Can’t get enough April 29, 2009

…of them fruits and veggies 🙂

This morning started out with a deliciously thick and creamy fruit smoothie.  I blended up strawberries and a banana with water and chia seeds.  I love how thick the chia makes the smoothie, I actually ate it with a spoon like pudding!  And I love how the chia seeds keep me full for HOURS.  I didn’t think about lunch till 1!  The funky grey pink colour is due to the sun having JUST risen, it really was pinker than that…

When I finally did break out my lunch I  munched my way through a container of green, red, and orange peppers, carrot, and cucumber.

All those tasty veggies were dipped in the last of the asparagus edamummus.  And I had the rest of the left over orange dill striped bass too (I need to get some protein from somewhere after all!).  The hummus really is greener too…

Late in the afternoon I enjoyed another slice of my morning glory bread.  I’m quite enjoying this stuff, I’m obviously going to have to experiment more with dehydrating things….

Then for dinner I loaded up a plate of veggies, red leaf lettuce, red, orange, and yellow pepper (can you tell they were on sale?), carrot, snow peas, and dill pickles.  And I felt like having non-oil and vinegar dressing, and the only thing in the fridge was Kraft Calorie-Wise Ceasar, so I went with it.  I should pick up a better dressing next time I see something good.

And desset was amazing.  I tossed pineapple with a little sucanat and vanilla, and sauteed it in a frying pan until all the juice had evaporated and the fruit started to caramellize.  Then I topped the bowl with Kashi GoLean Crunch.  Crunchy, sweet, delicious!  And the perfect solution to the to-much-pineapple-sore-tongue problem, does anybody else get that?

Free fruit (and chocolate)! April 27, 2009

This morning started off with a relaxing breakfast enjoyed almost-outside, a hard boiled egg and a plateful of my BSI Morning Glory Bread. While rearranging my room yesterday I put a rocking sofa chair (is there a word for that?) beside the window, right where the breeze hits when I open my window the whole two inches wide. And I’ve discovered it makes a lovely little spot to look out (mostly at the sky) and enjoy a meal with some fresh air.

For lunch I packed up the leftover balsamic asparagus and some orange dill Lake Erie striped bass from last night along with green pepper strips.

As well as Liberty plain non-fat yogurt with Dorset fruits, nuts, and seeds cereal.

And for snacks I had packed some strawberries and pineapple. But I didn’t eat them. But I’m including the picture to replace the fact I have no picture of what I did eat. Namely a little plate of mixed melon, kiwi, and blueberries, and a piece of a brownie. The fruit was leftover from a lunch meeting. And the brownies (as well as lemon squares) were brought in by my cubicle-mate for her birthday. And I knew they were from My Market Bakery in Kensington Market, so I has to try a piece, and as I suspected, it was amazingly delicious (with cherries on top!).

For dinner I made use of some items I found lurking in the cupboard.  I made some sushi-esque wraps, both filled with orange pepper and asparagus edamummus, one wrap with only nori, and the other with both nori and rice paper.   They were some pretty tasty bites, I was pleased.

Then I blended up the strawberries and pineapple I brought to work with ice and Celestial Seasonings Peach White tea to make a sweet smoothie.  Of which I only drank about half because it was too sweet for me…maybe I should have added greens…

Then for dessert I had a different kind of sweet, a couple of parnoosh dates mixed with 2 T of dried coconut.  I’ve never had a coconut cream pie larabar (and don’t those have almonds too?) but this sure was good.

Now I think I’m going to mix up a breakfast cookie for tomorrow. Though I sure do wish I could make it using the peanut butter and protein powder I could win in Nicole’s 100th post giveaway over at Just Sweet Enough!

And another note, Marianne commented that she had never heard of poor man’s pie, which got me to googleing, and I couldn’t find ANYTHING about my version.  I found a bunch of recipes for what looks suspiciously like a pie-sized butter tart, and some bread pudding in a pie crust, but no mention of a simple slice of bread spread with butter and molasses.  Which just seems odd to me because that’s what my dad would always call it (and he often used corn syrup too, especially for us kids who didn’t like molasses so much by itself).  And I assume he got it from my grandma, who grew up in Alabama.  So maybe it’s a southern thing?  A southern thing that hasn’t managed to make its way to the internet yet?  Will I become famous for bringing it to light? 😉

A glorious morning BSI April 26, 2009

This morning I was excited for my BSI:almonds breakfast entry after waiting for it for most of yesterday.  I wanted to try to make a raw food type bread, but I don’t have a proper dehydrator, so I knew it wouldn’t be actually raw, which I’m okay with, because it’s still delicious.  So may I present:

Morning Glory Bread

Ingredients (I used the official weights in brackets):

• 1/2 a small pinapple (350 g)
• 2 carrots (135 g)
• 1 apple (100 g)
• 1 cup almonds (95 g)
• 1/3 cup raisins (60 g)
• 5 T dried unsweetened coconut (30 g)
• zest of one orange (15 g)
• 1 T cinnamon

Directions:

I grated the carrots, pureed the pineapple, apple and orange zest, and roughly ground the almonds, then mixed everything together, and spread the mixture out on a lightly greased, aluminum foil covered cookie sheet.  Then I dried the mix in the oven set at ~175 (below the 200 marking on the dial) for ~6 hours.

The recipe divided up in 6 servings worked out to about 50 g of bread per serving after drying with 210 calories, 11 g fat, 26 g carbs, 6 g fibre, 15 g sugar, 5 g protein.

I tore up a slice of the bread over a bowlful of plain yogurt mixed with leftover pineapple puree for breakfast and it was delicious.  I gave some to the roomie and a friend of ours that came over in the afternoon and they both love it too.  My friend even said it tasted like her mom’s carrot cake.  I’m definitely happy with this kitchen experiment 🙂

For lunch I had a red leaf lettuce salad topped with a mix of carrot, lentils, green pepper and asparagus edamummus.  And a handfull of dill pickles.  And the rest of the yogurt and pineapple (without bread), but I’m not including the picture because this post already has enough pictures coming and I’ll spare you the scrolling.

In the afternoon I had a taste of Godiva chocolate liqueur our friend brought over (just a couple of sample bottles) mixed with Natura unsweetened soy milk, so tasty, especially in the mini martini glass.

And had many cups of (Golden Mint Tea Co. Monk’s Blend aka Pomegranate Vanilla) tea in the cutest mug ever that I found in the dollar store (go year of the tiger!).

For dinner we threw a bunch of stuff into the oven, asparagus tossed in balsamic vinegar, sweet potato fries, and striped bass with orange juice concentrate and dried dill.

Then dessert was a piece of this Theobroma dark chocolate, more yum.

Then I got hungry for a snack so I pulled a slice of ezekiel bread fom the freezer, toasted it, ans spread on some strawberry, blackberry, and acai jam and sunflower seed butter.

And now I am munching on a russet apple before getting ready for bed.

And because I promised yesterday, these are the herbs I bought and planted yesterday. First is the big box filled with parsley, sage, golden thyme, rosemary, and tarragon.

Then there’s the chocolate mint.  I tested a leaf before I bought it, and it tastes AMAZING, exactly like mint chocolate!  Can’t wait to use it, I’m thinking it’ll make an excellent green monster ingredient.

And I also upgraded the container size for my spider plant.  It’s roots had started growing out of the drainage hole of it’s old container.  The yogurt is a much better fit.  I also cleaned and rearranged my room today, making a good spot to put plants by the south facing window.  I’m considering trying to grow cherry tomatoes…I know I’ll need to pollinate them myself, but has any one tried planting these indoors before?

And finally I found this old school entertainment in the laundry room.

Colours of nature

I had a very green and brown day today, ending with the planting of beautiful green herbs in larger planters tonight.  But I’ll take pictures of those tomorrow when the sun comes out.

The morning started out with a very filling green monster containing spinach, grapes, and chia seeds.  Those chia seeds really do keep you going.  I set out in the beautiful weather for a grocery expedition and wasn’t hungry for lunch for nearly 6 hours!

When I did sit down for lunch I dug into a huge salad for romaine, cucumber, lentils, asparagus, and a russet apple with lemon juice dressing.

Then a few hours later I had a delicious bowl of oatmeal containing PC Multigrain Cinnamon Spice Oatmeal, another apple, a scoope of raspberry jam, and almond butter.

And finally for a late dinner I had two red pepper tortillas filled withYves Veggie dogs and green pepper.  I got distracted cleaning the kitchen while I was making this and I realized when I sat down I took my asparagus edammumus out of the fridge, but it never made its way onto the wraps, so I went back and added it afterwards, just some extra green for the day.

Where did spring go? April 24, 2009

It seems like spring has just started, yet tomorrow we’re set to jump into summer with a toasty high of 27!  That just seems a bit excessive.  But you can count on me mixing up some icy eats in the vita-mix.  But first what I ate today.

The day started with breakfast.  I have no greens left in the fridge OR freezer aside from romaine and the rest of the frozen asparagus.  And those seem wrong for a green monster.  So this morning I fixed up a veggie devoid smoothie (shocking, I know).  I drank up a tasty combination of Natura unsweetened soy milk, banana, Kaizen chocolate protein powder, PB2, and cocoa powder.  Pure choco-peanut-banana deliciousness.

I actually sipped that all morning long, and also had a russet apple with peanut butter first thing.

For lunch I had the rest of my pepper squash lentil soup.

And in the afternoon I snacked my way through an orange, pear, tomato, carrot, and cucumber.

Then for dinner I made a lazy-chefs salad, wherein I couldn’t be bothered to cut up the veggies into bite size pieces.  So my salad turned into romaine lettuce wraps filled with carrot, red pepper, and asparagus edamummus.

And for dessert I had poor man’s pie.  A slice of poppy seed rye bread topped with BUDD-AH and maple syrup instead of the traditional molasses, YUMMY.

Purple monster and a meme. April 23, 2009

So we turned the heat off over a month ago in our apartment, and refuse to turn it back on.  As a result, it’s been a bit chilly the past few days, especially with no sunlight to warm things up through all the south and west facing windows.  So this morning I warmed up with a big bowl o’ oat bran.  I nuked it with almond milk and a banana before topping it with crumbly pumpkin seed butter and raisins.  An excellent bowl of oats to start off the day.  Though I am considering attempting to add a little oil to the pumpkin seed butter to make it more….buttery.

That bowl kept me nicely satisfied right until lunch time when a pulled out a romaine salad topped with red pepper, cucumber, lentils, and asparagus edamummus.  This was the best salad I’ve had in a while, the red pepper, lentils and edamummus together were awesome.

And because Caroline asked, I did make the hummus myself and it contains approximately 2/3 cup each chickpeas and edamame, 1 trimmed 340 g bunch raw aspargus, 1 T tahini, 2 T lemon juice, half a head of roasted garlic, and a little salt.  And a trip in the Vita mix for an awesome smooth store bought texture my food processor has never given me.

In the afternoon I started drinking a purple monster containing frozen broccoli, frozen blueberries, and soft tofu.  Unfortunately it didn’t taste very good because I threw in too much tofu and the berries have been in the freezer forever and had no flavour left, so I only drank about half of it.

Luckily I had also brought along a Chocolate Almond Fudge Clif Bar.  My fridge was suddenly looking very barren after the huge veggie bowl last night.  This is the first time I tried this flavour, and I wasn’t particularly impressed, probably won’t buy it again.  It’s either too sweet or not enough chocolate, or both.

For dinner I fixed up another awesome stirfry, same as yesterday except instead of snow peas I found a bag of asparagus in the freezer, the last bag of frozen veg from my parent’s garden last year.  In the mix was tofu, shiitake mushrooms, asparagus, sesame oil and teriyaki sauce.  Along side I enjoyed a perfectly ripe, local greenhouse tomato.

Then for dessert, to make up for the dissapointing blueberry smoothie earlier in the day I enjoyed a Source Salba Blueberry bar.  And it was delicious.  It’s a bit high in sugar, but the agave nectar they use makes all their bars taste amazing.  Perfect for the occasional treat.

And finally, because Amanda tagged me:

8 Things I’m Looking Forward To:
1. Going back to school in September
2. Going home next weekend for my mom’s birthday
3. Possibly going to San Francisco next year
4. Losing another 50-60ish pounds
5. Switching to summer hours and having Friday afternoons off again
6. A certain cake in a couple of weeks
7. St. Lawrence Farmer’s Market opening for real in the summer
8. Iron Ring! (and finding myself a good job/career afterwards)

8 Things I Did Yesterday: (yesterday was a pretty uneventful day…)
1. Spent the entire day at work happily occupied with real engineering work 🙂
2. Got off the subway and walked part way home, even though it was kinda cold.
3. Watched an episode of Bones.
4. Used my Steel Design Code for the first time in over a year (concrete dominates for sure).
5. Taught the roomie how to use the Vita-Mix.
6. Finished the entire crossword on the ride to work.
7. Walked under a series of roof slabs I had spent the day calculating that they failed under the current safety codes.
8. Ate a ton of veggies.

8 Things I Wish I Could Do:
1. Speak Mandarin (yes, I’m stealing it from Amanda, it’s technically my first language, but I mostly forgot it when I started kindergarten)
2. Magically lose 50-60ish pounds RIGHT NOW (right up there with winning the lottery without entering).
3. Run, but I’m working on it.
4. Have a small outdoor garden.
5. Figure out a thesis topis for next year.
6. Eat what ever I want without having calories matter (doesn’t everyone?)
7. Be better about keeping in touch with people.
8. Be more outgoing/sociable in general.

8 Shows I Watch: (in no particular order, and not all-inclusive)
1.  Boston Legal (but it’s done now…)
2. Monk
3. Psych
4. Eureka
5. Eli Stone
6. Project Runway
7. Chuck
8. Bones

8 People I’m Tagging:
I’m assuming if this meme has found it’s way to me, most other people have been tagged already, if you want to do it, go ahead 🙂

Chocolate Heaven April 21, 2009

Today was a busy day at work, I never even got a change to open my gmail/reader, let alone start writing this post.  I even stayed half an hour late in order to finish up one section of what I was doing so I can start a new one tomorrow.  Makes up for all those days of nothing to do a few weeks ago.

I started off with a slice of toasted ezekiel bread with strawberry, blackberry, acai jam.

It was a small breakfast, but I made up for it by sipping on a giant, quite thick monster all morning long.  This decadant tasting treat contained a ton of spinach, soft tofu, TWO bananas, and cocoa powder.  So creamy, chocolatey delicious.

For lunch I had a giant Kath and Kelsey inspired salad.  The based was romaine, carrot, cucumber, and red pepper.  Then on top I mashed a can of sardines (alas, same brand but just packed in water), and mixed them with mustard, dried dill, and dill pickles.  Mustard + dill = amazing, can’t believe I’ve never had that combination before.

In the afternoon I snacked on a contained of tomato, starfruit, and bosc pear.  For those who are interested, a good starfruit, is firm, with no green left, but only the smallest possible amount of brown at the edges.  And I hear they do ripen on the counter if the store only has partly green ones.  And you can eat the entire thing.  And they’re very yummy, the flavour’s subtle, not hit you over the head strong or sweet, but they taste refreshingly tropical.

One my way home I dug into a Chia Razz Weil Bar.  Very good, I love the raspberry flavour.

And for dinner I was feeling lazy, so I nabbed myself a fresh sesame bagel from a platter in the kitchen at work, and spread half with asparagus edamummus, and had the other half with nuked egg whites and some ridiculously good dill havarti.  And surprisingly now, a few hours later, I’m still full.  The bagel was pretty big, but it was white bread, I wasn’t quite expecting that, but I won’t complain.

Moving Day April 20, 2009

This morning at work was moving day for some people (not me, but I helped with some of the furniture rearranging). My company’s been hiring a bunch of people recently, and one person left on Friday to move back to China, so there was cubicle/real office dominos happening as a section of the office’s cubicle walls were also rearranged to make room for new desks. And now every one in Structures is together again, no more exiles to the land of Highways. Infrastructure engineering = recession proof, lucky for me when I actually graduate next year 🙂

The day started out with a sweet and crunchy bowl of Health Valley Spelt Flakes with Cranberries topped with a russet apple, and my homemade almond milk (14 cents/litre instead of $2 = score!, partly due to my cheap $5 2lb bag of almonds I got at Christmas)

Then throughout the morning I polished off this huge spinach, strawberry, banana, orange green monster. I made this last night to avoid waking the roomy at 6am, and I completely wasted a smoothie-worth of ingredients because I added the peel with the orange half. Grrr, Vita-mix told me I could do it, and my favourite cranberry relish recipe is just a bag of cranberries, a whole orange, and sugar chopped up, but in the smoothie the orange peel was disgustingly bitter. Never again. But completely delicious sans pith.

For lunch I dug into a huge romaine salad. I chopped up grape tomatoes, carrot, cucumber, snow peas, and red pepper for the topping and mixed them all with homemade asparagus edamummus. And at the last minute I threw on some microwaved egg whites.

The asparagus edamummus is just 2 parts asparagus, 1 part each chickpeas and edamame, and roasted garlic/tahini/lemon/salt. And it’s very yummy if I do say so myself.

Then later in the afternoon I snack on some honeydew melon and starfruit. And I was quite happy to discover I chose quite a good starfruit, sweet, flavourful, and juicy.

I battled my way through the wind and rain on the way home and enjoyed the leftover roasted veggies from yesterday for dinner. The celeriac, cauliflower, and pepper squash (no more brussel sprouts, boo!) took a trip to the oven first though to reheat, along with a few slices of tofu covered in teriyaki sauce.  And I also finished off the mushroom chips.  The plate may look a bit boring and uncolourful, but it sure tasted good.  And the warm food (and a change of clothes) was a welcome relief from the cold, damp commute after getting soaked between work and the bus stop.  My umbrella was definitely not useful in today’s wind.

After an Episode of Eli Stone, and a phone call home I decided I was still hungry, so for dessert I sliced up a banana and topped it with pumpkin seed butter and almond milk.  Delicious mashed up.

No point crying over… April 14, 2009

A cracked shell?

This cute little guy was given to me this morning by my cubicle-mate who brought back a bag full of these key chains from her quick holiday in New York City this weekend. The contents of each box are random and we all had fun seeing who got which key chain.

This morning’s breakfast was a large slice of fresh Cob’s Bakery Flaxseed bread spread with lovely roasted almond butter, and a banana.

For lunch I packed up some veggies, snow peas, red pepper, and carrot.

As well as a bowlful of Dorset Fruits, Nuts, and Seeds cereal.

And in the afternoon I snacked on strawberries and super sweet and delicious mango.

For dinner I started with a crunchy plate of more carrot, Finncrisp rye crackers, and hummus.

Then I made a perfectly tangy wrap with a La Tortilla Factory Multigrain wrap, spinach, tuna, a little microwaved egg white, dill pickles, and hefty spread of whole grain dijon mustard (under the spinach)

And now I must go investigate this Dr. Who Easter special I’m told is available for the watching…

Are you going to Scarborough Fair Bluffs? April 12, 2009

Today was a fun adventure to Scarborough Bluffs (33+ km > 3/4 marathon!). I’ve heard of them before, but never seen them, and going there has been on my todo list for a while.

But first breakfast, Peanut Toffee oats again. I cooked oat bran in unsweetened vanilla almond breeze, then topped it with peanut butter and toffee sprinkles. As delicious as ever.

I passed by these.  They don’t seem to have been adversely affected by the snow and cold since last weekend…

I timed the affair so I would get to Bluffer’s Park around lunch time.

I brought along some highly portable sustenance, a Raw Revolution Spirulina and Cashew bar, and a couple small bottle of water. The bar was delicous, but it a bit oily on the fingers. I especially liked the whole almonds and cashews hiding in it.

Then I had fun taking some pictures.

This little guy didn’t seem to mind that I was kneeling a couple feet away from him.

He was much more interested in eating his grassy lunch.

It’s not exactly yachting season yet…

But there were a few people around.

One of the nicer views of downtown TO on the way home from the Prince Edward Viaduct.

By the time I got home I was starving for some early dinner, and luckily my roomie was just finishing a huge pot of stuff, and offered to share (aka he made way too much and wanted help eating it up). I know there’s rice, lentils, parsnips, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, and soy sauce involved.

I also snacked on a plateful of snow peas, celery, and carrot along with a dollop of hummus.

Later in the evening I was hungry again for a snack, and realized I might have gotten a bit of a sunburn on my face from being outside for >7 hours (oops), so I went in search of a source of antioxidants, figuring they could only help.

My eyes landed upon a box of acai berry juice that’s being hanging out in the pantry for a while. This was the first time I tried this, and the juice was really good, but I was a bit put off by the layer of brown/green fat on top of it (that’s supposed to be there, right?). I’m not sick now so I suppose it is. And if the antioxidants are fat-soluble, then they are now on my lips, which I can only suppose will help with the burn.

I enjoyed the juice along with a piece of microwaved sweet potato with nutmeg, and a slice of Balderson 2 year old cheddar cheese.

And now I’m ready for bed, good night!