Tag Archives: yogurt

EWT

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Eats:

Starbucks White Chocolate Energy Double Shot.

A strawberry shake (made with fresh strawberries!) split with my dad.

A rice bowl.  Brown rice, black beans, chicken, sautéed onion and pepper, lettuce, corn salsa, spicy sauce.

Pasta dinner.

Salad.

Whole-wheat spaghetti with marinara, ground chicken, peppers, and mushrooms.

Bread with butter.

2% Fage with Strawberry for breakfast this morning.

Workouts:

1 hour bike ride – lots of gliding but on a high gear – both Thursday night and Friday morning.  My butt is soooo sore!

Thoughts:

I miss my boys like crazy.  My grandma’s dog sits on the top of the couch just like Webster.

Finally, a message to my husband –

Sun Shine

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My parents didn’t actually come to visit, not yet anyway.  They will be here soon (hopefully!) and it was a good day nonetheless.

Breakfast bowl.

Plain yogurt, sliced plums, fat-free sweetened condensed milk, and cinnamon.

1 – Cinnamon on yogurt is awesome.  2 – Having an open thing of SCM in the fridge has also been awesome.

When visitors come to town Adam and I like to pretend that we don’t regularly live in squalor so we cleaned the house.  Or rather, Adam cleaned the entire house and I made the bed and put away my own laundry.

Whatever, that bedspread hasn’t been on straight since the last time my parents were here.

For lunch we split a Mike’s Sandwich from The Spot.

I ordered, and when Adam asked me what we got I told him “a bagel with cholesterol, topped with cholesterol.”  Basically it’s an everything bagel with 2 eggs, melted provolone, and cream cheese.

It’s as amazing as it sounds.

Also amazing, was my workout.  60 minutes of hot yoga.  My standing series was pretty wobbly today but I made it further in a few of the seated poses than I have before.  I always leave the hot yoga classes feeling really, really happy.

Around 5, my dad called with some news.  The good news was they were still paying for dinner.  The bad news was they wouldn’t be eating with us.  I’m pissed that we lost a whole evening of visiting and fingers are crossed that they’ll be here at 10.

But we did have a fantastic dinner.  I keep a running list of ‘places to try’ on my cell phone and today we crossed off Sun Restaurant.

Sun sells Burmese and Thai cuisine and we tried a bit of both.

We started by sharing La Peth Thoat.  Burmese-style pickled tea leaf salad combined with crispy chana dal pea, fried garlic, onion, tomato, cabbage, peanuts, and lime juice.

I strongly liked it, Adam loved it.  The tea leaves and cabbage were delicious with the lime and the fried chickpeas (crispy chana dal pea) were fun to try.

I got Pad See U – ordered “Thai spicy” – as my entrée. Thai-style stir-fried wide rice noodles with thick sweet soy sauce, egg, broccoli, Napa cabbage, and bell pepper.

This was the best Thai food we’ve had in Buffalo!  My noodles were cooked perfectly and the dish was actually spicy.  I loved it.  I ate 2/3 of my plate and only managed to stop because I am so looking forward to having leftovers.

We split a Taro Custard for dessert.  Thai-style taro custard cake with coconut milk.

We’ve had this dessert at a couple of restaurants now and I think it’s just not our thing.  We both love the bites of taro but we always end up leaving food behind.

Please cross your fingers for us that my parents get in on time so we can have fun tomorrow!

My Last Day At Twenty-Six

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Tomorrow I begin my twenty-eighth year!  Isn’t it weird how you’ve starting a year that’s older than your age?!  Today was low-key but good, a great way to wrap up 26.

I started my day with a trip to the gym, sort of.  I overslept, then I had to drive Adam’s car and couldn’t park in the gym lot, then the parking machine stopped taking my money halfway through… blah, blah, blah; I only had 16 minutes to work out.  But I made the most of them!  16 minutes on the elliptical at random level 10, with several rounds of sprint intervals.

I had to hurry because I had a 10am appointment at the Sprint Store.  Yes, again.  Several new parts later, my phone is working again.  Thank goodness for phone insurance.

I ate a big bag of green grapes on the drive.

And made a delicious mug of caffeine when I got home.

Strong cinnamon vanilla nut coffee (brewed with cinnamon!) with 1 Tbsp fat-free sweetened condensed milk.

It was amazing!  But I don’t think I enjoyed myself as much as the dog, who was breakfasting on a ginormous bone.

Gah, cuteness overload!

I got called in early to work so there was no time for a sit-down lunch but I ate this pb&j LARABAR on the walk.

A pallet of boxes came in today so I spent my entire shift tagging and sorting new inventory.

The husband and dog met me after work for a walk and when I got home at 8pm I was glad to have dinner ready and in the fridge.  Pasta with Daily Garnish’s Creamy Vegan Sweet Potato Sauce.

I skipped the Earth Balance, used dark raisins, and topped my serving with 1 tsp chipotle oil, but other than that I followed Emily’s lead.  It ended up being a very good meal.

Plain yogurt with honey and chopped nectarine for dessert.

I’m ready for another year!

The Last Three Days I’ve Been…

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…all over the place!  Figuratively speaking.  I don’t know where my head is but my meals have been less than impressive; lots of junk food, not a lot of veggies, and I keep forgetting to eat breakfast.  Adam was preparing for an important exam and between that, getting used to working, and obsessing over some new books, I’ve felt a little crazy.  It is what it is.

Friday

This was a no breakfast day.  And I didn’t manage to pack lunch before work either.  I ended up grabbing a mix of co-op salad bar.

Cucumber salad, farro salad, vegan pasta salad, and a few dolmas.

Plus a Sweet Leaf Sweet Tea.

When I got home I had chip and dip leftovers.

Plain low-fat yogurt with banana slices and a drizzle of sweetened condensed milk.

And a giant bowl of frosted flakes with skim milk.

I guess I didn’t have it together for dinner either.

Saturday

I ate breakfast!  Cottage cheese stirred into a Liberte Coconut Yogurt.

But I packed the stupidest lunch of all time.

A Plum Kids Strawberry Lemonade Yogurt Mashup,

and a Fiber One cookie.

Supplemented with an iced Earl Grey with skim milk.

And the last of my chips and dip when I got home.

Saturday morning Adam took the biggest, 8+ hour, most important exam he’ll take in his entire life (seriously, he’s done nothing but study the past month) so we went out for a celebratory dinner with another couple that night.

I made a small plate from the communal cheese board.

And drank a (giant?!) glass of riesling.

For dinner I ordered the pesto spatzle.

I loved the idea of the innovative pesto (romaine! pistachio! mint!) but sadly didn’t enjoy the execution.  You know that I can throw down with some heavy food but this dish was missing some desperately needed acid to cut through the richness.  I ate a few bites and figured that my chip appetizer would keep me from starving 😉

Sunday

I started my morning with Harvest Bay Coconut Water,

and chicken salad.

Plus a shake shared with the husband.

(Thank you birthday freebie coupons!)

Mid-day I headed to yoga.  60 minute hot yoga class.  Love love loved it.  This was definitely the high point of the last few days.

Then we had more ice cream; I can’t resist the allure of birthday freebies.

That’s a kid’s size vanilla frozen yogurt with reeses pb cup and cookie dough.

Veggies, chicken, and macaroni were consumed on a shopping trip.

Plus a mug of cocoa at home.

It was delicious but unnecessary.  As I wrote up this recap I was fairly disgusted by the amount of sugar (and chips!) I ate over the past three days.

Around 7:00 we hunkered down in the kitchen for a mega cooking session.  Three dishes were on the agenda – tonight’s dinner, tomorrow’s dinner, and tuna casserole to freeze for Adam for the week I’m in Ohio.  Two out of three worked out.  After spending a lot of time making Janetha’s cauliflower crust pizza I covered it in marinara that turned out to be covered in mold.

Uggggh!  Adam threw out our dinner and I threw a fit on the floor.  I took a giant bite of marinara sauce before I spotted the mold so a lot of histrionic gagging went down.

Then a bunch of other shit happened and many hours later I ate nachos for dinner.

The end.

Bowls, Bites, Beans, And Books By Burroughs

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Hello, Sunday Monday!  Since I worked on Saturday and was off today, this was technically my Sunday.  Today I ate lots of good things and yesterday I cooked lots of good things.  Yesterday’s kitchen-time included coffee concentrate, dog treats, popcorn, and frozen peanut butter hot chocolate (most of those are being blogged later this week which is why I didn’t blog yesterday; whew!).

The coffee concentrate actually wasn’t very good, though the drink I made with it today was tasty.

Cold coffee instead of iced because I used the ice trays for the frozen dog treats.  In with my weak concentrate was skim milk, 2 Tbsp chocolate milk, and 1 Tbsp fat-free sweetened condensed milk.  With all of those tasty milks it kind of didn’t matter that the coffee wasn’t strong enough.

Breakfast was a two bowl affair.

A big bunch of green grapes.

And 5 oz of plain low-fat yogurt with 1.5 Tbsp Jif Chocolate Hazelnut Spread and a big sprinkle of cinnamon.

The chocolate hazelnut spread is basically a problem; I’ve eaten half a jar with a spoon in the past week!

Adam talked me into pizza for lunch.

Buffalo chicken,

blue cheese,

baby carrots.

I asked Zetti’s to cut my slice because I planned on only eating half, but as you can see that dream died before I even made it home.

Since I didn’t have to work, I filled my day with super important things like grocery shopping and laying on the couch to read an entire book.  It was an important book.

Sellevision is Augusten Burroughs‘ first novel and since I’m obsessed with his memoirs it’s been on my “to read” list for years.  I loved it.  I’m so awed by Burroughs that I have a hard time describing why he’s so amazing.  So instead of trying to recap the book for you on my own, I’m going to share an excerpt from one of his memoirs, Possible Side Effects.  (Things you need to know – Burroughs was an alcoholic.  In the chapter this excerpt is from he writes about drinking, not taking care of himself, wanting to write but not knowing how to begin, and getting locked out and having the locksmith think he was robbed because his apartment was such a mess.)

Instead of folding all the debris in the room into huge plastic trash bags, instead of giving myself a clean slate, I just sat down.  And I wrote:

“You exposed your penis on national television, Max.  What am I supposed to do?”

The line came to me automatically.  I didn’t look for it.  It was simply there.  So was the line that followed: “I didn’t expose it, Howard.  It just sort of … peeked out.”

A show host on a  home shopping channel being confronted by his boss, after the host’s penis slipped out from beneath his robe on the air, in front of millions of viewers.  Sooner or later, this was bound to happen, wasn’t it?  On live television.

Silly.  It made me laugh.  I hadn’t laughed for a year.  I kept writing.

I wrote until seven that evening.  Then I drank.  But I never reached my Place.  Instead, I thought about what I’d written during the day.  I went to bed.

The next day, I wrote more.  I started drinking later in the evening and I drank less.

By the third day, I wrote until midnight and I didn’t drink anything at all except lime seltzer water.

By the seventh day I had written a book.  At least, I thought it might be a book.  It contained one hundred and fifty pages and they were in order.  That’s more than a monkey could do.

I called it Sellevision.

I did not drink.

Love, love, love!

Transitioning now from books to beans… Adam loved our dinner.

I tried to update my recipe for vegan black bean burgers and ended up with a new, better recipe.

Cilantro Lime Black Bean Burgers, serves 4

  • 29 oz can low-sodium black beans
  • juice and zest from 1 lime
  • 1 Tbsp minced cilantro
  • 1 Tbsp chia seeds
  • 3 heaping Tbsp all-purpose flour
  • 1 Tbsp evoo
  1. In a large bowl, mash beans with a fork.  You don’t want to eliminate all of the whole beans (the texture will be better if you don’t!), just get things “mushy” enough that patties can be formed.
  2. Stir lime juice and zest, cilantro, chia seeds, and flour into beans.  Form bean mixture into 8 patties.
  3. Heat evoo in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Working in batches, cook bean burgers for two minutes on each side.

I served our burgers on big, fluffy buns, with a slice of tomato and pepperjack cheese.

And tomorrow I’m going to try something really fun with the leftovers!

Have you read any of Augusten Burroughs’ work?

Monday Tuesday

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The post title is supposed to reference yesterday’s, and the fact that I am finding myself completely unable to write a blog post.  I just feel like I have a case of bloggers’ block.  There are two upcoming posts that I’ve promised to do and I am practically incapable of getting them done.  Both are on my to-do list for tomorrow and for today I’ll keep it quick.

Breakfast was a total success.

I stirred together Wegman’s Vanilla on the Bottom Super Yogurt with a biiiig dollop of 1% small curd cottage cheese.  Then I topped with sliced plum, sliced nectarine, and a chopped up cookie dough truffle.

I needed something that would keep me full through the early afternoon and this did the trick.

Lunch was snacky.  A GoGo Squeez Apple Strawberry pouch.

And a Peanut Honey Pretzel Luna Bar.

The first time I tried this bar I didn’t know my socks off but today I was much more impressed.  I could really taste each flavor; the peanuts, honey, and pretzels somehow all managed to stand out from within the mix of flavors.

Dinner was cheesy chicken and rice.

Plus 2 servings of potato chips (bacon cheddar, but not really, these were still vegetarian) a few hours later.

And that’s all she wrote (ha!).

I Swallowed (A Wine Tasting Recap)

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What a fun day!  It included booze, friends, and cookies, so you know it was a winner.  I didn’t do the best job photographing but today was one of those days when it is more important to live it than blog it.  I guess that’s true for all days really!

I have no excuse for the past two days because I think blogging a recap would have been my most exciting event, sadly.  I was lazy not busy.  But I do have two new recipes to share this week.  Two recipes for two days seems fair.

We had to do a major cleaning job on the apartment this morning but we did find time for a dog walk.  Breakfast on the go.

Adam and I split this Mango Noosa Yoghurt (there are two servings per package) and we were both big fans.  So thick and creamy!

I read up on the company and I really like their policies.  I just wish the ‘gurt was available in low-fat.

Today my friends and I cashed in a big group Living Social deal and hopped in two town-cars for a winery tour.  We got picked up at my place so every one came up for some sweet treats first.

We had (unphotographed) “virgin mimosas” of oj and vanilla club soda and I baked two treats.  How Sweet Eats’ Chocolate Drenched Coconut Oatmeal Squares.

And cookie dough truffles (recipes is one of the two promised for this week).

Both were big hits!  HSE is basically a genius; I subbed in unsweetened coconut but otherwise I left her recipe alone.  Adam complained about helping me bake on Saturday night but after he tasted the goods he shot me death-eyes when I tried to send friends home with leftovers!  I ate two of each all total for the day.

Then we were off for three hours of wine tasting.

We hit up three wineries, all of which had a great selection.  Between the seven of us there was a large range of preferences.  Rachel likes super dry and I like super sweet so the two of us ended up swapping glasses a couple of times.  I don’t really drink wine so it was nice to have little tastes to see what I like; I even tried a couple of reds!  The craziest ones were Schulze Wines’ crackling sweets.

I especially liked Niagara Landing’s Rosebud line and even came home with a bottle.

And I paid $2.50 extra at one spot for this mini glass of ice wine.

All total I had 13 tastes and I didn’t spit once!  I probably should have though, it wasn’t an insane amount of alcohol but all 13 were sweet and I felt pretty sick by the time I got home.

I ate a mac and cheese muffin (the 2nd recipe),

and then crashed hard on the couch.

When I forced myself up two hours later I knew there was no way I would be cooking the soup on my meal plan.  Instead we went to Moe’s.

My vegetarian burrito had rice, black beans, sautéed mushrooms/peppers/onions, cheese, corn salsa, and guacamole.  It was just what I needed.

I’m feeling loads better now.  But I am hoping to turn in early because I’ve got a busy to-do list for tomorrow.

Have you ever been to a wine tasting?  Did you spit?

The Last Three Days

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The last three days have been great. Summer school is over! I’m a senior! (again!) We went to Ohio! Yep, I wasn’t blogging because the summer of weekend fun has officially begun. Let’s back up to Friday morning first.

I stayed up late on Thursday (Adam was studying and I was doing nothing) so waking up was rough. Somehow I did manage to get out of bed and make it to the gym. And then I did strength training! I walked on the treadmill for 7 minutes to warm up and then spent 30 minutes rotating though a cycle of strength machines plus stretch moves on the mat.

Since I actually did weights work it seemed like the perfect time for the Honey Core Power protein drink I bought on sale.

It was fine, not great, but 26 grams of protein in a few minutes is nothing to sneeze at.

To celebrate our last day, our teacher brought in garden chili.

I had a bowl topped with cheddar,

and another glass of lemon sweet tea.

When the day was over a few friends and I celebrated on our own. First we grabbed the dog,

and then we walked to Dolci,

for bourbon cinnamon gelato.

Eeeeee, this tasted so good! The cinnamon was pretty subdued and it had the best texture, almost airy.

Then Adam and I were in the car for weekend #1 of summer fun.

I packed us leftovers for dinner.

Buffalo Chicken Baked Pasta.

We both agreed that this dish is one of best things I make.

Saturday morning I managed to sleep until 11:30 …on the living room floor …while people screamed at the top of their lungs playing Battleship! Tired much?

For lunch I did my best to pick and choose a meal from McDonald’s.

Two packs of apple slices,

and a fruit and yogurt parfait.

Plus a (mini) S’more Monster Cookie for dessert.

I thing I like these cookies even better when they are regular sized.

We spent the afternoon at our niece’s dance recital. There were kids of all ages, including a class of three-year olds twirling around in giant tutus. And now my ovaries hurt!

Dinner was re-dic-u-lous.

Salad with honey mustard dressing.

French fries. With butter for the …

Crab legs!

All you could eat. Apparently I could eat five clusters. And then I was very, very full.

Though not too full for candy at the movies a few hours later.

We saw Prometheus and I do not recommend it. The “Alien” nerds on all of the forums were right, the characters are dumb and I didn’t care what happened to them.

The parents made us all breakfast this morning before we had to hit the road. I had a glass of skim milk,

and a pancake (with butter and syrup) and fresh fruit.

The opposite of fresh, Adam and I snacked on this cookies and cream Chex Mix on the road.

I ate ~2 serving’s worth.

We had to stop at the mall on the way home to get the husband new sandals so we got froyo too.

I got a tiny bit of tart yogurt with tons of fruit and popping boba.

We we’ve been home about an hour and I’ve already eaten two of the Hawaiian rolls that Adam brought home.

Clearly it’s time to rustle up dinner!  See ya tomorrow.