Thursday Night – Home At Last

Phew! It is so good to be home after a long day! Never mind writing from my newly unearthed desk – I am reporting to you from bed. I finally got home from my day at 9:20 tonight. While I will not be doing my usual recap – I promise to tomorrow! – I did want to write a quick hello to everyone.

There are a few things to be excited about today. First – I found my missing copy of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential in my gym bag! I was so happy to find it – and once I am done writing, I am really excited to get back into the book.

Bourdain is coming to the Providence Performing Arts Center in January and I am really looking forward to seeing him speak – he is such an interesting person, I am sure the night will be very entertaining! If you are interested in the restaurant world, good food and cooking in general, I highly recommend reading Kitchen Confidential if you have not already!

I also finally got to my old salon in Brookline for a much needed haircut. I was so excited to catch up with Erin – I cannot believe it has been so many months since my last cut – nearly six months, since the last cut was in June! I kept it long enough so I can put it in a ponytail for running, but took almost two inches off.

After the cut, I met up with Jennifer for a walk around Brookline and a quick dinner. Fun times, with a much needed stop to Anna’s where we both ordered chicken burritos. (They were fantastic as always)

There is only one more work day left in the week – and I have to keep telling myself this. I am looking forward to going for a run after work tomorrow – if I can muster up the energy. I have noticed a change in myself by what I am looking forward to this weekend. I am excited to go to bed rather early on Friday evening and wake up early (8:30?) on Saturday to enjoy a nice bowl of stove top oats (ah the things you take for granted when you don’t have an hour plus commute in the morning!) and a couple of cups of coffee before heading out to the gym. There are several things on the agenda this weekend: continue the room cleaning, go for at least one (hopefully two) runs, and cook. There is a possibility of picking up one (or as many as three – yikes!) Christmas trees over the weekend. I will be sure to report on this holiday cheer, perhaps it will help get me in the mood!

I hope everyone is having a good finish to the week. See you tomorrow!

My trip to Zaftigs…

Monday after work Ben and I went to Brookline to my favorite deli for dinner. We met up with Lara – who is leaving us on Thursday (and moving to Wisconsin).

Here is the lovely lady that greets you when you walk through the door at Zaftigs Delicatessen!

Before we sat down, I knew what I was ordering – a potato pancake and a cobb salad.  But first we had our traditional bagel chips with amazing herb cream cheese which is made on site!

Now for the record I do not like run of the mill cream cheese. When I think of cream cheese I always say, “yuck” in my head (I know, how mature)…. but for some reason I have always loved Zaftigs bagel chips and cream cheese.  I think it is because of all of the spices that go into the mix. Today our awesome (and helpful!) waitress let us know the spices that go into the cream cheese… here are a few of them: garlic, rosemary, oregano, thyme.  All together it makes for a fantastic mixture of taste. I might try to recreate this cream cheese one day – the thought is tempting.

Here is my bagel chip with a thin layer of cream cheese (Lara and I think it is whipped!)

I have so many favorite things at Zaftigs soemtimes it is really hard for me to decide what to order… but at least here I know that I will never be dissappointed with what I decide on!  One of the best things about Zaftigs is that they serve breakfast all day and night and I love breakfast at anytime of day, I must say.

For a brief moment I flirted with the idea of ordering my favorite sandwich -  the Rachel (grilled pumpernickel, smoked turkey, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and Russian dressing – which I always order on the side).  But I went with what I was craving most of the day – a cobb salad and a potato pancake.

The pancake comes with sour cream and apple sauce. I love that you can just order one pancake, it can be the perfect side to a salad!

My cobb salad was was amazing as always!

The salad had what I would consider the traditional ingredients to a cobb – turkey, bacon, hard boiled egg, tomato, sprouts, avaacado, on mixed field greens. I ordered the wonderful lemon vinaigrette dressing on the side and used about 1/2 a tablespoon through out the salad.  It was wonderful. Oh – yes, for the record, I ordered the salad sans bleu cheese.

After dinner, we walked around Coolidge Corner for a while. We went back to Brookline Booksmith after already visiting our favorite bookstore before dinner!  It was during our meal that I remembered what I had been wanting to try and find… and luckily I found the book Julie and Julia by Julie Powell – this discovery made my day!

I cannot wait to start this book tonight – and I hope to finish it before the movie comes out later this month!

In my book shipping, I also found another book I am eager to read:

After browsing for books, and an unsuccessful attempt by Lara to try and re-sell her books, we were off to JP Licks.

I opted for a small, soft serve fat free yogurt – which was surprisingly fantastic!

Thanks for treating me to my yogurt, Lara! Flavor was “cookie” and it was wonderful!

Wow, for a Monday evening it was busy. I still have not made it to the grocery store… so I hate to report that tomorrow’s food will probably be dull again!
Ben and I will be at Fenway tomorrow night for the first game in a Red Sox / Yankees series and the forecast is for rain. I hope the forecast is wrong!!

I’m signing off for now. I am going to start my new book. I’ll be back to write more tomorrow – good night for now!

Tuesday – No Plastic Baggies for Lunch!

Ok – one thing I am super bad at is packing parts of my lunch in plastic bags. Ugh. I hate using plastic bags because I know they are horrible for the environment. So, Monday night I took out some of my re-usable containers and packed my lunch using them instead of plastic bags.

On to the dull side of food for Tuesday – I basically ate the same thing as Monday.  For breakfast, I had another mix of Kashi Go Lean Crunch and Trader Joe’s high fiber with skim milk. Yum.

(OK, in this pic there is a spoonful of peanut butter – this was from this weekend, not what I ate today – I did not have the peanut butter, but I had the same mix of cereal!!)

I was hungry before lunch time. I had a snack at 11:30 because I knew I would be going for a walk before having lunch.  My snack was a Quaker’s True Delight:

I ended up having lunch around 12:45 after going for a really nice half hour walk. The walk definitely got me excited for Spring! Even though it was only forty degrees this afternoon, it felt sooo warm – considering that a couple of days ago it was twenty degrees!!

Lunch looked like this:

What you see here is my turkey sandwich… and in the red container are the Baked Lay’s potato chips (just a few).  My turkey sandwich was pretty good today!

I ate lunch at my desk today…. because in the lunch room it was DESSERT DAY!  Here is what I saw when I walked into the lunch room… check it out….!

I had the smallest peanut butter bar with my lunch… It was great!  I knew that if I stayed in the lunch room, I would have more snacks, so I ate at my desk and read a little bit of Loving Frank (which is a great book –  I highly recommend it!)

I felt like I accomplished a good amount at lunch – a walk and some reading.

In the afternoon, I had a cup of hot vanilla chai tea. It really hit the spot.

I worked an extra hour at the office tonight, and then met my friend Jenn for dinner. We went to Gourmet India in Coolidge Corner for some great eats!  I had chicken tiki masala, a samosa, a piece of garlic nan and some rice. It was definitely a HUGE dinner – but I had not enjoyed Indian in months so I’m trying to feel too badly about it!

I had a great time eating dinner with Jenn and catching up. She let me take home a new book to read once I’m done with all of the books I’m reading right now. The new book is Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Jenn loved it – has anyone else read it? Let me know what you think!

Ok, it’s after 10 o’clock and I want to read more of Loving Frank so I’m signing off for tonight! Catch ya’ll tomorrow!

Wednesday, coffee, work, gym, food

Hey All -

I am sort of proud of myself for getting up “early” today and enjoying coffee before rushing off to work. I am not a morning person (that is an understatement). But today I was up and starting my morning at 6:40 AM. Ideally, I would love to get up at 6 o’clock and go to the gym before work. This winter that has been really hard for me – but I’m hoping that the spring and summer will be a different story. Stay tuned to see if I can actually do it!

For breakfast this morning I had a Chocolate Raspberry Luna Bar. this Luna Bar is not my favorite. It is very chocolaty and the raspberry flavor is more of an afterthought, which is too bad.

Even though the Luna bar was not my favorite, it still kept me very full until lunch.  I was definitely excited to have the rest of my Amy’s black bean and veggie soup for lunch today! I finally remembered to take a photo today!

The sour cream and Mexican cheese really help the soup – but even without the extras, it would still be great! I had a few TJ’s everything crackers along with the soup.
After I got back to my desk, I went back to work, but soon I was a bit hungry. I was not surprised, since I did not have my carrots and hummus to fall back on. But today I had a great trail mix to snack on. The almonds and cashews really helped me get through the afternoon!

At around 3:30 this afternoon I enjoyed a Kozy Shack sugar free tapioca pudding…. Normally I don’t go for things that have Splenda in them, but the puddings were on sale last week – so I picked some up. They are pretty good!

I left work around 5 o’clock today, and picked Ben up. After we got home, I changed into some running clothes and went to the gym. It took me a while to get a parking place at the gym (I can’t wait to ride my bike this spring and summer!) but I finally did. I walked and jogged 3 miles on the treadmill. My first workout since the 5k on Sunday.

I was starving after the gym! As I preheated the oven, I snacked on a piece of protein bread and some Barney Butter. Yum!

Do you ever just want dinner ASAP?! Tonight I wanted dinner quickly, but after the snack, I was able to wait a little bit while my TJ’s chicken breasts cooked in the oven. I cooked a chicken breast, and made a chicken and cheese quessadllia on whole wheat tortillas, along with a salad of mixed greens, carrots, almond slivers, croutons and soy baco bits.

While I was at the gym, I realized that I had not had MEAT all day. This is not unsual for me, but then I realized that I really wanted chicken for dinner. Sometimes I crave chicken when my body needs protein. So, I had chicken with dinner and it was really good!

I’m sort of tired now – so I’m going to spend the rest of the night relaxing with last week’s New Yorker (yes, I’m always a week behind!) and Mountains Beyond Mountains which is definitely a great book.

Sometime between now and Feb. 22 I am hoping to read Loving Frank which is the next book in my friend Katherine’s book club which she has invited me to join. Yay for book clubs!! I have wanted to be in a book club for soo long now – and I’m really excited about the potential!

Sunday night

What the heck is it about being snowed in and snacking!?

The day started out well, with great oatmeal (I cooked 1/2 a cup of oats with 1/2 a cup of water, 1/2 a cup of milk, 1 teaspoon of vanilla and a small pinch of salt) and then at the end added a tiny bit of brown sugar, 1/2  a teaspoon of Teddy (just wanted that flavor!), cinnamon and ground flax seed – yum!  I also enjoyed a homemade cappuccino (thanks to Ben!) and some coffee.

By the afternoon, I was feeling some serious snack cravings coming on… was it possibly because we were watching football? Was it because we had been out shoveling and playing in the snow – and thus burned some calories? (We did make a great snowman and had a great snow ball fight along with making progress in cleaning off the cars, driveway and sidewalks!) I am not sure.

But I can tell you that Ben and I snacked on Sun Chips and Munchies (seriously!?) today – and loved them!

For my actual lunch, I had a turkey sandwich on Arnold’s with spinach and a slice of low fat American cheese, and some baby carrots.

At around 8:30 tonight I made an ice cream shake with low fat Friendly’s ice cream, skim milk and half a scoop of protein powder. That was the best dinner / dessert I have enjoyed in a lot time!!  The protein powder added some extra power to keep me perfectly full for the rest of the night, which was very nice!

I cannot believe our snowy weekend is almost over.  This makes me very sad. I am not looking forward to having to leave the house and go to work tomorrow… which also makes me wonder if something is wrong with me.

I had Friday off (but was not snowed in until later in the day)… Saturday was actually a productive and busy day, even with the snow, and today I had a good amount of time outdoors. So I guess I can say that I had a busy weekend and hopefully it is not too strange that I would wish for the weekend to be even longer!

On Saturday Ben and I went out even though it was still snowing and the roads were pretty bad. For breakfast I had a banana. I thought we were going out for a big brunch, so I did not make oatmeal for breakfast.

Oddly enough, the brunch never came about – but eventually I had a slice of cheese pizza at Upper Crust and Ben and I saw Slum Dog Millionaire at Coolidge Corner theater at around 4:15 yesterday. What a great movie – I recommend it to everyone (although there are definitely some scary moments during the movie).  We also did some shopping at Brookline Booksmith (yay for holiday gift certificates!) where I bought a few books.

Here is what I spent some of the weekend reading:

My Real Simple magazine came just in time for the snow storm – and I am also enjoying In Defense of Food… and will write more about it when I get further into it.

Another thing that came in the mail this weekend was super exciting to me – my first full jar of Barney Butter!! Yes!

When I first started my blog, I wrote to the folks at Barney Butter to see if I could get a sample of their amazing almond butter to try for myself. I had read rave reviews of BB from some of my other favorite bloggers – and wanted to try it for myself.  I have to say, not only do I love Barney Butter – but I love the company!

The other day when I was ordering Barney Butter for me, and for a couple of holiday gifts, I had a question regarding my order – so I called the number on the website…. I was so shocked when Jennifer Barney (the founder of BB) answered the phone that it took me a minute to remember my question! She was so helpful (obviously) and nice – it just made my experience with Barney Butter even better.

This almond butter is like nothing else I have tried. I love it! I also love the fact that it comes in jars and in convienet travel, individual sizes that are 90 calories each, with three grams of protein.

Well, I am sorry my bloggies – but I am going to have to sign off for tonight. It is very late – and my old computer is running very slowly – it’s been hard for me to edit the blog entry tonight – as I am sure you will be able to tell!  Sometimes I hate computer updates – even for Macs!

Hope you all have a great Monday and I’ll catch you sometime tomorrow!