All of that to be ruined about 3 seconds after I got out of my car when the skies opened up and poured a full bucket of water onto my head.

Now you might think – how could I have missed the gray skies? 

Well, I didn’t.  But I don’t own an umbrella (not on purpose, I just broke my last one and haven’t gotten around to buying a new one) and I have a really bad habit of underestimating the time it will take me to do something… such as dash across the parking lot.

And my meeting?  The longest sales pitch I’ve ever had.  Ever.  The meeting lasted 2-1/2 hours in what could have been accomplished in 30 minutes.  But I did get a $20 Starbucks card out of it.  Maybe it was worth it.

After that – another long day, which is –surprise, surprise-  getting a little old. 

I stopped by the drugstore on the way home to grab some paper towels because we were 100% out and picked up a box of Rice Chex and immediately dug into it when I got home.

I had 2 bowls with soymilk – crunchy cereal with cold milk is SO good.

And because that wasn’t going to suffice for dinner alone (although I briefly considered parking myself on the couch with the box of cereal, a carton of soymilk, and that bowl and calling it a night), I went looking for my best friend:  Amy’s.

This:

Became this:

Anyone that can make a frozen meal look tasty is my hero.  I mixed it all up before I ate it.

And because that wasn’t enough…

• 1/2 c. Oikos
• 1/2 c. plain lf yogurt
• vanilla + stevia
• Nuts + Seeds Crunch

I used to eat cereal in my yogurt all the time, but GF cereal often isn’t suitable and I don’t like the fake GF granola.  This was really nice.

I need to log back on to work and wrap up a few things.  And then it’s wine + chocolate chip time!

What do you eat in your yogurt?

For dinner tonight, I made a smoothie.  I like smoothies – I’ve had (drunk, drank, drinken?) many protein shakes/smoothies in my life but it’s never occurred to me to make a smoothie for dinner before.  I don’t know why – it’s filling, full of good stuff, and pretty easy to make. 

I made it a little too thick and it tried managed to jump out of the cup.

• 1/2 c. soymilk
• 1/2 c. pomegranate juice
• 1/2 c. plain yogurt
• tons of spinach
• frozen peaches, mango, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, and nectarines

Plus leftover brussels

<3    <3    <3

I can’t decide if I like them better when they’re freshly roasted or cold the next day.  Which is quite a problem because it’s really a struggle to save some for the next day.  Next time I make them, I’m going to make 3x as many as I think I’ll eat and try to save enough to stick in the fridge.

The last part was leftover roasted asparagus, which is definitely NOT as good the next day, but is still nothing to complain about.

Despite the huge volume of food (smoothies are ridiculous in the amount of space they take up in your stomach), I’m still feeling a little empty so I think I might grab an apple + PB to snack on.

Have a fabulous Wednesday!

Such as nice bonuses. 

It’s actually a good thing that I had a good morning because the day seemed to drag on forever.  One nice thing about my job is that I’m rarely, almost never, bored.  Usually the days fly by, but not today.

This could be because I had more than a little bit too much wine last night and was awoken to a cacophony of beeps as our power went out in the middle of the night.  All of our battery backups and smoke alarms illicit short beeps as if to say: “I’m dying here, just wanted to let you know…”  It has to be the most irritating sound at 2:30 in the morning that I’ve ever heard.  Ever.

So I was up a little late this morning and not quite feeling up to par.  And it was Monday.  It could have been the making of a very bad day, but thankfully it was not. 

Last night

Dinner last night was fabulous and a little bit of a change from the norm.  It’s really a cruel twist of fate that I have Celiac disease, as my favorite part of any meal before going GF was the bread.  I could have subsisted on Macaroni Grill foccacia bread by itself and lived a happy life.

Unfortunately, my body did not agree.

One of the cuisines I miss the most is Italian.  We do Italian-inspired things, sure.  Pasta Bake and other pasta-based things.  But there is so much more out there – and a lot of it could pretty easily be made GF.  I need to remember that next time I am looking for something to make.

So for dinner, we did a take on Chicken Parmesan.  Which ended up being not-very-Chicken-Parmesan like, but good nonetheless.

In typical me fashion, served on spinach and with spaghetti squash “spaghetti” and roasted asparagus. 

Really, really good and a perfect end to a nice weekend.

Tonight

Since I had baked tofu a few days ago, I’ve been thinking about when I could eat it next.   I really go through phases with food.   At the grocery store yesterday, I really considered buying a sweet potato, which is a big deal since I really am not a fan.  But for some reason, it just sounded like a great idea.  I didn’t buy any (I was already in line), but I probably will next week.

I enjoyed my mexican tofu on Saturday, so I made it the same way tonight:  sprayed with olive oil and sprinkled liberally with Prudhomme’s fajita magic.

Served with the best vegetable on earth.

I’m seriously in love with brussels sprouts.   They’re soooo good!

—–

I ordered a pack of Tropical Nut FoodBars tonight – I have blown through nearly my entire stash in 5 days.  Seriously good stuff!  And for those of you that asked, you can buy the on their website – very easy.

—–

Veg time on the couch.   Hope your Monday was bearable!

What food can you currently not get enough of?  (I think you know my answers!)

I thought things would calm down after the fieldwork portion of the audit, but I had forgotten how the weeks afterwards are usually just as busy if not more so for me because I’m catching up on all the things I put on hold during the audit.

Couple that with still not feeling up to par from being sick last weekend, and I feel like I have zero time to do anything for me.

Yesterday was a pretty good example of how I like to spend my Saturdays:  I woke up, leisurely drank coffee, spent about 2 hours working and then the rest of the afternoon doing yardwork (first of the season!), grocery shopping, washing my car, housework, laundry, and then relaxing on the couch with a magazine (my magazine pile is growing enormous as I’ve not had time to read any!).  We watched a movie and went to bed decently early. 

For breakfast, I had a new bar. (More on this later)

At the grocery store, I found the new Dannon greek yogurt, which I’ve been wanting to try for a while.  I really like regular Dannon yogurt and since I’ve tried practically every other greek yogurt out there, I was looking forward to trying it.

I bought the plain – in general, I don’t really like flavored yogurts – but they also have strawberry, blueberry, honey, and vanilla.

I think I have found my newest favorite yogurt.  This stuff is thick, creamy, cheap (!), and does not taste fat free.  That’s probably the reason I like it the most.  I really like 2% fage and 2% chobani, probably as much or a little more than I like this one.  But the fat-free versions of all of the greek yogurts out there taste really sour to me.  When I eat fat-free greek yogurt, I mix it half and half with low-fat plain yogurt, but with this one, I won’t have to.

I paired it with a very simple salad.

• spinach
• red leaf / romaine / red chard / kale mix
• red pepper
• yellow squash
• balsamic / olive oil

I’ve really been enjoying leafy salads lately.  I’m reading Greens For Life by Victoria Boutenko, which is kind of new-agey and strange, but theorizes that greens should be considered a separate food group from vegetables.  I’m not sure I agree, but I do have cravings for greens specifically versus sometimes a general vegetable craving.

And of course, I’m always craving brussels sprouts. 

Another craving I had yesterday was for tofu.  I’ve had a pack in my fridge for a couple weeks now (thank God for food with a long shelf life) and since Matt decided to order a burger for delivery (Picasso’s Pizza for those of you in Dallas – he says their food is actually pretty good and they seem to have a good variety), I made baked tofu a la Gliding Calm.

I seasoned mine differently – actually, all I did was pat it dry and spray it with olive oil and sprinkle with Prudhomme’s Fajita Magic – but otherwise prepared it the same way.

Served with butternut squash fries, seasoned with more Prudhomme’s, and zucchini chips and loads of ketchup for dippage.

For dessert, I made chocolate cheesecake fro-yo and it was fabulous.

Very simple.  In the magic bullet, blend:

• 1/2 c. cottage cheese (Daisy)
• 1/4 c. greek yogurt (Oikos plain)
• 1/4 c. plain yogurt (Stoneyfield Farms plain)
• 1 T. cocoa powder
• 1 t. dark cocoa powder
• stevia/sweetener to taste

Then throw it in the ice cream maker and wait for the magic to happen.  Top with chocolate chips and die of happiness.

—–

A few days ago, Taylor from Wholesome Foods Bakery sent me a box of goodies, including some brownies, Crunch, and FoodBars.

Wholesome Foods Bakery is a dedicated organic GF and dairy-free bakery in the Dallas area.  The treats are made with actual food instead of the chemicals, artificial ingredients, and fillers that are in a lot of processed GF goods.  One of the reasons I don’t buy a lot of GF baked goods – even though there are tons out there – is because I don’t want to stuff myself with artificial ingredients.  And since I don’t bake often (full pans of brownies all for me to eat = my jeans don’t fit), I miss out on good treats.

I inhaled the brownies before I could get a picture (uh, thus the reason I don’t bake my own very often) – they were crunchy on the outside and gooey in the middle – and I’ve made a big dent in my stash of bars.  My favorite of the bars were the Tropical Nut and Cranberry Apricot, which were both chewy, moist, and seemed like they had far more calories in them than they do (about 150 each – which is a bargain when you’re used to eating Larabars).  I do eat my fair share of Larabars, but have been looking for something else I can stick in my purse for snacks and these fit the bill.  I will definitely be buying some when I run out… which is pretty imminent given how addicting they are.   Thanks Taylor!

—-

We’re about to have a very busy couple weeks.  I’m going to see my BFF’s new house in OKC, we’re having house guests 3 out of the next 4 weekends, and my Dad’s birthday is at the end of the month.  March Madness indeed!

How was your weekend?

Quick Indian

Amy’s Paneer Tikka, which is prettier in its box but tastes amazing mixed together.  To my delight, I recently learned from our friends (who are from India) that this dish is very easy to make.  Apparently there is a great Indian grocery store like a mile from our house that sells Paneer cheese and masala ingredients.  Thank goodness because paying nearly $5 a pop for this was starting to eat into my shoe fund.

(And I just realized that bay leaf in the bottom center.  Definitely ate that sucker without noticing.)

Dirty Salad

I feed the turtles a mix of greens each week – basically the same leafy lettuces I make myself for salads.  For years, I bought myself a  couple heads of some type of lettuce each week for salads and then bought them a couple heads of some sort of leafy green.  I’d chop theirs up and put it in baggies for easy feeding but didn’t chop up my lettuce until I decided to have a salad. 

On Sunday it dawned on me (sure took long enough) that it was inane to make separate mixes and that I should just chop up all of the greens, wash, dry, and put into bags and use in both their dinners and mine.

And thus this week’s kale / red chard / red leaf / romaine mix was born.

• greens mix (from above)
• red pepper
• yellow squash
• craisins
• goat cheese
• walnuts
• cherry balsamic / olive oil

The “dirty” comes from the way goat cheese looks after you pour balsamic vinegar on it.  Not pretty.

(But tasty!)

I’m loving salads with walnuts and a little cheese in them – give me a huge bowl of steamed rice and I might be really happy right after eating it, but I feel empty an hour later.  After eating a big salad with nuts and cheese, I’m not quite as satisfied right after eating, but I feel great for several hours.

—–

Happy  Thursday – hope your Friday flies by.  As for me, I hope it’s a quiet, ridiculously productive day.

I’ve been drinking the same blend I made the other day:

• red leaf
• zucchini
• cucumber
• lemon
• ginger
• celery
• carrot
• stevia
• apple

And I think it’s definitely made me feel a little better.  I still feel like my head has been stuffed with a large Q-tip.

I’ve also been drinking smoothies.  They’re easy, tasty, and the nutrients are more easily absorbed.  But the best part?

The husband has been doing the dirty work (i.e. throwing a bunch of random ingredients into the blender).

• soymilk
• pom juice
• spinach
• frozen raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, mango
• fruit salad (nectarine, plums, mandarin oranges, kiwi, pineapple)
• plain yogurt

I have also eaten my fair share of steamed rice which I think is the ultimate sick food.  I could eat plain rice every day and not get sick of it, as long as I had some salt.

I went to work today and must have looked as awful as I felt because everyone stayed at least 10 feet away from me.

I left the office early – the plan was to go home and take a nap but that didn’t happen.  Instead, we went to a little Cajun restaurant around the corner for an early dinner:  Dodie’s. 

Matt eats there quite a bit but I’ve never taken the chance.  However, we were there for a neighborhood association meeting a couple months ago and the owner seemed very involved and very competent, so we decided to give it a try tonight. 

Instead of a side salad, I opted for the coleslaw.

This was basically red and green cabbage dressed in olive oil and vinegar with a ton of spices.  It had a great kick to it and was tart and a bit spicy at the same time.  I had 2 plates’ worth.

They had flounder as a special so they sautéed me a filet in white wine, garlic, lemon, and a little butter with mushrooms, artichoke hearts, tomatoes and topped with crab meat. 

Served with yellow squash, zucchini, and broccoli.

This was a nice change from the usual.  I really like fish and we definitely do not eat it often enough now that we have access to fresh – albeit not right-out-of-the-ocean fresh – seafood.

I finished my tax homework and am gearing up for the Biggest Loser along with a couple of decongestants and a big sexy box of tissues.

Hope you all are having a good start to the week!

—–

Q:  When was the last time you got sick?

I, however, did not. 

A while back, I read the much-anticipated Thrive by Brendan Brasier.  I thought it was a fabulous book – I’m not raw nor do I imagine I’ll ever go 100% raw, but I thought the arguments behind a raw-based diet were sound and I try to incorporate fresh, raw produce into my diet whenever possible.   One of the topics in the book that has stuck with me is the concept of nutritional stress – basically the idea that not only can not eating the right foods (i.e. getting enough nutrients) can cause stress on your body but eating the wrong ones in addition the right ones can also cause stress.

It’s ironic that the more stressed we are – from work, school, whatever – the less time or effort we have to make ourselves a meal chock full of the nutrients we need, yet it’s when we’re most stressed that we need really good food the most.  We’re more likely to reach for fast food (or in my case, a Larabar and string cheese) than make a huge salad with veggies and nuts, which in turn creates more stress on our body.

It’s also ironic that right after a really stressful time at work (which isn’t quite done yet – it won’t be over til the fat lady sings and that fat lady should sing sometime mid week) that I get really sick.  I’m glad that I my body was able to hold off the bugs from invading my system until after the most stressful part, but it’s still frustrating.   I have some sort of cold/upper respiratory infection and a really bad case of acid reflux that is causing major chest and upper back pain (pretty image, I know).

I went into the office for 4 hours yesterday morning and left early when I started feeling bad.  I couldn’t even pinpoint it – it wasn’t like a specific thing hurt, I just didn’t feel well.  Came home and fell asleep on the couch and then moved into the bedroom when I slept for 3 hours.  I haven’t taken a non-vacation nap in maybe 2 years – I just don’t need them.  Then I fell asleep on the couch again last night at 8:45 and slept until 10:45 this morning.

Ironically (that seems to be the key word in this post), I just felt worse this morning – pounding headache, stuffed up nose… and then realized why I felt so bad yesterday even though nothing specifically felt bad:  it was a pre-sick day.  Those are the worst.

All of that brings me to:  yesterday’s eats.  I don’t have pictures (I could barely drag myself off the couch to get in bed) and they weren’t healthy.  The husband was kind enough to get me what I asked for:  waffle fries and a salad from Chic fil A (both GF, of course) and Hershey’s nuggets with toffee and almonds.

While tasty, what I really needed when sick as a dog was green.  Granted, I did eat salad, but only because I didn’t feel like I should make a meal out of chocolate and french fries (although it’s been done before). 

Today, I feel worse, but I recognize the need for stuffing my body with nutrients, not stuffing my body with chemicals and salt.

So I dragged my sniffly, sneezy self (much to the pleasure of the other shoppers – sorry guys) to the Korean grocery store and bought fresh veggies for the week:  red leaf and romaine lettuce, red chard, kale, brussels, asparagus, tofu, a lemon, a strange citrus fruit that I don’t recognize, soymilk, and a big knob of ginger.  All for $19.11 – which could be the reason I was the happiest I’ve ever been when leaving a grocery store despite feeling like death.

So I present go-away-cold juice and don’t-feel-like-ass salad.

This scary looking cup of plant blood contained:

• red leaf lettuce
• zucchini
• celery
• cucumber
• lemon
• apple
• ginger
• stevia

And it was fabulous.  Not pretty, but fabulous.

Part II of dinner was more chlorophyll.

• red leaf,  romaine, red chard, kale
• tomato
• yellow squash
• GUAC
• red pepper
• carrots

Off to resume my place on the couch and feeling like death. 

—–

Hope you all had a better weekend than I did.  What exciting things did you do this week?

Seriously.

The audit is almost over.  The fieldwork is done (or nearly done), so this weekend they are drafting the financials and then the partner of the firm will review the audit manager’s work and they will issue the opinion sometime next week. 

The audit is unquestionably the most important thing I do all year – it’s really a test of how well I did my job in 2009.  So I’m ready for it to be tied with a pretty bow and done so I can move on. 

Sorry for going MIA yesterday – it was the last day of fieldwork and it had been a stressful, crazy day.  I really wanted some Nut Thins and guac for dinner, so I stopped by the store on my way home to grab some.  They didn’t have any so I stopped by another store, which also didn’t have any.  By that time it was super late and I was absolutely exhausted, so I came home and ate steamed rice for dinner.  Exciting, no?

Tonight’s “dinner” was equally strange. 

I’m not generally one to eat based on my emotions (I’m not all that emotional to begin with).  In fact, I’m much more likely to lose my appetite when I’m stressed than to eat because of it.

But tonight, all I wanted was to mindlessly eat crap.  My brain is clearly tired of processing and wanted a break.  Thank goodness I had a giant salad for lunch because that’s where the veggies ended today.

Coo coo for Cocoa Puffs

Not real Cocoa Puffs anyway (even if they were GF, they look and smell way too much like dry dog food) but the GF version.  Yes, I realize they are not puff-shaped… that makes them superior.

Eaten with soymilk on the couch in my PJs (you have now seen my 2 favorite PJ pants:  fish and lollipops). 

Chocolate Icing

This stuff is fabulous – chocolatey and sweet but not too sweet.  And the fact that you have to heat it up to really eat it (otherwise it is too solid and flakes) means that it requires thought to steal a bite.

I had a big spoonful to finish off the jar. 

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

At the store last night, I passed by the ice cream aisle and wondered when the next time I would buy ice cream would be and decided that it might be quite a while.  This homemade stuff is too good and too good for you to justify buying something packaged instead.

This was:

• 1-1/4 c. plain low-fat yogurt
• 2/3 c. plain Oikos
• 2 T. cocoa powder
• stevia
• vanilla

Topped with chocolate chips.

It’s pretty much a health food but it feels like I’m eating a giant bowl of ice cream.  What I love is that it really isn’t any different –except for the addition of the cocoa powder and chocolate chips- than a yogurt mix I would eat for breakfast with fruit.

—–

I have to go into the office tomorrow morning to get a head start on all the things I have been ignoring the last few weeks.  While I’m not exactly happy about working tomorrow, I see a light at the end of the tunnel and an end to these 70+ hour weeks.

Q:  Do you like your job?   Despite how stressed out mine makes me at times, I do like what I do.

This morning was a testament to my dedication to my job.

There has been a lot of construction on the building we’re in while they got it ready for everyone else to move in.  As a result, part of one of the walls of my office isn’t closed off at the top.

This turned out to be a good thing when my door wouldn’t open this morning.

When I left last night, I closed my door.  I didn’t lock it, but apparently the new handle they had put on it yesterday was defective because it locked itself and my key wasn’t working.  (I thought it was just me – but it turns out that the locksmith, in trying to make a master key, had inadvertently changed all of our office door locks AND given me a defective door handle.  How you accidentally change all of the locks without knowing it, I don’t know.) 

So there I was, all dressed up and nowhere to go at 6:15 in the morning.  My laptop and all relevant work stuff was locked in my office.

After the IT guy and I tried slamming our body weight against the door to no avail, we decided that desperate times called for desperate measures, such as pushing a file cabinet against the wall and hoisting myself up over the wall so I could drop down onto the file cabinet on the other side, inside my office.

It would have worked… if I was a couple inches taller. 

So IT guy tried it.  And he was also too short.

I was contemplating piling a side table on top of the file cabinet when our office manager arrived with a big stick.  I stood on the file cabinet and jimmied the handle with the stick and –FINALLY- opened the door.

So, an hour after I got to work, I finally got in my office.  I should have just stayed in bed.

Fail #2

From hearing most people write about their meals, you would think that everything they threw together was the most magical combination ever created and that they never tried a recipe that wasn’t awesome.

Perhaps they are superhuman, master recipe creators. 

I, however, am not.  And pretty much everything about tonight’s meal sucked.

It should have been a good dinner.  It had all of my favorite components:  guacamole, brussels sprouts, kabocha ‘fries’.

But alas, it was awful.

The turkey was warm (not in a good way) from the toasted bread.  The brussels sprouts weren’t quite cooked enough and were too salty.  Making fries out of a kabocha may not have been the best idea because they were kind of dry and powdery.

And the carrots were a little watery.

I can’t quite figure out what went wrong with the brussels and kabocha – they should have been good but they weren’t.

I ate (most of) it anyway, partly because I was starving but mainly because I didn’t want to make a second dinner but I’ll probably get a snack later on because not only did it not fill me up, it didn’t satisfy me either.

Which brings me to…

Fail #3

It’s 8:30 and I’ve done nothing except bum around in the kitchen making a really haphazard “meal” AND we have nothing exciting to watch on the TiVo because all of the shows on hiatus for the Olympics.

I think I should just go to bed and call it a day.

—–

Ever been locked out before?  I once got locked out of my car while it was running.  Fortunately, it was in my parents’ driveway.   

The good news for my competitive streak is that it is now becoming a visitor spot, so I have no incentive to trip over myself to beat the tobacco-spitting IT  guy anymore.

We’re still all settling in to being one big family in one house again – it’s taking a lot of getting used to to have everyone together again.  Our exec assistant had to send out an email about bathroom etiquette – apparently the gentlemen weren’t happy about having a bathroom with more  than one stall and were locking the door and using it as a single bathroom.   And not using the air freshener.

Busy, busy day today – the auditors are here and life is crazy.   Only 3 more days and life should start to return to normal.

Everything but the kitchen sink

I didn’t get a chance to eat lunch (veggie soup) until nearly 5, and dinner was just as haphazardly thrown together.  It tasted pretty good, though, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

Ensalada con frutas:

• base of chopped romaine
• red pepper
• walnuts
• carrots
• feta
• yellow squash
• raisins
• fruit salad:  pears, kiwi, fresh pineapple, mandarin oranges, plums

Topped with Dark Cherry Balsamic and olive oil.

And the “meat” of the meal:

An Amy’s mac and cheese with peas!!!

All  together now:

——

LOST is on – adios amigos!