And We’re Off!

by Emily

Today was officially my first day off (from both school and work) since January 20th! 42 days straight!!! I didn’t even work full shifts for most of those days but it was still nice to have 24 hours all to myself for a change.

We didn’t do anything all that exciting with our newfound free-time but it still felt pretty damn nice. We did a major grocery trip, started watching Battlestar Galactica (please tell me that the episodes are faster paced than the movie?!), and Adam currently has the guys over for poker.

Breakfast was a bowl of peanut butter and bananas, squared.

2% Banana Chobani Greek Yogurt topped with a sliced banana, 1 tsp of melted peanut butter and 1 crumbled Cascadian Farm Crunchy Peanut Butter Granola Bar.

So flipping good.

Lunch was even better.

I took enough Pho home last night for Adam and I to both have lunch with the leftovers. I beefed mine up with some roasted broccoli and a soft-boiled egg. Plus more Sriracha, of course.

The entire bowl was delicious and the egg yolk melting into the broth was so amazing that it almost made me cry.

For dessert we shared this plate of samples.

Oh Nuts! offered to send me their Passover Cake & Cookie Sampler and I happily accepted.

Neither of us liked the brownie piece (too dry) but we thought that the jam in the sandwich cookie and raspberry jelly roll was nice. By the by, everything was gluten-free and kosher.

I also had an Adora calcium disk.

I am going to try to remember to take one every day for the next while, but I probably won’t blog about it again.

Dinner ended up being a (giant!) container of hot bar.

A little bit of mac and cheese and brussels sprouts and a bunch of chicken. Apparently I was in the mood for protein.

I made the poker players some Mac and Three Cheese Cups but they were gone before I could snag one. That’s a good sign!

What’s your longest run without a day off?

27Feb2013

Coconut Chocolate Lavender

by Emily

Howdy! I have not been following my sleep schedule – – at all – – but I can say that today was quite productive. Every item on my list is now to-done!

The dog has been getting in and out of bed all night long recently and between that and my usually fitful sleep, mornings have felt very difficult this week. I barely had time to make it to work today so I had to take breakfast with me on the walk. This Wegman’s Bean and Cheese Burrito was good but not great.

Something about the flavor and texture made me long for a beverage, and I ended up exploding pinto beans all down the front of my winter coat.

I ate a Honeycrisp apple mid-morning.

Then I spent the rest of my day holed up in the basement like a retail hermit. We got in tons of tons of shipments on Monday and I opened and priced 99% of them today.

I never did have time for lunch at work (I kept my packed food in the fridge for an easy lunch tomorrow!) and I ended up doing double dinners. First was Wegman’s hot bar on a mini-date with the husband.

Wok-seared veggies,

and chicken dumplings and chicken salad.

Adam and I are obsessed with the dumplings’ dipping sauce and the combination of the sauce stirred into my chicken salad was the bomb.com. <– legit, it tasted so good that was the first expression that popped into my head!

I also ate a big bag of Easter candies from the bulk bins and gave myself a stomach-ache.

A little pain was worth it, the sugar rush totally helped me through the remainder of my internship journaling. Minus breaks for making food and eating food, I chugged away for the remainder of the evening.

Our home dinner was vegetable fried rice.

In the wok (for 2) –

1/2 Tbsp sesame oil
~1 heaping cup peas
~1 heaping cup roasted broccoli
~1.5 cups leftover brown rice
1 Tbsp tamari
1 Tbsp rice vinegar
1.5 Tbsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp Sriracha
3 large eggs

The dish had the potential to be great, but it was way too salty. It’s been awhile since I’ve used fish sauce and I forgot what a sodium-punch it packs. I ate a little less than 2/3 of my plate.

Dessert was a giant, delicious cookie.

Coconut Chocolate Lavender Cookies = this recipe for single serve cookies plus 1 tsp minced culinary lavender and chopped Sweetriot 70% dark kickin’ coconut chocolate subbed in for chocolate chips.

We were both big fans of the big cookies and big taste.

The winner of my Hey Shuga! giveaway is:

(#1) Jenny, shoot me an e-mail with your mailing address.

25Feb2013

Weekend Highlights

by Emily

Hello, Monday! This is my last week of “break,” but I don’t even care because I had such a good weekend. The past three days have been packed full of fun; we did so much on Saturday that Adam even said I wore him out! Other than some short shifts at work, every moment has been exciting.

I only have time to share the highlights, but I will make this note – we ate like we had the wallets of our future and the metabolisms of our past!

I tried this dark chocolate and soft caramel Nunu bar (from the Yumvelope subscription my mom got me for Christmas) and fell in love.

Best caramel I’ve ever had and made in Brooklyn.

I received this incredibly sweet and generous care package from Cascadian Farm.

I am too excited to have those Oats & Honey granola bars back in my pantry.

I took Adam to Brickhouse Tavern for bacon-studded deviled eggs,

and discovered that they sold my favorite beer.

I’m not even going to try to lie, this one Red Stripe got me embarrassingly drunk.

We ventured out to Franks Food Truck at 1:30 in the morning.

Amazing fries with garlic aioli and a veggie dog topped with bbq sauce, cole slaw, and blue cheese;

well worth the tired morning.

Finally, I may not be any closer to running an 8-minute mile, but I did cross one thing of my yearly goals list…

S’mores {over a fire} have been made!

Did you do anything amazing this weekend?

21Feb2013

Hey (Shuga!) What’s Going On? {Giveaway}

by Emily

What’s going on around these parts?

Look at what I did at work yesterday –

I probably should have taken pictures before it got dark out, but I did have a really good time making that train!

Even though there were only a few days to go, the Vegan 20 Day Challenge has unceremoniously …ended. Not that my friend and I were doing that well anyway, what with eggs sneaking into half of what we both were eating. But yesterday I dove head first into a slice of buffalo chicken pizza. (I also ate an entire bag of chips, but that’s neither here nor there.) And tonight’s dinner involved these guys –

Adam and I have wanted to buy that shrimp plate for months and at $12 we finally decided to take the plunge. So good!

Tonight’s dessert was vegan –

We made the Chocolate Vegan Mousse recipe from the Hey Shuga! website.

Full disclosure – I recently received a bottle each of Hey Shuga! and Lil’ Shuga! to sample.

Hey Shuga! is an organic cane sugar syrup. It pours more easily than honey and blends into liquids easily. Lil’ Shuga! is a blend of organic cane sugar syrup and stevia leaf extract. I will be honest about the fact that I hated the Lil’ Shuga!; one small taste made me screw my face up in disgust. I hate, hate, hate, stevia though, so take that as you will. I shared the Lil’ Shuga! with a fake-sugar-user friend and she was a fan. And Adam and I both thought that the Hey Shuga! was quite tasty. We are both looking forward to using it in coffee and smoothies.

The company wanted me to let you guys know that both products are available in the Northeast at Wegmans. They will be doing demos at many of the stores, including at Wegmans Eastway and Wegmans Pittsford. Hey Shuga! is going to launch a fun contest with prizes for people who submit pictures of the product at Wegmans, Whole Foods, or in specialty natural food stores and tag “@HeyShugas” on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest.

They also offered to let me share with you guys – I can send a bottle of Hey Shuga! and Lil’ Shuga! to one reader. For a chance to win – leave a comment on this post before midnight on Monday, February 25th.

Have you seen the Hey Shuga! product in your local store yet? Have you tried it?

17Feb2013

The Sunday Scurry

by Emily

I’m in a quandary: I want to blog because yesterday I started my “30 days of blogging” challenge again, but I want to get off the computer so I can hang out with my boys. I didn’t say it was a large quandary. I’ll just keep this quick.

Leftover pineapple crisp (from my Slow Cooker Desserts cookbook).

Ritz crackers with white bean truffle dip.

A lunchtime snack plate.

Honeycrisp.

Crunchy peanut butter.

1 serving of Sweetriot 70% Dark Chocolate with Kickin’ Coconut*.

Co-op hot bar after work. Fried seitan, cucumber salad, and peanut noodles.

Homemade Thai curry for dinner.

Green curry and light coconut milk with a bit of tamari and rice vinegar. Nasoya Black Soybean Tofu Plus** fried in coconut oil. Tons of broccoli and a can of straw mushrooms. Cashews. Tasty Bite Thai Lime Rice.

My boys.

*the chocolate was out of this world; it had all the healthiness of dark but the creaminess of milk chocolate

**Adam and I both want to buy this tofu again; we didn’t press it but it still stayed firm and got nice and crunchy, plus it had a good, different flavor

Don’t forget to enter my cookbook giveaway.

16Feb2013

Kool And The Gang

by Emily

Q: Do you know what these two things have in common?

A: I used the Kool Aid to (re)dye my hair!

I never captured it in a photo, but over the last week or so I lost 90% of my purple and was left with a lot of white/grey streaks. Since I don’t have an appointment to go back to brown for another two weeks, this wasn’t exactly a good thing. So last night the husband helped me sit with my head in a bowl of concentrated Kool Aid.

It was windy today!

I’ve still got some white but overall it looks much better. We’ll have to see how long the color lasts. I used to dye my highlights with Kool Aid in high school and I remember getting at least a couple of weeks out of it.

The hair photos were taken on my way to work. I woke up this morning feeling a bit under the weather; I had a fever and I was super achy all over. Adam fed me an aspirin and I stayed in bed until the last possible second. I’m feeling much better now {knock on wood}. And thankfully I was only working a partial shift.

I skipped breakfast for bed and was very excited about food when I got home this afternoon.

1/3 cup of Nature’s Path Coconut Chia Granola with Naked Vanilla Oat Milk and tons of chopped dapple plum and nectarine.

Plus lots of tea. A cup of Revolution Tea Lavender Earl Grey,

and a cup of chai with 1 tsp honey an hour or so later.

I carried the lavender theme over to my snack as well.

My mom got these floral candies from a student whose parents are from Japan.

My dad says they all taste like peach, but I swear the ones I tried had subtle differences.

We spent a long-ish time on errands this evening and I got a small plate of hot bar to keep from getting too cranky.

Maple cinnamon roasted sweet potatoes plus sautéed veggies and 3 pieces of General Tso tofu. It’s been ages since we’ve roasted sweet potato fries and we definitely need to make them again soon.

Dinner didn’t take very long to prepare once we got home, but it sure was good.

I had 1.5 servings of Wegman’s Don’t Be a Chicken Meatless Nuggets dipped in honey.

They were great, far more enjoyable than I ever find chicken nuggets to be.

I made use a hot spinach salad for our veggie component.

(recipe to follow) We loved it. The spinach was super creamy and there was such a good mix of textures.

Dinner didn’t really fill me up though, and I ate some Smart Fries while I wrote this post.

Much better.

Hot Spinach Salad, serves 2

1 Tbsp Earth Balance vegan butter
1 pint white mushrooms, roughly chopped
2 pinches salt
3 heaping cups raw baby spinach
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup smoked almonds
1 Tbsp evoo
2 heaping Tbsp vegan sour cream

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, brown mushrooms with butter and salt.
Add spinach to mushrooms, tossing until greens are completely wilted.
Add remaining ingredients to pan and cook 1 more minute, stirring regularly.

I hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Have you ever dyed your hair with Kool Aid?

15Feb2013

A Valentine’s Giveaway

by Emily

I know it’s a day late, but I still love you guys. So I got you some gifts. Your first present was me not whining on the blog all week about what a bad mood I’ve been in. Adam says I’ve been unbearable, so you’re welcome.

The 2nd is a chance to win a copy of Slow Cooker Desserts.

I was sent a copy to review and I asked if I could share one with you guys as well.

Remember Dump Cake? Well this cookbook has about a zillion variations of that, and they all look delicious. <– I may be exaggerating a bit, but there really are bunches of recipes for cakes, cheesecakes, crisps, brownies, and more. A fair amount of the recipes are even healthy. And since they are all made in the crock pot the hands-on times are minimal.

The recipes we thought looked most exciting? Bananas Foster, Simmered Sweet Plums, N’awlins Praline Cheesecake, and Rice Pudding with Coconut.

Also Pineapple Crisp, which we made tonight.

I used Earth Balance for butter and cut the brown sugar back by a few Tbsp but otherwise followed the recipe.

Delicious! And all it took to prepare was the time to open the cans!

For a chance to win a copy of Slow Cooker Desserts, simply leave a comment on this post before midnight on Monday, February 18th.

6Feb2013

Ball Of Stress

by Emily

I’ve been trying to let myself sleep in as late as possible this week and bars help me do that. I ate this White Chocolate Macadamia Clif Bar in the car on the way to the hospital.

I’m feeling a lot better from Monday but I’m still making a point of not skipping breakfast.

For lunch I veganized my favorite bean salad by swapping out cheese cubes for spicy Nayo.

Black eyed peas + chopped green pepper + smoked almonds + spicy Nayo.

Nothing is ever as good sans cheese but this was still pretty damn good.

With a Mango Coconut Sparkling KeVita.

And cola breeze and sour mix and match gummies for dessert.

I found these Goody Good Stuff Gummies at 7-11.

They are vegetarian and pretty good, though they are a little soft for my tastes. The husband loved them though; he had one taste and rest of my bags were gone.

I am having a really great time at the pediatric hospital, but I have to admit that I am really stressed out right now. There are a lot of things happening in my school and personal life at the moment that are freaking me out. I can’t talk about any of it on the blog, but I will say that I am a giant ball of stress. My stomach hurts all of the time.

Thankfully I had the afternoon free to decompress. I did some fun baking (and tasting!).

Then I brought a friend some of my baked goods and we had a mutual vent session.

And I walked to and from the gym. The icy patches made the trips take forever, but it was a good way to clear my head.

At the gym, I did another Couch to 10k treadmill workout. 4 minutes of walking / 1 minute running, x9.

I ate these Darrell Lea Strawberry Licorice while I cooked dinner.

I kept it simple.

Adam and I shared a package of Tasty Bite Channa Masala – bulked up with some frozen veggies – over a package of brown rice.

Easy peasy.

What do you do to let off steam when you are feeling stressed?

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: sweet

And We’re Off!

Coconut Chocolate Lavender

Weekend Highlights

Hey (Shuga!) What’s Going On? {Giveaway}

The Sunday Scurry

Kool And The Gang

A Valentine’s Giveaway

Ball Of Stress