Beenie Weenies

by Emily

I stayed up until almost 2am last night getting myself on the right page study-wise; yuck! I was so tired and distracted that I probably would have been better off just going to bed but it felt good to check “make notecards” off of my list. I’ve had a busy day so I haven’t gotten to review as much as I’d like but I’m going to make an early(ish) bedtime my priority today. Thank goodness for the 3-hour break between classes before tomorrow’s exam!

I slept in instead of showering (it’s also possible I’m still wearing the shirt I went to bed in last night, but that’s neither here nor there) but I did leave myself time to make breakfast.

They’re back! Pumpkin smoothies are one of my favorite things about October; they just don’t feel right during other months. They are squash-y and just a bit sweet and the texture is more pudding than smoothie which makes them all the more fabulous.

For 1, I blended –

1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup Wegman’s 0% Plain Greek Yogurt
1/2 cup Plain Silk Almond Milk
1 Tbsp maple syrup
2 big shakes pumpkin pie spice

I didn’t have time to pack lunch so I was excited when I found out we were doing some cookie sampling in class (I split 2 with a friend).

Nevermind! We were making sure that some prepared mixes hadn’t gone bad before we used them for a bake sale next week but these had definitely expired. The white chocolate chips were rancid and gave me the worst chemical feeling in the back of my throat, like my nose was being scorched. One small bite of each was definitely enough!

I fled to the vending machines for relief, at that point I probably would have eaten beef jerky to get the taste out of my mouth.

Thankfully I found peanut M&M’s and didn’t have to resort to jerky 😉 I shared with friends and probably ate ~2/3 of the package.

I had a 2:45 orthodontist appointment so I stayed at school after class to get a bit of work done. Then I had to go to the post office, then I had to take the dog on a long walk… I haven’t really been mentioning No Take-out ‘Tober because it’s been pretty easy but this afternoon was the first time I wanted to run screaming into an eatery. We were mid-walk, 8 hours since I’d eaten breakfast, and let’s just say Webster was glad I’m semi-vegetarian or I would have tried to stick him in a hot dog bun!

I made myself a bowl of juicy things as soon as I got home.

A yellow nectarine and a red plum.

I made something for the husband too.

He called to say he was on his way home and I thought about greeting him at the door with a martini but decided that a spinach salad on the table was basically the same as a martini at the door.

Right? Probably not, but at least I set out vitamins (seen lurking in the background).

It’s good to make a snazzy salad/fruit course when you’re serving leftovers for dinner.

Particularly if those leftovers are hot dogs and baked beans, aka Beanie Weenies.

Let’s be real though, I loved this meal! I topped ~3/4 cup of apple cider cabbage leftovers a serving of hot dogs and beans, topped with a dollop of 0% plain Greek yogurt and lots of drops of Sriracha.

Plus 2 servings of Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos that Adam brought home from a golf tournament this weekend.

My favorite chips are the foldsies.

Yum.

Leftovers or not, this was a fabulous dinner.

I’ve got to scurry into the shower so I can get to bed and at least be rested if not reviewed for my test tomorrow. I’ll leave you with this, meet Pig –

29Sep2011

Blog Reading for Cultural Expansion

by Emily

I was not very productive today. Just ask the homework that has to be done this weekend and the run that has to be done tomorrow! But I cuddled with my puppy, had a good class at school, and got my teeth fixed; so the day wasn’t a total wash.

It’s possible I even started the day off in poor form. I had to give a presentation in class today so I headed in early. Sidenote – don’t you love my semi-professional outfit? I felt like fall!

On my drive to school I realized (for the first time in three weeks of making the same drive) that I pass a Wilson Farms. WF has my favorite coffee so I knew a stop was in order. Unfortunately I just kept acting dippier. First, I got a pumpkin spice latte when it is still apple month! Next, I walked past at least five signs proclaiming “free 16 ounce coffees for all,” and poured, and paid for, a 20 ounce coffee. Frick! The cashier thought I was nuts.

At least it was delicious. I did half pumpkin spice coffee (unsweet) and half pumpkin spice cappuccino (sweet) and it was perfection.

And minus my caffeine shakes, our presentation went great. The class all had to evaluate each other and Janessa and I got nothing but good reviews. It helps when you bribe them with food!

That’s marble halvah (a sweet, sesame based treat) that we brought in to showcase as one of the foods from our Jewish Food Habits presentation. A few people found the aftertaste to be strange, but most of the class loved it. Halvah is one of my very favorite sweets and I ate at least two servings.

During our 10:30 break I also wandered over to the campus Freshens for a smoothie.

I ordered the Maui Mango (Mango, Strawberries, Bananas, Passion Fruit, Juice Blend & Booster) but I think they gave me the wrong cup because all I could taste was peaches.

It wasn’t very good and probably ended up only drinking about half. I looked up the nutritional info which stated ~300 calories per smoothie, so I still can’t figure out why it was so disgustingly sweet.

Our class today was a lot of fun. In addition to Judaism there were presentations on 7th Day Adventist, Mormon, Greek Orthodox, Native American, Alaskan, and Rastafarian food selection and restrictions. I didn’t really learn anything new, but it was all fun info to revisit. It’s always interesting to me how much cultural background knowledge I seem to have compared to my friends (who know all sorts of things about other subjects that I know nothing about). I’m not sure if it’s from my interest in Anthropology or from the diverse places I’ve gotten to live. I grew up with Rastafarians and have read a lot about Native American cultures but my exposure to Mormons has been through blog friends. Reading blogs has definitely been a factor in introducing me to new things!

Lunch was easy and soft to chew.

I don’t eat a ton of “diet food,” but I actually really enjoy some Lean Cuisine flavors. The Roasted Turkey is a favorite.

Confession? The stuffing in there is actually my very favorite of all the stuffings (homemade included) I’ve ever tried!

I also took several soft bites of Biscoff straight from the jar for dessert.

After my teeth were fixed I could finally move on to foods with chew and crunch factor for dinner.

Mango, pineapple, tiny piece of watermelon.

Udon noodles, a veggie eggroll, and more veggies – including some very tasty bok choy – hidden on the bottom.

Note – when I made this plate I still thought I was running or I probably wouldn’t have gone quite so heavy on the carbs. But then in rolled a big storm and out rolled not being a big fatty. At least I’m excited to get tackling my to-do’s tomorrow!

Mormon, 7th Day Adventist, Native American, or Rastafarian – do you follow any bloggers who have these backgrounds?

15Sep2011

Oh, Balls

by Emily

Oh. Hello there. Are you here to hear me talk about my balls? Well calm down, I’m getting to that. I do have some exciting ball news but there was lots of excitement today.

Like my discovery of my new favorite smoothie of all time.

I know it doesn’t look like much but this new combination was freaking amazing. I put 1 cup of lemonade and 2 Tbsp of chia seeds in my blender and left them to soak. Five minutes later I added 1 cup of frozen strawberries and then blended like crazy. Here’s an outside picture so you can really see the color –

Un-be-leave-a-bull! The chia seeds mostly blended but still left a nice chew and their nuttiness was the perfect foil to the sweet and sour of the strawberry lemonade.

Even better, my smoothie actually held my stomach through my 4 hour class. I attribute this to the chia seeds. My 2 Tbsp of chia seeds gave my smoothie an extra 140 calories, 5 grams of protein, 11 grams of fiber, and 7 grams of polyunsaturated fats (mostly omega-3s). source

That’s not to say I wasn’t ready for lunch though. We had a “welcome back” department lunch today, complete with food.

I took a slice of mushroom pizza,

a few fresh veggies,

and some amazingly fresh strawberries and watermelon.

I also grabbed a 2nd slice later on.

In other lunch news I finally had an apple month win!

This caramel apple iced coffee from my school’s coffee shop totally hit the spot. I did only drink half of that monster (I thought I was ordering a small) but I definitely made sure to get every last lick of caramel out of my cup.

Fully fueled, I headed to the gym for a L-O-O-O-N-G spells long workout. I had a time goal and a length goal and I ended up hitting my time goal long before my length one; ie I took too many walking breaks and was slow! I did a looong warm up and looong cool down with walk/run intervals in between that ended up being a lot of walking.

In the end I covered 9 miles in 1 hour and 53 minutes. As slow as you can move and still call it running but the distance at least is nothing to sneeze at. P.S. I’m having some issues with the bones in my right foot but my legs feel great; yay!

Alright already, let’s talk about the balls.

S’mores Oat Balls. Click here for the recipe link. I swear to God this recipe was inspired by the S’mores Quaker Chew Bars and not my desire to say the word balls repeatedly after eating and rewatching Schweddy Balls.

The recipe was simple but the end result was delicious yet subtle. Part s’more, part oat, totally acceptable for breakfast! I resisted any nibbling while I assembled but I did eat two balls as soon as they were formed.

Make them at home, I promise you’ll love my balls.

Since we ate dessert first dinner needed to be a 15 minute affair.

I prepared 2 servings of spirals pasta, stirring frozen spinach and peas into the mix in the last few minutes of boiling. Then I made Emily’s Nutritional Yeast Sauce and tossed everything together.

Yum, I thought the nutritional yeast was really good; though that could have been my love for peas with pasta talking. Head over to The Daily Garnish (recipe link) to see all the benefits of nutritional yeast, but suffice to say dinner was healthy.

Adam has a test tomorrow and I have a really hard time sleeping when he’s not in bed (the upcoming surgical rotation should be fun!) so I’m going to stay up with him. Studying, blog reading, perhaps a shower; who knows what I’ll get done.

P.S. I used the word “balls” 10 times in this post. Sorry, Nana!

30Aug2011

If At First You Don’t Succeed

by Emily

I’m 0-for-2 in my efforts to hit the gym before school. On Monday I had those weird nightmares and I wasn’t well-rested. Last night I got in bed at 10:30 (it should have been closer to 9:30) and then the dog woke me up at 3am and I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I turned off the alarm this morning but I was more determined than ever to make this work. I’m not working out tomorrow and Thursday’s plan is a longer session, but I’m going to give it all I’ve got on Friday morning. I guess I’m in the second stage of if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. For now, I’m going to make an effort to go to bed early the next two nights to prepare.

At least staying at home gave me time to make a healthy breakfast.

For two servings, I blended 2 cups of frozen strawberries, 2 scoops of chocolate protein powder, 1 cup of unsweetened So Delicious coconut milk, and 1 cup of green tea.

The addition of the green tea gave our smoothies a totally unique flavor. I like what the protein powder does for the texture (and the protein content, duh!) but I don’t love how chalky it makes things taste. Any suggestions?

I drank my smoothie on the walk to campus but halfway through my 4 hour class I was devouring half a tin of Altoids. I think I’ll need to bring a snack for my extra long classes from now own.

Fueled by Altoids, I headed to the gym after class. 45 minutes on the elliptical at random, level 6. I put in the time on the elliptical but I didn’t really put in the effort, my brain and body were both ready for lunch! At least I finished my session with some quick strength and stretching moves.

I’d like to say I ate as soon as I stopped sweating, but sadly the dog crushed my soul by eating his pee pad first. Between the walk home, discipline, and taking a shower, I didn’t actually sit down to lunch until almost 4pm!

At least it was worth the wait. The same combo as Sunday night, a serving of bbq kale and beans topped with tons of Parmesan, Sriracha, and a dollop of 0% Plain Fage.

For dessert I tried this can of horchata de leche I found at the grocery store.

The taste nice and cinnamony but I did miss the chew factor of regular horchata.

I’m off to take the monster on a walk and build back up my appetite for our tasty dinner.

When do you usually workout?

How to do use protein powder to make it less chalky?

26Aug2011

Lemon Cookie Smoothie

by Emily

Good morning!

<– that’s my pucker face. Two thoughts – 1) Dear God, no wonder Adam never wants to kiss me; 2) Don’t you want to know why I’m making my pucker face at you guys?

This is a pucker post because it’s all about the lemons, baby.

Thanks, Natalie Dee. I disagree though, lemons are fantabulous.

Lemon chicken, lemonade, lemons in tea, lemon sorbet, lemon cookies… but especially lemon cookie smoothies.

Oh yeah, I went there. And I’m so glad I did.

Who here knows about Kath Eats’ Dough Boy Smoothies? Well once upon a time, a reader of hers asked about making a lemon cookie smoothie. I didn’t know anything with the idea then, but I thought “hmmmn, that could be amazing,” so I bookmarked the page.

It was amazing, dear readers, it was, it was.

This had just enough sweetness and lemon sourness to be amazing instead of gross. And just enough of a chew to make you think “cookie crumbles!” texturally.

Lemon Cookie Smoothie, serves 1

1 medium frozen banana
1 serving Oat Revolution cinnamon bun oatmeal, cooked (you could substitute 1/2 cup cooked oats with a bit of cinnamon)
1 6oz container of Non-fat Lemon Chobani Greek Yogurt
zest of 1 medium lemon
1/2 cup unsweetened So Delicious Coconut Milk (any vegan milk substitute would be fine here but I find that cows’ milk gets too frothy in smoothies)

Blenderize. Sip. Swoon.

13Aug2011

Family and Froyo

by Emily

As you can probably guess from the title, we had a good Saturday. Of course Saturday got off to a ruff start when our neighbor’s dog parked from 1-2 am. No not a peep from Webster, he doesn’t bark, seriously. He did get us up at 4:30 for a quick pee walk though; good thing he’s so cute!

When we got up for real around 8 we took Webster on longer, 50 minute (round trip) walk to the lake.

He got a break in the middle while I tackled these –

I can tell you that there are 41 steps there because I counted while I ran up and down them. Actually, I walked down and sprinted up for 15 minutes of cardio, gasp, gasp! Good thing I had such a nice view.

I made some sludge for breakfast.

1 frozen banana, ~ 3/4 cup frozen spinach, 1 scoop chocolate protein powder, and ~ 1 cup So Delicious Vanilla Coconut Milk.

The flavor combo was good but the spinach didn’t blend all the way and I don’t like chewable smoothies! Sort of like chewable vitamins, which I swallowed whole for months before my parents realized I could switch to big girl vitamins.

After a quick shower we got on the road to Ohio for our niece’s sixth birthday party. Adam’s entire family made it for the festivities and I’m so grateful that our friends agreed to puppy-sit for the day so we could go.

Also exciting? They have froyo in their town!!!

I got ~ 1/2 cup of cake batter and dulce de leche swirl, topped with butterfinger, skore, coconut, sprinkles, and hot fudge.

Gah, froyo, we need you in Buffalo!

Sidenote – remember how I said I wish I was more preppy? This outfit is like what would happen if that ambition threw up all over me.

It’s hard to top self-serve, but we had a wonderful time at the party. We don’t get to see Adam’s family (or mine) as much as we’d like.

I lunched on party food.

Fruit salad with tasty mango,

part of a turkey sandwich with l, t, m, and c (mayo and cheese),

and a small slice of pizza.

After presents and singing, we also had cake.

I split that piece with the husband; cake – Adam, icing – Emily.

A loooooong (not really, but it sure felt like it!) car ride later and we were kissing Webster. He actually hasn’t pooped since we picked him up yesterday and I’m getting sort of worried. He has one more day to drop some kids off at the pool before I’m calling the emergency vet.

It was after 9:30 when we got home and I might have had a bit of a mini meltdown about how hungry I was. The situation was not helped by our exhausted puppy making us feel too guilty to use the microwave. The situation was helped greatly by Adam’s announcement that his mom slipped him money for dinner. He’s out picking up a feast while I blog. Recap to come in the morning.

Does your town have self-serve froyo?

4Aug2011

Peachy Keen

by Emily

How’s your week been? Everything peachy keen? That’s my favorite throwback expression, by the way; “peachy keen” makes me think of yellow ribbons and two straws in a glass Coke bottle.

Things have not been so peachy around here; nothing major, but our internet has been all wonky and frustrating. Plus I’ve been feeling wonky and frustrated, which is why I’m not bothering to recap the days I’ve missed posting. I’ve been spending way too much time on the couch and adopting the sleep schedule of a vampire.

[source]

Even though my night was like a date with Angel (if only!!), I forced my eyes open at 8:30 this morning. If I want to break the cycle I need to get out of bed earlier in the morning. And if I want to get out of bed earlier in the morning I need to have a good breakfast on the agenda.

Wake-y, wake-y, ~~eggs and bac-y~~ peaches and cream smoothie!

Into the blender went 1 cup of frozen peaches, 1 cup of Stonyfield Fat Free Plain Yogurt, 1 cup of So Delicious Vanilla Coconut Milk, and a packet of vanilla protein powder.

Not exactly peaches and cream, but nothing to sneeze at either.

31Jul2011

Pizza Party

by Emily

We had a mini pizza party for dinner but the rest of the day was sort of … strange. I had a teaching nightmare last night and it left me feeling funky. I basically never have nightmares, like ever, unless they are about teaching. In fact, other than night-terrors that I had as a really young child, I had never even had a nightmare before I became a teacher. I don’t get them often now, but when I do I’m always in a rowdy classroom (or fighting with Adam!).

I have no idea where my nightmare came from, maybe anxiety about going back to school or churning thoughts from not being that busy recently. I’d like to pin it on “No Strings Attached,” but I guess being the worst movie ever (seriously) still doesn’t make it to blame for my bad dreams.

Breakfast was mocha(ish) smoothies.