Tag Archives: spinach

What a long weekend.

Not what a long weekend, but rather WHAT a long weekend. One solid track of celebrations, complete with copious amounts of cupcakes, decent amounts of dancing, and devilish amounts of drinks (Slight exaggeration. It was all good times but all decently tame. I’m too old and crotchety for that party animal lifestyle! Har Har). Something about long weekends that just makes everyone want to nonstop celebrate.

Thursday there was a night out reunion with a group of old high school gals. We’ve lived in different cities for school but they’ve all finally trickled back in for the summer and it was time to reconvene. Drinks and singing along to cheesy Glee tunes beforehand; drinks, dresses and dancing at a bar to finish it off.

(weheartit)

I rarely actually drink fruity drinks but they sure do look suave.

Friday was a buddy’s birthday, complete with breast-studded cupcakes delivered in a shoebox to his delighted hands. There were several big hungry men at this birthday and they were all more than excited about the brownie-bottomed treats, topped with chocolate womanly bits. The way to a man’s heart…

Said birthday began at the house, then continued on to two different bars. It was a Bud Light and antojitos (Stuffed with MANGO. Absolutely delicious) kind of night.

(google)

Saturday was the craziest one yet! Okay…no it wasn’t. Highlights included going to work, running, eating a salad and a lot of bean salad, updating my Ipod and going to bed early. Hey, I needed a break! I told you, old and crotchety.

Sunday was good for some tame tanning time during the day (I got some nice colour and a good dose of the natural Vit D) and some retro moves and grooves at a bar at night. The best thing about going out on a long weekend Sunday is running into faces you rarely see. I love my long-lost acquaintances.

A whole weekend of late nights left me run right down though. I actually half napped today and I NEVER nap. It was lovely.

Aside from cupcakes, non-fruity beverages and low levels of sleep, how else did I fuel this long weekend?

A LOT of greens. Green smoothies are my breakfast of choice these days, now that the weather has really warmed up.

ONE of these was stuffed not with spinach but with collard greens. It needed a bit more sweetener but I kind of liked the slightly earthier taste the collards added.

Considering how darn cool it is to blend your spinach into your smoothie… how about topping your spinach with your smoothie?

Yup, I did it.

Yup, I ate it.

Yup, I ate it all.

Creepy? Weird? Unnecessary? All of the above. But it wasn’t half bad. And I’d do it again.

I also ate a lot of salads. What else is new?

Salad topped buffalo-chicken style (cooked chicken;dressing of light source cream, dijon mustard and balsamic vinegar; Frank’s buffalo sauce)

Salad topped plain style – veg and honey mustard dressing with rye and cottage cheese on the side.

Salad topped taco style – seasoned ground beef, bean salad, tomatoes, salsa, sour cream, cheddar

Salad topped tuna style – tuna mixed with sour cream, dijon mustard, worcheshire sauce and pepper

And some odd balls

Italian "Pizza Cheese” made with cashews

Chicken-stuffed Enchiladas. Hideous but delicious.

Red fiesta with red peppers, red salsa on crackers, red ketchup on egg whites

Collard greens, broccoli, zucchini and mushrooms stir-fried in a curry mayo sauce (light mayo + curry powder + splash of milk) with a side of mashed cauliflower

Strawberries topped with coconut/cocoa powder yogurt and sesame brittle

More berries

And more berries

And even more berries – accompanying leftover carrot cake of course.

And to wash it all down? A nice big glass of Crystal Light blended with water, carbonated lemon water, ice, frozen raspberries and frozen mango chunks.

SO. Refreshing.

And now I just got asked to go out AGAIN. This long weekend is over, how do people do it? And more importantly, why am I actually considering it? Oy vey!

Journey Through the Eats

November 18, 2010

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Alright. Because I have an abundance of food photos from the past little while that I have yet to use, and because that’s about all I have to offer right now, here’s a nice little journey through some of the stuff I’ve been eating this month.

And by the way, 99% of what I eat right now is speedy so if you need to know what to eat in a jif, welcome to my appetite. :)

Spinach is about the most convenient green I can get. Giant bowls of it with a bit of dressing and you’re good to go. By the way, the big containers of Fontaine Sante Taboulé at Costco = delicioso

I really like that tabbouli…

Spinach steamed in the micro for 30 seconds is equally as convenient. And even better topped with pasta, preferably if your mother makes it if you’re pressed for time but I know we’re not all quite so spoiled.

Or you could top it with a mixture of pasta sauce and hummus for a pimped out pasta sauce without the pasta.

You could even side it with some Vegan Red Lentil Dal. I was missing a couple spices so I did a quick Google search to figure out what might work as a substitute:

For the 1 tsp cumin – I used 1 tsp chili powder
For the 1 tbsp coriander – I used 1 tbsp dried parsley

I have no idea if these subs were valid or not but the dish did taste a bit overspiced so I’m thinking the cumin and coriander are pretty key, especially since I think they’re pretty regular players in Indian cuisine? Either way it didn’t turn out too badly but I think I’ll have to give it another go once I have the proper spices on hand.

I’ve just started topping some of my salads with plain mustard and I LIKE it. That and random freezer leftovers but that’s nothing new.

Those random Deep Dish Veggie Tart leftovers are the way to go.

Tuna is a good protein-packed speedster.

As are egg beaters mixed with laughing cow, salsa and spinach atop toasted a english muffin. I used to eat this like…every day? Not surprisingly I got sick of it and I hardly eat them anymore but when I do… thumbs UP.

Roasted vegetable salads aren’t quite as quick (I’m impatient so the 20ish minutes it takes to roast the veggies feels like an eternity sometimes!) but they’re easy peasy:
Spinach topped with roasted broccoli, brussel sprouts and carrots coated in dijon mustard and balsamic vinegar before roasting, all topped with roasted red pepper dip and cottage cheese.

And by the way…sauerkraut? Any fans? I just tried it for the first time this week. It’s okay… I’m not a huge salty food fan (please ignore the cottage cheese above), or I guess more precisely olive fan, and this was kind of reminiscent of shredded olives? I have a lot left though, what do I use it for?

I’m no food saint though. Despite all these veggies I’ve definitely been consuming even more breads and sugar. Doh. FYI – bread rarely gets photographed but it’s abundant in my everyday eating…usually in the form of a giant hunk ripped off a slice and shoved into my mouth while prepping other foods. No one wants to see that spectacle.

But I guarantee you do want to see the spectacle of the other sweeties of my eaties.

I’m a little miffed about my lack of hot breakfasts lately. The temperatures are dipping but hot oats are still only an occasional breakfast guest.

I’m still more into the cold breakfast thing right now.

Maybe not this cold though. This smoothie was the first I’ve had probably since summer. I need to bring them back more though, I miss them. Just as long as I have coffee to pair them with. This baddie>spinach, almond milk, water, stevia, vanilla protein powder, frozen banana, ice, the gums.

I brought back the smoothie once more for dinner. Vanilla protein powder frozen berry smoothie (with mucho gums and ice) in a near empty whipped peanut butter jar with big chunks of chilled roasted squash stirred in. I crave interesting things in the heated midst of intense essay writing.

So when I said cold breakfasts, I was thinking more along the lines of cold cereal. Or more specifically, in this case, crumbled Granola Plank in almond milk (which, by the way, I wasn’t impressed with. It just tasted like a stale rice krispie square to me).

I save the real deal cereal bowls for dinner. Sometimes dinner cereal is the way to go, especially when you have a hungry yet queasy stomach. This was perfect – Puffed rice, Shreddies, frozen berries, banana, almond milk and a hefty sprinkling of chocolate Amazing Grass powder.

And when you’re always looking for quick grab foods, those freezer baking stashes never fail. Avocado Banana Muffin bottom topped with puree of baked sweet potato blended with a splash of almond milk, SF maple syrup, cinnamon and nutmeg.

All that baking I did in my last post… mostly gone now. Despite stashing it in the freezer. Gotta love convenience.

I have about a million words to write for papers in the next two weeks so I better get cracking. Our prof in one of my classes just gave us a week extension on our final paper though which is a huge help. I love awesome profs.

Usually in the heat of the term I’m really good at isolating myself from humanity and work work working until I get everything done but for some reason this year things just keep cropping up and pulling me out of the house. What is this social life business?! I can’t handle it!

How do you balance a social life with school/work/the like? Tips, tricks, tools and savvy advice?
Google Calendar is one of my sanity tools :) So is quickly jotting down daily schedules/to-do lists. I do one of these every night before bed for the next day, and then check off what I actually accomplished before writing the next one that night. It doesn’t matter if I don’t get everything done, it just helps keep my brain organized.

Summer Schlop and Some Culinary Fun

August 26, 2009

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Whoops. I’m looking at a backlog of photos here…yet again. I’m so predictable.

Let’s do a bit of a rewind way back to some of

Friday’s delicacies

The Highlight of the day!

Yeah uh, kidding! Although this was good, definitely not the highlight of the day. It’s too much of a mess for that. What the heck is even in here… Cabbage slaw, red pepper, red onion, tempeh, leftover rice, honey mustard? It’s madness.

THIS is an improvement though – THE freshest, plumpest dried fruit I’ve ever eaten. Thank you Costco.

And courtesy of my grocery store’s health food section – Crofter’s Superfruit Spread! First time seeing it and it was on sale. Score! I haven’t cracked the Crofter’s just yet but it’s sitting in my pantry waiting patiently for the fridge to clear out a bit.

For dinner Friday night my mom suggested we make some gazpacho. I’ve never made, nor even tried gazpacho before but it seemed like a good summery meal to make, and I knew immediately where to turn to look for a good blended vegetable recipe – Choosing Raw of course!

I wasn’t let down as I quickly found Gena’s Perfect Gazpacho recipe.
Now mine doesn’t quite look like Gena’s (I guess my food processor isn’t up to blending par) but the taste was so light and fresh. I’m no raw foodie so I definitely dipped some fresh bread into the soup – this sure makes a good bread dipper!

Speaking of dipping, post dinner including a little bit of a dip into this:

And chugging of this (I needed some liquid energy before my late night of dancing that lay ahead):

Saturday

I woke up much too early considering my late night. My internal alarm clock is not my friend, I’ll tell you that.

Obviously late night paired with early morning = cereal. Nothing else will do.

This is what made it into the bowl but I’m pretty sure the amount of Peanut Butter Puffins I actually ate (over the course of the day at least) would probably fill this entire bowl… twice.
+ Weetabix + Blueberries + Banana + Yogurt.

I must like my food to look like schlop because lunch was equally schloppy. Schloppy in the bowl but clean for the fridge! This bowl helped finish up some rice and quinoa leftovers, cottage cheese, hummus + a bunch of veggies and honey mustard. Yums.

I spent a good chunk of the day sorting through a whole whack of magazine page cutouts I’ve been hoarding in my room for ages. I’m an obsessive mag page ripper. I have to go through every magazine that sets foot in this house and rip out anything I might find a use for before allowing the mag to make it to the recycling bin. This equals a lot of miscellaneous articles and pretty pictures kicking around in a giant bin in my closet. Every once in a blue moon I’ll sort through a bunch and purge a bunch. Saturday was that blue moon.

During this sort and purge process I came across a recipe for Honey-Roasted Chunky Peanut Butter Cookies. It was ripped out of the LCBO’s Food & Drink magazine Summer issue 2003. I immediately pictured the giant jar of almond butter from Costco sitting in my pantry and dropped everything to get started on the baking session.

It called for 10 minutes baking time and I only did 8 but they still burnt on the bottom. Crap! Overall they were pretty tasty but not award-winning. Guess this page is one for the purge pile.

Still feeling culinarily experimental, I later on whipped out a package of wonton wrappers that have been chillin (literally) in the bottom of my freezer for… I dunno, a year? I’ve been dying to make some kind of dumpling recipe but just kept forgetting to do so. No more!

I scored the net for fillers and how-tos and then got to work. I used this recipe as my main guide.

I cooked up spinach, carrots and onion in chicken broth and spices, stuffed these little finicky wonton wrapper buggers and then pan fried them using cooking spray and more chicken broth – no greasy oil fry required and they turned out quite delicious!

Be aware if you ever decide to do homemade dumplings though – this isn’t exactly a quick meal. Much more painstaking than I thought it would be. Then again, my patience levels are practically zilch so I’m sure it wouldn’t be quite as frustrating for most people…haha.

I paired them with a cabbage slaw/cuc/feta salad and dipped them into an (unpictured) mixture of soy sauce, rice vinegar, ground ginger, honey and hoisin.

Monday – Wednesday

Much less exciting on the eating front, I spent the beginning days of this week eating things like oats, vegetables and leftovers.

Check it:

Overnight oats topped with Dark Chocolate Dreams drowned in almond milk.

“Crack wrap” and veggies with salsa and honey mustard.

Plain yogurt, cinnamon, peanut butter cookie pieces

Spinach topped with crumbled tempeh and honey mustard, leftover polenta bake (depths of the freezer) topped with rubber cheese, dumpling (x like 4)

More dumplings, cabbage slaw, plain tofu

Spinach/salsa/garden veg cream cheese –stuffed omelet, frozen vegetable mix, one swedish meatball.

THE best packaged cookies ever – Ikea’s Double Chocolate Crisps. Ever tried them? Good straight out of the package but amazing straight out of the freezer.

Doesn’t that just scream “Eat me!” ?

Breakfast yesterday was especially note-worthy because it was a CCV Recipe!
In honour of the Spiralizer Giveaway, I had to take advantage and finally get my butt in gear to make the oh-so-delicious Snickerdoodle Oatmeal!

And with that, the Blueberries and Cream Snickerdoodle oatmeal breakfast was born. I went with Katie’s suggestion of kamut flakes, cooked following the CCV recipe and ingredients, lightly hand blendered, then “stuffed” with a vanilla yogurt and blueberry center!

Miss CCV sure knows how to start off her mornings on the right foot!

And speaking of feet, I should get mine moving. I feel a bit like a bump on a log right about now!
Happy Wednesday!

Midterms Are Icky… and So Is My Hair

February 13, 2009

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I am DONE!

No more complaining about studying and stressing and school. Well, at least not for another week ;)

It is my spring break as of now. Well, technically I have two classes tomorrow morning but they are short classes and I highly doubt I will be missing anything important in them so I am choosing not to attend. I think my sanity is more important right now and anything more to do with school right now might just put me over the edge.

This morning I did some last minute studying since my final midterm wasn’t until 4:00.

Prior to beginning that fun though, I did some scrape cleaning:

The last of the Pumpkin Seed Butter

Check out those awesome nutritionals. This stuff is packed with protein!

I got about a tablespoon out of it…

…which I mixed with vanilla yogurt to create a delicious topper for this Breakfast:

Oat Bran cooked in tea (I used three different tea bag flavours that had already been used once. Anyone else ever reuse their tea bags?) with banana, blueberries, pom seeds and the pumpkin seed butter/yogurt topper.

This was more than filling but a little later into the morning I had a strange sweet craving so I went with it: Some Pb Puffins with a square of chocolate. I definitely had more than just two Puffins.

I spent a good chunk of the day sipping down many a mug of hot coffee. I had the worst sleep last night and I was completely tired and out of it all day. What a perfect state for studying and midterm writing eh? I think it might have had something to do with the crazy winds that were blowing last night keeping me up since winter for the past several months has been so silent. It took me forever to get to sleep and then I woke up at 4:30 and could not get back to sleep no matter how tired I was. I eventually put in The Office on DVD and finally fell asleep again from around 5:30 until my alarm went off at 7:30. Blech. Needless to say I am quite exhausted right now. But moving on first since my timeline is a little off here…

For lunch I finally finished the last of my buttercup squash along with some leftover baked tofu and a slice of turkey rolled with a slice of swiss.

More Puffins with Moka Yogurt

And since the sweet tooth was still whining, half a banana paired with the White Chocolate Wonderful jar. Somehow I managed to restrain myself from polishing it off. Which wasn’t that hard considering it’s still 3/4 full so polishing it off would involve quite the stomach ache.

I wrote my midterm. It took about half an hour. Complicated stuff, right? I feel pretty good about it. But then again, sometimes when I actually feel okay about a test I find out I did horribly. Let’s hope this is not one of those times.

For dinner my mom made Chicken Pasta Primavera out of a bag. I don’t typically like my dinners to be completely out of a bag so I had some of that paired with some chicken breast and spinach topped with Goddess dressing, more leftover baked tofu and a small piece of cheesy garlic bread.

This wasn’t that filling. Hello frozen mango and end of a vanilla yogurt container.

Then my mom and I did some grocery shopping since our fridge was getting quite bare and we wanted to get it out of the way instead of going out tomorrow.

I was still hungry when I got home. The fact that we had all kinds of new foods to eat only furthered that hunger.

So I had a second dinner:
- couple bites cottage cheese
- half slice rye bread dipped in baba ganoush
- spinach and baby carrots with greek feta (the best way to eat feta) and balsamic vinaigrette
- a few Kashi Go Lean Crunch crunchies with plain yogurt.

Yeah second feast. I at least managed to get a picture of the spinach bowl…

Despite the fact that I am finally able to relax and no longer worry about midterms, I am not in the greatest of moods right now. I’m pretty sure a huge part of that is the fact that I am seriously sleep deprived, but I’m having an icky down night. And as pathetic as it is, it was mainly triggered by my hair… I know, that’s so lame, but I am having quite the tough relationship with my hair at the moment. I got it chopped off a couple months ago and it has now grown out a bit and is at that awkward middle length. It looks roundish and flat but then flips out at the ends. It’s dumb and I’m having trouble working with it. I seriously miss my long hair. I feel like cutting off my hair cut off a chunk of my confidence and I know that is completely dumb but I’ve just felt a little less good about myself since doing it. I feel like a boy.
Hair, please grow.

Okay, so I’m pretty sure most of that rant stems from my sleep lack. I don’t always feel like a boy. The fact that I’m analyzing the crap out of my coif while at the same time wearing bummy, baggy sweat clothes and no makeup while looking dead tired doesn’t help either.

I love my hair, I love my hair, I love my hair… I know I can convince myself eventually. Tomorrow I’ll wake up loving it. That’s my goal…