workout.  I had to share my lane for a while and I felt really slow and cumbersome.  But today was the very last time I’ll have access to the UB pool and I wanted to make the best of it.

55minutes later I had swam 60lengths and I felt great.  Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.

It’s a little less exciting when you realize that 60lengths is still only 4500feet.  I swam for almost an hour and I still didn’t finish a mile?!?  Once I see the pool at Buffalo State if I decide to keep up my pool work outs I think some swimming lessons are in order 😉

I told myself I could get an iced coffee if I stayed in the pool for an hour (sometimes bribing works too!) so I stopped into Dunkin Donuts on the way home.

They were less than pleased with my modified order, which ended up being basically a mash-up of three different drinks.  A medium dark roast iced latte with skim milk, no sweetener, and coconut flavoring.

In the end, the lunch I made once I got home was far more exciting than the coffee.

I swear on a stack of cases of diet coke that there is nothing more tasty than a veggie bowl!  It seems like if it has veggies and is cooked in a skillet it’s going to taste delicious.  Today’s mix was something random from the top of my head and I am a genius, just putting it out there! 

  1. I put 2/3cup frozen peas in a skillet over medium-high heat.
  2. Once they de-iced I removed the peas from the pan and added 2t of evoo.
  3. Then I added 1 small neon eggplant, chopped and a sprinkle of salt.
  4. I let the eggplant cook, cook, cook; 5-7minutes until it the edges were getting nice and burnt.
  5. Meanwhile I whisked together a mixture of ketchup, honey, and oj in a small bowl.  (approx. 3T ketchup, 2T orange juice, and 1T honey)
  6. Finally I reduced the heat to medium-low and poured my sauce over the eggplant.  I gave them a minute to get acquainted before I put the peas back into the mix and gave a few stirs.

Man, oh man, oh man!

The rest of the afternoon looks like a mix of the binder project and my continued swooning over lunch.  Peace!

What helps you to have a really good workout?  Do you have a personal mantra?

Hitting the Dessert

by

Thanks for all the support on my weight gain post, you guys are the best!  However, not one of you commented on the Cartman tie-in, apparently your senses of humor are a little more mature than mine?

Since today was my last day of volunteering I made full use of my lunch voucher and got a slice of the awesome cafeteria pizza.

I rounded it out with veggies at home.

Kale chips,

and part of a red bell pepper and baby carrots,

dipped into some homemade 1000island dressing (1T miracle whip, 1T ketchup, 2T pickle relish).

It ended up being quite the good lunch.

And a serving of Theo Bread and Chocolate bar for dessert.

I also had a bag of Pretzel M&Ms while I worked on my recipe binder.

Once the husband got home at 7 I got dinner in the oven before heading to the gym.  Note – I did some snacking while I cooked (1handful of chips, 1/2handful of cheese, and 2spoonfuls of filling).

If I’ve said it once I’ll say it a million times (sorry!) being able to move again feels great!  I will never take fitness for granted again.  I had a few twinges in my leg today so I did keep it easy though.  25minutes on the elliptical at level 5.  Followed by 10minutes of arms/abs/stretching when I got home.

By the time I got out of the shower dinner was looking pretty darn tasty.

The recipe comes from Everyday with Rachael Ray, Chicken Salsa Verde Bake.  It is definitely NOT terribly healthy, but it’s the last thing I’ll cook before Vegan Month so I went all out for the husband.  You can click the link (recipe name) for the recipe but here were my changes –

  • I boiled the chicken instead of pan cooking it
  • I used 1.5lbs of meat and subbed in a 15oz can of black beans to fill in the rest of the protein
  • I used low-sodium beans
  • I subbed in shalots for the onion
  • I used low-fat sour cream

It’s calorie-dense, but very filling and delicious.  A good mix of creamy yet crunchy and tangy and spicy yet creamy.

I ate half a red pear alongside my portion.

Dinner = done.

Hope everyone else is having a *sweet* start to their week!

What is your favorite South Park episode?

Fantastic Fettuccine

by

Happy Friday!  The husband and I are cuddling up to watch the latest “Bones” as soon as I’m done so I’ll keep this quick.

Tonight’s dinner recipe came from Cooking Light, Fettuccine Alfredo with Bacon.  Click the name for a link to the recipe.  Per usual, here were my changes:

  • Subbed in 6slices of extra-lean turkey bacon (and 2T butter); and stirred the bacon into the pasta
  • Subbed in 1/3cup chopped red onion for garlic
  • Subbed in fat free milk
  • Skipped the addition of cooking water

Our meal was fantastic!

I had a small serving of pasta with roasted asparagus on the side.

The pasta was creamy and chewy and oh-so-tasty!  It was filling without being too heavy and the sauce turned out perfectly.

I thought I hated Alfredo sauces, but I think maybe I just needed bacon 😉 Plus I’m not at all a fan of full-fat dairy so the fact that this had skim milk instead of cream was perfect for me.

And the asparagus was outstanding.

This was the first time we tried roasting and of course it was the best ever; roasting is my favorite method for every veggie.  It ended up almost hollow.  The stems were wilted and perfect and the tips were amazingly carmelized and crunchy.

Can you tell I was in love with dinner?

I’ve got mid-show dessert planned already.

Single-serving of dulce de leche ice-cream is sure to hit the spot.

I hope everyone else had a great Friday!  See you Saturday.

What is your favorite ‘lightened up’ dish?  Do you enjoy ‘lite’ options or would you rather indulge sparingly? 

P.S. My camera was charging but I also ended up snacking on a big bowl of popcorn and a serving of blue corn chips.