Fun new dinners!

Last night I made a dinner that had really stuck out to me in one of my new Ina Garten cook books; her parmesan chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy.  I was a little bit worried becauseI'm never that good at cooking chicken for some reason.  Let's just say that this was a major confidence boost.  Me and G both really liked it a lot.

Plus, I made homemade gravy for the first time!  It wasn't as good as my mom's, but still good.  I also made some black eyed peas and spinach from my Moosewood book, which G ate so that was also a triumph.

 

I've been topping my nights off with hot cocoa.  Probably a good dessert choice for my new year's resolutions.

This morning I had apple cinnamon oatmeal.

After working out, I finished off the rest of the veggies from last night (maybe I could get him to eat them once, but there was no way that G was going near them again).

A little later I had a banana muffin.

Then, for some reason, we had the idea that the weather would be okay for a walk to Fell's Point.  This was probably a bad idea.  It was so cold out.  But I guess worth it for the food.  We went to BOP Pizzeria for lunch and I got a Greek salad.

They have really, really great pizza, but I just wasn't in the mood.  I had a bite of G's pepperoni-pepperoncini pizza and it was good as always.

Then what I was really waiting for!  Mr. Yogato!  It's probably a good thing that we aren't closer to it, because I would be trying to get all of the topping combos that I could possibly think of.  Today I got what I've been getting, though: tangy with kiwi, coconut, and chocolate jimmies.

Did I mention that I got a slow cooker for Christmakkuh from my momma?  And that we watched Julie and Julia?  And that after watching it, G decided that he wanted to try beef bourguignon?  Yes.  And lucky enough, there was a recipe in the little book that came with my slow cooker.  So all day, we had a nice smell in the apartment as it cooked.  The final result, with buttered noodles and bread:

This was good, but really, really rich.  I guess a lot of French food is like that.  Plus, I'm not a huge beef eater to begin with.  Maybe this is more appropriate for a bigger crowd and smaller portions.  But still, really flavorful and tasty!

Now I'm having my cocoa again.  I keep saying that I need to get around to the huge pile of clean laundry that needs to be folded.  Maybe tomorrow...

How do you get the motivation for chores that you hate doing?

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Wow, 2010?  That's pretty crazy.  This year went by so quickly and so many great things happened.  I wanna get to that, but first I've been having some pretty amazing food over the past couple of days.


Yesterday for lunch I made a BLT, with real bacon, which I've never done before.  And it was quite yummy.

I should also mention that I've been having a major downfall to these almond biscotti.  I hope they disappear soon (which means I just need to eat them faster!).

Since we had to have a pretty lowkey night last night, we decided to make it awesome with food.  We started off with some steamed shrimp from the grocery store.

I thought their texture was kinda funky, but G didn;t have a problem with them.  But the main event was food from Trinacria.

Right here we're looking at cheese lasagna, a couple of meatballs, some garlic bread and some asparagus that I made.  YUM.  I want to live inside of that place.

I also wanted to make a special dessert and tried for molten lava cakes, but they didn't bake right.

Still tasted good, though!  I think I just needed to leave them in longer.  I've made them successfully before with a different recipe, so maybe next time.

This morning I made us a new year's breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and 1/2 english muffin.

For lunch it was more leftover lasagna and an apple.

Man, I really want to try everything that that market sells.

I also made some banana muffins and I just finished snacking on one.

I'm making a couple of recipes from my new cook books tonight!  I'm really excited!  Don't forget to eat your black-eyed peas on New Year's day!

What is your favorite cook book?

What are your New Year's traditions?

Prepping for puppy.

I just had a really great weekend with my parents!  It was the first time that they've been up to see our new apartment since we moved.  The weekend pretty much consisted of eating and shopping-- two of my favorite things :)

They had never been to Lexington Market so we went down there to check it out.  We picked up some sandwiches from Krause's.  I got a Thanksgiving sandwich with turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce.

No time like the present to get into the Thanksgiving spirit!  This turkey is really good-- moist and good flavor.  And big!

We also did a lot of puppy shopping this weekend.  My parents were amazing enough to help out the poor graduate students with the puppy supplies.  Check out puppy's new home!

For dinner tonight I made shrimp pot pie.  It was a shrimp, broccoli, and onion base with puff pastry.

It was alright, but I definitely still had room for Berger cake and milk.

I have a human behavior midterm tomorrow and I'm really not into it.  Getting ready for a new puppy is WAY more exciting :)

Finding your pattern.

It's so much harder to stay in a flow when I'm not at school. I really hope that after I graduate I can keep up with my regular updates. It's all about finding a pattern, I guess.

I've gotten in some awesome food in the past couple of days! I love being home. Everything in College Park is a chain.

Yesterday for dinner we had Pepper's Tavern. They advertise as a "5 star dive" and that's a pretty spot-on description. It's really seedy inside and a lot of locals hang out there. The food is awesome. I almost always get the fish tacos with rice and beans, which is what I got last night (sorry about the fuzzy pic; I forgot my camera).

We were in a rush because we went to a play at my old high school, but it was still good. They have the hottest wings on earth. Seriously. I've had a lot of wings, and these are ridiculous.

Dessert was 2 Pepperidge Farm Chocolate Chip Cookies with milk. Gotta have the milk.

Today, similar to every other day this week, started with oatmeal (oats, skim, water, banana, cinnamon, splenda, vanilla, granola, blueberries, almond butter) and 20 minutes of yoga.

Lunch was from another one of my favorites: Mione's. I got a slice of the white pizza, which has ricotta, broccoli, tomatoes, and basil.

So awesome. I also had a couple of bites of The BF's Margarita pizza, which was equally good. His slice of pepperoni was mediocre.

Then I had work at Dumser's, which meant that I didn't have a lot of healthy food options. Which meant that I decided to give into the fryers and got some chicken tenders and fries.

I ate about 3/4 of that. A few hours later I had a small scoop of coconut chocolate chip ice cream with hot fudge. Yumm. But I definitely felt the effects of the fatty foods later on in the shift. I felt tired and draggy and slow. Blech.

Need to go to bed because I have work tomorrow, too. Have a great weekend!!

Excitement is in the eye of the beholder.

The most "exciting" things that have happened since my last post were making dinner and watching the new episodes of South Park and Important Things with Demetri Martin. I put that in quotes because not doing nothing IS pretty exciting for me :)

I'll start with dinner last night. Pizza was originally on the menu, but for some reason our lunch yesterday kept us really full all night. A lot of protein, I guess.

We had been talking about a restaurant that doesn't exist anymore that used to be one of my favorite places to eat. Period. It was called Mad Hatter's and they had the most amazing sandwiches, sweets, and coffee. I went there as often as possible until they suddenly closed about a year ago. So sad. One of their awesome sandwiches was called The Dodo, and we decided to replicate it last night.

It's really easy to make and a huge treat! In the sandwich:

• 2 slices multigrain bread
• peanut butter (we used crunchy)
• sliced banana
• honey
• raisins
• granola

I need to admire it a little more.

Ok. Done. Today has been another slow eating day, due to late awakening and a big breakfast. Tried something a little different today though: Gingerbread Waffles.

Ingredients (for about 4 waffles):

• 2 cups pancake/waffle mix
• 1 c. water
• 1/4 c. mollases
• 1 t. pumpkin pie spice
• 1/3 c. oil

Mix together and use waffle iron according to its directions. We had them with smart balance and syrup and they were very rich and good. Sweet, though and I haven't been hungry since.

I'll be back at my house before I know it, with my standard eats and my normal eating/workout schedule. But I like this right now :)

Bizarro world.

I feel like I'm in a parallel universe. The sun is still out and I've gotten to walk around for a long time without it being freezing. I'm also no where near hungry for dinner. Breaks are weird. But awesome.

The BF and I did 20 minutes of Hip Opening Flow and then set out (finally!) for our walk! We went down to the boardwalk and walked about 4 miles all day (along with some window shopping at the outlets). There are good and bad things about Ocean City in the winter. Good: There are no tourists and town is quiet. Bad: Nothing is open. Which meant that we ran into a few closed restaurants that we wanted to eat at for lunch.

In the midst of searching, we picked up some Cinnamon Crunch Almonds from The Nut House. We love this place in the summer because the smell wafts all the way down the boardwalk. These are so good :)

We finally settled on Fat Daddy's. Their food is good, but overpriced. It's really popular with locals because they stay open really late.

I got a Dirt Burger, which was a veggie burger with lettuce, cucumbers, hummus, and provolone on multigrain.

We also split a small basket of fries.

Not sure what's going on for the rest of the night. I'm going to be sorry for saying this, but I think I might be creeping up on boredom. Eeek!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Break is still proving to be pretty laid back. Totally don't remember my alarm going off this morning... and it really doesn't matter if I sleep in because I have nothing to do. I love it!!

Yesterday I opted for the snack and dinner option. I snacked on an apple in the late afternoon to hold me over:

We went to dinner at Bull on the Beach because we just wanted to get sandwiches. They have really good turkey. And apparently their pit beef is awesome, but I don't eat too much meat so I wouldn't know.

That's a hot turkey sandwich on a Kaiser roll with fries. I also doused that thing in barbecue sauce. Yumm.

After some aimless walking around the outlets and some yearning over guinea pigs at Petco, we headed up to the movie theatres to see He's Just Not That Into You. It was cute, and we were the only people in the theatre. Gustl kept saying I look like Ginnifer Goodwin, mostly because of my hair I guess. We split a small popcorn and I had Twizzlers, a couple of Gustl's Starburst and a couple of Cadbury mini eggs (my favorite!!).

This morning/afternoon I wanted to make something themed with St. Patty's so I used the Irish Soda Bread to make french toast.

With smart balance and syrup. Not sure what we're getting into today. I want to go out tonight to an Irish bar, but I'm not sure what else.

Check out Thinspired to win some British bars! Those would be awesome! Have a great day!

Game of catch up!

Yikes there's been quite the hiatus! I've been enjoying my first weekend off for break, but I've been wanting to catch up here! It's still kind of nice that I've been away from technology for the most part. I think I'll be a little more able to catch up this week because I'll be around the computer more.

Friday night:

Waiting for Gustl and our friend James to come up for the concert, I snacked on a Cranbran Vitamuffin (seen here in it's partially eaten state...):

Once they got up to CP and we got settled, we decided that we should probably get something pretty fast so we could get to the club when the doors opened. This meant going to one of my guilty pleasures:

Chick-fil-A tenders and waffle fries. Yummm. I try not to eat fried foods very much, but I'll make exceptions :)

The concert was fun. REALLLLY LONG. Modest Mouse didn't go on until midnight and we didn't get to sleep until 3! Yikes. Needless to say, my sleep pattern has been pretty weird.

Saturday:

In the morning/afternoon, I decided to make everyone breakfast. I made banana flax pancakes with smart balance and maple syrup. Totally forgot to take a picture until I gobbled them up, but trust me, they looked like pancakes ;)

Stopped in Annapolis at Whole Foods to get a few ingredients that we can't find on the good ole eastern shore. I picked up some Lara Bars to hold me over for the week and ate the Pecan Pie one on the ride home.

I also picked up some freshly baked Irish Soda Bread and had some at home. This is both mine and Gustl's pieces.

This is really good bread. Nice and dense and chewy.

Gustl made dinner from this recipe in Men's Health for Chile Chicken and Basil.

It was amazingly spicy, so I'm glad that I had the multigrain baguette to cut some of the heat. It was really good though, as long as you can take the heat!

Finished off the night with Stonyfield Farms Vanilla Frozen Yogurt.

I've been dieing to try this, but I wasn't too impressed. The texture wasn't great, and the vanilla flavor was a little off. I might try the other flavors, but probably not unless they're on sale.

Sunday:

Today I worked all day at the restaurant where I work at home. During the day I was making sundaes and at night I was waitressing. It's a fun job, and I seriously feel like I'll be working there forever. I've been there since I was 17 and always seem to get some shifts in when I'm home.

Breakfast at my parents' house was Irish Soda Bread. One slice was with crunchy peanut butter and one with almond butter.

With an apple on the side. This kept me full for a long time. I've been loving big breakfasts :)

Lunch at Dumser's was a turkey sandwich on wheat toast with lettuce, tomato, pickles, sweet peppers, hot peppers, and mustard.

Not a whole lot of excitement at work. Just catching up with everyone.

Dinner was pulled chicken barbecue with green beans and macaroni and cheese.

Not a whole lot of healthy food at the Dum's. And homemade ice cream doesn't help. I had a mini chocolate malt, one of my favorites. I also had a little bit of my mom's Texas Sheetcake when I got home.

Now I'm just relaxing and ready for the rest of the week. I hope the weather gets nicer! I've done yoga every day, but I'd like to get some action in outside. Have a good week!

Weekend 3/6-3/8

First of all, thanks to everyone for the congratulations about my acceptance! I really appreciate the support and have my fingers crossed for the other program I applied to, too :)

This weekend was insanity. Not so much in what I did, but definitely in what I ate. If this blog is meant to be about health and wellness, this weekend was the antithesis. Oh, well. It was fun, though!

Friday night:

For traveling, I packed some carrots and a Kashi Pumpkin Pie bar.

I got stuck in traffic and was delayed an extra hour, so I'm so glad I brought these.

Since I had something to celebrate, Gustl and I decided to go to Carraba's for dinner. I think this has become our standard celebration place when I'm in Ocean City. Plus I wanted CARBS like CRAZY.

Started off with the best bread ever (and oil):

Caesar salad:

1/2 bowl of Tagliarini Picciu Paccau (sp?) (pasta, tomatoes, garlic, basil, olive oil, and chicken):

Of course celebrations also call for sweets! We headed to Denny's and split a Cinnamon Apple Crisp:


Saturday:

Breakfast was Kashi GoLean Crunch w/ skim milk:

And a side of cinnamon raisin bread with Smart Balance:

After that, we went for a 5 mile walk/run on the boardwalk. The weather was sooo nice and I am not a runner, but I tried! I'm going to get better!!!

Of course we were ravenous after that, which called for Carraba's leftovers:

A Kashi Oatmeal Flax Raisin cookie:

And 1/2 a cantaloupe:

We went to a friend's birthday party, so I wanted to make cookies for a gift. While baking, my Momma put out some snacks for everyone:

I definitely ate quite a few of these Magic Peanut Butter Surprise cookies:

Before the party we ate at Captain's Galley. Seriously, the BEST crabcakes on earth. The Best. We started with steamed shrimp:

There's my beautiful, lovely crabcake (ate about 1/2 chips, 1/2 slaw):

We also had a slice of Lemon Lust pie by Dessert's by Rita, also one of my favorite things in the world, which is prob why I was too excited and forgot to take a photo. The party also contained a vodka and diet coke and too many baked goods. Seriously WAY too many. And of course I left my camera in the car, so I didn't capture any of this... Note to self: the camera helps you to NOT eat 10 desserts...

Sunday:

When I go out at night, I typically want Denny's the next day. It's become engrained in me and I don't fight it. So brunch was a Grand Slam:

Luckily that kept me full all day. On the ride back up to CP, I grabbed a Kashi GoLean Bar and a cup of fruit:

Dinner was a quick microwaving of Kashi Lemongrass Coconut Chicken. Good, but still a frozen dinner:

Plus, I've gotten yoga in every day! We'll see about tonight, though...
Oh my goodness, I am glad that I updated. Sorry it's so succinct, but I need to prep for the week. 2 exams and a major project this week. Yikes! Have a good night and a happy Monday!!