Monday, Monday

Is everyone glad this Monday is over? What a slow, dreary day. Its so yucky and rainy here - I was not motivated at all to work out. I'll get back in the grove tomorrow. Breakfast this morning - surprise!

Yogurt, bananas, strawberries, blueberries, and granola. These strawberries were pretty good - much better than the last batch I bought. For lunch I had a salad with all the ingredients I prepped yesterday.

Mixed greens, shrimp, asparagus, cucumbers, green peppers, cannellini beans, and a vinaigrette made with dijon mustard, rice wine vinegar, and EVOO. I also had an unpictured chocolate truffle I found in the recesses of my desk.

Afternoon snack was more prepped veggies.

Carrots and celery with hummus. I got home early tonight because I didn't go to the gym - 6:30! So I started the dinner prep. I found this recipe in Food & Wine for Halibut with Smashed Fingerlings and Tomato Butter. I used cod instead of halibut and baked the fish instead of grilling (since its raining outside!). 

It was delish. Definitely not a low fat meal though, with all the olive oil and butter. Must be why it tasted so good :)

Of course I will be having a peanut butter and jelly cupcake tonight. We've got a few more of those to get through. Tough job, but somebody's gotta do it.

Yam Pie

I had a lovely Sunday and I really wish it wasn't over now. It was a beautiful day outside - Spring is just about here! I went for nice run outside, and used a new iphone app to track my distance - Runkeeper.  It seemed to pretty accurately tell me that I ran 3.75 miles - and that I ran slow!  Took me 45 minutes.  I was definitely fighting the wind, and its tough to keep up a good pace running to and from the river, having to dodge people and cars. But it felt really nice to run outside in the sun. When I got back I stretched out on our little patio and noticed that some of my tulips are coming up! I hope it doesn't get too cold and I get some flowers. I re-fueled with a big salad.

This has frisee, endive, radicchio, cannellini beans, more asparagus, cucumbers, and a segmented orange. I squeezed the pith of the orange over the salad and added a little EVOO. It was very refreshing post-run. And of course I had to have a cupcake for dessert.

I know this looks huge but I swear they're mini cupcakes. After lunch I headed to my new favorite place - Russo's! When we went last weekend it was busy but not insane. Heather told me it was quiet for a Sunday. She was obviously right because today it was nuts! The place does not have a lot of aisles or room that is not taken up with products, so it gets ridiculously crowded. I can see some people being very turned off by this (I would never bring Derek on a weekend) but the prices and selection are so amazing, its totally worth it for me. I couldn't believe how much I got for so little money! Even with all the pricey mushrooms and fancy cheese I bought! The only downfall of this place is that it doesn't sell fish. So on the way I home I stopped at Morse Fish, the fish shop in my neighborhood. I was planning on buying some crab and making a big batch of crab cakes to eat tonight and on salads for the rest of the week. But they were out of crab! Instead I got shrimp for salads and their housemade stuffed clams for dinner. Here's my whole loot...

I absolutely stuffed the fridge with all this stuff. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon cooking and prepping food for the week. I peeled and cut some carrots and celery for snacks - I think this is a much better way to go than buying those bags of "baby carrots." A lot of people don't even realize that those are really just whole carrots cut into smaller pieces by a machine. Which use a lot more energy than just cutting up the carrots yourself and there's probably a lot of carrot that's wasted by those machines. I also boiled a big pot of water and used it for multiple cookings. First asparagus, then shrimp for salads. Then dandelion greens and a huge garnet yam for dinner. Around 6PM I decided it was cocktail time and had a glass of wine and some fancy cheese.
I had about 5 of theses crackers with cheddar, wasabi goat cheese, and some other kind of stinky cheese. Then I settled down on the couch to read Food & Wine magazine for awhile. But quickly popped back up and ran back into the kitchen! I was planning on just mashing the garnet yam I cooked for dinner, but saw this great recipe for Sweet Potato Pie that I wanted to try. The recipe called sausage, which I obviously skipped. But the pie was amazing! The cornmeal crust added a great flavor and texture.

For dinner, I served a slice of the pie with the heated up stuffed clams. I also sauteed the dandelion greens with some red pepper flakes.

I can't wait to eat this pie all week - we have plenty of it. Hope everyone has a good week!

Kids and Food

Busy night last night - kids are exhausting! We went up to Derek's parent's house to babysit for his 1 and 3 year old nephews. First we checked out the Down: 2: Earth expo. We spent about an hour there and found some interesting stuff. The best discovery was this local company called Swap Tree. Its a site where you can trade media (books, DVDs, CDs) with other people and its very easy to use and fun. On our way back from the expo we stopped at the grocery store and Williams Sonoma to buy a mini muffin pan - it will come in handy shortly. When we got home, I cooked up some grilled cheese on 7-grain with cheddar, tomatoes, and mustard. With a little frisee, radicchio, and endive salad on the side.

Then I got to cooking. I used those mini muffin tins and made peanut butter and jelly cupcakes for the boys.

Justin, the 3 year old, is a very picky little eater and just licked the jelly off his. And I found out that the 1 year old is allergic to peanuts and eggs. Oh, well. My big boy liked them :)

I also made a batch of carrot macaroni and cheese, hoping to sneak some vegetables into the boys. Justin also wanted nothing to do with this and Derek had to make him a hot dog. The little one - also named Derek! - will eat everything and anything in sight and plowed through his mac and cheese.

I sauteed some asparagus. I wasn't really expecting the kids to eat this - it was more for us - but I figured it was worth a shot.

I have these fantasies of some day having kids who will eat all the delicately cooked organic local vegetables I serve them and love green things as much as we do - the more time I spend with Justin the more I realize this is pretty unlikely. We'll see - I'm sure our children will be exceptional :)

We did manage to do a pretty good job of getting the kids to go to sleep. And then did a good job of wearing us out so we passed out as soon as we got home. Poor Derek had to get up at 4:30 this morning to work all day - no fun. I got up and washed masses of dishes that I had left in the sink yesterday before running out to meet the boys. After that, I made a nice little breakfast.

A 2 egg omelet with with leftover asparagus and low fat cream cheese I bought for the peanut butter frosting. Cream cheese in eggs is something I picked up down south. Its especially good in scrambled eggs with basil. Makes them nice and creamy. I also finished off the last of the oatmeal date bread with some peanut butter and fig and ginger jam. Looking forward to my usual Sunday - going for a nice run, grocery shopping, preparing for my week!

Dirty Wrong Cuisine

Yesterday officially ended my office biggest loser contest, and all the participants took that as an opportunity to eat everything and anything in sight. Let me warn you - this is about to get ugly. I started the day off with Jillian's Shred, hoping to sweat off as much as I could before the final weigh-in. We weighed in at 9AM and calculated the results while we stuffed our faces. I had no real intention of winning this contest - I didn't really think I had much to lose, and wasn't an unhealthy eater before the contest started. I had gotten pretty lazy about exercising though, and this contest really inspired me to get back in shape. I also cut most of the sweets out of my diet - my weakness. Stepping up the exercise made a big difference - I lost 11 pounds! The winner of the contest - Scott of 53 Lunches - lost an impressive 34! In total, we all lost 122 pounds. We lost a whole person! And then we proceeded to gain it all back. Here I am with my first celebratory munchkin...

It made me so happy. I think I had 4 of these. And a cinnamon raisin bagel with FULL FAT cream cheese.
I felt a bit ill after all this. I continued to make myself ill for the rest of the day. Scott took all us losers out for a celebratory lunch at his favorite Italian place in the North End, Antico Forno, where we had a big old carb fest. They make great pizza and house made pasta. We started with some pizzas for the table.

I had a slice of this pizza with tomatoes, smoked mozzarella, and arugula and a slice of mozzarella and grilled vegetables.

Then I split this huge plate of fusilli with tomato sauce, roasted vegetables, and goat cheese with my friend Liz. We also shared a salad.




This meal was definitely the highlight of the day. After that - well, I told you, it gets ugly. Back at the office I had a yummy chocolate chip cookie that one of our coworkers baked for all of us.

After work we all went out to celebrate (some more) with beers and greasy apps. I had probably 4 Blue Moons and several helpings of this cheesy, greasy spinach artichoke dip.

And some of these nachos.


There's chicken on these but I picked around it. After we left the bar, I wasn't really in the mood for a full dinner - not surprisingly - but I was drunk and crazy enough to drag Derek to 7-Eleven so I could buy one of these. I'm so embarrassed.

I sort of wish I didn't have a blog right now. Yes, my dinner was a packaged Tollhouse cookie ice cream sandwich. This is not clean or green. This is just wrong. After this lovely meal I passed out feeling pretty gross. Can we just pretend this day never happened?

Today I'm hoping to go back to normal eating! Even though I plan on making cupcakes later for Derek's nephews :)

I started this morning with Apple Cinnamon Whole Wheat Pancakes.

I used my basic Whole Wheat Pancake recipe, and stirred in some peeled diced apples sauteed with a little butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. I served them with vanillas spice butter and maple syrup. Now we're getting ready to head to a green living expo called Down:2:Earth. I'll let you know how it is!

I Will Never Go Hungry Again

Today is the last day of my department's biggest loser contest, so I've been cutting back the calories and bump up the exercise. I got up this morning and did crazy Jillian's shred. I'm still sore. At work, I had oatmeal out of a jar.

Since my glass food container broke, I decided to try out an old peanut butter jar instead. It worked very well! I could screw the lid on to transport the oatmeal, and put the glass in the microwave. This jar of oats is made of 1/2 cup rolled oats, 3/4 cup water, 1/4 skim milk, 1 sliced banana, and some dried cranberries and unsweetened shredded coconut.

For lunch, I skipped the screening where they were serving delicious smelling Thai food and ate my salad.


This salad is made with radicchio, endive, frisee, red and green peppers, cucumber, broccoli, feta, and balsamic and EVOO. I had an apple (sans brazil nut butter) as my afternoon snack, then hit the treadmill for 3 miles.

For dinner I made open faced roasted veggie sandwiches. I roasted 2 chinese eggplant and 1/2 red pepper, then layered that on toasted slices of 7-grain bread with some hummus, topped them with a yellow tomato and some fresh mozzarella, then stuck them under the broiler. I just had one with a very thin slice of toast.

Very good! But I'm still hungry...I can't wait until tomorrow...

End of the mushrooms

I'm back to posting after dinner! Lunch today was another colorful salad.

I bought a bunch of random lettuces last weekend, and this salad includes radicchio, endive, and frisee. Along with some broccoli, red and green peppers, cucumbers, feta, and balsamic and EVOO. And for my afternoon snack...

Surprise! Apple with brazil nut butter. After work I made it to the gym for a treadmill run (it was just too cold for me to run outside today). I ran about 3.10 miles in 30 minutes doing some intervals at a 1% incline. The intervals really got my heart going - I was beat after this workout! I haven't mentioned it here yet, but for the past 3 months I've been in a biggest loser contest at my office, that we put together in our department. And Friday is the last day! I've actually lost more than 10 pounds during the contest, and its been fun to do this challenge together with my co-workers. I'm really trying to bust it out for the last couple days and weigh in low.  But just to warn you - there will be a major pig out Friday after the weigh-in! I see donuts in my future. Mmmm, donuts. Ok, I'm hungry again.

For dinner we ate the last of the mushroom barley risotto. I added in some sauteed tempeh for protein. And served it with roasted cousa squash and fennel.

Time for Lost! Good night!

Eating too late!

I keep having late dinners and not posting afterwards! By the time dishes are done and I'm back on the couch, I'm ready to fall asleep. Ok, let's back up to lunch yesterday. Same salad as the day before.

Mixed lettuce and herbs, golden beets, grape tomatoes, dried cranberries, pecans, maytag blue cheese, and balsamic and EVOO. Along with a hunk of whole wheat bread with brazil nut butter on the side. In the afternoon, my coworker Jillian filled the candy jar on her desk with Easter colored peanut M&M's. Mean girl.

But look how pretty they are! I had 5. And then more brazil nut butter and an apple at the end of the day.

I had another party to go to after work. There's actually one tonight too, but I just can't go out 3 nights in a row! I had 2 light beers at this party, and this blurry plate of veggies and avocado dip.

Kind of artsy, isn't it? I may have also had a couple pieces of cheese. Maybe. I'm not committing to that. I didn't get home until after 8, so dinner got on the table late again. I scraped the seeds out of an acorn squash and cooked it in the microwave for 8 minutes, cut side down in a little water. I've always been kind of against microwaves as a cooking tool, but I read recently that they're actually more efficient for cooking and heating things up than an oven.  Interesting, huh? I sauteed up some fancy wild mushrooms that I bought over the weekend, and added those to the more conventional mushrooms in my barley and mushroom risotto. I stuffed the cavities of the squash with the risotto, topped them with a little low fat cheddar and parmesan, and baked them at 400º for about 15 minutes. It was definitely different, but came out pretty good. The squash got soft enough to mash up and stir in with the risotto. I also sauteed half a head of cabbage with some EVOO and apple cider vinegar on the side. It was a lot of cabbage!

I missed my strength training yesterday, so I got up this morning and did Level 1 of Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. This is no joke! I used 3 lbs weight and it still kicked my butt. Breakfast, again, yogurt, sliced banana, granola.

I'm running low on granola - I'm going to have to make a new batch soon! I'm amazed we ate it so fast, but it is SO good.