Roasting Away Anxiety
Disclaimer: I don’t know how this post is going to read because today has been “just one of those days”. Nothing’s been wrong; but I’ve still felt… uncomfortable? anxious? stressed? all the way through. It’s a bit ironic I’ve felt like that today, since I have something to celebrate: This blog hit 100,000 page views. That, to me, feels like 100,000 hugs from you readers. Considering only 89 of those came from the first month I was blogging, the growth has been trememndous and I couldn’t really be happier with my readership. I think I’ve never gotten a single bad comment and all I ever get are wonderful words and that alone lifts my spirits so much.
Enough sappiness aside–after blogging I was so ready for a warm lunch in my tummy, with another built in dessert!
After 4 or 5 months, I should feel pretty cozy taking food photos in front of people, especially the roomie, right? This just felt awkward for some reason. But how could I miss a beauty like this. Maybe this blog should be Confession of an Onion Addict because I could not get enough in the Lightlife Sausage. For the cheese, I used a Trader Joe’s american cheese square; it’s all natural and tastes just as overprocessed as the supermarket kind that’s why I love it 🙂
To round out the meal, I had YIAJJ(Yogurt In A Jam Jar)! I think I go through that jam more than any other; it’s the best! I totally need to make a review page for it because it gets a 10/10 in my book. I ate the yogurt in my Greek History class, and ironically felt no unease or discomfort come to thing about it. I guess I don’t consider eating straight out of jars unusual?
Lucky for me, Latin class was cancelled today. The 2nd class of the semester was cancelled; that’s a good sign. Even better, I rushed back to my dorm, hopped on Twitter, and was able to be around in time for Chobani’s Spoons! If you don’t know what that is, the gist of it is that I won a case of 2% Chobani, and having lowered my meal plan this couldn’t possibly have happened at a better time. To celebrate, of course I needed to eat some Greek yogurt.
Ah, yes. This greek yogurt shipment will be well recieved. I stirred some cherry butter into plain and then added the remainder of the Green & Black bar my mom gave me for Halloween. It was… well a little disgusting, to be honest. The chocolate was good, but the dried cherries in the bar went bad. I didn’t even know that was a legitimate concern. Of course, I ate it anyway.
Maybe this is when things starting feeling a little blah; I had a meeting with my peer advisor at the bookstore. Because of miss-scheduling on her part, she was a little late, but I really didn’t mind. What did bug me was how a “quick check in” was really 40 minutes of fun-but-slightly-awkward-and-aimless conversation. At one point, we drifted from classes to something that called for the line “as a kid, you don’t see your parents naked but you see your Barbie doll naked”. Frankly, that was not the case with my childhood, but I wasn’t about to say that. When I finally did break free and make it back to my dorm, I really needed something with pizazz.
Pizazz… was not here. This was one of those things that felt like it would come together great in my mind, and ended up tasting like its individual components–quite disappointing. I also managed to realize all at once that a) the hour away from my dorm took a real toll on my work productivity and b) I had nothing in mind for dinner. Anxious! First up…
I needed to get comfy so I slipped on pajama bottoms. At 6pm? You betcha. With that aside, I knew that what I really needed to calm my nerves was something homey, like a roasted meal. I found some ingredients and stuck them in the oven for 40 minutes with some maple syrup.
This has definitely made me feel 90% better; there’s just something about roasted vegetables, wouldn’t you agree? I wanted to switch up the greens at dinner but broccoli is all I had that roasted well. A little maple syrup at the end really livened it all up and brought out the earthiness. I love how the sweet potato and broccoli just soak it up, too.
What’s your comforting hug after a long day? Clearly, mine is roasted vegetables. A tin pan and aluminum foil(100% recycled) was the best investment of this semester so far. Maybe you’re a mac n’ cheese person? Macaroni has never really been “my thing” and even cheese is “meh” with me, but I can understand how it would be comforting. Give me some good ideas! There will be plenty more dinners this semester 😉 Now I just hope I can focus and not get too caught up in The Biggest Loser and American Idol.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 23 so far )Built In Dessert
Routine, routine, routine! I feel like I’m settling in to my new weekday routine pretty well, but Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be packed. I guess that’s a price I’m more than willing to pay, though. No complaints here 😀 Excuse me if I’m short on words because I’m short on time. Some things don’t need words, like how amazing this combo is:
Gah! I’m drooling thinking about it. I’ll admit: Like a vegetarian who misses meat, I’m an all-natural eater who misses some of the “silly things”, like colored M&M’s and Swedish Fish(*drool*). Sunspires mend my heart a bit, though they need to come in more colors! Still, I do get a kick about mixing them all in…
Pretty!…ish? If it were frozen, it would remind me of a McFlurry 🙂 Ahhh, I remember having way too many of those one vacation in Florida as a kid; that’s what vacations are for, right? Note to self: Bananawhip + Sunspires = McFlurry? It’s a possibility and something to try…
Heroes has me so lost at this point, I’d think I’m watching Lost! Claire’s father had another family? How old is he? Mostly I just waded through some homework while I was trying to figure that one out. I also realized I was putting off a chapter of a book that was only about 7 pages. I think I could deal with 7 pages 🙂
I didn’t want to have the “same ol’, same ol'” pumpkin, nutritional yeast, and Smart Balance agave peanut butter oatmeal before bed. Instead, I started with oatmeal and then added pumpkin. To top it, I threw on some Crazy Richard’s chunky peanut butter(which was basically a clump of whole peanuts–yum!) and squirted on some agave nectar. Then I added a little nutritional yeast and sea salt at the end. So… I ended up with the same ol’ same ol’ anyway, haha. I think you just can’t ignore perfection. Does anybody else though find agave nectar not that sweet? It’s supposed to be 1.7 times sweeter than sugar but I can hardly taste it 😦
This morning I was pumped to be up at 6:15!… Not really, but I was up at least. I hopped out of the room and into the gym. I’m surprised I was only the 2nd one there; someone really wanted to get their elliptical in I guess. I, of course, grabbed my treadmill and got going for 5 miles. I love that I’m building speed again! This way I’m not falling too behind in my morning rush 😉 I finished in a sweaty 44:54 and got right back into the dorms to throw together a breakfast and check emails.
Holy protein, Batman! That’s what I was thinking over my oats. After cooking them, I beat in 2 servings of cage-free egg whites(from a carton), and cooked it until puffy. Then I topped it with high protein honey-maple peanut butter. Yum! It needed something, though, so I threw in some cinnamon. For something that has no sugar, does anybody else find egg whites surprisingly sweet? And not agave nectar? Maybe my taste buds are just all crossed. Breakfast had a built in dessert with the chocolate bar–I think I need to make this an every meal thing 😉 Actually, I packed it for Greek class, and by the time I got to it the agave nectar had seperated a lot from the cocoa powder and coconut oil. It still tasted good; I just needed to mix it up and eat it with a spoon. Now I see why every chocolate bar has soy lecithin(except Vivani)!
That was speedy. On the list: Make a replacement chocolate bar, Greek History reading, make lunch, Greek History, no Latin today because it was cancelled(sweeet), meeting with peer advisor, and then I’m free for the day! It’s going to be a long run one. Gooo!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 16 so far )Grocery Shopping RI
The Grammy’s are starting soon, and I’m not sure if I want to watch them, so I’ll just type super fast just in case. Speaking of grammies, I saw mine today. But first, lunch.
I just could not get in to the idea of “brunch” so I had a late breakfast and a small lunch. I wasn’t that hungry but I had an odd craving for broccoli and soy sauce(how good does that sound?) so I threw on one of these sausages and called it a meal. Voila! Plenty of sodium for one day. At the end of this, my dad arrived and brought a few goodies from home, mostly being things I forgot. Are chopsticks essentials? No, but they’re fun 😀 My mom and grandmother(who came along “for the ride”) were waiting in the car and they took me to Trader Joe’s.
Would you believe there’s just 1 Trader Joe’s in all of Rhode Island? The next closest one is the one in Framingham I go to when I’m home. I don’t know how you Trader Joe-less folks do it. Actually, I do know: You go to Whole Foods and pay a little more. Sorry 😦 I just wanted to get every simmer sauce and curry I could find for meals! But realizing that wasn’t practical in my dorm fridge I just got mostly plain things like tofu, tempeh, salmon, pilaf, and the rest of what you see. Clearly there’ll be more pudding with all them avocadoes 😉
After that, I made us take quick detour to McDonalds for coffee(which I defend by pointing out that everyone else in the car got coffee driving down and didn’t bring me one), and then we went to Stop & Shop for some pumpkin; I knew if I went in it would take 10 minutes and I’d come out with 5 extra things, so this time my dad just did the shopping. He still took 10 minutes, but got the 1 thing on the list.
And then, of course, it wouldn’t have been a trip without going to Whole Foods. I was actually a little disappointed with this sales period; there was soooo much I picked up and wanted to try but couldn’t really “justify” getting. Instead, I kept it simple again. I guess the two “treats” I got were the dark chocolate coconut candy bar(umm, yum!) and some dark meat turkey for dinner. The Crofter’s Organic Europe Superfruit spread I had a coupon for because, if you remember, I got a bunch of their jams to review for the blog but that one unfortunately broke during shipping. One “fun” thing I almost bought was vanilla goat milk frozen yogurt with brownie pieces in it coming off sale Tuesday. It took a lot of restraint from buying that, restraint and the promise of this:
I defrosted one of the peanut butter gluten free brownies I made for New Years and crumbled it warm into a yogurt. Then I melted a little of the Justin’s chocolate peanut butter in the microwave to drizzle over. Holy yum! Vanilla brownie ice cream who? This completely had my attention while I was catching up on emails/putting groceries away. Unfortunately, I still felt like I could chew my arm off, so I had another snack while waiting for dinner.
A little mealy but not bad for free from the dining hall. Dinner was a sweet potato I threw in the oven at 5 and the dark meat turkey I bought. I really didn’t know how to make it so I called home. No answer. I then called my mom. No answer. Finally, my dad picked up his cell phone. Why was no one answering? Because they stopped at a casino on the way home. I’m glad nothings changed in my absence.
Since I couldn’t get in touch with my mom, I went ahead and guessed that the turkey would be fine in a pan on its own since it should have enough fat in it already to cook. That was pretty much right. I cooked the meat through and then let it rest for 5-10 minutes while I worked with the sweet potato and such.
Ah, this came out wicked good*said in a Bauston accent*. I don’t think there is any real “trick” to meat; I think there are just old rules which people either follow or ignore. Don’t work with it too much. Let it sit. And, if you really want flavor, use a fatty cut. It’s that simple to get something juicy and delicious. The sweet potato was perfect and practically fell apart after roasting for 90 minutes. I was craving cinnamon on a sweet potato and that hit the spot. I think I will watch the Grammy’s soon; I hear Elton John and Lady Gaga are performing together and how could I miss that?
Tomorrow’s the first day of February, and let’s just say there’s a bit of a special surprise in store for the morning post. I also have my “long run” of 8 miles first thing. Ahhh I need to start stockpiling fuel via chocolate!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 20 so far )Excuse Me, Your Head Is Blocking The Fridge
7:53: Get into some comfy pajamas. It’s going to be a good night
8:23: Find Disturbia on TV; decide to watch even though I’m a scaredy cat for movies like this.
8:30: Think fudge would be a good thing for dessert, even though I can’t remember the last time fudge did anything for anyone’s hunger
8:40: This fudge is really weird and hard–not really like church fair fudge but it’s sweet and that’s nice
9:12: Realize while doing Greek homework that Plato was soooo much dirtier than people give him credit for. Why don’t I remember things like this from 9th grade?
9:23: Why am I watching Disturbia?!?!
9:30: Start the process of making chocolate avocado pudding, mashing avocado, cocoa powder, and coconut milk kefir in a bowl
9:40: Start cleaning the mess I’m making, throwing out bits of avocado, and cleaning the bowl.
9:43: Coconut oil? Coconut Butter? Cacao Bliss? Why can’t I decide?
9:47: Coconut Butter
9:52: Still cleaning; still hungry
9:53-9:57: Photographing the chocolate pudding
9:58: Screw it–I’m hungry and need to eat something now and no longer even want this damn pudding.
10:02: Shove the pudding in the fridge and make oats with pumpkin and nutritional yeast, topped with banana peanut butter.
10:12-10:23: Simultaneously admire and devour the oatmeal while burning my tongue because it’s so hot.
10:25: Need something sweet; feeling self-destructive.
10:32: There are worse ales I could have reached for.
10:52: Learn through Mythbusters that if I hold a gun the wrong way, my thumb will be cut off. Great.
11:02: Sleep. Glorious sleep.
3:17: Wake up, and now having trouble falling back asleep.
3:25: Roommate and 2 people I don’t know(maybe?) come in a little giddy. They whisper a lot and fall asleep on the floor.
3:27: Amazed at how the drunk people can fall asleep faster than I can and WOW DOES ONE OF THEM SNORE LOUD.
3:34: Ok, I’m hungry and not sleeping. What do I want?
3:35: I want that damn pudding but one of their heads is blocking the fridge. Would it be rude to wake whoever that is up?
3:37: Pry the door open, grab the pudding, head downstairs to the dorm kitchen.
3:40: Heat it up and start digging in. As I walk back to my bed to finish it
3:45: All gone. I like fat. I really like fat. Why do I eat protein and carbs?
4:02: Finally back to some shut-eye
7:07: Wake up and th 2 people on the floor are gone. Ugh, why is the gym not open until 9 on the weekend?! Would it be bad to watch Cartoon Network until then? I’ll just go back to sleep.
8:41: Wake up after a dream nightmare about never being able to find sour cream & onion popchips. If that’s the world I have to live in, I don’t want to live. On the bright side, I can get ready to go to the gym.
8:58: Chugging some decaf hazelnut coffee and out the door.
9:03: Starting my 5-miler after stretching the left calve which was acting up
9:08: Getting way too in to “Single Ladies”; resisting the urge to put my hands up and regretting that I didn’t put a ring on it
9:22: I’ve got Cartoon Network on TV, my iPod blasting, I can do this!
9:49: That felt great. Maybe could have done more? Tomorrow’s my long run so I wasn’t going to push it.
9:50-10:25: Cool down with a two mile walk followed by stretching.
10:12: What time am I going to finish? When will I get back? Will it be breakfast or lunch?
10:33: Back in the dorm, roommate’s still sleeping, should I be shocked by this? Not at all.
10:46: Hop out of the shower and run back to the room.
1047-10:48: Have a fight with the scale to get it to turn on and stay on. It does, which is a sign that I should eat a “breakfast”.
10:55: Oops, people are starting to get up. Perhaps I should put on pants?
11:02-12:02: Oats come out of the microwave and I start eating. Write a “cutesy” blog post, Twitter a bit, talk to a friend on the phone, e-mail my dad, and finish breakfast saving a huge bite of walnut butter for the last bite.
12:04: Publish.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 20 so far )Too Cold For Anything Else
Today has just been too cold for anything other than what I did and was done. My hands are recirculating, and my jeans have been long swapped for PJ’s by now. I suppose that when they announce an “Extreme Cold Advisory” on the news, they mean business. Backing up, I had some weird cravings for lunch. It was just too cold to want something real or excited. I managed to reign back my cravings a bit and make a semi-normal lunch.
Did maple peanut butter jump out of the jar onto my turkey? It just might of… with a little help. I prefer dark meat, so if I’m going to have white meat turkey I better stick some fat in there somehow; the sweet maple was pure craving, but at least it worked well with these chips.
I probably should have heeded the weather warning and stayed indoors just because I could but I had a bit of a list to work on. At least while I was out I managed to get it all done. I’m officially on a lower meal plan, trading 110 meals and 125 flex points for about $240 dollars;It’d definitely be a “better bargain” to have stayed on but what’s the use if it goes to wast? Nada.
I ended up returning 2 of my books and buying them new; I try to buy used when possible but these were a little too used and they’re books I’ll be looking at for a while so I figured the extra money was worth it. The final total for the semester was around $350–not bad considering the majority of the books are in my concentration and I’ll need beyond this semester.
It was too cold not to get tea while I was near a campus convenience store. I threw everything on the bed and considered making a snack, but wanted to get to a dining hall right at 4 to grab things for dinner and get in for the night before it got colder. Or so I thought. I got there at 4:10. They opened at 4:30. But unless I wanted to go back into the cold(absolutely not), I would just have to wait there. So I did. I didn’t end up getting back to my room until 4:45.
At least it was a productive shopping trip. I don’t know if you’re supposed to load up two large take out containers with vegetables, but no one particularly stops you if you do. You might get odd looks, but no words. I was starving and just threw together the best thing I could think of.
It was too cold not to eat pumpkin oats with maple peanut butter. Nothing would have made this better, unless it were made in the jar; I think that’s a principal of life. Instead of eating more after this, which definitely would have spoiled my appetite for dinner, I just decided to invest a little time and “make something” that’d be nice. Since I was craving Indian, I mixed 2/3 a can of chickpeas, 1/3 cup pumpkin, 2 tablespoons ketchup, 1 tablespoon steak sauce, 1 1/2 teaspoons indian spice, and enough watter to thin it. Normally I’d prefer a tomato based sauce but it was too cold not to utilize pumpkin(and that’s all I had on hand). That made about 3 servings, so I took 1 and saved 2.
This was pretty darn good. The chickpeas came out nice and spicy, with the pumpkin to add some savor factor. A dollop of full fat yogurt, though, really made the whole thing come alive; the dish needed fat and depth. Speaking of fat, the raw vegan brownies are still just as delicious. It was too cold not to have something sweet to finish of dinner. Do other people eat the best part of their meal at the end, too? I always did this as a kid, but people would confuse this for me not liking something and picking it off my plate before I would get to it. Not cool. No one got my brownie.
Don’t think having chocolate with dinner meant there won’t be some for dessert; it would just be too cold to ignore chocolate like that. I do feel somewhat bad on skipping out on a friend’s birthday party tonight. But if I went–and in this cold–I wouldn’t be enjoying myself, and I’m not convinced she’d notice me there amongst the other 100 facebook friends attending. So after all I don’t feel bad about ditching it for some light and humorous reads.
Wow are there a lot of giveaways going on now. Here’s one for a bread machine. Here’s another for coconut oil! Here’s one for some delicious bars. And here’s one for iHerb shopping spree! Here’s one for chocolate. And how about one last one for chocolate, here!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 11 so far )My 25 Hour Week
It feels a little surreal, but 25 hours after my first school week of the semester began, it ended. It hasn’t even hit me really that today is my “Friday” and tomorrow’s the weekend. I could get use to this.
Because I had a little extra time before my 2nd class of the day, I decided to make lunch in the kitchen again! This time, I cooked a “burger”.
Yeah, I wish 😛 What this actually was was 4oz Lightlife‘s Gimme Lean Beef shaped into a patty with some black pepper and cooked in a pan with EVOO.
But holy yum was that a good burger! I’ve had this beef before heated up in the microwave and it didn’t do it for me, so I wasn’t looking forward to this in all honesty. But yum! Cooked in a pan with fat it tasted like a real burger(albeit an overcooked burger since I like my meat practically mooing). I think I made up a side at this meal; I had an intense banana craving and wanted to get a little funky, so I mashed 1/4 cup pumpkin with 1 small-medium banana and seasoned with sea salt and cinnamon. This was sooooo good–try it! It’s similar to a sweet potato, but the sugars in the banana make the cinnamon POP!
I loooved my next two classes. The first had a hilarious professor who’s very much in the old style of teaching. My only problem with it was the class was PACKED. I have a feeling it’s a class a lot of kids are taking for fun or to slack off in, but I need it for a Classics concentration so I ain’t going anywhere. My next class was OK, but a little duller in comparison and a lot smaller. At least I know 2 of them from last semesters’ classes. Midway through, I could feel hanger coming on.
I broke this out midway through. I’m becoming so obsessed! Now, instead of making one when I feel like it, I always have one made already for me chilling in the fridge. When class got over, one of the people I knew asked me where I got this and said it smelled excellent; when I told her I made it, she called that “brilliant”, haha. No arguments there!
I walked ran to my dorm to watch Oprah’s interview with Jay Leno. I have to say–I’m liking him less and less through this whole process. I know it’s not his fault so much as NBC but… And I think Oprah was a lot easier on him than she could have been; where were the hard hitting questions, Oprah? While I was watching this I did two things: I made another organic raw vegan chocolate bar for my next craving and made a snack for then.
Greek yogurt is the perfect snack; it’s a complete protein so you really feel like you’re getting something out of it, too. For my taste and my wallet, lately I’ve been mixing 3 parts Trader Joe’s 0% with 1 part Trader Joe’s full fat, and sweetening with vanilla NuNaturals stevia. I’m running out of that last ingredient and can’t help but question to stick with it or try Sweetleaf or Whole Foods brand. Any recommendation? Dinner tonight hit just about every spot:
I’ve had MAJOR chickpea cravings all week, but didn’t want to open up a can with so much other food to eat. Tonight was the night, and with pasture butter it tasted very much like soft popcorn–yum! For my broccoli, I made Meagan’s cheeze sauce, but added ketchup to it–another winner. The only slightly disgusting thing was thinking at the end that sliding the pool of melted butter/leftover sauce/sea salt into my mouth would be a good call; that was a bit too much sodium, even for me. Coffee will dilute that, right? I think so.
Here’s another contest to win coconut oil of your very own.
And here’s an absolutely awesome article on nut butters with all my favorite brands interviewed–you must read this!
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