Corn, two ways

First of all, can I just say – popcorn and chocolate chips!!!  Seriously.  I mean that triple exclamation point from the bottom of my heart.  I had no idea what I was missing.

Mix a single serving bag of popcorn (I used Trader Joe’s) with a tablespoon or so of chocolate chips. Obviously, I am not the genius who came up with this, just the idiot who has been sleeping on the idea for 25 years.

And then, because I didn’t have enough corn in my life, I decided to make some corn chowder for dinner:

I made up this recipe as I went along and it turned out pretty good:

• 16 ounces frozen sweet corn (or use canned)
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 tomato
• 3 small potatoes
• 4 – 5 cups skim milk (I eyeballed it)
• 1 cup vegetable stock
• 1/2 an onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 bunch cilantro
• 1 T butter
• 3 T parmesan cheese
• About 1 teaspoon salt
• Couple shakes of pepper, cayanne pepper, chili powder, paprika and cumin

Chop the onion, garlic, bell pepper, tomato and potatoes into small pieces.  Melt the butter in a large pot, add onion and potatoes and let cook.  When the onion starts to brown, add the garlic, saute for a minute or so, then add the vegetable stock. Let simmer until it starts to reduce, then add the milk, the pepper, the tomato, the corn and the seasonings.  Once everything is heated through and the potatoes are done, ladle half of the soup into a food processor or blender and blend until smooth.  Add it back to the pot and let simmer for 15 minutes or so, then add cilantro and parmesan cheese.  This makes a TON of servings.  I have no idea how many, but I’d guess at least 5 – 6.

Here’s my bowl:

I couldn’t get a clear picture for some reason, sorry.  I also made some garlic bread out of a whole grain baguette:

This is Chris’s piece, too.  I try to conserve dishes because we don’t have a dishwasher.  Aside from him, of course.

I can feel my muscles growing

I found the best new protein powder, and I just had to tell you about it because I’m nice and generous like that.  Here it is:

Doesn’t he look like a man who knows good protein powder?  I thought so too, which is why I took a chance on him and spent nearly $3 on this single-serve packet at Whole Foods when the stuff I normally buy is only a buck.  I am not sure I meant to buy egg white protein, because the sound of that freaks me out and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have gone for it, but now that I have it, I’m in love.

In. Love.

It makes the best smoothies.  Look at what I just had for lunch:

It’s all thick and milkshake-y, right?  That’s because of my man Jay Robb.  I only used half the packet, too, which means I still have some left for another smoothie tomorrow.  A $1.50 smoothie is better than a $3 smoothie, right?  They also sell it in big canisters for upwards of $30, but I wasn’t ready to commit. I’m still not, actually, because I’m kind of cheap, but I’m slowly talking myself into it.

Getting it done

I felt extra productive this morning because it’s sort of a holiday, so some people are off work.  Why it is a holiday, I don’t know, because Christopher Columbus was not quite the kind of guy I like to spend my free time commemorating, but I don’t make the rules.

Anyway, so Chris is off work and so are a lot of other people, but alas, not this girl.  I got up this morning, as I always do, and went to spinning where I felt great about myself because there were only about seven people there and I was one of them.  Then I went home, got dressed, made and ate my breakfast, and walked semi-empty sidewalks to a semi-empty train so that I could go in to work.

Pretty productive, right, considering that many people, my boyfriend included, were still in bed?  Except that when I was on the way to the gym at 6am, I passed a man sitting on his front porch carving a pumpkin.  Now that’s what I call getting a jump on the day!  I bet he didn’t even need coffee, but I did:

That’s a recycled picture; my blackberry froze when I got to work.  Apparently it doesn’t want to work today, either.

Anyway, I’m going to try to post more snacks this week, and recipes, but from now on, let’s not assume you’re seeing everything.  I don’t want any hate comments from people saying I don’t eat enough.  Trust me, there’s plenty of peanut butter on the side.

Failure

I really have to start paying attention to recipes, cause I totally screwed up tonight.  I attempted to make this recipe after seeing it on Jenny’s blog.   But somehow, I missed the part about three eggs.  In fact, I not only missed it tonight, I missed it when I originally read the recipe and made a list for the grocery store.

What can I say?  I’m a skimmer.

Apparently eggs are rather important when it comes to holding something like a Spinach Rice Gratin together.  Because after I assembled my rice, spinach, tofu, almond, and cheese mixture, I placed it in my round baking dish, baked it for thirty minutes at 400, and removed a rice, spinach, tofu, almond and cheese mixture.

In other words, not a gratin.

I also subbed sun-dried tomatoes for the olives, cheddar for the manchego, and scallions for the red onion.  I’m a mess.  And so was my not a gratin:

Not A Gratin

But I stuck it in a pot, threw some extra cheddar in there, and called it a rice salad.  And it wasn’t a bad one, either.

Priorities

Tonight for dinner I made a peanut butter & jelly sandwich:

The recipe:

HA!  Just kidding.

I was planning to cook something, more than likely involving one of the three bags of spinach we have in our fridge because I go overboard at grocery stores, but I am going to go drink with a friend in need instead.

Back tomorrow, promise.

THIS IS VERY URGENT

Have I mentioned that Jack requires a lot of attention?  He is what you might call needy.  Basically, if he was a person, he would have no friends and any prospective girlfriends would dump him after the first date.

When I work from home, this is what he does for approximately six hours a day:

Pathetic

But as if that sad little puppy face isn’t enough, he also uses his chin to press the keys on my keyboard.  He is particularly fond of the caps lock button.  So, a few times a day, I’ll be working intently on something, only to look up at the screen and see that EVERYTHING I’VE WRITTEN FOR THE PAST TWO MINUTES LOOKS LIKE THIS.

Did you know that you can’t uncap everything all at once?  Because you can’t.  You can do that with italics, and bold, and even underline.  Who the hell uses underlines anyway?!  People use caps.  But yet if you change your mind and decide that whatever you’ve written isn’t that important after all, or if your dog has some kind of weird capital letter fetish, you have to erase everything and start all over.

It’s annoying.  And I’m glad I got that out.  I feel much better.

For dinner, I finally figured out how to make a little wine sauce for pasta:

I have been working on this for awhile because I get so sick of tomato sauce and cream sauce, if eaten on a regular basis, has the potential to kill you.  Here’s what I finally did tonight that worked:

1 clove minced garlic

1/4 cup white wine

1/4 cup vegetable stock (or chicken, if you want)

1/2 T butter

1 bag baby spinach

5 cremini mushrooms, chopped

Bunch of fresh basil

Salt and pepper

Add the butter to the pan, then the garlic and mushrooms.  Cook for about a minute, then add the wine and the broth and let reduce a bit.  Stir in  spinach until wilted, then add basil and salt/pepper to taste.

It was really easy.  It might still need a little work – I didn’t get it quite as thick as I was expecting – but the flavor was good.  I put it on some Trader Joe’s mushroom ravioli and made garlic bread for the side.

Mac and Cheese

Sorry, terrible picture.  I’d already started scooping Chris’s portion out, and I was all crooked or something.  I wasn’t even drinking.  Odd.

Anyway, I used Ellie Krieger’s recipe as inspiration here, but I made a bunch of changes to make use of what we had and to up the cheese factor because, well, we are cheese people around here. 

Recipe:

• Four ounces whole wheat penne
• 1 1/2 cups pureed butternut squash
• 1 cup skim milk
• 1 cup shredded reduced-fat cheese (I used Trader Joe’s medley of Monterrey Jack, cheddar and mozzarella
• 1/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar
• 1 ounce fresh mozzarella, diced
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan
• 1 teaspoon dijon mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 3 T bread crumbs
• salt, pepper

Boil the penne until still slightly undercooked, about seven minutes.  While that’s cooking, add the butternut squash (see these instructions for how to cook and puree the squash) and milk to a sauce pan and heat through.  Once it starts to thicken and bubble, turn off the heat and add 3/4 of the reduced-fat cheese, half of the parmesan, all of the sharp cheddar and stir until melted.  Add the mustard, the red pepper flakes, and salt/pepper to taste. Mix the cooked pasta with the squash mixture, then spread into a greased baking dish.  Sprinkle on the rest of the cheese, including the diced fresh mozzarella, then top with bread crumbs and the rest of the parmesan.  Bake at 375 for 15 minutes, until the top starts to brown.

We had ours on Saturday with salad:

And here’s my mac and cheese plate:

It was good.  Really good, actually.  Not quite like traditional mac and cheese, but then again, it doesn’t make you feel like you gained 14 pounds during dinner, either.  Chris even ate the leftovers the next day.  Should I repeat that?  I feel like I should, because that never happens.

Hello, Monday

Another Sunday night…blah!  That’s what I think about that.

Here’s the weekend eats:

On Friday, I didn’t get to post again because I ran out of time before I had to meet Chris for the movie.  But for lunch, I had some more of that Trader Joe’s vegan black bean soup mixed with some refried beans:

This is a random brand of beans, but obviously any kind would work.  The grocery store near my apartment has a bunch of stuff no one has ever heard of, but good luck finding standard grocery store things like ice cream and trash bags.  Not happening.  Anyway, here is my bowl of soup:

I used the whole can of soup and a couple spoonfuls of the beans.  And cheese. Obviously.

I brought a Z Bar to the movie, and then we went out to dinner to this old school Italian restaurant.  It was really good but I’m pretty sure my ravioli had at least four cups of cream sauce on it.  I had to do some scrapping action, but I eventually uncovered a little pasta.  Sorry, no pictures.

Moving on to Saturday.  Here is my lunch:

A leftover black bean burger that I made the other night, some grapes, cucumbers, and Sun Chips.  Good stuff.

I also picked up the infamous peanut butter cookie Larabar at Trader Joe’s, just to see what all the fuss was about:

Um.  I did not think this was very good – I actually didn’t even eat it.  It didn’t really taste like peanut butter to me.  I do admire the short ingredient list (peanuts, dates, salt) but I’d rather eat two tablespoons of straight up peanut butter and call it a day.  Maybe I’m just not a Larabar person, because I wasn’t a huge fan of the two other flavors I’ve had (cashew and chocolate mole, I think).  Are the fruit ones better?  Am I just a lost cause?

After dinner, I had some ice cream:

Which brings us to today, when I tried out this new soup for lunch:

It’s an Annie Chun’s Udon Soup Bowl with bok choy and shiitake mushrooms.  It was okay.  The noodles were good.  I added some more mushrooms, a chopped scallion, and some soy sauce, which helped.  But I wouldn’t buy it again.  Check this out:

Suspect

Hmm.  What do you think that is?  Do we want to know?  It was kind of scaly.  There were a lot of them.  It freaked me out.

Anyway, it also didn’t really fill me up, so a few hours later I was hungry again and I had some cereal with soy milk:

No seconds.  Small triumph.

But, um, some chocolate covered raisins:

More than I am showing here.  Probably another handful.

And that was my weekend, or the basics, anyway.

As for this week, we’re going to try a little something different.  I have a ton of work to do the next few days, and I don’t think I’m going to have time to blog my snacks.  And let’s be honest, you don’t need to see five days of Z bars, anyway.  So for the next week, I’m going to just blog dinner in the evenings.  I have some new things to make this week, and I made two new recipes last night and tonight that I’m going to write up and post tomorrow and Tuesday, because I won’t be home to cook or eat.

Actually, I may try to switch to this format permanently in the future, but we’ll see.  I’m open to comments about that. To be honest, I don’t really mindlessly snack anymore just because I’m home, so the blog has worked its magic!  Or, I learned some self control.  And that keeping chocolate covered pretzels in the house on a regular basis is a bad idea.  Probably, it was a combination of all three.

Worse blogger

Yikes.

Okay, so yesterday kind of got away from me…but I do have some pictures.  Afternoon snack was cottage cheese:

That’s the Trader Joe’s cereal that Chris buys.  I think it’s called Raisin Clusters or something? I don’t know, I am all out of plain raisins.  Sad.

And then, I had to run into this organic store by my apartment to get some things, and I got intrigued when I saw this:

I have no idea why I bought this.  I don’t even like soda.  But it was okay.  I thought it tasted like watered down Coke, but I haven’t had an actual Coke in years, so maybe that’s what it tastes like.  I wish they made root beer.  I could get into some root beer.

Anyway.  Then I went over to Jaclyn’s for dinner.  She made this awesome baked tofu and butternut squash/sweet potato puree, and Kate brought over margaritas.  Needless to say, I am not exactly feeling top-notch today.  I didn’t take any pictures, but if you’d like to see me catch tofu in my mouth and possibly even eat some off the floor, check it out.

And, because he’s very nice and romantic and because I said “wouldn’t it be nice if you took me to dinner and a movie” at least four times this week, I woke up this morning to a note from Chris saying to meet him to see Religulous and go to dinner after work.  So that’s exciting!  But right now I have to fight through my margarita headache and get some stuff done.

Bad blogger

I forgot about you yesterday!  Isn’t that mean?  I’m sorry.  We had a friend over for dinner and I made black bean cutlets and roasted potatoes and then we drank some beer and watched The Island, which I am shamelessly addicted to, and then I completely forgot to post about it.

I think it probably had a little something to do with the beer.

So, we’ll just pretend yesterday didn’t happen.  Hope that’s okay with you.  And unfortunately, today is not going to be all that exciting.  Not that my days are usually exciting, but this one is particularly lame so far.  All I have is a little cup of coffee from the Flavia machine:

I forced myself to walk past Starbucks because I finally found a Flavia flavor that is halfway decent.  It’s called Espresso.  I take it you’re supposed to use it for espresso, but apparently I like my coffee rather strong.