Use Your Noggin

by Emily

Hello, hello! The days I’m excited to blog are always the same days I’m utterly exhausted. Go figure. Saturday was a symphony of holiday flavors but also a 9+ hour day at work. Instead of posting last night I had a total tantrum and passed out fully dressed… so here is a 2-day recap.

Remember when I said “Saturday was a symphony of holiday flavors”? You know, like five seconds ago. Well, my day went eggnog –> candy cane –> gingerbread; bam!

Nog based overnight oats for breakfast.

I put 1/4 cup oats, 1/2 cup Silk Soy Nog, and 1 Tbsp chia seeds in the fridge overnight, then Saturday morning I added 1 sliced banana and a big dash of Christmas sprinkles.

So festive and delicious. Also, holy frick, I love chia seeds so much.

My candy cane came in the form of a Peppermint Stick Clif Bar during work.

This is Clif’s best seasonal flavor by far. The bar has the perfect amount of peppermint.

Gingerbread was a cupcake surprise from the husband.

He had an appointment near Fairy Cakes in the afternoon and he brought me home a gingerbread stout cupcake with cream cheese icing.

It was ridiculous good, maybe the best cupcake I’ve ever had! The cake had a great ratio of spice to sweet and was so fluffy and moist. I shared one big bite with Adam but downed the rest with gusto.

The rest of the day’s eats were out of season, but still good. From fall I borrowed an apple and a Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale.

I split the beer with Adam and ate the apple on my own.

I guess nachos are actually appropriate for any season, right?

Adam and I shared a tray, straight from the oven. We topped scoop-style tortilla chips with roasted brocoli and green pepper, Newman’s Own Pineapple Salsa, and Cabot Reserve Aged Cheddar.

We loved them. He was a little iffy on roasted brocoli as a nacho topping but it was delicious. And I was worried about that type of cheese versus a regular cheddar, but that ended up being perfect too. And the pineapple salsa is hands-down the best jarred salsa I’ve ever had.

Blah, blah, blah, and then I started having a fit and had to go to bed. I didn’t get anywhere near enough sleep during the weeks Adam was gone and I’m still really freaking tired.

Sunday was a super hungry day and I ate a ton ~~of crap~~. A brunch of sorts, was low-fat coffee yogurt with honey roasted peanuts and honey,

a few pieces of toffee candy from home,

and several handfuls (about 3 servings or 250 calories worth) of dried turkey.

During work I drank a Starbucks Vanilla Doubleshot.

Working with crowds of Christmas shoppers is exhausting but also really rewarding. Five different people today thanked me effusively for my help and that was a really good feeling. Actually, one super hot guy told another customer that I was fantastic and I about died!

Adam picked me up after work for a fun treat.

Bubble tea from Gin Gin! Best bubble tea I’ve ever had, and I’ve tried a lot. I got a medium red bean milk tea with regular and popping boba (the purple one is Adam’s taro).

We both swooned over how good they were and finished our drinks in the car long before we made it home. And we called my mom on speaker on the drive and drove her crazy scraping through our ice for errant tapiocas!

Dinner was pizza.

And we shared a beer.

We were gearing up for a long night of baking.

I’m giving my co-workers all pies for Christmas and we are not even close to finished still. Sorry, husband!

We made smoothies mid-baking for strength. Frozen strawberries and blackberries blended with So Delicious Mint Chocolate Coconut Milk.

And I’ve done a little nibbling while we baked.

I have a holiday breakfast with work tomorrow and then I’m spending Christmas Eve on the couch with Adam. I have two days off in a row for the holiday and I am so excited to spend them with my boys!

Did you give any handmade gifts this season?

21Dec2012

It’s Begining To Look A Lot Like Christmas

by Emily

We are four days away and it is starting to snow! We might have a white Christmas after all. Also, the world didn’t end today; yay.

Sorry I missed a post last night (after going on and on about how I was “back,” natch) but I was still running errands as the clock neared midnight. Two crazy days in a row are over and I’m ready to recap.

Thursday’s brunch included two of my best savory recipes.

A Nacho Turkey Burger topped with some Citrus Guacamole.

We even toasted our buns (in a hot skillet with a bit of Smart Balance Light) so the meal felt extra fancy.

I also had a deeelicious drink; 1 cup each Chameleon Cold Brew coffee and eggnog.

I know it’s cold out for iced coffee but I couldn’t resist the chance to pair my favorite coffee with my favorite winter flavor.

I worked 9+ hours and was sooooooo hungry when I got off. I would have loved to go straight home for dinner but we had errands to run so I ended up getting Moe’s instead.

But who would complain about Moe’s?

I got a naked burrito (aka a cheaper rice bowl) with rice, black beans, sautéed onions, green peppers, and mushrooms, lettuce, corn salsa, cilantro, guacamole, and sour cream.

Plus chips with queso.

I ate all of the queso, 2/3 of the chips, and 3/4 of the bowl.

When we finally made it home (more than 12 hours after I left!) there were presents from both sets of parents.

My mom sent us homemade toffee.

It was the perfect bedtime snack.

Friday I started with a salad. Romaine topped with 1.5 chopped turkey burgers, shredded cheese, a dollop of guacamole, buckwheat groats, and honey mustard dressing (I accidentally used way too much dressing and it was kind of gross, boo).

Also half a honeycrisp with 1 Tbsp each peanut butter and Biscoff spread, melted.

And I drank a Guava Rockstar Punched at work.

<– yum

I have the best bosses on earth and they surprised us with pizza for dinner mid-shift! It was too exciting. I had a a veggie slice and a buffalo chicken slice.

Mr. Pizza has the best crust in Buffalo.

And I won this candy bar.

When I got home I made myself eat fruits and veggies first though. A handful of baby carrots.

An ambrosia apple.

And finally my tasty snack.

1 serving of Green and Black’s Toffee Milk Chocolate Bar,

and a cup of eggnog mixed with Silk Soy Nog.

Topped with a sprinkle of nutmeg.

Finally, some general updates –

My hair – I’m still leaving the tub purple after every shower and my new hair is a bit lighter than the original photo I showed you guys. I will have to have Adam snap a picture the next time I’m home during good light.
Christmas – we are not going to visit any family, boo. But Adam and I are going to have our first ever Christmas with just the two of us; it’s time that our little family started to develop some of our own traditions!

If you celebrate, where are you spending Christmas this year? Do you and your significant other have any of your own holiday traditions?

11Dec2012

Exam Eating

by Emily

Sunday’s 3pm Spot coffee was a terrible mistake. I got less than three hours of sleep that night! It made Monday morning’s 6 am Starbucks coffee an absolute necessity.

That’s a tall, non-fat, eggnog latte and it was fabulous! And I ate a Green Dragon apple (also fabulous) while I read through my notes.

My morning snack was from my #simplesurvivalkit.

A serving of Food Should Taste Good Chocolate Tortilla Chips to scoop up green salsa.

I had time to go home between my exam (went well-ish!) and work so I made myself a delicious plate of eggs for lunch.

At that point I still thought I was making a healthy dinner so I kept my eggs simple with no veggies. Just 5 chopped slices of turkey – just regular old honey roasted like for sandwiches – cooked in 1 Tbsp Earth Balance with 2 eggs and Cabot’s Sharp Cheddar Light Cheese scrambled in.

They were amazing; I’m having a total love affair with eggs recently.

I brought a Hint Blackberry Fizz with me for my 8.5 hour shift.

The Fizz was good, but it didn’t pack the caffeine-punch that I desperately needed.

At one point during my shift I was so tired that I was in an actual daze! On three different occasions I wanted to call Adam to bring me something and I had to really crank up my brain to work through why that didn’t make sense. <– he was out-of-town

I ended up using the work Keurig to make an extra-strength coffee with cream and sugar.

I stopped at the Co-op for food the minute I got off of work.

I shoved that Orzo Greek Salad into my face while walking around 7-11. Classy.

I had to run another errand on the way home from work and I called my parents to tell them I was home safely and suddenly it was 11 pm. I was exhausted and cranky and so hungry I felt like I was going to pull my hair out if I didn’t get food into my mouth immediately.

I ended up eating a bunch of crap and staying up too late but not studying. Of course. Homemade nachos that I ate so quickly I think even Webster was a little disgusted.

That’s 2-ish servings of Nacho Cheese Tortilla PopChips microwaved with cheese.

I bought the chips with a sweet free coupon that PopChips sent me and sadly I don’t think I like the tortilla version as much as the originals. Something about the texture feels off to me. To be fair, PopChips are amazing so the standard was set high.

Plus Tandoor Chef Vegetable Pad Thai,

and a bowl of melted pb with cocoa powder.

I wish I could tell you that today has been better on the fruit and veggies front but sadly that’s not true. This is definitely a week of exam eating.

Breakfast of champions.

Plus this Boston Cream Pie Seltzer that I thought would be amazing but ended up getting passed to a friend after one sip because it made me gag.

I have adored Polar this year though and one bad flavor won’t turn me off. I am very excited about the Pear Vanilla I bought with it. And I am crossing my fingers and toes that the Eggnog flavor with be out again in time for Christmas.

Starting at 7:40 I had two very frustrating meetings on campus. I don’t know if I get to graduate or not (getting a 2nd degree vs. just taking the classes needed to sit for the RD exam), I don’t really understand what I need to have done for next semester, and I have lots more to do before Thursday.

I took a walk home to clear my head and got Subway for lunch. A 6-inch tuna sub with lots of red onions.

Do you have a Subway rewards card yet? Because my sandwich was free!

And I’ve got a healthy dinner waiting for me in the fridge…

Or just “a dinner.” I’m blogging my winner of a dinner in advance because I have to go back to school for another meeting at 2:00 and then tomorrow morning I have two final exams that are going to crush me.

Plus this afternoon I am taking a study break to do something crazy. There is a hint in this post. Can you guess???

30Nov2012

The Best Thing Ever

by Emily

Howdy! It ~~was bedtime hours ago~~ is bedtime but I’m bubbling over with good cheer so I wanted to blog. Spread the love and all that.

Note 1 relates to note 2. Note 1 – Please ignore my crazy hair and old lady scarf and focus in on how fabulous my giant puffy sleeves are.

Love them! I bought this top back in my teacher days and it always made me feel like a professional city lady.

Note 2 – I got to Google Video Chat with Adam tonight and it was the best thing ever.

My husband is the most handsome man on the planet! And me…. well, I’ve got my great sleeves.

Adam has been/will be traveling a lot for interview this year and suggesting that we use the video chat today is the smartest thing he’s ever done. I can’t even tell you how good it was to see and hear him while we said goodnight. And this best thing ever is actually a silver lining on what seemed like a terrible situation. You see, yesterday Adam broke his cell phone. And if he’d had his phone with him on his trip today we wouldn’t have been on Google Chat at all. The money and time we are going to lose fixing it and the hassle of Adam having to navigate a new city tomorrow sans phone all pale in comparison to how wonderful it was to video chat this evening. <–silver lining

Don’t get me wrong, all of the travel has been/will be hard. A lot of his interview dates are right on top of one another and they make our busy schedule even more hectic. For example – he got to the apartment at 2am this morning and was heading to the airport by 6am. This meant I got 3 hours of sleep last night. Ugh.

It was a double pizza day. Making a smoothie meant getting out of bed five minutes earlier so instead I breakfasted on the cheese slice Adam brought me from our favorite pizza place in Brooklyn.

Amazing and also a bit sickening.

Clinic went well today, even though I was tired. In the morning I partnered with another student to chart on a tube feed and in the afternoon I shadowed a RD on the renal transplant floor.

Lunch was a mix of food from home and $2 spent at the salad bar with our great nutrition department discount. A ‘Thanksgiving leftovers’ sandwich of sliced turkey, homemade cranberry sauce, and cream cheese on a Sandwich Thin.

Plus Food Should Taste Good Sweet Potato Chips.

And salad bar with cherry tomato, cucumber, carrot, red onion, and honey mustard dressing.

I always have to really talk myself into salad at home but when I’m out and about it tastes so good!

Dinner was round two of pizza since I was stuck on campus working on a group project.

A buffalo chicken slice that was nowhere near as good as Zetti’s. And I dropped a greasy piece of chicken on my nice pants. I clearly should have gone with another salad instead!

Finally, I ate 2 oz of chocolate covered kettle corn nuts while I puttered around the house this evening.

They are good, but not as good as they were inside cookies.

How do you stay close to your loved ones when you are physically far away?

23Nov2012

A Perfect, Peachy Visit

by Emily

If you follow me on Instagram you may have already guessed that… WE WENT TO ATLANTA!!!

We got very lucky and had access to two free tickets that had to be used before the end of 2012. I had two days off in a row from school and work so we started clicking on cities at random until we found a set of tickets that worked with my schedule. We ended up in Atlanta!

We flew in late Tuesday night and left Thursday morning so it was basically a one-day trip and it was absolutely perfect. We spent every last minute walking or eating – So. Much. Food! – and got to try lots of local flavors as well as froyo, twice! Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous.

The gorgeous weather was totally in our favor; perfect walking around temperatures.

We started Wednesday morning with Sublime Donuts.

Adam and I shared three kinds –

Butterfinger,

dulce de leche,

and s’more.

Butterfinger was his favorite and s’more was mine. The donuts were great but they definitely confirmed that I’m not a donut person; I could tell that they were awesome but they just weren’t that exciting for me. Give me a cupcake or froyo instead anyway. <– twice that day!

Next up, we visited The World of Coca-Cola.

We learned some interesting Coke facts and saw lots of neat old products,

but the best part of the visit was the tasting room.

They had Diet Cherry Coke!

Actually, they had lots of flavors – 60+! -and Adam and I tasted every single one.

The basics –

Peppermint Sprite –

Africa –

Asia –

Latin America –

North America –

Europe –

Ahhh! Adam was pretty ill by the time we were done but I told him that I’d be training for that day my entire life!

On our way out they even gave us a bottle to go.

I’m not even going to lie, I totally bought a Cherry Coke Zero a few hours later!

We spent a few hours walking around the downtown area before we were ready for lunch.

You won’t be able to guess what type of food we set our GPS for…

Froyo! I got a million flavors (including apple pie!) with all of the non-fruity toppings.

To save a little money, we got lunch food from Publix instead of going to a restaurant.

I ate about 1/3 of that smoked turkey and mac and cheese. Plus a short salted caramel hot chocolate while we recharged our phones at Starbucks.

For dinner we got Thai at Mali. We shared the Moo Sho to start.

Steamed rolls stuffed with sautéed chicken, shrimp, egg, and vegetables. Served with a peanut sweet plum sauce.

There was a little hiccup when they were out of the dish that brought me to the restaurant (seafood Pad Thai with crab claws), but we rallied by sharing two drinks. A pineapple capirinha, pineapple, cacha rum, limes and sugar,

and a Thai tea-ni, tea infused vodka, vanilla vodka, sweetened Thai tea, and milk.

For my meal I got grilled salmon with sautéed vegetables in basil sauce, ordered Thai-spicy.

It was good; nice and spicy! So spicy, in fact, that I ended up ordering a regular Thai iced tea to help cool down my mouth.

Dessert was round 2 of froyo.

I got taro, almond butter, and pecan pie froyo topped with sprinkles and sweetened condensed milk.

<– best bowl of froyo ever

The yogurt place was in a cool area and we ended up doing a final round of booze and food at the incredible Rosebud.

A can of PBR for me,

and pimento cheese with spiced saltines to share.

Amazing! I adore pimento cheese and this stuff was ridiculous. We waddled back to our hotel completely satisfied and happy.

It was an amazing trip and I feel very fortunate to have been able to take it. Our Turkey Day wasn’t quite as traditionally thankful but I’ll tell you about that later.

29Oct2012

It’s Getting {Pinapple Turkey} Chili

by Emily

Yesterday I spent 3 hours standing in the 40* rain… It was fabulous.

Elmwood Avenue held its trick-or-treat session yesterday afternoon and since I’ve never gotten to give out candy before my store let me be in charge of that job.

I checked out all of the cute costumes, rocked my bunny ears, handed out candy (ate a lot too!), and froze my butt off.

When I got home from work I needed new socks, one of Adam’s sweatshirts, and a big bowl of something hot to warm me up. Good thing I had gotten the crock pot started before I left for work.

Pineapple Turkey Chili, serves 8

1 tsp evoo
1 lb 94% fat-free ground turkey
1 medium red onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
15.5 oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
15.5 oz can cannellini beans
29 oz can tomato sauce
20 oz can crushed pineapple

Heat evoo in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add ground turkey and cook until browned, 3 – 5 minutes.
Place all ingredients (including browned turkey) into crock pot and stir to combine.
Set pot for 4 hours on the “high” setting.

P.S. I hope all my readers in the path of the Frankenstorm are doing alright!

17Oct2012

TV Dinner

by Emily

I think this is my easiest week thus far this school year. I actually watched tv this evening! I know that I really should have been working, but at least for this week it’s not the end of the world that I didn’t.

I was starving this morning and ended up eating all of my breakfast and my lunch within the first ten minutes of class. Müller Passion Fruit Peach Früt Up Yogurt.

A Clif Grape Fruit Rope (FNCE sample).

And a Jalopeño Popper Burger on a Sandwich Thin with pumpkin spice cream cheese.

This was such a good sandwich combination.

I had a long morning of classes and then a doctor’s appointment – with a super long wait – in the afternoon. Thankfully my appointment took me near Gin Gin, the restaurant with bubble tea that a customer raved about at work last weekend.

It was worth raving about! The used two kinds of boba, regular and popping!

The bubbles were in a red bean milk tea, and that was delicious too. I’m glad I took a chance on something different.

I came home with food too.

Hot and sour soup,

and Mongolian chicken (with carrots, cabbage, and a spicy sauce) with white rice.

I ate about half of each and then Adam ate the rest.

Plus ice cream (about a serving) straight from the pint.

With a side of “Private Practice,” “Castle,” and “Royal Pains.” ‘Twas a good night!

17Oct2012

Jalapeño Popper Burgers

by Emily

I know that this recipe has been on my blog for a while, but it is so flipping good that I had to highlight it again. Just look at the text Adam sent me after he tasted the burgers the other day –

The main thing that sucks about having a tiny, unknown blog is that people don’t see/make all of the recipes that I think are amazing. I promise, I’m a much better recipe creator than I am writer and photographer! So this post is my plea to you – try these jalopeño popper burgers for yourself. They are meaty and cheesy and just a little spicy.

My favorite way to eat them is on a bun with a little bit of Miracle Whip to cut the heat.

Jalopeño Popper Burgers, serves 6

1 lb 99% lean ground turkey
6 oz 1/3 less fat cream cheese
1/3 cup pickled jalapeños, minced
1 cup panko bread crumbs
1 tsp canola oil
6 oz sharp cheddar (optional)

Combine turkey, cream cheese, minced peppers, and bread crumbs in a large bowl. Use your hands (get dirty!) to blend the mixture. It doesn’t need to be homogenous; the burgers are best with pockets of cream cheese.
Spread oil evenly over a grill pan on medium-high heat.
Split meat into six even balls and then flatten into patties and place on the grill pan. Cook through, about 7 minutes on each side.
Optional – top cooked burgers with sharp cheddar and broil until the cheese melts.

P.S. Another burger plea; I entered a contest that I’m not going to win. If you could like and repin my Reuben Stuffed Turkey Burger recipe on Pinterest it would mean the world to me.

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: turkey

Use Your Noggin

It’s Begining To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Exam Eating

The Best Thing Ever

A Perfect, Peachy Visit

It’s Getting {Pinapple Turkey} Chili

TV Dinner

Jalapeño Popper Burgers