Tag Archives: tofu

Hello Again

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I swear, with my hand on a stack of Buffy DVDs, I really do have a blog!  It’s been a few crazy days, but I did miss y’all like crazy.  I’m not going to recap, but I will mention a few things – Adam and I are about ready to serve the dog on a bun ~ we’re all ready for a vacation ~ I have two tests tomorrow because I didn’t even make it to school on Friday to take my exam.

Starting again this morning…

I had a group meeting to finish up a project so I headed to school this morning.  We worked for a couple of hours and we are feeling ready good about the assignment, which isn’t even due for another couple of weeks!

Since it was after 1 before I could even think about food, I headed to The Spot for a quick bite while I studied.

Pizza bagels are crazy simple, just a toasted bagel with marinara sauce and cheese on top, but also crazy good.

I ate 3/4 of this, and gave the last bit to my friend when she picked me up.

Then we moved the party to Starbucks so we could take advantage of the 2-for-1 holiday drinks special.

I got a grande, non-fat, eggnog latte. Score!

Mid-studying this afternoon I snacked on a D’anjou pear.

I also took a break to make an easy, fall-feeling dinner.

  1. On foiled, sprayed baking sheets, top chopped tofu and butternut squash with apple cider vinegar, salt, and brown sugar.
  2. Bake for 40 minutes at 350*, then 20 minutes at 400*.
  3. In a large pan, cook shredded cabbage in apple cider.
  4. Combine.

Dinner was so tasty, the squash got almost caramelized.  I liked the undertones of apple spread throughout.  I took a small portion and now Adam and I both have great leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch.

I know I didn’t eat all that much food today, but trust me, Adam and I more than covered it the past few days!!

Have you gotten a holiday drink from Starbucks yet?  Which one’s your favorite?

No Sleep Makes Strange Cravings

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Hello, hello. It’s been a long time (48+ hours!) since I’ve posted and it’s felt even longer. It’s been a crazy couple of days. My meals since I last blogged have been anything but impressive, but it kind of made me want to post all the more since I’m trying to put it all out there. I will add the disclaimer though that this is a *do not as I do* post 😉

I didn’t tell y’all last time, for obvious security reasons, but Monday was Adam’s 1st 24-hour shift at the hospital. It went very well, but I’m still glad that he’ll get to sleep at home most nights this year! I was tired, he was tired, the dog was tired.

<– That’s the scene I walked in on Tuesday afternoon. Swoon.

I had a ton of schoolwork to catch up on and was worried about sleeping without Adam so I pulled a bit of a 24-hour shift myself and only slept 2 hours on Tuesday night. <– this was a terrible idea, but more on that in a minute. I studied mostly standing at the mantle, which was lovely, and had a civilized midnight snack of tea with skim milk and dark chocolates.

Since I packed lunch before my all-nighter, Tuesday’s meals got off to a good start. I mixed together a Stonyfield 0% Chocolate Underground Yogurt with pumpkin puree and the end result was pretty amazing.

I also packed some citrus.

I ended up eating just the tangerine and giving away the orange.

And I bought a coffee – with tons of skim milk and a sprinkle of cinnamon – during a break in class.

Brunch was tasty, but not very filling, so when I came home to my sleeping family I stole a slice of Adam’s Newman’s Own White Pizza.

I also ate this fruit packet.

Wednesday (today) involved a major test and a major paper, so working on practically zero sleep Adam and I knew to grab hot bar for dinner Tuesday night.

An Indian dish and some tofu,

veggies,

which included some “Asian” Brussels sprouts that we so wildly good I almost drove back to Wegman’s to buy more!

I also snacked on a bowl of pretzels and coffee & cream malted milk balls.

And then the evening took a turn South. It’s possible I had a full-scale meltdown and confirmed that I’m now too old to pull all-nighters. Writing my paper involved such dramatic sobbing that I had to reprint a copy of my article because I got it wet with tears. Pathetic, I know.

When I did wrap things up, around 2am, we both celebrated with bowls of Lucky Charms.

Thanks for the cereal, husband, and for loving me in spite of me!

Tuesday I was too tired to be tired (if that makes sense) but today I felt every single missed hour of sleep. Meet breakfast –

And lunch –

Why, yes, classmate wondering why I’m photographing two bags of combos at 10am, I do write a healthy living blog.

But my paper was turned in and my test was at least passed, so today wasn’t a total fail. All I wanted to do at 4:30 when class finished was go home and sleep, but instead I headed to work. Tonight was my final shift which was actually sort of sad. I suppose I won’t miss random strangers calling me an asshole and hanging up, but the whole getting paid thing was nice.

When I got out at 9, I picked up Adam so we could fulfill the strangest food craving I’ll ever have – a McDonald’s Fillet-O-Fish Sandwich.

I hate McDonald’s. I’ve never even tasted this sandwich before. But for some reason I was smelling it all afternoon and it was driving me crazy.

This wasn’t even good (I was right, McDonald’s is gross) but at least I can move forward now.

P.S. I still have to shower (it’s after midnight) and tomorrow I have to *start* studying for Friday’s giant test so if you think tonight’s post was whiney and/or incoherent you probably should wait to read again until this weekend!

Have you ever craved a food that you’ve never tasted before?

Veg Head

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The chili sale was good, work was good, but today was crazy and I’m tired so I’ll keep this quick.

Sometimes, when I know that the schedule of a day will make it impossible to keep an all-around healthy lifestyle (like today!) I’ll choose one healthy goal to work on.  Today’s goal?  Making veggies the main “meat” of all of today’s meals.  And in light of today’s goal, I think this is the perfect post to share the vegetarian infographic my friends at RetailMeNot sent my way –

Vegetarian Foods
Source: RetailMeNot.com

Breakfast’s veg was eggplant.

My Cheesy Baked Eggplant leftovers are just as tasty as they were the night I made them, even cold and straight from a Tupperware!

Today’s schedule was class –> chili sale –> orthodontist –> work –> home.  With a fun mid-day addition of cake tasting.

A classmate’s wife is starting a cake business and sent one in for us to give feedback on.

Lunch was a Chili Sale meal (we did great by the way, made more than $250 to give to the food bank!).

Veggie = beans in the vegetarian chili.

Plus a super delicious roll, provided by Romeo and Juliet’s Cafe.

And a bit of the tasty veggie sandwich they brought as well.

Dinner was pure veg.  Spinach, butternut squash, mushrooms, (and tofu and craisins!).

Yesterday I went on a roasting extravaganza.  I did the tofu in maple syrup and rice vinegar, the squash in curry powder, and the mushrooms in truffle oil and salt.  Once everything was nice and toasty (30 minutes at 350* followed by 20 minutes at 400*)  I put them all together in a Tupperware with a few handfuls of spinach and some craisins.  I shook everything together and the heat from the roasted veggies wilted the spinach a bit.

It was perfect.  And the mix of flavors was great.

As were these –

The bookstore was having a Combos’ sale, how could I resist?!?  I didn’t eat that entire big bag but I definitely came close!

I really wanted to make it to the gym today but it just didn’t happen.  I’m hurrying to the bed in the hopes that a good sleep will get me to there tomorrow.

Staying Alive, Staying Alive

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Let’s not talk about last night.  Dinner was a disaster, studying was a disaster, bedtime was a disaster.  Let’s not talk about this morning either.  No breakfast, no answers to the test questions, no remembering that my car was parked on the wrong side of the street and that deciding to walk would earn me a ticket.

Let’s just start this post at 11; that’s when the eats for today started anyway.  I spent the hour between my test and class in the food lab, planning for the Chili Sale.  We are selling on Tuesday and cooking all day Sunday so my group had to go think logistics.  We’ve got a specific plan for what all 18 classmates will be doing in the kitchen for 6 hours on Sunday, but I’m pretty sure it’s still going to be a shit-show.

Today’s food lab was the fat substitute group.  Normally I don’t snap pictures because I’m too busy taste-testing but there were a few things I couldn’t eat today so I had the time to photograph.  We tried regular and reduced fat samples of potato chips,

pudding,

and shredded mozzarella.

I could totally tell the difference between the original and modifieds!  Appearance, texture, and flavorwise.

After lab I got some real lunch (and breakfast!) at the campus bookstore.

Del Monte Tropical Medly fruit cup for vitamin C.

Plus this go picnic snack pack.  It contained crackers with hummus,

and roasted edamame, a fruit and nut blend, and a small square of dark chocolate (all of which were fantastic).

This ended up being a very filling lunch, though 520 calories is low to cover two meals.

I was stuck on campus until 2 so I got a little bit of studying done.  After our crazy chili week we have two super difficult weeks of testing and assignments and I’m hoping to be a little better prepared.  And speaking of being prepared … I am recertified in CPR!  That was what my committment at 2 was, BSC offers classes to students for free.  2 hours of chest compressions felt like quite a workout!  I can’t think of a better motivation to start hitting the gym than the fact that I might be too fat and out of shape to save a life.

This weekend is going to be super busy (I’m spending Saturday and Sunday on campus) so when I got home I did some preemptive cleaning and got ready for our weekly grocery trip.  Plus I put dinner into the crock pot.

I refueled around 7 with a Honeycrisp apple.

Plus half a Wolaver’s Pumpkin Ale, split with the husband.

We weren’t fans sadly, neither of us finished our half.  The first sip was heavenly but every subsequent taste felt a little more bitter.  I washed my mouth out with a cordial.

And then we were off to the store.

Thankfully dinner was preparing itself at home because we were HUNgry like Attila by the time we got home.

And this meal was gooood!

Roasted green beans.

Tofu “fish” cakes from More Make It Fast, Cook It Slow.

And a hunk of Piccolo bread from Wegman’s bakery.

Some notes on the bread – a) it was perfect; chewy yet airy; b) I dipped it in olive oil but couldn’t get a good photograph; and c) another (smaller) hunk was also hungrily eaten in the car on the way home!

Are you CPR certified?

Quick Trip To Canada

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I went to Canada today!

We didn’t really do any exciting abroad things, but we did snap pictures as we drove past the falls.  We were just making a quick trip up to the International Marathon Expo.  I offered to drive up so that blog friends Katy and Holly could pick up their packets.

I actually was planning on running the half marathon with them until not too long ago, but that’s another story for another time.

Prior to our drive, Adam and I hit up the farmers’ market in search of eggplants.  We had success.  We also found breakfast.

The husband and I split this locally made cheddar-rosemary scone.

It was crumbly and delicious.  I need to put “make scones” on my life to-do list.

Then after Canada we headed to the grocery store.  Adam and I both got totally sucked in by this register line purchase.

We split the box 60:40 (his favor), but both took at least a nibble of all four flavors.

When we got home I made myself a plate of grilled cheese epicness for lunch.

2 mini sandwiches (that’s a small plate) of sourdough bread with cheddar, 2% mozzarella, and pickled jalapeno slices.

I cooked the sandwiches in a skillet with another smaller skillet pressed on top and they turned out so crispy. 

Plus melty, cheesy, and spicy.

With a cookie for dessert.

We had dinner planned but Adam was absolutely desperate to get back to India Gate.  We compromised by eating some veggies at home first.  In the form of salads.

This was an amazing salad too.  A Romaine lettuce base topped with groats, roasted zucchini, goat cheese, and champagne dressing.

The cheese was more of the world’s best goat cheese from First Light Farm and Creamery.

This time a double cream chevre with garlic and dill.

And the dressing was a Foodbuzz Tastemakers Program sample from Marzetti’s Simply Dressed Line.

Nutrition –

From the accompanying literature – “Marzetti Simply Dressed is made with a minimal number of all-natural ingredients, such as extra virgin olive oil, canola oil (a source of Omega-3 ALA) and sea salt, and does not contain any preservatives, trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, or artificial flavors or colors.”

After all that it’s ironic, but my only complaint was with one of the ingredients!  The dressing contained xantham gum (which I’m not opposed to in principle and do use occasionally in smoothies) and it made it way to viscous.  The thick, goopy, snotty (sorry) texture is not what I’m looking for in a dressing.  But the flavor was nice without being overpowering.  And I only needed 1.5 Tbsp (less than 80 calories) to feel like my whole salad was properly dressed.

‘Twas good all together.

But we hung out a bit too long between our salad course and the rest of our meal because we definitely had room for dessert, drink, and appetizer!

We started with Paneer Pakora, hhome-made cheese dipped in chickpea batter and deep-fried.

This was like the Indian spin on fried mozzarella sticks.  Here’s my serving –

We also ordered a fig lassi.

It was creamy with nice back hints of fig and these great little pieces of chewiness at the bottom.

We meant to share this 50:50 but I took a much larger portion because my meal was hot-hot-hot.

It’s not on the menu, but they were happy to hook me up with Tofu Vindaloo.

Vindaloo is a spicy, tomato based sauce that I’ve been dying to try because it’s notorious for melting your face off.  I ordered mine “hot” hot and while this was spicy it still wasn’t quite the heat level I was hoping for.  I’ve found outside of Thai food other types of heat just feel a little flat to me.

Adam repeated his order from last time, Chicken Makhani, boneless skinless tandori chicken breast prepared in tomato, butter, cream sauce and garnished with cashews and raisins.

My meals have all been good but I think there is really no way to beat this dish!  The cashews and raisins are little bits of chew embedded in every bite.

The bits of chew theme continued with fantastic rice.

I told Adam during this meal that chewiness is my favorite texture sensation.

Here was plate number 1 –

Rice, tofu, plus a taste of the Makhani sauce.  I ended up also topping my vindaloo liberally with raita to help cool things down.

For plate number 2 I ended up just layering all of the components into a pile.

It was a great combination of flavors.  And we came home with leftovers so we’ll have happy taste buds for lunch tomorrow too.

We didn’t want to kill the date-night vibe so we ended with dessert.

Gulab Jamun, deep-fried milk balls in a sweet syrup.

These were like little donuts with the slightest flavor of milk, like tres leches light.  The syrup had some sort of spice in it and lent another nice layer of flavor.  It was a fun end to a fun meal.

Which Indian dish should I check out next?

Good Marital Advice

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First things first.

Q – Which has more caffeine (no looking it up!) a grande coffee from Starbucks or a Red Bull energy drink?

A – The Starbucks.  330 mg versus 80 mg.  (source)

Also, I have no photos of my mid-day meal.  Lunch was consumed via food lab samples and I didn’t have time to photograph.  The lack of pictures stinks, but the meal was gooood.  Today was the fat/fat substitute group’s lab and we made regular and reduced versions of ranch dressing, buffalo chicken dip, french toast, red velvet cupcakes, and grilled cheese sandwiches.  In total I consumed about 3-4 big bites of each.  The cupcakes were beyond nasty (both varieties) but the dip was ridiculous good and we all stood around taking bites long after we were done tasting!  Plus I ate several pieces of sourdough while I was slicing bread for the sandwiches.

I had dinner all planned out but the husband arrived home from the hospital at 6pm and confidently declared that we were going out.  A good wife never contradicts her husband.

We ended up at Thai Orchid and our meal was mind-blowing.  Good call, honey!

I took a few bites of Adam’s Tom Kha soup.

And several more bites of his Pad Thai.

But mostly I was focused on shoving this into my mouth as quickly as I could.

Pad Kee Mao; spicy stir-fried flat rice noodles in chili sauce with broccoli, egg, onion, green and red peppers, and fresh hot basil.

I ordered mine tofu/vegetarian and Thai spicy so it came with extra veggies and burned my face off.

Heaven.  I was dying with happiness with every bite I took.

Now we are going to catch up on “Modern Family” and stick some spoons into this –

Did you guess the answer to the caffeine question correctly?

The Circle Of Life

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“From the day we arrive on the planet

And, blinking step into the sun

There’s more to see than can ever be seen

More to do than can ever be done

There’s far too much to take in here

More to find than can ever be found

But the sun rolling high

Through the sapphire sky

Keeps great and small on the endless round

It’s the Circle of Life”

I just can’t stop singing!  It’s possible I’ve hummed straight through my day.  Other than “Aladdin,” “The Lion King” was the Disney movie with my favorite music.

Backing up to where we left off yesterday, I spent some time (not enough) with these –

I popcorned while I studied.

I hated it.

Plus 100 calories worth of Ghirardelli Midnight Reverie 86% chocolate topped with a smear of Biscoff spread.

Adam was in surgery until late so the meet-up plan involved friends picking me up and all of us getting together with Adam whenever he could make it.  The husband had told me to be ready at 5:45 so a bit after 4 I took Webster out on a long walk.  We were heading home around 5 when I got a call from our friend Patrick – “Eithan said to tell you he’s running late, they’ll probably get you around 5:30.”  5:30 you say?  Whoops! 

Thankfully I’d already showered in the morning so I didn’t take all that long to gussy.  I even managed heels and mascara.

Ready on time, we set off to Pearl Street Grill and Brewery for dinner before the show.  Thankfully, Adam got out early enough to meet us for dinner so we did a little sharing.  I ordered the Gobbler (turkey burger) with a side salad subbed instead of fries for veg.

I was not expecting such a large plate of greens though!  In the end I ate ~ 1/3 of the husband’s chicken fingers and fries,

all of the salad (with brown sugar rum vinaigrette!),

and 2-3 bites of the turkey burger.

Adam was more than happy to take care of the rest for me.  We were with a great group of friends – 2 couples of regulars plus another 2 couples who were friends of friends – so even dinner was fun.

Getting to the theatre was a bit of an ordeal – it’s possible all of the girls had to sprint 2 blocks in high heels! – but all that really matters is we made it.  This was my first time seeing “The Lion King” and I thought it was great.  Knowing the music from the movie and being able to sing along (silently!) definitely helped to keep me engaged.  My favorite part of the show was actually the visual appeal; the costumes for the elephants and giraffes were truly breathtaking.  I’m so glad we had the opportunity to go.  Though now Adam and I are desperate to see the movie to hear the songs again!

It wasn’t the earliest bedtime and my 6am alarm felt a little … rough.  Thankfully I thought ahead so all I had to do was put on shoes, grab my bags, hop in the car, and stumble to the gym.  My notecards and I spent some time on the treadmill, more for a wake up and study review than workout purposes.  2 miles walked, 35 minutes.  A quick change and face wipe bath later and I was ready for my exam.

Before the test I ate this White Chocolate Macadamia Chewy Nut Bar Odwalla sent me to sample.

This was sweet, but not too sweet, and a little bit nutty.  I couldn’t savor it the way I would have liked because our test was about to begin, but it did hold me over well through the morning.  210 calories and 2 grams of saturated fat for 25% each daily value of calcium and folate (<– important for baby making).  The white chocolate macadamia flavor will be hitting stores this month; look for it!

My test went alright, not great but not terribly either.  The subjects covered included the clear liquid diet, parenteral feeding, and Latin roots for medical terms, among other things, so no matter how the test went I know it’s all material I will be seeing again. 

I had time for a quick break and then it was on to class #2 and a group presentation.  Our non-nutritive sweeteners group had to present our findings from the last test lab as well as information on the options available to our future clients.  We were the very first group to go which was a little nerve-wracking but the TA said we did a good job.  We also did our 2nd set of sampling today, this time with commercially made products. 

The class had to analyze original and sugar-free versions of cola, yogurt, ice-cream, jell-o, and chocolate syrup.  Normally we can just take small tastes in lab but since I’ll have to write up a report for this one I needed to take really good notes which meant eating all of the samples, even the nasty ones.  And most of them were nasty.  <– Word to the wise – don’t even waste your time with Hershey’s sugar-free chocolate syrup, yuck city. 

Since I didn’t have time to photograph everything I ate (which ended up having to be a lot) I gave myself the afternoon off from blogging as well.  I will note though, that lunch included many handfuls of salty nuts and a big bag of chips to help balance out all that sweet!  And other than eating and dog walking I didn’t accomplish a blessed thing.  We have two huge exams and a paper due next week and I needed some time for tv watching before my long-weekend study session begins.

Dinner was similarly low-key.

The Tandoor Chef veggie Pad Thai is seriously better than most of the Thai available in Buffalo.

Yums.

On my extra-sweet day, check out what arrived in the mail –

Adam’s mom sent us a haul of cookies!  It’s taking a lot of self-control but we are going to wait until the coffee caramel is finished before having at them.  And on that note, we are off to have sundaes!

Which sugar-free products do you use?  Do you prefer the taste or are you diabetic/looking to cut calories?

10/90 Work To Sleep

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I spent basically the whole day napping with the dog and the husband.  It was epic.

Just like next week will be an epic fail as I try to work around all the stuff I didn’t do.

I swear the cold just makes me go into hibernation.  My appetite was all over the place too.  We started our “morning” with hunks of sourdough dipped in herbed olive oil.

Off all the things my body could have demanded at 45* degrees in October, next came ice cream.

I topped Ben and Jerry’s Cinnamon Roll ice cream with hot fudge and Heath crumbles.

When we did make our way out of the cave it was to go to the movies.  50/50 was great; very touching and funny.  I love Seth Rogan in everything he does but it was nice to get to see him play a new role.

We also made a weekly trip to Wegmans.  They were out of eggplant entirely which through our meal plan for a loop, but I think we worked it out.  We didn’t get any hot bar (more on that tomorrow) but I did buy 50cents worth of Halloween candy.

50cents for $100 worth of happiness.  I live for theme things.

Following the theme, Adam and I split a pumpkin beer when we got home.

Shock Top’s Pumpkin Wheat was wonderful.  Not bitter at all like some pumpkin beers I’ve tried.  I think I actually liked this variety better than traditional Shock Top.

For dinner we made this tofu quiche.

Same recipe as last time, though I did leave out the milk this go-round.

It was quite good; very cheesy.  A good hibernation food.

How did you celebrate the start of October?