Tag Archives: almond butter

Homemade

Happy Monday!

Guess what finally returned this Friday after many weeks of misses? Pizza night!! We started off the new streak well – one whole wheat veggie pizza and one shrimp white pizza.

As usual, the wheat pizza came out the winner. Personally, I always think whole wheat products taste better than their nutrition lacking  white counterparts.

I worked down in the city Saturday and had planned on checking out a new gym but, to my disappointment, pretty much all the gyms in my area are closed on weekends! Luckily I walked into a NYSC to find that they were at least open late on Saturdays. The sales guy left me a message saying he’ll give me a 3 day pass so I hope I can try it out this week!

Sunday I was in the kitchen all day. Well first I started the day with a run and a quick stop at the grocery store. Can you spot anything peculiar in this section?

News Flash: Barney butter has made it to stores in the North East!

I didn’t buy that tiny little jar for 5.99 but it’s good to know it’s there. What I did buy were all the ingredients to make homemade manicotti!

We were celebrating my Pop’s birthday at dinner. Usually we buy manicotti from an Italian store in the Bronx but since no one made it down there, I decided to try my hand at them. The recipe called for spooning the ricotta mixture into the pasta shells but instead I put the mixture in a ziploc and cut a hole in the corner so I could squeeze it out like I was stuffing cannoli. Fun!

Not to brag or anything but I heard they came out better than the ones store bought :)

Second, I baked a cake, carrot to be exact. I’m calling it tropical carrot cake because it included pineapple and coconut. I know carrot cake supposedly always has pineapple in it but I’ve never had one with it before. I took it to another level and even whipped up my own cream cheese frosting. Look how smooth!

Although putting the icing on the cake isn’t my strong point.

All that work in the kitchen paid off when dinner was served.

My plates:

There’s nothing better than a Sunday dinner with family :) Now it’s Monday so I better get out of bed and start getting ready… Have a good day!!

Questions:

  1. Taste wise, do you prefer whole wheat or white?
  2. What are your typical carrot cake additions? I like raisins and walnuts!
  3. Were there any exciting new recent additions to your grocery store?

Spammed

So spam is driving me crazy! Over the last week it seems that they have finally found the key to getting past my spam box. I am getting a million random guy names posting your old comments to my old posts. At first I was like, ooh new commenters! And then I’m like, wait, that sounds familiar! Way to burst my bubble :(

I have good news! For those who have been reading for a while, you know I graduated from college last April and have been working part time while looking for a job. Its been a long year but.. I found a job! It’s part time right now but there is a possibility of eventually going full time and it seems like something I’ll really really like :) Also, I’m staying at my current job for right now so It’ll be like I’m working full time.

For privacy reasons I won’t say what it is but I will say it’s in NYC, which means an hour train ride, so maybe I can buy something where I can blog during that time. Any suggestions? Mark keeps telling me to get an internet enabled phone but I can’t imagine blogging on one of those! I’ll need to do some research..

Ok, on to the food! I had a -gasp- change in breakfast yesterday morning! I stayed at Mark’s, where there’s always limited breakfast options since they don’t buy non-dairy milk (and, even worse, they buy whole milk). After thinking about going for water based oats, I spotted the biggest wraps I’ve ever seen. They were whole wheat so I went with them to create the apple wrapover.

I put a diced apple in the center, topped it with cinnamon and a tbsp of almond butter, and closed it apple turnover style. Then I put it in the toaster oven for a few minutes and ate the warm apple-almondy goodness.

I stopped at Stop & Shop on the way home to use my gift card from MyBlogSpark so I can enter the Hybrid contest. I got the products I needed, and more, and only had to pay $1.75. Awesome!

I decided on the tofu for lunch. I loved how it was already cubed. It was so easy to throw into my stir fry of onions, garlic, spinach, and cherry tomatoes. I mixed it all with barley and italian seasoning.

After digesting a little bit, I went back to Mark’s and ellipticalled for an hour while he painted (his living room, not artwork). Yesterday I also did an hour of low impact cardio on my stationary bike. It’s been raining and I just haven’t felt like running. Also, I have a million magazines to catch up on! I need to cut back on my cooking ones. I tend to rip a million recipes out and then never make them because there are always other yummy sounding ones in the next magazine I read. Frustrating!

After cardio, I actually did some strength training! Slowly but surely I’ll get back into it. I did 3 sets of each bicep curls, tricep extensions, and overhead shoulder press – with 5 lb weights.

Dinner was Alaskan wild caught cod – the best choice on the Sustainable Seafood list! I almond crusted it using a recipe on Eat Better America, which is gone now. On the side I made garlicky broccoli rabe.

Ok, off to my first day of job training :) Have a good day!

Questions:

1) Do you rip recipes out of magazines? Do you ever end up making them?

2) Do you ever blog on the go? How?

3) How much spam do you normally get?

Free Cheers

Ciao bloggies :)

Sorry I haven’t been posting regularly lately. I’m just so tired of having no schedule to my life. I definitely thought that by now I’d have a full time job. Every interview I get tricks me into thinking I’m about to get a job and start my “real” life and it’s so hard to go back to square one once I get rejected. I’m trying to keep telling myself that it is an extremely hard time right now with unemployment at an all time high and everything but I still end up thinking it’s me that’s doing something wrong. Ok, enough of my depressing ramblings.. you know what makes me happy when I’m feeling down? Free stuff!

The wonderful Lindsay for Nasoya sent me a few coupons to pick up their new product, wraps.

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I finally got around to getting them last night. I’m not sure what I’m gonna make with them but I’m excited about it, it looks like I have a lot of options. My very own homemade chocolate soup dumplings possibly? I ended up buying way more Nasoya products than I had coupons for. It’s been way too long since I’ve had tofu!

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I wish I had known that they make those new Silken Creations products too. I’ve been wanting to try them! I also picked up a new tea that was on sale, apple cinnamon flavor. I wonder if it will taste kind of like apple cider?

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And leeks.

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I feel like I’ve been seeing so many recipes with leeks in them. And then I saw Mike on Top Chef use them, although he did get sent home for it. So I thought I’d try something new since I’ve never had them before. The only problem is, now I can’t find any of those recipes I was thinking of. Does anyone know what I can do with leeks?

When I’m feeling depressed or worried, I have absolutely no appetite. I remember when Mark went away on Spring Break to Cancun without me in 2004.  I didn’t eat for an entire week! Do you eat more or less when sad? Either way, I don’t have very exciting eats to show.

My Dad made pizza Thursday instead of Friday because he had a Friday night Christmas party to go to so last night I had a leftover broccoli raab/red pepper/olive slice with a side of rice and peas. Ok, I won’t lie. I ended up only eating the pizza.

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I spent Friday morning laying in bed watching Friends (the best sadness remedy) and my Dad served me breakfast in bed. He knows me so well – cream of wheat with Blue Diamond honey almond butter on the bottom (which I still think is horrible by the way) and topped with dates, currants, bananas and walnuts.

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Totally wasn’t hungry for lunch so I just had some avocado and broccoli raab.

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It’s supposed to snow today here.. It’s about time! Have a great weekend :)