Tag Archives: yam

STT; Sunday Afternoon – 3rd Anniversary

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Sunday afternoon, after a quick trip home for provisions, we headed to the movies. We saw a matinée of True Grit, which I just loved. Cowboy movies are so not my thing, but somehow I knew this one would just rock my socks. The story line was funny and touching and I loved the vocabulary.

I packed a baggie of baby carrots,

and bought some Jordan Almonds at the theatre.

We did a quick and easy dinner when we got home.

Baked okra with ketchup,

cole slaw,

and two mini buns (split), toasted and topped with leftover spinach dip.

Plus dessert.

One of our guy friends was flying out Monday afternoon, so we met him that morning for brunch.

A few other friends came along and it was great to catch up with everyone.

I ordered a mahi mahi sandwich with a side of cole slaw.

Delish!  Mahi mahi is my favorite kind of fish, so light and flakey.

I left my bun, but devoured everything else.

Dessert (clearly I’m on vacation, who really needs lunch dessert?!?) came at home in the form of 7-layer bar.

Around 4 – we are really watching our sun exposure – Adam and I got in an afternoon workout. We headed to the beach, and amid the frolicing did 30ish minutes of hard swimming.

We met up with visiting family friends for dinner. I wasn’t feeling confident about the healthiness of the meal, so I supplemented with some baby veggies before dinner.

Good thing, because pizza was dinner. I ended up with a shrimp scampi slice,

and a bbq chicken slice.

Adam and I also split a Caesar salad with extra veggies.

And I had a piece of homemade toffee when we got home.

Today (the 28th) is our 3rd wedding anniversary!!! We’ve celebrated by spending the day doing things we both love. Like starting the morning with a run… We got in an hour+ workout that included a bit of walking, 2 miles of running, and the mile uphill walk home. Between today’s run and yesterday’s swim, both of our legs are pretty sore!

Next on the agenda was lunch at our favorite restaurant.

Plus some time sipping coffee and reading.

I ordered a Vietnamese Latte (sweetened with condensed milk),

and Adam and I split the spicy sweet potato wrap (with spinach and rosemary goat cheese).

We’re unsure of the agenda tonight – there’s a party we might skip – but all I really need is an evening with the (3year’s old) husband!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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I hope everyone enjoyed their turkeys/tofurkeys and had a good day of family time!

We had a great holiday.  We ate with a family friend who hosted the big meal at noon; it seemed a little odd to eat that early, but it was nice to have the rest of the day free.

Adam and I actually started off our day with a little activity; my grandparents live right off of a path so we walked over for a run.  We covered 2miles total (in the rain!) and had a lot of fun.

We kept breakfast small because of our early meal.

A mixed bowl of Frosted Flakes and Blueberry Special K with berries,

and a small glass of oj.

Before I show you my lunch (Thanksgiving) plate, I should probably prewarn you – I hate Thanksgiving!  I like the idea of being thankful and getting together with loved ones, but for all the foods I love, I pretty much hate the traditional Turkey Day fare.  Which I suppose works out because I’m the only one who never leaves the meal feeling stuffed!

Sweet potato casserole, a roll, a deviled egg, marshmallow salad, corn casserole, and a bunch of green beans.  Sans turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes I managed to put together a pretty good meal 🙂

The dessert table was gorgeous, but my pumpkin love affair doesn’t extend to pie!

I did eat a Halloween reject when we got home though.

In the afternoon we took my grandma to see “Love and Other Drugs.”  It was funny and sweet, but *disclaimer* basically just one long sex scene!  So, um, don’t take your grandma 😉 (she enjoyed it!)

Dinner’s feast was much more my scene.

Leftover salad from yesterday,

roasted red pepper and tomato soup,

and the best grilled cheese I’ve ever eaten.

Seriously.  Pumpernickel rye bread spread with honey mustard, topped with 2 slices of extra sharp cheddar and spicy pickles, grilled on a skillet with a bit of butter. 

Oh.my.god!

Dessert was a small slice of coffee cake.

Not gonna lie, I cut this slice out from the middle of the cake so I could get that big chunk of topping!

Good family, good food, good day.

Don’t forget, you have one more day to enter my giveaway.

Why Don’t I Accomplish Things on Sunday?!

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I’m going to set a blogging speed record today because it’s bedtime.  Especially with the amount of school work I did today (cough, cough, none, cough), I want to be well rested for tomorrow.

As we went to get in bed last night the husband and I both realized that we were starving.  It was a bit ridiculous.  We ended up getting staying up, getting pizza, and watching the Simpsons’ Halloween special.

Breakfast = beautiful.

Plain fat-free Dannon with canned pumpkin, homemade pb, 1/4 cup gingerbread granola, and a bit of honey.

2nd breakfast (my hunger from last night didn’t wane all day), was more yogurt.

Low fat coffee topped with peanuts and honey.

Lunch was a sandwich from Lean Cuisine, Sun-Dried Tomato Basil Chicken.

Dinner was looking at me!

That fried egg is sitting atop a bed of sweet potato and kale. 

I precooked both veggies in the microwave to cut time, then cooked them in a bit of butter with salt, pepper, and paprika.

More pumpkin?  Dessert was a Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Square.

Con leche.

Goodnight!

Scotty Doesn’t Know

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We had an impromptu date night tonight; the husband called up another couple on a whim and invited them over for dinner and “Eurotrip” watching.  Actually, Michelle was feeling sick, but the boys and I whipped up a pretty good meal as a threesome!  (maybe we got in the cramming position…..clearly I’m still a bit delirious!)

Before that though, we made a few trips and finished all of our grocery shopping for the week.  Hunger final hit while in Target so I grabbed a single serving pita chips and red pepper hummus from the cafe.

De-lish-us!  I am continually impressed by Target. 

For dinner I made Chicken Cutlets with Fig Compote (recipe from Family Circle),

Adam made some roasted sweet potatoes,

and Patrick made a side salad.

We did good!  I took small servings because my cold has made my appetite all wonky.

And I still couldn’t even finish what I took, I left ~1-2bites of everything.

I didn’t actually fit in a stretch session, but we got in a pretty good workout of side-splitting laughter!  “Eurotrip” is one of my favorite movies; “here’s a fun fact – you made with your sister man!”  Actually, in order, my favorites are –

  1. Super Troopers
  2. Eurotrip
  3. The Hangover
  4. Knocked Up

I’m a bit of a guy in my entertainment choices 😉

We’ll say I worked up an appetite chuckling, because I did find room for dessert!

I’ve been waiting to make Rachel’s Pumpkin Butterscotch Cookies since I bookmarked them months ago!

Mmmmn, you can’t go wrong with pumpkin and butterscotch and the texture of these was awesomely cakey.

Tomorrow morning I’ve got to get up early to go to a 5k Heart Walk, yikes!  I’m going as part of a service group I joined so I can’t bow out, let’s hope I’m feeling healthy in the morning.

Be honest, did I get “Scotty Doesn’t Know” stuck in your head?

Sick Can Equal Super

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So I don’t know what the deal is with my tummy, but it turns out it wasn’t hunger.  I felt queasy all afternoon (I’m NOT preggers) and when I went to lay down I actually fell asleep before I could even set the alarm, Adam had to take the train home from work!  I really hope that it’s something random and I’m not getting sick because I don’t even know how I would deal with that with summer school.

We rescheduled our run for tomorrow and when we went out to pick something up at UPS we got dinner from Wegman’s hot bar instead of cooking.

I’d be lying if I said I’m not always excited about hot bar, even in spite of a tummy ache!  And tonight’s selections seemed especially tasty.

Wok seared veggies,

steamed broccoli,

roasted sweet potato,

and it turned out that awesome vegetarian meatballs from the other day are vegan as well, sweet!

In the end dinner was perfectly filling and super tasty, almost worth the bellyache.

When I got home I got straight to work reading for Sociology, and I’ve got to hurry and get showered and bedded so I can continue in the morning.  See ya tomorrow afternoon!

Beans and Bloggers

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Lunch and dinner today had a lot in common; both involved beans and both were inspired by some of my favorite bloggers.  I think my favorite thing about blog-land is all the fun things I’ve been inspired to try.  Green monsters, running a half marathon, Greek yogurt, nut-butter crusted parsnip fries……

Lunch came from Caitlin at Healthy Tipping Point.

I love sweet potatoes and I love baked beans, but I don’t think I would have come up with pairing them all on my own.  I used one big sweet potato (13oz) and 1/2 cup of baked beans.

The flavor combination was perfect, I prefer sweet potatoes sweet to savory (i.e. with butter and brown sugar to ketchup or salsa) and this was the perfect blend.  Plus I loved how much it looked like a papaya 😉

I spent my afternoon cleaning, confirming that I don’t have skin cancer, and running errands; all whilst listening to Regina Spektor, who(m?) I’m obsessed with.  I did not get ready for our trip tomorrow, but that’s what tomorrow is for, right?

Dinner was supposed to be a bean burger recipe that Allison of Green Dog Wine raved about.  But one of the reasons I’m obsessed with Allison is that she does cool things like go out to restaurants in the middle of the week, so when the husband begged for suggested Cheesecake Factory I wasn’t too hard to convince.

The best thing about CF is the bread.

I had one slice of each type.  As well as one of the husband’s avocado eggrolls.

For dinner I went with the spicy cashew chicken.

This meal is sooooooo unhealthy but we got to CF like once a year so I’d rather get my favorite thing.

I only ate half of my meal though, because I knew we were ordering dessert.

White chocolate caramel macadamia cheesecake.

The husband and I split it, minus the whip cream.

It was great to go on the mid-week date with the husband!  And my food was delicious, but honestly when it was all said and done I wished I had just ordered a salad.  I’m finding it’s harder to enjoy “splurges” when everything I eat is unhealthy (duh!).  I am so ready to get back to the old me!

Veggies eaten today: 1.5cups, not exactly killing this goal

What is your favorite item from the Cheesecake Factory?

Sunday Night Dinners

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I hope everyone has had a great weekend!  It’s been an interesting Sunday around here; both Adam and I barely got any sleep last night so the whole day has felt like a dream.  As thrilled as I am about the warming weather, we are in that strange time where a blanket is too heavy but a sheet is too light and we don’t know whether we want to turn on the heat or the ac.  Hopefully we’ll get things figured out by tonight!

We slept in and lounged around so I didn’t eat until close to noon and I ended up having breakfast and lunch in reverse.  Lunch first –

Eggplant, and yam, and brussels sprouts, oh my!  I tried to mix up my seasoning with balsamic vinegar and sadly this wasn’t as tasty as my usual veggie skillets so I’ll spare you the recipe.  It sure looked pretty though.

Probably because it wasn’t the taste I was expecting, lunch didn’t satisfy me at all.  I ended up eating ‘breakfast’ a little later.

1cup Kashi H2H with 2T dried cranberries and 1T cinnamon chips.  And skim milk of course.

The cereal did the trick.

My parents, who don’t do a whole lot of cooking, always make fish on Sunday nights and have a fancy dinner.  Sadly this tradition began after I moved out, which is probably why it hasn’t caught on in my house.  We have things like Dairy Queen for Sunday night dinner.

We had to repark the car for the weekday morning so Adam suggested taking a drive and we ended up at DQ.  I’d be lying if I said that my turtle blizzard didn’t feel like the perfect dinner!

I’m glad I got in some veggies at lunch, but I didn’t eat a single piece of fruit today.  Healthy living fail!   And an issue I’m actually going to address in another post later today.  Be on the lookout for it this evening.

Does your family have any special traditions for Sunday night dinners?

A Spot of Tea

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I had my head buried in the books all morning so it ended up being a late lunch.  I have three more chapters worth of notecards to make before I can get into the nitty gritty of reviewing.

The husband’s been nagging me to cut back on the diet soda (a.k.a my lifeblood) so today I gave iced tea a try.  I combined 4 bags of Snapple berry tea with 3cups of water in a saucepan and heated them to a low simmer. 

Then I cut the heat and let them stew for five minutes before discarding the bags.  Finally I dumped in a tray of ice-cups.  Voila, a pot of tea –

My strainer ladle was the perfect serving implement.

And I enjoyed this glass x2 while I studied.

I also enjoyed geeked out over a few of these.

Cherry-cola salt water taffy, I am so onboard!  Cherry cola is one my favorite flavors (my favorite diet soda addiction is Cherry Coke Zero), in fact I’ve already decided to order a Roy Rogers next time I’m in a restaurant!

Around 2:30 I finally came to a stopping point and made a worth-the-wait lunch.

  1. First I put 1t canola oil into a saucepan over medium high heat.  Once the oil was warm I added in 1/2 a medium sweet potato, chopped and 1/4cup roughly chopped red onion.  I seasoned the veggies with s&p and spicy Hungarian paprika.
  2. I cooked the veggies for ~5minutes before adding 2 handfuls of fresh kale.
  3. I poured 1/4cup h2o over the kale and let the water disappear before I added 1/2cup black beans.
  4. Finally I poured in 1t chipotle oil and toss everything together.

Yums!  I’m not a vegan, but my favorite meals are always a combo of veggies.

When Adam gets home around 4 he’s driving me to The Spot for a study session with Caroline.  I’m probably going to be at the coffee shop every night this week and I’d rather not spend that much $ on food so hopefully my late lunch will be able to hold me over until a late dinner.

What do you drink all day long?  I have no plans of quitting soda, but I did agree to cut back a bit, and more importantly drink more water!  In addition to my tea I’ve already also had a few glasses of the plain stuff.