Friday Afternoon – Saturday Afternoon

Well, I am still enjoying my vacation.  How are you enjoying your weekend?  After my last post the husband and I headed to a local favorite for some lunch.

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If you ever visit St. Thomas, Shipwreck is actually a bit overpriced, but we had a coupon.  I ordered the Buffalo Chicken Sub, which came with fries.

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Spicy buffalo chicken tenders with pepperjack cheese and blue cheese dressing, count me in!

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I let Adam eat 90% of my fries but I demolished my sandwich.  I have a serious weakness for buffalo chicken sandwiches (good thing I’m moving to Buffalo NY, eh?).  In general I am able to make healthy choices at restaurants, except when I am choosing to indulge, but no matter what my intentions I am powerless when I see this option!  The annoying thing is that it doesn’t even have to be so unhealthy – I would probably like it better with grilled chicken!  My problem in recreating them is that I’ve yet to find a sauce that tastes like “buffalo” to me.  Any suggestions?

After lunch we headed home for some showers.  Adam spent the rest of the afternoon playing chess with my dad but I drove back to school to do some work.  I spent 4 – 5:30 doing chemistry studying.

Next the family headed out for a fun dinner at Enkai, a new sushi spot.  It was right on the water so husband and I posed for some pictures.

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I love my hometown (duh, it’s an island!) but I had to do some Brooklyn representing!

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The restaurant was super cute,

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I love it when tablescapes are mismatched.  But the lighting was really dim so my pictures are all terrible.  I also have zero description because I couldn’t take my usual close-ups of the menu descriptions.  We started with some edame,

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which I pretty much polished off by myself, sorry guys!

My parents don’t really eat real sushi, as raw as they get is smoked salmon (because they are used to lox and bagels) so we stuck to tempora shrimp, lobster, crab sticks, and smoked salmon.  My mom dad and I split 4 rolls,

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here are my pieces –

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Everything was delicious!  When I looked at my camera later I realized I only ate 11pieces (aka 1.5rolls), no wonder I was still a little hungry.

After sushi fun we came home for more games 🙂 We are definitely trying to rope my parents into playing at least one game a day while we are here.  I made my mommy and I frozen coffees (4C cold, strong, coffee; 1tray ice cubes; 1/2C skim milk; 3/4C coffee chip ice-cream) while we played.

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They weren’t all that sweet, but they were super icy – perfection.  I also ate 3 more chocolate chip cookies.

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I’ve decided I’m done with the cookies, I physically cannot stick to just one.

After game time Adam and I headed out to meet up with some high school friends at Mojos, a new bar.  They had some good drink specials so I got a $2 strawberry mojito.

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I was driving so after that I stuck with small sips of the husband’s Cruzan Dark with Cokes.  We stayed out past 2 though so by the end of the night not drinking I had eaten most of this pack of Newman’s Own Organic mints.

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Peppermint tummyache was more than worth the good time we had with our friends though.

Saturday – dining delight

Our late homecoming only slightly effected our wake up this morning, we made it out the door before 8:30.  We had plans to meet some friends for lunch and I wanted to get some studying done so we decided to park ourselves at my favorite spot on earth – Barefoot Buddha Cafe.  We timed it so we could have both breakfast and lunch there, it is that good!

For breakfast I ordered the Bigfoot Bagel.

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Holy frick, I cannot even describe how good this is!  It has turkey bacon, egg whites, tomato coulis, spinach, aioli…..drool. 

We ate breakfast around 8:45 and then I spent 9 – 12 deep in chemistry.  When it was time to come up for air our lunch date had arrived.

I was in the mood for hot coffee so I ordered a vodoo latte; it has espresso and coconut milk.

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It was gorgeous, look at the heart –

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And for food I got a sweet potato wrap.

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It had sweet potato, chipotle sauce, goat cheese, and was pretty fantastic.  Not as good as my breakfast but pretty damn close!

After lunch we ran some errands with my mommy and at some point it seemed like a good idea to go to Wendy’s for a cookie dough twisted frosty.  {for which I magically seem to have no picture} This put me over the edge fullnesswise.  Looking back on this post there has been a lot of indulging in the last two days (I feel like that’s been the norm these last few months, that is good for fun times but not as a norm!).  I want to assume that it’s time for some leafy greens and light choices but being realistic we are headed to a fancy French spot tonight and I don’t see that happening.  Tomorrow (maybe!).

We will probably meet up with friends again after our French dinner but I’m not sure what the plan for tomorrow is.  Just in case anyone is wondering about the lack of beach time I wanted to address that: even though I grew up on an island I do love the beach, it is gorgeous even if you’ve seen it a billion times.  However, I am very careful with my skin – growing up on an island means even without tanning I’ve already had way too much sun exposure – so I don’t tend to calmor for the beach.  And right before this trip my husband had an abnormal mole removed from his back so for now I’d mostly rather keep him out of the sun.  How do you take care of your skin?

I was born and raised in St. Thomas, here are some fun facts about my island childhood –

  1. Down here we drive typical American cars (steering wheel on the left side) but we drive on the left side of the road.  The first time I had to drive on the right in the states it was pretty scary for me!
  2. I graduated from a private prep school in a class of 40.  I was very fortunate to be at private school (my mom is a teacher so we had tuition credits) because the year I graduated all of the local public schools were deemed non-accredited.
  3. I am a US citizen, but I can never run for president.  People born in commonwealths or US military bases outside of the US can, but people born in territories can not.
  4. Similarly, I could not vote in a presidential election until I established residency in the continental US.
  5. (Partly due to the lack of voting rights and partly because of the lack of highways) Even though we are a part of the US the drinking age here is 18 years old!!!

What are some fun facts about your hometown?

Wednesday Morning – Friday Morning

Hello, vacation-style!  I hope everyone is having a good week, the vacay has been nice and relaxing so far.  I’m in a bit of a time crunch today so I’ll try to keep this recap pretty brief.  Just fyi – I only have internet when I go to work with my mommy so I’ll be doing a recap every few days until I get back home.

Wednesday – travel day

Our flight was at 8:15am so we had to get up nice and early.  We had to leave our car in long-term parking so we actually drove to the airport.  Thankfully, Mapquestgot us there in time to get breakfast, of sorts.  There were not many restaurants and those that were there didn’t have full menus.  I ended up with a Wendy’s Maple Baked Frescuit with egg and cheese.

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It actually tasted pretty good; I love the sweet-savory combo so cheese with maple syrup was nice.  And when I looked up the nutritional information online this morning I learned that it only had 390calories.

Being at airports always makes me think about having kids (not that it isn’t on my mind anyways!).  Adam and I have always discussed how important it is to make exercise fun for kids – the more you make movement into a game the better.  Even now, when we come to a moving walkway one of us will ride and the other will walk alongside and we will race!

We had a straight flight, which meant we were at my house before 2pm!  My mom always has a gift waiting for me on the bed.

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I wanted to get right into reading but Adam needed to go to his old doctor to do some forms for medical school so off we went.  I ate a baggie of baby carrots during the ride.

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The husband took forever so my father and I ended up taking a long walk on the boat docks.  I drank a Ting.

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My parents cooked us a great dinner.

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WW pasta with parmesan cheese,

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spinach and tomatoes cooked in toasted sesame oil,

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and broiled salmon.

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I also ate a slice of dry sourdough toast.

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They did a great job, everything was delicious.  Also good was my snack.

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Huge cup of coffee with skim milk,

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and homemade chocolate chip cookies.

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We played Pictionary and cards and by the time we were done I had actually eaten 4 cookies!  My cookie control was down a bit because of booze 🙂

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My favorite drink on earth is oj with cinnamon Stoli.  They actually stopped making this Stoli, my mom and I have 2 of the last bottles available, but it is equally good with Goldschlager. We each had one, yum.

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Thursday – “it’s so hot!”

In spite of not staying up all that late playing games (my dad is pretty intense about bedtime, he is my sleep role model) we could not get going Thursday morning.  I was supposed to get up and work out but that did not happen.  I woke up 3hours later than planned, ate breakfast, and went back to sleep for the rest of the day.  The husband and I think it’s because it was so hot.  At least I did have a great breakfast.

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A small chopped nectarine, half a banana, and ground flax seed.

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Plus a Low Fat Pineapple Chiobani.

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This was the first time I ever saw this flavor and it was awesome, I hope this comes to NY!

After my intense napping session I managed to drag myself to the shower and get gussied.  We ended up eating at the restaurant right near where we got married so Adam and I had to take some pictures!  This spot is exactly where we said our wedding vows –

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We had a fun time, it is hard to believe it’s been so long since December 28th, 2007.  1.5years, we are not even newlyweds anymore!

After some rememberings we headed to dinner, I slept through lunch so I was pretty starving.  I started with a beyond fabulous passionfruit colada,

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and my dad and I split a sandwich and salad for dinner.

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Fire roasted chicken paninni sliced chicken breast, roasted red peppers, sun dried tomatoes, goat cheese, and a garlic and basil ailoi.

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Key Lime Caesar Salad.

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I ate half of everything.  The sandwich was good but a little greasy and I loved the salad, the lime cut through the usual creaminess wonderfully.

After dinner we went home for more board games and cards – Monopoly and Gin Rummy – we are serious nerds about game night!  I drank an iced coffee with skim milk, along with some desserts.

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First, two homemade chocolate chip cookies,

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and even better – Greek Gods Honey Greek Yogurt,

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frozen,

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oh yeah, this was so good!  Freezing Greek Yogurt (I’ve only tried it with flavored but I imagine that plain would be a lot like Pinkberry) turns it into slushy, granita-like goodness, I highly recommend it.

Friday– wake up!

Today, I managed to get my butt out of bed!  I went with my mom to an 8am spin class so we had to get up by 7.  We left extra early because we dropped Adam off at the beach, with a bucket of beer!  I ate this Luna Bar in the car for breakfast.

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The class was 60minutes of spin and floor work.  I don’t know if it was the sugary breakfast, that I was feeling sick yesterday, or that I’m out of shape, but my butt was kicked!  I felt so sick I actually had to sick down and skip the lunges.  I chugged some water and I’ve been sitting so I’m feeling a little better but it sucked at the time.

Now I’m hanging out at my mom’s library, hopefully headed towards some studying.  The husband and I are getting lunch soon so we’ll see what happens.  I will most likely be doing another post on Sunday, hope everyone has a great weekend!

For now, I will leave you with a list of the songs I played while I typed, found on my mom’s i-pod!!!

  • Viva la Vida – Coldplay
  • Single Ladies – Beyonce
  • Boom Boom Pow – Black Eyed Peas
  • Low – Flo Rida
  • Blame It – Jamie Foxx
  • That’s Not My Name – The Ting Tings

I Didn’t Have to Go to School Today

The title doesn’t really relate to anything, I’m just still excited about it 🙂

My parents really wore us out, we stayed in bed until 11am getting our sleep on!  When I did finally wake up I had a killer headache that knocked me back into bed for most of the day.  When I did finally get up we had no food so breakfast/lunch was this –

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I ate one row of this Riter Sport bar.

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I took care of some business and did some cleaning and then Adam and I headed to Trader Joe’s to fix the food situation.  I needed to eat something so I made a cup of this before I left.

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Vanilla hempmilk and No Sugar Added Strawberry CIB are a bad combo, lesson learned.

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I choked it down (with a fish oil pill) but I did not enjoy it.

We had a great time at Trader Joe’s but it took forever.  We went to Staples first so I could redeem a coupon and then we did some serious aisle wandering.  I was starving by the time we got home.  I ate this Yoplait Light Thick and Creamy Yogurt in cherry cobbler.

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Yums!  This is a 100calorie product that I am 100% behind.  I found this on a big sale the other day so expect to see a lot of them!  I also ate a serving of this TJ’s sliced Asiago cheese.

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Next we headed out for an easy run.  We did 2miles around the ‘hood.  My goal for June is to get back into running.  Here is my training schedule – I will do 3-4 runs per week

  • week 1 – 2miles
  • week2 – 3miles
  • week3 – 3.5miles
  • week4 – 4miles
  • week5 – 4.5miles

I have really bad joints so I’m forcing myself to really take it easy and be careful with them.

When we got home we got right down to dinner.  I ate a serving of these Newman’s Own Organics Spelt Pretzels.

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These are so tasty, they are my favorite type of pretzel.

Dinner was quick, easy, and delicious.  We threw together these ingredients in under 15minutes.

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We cooked the mac following the box directions and added 1.5C of frozen artichoke hearts in the last 3minutes.  After draining the pasta we stirred in the cheese powder and 1can of boneless skinless tuna.  I ignored the directions at that point, skipping the milk entirely and subbing evoo for butter. 

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Finally I topped my serving with 1.5T seasoned bread crumbs, 1T goat cheese, and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.

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This was so satisfying and delicious, I even made a recipe page for it!

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After a much-needed shower, it will be time for bed.  I have an early morning planned for tomorrow so I’ll see you then 🙂

What is your favorite thing to add to mac and cheese?  We always do canned tuna or salmon and some sort of veggie.