Living, learning and losing. (original) (raw)

Maintaining 2 blogs is not for me.

So, this will be the last Fabulous Foodie post to this blog. From now on, all food-related posts can be found at LAKE LIFE.

For my last post, here’s what I did last Sunday before watching the Academy Awards.

I started out with the ingredients for Wegman's Creamy White Bean and Pancetta soup. (Yes, some day I will make a post solely dedicated to the best SUPER Market in the world).

One of the reasons Wegmans is awesome? They cut the prep time.

Wegmans Basting oil, Vegetable Stock, Minced Garlic and pre-cut Mirepoix.

After prepping these ingredients along with the Cannellini beans, half & half and pancetta, I got to use my nifty new Emersion Blender (aka “stick blender”)

This is a kitchen tool that EVERYONE should invest in.

After making my soup, I moved on to make breakfast, which was Crust-less Smoked Turkey & Spinach Quiche from Cooking Light magazine. I made some substitutions (turkey bacon, all fat free cheeses, extra spinach, omitted the flour and baking powder).

This was THE BEST crust-less quiche I have ever had. I will be making this recipe over and over again.

When breakfast was done, it was time to make dinner for the week. If it seems like I did a lot of cooking this day, it’s because I try to do the bulk of my cooking on Sunday then just reheat everything throughout the week. This was a result from working 10-hour days.

Anyway, dinner for the week was vegetable “lasagna”. This recipe basically just included sauteeing some vegetables I had: zucchini, red peppers, mushrooms

Then mixing with some red sauce, fat-free Ricotta and Mozzarella cheese and baking at 350 for about 15 minutes.

These pics were before it went in the oven but TRUST ME…pasta and meat is HIGHLY overrated.

I love to cook, but hate when I have to tackle this afterwards.

I HATE doing dishes, but I’m just not in the mood to go husband-hunting -lol!

Well, this is it for Fabulous Foodie, I’ll see you over at LAKE LIFE!

I was going to attempt a post using the actual Livejournal website, tried to upload a pic of today's breakfast and gave up after waiting about 10 minutes for the pic to load. I'll attempt again tomorrow at work.

P.S. To anyone wondering, "HughesNet" aka "DirecWay" aka the Satelite Internet service from DirecTV absolutely sucks for speed, does not work properly when the weather is anything less than stellar, and costs entirely too much money.

See everyone tomorrow, with a dinner from my absolute favorite grocery store!!

I love trying new recipes on the weekends, and lately have been getting a lot of low fat recipes in my e-mail via the Hungry Girl newsletter. I recently received a recipe for Creme Brulee, which is one of my favorite desserts, but I only have it if I’m at a restaurant. This particular recipe only has 104 calories and half a gram of fat! Since my friend Robin gave me this Creme Brulee kit

for Christmas, I decided to make the Creme Brulee to have for dessert on Sunday’s spa day. I assembled all the ingredients

mixed everything together, poured into ramekins and popped them in the stove.

Then I sat and watched them like they were babies

Just kidding, I am not THAT obsessive about my cooking. This chair was just in the kitchen because I had nowhere to put it until Zara came to pick it up on spa day.

The custard part of the Creme Brulee came out perfect, and I put them in the fridge to chill until the next day. Then I got busy making my Saturday night dinner, which was a Spinach and Feta chicken sausage and some steamed baby brussel sprouts.

Then it was time for bed so I could get up and have everything ready for Spa day on Sunday.

Robin was supposed to bring mozzarella sticks for an appetizer, but her boyfriend had gotten STRING CHEESE at the grocery store instead. So, when life gives you string cheese, make home-made mozzarella sticks!

We cut the string cheese in half then dipped them in egg substitute and bread crumbs.

Then we put them in the oven at 350 for 8 minutes, which was obviously too long.

It was a delicious cheese explosion. We served these with tomato sauce from the crockpot and topped that with parmesan cheese. Everything is better topped with parm cheese :-)

For our main course we had salad

and hot meatball sandwiches with mozzarella cheese on whole wheat rolls.

My dressing of choice was Caeser Vinaigrette. After the sandwiches and salad it SHOULD have been Creme Brulee time.

Unfortunately, butane fluid must be hard to come by in NY state. I had Zara AND Robin look for some on their way to my house, and there was none to be found. So, the Creme Brulee was missing the Brulee part and therefore was just plain custard. Oh well, it was tasty anyway, and there’s always next time.

So, that sums up spa day. Now for a quick run-down of today’s eats. Breakfast was a bowl of Raisin Bran with skim milk (which went unphotographed). Lunch was the last Feta and Spinach chicken sausage with some Steamfresh corn.

I love these little microwavable packets

Perfectly portioned and portable :-) For an afternoon snack I had some Kashi crackers with low fat cheese (this also went unphotographed). For dinner was some leftover meatballs with fat free mozzarella and a big salad with some Salad Toppins, parmesan cheese and some more Caesar Vinaigrette.

Now it’s only 6 pm and I’m more than ready to read in bed and be asleep by 8.

Having 2 blogs is getting tedious. I think I’m going to incorporate my food blog into my Lake Life blog. We’ll see.

This morning the roads were terrible and the radio was advising “no unnecessary travel” so I couldn’t guarantee the Cafe would be open at work. I decided to bring a thermos of coffee with me just in case.

The epitome of my odd luck was made more apparent to me than ever when I discovered the Cafe was, in fact open, and I saw this sign

A little employee appreciation goes a long way! I must have had at least 5 cups of coffee today. Is coffee an appetite suppressant? I wasn’t exactly hungry for breakfast, just more bored than anything. Snow days allow for waffle fries for breakfast.

The waffles fries were actually pretty gross, not really worth the calories at all.

Due to my excessive coffee drinking I was craving some sort of baked good for my morning snack and had half a piece of cranberry bread and half a piece of banana bread that my mom made.I didn’t get a picture, but both were very yum.

When it was time for lunch break Zara and I had wanted to work out, but the Cardiac Rehab department was closed. In my opinion, it’s a big crock that a patient care area gets closed, but an office doesn’t. Zara and I decided to have lunch in the Cafe, where I dined on leftover Pork Tenderloin and mixed veggies with a few sprits of ICBINB spray.

Then it was back to the office for the drag that is a Friday afternoon. I was more than happy when the clock finally hit 5:30. I took a sick day last week and therefore had to work 50 hours this week. When I got back to the ‘rents (since I was chauffeured to work again) my mom made chipped beef! I couldn’t pass this up, but made it a *little* healthier by having the chipped beef over broccoli instead of toast. On the side I had some butternut squash.

I didn’t miss the toast at all!

Now it’s time for me to have some tea and look through my recipe collection for something to make for Spa Day on Sunday!

Eating healthy is definitely more difficult in the winter. I think when it’s cold and dark you just want comfort foods, and when you’re all bundled up you don’t worry as much what you look like in a bathing suit.

But, I am looking towards summer. Every day the winter wears on me, especially on a day like today. I’m ready for boating, laying in the sun and grilling! Cold weather calls for a hot breakfast.

Cheesy eggs with ham and corned beef hash. Topped with lots of ketchup, of course. I immediately regretted my breakfast choice when I entered it into Sparkpeople . At least I made better choices throughout the rest of the day. My morning snack was some BBQ Soynuts and some veggies with ranch dressing.

I worked through workout time (aka lunch break) today because I’m a tad swamped at work, and I had my favorite go-to soup, Progresso High Fiber Chicken Tuscany, while working.

I plugged away at work for the rest of the afternoon, and had a raspberry Dannon LIght n Fit

with a dark chocolate heart

(Yes, I had a heart, for a change ;-)

I worked for the rest of the afternoon then my stepfather picked me up from work due to the crappy road conditions and I came back to the ‘rents for the evening, in case the power goes out (they have a generator.)

My mom made pork tenderloin for dinner and it was delicious! I had a serving of the tenderloin with mixed veggies and corn.

I’m still stuffed! Finally it’s time to have a cup of Sleepy Time tea while flipping back and forth between one of my favorite episodes of House and the Olympics. It’s a good thing Grey’s Anatomy is a repeat tonight!

Wow, post number 2 for today, and this time I’ll actually be covering TODAY’S eats. I’m going to make this snappy cuz I have a True Blood disc from Netflix just begging to be watched.

This morning I was feeling kind of…blah. I knew it was going to be a “2 breakfast” morning. For some reason I had no interest in my coffee today and was craving something juice-like. I went for this:

I say "juice-like” because if you turn the bottle around you see this:

Don’t know what made me insane this morning, as I usually HATE to drink my calories and like to stick with good old-fashioned coffee or water. Luckily I only had one serving of this and threw the rest away. With my wanna-be juice I had 2 slices of raisin toast that I didn’t get to snap a pic of.

My 2nd breakfast of the day was a replica of yesterday's breakfast- scrambled egg substitute with Canadian Bacon and one slice of Kraft Fat Free American cheese. Today, when I went to take the piece of cheese from my bag it was covered in chili. Isn’t it great when your lunch leaks? Except when I checked the bag, it was much more that just a “leak”.

It was an explosion.

Apparently I’m blissfully unaware of my own superhuman strength. The only solution I can come up with is that when I casually tossed my lunch bag onto my passenger seat this morning it somehow managed to crack this bowl…as well as the container that held my sour cream for topping my chili. I had quite the mess to clean up

Once everything was clean again, I decided it was snack time. Since (part of) my lunch had exploded I decided to have 5 mozzarella sticks.

Three “single” mozzarella sticks and one “monogamous” mozzarella stick couple

Renee from the Cafe came up with the whole monogamous thing. After much discussion, we figured out this was actually a Harry Potter lightning bolt mozz stick. Food is fun :-)

Lunch was salad again, with grilled chicken, edamame and shredded cheese, as well as some “Old Fashioned Green Bean” soup

I am happy to say I got 3 people to try (and like) edamame today. Yay!! I love it when people try new food and like it.

When it was time for an afternoon snack finally had the yogurt I had planned on having yesterday. I also had a heart-shaped dark chocolate cut up and added to the Pomegranate Berry yogurt.

For some reason the afternoon was dragging at work (only one more day til FRIDAY) so I was so happy to get out of work. I headed to the ‘rents house to do some laundry and was craving a healthy dinner. It started out with Alexia Sweet Potato Fries that I didn’t get a pic of, because I ate them while making a big bowl of green beans and carrots.

I spritzed this with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray and some S&P and was good to go :-)

Speaking of good to go, True Blood is calling my name!

I’m considering just leaving my camera cord at work so that I can update during the day, that way I won’t feel so over-whelmed in the evenings.

My evenings are short at best. I work four 10 hour days a week and only have about 3 hours to “work” with in the evening. Of course, even though the clock drags at work, it becomes hyperactive once you walk through your front door.

Quick recap of yesterdays eats:

I started out with my usual morning cup of coffee (8 o’clock coffee with sugar-free French Vanilla creamer). The only difference was I was using my new Copco reusable “to go” cup I got last week at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

About an hour and a half after getting to work I had breakfast, which was scrambled egg substitute with Canadian Bacon and a Kraft fat free cheese slice.

We got a new brand of Styrofoam cups in the cafe and work and they are painfully boring white. I tried to jazz mine up with pink highlighter and make it match my coffee cup. This backfired later on in the day when I looked down and saw my fingers covered in pink highlighter.

Around 11 the co-workers colleagues (that was for you Mary) and I went to the cafeteria so Zara and Mary could warm up their soup, and I suffered a serious battle of the wills when I saw the lunch menu:

I LOVE LOVE LOVE chipped beef AND fried zucchini and cauliflower. I almost justified getting the fried veggies because, even though they’re fried they are still veggies.

I begrudgingly went back to my desk and snacked on a healthier version of veggies. Slimy green peppers, baby carrots and T Marzetti’s Light Ranch dip..

Then I glared at the back of Mary’s head while she ate this:

It’s ok though. Mary is geriatric, and when you’re that old geriatric you’ve earned the right to eat fried zucchini, fried cauliflower, grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch. Oh how I wish to be geriatric. Just kidding. I want to be an Octogenarian.

And since I want to be an Octogenarian some day, I had a salad for lunch

Baby romaine, romaine hearts, chicken breast and edamame with Caesar Vinaigrette. I also topped it with some Almond Accents

and followed that will some sugar-free Raspberry Goji jell-o.

I had brought a yogurt with me for an afternoon snack but was in the mood for something more crunchy/savory and brought out the bag of BBQ Soynuts I keep in my desk drawer for just this occasion.

These are definitely an acquired taste, but have more health benefits than peanuts…and the serving size is 1/4 cups as opposed to 15 :-)

Not long after these I was still feeling snacky so had a Weight Watcher’s mozzarella string stick

Is anyone else getting bored of the grey desk background? I’m not sure what to do about that. Luckily, not long after the cheese stick I got to leave my grey desk and go HOME. There was a lot of bills and filing for me to do, as well as catching up on the Bad Girl’s Club episodes, so I had planned on just having leftover Chinese for dinner. Fortunately for my waistline, the General Tso’s chicken in my fridge just did not sound appetizing to me. I was craving something foreign, but more along the lines of Mexico.

I opened a can of Hormel Turkey chili to take for lunch the next day and saved a bit of it. To this I added diced green peppers, roasted red peppers, black beans and some Sriracha hot sauce and popped it in the oven at 350. Check out this giant bean that was on top in my can of black beans

After my dip had cooked for about 10 minutes I added some shredded cheese, black olives and avocado to the top and served it up with some Tostitos and fat-free sour cream. YUMMMM.

Note the sophisticated fine paper plates I’ve been using lately :-)

Ok, one day down, one more to blog. See ya again in a few!

Lately, if I had my own show on the Food Network, it would be called “Bad Eats”.

Today was another unhealthy food day. First, it started out with a blueberry muffin with my morning coffee at work (which went un-photographed). What is it that makes coffee and baked goods so good together?

Then about an hour later it was time for my “real” breakfast, which consisted of scrambled egg substitute and potatoes with lots of ketchup. (Does ketchup count as a veggie?) :-)

Don’t you love the messy Styrofoam container look? It really adds some character to the meal. When it was time for mid-morning snack I perused the cafeteria with my co-workers colleagues in the hopes of finding at least ONE decent soup out of the extensive 2-soup collection. Today’s offering was Watery Split Pea or Watery Cream of Mushroom. I guess before I started working at the hospital, I never realized that people eat Cream of Mushroom soup by itself? Hmm.

Since the soup option was a no-go I decided to settle on the vending machine. I almost punched in the numbers for Sour Cream n Cheddar chips then thought “wow, that would look like a bad choice on the blog” and decided to go with a package of trail mix:

A food blog = accountability. Not that this trail mix was an excellent choice. Most people don’t realize all the added sugar in packaged trail mix, or the fact that one bag is usually TWO servings. Oh well.

At lunch time I was still craving soup and remembered I had a back up microwavable bowl of soup in my desk drawer.

I also paired this with a salad from the cafeteria salad bar

I HATE it when baby carrots turn white. This can be easily avoided by a few little spritzes of water. The cafeteria is hiring a Supervisor. I have a feeling I could do that job. I sure as hell wouldn’t be serving watery Cream of Mushroom soup or dandruffy carrots.

I WOULD, however, serve this delish banana pudding thing my mom made. It’s not the prettiest thing, but it was DELICIOUS.

Throughout the day there were 2 truffles, a package of fruit snacks, and a Shrek lollipop that went unphotographed.

I was fully ready to make a healthy dinner when I got home, until I saw the leftover Pu-Pu platter on the top shelf of my fridge.

I’ve tried to come up with excuses, and the only thing I can think of is the fact that shrimp is low in calories and the egg roll had cabbage :-/

But, I have my breakfast, lunch and snacks all packed and ready for tomorrow and they are ALL healthy. I’m so ready for tomorrow. Well, I guess I’m actually so ready for bed. The first day back to work after being sick is always so exhausting, and my head is pounding.

Speaking of tomorrow, I took these pictures out of my bedroom window about an hour and a half ago:

Blustery, slushy snow…and the first thing a New Yorker thinks is “Great, how early do I have to get up tomorrow to clean off my car and get to work on time?”

Wow, my first day back to complete food blogging and I don’t know if I dare post my eats. I’ve been abiding by that whole “Feed a cold, starve a fever” motto, but I haven’t been feeing my cold very healthfully. I have been taking too much advantage of being sick. Though I know I should be eating healthfully to bring my immune system back up, I have been eating like this instead.

I started the day with a cup of coffee and a white chocolate Lindor Truffle:

Best chocolate ever (though white chocolate isn’t technically chocolate). I may have had approximately 2 more of these as the day went on. After the chocolate, I had what was probably my only technically healthy meal of the day.

2 eggs scrambled with turkey breakfast sausage, 2 % American cheese and salsa. It was yum and hit the spot. While organizing the cookbooks I made from old issues of Cooking Light and Everyday with Rachael Ray I had a serving of Sour Cream n Onion Ritz Toasted Chips.

Then for lunch I had some Campbell’s Select Harvest Clam Chowder.

My mom was nice enough to stock me up with soup and other various comfort foods on Friday night, and this is the clam chowder she picked for me. I don’t think I’ve had this kind before, but I don’t think I’ll be having it again either. My #1 pet peeve about canned soup is the insane amount of potatoes they pack into those cans. I very much dislike potatoes in soup, as I don’t think they really add any flavor, but do pack a lot of starch. Boo.

One of the comfort foods my mom picked up was 2 boxes of pudding pops! I had a vanilla one mid-afternoon as a snack. Soo soothing.

I actually tried to re-create these once with sugar-free pudding and at-home popsicle molds. Just not the same.

By early afternoon I was ready for dinner and was craving something spicy. Is it weird that when I have a sore throat I crave spicy foods, whereas most people prefer bland?

Nachos with shredded chicken, medium salsa, shredded Mexican cheese, Frank’s Red Hot, medium taco sauce and black olives (with sour cream and black bean dip on the side.) I wanted to add some veggies to this but didn’t feel like putting the extra work into it. How bad is that? My vegetable equivalent today is from salsa and the few measly celery pieces in my soup. That is BAD.

Since I was feeling so bad about my fruit and veggie intake for today I DID have a package of fruit snacks (hey- they have 100% vitamin C, lol) and some of the banana pudding my mom made today. The recipe came on the side of the Nilla Wafer box and ended up being delish. Basically it included Nilla Wafers, vanilla pudding, bananas and cool whip. Totally healthy right?

Ok, tomorrow I’m back to work and hopefully back to a little healthier eating. We’ll see.

If anyone hasn’t noticed, I’ve been on a blogging hiatus since the epic crash of my Nikon.

I had been toying with the idea of buying a cheaper “back up” camera so I’ll never again be camera-less, and my Olympus FE-47 arrived in the mail last Wednesday. For my feelings on the new camera, you can read my post here at Lake Life. Since that post, I’ve emailed my coworker regarding an old Olympus digital camera I sold her a few years ago and am hoping the memory cards she had for that will work in my new camera. At first I emailed to see if she wanted to buy this camera, but she had just bought a new one on Tuesday.

So, before I get back to our regularly scheduled blog, I figured I would clear out a few pics I had taken with my mom’s camera.

Last Sunday was Valentine’s day (which I do not celebrate) so my mom and step-father had planned to go out to breakfast. Since Valentine’s Day is the one day of the year that couples feel it mandatory to pamper each other by dining out, the wait everywhere was extensive. Instead, my mom decided to come back home and make home-made waffles. Oddly enough, the night before I had found these ready-to-go Pomegranate Arils at Wegmans:

That I added to my waffle batter, then topped with some Toasted Coconut Light n Fit yogurt and some additional Poms to the top:

Yummy and healthier than butter and syrup! After breakfast at the ‘rents I packed up and went home for a day of indulgence. Instead of doing what most Singletons do on this so-called “day of love”, I indulged myself. My day was spent indulging in at-home facial masks, parafin hand waxes, a pedicure and some delicious eats. The only one I could get a grainy cell phone picture of was my chocolate-covered strawberries and golden delicious apples.

My co-workers were happy to snack on these the next day :-)

As noted before, I did take a few Olympus pics on Thursday. Breakfast was a toasted piece of Arnold’s Flax & Fiber bread and two eggs over easy. Let me just say I’ve had this bag of bread for several weeks now and it’s still good. The reason why? Debbie Meyers, of course!!

I love, love, love these products! As a single woman, I don’t go through bread or fresh produce as quickly as most do. Debbie Meyer’s Bread bags and Green bags are a huge money saver for me! I’ve even tried the "Cold Cuts Bags” to keep deli meat fresh longer!

Anyway, with my several-week-old bread I had some not-so-old organic eggs:

I read an article recently with the top foods you SHOULD buy organic. Eggs, milk, and leafy greens topped the list. Unfortunately I ended up cooking my eggs a little long, I prefer them more yolky than this:

Well, what do you think of the Olympus pics? Not fabulous, in my opinion. I’ll be doing comparison shots with both cameras soon since MY NIKON HAS BEEN RETURNED SAFE AND SOUND, AS OF THURSDAY :-)

I haven’t even gotten around to opening the box yet. At this very moment I’m in bed at the ‘rents house being nursed back to health. I woke up yesterday morning with a terrible sore throat, headache, swollen glands and sore muscles. I had gotten hit overnight! I don’t feel much better now, but just started antibiotics today so hopefully they will kick in soon. 9 more days of taking 4 extra pills a day. Boo. It will be worth it if I can just feel better. I always ended up at my parent’s house when I’m sick. My mom used to be a nurse, and she wouldn’t want her skills to get rusty right? :-)

I spent most of today napping, and even though I feel exhausted am having a hard time falling asleep now.

Maybe I’ll fall asleep while catching up on my Google Reader? Goodnight y’all,