Extra breakfast

I ate breakfast this morning, I swear I did, but by the time I got to work I was hungry again.  So I ran into Whole Foods and I somehow ended up in the bakery and I started looking at the cupcakes and the cakes and the cookies and brownies. I don’t know how that happens to me.

I got myself together, though, considering it was only 9:30, and bought this:

I love this kind of yogurt.  I haven’t had it in a really long time, because it costs $3 for one measly little six ounce cup, which is absolutely absurd.  But I skipped the Starbucks, so I figured I deserved it.  I even sprung for the vanilla flavor since I was clearly craving sugar.

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I guess I like American yogurt

I got this new kind of yogurt over the weekend:

They didn’t have the kind I usually get, which is just plain old nonfat yogurt.  I was expecting something exciting, what with the bold “thick and creamy” claim, but it’s actually much thinner than the regular kind and really, really sour.  I had to add raisins and extra honey:

For dinner I made this recipe from Food & Wine after seeing Jenny make a few of their recipes from this issue.  I used mahi mahi instead of swordfish and cut the dressing by 1/3.  I would have cut it more but I wanted some extra to go on the couscous and I used it for the asparagus, too:

Doesn’t it look kind of fancy?  Herbs will do that for you.  One time I made polenta with rosemary and I got a little over-excited with the greenery and Chris hasn’t eaten rosemary since. It was the first time I’d ever used rosemary, and let me tell you – that shit is stronger than it looks.

Now I’m eating some chocolate chips while I attempt to convince myself that I’m not too old to watch the new 90210 series.

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Slow motion

Today is drrraaaaaaaagggging for me.  I seriously feel like I’ve been working for at least twenty hours.

So, I decided to take a little break and give Jack a much-needed bath.  He has mysteriously had maple syrup on his head ever since we had pancakes over the weekend.  Hmmm…

Anyway, it was a bit of a work out.  He’s not exactly a fan of the bathtub, despite the fact that I’m very nice and gentle and we use organic shampoo that smells pretty and I sing the Rubber Puppy song to him the whole time. Ungrateful.

So I rewarded myself after with, um, more chocolate chips.  In yogurt, to make them healthy:

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I’m practically Italian

Okay, let’s get the yogurt out of the way before we move on to the good stuff.  With peanut butter and honey:

I’ve never had peanut butter and yogurt together before, but I started eating the peanut butter out of the jar and figured I should turn it into a real live snack.  It was good together, definitely a keeper.

And for dinner…calzones!

This was Chris’s idea, actually.  Because of these and the Mexican pizza a few weeks ago, he has now appointed himself my Chief Food Man.  He can call it what he wants; I still consider him my Chief Dish Washer.

The recipe:

2/3 of a 12-inch pizza crust

1 cup marinara

1 yellow squash

1 eggplant

3 – 4 cups baby spinach

1/4 cup onion

2 cloves garlic

2 T parmesan cheese

3 ounces part-skim mozzarella cheese

Olive oil

Salt, pepper, basil

Cut the squash and eggplant into chunks and saute with the onion and garlic until soft.  Add the spinach and cook until it’s just starting to wilt, then add the marinara, salt and pepper.  Let simmer, then thicken with the parmesan cheese.

Divide the pizza crust into four pieces (I actually made one big one for Chris and a little one for me – I could only eat half of mine, so I think it would make at least four good-sized portions).  Roll each piece into a rectangular shape and place on an oiled sheet pan.  Pile the vegetable mixture evenly in the middle of the lower half of each crust.  Top with mozzarella cheese and basil, then fold the upper half over and form a seal (a little of the liquid might leak out; that’s okay).  Brush the top of each with a little olive oil and sprinkle with a little more parmesan if you want.  Bake at 425 for 20 minutes or so, until the crust is crispy and brown.

Here are mine before they went into the oven:

Chris’s was HUGE.  Perhaps a little too big, actually.  He just said that he feels like he has a “small Toyota” in his stomach, which is never a good thing.  I don’t know how – or why, really – he ate it all.  Like I said, I got full, but that might have been because there was a ton of filling left over and I ate most of it out of the pan while they were cooking.

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Second chances

The other day, after I tried Chobani plain yogurt and said it was gross, my lovely nurse friend Larissa left a comment suggesting that maybe I was just getting sick.  Apparently this girl is an even better nurse than I thought, because as you all know from all the bitching I’ve been doing, I did get sick just a few short days later.

Now, if only Larissa could predict things like lottery numbers and whether or not I’m going to be the next Food Network star, I’d be all set.  She’ll have to work on that.

Anyway, the point is that I gave the old Chobani another try today:

Please note that this bowl is ridiculously small and I refilled it probably about two or seven times.   Which obviously means I liked the Chobani this time around.  It was good.  I put some honey on it for a little something special.

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Move over, chickpeas!

How dorky was that title?  I know.

But tonight, I took the standard chickpea cutlet recipe and turned it into black bean burgers:

Close up:

I’m sure other people have done this, and I can’t remember any of the amounts I used, so I’m not going to post a recipe.  Basically, I just subbed the beans for the chickpeas, obviously, and then replaced the spices with chili powder, corriander, cumin, cayanne pepper, and paprika…maybe a little under a teaspoon of each?  I was surprised by how well it turned out because I was really just throwing stuff in left and right.

We had them on the sandwich thins with guacamole, tomato, and some baked fries on the side.  I just used one potato for both of us and I’m glad I did because I was way full after this.

Earlier, I had some 0% plain Chobani yogurt with strawberry jam:

I know, the proportion of jam to yogurt is nearly equal.  This is the first time I’ve ever had Chobani, and I’m not going to sugar coat this:  It tasted like Elmer’s glue.  Does anyone else think this?  Yuck. I can’t even describe it, it was almost dry or something.  Is that normal?  I like Fage and Trader Joe’s Greek yogurt, so I assumed I’d like this too, but I am not a fan.

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A sticky situation

So for the past three or four days, this has been in our freezer:

It’s Chris’s shoe, gently resting on some frozen corn.  It is in there because he stepped in gum.  But not just any gum – the biggest piece of gum I’ve ever seen:

It looks like some kind of spearmint, but the size tells me it must be Bubblicious.  I have no idea how he managed to spread it all over the side like that, but I would venture to say that it involved a couple of beers and maybe a shot of Petron.  Or two.

Anyway, I told him to put it in the freezer because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you have a gum situation.  Or so I thought, but it didn’t work.  I finally pulled it out last night because I was sick of it standing between me and my ice cream.

So what now?  How do you get gum off your shoes?  I told him to spread peanut butter on it, but he didn’t like that idea.

And now that I’ve thoroughly analyzed someone’s discarded gum, we can turn to food.  Last night I got hungry for some random reason so I had some yogurt, a little cereal, and raisins:

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I am too hot to think

I totally forgot to take a picture of my snack this afternoon.  I blame some sort of heat-induced memory lapse.  To save energy and money, I keep the air conditioner thermostat set to 80º during the day.  This means that it comes on approximately every half hour, or just often enough to keep Jack and I from drowning in our own sweat.  Then at about 5:30, I turn it down to 74º so Chris doesn’t start crying when he walks in the door.

And there you have it.  A day in the life of my air conditioner.

Oh!  But there’s more.  When I realized I forgot to take a picture, I created a reenactment for you of my snack, deconstructed.  I have seen them do this on Iron Chef, only with salads.  Same thing, right?

So we have peaches:

Yeah, I know.  There are some apples in there.  And a lime.  Focus on the peaches, okay?  I had two.

Yogurt:

Maybe a cup?

And honey:

Probably a teaspoon.  The peach wasn’t quite ripe.

Okay.  That’s a lie.  It was.  I just like honey.

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Extra energy

So I ate this Z Bar while I was waiting for the bus this morning:

I very rarely eat before going to the gym, just because I’m not usually hungry that early.  But this morning I was starving for some reason, so I grabbed this on my way out the door, and I now think that there may be something to this pre-workout snack business.  Because let me tell you, I was a star in spinning.

Okay.  Not a star.  But I was really motivated and pedaling extra fast and I cranked up the resistance a bit more than I normally can and I may or may not have belted out a few bars of a Miley Cyrus song by mistake.

All that singing had me extra hungry this afternoon.

Peaches:

When I was done eating them, there was all this glorious peach juice in the bottom of the bowl.  Normally I’d just drink it out of the bowl because, hello, I’m by myself, but today I got the bright idea to mix some plain yogurt into it:

It was fabulous.  I actually had another bowl after this.  My yogurt somehow got this weird layer of liquid on the top and I’m not sure if that’s supposed to happen or if it’s still safe to eat, but I poured it off and what is left is very thick and tasty like Greek yogurt.  Except approximately $3.50 cheaper.

Anyway, I also had a vegan jerky with my lunch that I suppose I should fess up to since it technically wasn’t supposed to be part of my lunch.  I didn’t take a picture of it.

Then for dinner I made crab cakes, asparagus and salad:

I haven’t made these crab cakes in a while and I think I lost my skills.  They totally fell apart.  Chris basically had one big crab cake scramble.  I gave myself the better-looking ones because I take pictures.

Finally, for dessert, I had an Edy’s bar:

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Bonne Maman is lying to me

I am including lunch today as an extra special bonus.  Get excited.

It’s a salad.  But not just any salad.  No.  This is a pear and goat cheese salad.  The pear was a little iffy – borderline rotten, I’ll admit – but this still tasted good because goat cheese tastes good and I would eat it on pretty much anything.  Today I chose to eat it on romaine lettuce and walnuts.  I also had some strawberries:

Surprising, I know.  But don’t forget about the goat cheese and pear salad, which is new and different.

Then this afternoon I had some yogurt:

There is jam in it.  Some more jam actually went right from the jar into my mouth:

This stuff is disappearing so fast, it scares me.  I think I might have to write to the company because I am 99% sure that there absolutely are not 18 servings in this little jar.  Six, tops.

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