House in the House

I don’t know how I managed to get Adam out of bed at 8am to run with me this morning, but I did.  He’s not the best running partner though, he made me laugh so hard I had to take a break!  His brother’s neighborhood had a loop, so I ran that 3x and walked in once.  The husband measured it afterwards and found out the loop was .75mile.  That means I did 3miles total, with my walk included.  39minutes, 273calories.

I played a rousing game of Hungry Hippos with my niece before I decided I was a hungry hippo and it was time for a shower.  Then I put together a random lunch plate.

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An apple and a few pieces of sliced turkey.

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Cheese and pizza bites.

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I actually ate another piece bite too, and when I realized I was still starving I got a bowl of cereal.

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I haven’t had Lucky Charms in years!

We were supposed to go to the fair today but it is raining buckets so we are just hanging out around the house.  And watching House, they have the newest episode on dvr.  Hope everyone else is having a sunny Saturday.

What are your Saturday plans?

Peppers and Pie

My biggest accomplishment this afternoon was getting rid of my headache, but that’s actually a pretty big accomplishment in my book!  I finished GhostWorld and I can officially say I’m not a fan 😦

After crappy movie hour I finally did my kitchen to-do’s.  I pre-made pasta for lunches this week, made dinner, and…..I made a pie! 

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Tyler Pie to be exact.  I can’t give you the recipe, but it is from Pie, Pie, Pie; Easy Homemade Favorites by John Phillip Carroll.  I’ve made things from this book throughout the years and I highly recommend it.  Here is the description he gives in the book –

Incredible as it sounds, in the past, it was not uncommon to christen foods, particularly desserts, after political figures.  Named for the 10th president of the United States, John Tyler of Virginia, this pie has its heritage in the South.  Though the ingredients are simple, the pie has a caramel-like flavor and a smooth texture that combine to give it a soothing quality.  It is a suitable for breakfast as it is after a good meal.

More on that later though, dinner was a success!  I pulled the recipe completely from my head and it ended up being great 🙂

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Stuffed Peppers, serves 4

  • 5oz ww penne pasta
  • 1C chopped broccoli
  • 1T evoo
  • 8oz 99% lean ground turkey
  • 1/2C marinara sauce
  • 4oz log goat cheese
  • 4 peppers, any color (we used red, yellow, and orange)
  • 1/4 shredded cheese (we used 2% cheddar)
  1. Cook pasta, following box directions.  In the last 3-5minutes of cooking stir in broccoli.  Drain and set aside.
  2. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 475*.  Cut the tops off of the peppers.  Using a spoon, scoop out the pith and seeds, careful not to break the bottoms of the peppers.
  3. Put pot back on stove, turn heat down to medium and heat evoo.  Add turkey meat and cook for 2-3minutes.  Pour in marinara sauce and finish cooking meat through.  Remove from heat.
  4. Add pasta and broccoli back to pot, along with goat cheese, and stir to mix.
  5. Spoon pasta into peppers.  Split cheese ontop of the peppers.  Place peppers on a foiled cookie sheet.
  6. Bake for 15minutes.

Notes on the recipe –

* Think anti-Sir-Mix-A lot with the peppers, get ones with flat bottoms (i.e. they will stand alone)

*I did not do this, but I highly recommend preheating the peppers for 5-10minutes

* Each serving has ~400calories

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Our peppers were pretty small so I ate some filling on the side.

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I took too much though, I ended up leaving most of the extra filling.  I needed room in my belly for pie!

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It was pretty good, it had a nice eggy taste to it.  I got some free coupons for Wholly Wholesome products so I used one of their pie crusts.

We watched “The Open Window” while we ate, which was also a strange movie.  And now it is late, and bedtime.  Nighty night!

Do you bake?

The Buzz

Good afternoon all!  I hope everyone is having a painless Monday.  As you know, I didn’t go to bed until after 2 last night, but once in bed I didn’t fall asleep until after 3!  I don’t know how on earth I managed to wake up at 9am but I think my excitement over breakfast was a factor.

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I pan-heated two chicken apple maple sausages.

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And put my leftover oven-roasted root veggies into eggs.  I heated 1T SmartBalance Light in a pan, heated the turnips and parsnips, cracked in two eggs, scrambled, and added a small handful of sharp cheddar at the end.

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Very tasty!  I will officially say that turnips and parsnips (and whole okra) are a success, they will be entering the regular line up!

After breakfast I hurried to the hospital for my 4hour volunteering shift.  At 20’clock I clocked out and apparently became a cereal magnet.  I used my lunch voucher to buy some granola and skim milk to eat later this week,

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and when I got home I found a Kashi coupon and sample in the mail.

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You can click here to get your own sample, I said “surprise me!”

In spite of its abundance, I knew that cereal was not going to cut it for lunch.  I spent most of my volunteering time delivering blood and medicine, which means I took the stairs a ton! (when I am taking patients places I obviously only take the elevator)  I decided to give Flat Outs a try with another sandwich.

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I know it looks unassuming, but he’s just being modest.

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  • 1 Flat Out
  • homemade honey mustard (1T dijon mustard, 1t honey)
  • 6 thin slices turkey
  • ~1/2C shredded carrot

This was very satisfying.  I still found the wrap a bit chalky but overall the taste combo was fantabulous.  I totally only ended my lunch with almond butter straight into my mouth for the protein.

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It was 100% the 6g of protein in the packet, not that it was maple flavored almond butter, and certainly not that I like squeezing it straight into my mouth 🙂

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I am feeling very lucky to have received Justin’s samples, 2 thumbs up!

In just a bit I am going to head out to campus.  Class isn’t until 6:30 but I need to print off the class notes and pick up some forms.  Dinner will be something thrown together because Adam claimed the tofu leftovers, but I am planning on doing some baking tonight!

Foodbuzz Excitement

I couldn’t wait to tell you guys about the excitement I mentioned yesterday – it’s official, my friend Camile and I will be attending the Foodbuzz Blogger Festival in November!!!  We booked our tickets and hotel room yesterday and we are both so excited!  Do you know anyone else who is attending?

Also, I forgot to mention before, but one of my photos was featured on the main page of Foodbuzz the other day.  It’s clearly not a big deal, but the husband was so proud of me he took a screenshot.

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Balls, of Meat

Extra to-do’s are done, dinner was made from scratch, it’s been a good day!  This morning was not much of a success.  I wanted to do chemistry review – one last ditch effort before class starts on Monday – so I rode to school with Adam to study at the South Campus library.  We got to school before it opened so I hung around the med school lobby and ate my snack.

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My baggie was about 2servings and very tasty.

Once the library did open at 8 I put in a valiant two hours of day-dreaming before I accepted that I was too cold and hungry to focus.  I trekked in search of a cafeteria, success.

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My egg/cheese bagel and coffee were just what I needed.  I studied in the cafeteria until I was halfway through with my coffee.  I should mention, the coffee machine was one of those push button thingies, and I ended up with English Toffee Cappuccino.  It was very syrupy and halfway through I basically had diabetes.

I trekked again, bought a diet soda to clear my head (don’t judge me!) and went back to the libary for some actual  studyingcompletely worthless blog reading. 

It wasn’t until 12:30 that I finally had some success!  I went for coffee with a blog reader/R.D student at UB (hi, Katie!).  I got to ask questions about the program and catch up on blog gossip, it was great.  We ended up sitting at Starbucks for hours!  While we were there I had a more successful snack.

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Unsweetened iced coffee with skim milk and a KIND bar.

I didn’t get home until after 5, and then Adam and I headed out on errands.  We spent forever at Target.  Among other things, I replaced my devious Sigg,

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and we bought a new blender, woo!

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Before we could head home we had to hit up a wine store too.

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We are having a small get-together tomorrow, the theme of which is wine and cheese.

Somehow at 9pm I managed to force myself to cook dinner.  While I worked I ate two farmers’ market plums for energy.

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We made Giada De Laurentiis’ meatballs, from her Everyday Italian cookbook.  I only had a small serving,

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but it was frickin delicious!  Hands-down the best turkey meatballs I’ve ever had, I’m sorry I can’t post the recipe.

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Dinner was great, and “My So-Called Life” was even better 🙂  We will be very busy tomorrow (in addition to our get-together set up we have to get our car registered) so I probably won’t be posting again until the evening.  See you then!

What is your favorite ground meat, for balls form?  My favorite is extra-lean turkey.

Thunder, Turkey, Too Much

I am so hungry!  I’ve eaten so much, as you will see in this post, and I am still starving!  I finally just stopped eating because it was getting ridiculous.

We didn’t have much to get at the grocery store for this week – milk, bread – but we stocked up on some snacks for our upcoming road-trip.  Due to some plan changes I just found out that I will be driving from the city to Buffalo alone by myself in the car.  It’s a little scary – moving vehicles put me to sleep in minutes – but my plan of attack is to do a lot of snacking and chug some sugar free energy drinks.  By the way, for obvious reasons, I won’t be blogging during the move.  We lose our internet this Wednesday and it won’t be set up in Buffalo for about a week so I will be taking a quick hiatus.

The errand took a little longer than planned because we got caught in a massive thunderstorm –

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I looked like a drowned rat.  By the time we got home I was (wet) starving so I grabbed my emergency candy from when I thought the CPR class was running until 6.

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Limited Edition Coconut M&Ms.  These were really good, the coconut flavor was very present without being too strong.  Plus some had cute little palm trees stamped on them.

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I also love these “what’s inside” nutrition stat bubbles.

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What a clear, colorful way to make sure important information does not go overlooked.  My only complaint is that they do not list trans fat in the bubble – that is by far the most important thing I look for when I read nutritional labels.  Even when I am totally pigging out I never eat trans fat.  With the disagreements over how trans fat effects fertility it is disgusting to me that this [added] ingredient is still in products.  It’s one thing to say that Big Brother shouldn’t put laws on how much fat products can have or restrict supersizing, it is up to consumers to be informed.  But when it comes to trans fat there is a real glut of information, even many informed consumers aren’t informed and they deserve to have risk-free food.

While we were cooking I also lopped off the top of a kiwi and ate his brains out with a spoon.

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This was the best method at maximizing flesh eaten and minimizing mess I’ve found so far.

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For dinner we sauteed extra lean ground turkey with frozen collard greens and some peas and then added Newman’s Own Cabernet Marinara.  We ate that on top of some wheatberries Adam cooked in bulk the other day.

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I ate a ton of toppings over 1/3C of wheatberries.

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Tasty, and quick.

Of course I was still hungry after dinner, so I dipped into our car snacks stash and at a small large bowl of cheddar goldfish

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And finally a mini strawberry rice krispies treat.

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As I said before, I’m still hungry, but it was time to stop.

Unfortunately I never got in even a mini workout, but I am just so wet!  I need to go shower so I can snuggle up in bed.  I’ll leave you with some interesting happenings online –

1. Surprising Secrets of Celebrity Chefs from MSN.  My favorite tip was from Ming Tsai, there are so many wonderful, easy applications for store bought wonton wraps.

2. Kath and Caitlin both blogged about free samples in bloggerland.  I don’t get many samples (although I’d like to get more!) because my blog is pretty teensy and I don’t ask for them.  However, when I do get freebies I think I do a good job of mentioning that the item is a sample.  I will always be completely honest about how I feel about a product – if it’s bad it’s bad, my blog isn’t big enough to be worth compromising my integrity.  While I don’t get a lot of free samples, I do do a fair amount of product reviews on here.  I know sometimes it seems like I gush about everything but honestly, I’m just really excited about food!

What is a non-negotiable for you on nutritional labels?

What do you think about blogger freebies?

Monday Afternoon – Tuesday Evening

Our trip is coming to an end, this is our last evening in St. Thomas.  Right now the husband, my mom, and I are heading to dinner so this will be a quick post.

After my last post Adam and I headed to a late lunch at Iggy’s.  We decided to split two things –

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Grilled Mahi sandwich and chicken tenders.  Here was my portion –

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The food was pretty bad, I ended up leaving a lot on my plate –

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It was ok though, we knew that the food is almost never good there, we went for 3 big reasons –

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location, location, location!  We even got a visit from an “Iggy.”

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After some freshening up and relaxing at home we did dinner with my parents.  At my request we had turkey burgers with turkey bacon.  I topped mine with a slice of cheese and instead of buns we used focaccia my dad made.

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Alongside I made a bunch of roasted veggies – radish chips, cauliflower, oven baked okra.

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All together.

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I also munched on a slice of cantelope.

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For dessert my mom made me an early “birthday cake,” Lemon Icebox Pie from my Serendipity cookbook.

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It was delicious.

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And then we played more games, of course!

Tuesday – Sun day

We headed out early to get in some time at the beach.  It is possible that for breakfast I ate a slice worth of bites of pie, straight from the pan.  Adam caught me and said I looked like a raccoon but I have no pictures 🙂

We went to Saphire, which was gorgeous but super windy.

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We did hang around long enough for a beer though.

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After we cooled down at home we headed out to Petersburg with my dad to visit The Point.  The Point is a rocky area of cliffs that is beautiful (but dangerous – several people have climbed into the tide pools there and died).  I took some great pictures.

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The husband and I did lots of climbing, it was definitly my cardio for the day!

Now we are going out to dinner with my mother.  After that we have plans to meet up with a high school friend and early tomorrow we are heading to the airport and back home.  It’s been a great vacation. Your reguarly scheduled programing will resume tomorrow evening.