Weekend Wrap-Up; Marshmallow Madness

by Emily

I am not 100% yet, but I am feeling much better. 90%? Poor Adam, though, has gotten my cold x2, complete with an ear infection. It’s put a real damper on how much sympathy I’m able to get! At least we were both in the mood for a quiet, lazy weekend.

breakfast and lunch

Friday at work I had a Coconut Chocolate Chip Clif Bar with WF’s Citrus Blend Italian Sparkling Mineral Water.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing tops Diet Coke, but I am really loving those sparkling waters. The strawberry flavor is the best.

Then for lunch, Grape Chobani with KIND Raspberry Chia Seed Clusters, an apple, and a Vita Coco Café.

Again, not as amazing as iced coffee, but the espresso coconut water mash-up is damn good.

And I did have iced coffee this weekend. With skim milk and vanilla creamer.

Plus peanut/butter toast and a mini cheese for brunch.

That is the only weekend breakfast or lunch picture I have because mostly we snacked on random things.

Also I made and ate a lot of brownies (see below…).

dinner

Friday night we turned to the freezer for dinner.

TJ’s vegan orange chicken was alright paired with broccoli.

But it was basically the least filling thing on the planet. We both ended up making sandwiches too.

Fancy pb&j for me.

Saturday night was just straight fancy.

I made baked shrimp! Shrimp, chopped bell pepper, evoo, fresh cilantro, salt, smoked paprika, cayenne, lime juice, and a sprinkle of chopped butter, baked at 425* for 12 minutes. Served on top of jasmine rice cooked in chicken stock.

This was tasty, healthy, and oh-so quick to prepare. Triple win.

Sunday I started dinner in the car home after the world’s longest trip to Trader Joe’s. Apparently people are freaking out about our potential blizzard. By the by, please, please, please cross your fingers that it doesn’t blizzard!

After my pretzel roll I made a spinach salad.

With balsamic vinaigrette, pomegranate, goat’s milk cheddar, and sweet and salty pecans.

snacks, aka marshmallow madness

My mother-in-law sent us a cute Valentine’s card and some strawberry Peeps.

They were yummy, but the marshmallow extravaganza was just beginning… we also had a big container of fluff!

So I made the very best brownies I’ve ever tasted.

Triple chocolate fudge with a layer of marshmallow fluff in the middle.

Recipe is coming tomorrow and it is absolutely fantastic, I promise.

In the meantime, I did something else with the fluff.

Oh yes, I did. Malted Marshmallow Coffee Creamer. If you put skim milk, marshmallow fluff (1:2 ratio with the milk), and malted milk powder (1:4 ratio with the milk) in the blender you can put it in your coffee and pretty much die of happiness.

We used 2 cups skim milk, 1 cup fluff, and 1/4 cup malted milk powder, but as long as you follow the ratio above you can make a smaller or larger batch, no problem. I highly recommend it!

31Dec2014

Goodbye, 2014! Weekly Wrap-Up

by Emily

I cannot believe that it is almost 2015! Doesn’t it sometimes feel like life is flying by? I hate the idea of waking up late and tired in a new year, so our big plans for NYE consist of cuddling on the couch and trying to get in bed extra early.

Posting my recap a few days ahead of schedule so I can feel like I wrapped up one final thing…

breakfast

Yummy hot chocolate and an apple.

After coffee, obviously. Per usual, I was all about the coffee.

This giant (I had a freebie) was an iced vanilla latte with extra espresso.

I have been weirdly obsessed with vanilla all week and it’s making me kind of crazy; I don’t even like vanilla! You’ll see Greek and frozen vanilla yogurts below, and I’m pretty much going to die if I don’t find pudding this weekend. Hopefully this craving will pass soon.

lunch

Salted caramel Greek yogurt with coconut butter and an apple on the side.

Plus a vegan monster cookie sandwich from Babycakes. <– amaze!

And some jerky while I did my charting.

Tuesday I got lunch from the cafeteria that tasted better than it looked.

A strange Caesar pasta salad (it was chicken and dressing with pasta AND croutons?!) topped with mushrooms and broccoli from the salad bar.

Another day I brought in dinner leftovers.

Apple on the side; I had SweeTango and Kiku this week and both were great.

snacks

Chocolate! Some nice (this Coffee & Cream bar from Theo is gritty good),

and some inedible.

Sorry, Mom, this Christmas gift was too spicy.

Adam is now as obsessed with this fruit mix as I am.

But no one is as obsessed with vanilla as I am currently! Vanilla bean yogurt with some candy cane Oreos crushed in it.

And vanilla frozen yogurt with sprinkles.

This was literally the first time I’ve even ever tasted vanilla froyo. Who orders vanilla?! But today I looooved it.

dinner

A dinner in three parts – (1) Leftover, cold, spicy cashew chicken straight from the container.

(2) A tray of roasted green beans with truffle salt. I have been finding green beans to be particularly buttery tasting lately.

And finally, (3) a chile relleno from Trader Joe’s.

The chile looks a little rough but it was so yummy; cheesy without being too heavy.

We went with the TJ’s freezer section the next night as well.

Pad See Ew and orange chicken with broccoli.

We wouldn’t get the chicken again, but years ago we had the vegan version of it and loved it.

Tonight we were supposed to eat lentils with broccoli and coconut rice.

That bowl is in the garbage. Apparently I have forgotten how to cook lentils that don’t taste like dirt. It looks like I’ll be ending the year with take-out instead.

Happy New Year’s Eve!!

20Dec2014

Five Things – Weekly Wrap Up

by Emily

five things i ate last week

{1} Really great breakfasts.

I killed it on the breakfast front this week. Two different days I managed to bring in yogurt (TJ’s strawberry and then 2% plain Fage) with tons of pomegranate and blackberries for topping.

Plus I had cold-brew coffee with soy nog for the train.

Another day I did toast, followed by a juicy apple, and caramel hot chocolate to spruce up my coffee at work.

{2} Party food!

My lunches were a bit ridiculous this week, lots of work parties to attend. First, the Dietitian party.

My profession always has the best food. Salad, fruit salad, glass noodles with shrimp, and chicken Pad Thai.

Plus lots of dessert.

And later in the week there was a hospital wide celebration.

Salad, green beans, jerk chicken, eggroll, macaroni. Plus a chocolate fountain.

{3} Sandwiches, still.

The days without parties, I was still loving the cafeteria sandwiches. Jerk sliced chicken with mayo, mustard, provolone, and lettuce.

Plus a similar ‘wich with seaweed and a tangerine from home on the side.

{4} Dinner at Whole Foods.

We went on the first night of Hannukah hoping to find lattkes on the hot bar. No such luck, but we did make super tasty giant salad bowls. P.S. That seltzer was so good that I went back and bought a case of them!

Salad base with yummy chipotle almond dressing, tons of shredded veggies, roasted veggies, and a big scoop of mac and cheese.

And we stopped at Ample Hills to check out the seasonal flavor on the way home.

Did not disappoint.

{5} Super thick hot chocolate.

I made my own (super thick) hot chocolate. But I messed up the proportion of things a bit so the recipe is still not ready to share.

It looked good though!

five things i read/watched/listened to

{1} “Take Me to Church” from Hozier. I am still obsessed.

{2} “Snowfall” from Ingrid Michelson. This is my all-time favorite “Christmas song.”

{3} Blood, Bones, & Butter, Chef Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune’s memoir. <– do not recommend. Parts of the story were great, but I wasn’t a fan over her writing style and by the end I wasn’t a fan of her either.

{4} The mid-season finale of “Brooklyn-99.” Loooove.

{5} “Rick and Morty,” an amazingly smart and funny cartoon that we just discovered.

five things from instagram

{1} My new favorite top ever, a sweater my parents sent me with a giant icebear.

{2} I’m super proud of this wrapping job I did on my in-laws’ Christmas present… working a toy store over the holiday season in Buffalo definitely taught me a few things.

{3} Another shot of that tasty marshmallow I ate in the Bryant Park Winter Village.

{4} I like this drawing, but I took this photo back in November, before Thanksgiving! Slow down!

{5} Puppy love. His fat little arms slay me.

Have a great weekend!

12Dec2014

This Week I Loved…

by Emily

*Silk Soy Nog*

I adore eggnog, and this (vegan, 80 calories per half cup) stuff is at least 90% as good as the real thing. Enjoyed in both overnight oats and cold brewed coffee.

*Sandwiches from the cafeteria*

I didn’t pack lunch for most of the week because I bought a sandwich on Tuesday and got hooked. Turkey and provolone on an onion roll with mustard, mayo, and spicy banana peppers.

*Chips*

I had tortilla chips – with cheese and fresh salsa – with my sandwich one day and became a woman obsessed. I ended up making Adam a separate, grown-up person dinner and then eating chips and cheese several nights.

*Cola-flavored candies*

So good! Extra fizzy cherry cola Pop Rocks and cola float hard candies with a creamy center.

*A new book obsession*

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

I finished Cutting for Stone this week and thought it was absolutely wonderful. Author Abraham Verghese is a doctor as well as a writer and he did a skillful job of portraying the medical scenes in the story in clear and approachable way (most of the main characters are doctors so this came up a lot). The characters are all flawed but beautiful, and I fell head over heals in love with Ghosh.

What books have you loved lately?

25Nov2014

The Slanted Woods {San Francisco}

by Emily

Wednesday morning we stopped at Peet’s for an eggnog iced coffee to go with my Ferry Building farmer’s market pear.

Then we made our way over the bridge through the pouring rain,

and up to Muir Woods for a stunningly beautiful hike.

We bought trusty $4 ponchos to get us through the 4+ miles in the downpour, but I wasn’t able to take many pictures.

Mostly we just got shots of Adam and me being goofballs.

We got completely soaked but still had a wonderful time.

Afterwards we went back to the hotel to dry off before our late lunch at Coqueta, a Spanish tapas place that knocked our socks off.

My cocktail – cream sherry, Luxardo amaretto, sherry vinegar, Manchego, and golden raisins – was one of the best I’ve ever had.

We split a variety of small plates, all of which we enjoyed greatly.

Huevos Nacional – deviled eggs filled with spring pea, smoked pimenton alioli, on pickled saffron potatoes and olive oil poached bonito.

Housemade potato chips with shaved Manchego and vermouth vinegar salsa. A play on bagels and lox of smoked salmon, queso fresco, and truffle honey.

Wild and cultivated mushrooms with garlic, chili, and sherry.

And Catalan-style vineyard greens with a caper-raisin puree, raisins, pine nuts, and garlic. <– my favorite dish of the day

For dessert we did caramel popcorn with Manchego cheesecakes that were amazing caramel lollipops with a liquid cheese filling.

And churros with drinking chocolate and a mixed berry powder for dipping.

Every last bite of this meal was inventive, fresh, and freaking delicious.

After more walking,

a stop at Humphry Slocombe for fluffernutter ice cream with butterscotch sauce, (<– Adam got ice cream almost every day)

and a New Orleans style coffee from Blue Bottle,

we were ready to drink our dinner at 21st Amendment Brewery.

21st Amendment brews Hell or High Watermelon, one of my top favorite beers, so we were excited to taste our way through their menu.

We shared Hell or High Watermelon, Vina, Framboise Forte D’or, Belgian Chocolate Stout, and a yummy honey meade from a guest brewery.

Also, a giant plate of fried cheese curds.

Ridiculous! And we were completely sober by the time we finished the 4 mile trek back to the hotel.

Thursday morning I fueled up with a praline chestnut latte and a local apple.

Plus a great rose macaron that we picked up along the way.

But the super steep hills still totally kicked my butt.

We were supposed to spend the morning in Golden Gate Park but unfortunately the crazy rain scared us away. We ended up eating our way through Japantown.

And actually even getting some Whole Foods hot bar while we hid and tried to keep dry.

Thankfully our afternoon plans were an indoor tour/tasting at Anchor Brewery.

We had a great time and definitely recommend it.

The rain cleared up in the afternoon while we spent some time in Chinatown.

And Boba Guys served us the best bubble teas of the year.

My almond milk coffee with boba and housemade almond jelly was delicious.

Then we were back to the Market Building where we couldn’t resist a final Vietnamese iced coffee from Out the Door.

An ironic choice considering our dinner reservations.

The Slanted Door has been on my list for years and it did not disappoint.

Piña colada – El Dorado 3 year white rum, house coconut cream, fresh pressed pineapple juice, pineapple gum, and lime.

Adam got a truly fabulous steak and I did three veggie options for my meal. Fried kabocha squash – palm sugar & lime caramel sauce, thai basil.

A green papaya salad – pickled carrot, rau ram, crispy shallot, roasted peanut – that was my favorite dish of the day.

And the Catalan Farm spicy broccoli – braised tofu, lion’s mane mushroom. The spongy mushrooms were so cool!

We did another round of churros for dessert.

As well as a brown butter cake trifle with huckleberries, lemon curd, and hibiscus meringue.

The meringues were as tasty as they were gorgeous. A great way to end our fourth day!

31Oct2014

Best Pizza Ever; Weekly Wrap-Up

by Emily

Happy Halloween!

Things were busy, busy, busy, busy this week at work. <– if you don’t read that in the voice of the magician from “Frosty the Snowman” then you didn’t have a childhood and you need to go rent the movie immediately!

As I’ve mentioned, my clinic is transferring over to an electronic medical record system at the end of this year. The nutrition department needs a new charting form (built from scratch) to accommodate our specific patient population, but since I am the entire department things have been pretty hectic. Plus we are in the middle of planning a big event and I randomly had a bunch of newly diabetic patients this week.

Additionally, I do some consulting work on the side reviewing nutrition educations and I had a big batch of articles to get through this week. I really enjoy the work – did you know that I did some editing/reviewing for a famous Caribbean author as a child? – but it can be hard to get motivated to get myself back into work mode once I’m home and changed into Adam’s sweatpants at the end of the day. Snacks help.

My meals were all totes amaze this week and/but you will see quite a bit of repetition…

breakfast

Vega Peanut Butter Cup Bar and an orchard apple.

Iced coffee with chocolate soy milk and an apple.

Orchard apples and espresso with milk and sugar.

The energy shot in the middle was a sample from my Urth Box and it was a giant nope.

lunch

Yogurt bowl. It’s funny, at least once a week someone will comment about how good my yogurt lunch looks.

Dannon Pumpkin Pie Greek with fresh blackberries and TJ’s Pumpkin O’s. Plus a candy corn salt water taffy.

Take-2.

With TJ’s pumpkin Greek and Pop Rocks.

Dark Chocolate Mint bar from Zing.

This was all I had time to eat on Thursday but it kept me full all afternoon. Thanks, 10 grams of protein.

snack time

Lindt’s “Hello My Name Is” bars are pretty much my favorite. Cookies and Cream!

An “Apple Pie A la Mode” = honeycrisp apple cider + RumChata + Goldschläger.

Locally-made yogurt.

Trying to bribe myself into doing my freelance work, I … stole some of Adam’s Cheetos (we both are a little bit insane about themed foods),

Ate licorice bears,

And dipped a big, sliced apple into butterscotch peanut butter.

The apple dippers beat out my other snacks in nutrition and flavor.

dinner

We made Rachael Ray’s Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage using this fun pasta as our base.

We tend to rarely repeat recipes but this is one we’ve made several years in a row now (back in the day!).

So good. I subbed TJ’s soy chorizo for sausage and fat-free half and half for cream but otherwise followed the recipe.

Round 2.

I made a big bowl of leftover pumpkin pasta and leftover white cheddar macaroni with spinach, topped with chunky cranberry apple sauce that one of my nutrition co-workers made for me.

Adam was not willing to put fruit on his pasta, but my bowl was delicious.

Pizza Night!

Ugh. These came out so flipping yummy and neither Adam or I could shut up about it. We loaded them with ridiculous toppings and they probably ended up being far more caloric than delivery but they were also the best pizzas we’ve ever eaten. We used a ball of dough from Trader Joe’s and it split perfectly into two nicely sized pizzas.

Traditional – marinara sauce / low-fat shredded mozzarella / sautéed green pepper rings / tons and tons of mushrooms browned in butter.

Plus, slightly less traditional.

Oh yes, you know I went there! The best pizza I’ve ever eaten ever including the amazing, giant slices of Buffalo chicken from Zetti’s – pumpkin puree / low-fat shredded mozzarella / TJ’s Pacific Rock cheddar / onions sautéed with liquid smoke and smoked brown sugar / tons of crumbled turkey bacon.

Plus we had sautéed kale on the side, with liquid smoke, maple syrup, and more bacon.

For nutrition.

We also shared a Warlock.

Best of the season! There wasn’t actually much pumpkin flavor, this was just a really delicious stout.

Round 2.

Leftover pizza.

Kale chips with truffle salt and roasted broccoli with bbq.

The pizza was just as swoon-worthy eaten cold. How do I get more, immediately? And we ate this while watching “Nightmare Before Christmas” so I was pretty much exploding with excitement. <– picture strange, giddy laughter and me singing along with my mouth stuffed full of pizza.

What was on the best pizza you’ve ever eaten?

18Oct2014

Books And Bites; Five Favorites From The Week

by Emily

{1} Coffee

I made a fantasmic batch of cold brew this week. Brooklyn Roasting Company Iris Espresso brewed with pumpkin spice and vanilla bean paste. Two notes – 1. Go read all of the coffee descriptions on BRC immediately; you’ll drool all over your keyboard. 2. I am adding vanilla bean paste to all of my coffees from here on out.

Served over ice with Almond Breeze Hint of Honey. <– I’m a fan.

{2} Chocolate

Dark Chocolate Mint from NibMor.

Did y’all know that NibMore lives right up the road from me in Great Neck? I’m excited that this tasty bar is local.

{3} Oatmeal for lunch

I know that these overnight oats look a little rough, but the flavor was perfect. In the morning before work I stirred together 1/3 cup pumpkin puree, 1/4 cup oats, 3/4 cup almond milk, and 1 Tbsp chia seeds. The mixture thickened up nicely by lunchtime.

The blob on top is butterscotch peanut butter. <– Ahh-mazing! Adam and I are obsessed.

Another day, another (oat)meal.

Veggie and fruit leather, a SweeTango apple, and *new* Quaker Caramel Apple Oats.

{4} A great, Greek, green dinner

Leftovers.

I was worried about the phyllo dough, but my Greek Tofu Pie reheated just fine.

Plus leftover green beans sautéed with garlic aioli mustard sauce and sliced almonds.

We had a rough week health wise – one night Adam had a fever and I had a migraine and we sat on the floor and ate chips and aspirin for dinner – so having leftovers available was great.

Worth mentioning too – My leftovers from Max in Williamsburg.

The pasta and sauces are all made in-house and they are out of control.

{5} A new favorite novel

The Center of Winter by Marya Hornbacher. I haven’t actually gotten all that far into this book yet – partially because I’ve needed to nap on the train and mostly because the writing is so beautiful that I go back to the beginning of the page and reread when I hit the end of most of the pages.

Hornbacher is one of my favorite authors and her first book, a memoir focusing on her eating disorder, shaped the way I think about literature. <– I am planning on blogging about that in more detail next week.

Her first novel has been truly one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. I wanted to share a short {meta!} passage to give you guys a taste –

All the seasons here in the north move toward their own end, except winter, which moves towards its center and sits there to see how long you can take it. Spring twitches impatiently in its seat like a child wanting to go outside, straining toward summer, and summer, all lush and showy, tumbles headlong toward the decay of fall. Fall comes and goes so fast it takes the breath away, arriving in brocades of red and gold and whipping them off in only a few weeks, leaving a landscape ascetic, stunned with loss.

Outside, in the soft blue-gray dark, the snow fell. A child sat at the kitchen table and pretended her father had not died, because you were there. As long as you were there, she did not need to be afraid, or go outside, and so she was not afraid, of cold or anything else. Death did not kill her off but merely left her maimed, like a shot animal that startles at the noise more than the pain and scrambles even faster through the underbrush, wide-eyed and sweating at the flanks, not pausing for the ripped and useless leg it now drags behind it as it runs. The animal has three legs left. Terror makes that enough.

Have you read any of Hornbacher’s work yet?

19Sep2014

Things From The Week

by Emily

Hello, hello! I have a mere five things to talk about today, I was too busy with lots of little things last week to take many pictures. I mostly wanted to check in and reassure y’all (MOM) that I’m out of my funk. We spent the weekend eating tons of pizza and finishing up “The Office” and it totally cured my bad mood.

thing #1 – TV

Loooooooved the ending of The Office! Pam was kind of starting to drive me crazy in the last seasons, but I thought the finale was perfect. Both the wedding and the cameo made me cry!

thing #2 – Bars

Lots of on the go bites this week, and these were two of the best. Zing Dark Chocolate Hazelnut.

I liked the chewiness. And I was quite pleased by this –

I also loved the KIND Honey Smoked BBQ Bar, though I accidentally deleted the picture of it. This savory line is perfection for the times you want the convenience of a bar but not the typically sweet flavor.

thing #3 – Yogurt

I found the pumpkin spice Chobani!!! But you know I won’t eat that until October, so more importantly, I found the Apple Cinnamon Chobani.

It was very delicious paired with pomegranate arils.

thing #4 – Baking

Part of what was keeping me busy this week were the three September birthdays in the Nutrition office. I made a big batch of my Pumpkin Double Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Muffins and they got good reviews.

thing #5 – Coffeeeeee

I found Chameleon Cold Brew in NYC, finally. Yippee!

I also scored more Stumptown boxes and the Blue Bottle boxes, so I’m going to have some extra-fancy caffeination next week.

Eating Chalk

Tag Archives: vegan

Weekend Wrap-Up; Marshmallow Madness

breakfast and lunch

dinner

snacks, aka marshmallow madness

Goodbye, 2014! Weekly Wrap-Up

breakfast

lunch

snacks

dinner

Five Things – Weekly Wrap Up

five things i ate last week

five things i read/watched/listened to

five things from instagram

This Week I Loved…

The Slanted Woods {San Francisco}

Best Pizza Ever; Weekly Wrap-Up

breakfast

lunch

snack time

dinner

Books And Bites; Five Favorites From The Week

Things From The Week