Other People's Food

Good Sunday morning to you! Last night we went to some of Derek's friends house for a dinner party. I'd never met this couple before, and they were very nice people who served us a lovely meal! We were running late, but luckily they were too. When we arrived, they had two big homemade pizzas on the table for appetizers. I had a piece of one with whole wheat crust, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil. I also had a decent amount of chips with salsa, guacamole, and artichoke hummus.

Derek let them know ahead of time that I don't eat meat, so they made some roasted salmon along with the chicken and steak they served. The salmon had a sweet glaze on it and was baked with onions. It was very good. I also had some yummy salad with mixed greens, dried cranberries, blue cheese, and sunflower seeds. And some brown rice. Oh, and a couple glasses of red wine :)

For dessert, some strawberries and blackberries and a chocolate dipped madeline!

This was a very nice night with lovely company. One of the women at the dinner was from Finland! I'm Finnish on my father's side and get very excited by real Finnish people and Finnish connections. I voted for Stefan on Top Chef in a pool we were in just because he was Finnish. Love those crazy Finns!

This morning I got up and tried my new workout DVD - Jillian Michael's 30 Day Shred. This is no joke - Jillian seriously kicks butt. I did the workout without hands weights because my 10 pounders were just too heavy for this routine. It was still a good workout without the weights! I'm going to try to pick up some lighter weights today. I think this is more of a strength workout than it is cross training (which was on my schedule today), so I'm going to try to incorporate this into my morning strength training.

I just had a sliced apple and some greek yogurt with cinnamon and nutmeg.

Now I'm heading out to meet my parent's for brunch at my grandmother's. Then the usual Sunday afternoon grocery shopping!

The Restorative Power of Pancakes

I love weekend pancakes! After a few of these (and 2 Ibuprofen and lots of water) my headache was totally gone. This morning I made whole wheat banana strawberry oatmeal pancakes.

I used my basic whole wheat pancake recipe, but used 3/4 cup of whole wheat flour and 3/4 cup rolled oats.  Before mixing them in, I soaked the oats in 3/4 cup of skim milk.  The oatmeal added a delicious chewy texture to these.  And made them super filling.  I served these with spiced vanilla butter and some of our maple syrup sampler.

After my full pancake induced recovery, I headed to the gym.  I did 3 miles at 6MPH at a 1% incline.  Then headed back home for lunch.  I still had a few wraps left and decided to try to recreate an amazing breakfast burrito I had from the catering truck on set in LA.  I heated up my griddle and cooked some sliced peppers and 1 scrambled egg.  Then wrapped those up some low fat cheese, avocado, pickled onions, and salsa verde.  Then I put the whole thing back on the griddle so it got toasty on the outside and warm and gooey inside.

This evening we're going to have dinner with a friend of Derek's and his wife at their house in Worcester - my old stopping grounds, right down the street from where I went to high school. Hope everyone has a great Saturday night!

A Day Late and a Dollar Short

Sorry for the delayed posting! Yesterday was busy, per usual, and I was rushing to get out of the office to go meet my friend Lucy. Work ended on a good note yesterday - actually made weeks of craziness worth it :)

I started off yesterday with yogurt and granola.

Nonfat greek yogurt, strawberries, a banana, and some granola crack.

And the same old wrap for lunch.

Avocado, tofu, peppers, cabbage, pickled onions, and pea sprouts. I promise I will have new lunches next week!

My afternoon snack was an apple with lowfat cheese - same as yesterday. Remember what that looked like?

After work I met my best friend Lucy at Marliave for drinks. She suggested this sort of last minute and I was thrilled! We haven't gone out for drinks in ages! Marliave is near my office, and I've been wanting to try it since it re-opened. Its got an old school 20s era vibe, with classic food and cocktails. We sat at the bar and I started with a Boston Tea Party made with tequila, earl grey tea, ginger beer, and lemon juice. Some of my favorite things! Then I had two of these puppies:

A Yellow Journalism made with pear eau-de-vie, some kind of licqour, prosecco, and lemon juice. 2 tart drinks. And today I have a headache. Of course we ended up eating dinner along with our drinks. The food was quite good. The pictures I took - when I remembered to take them - were not. We started off with half a dozen Rhode Island Moonstone oysters and steamed mussels in a rich broth with tomatoes. This shellfish extravaganza went undocumented. Then we shared an entree of crispy trout with spinach, capers, and sauteed shrimp.

The capers added a nice saltiness and the shrimp were huge and delicious!

After our 3 cocktails we were much more inclined to peruse the dessert menu. We shared the flourless chocolate cake with mint ice cream.

The ice cream actually didn't taste anything like mint - we think they forgot to add it in. Put it was still a nice compliment to the amazing, warm, gooey chocolate cake. Yum! After all the eating, drinking, and chatting I didn't end up getting home until 11PM - past my bedtime! But it was a lovely Friday night and so great to have some girl time with Lu. Now I'm headed into the kitchen to make some much needed pancakes!

Hello, my name is Gretchen, and I eat donuts

I wanted to deny it. I wanted to pretend it didn't happen. But I just couldn't do that to my loyal blog followers (all 3 of you). Even though it is the exact opposite of my food beliefs, this morning I ate a donut. Ok, half a donut. I ran into a coworker on the elevator carrying 2 big boxes of donuts. She handed me one and said she got them as a thank you for all the hard work my team had put in on a challenging project. So I couldn't not accept it! I know I didn't have to eat one but I hadn't eaten anything yet and was hungry and they looked so good. I had half a chocolate glazed. And it was good.

Then I immediately got a headache and felt kind of ill. This is not the breakfast of champions. Luckily, I did have a real breakfast ready to go. A delicious bowl of oatgurt!

I cooked 1/2 cup of oats in the microwave for 3 minutes with 3/4 cup of water, adding a sliced banana in the last minute. Then I stirred in 1/4 cup nonfat greek yogurt and 5 sliced strawberries, with a little agave nectar. It was sooo good and creamy and filling. Much better than the donut. Although I still don't regret that.

After breakfast I dove into another crazy day - this one was particularly stressful. Yuck. I wolfed down my lunch at my desk between meetings and phone calls.

Finally my avocado was perfectly ripe! This wrap had 3 slices of that avocado and the usual - tofu, cabbage, peppers, pickled onions, pea shoots. The avocado really makes this wrap. So yummy and keeps it from being too dry.

Late in the afternoon I had my snack.

I finally ate the apple in desk, along with 5 slices of Cabot 50% light cheddar.

In my stressed madness I was really klutzy today. At some point - without even noticing it - I banged my aluminum water bottle and dented the bottom. Then, I dropped my glass food container in the sink when I was washing it and cracked it. I'm so bummed about that! I like to use glass to transport my food because it doesn't leach those nasty chemicals that are in plastic - especially when I'm putting it in the microwave. But I only have one of these glass containers cause they are not cheap. Now I have to buy a new one! Doh!

I did manage to get to the gym today, and running definitely helped with my stress a bit. A bit. I did my strength training early this morning, and only had to crank out 2 miles on the treadmill. I did it in 19 minutes and then bolted home to make dinner. Which was pretty similar to last night, except this time I used real pasta instead of spaghetti squash.


I sauteed shrimp, zucchini, snowpeas and sugar snap peas with some herbs de provence, then stirred in the last of my tomato sauce. All this went over fresh fettuccine. Good, hearty meal. Although I can't say I necessarily likde it better than the spaghetti squash! I also had a glass of white wine, and just ate a piece of dark chocolate.

Boy, am I glad that tomorrow is Friday!!!

Busy Day!

Phew! This was another very busy day at work. I didn't even have time to blog! Here's what I packed for my breakfast and snacks.



Same old yogurt, strawberries, and granola. And an apple and banana for snacks. On the way out the door I realized I didn't eat my apple from yesterday and it was still in my desk. So I left this one behind. And still didn't eat the apple from yesterday!

I didn't bring my sandwich today because I knew we were having a lunch screening and they were bringing sushi. They brought delicous sushi for 20 people, and there were only 8 people who actually showed up. So there was plenty!

I probably could have eaten this whole tray (there were 3 more!) but I didn't. I did have probably a dozen pieces. And 2 amazing chocolate covered strawberries.

The chocolate on these was so thick! And a little bit too sweet, but still great. Quite a treat. Then it was back to my crazy work day. Like I said, I never got to my apple, but I did eat my banana with almond butter. Didn't take a picture - looks the same as the banana from the past 2 days.

I didn't leave work until 7:30, and didn't want to go to the gym that late for my scheduled 30 minutes of cross training. But it was a nice night out, so I decided to walk home through Boston Common. 30 minutes of cross training - check! Yeah, I know its not really a workout, but better than sitting on the T.

Derek's out of town for work tonight, so I made dinner for 1. I basically threw together whatever I could find in the fridge. I sauteed a sliced zucchini with a little EVOO, then tossed in some chopped tofu (the tofu I baked for sandwiches), spinach, and leftover tomato sauce. I served all this over the other half of the speghetti squash we had. This was a big plate of food and very filling without being too heavy.

I ate this with a glass of white wine. Now I'm catching up on Lost (I'm so far behind from being on the road for 3 weeks!) and I'm thinking about having some tea and a slice of that Irish soda bread.  Yum!

I want to give a little plug to this great magazine my friend Holly got me a subscription to as a thank you for feeding her cat while she's out of town.

Clean Eating! Doesn't that sound perfect for me? The food philosophy behind this magazie is very similar to mine - fresh, healthy, unprocessed, natural food. And its full of great tips and recipes. I highly reccomend it. Thanks, Holly!

Where's the pot of gold?

I totally jinxed myself by bragging about what a manageable work day I had yesterday! Today was busy and stressful. I was working on a very tedious project this afternoon, and my lovely coworker Danielle brought us some chocolate chip cookies to make it more manageable. I had one - they were small!

It definitely helped! Later in the afternoon I had a banana and almond butter.

I didn't leave work until almost 8PM, so dinner was a little later than I'd hoped. Derek helped by cooking the fish and potatoes.

This was another Irish fusion meal! This time it was Asian/Irish. Roasted white fish (I honestly can't remember what kind of fish I bought!) with soy sauce and ginger, sauteed baby bok choy with toasted sesame seeds and sesame seed oil, and masked yukon gold and sweet potatoes with a little hoisin sauce. And, of course, and Guinness for St. Patrick's Day!

Definitely feeling more relaxed now - after that nuts day. I just had a piece of dark chocolate and a few dried cherries. And I'll be ready for bed soon. Good night!

A Different Shade of Green

I'm a different kind of green today - St. Patrick's Day Green! Do you all have your green on? I do! Sweater and boots.

I got up early this morning to do some strength training in my apartment. With 10lb hand weights and an exercise ball, I hit all the major muscle groups - arms, legs, abs, butt, and back.

Breakfast this morning was the same as yesterday - yogurt with strawberries and yummy granola. And again, I had a handful of granola while I packed my lunch. Here's my yogurt and strawberries pre-granola!

Lunch was the same wrap as yesterday, as well. I tend to buy the fixings for breakfast and lunch at the beginning of the week and eat the same thing all week. The avocado I wanted to use in my wrap still wasn't ripe, so I added some of my dad's homemade salsa verde to keep it from being too dry.

This has cabbage, tofu, peppers, pea shoots, pickled onions, and salsa verde. I did a better wrapping job today than yesterday!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!