Pasta Primavera

Hi All -

Hope everyone had a great Thursday.  I had a great day – the overnight oats really kept me going all morning. I love my new breakfast! I did not get really hungry until a few minutes before noon… because I was going for a walk before having lunch, I had a graham cracker just before leaving for the outdoors. These awesome snacks are left over from our weekend in the White Mountains.

Lunch was not quiche – I’m going to freeze the rest of it and see how it is in a week or two.   Instead, I brought the last two pieces of the Sweet Tomatoes pizza… I love the combo of fresh basil and garlic on the pizza. It was so good.

I also enjoyed a refreshing Fresca with the pizza… not really a healthy lunch! But before eating I walked 35 minutes with my friend Jamie. Today was such a beautiful day in Boston – made even better by the fact that all week we had been expecting rain today…. instead we ended up with beautiful blue skies and warm temperatures.

A few minutes before 4 o’clock I started looking for a snack.  I had no idea that I was in for such a treat!  One of our interns made the most amazing black and white cookies today and I definitely enjoyed one this afternoon!  It was one of the best cookies I have had in a long time… I definitely wanted to go back for seconds, but I refrained

Yum…

I left work at 4:30 today and went straight to the gym even though I really wanted to go home!  I was hoping that I would find a second wind while working out, and I would say that I really didn’t but at the same time I was able to crank out 50 minutes on the elliptical. I was saved by the fact that there was a re-run of Project Runway showing on Bravo while I was working out. I love Project Runway – and this episode was the finale of a season I had not seen. It was very interesting! I feel like I had an active day today with walking at lunch and paying a visit to the gym after work.

On my way home I stopped by Trader Joe’s where I picked up a couple of bananas, more yogurt for the overnight oats, balsamic vinegar, and some great pasta:

I built my dinner around this new pasta that Jamie recommended to me this afternoon. I had been planning on some sort of pasta primavera for dinner tonight, and Jamie had just tried this spinach and chive pasta the night before. I totally love it now!
Here is how dinner turned out:

The pasta:

Along with the pasta (the veggies are: tomatoes, broccoli and carrots) was a Morningstar vegan burger with a tablespoon of roasted red pepper hummus. I only ended up eating half of the burger – I’m bringing the other half along with more pasta and veggies for lunch tomorrow.

On a side note – I munched on Twizzlers after the gym today as I was making dinner and putting away groceries! Four in total.

Hope everyone has been having a good week and has a great Friday! See ya’ll soon!

My Lentil Soup

Hi Guys -

On Sunday afternoon, I decided it was time to make my lentil soup.  Yay! I love soup when it’s super cold out.  And it sure has been cold out these days!

I love making lentil soup.  I love chopping veggies – I find it therapeutic! For the soup I chop one medium to large onion. At least one cup of celery. At least one cup of carrots.  At least two cloves of garlic!  I was a busy chopper.  Ben even thought to take a picture of me while  I was chopping!

Once I was finished chopping, I added two tablespoons of EVOO into the stock pot, after the oil was finished heating up – I put the onions, celery, and carrots into the pot and let the veggies sweat it out. I kept them cooking for a long time, until the onions were translucent.

Once the veggies were done, I added the broth. Two boxes of 32 ounces of broth plus one can of broth (another 8 ounces) and probably 16 ounces of water.  The chicken broth I used was Stop and Shop organic, low sodium. This broth is great – the low sodium type actually has only 6% of your daily sodium content per serving (one serving is one cup) compared to the normal 50% sodium in average chicken broths.  Because of this fact, I felt like I could add a pinch of kosher salt to the recipe (which it does call for – but in the past I never added).

Once the broth and liquid started to boil, I added the garlic, and the one pound of lentils. I previously rinsed the lentils in warm water and made sure the lentils were clean. (You never know what you might find!)  I also added two eight ounce cans of peeled and diced tomatoes (no salt or sugar added!) along with the tomato liquid found in the can.  Once all of this was getting its grove on, I added a teaspoon of cumin and coriander – and a good amount of freshly ground black pepper. (You can add as much or as little pepper as you’d like!)

Once all of the ingredients were put together, I seriously let the soup cook for an hour and a half on the stove!

While the soup cooked, I threw together a mix of Jiff corn muffins. Usually I try to make things from scratch, but this time I opted for an easier way out! It is definitely possible to make some box mixes healthy. For the Jiff corn muffins, you only need an egg and milk. Instead of an egg, I used egg whites and skim milk… so I added protein and no fat to the mix.  The muffins came out really well – nice and fluffy. Yum!

On Sunday night for dinner, Ben and I enjoyed bowls of veggie lentil soup and corn muffins!

Wednesday’s semi-recap

Hey All -

Wow, it’s been a long week – it’s Thursday now and I’m really excited that there is only one day left in the work week!

I was not able to post yesterday after a really long day at work… I did not get home until after 7 Wednesday night!  But here is a brief recap…

I started with a quick breakfast at work – TJ’s fiber with light vanilla soy milk. This is a wonderful combo! The fiber and soy protein can really keep you going for a while – I was especially impressed, since cold cereal usually does not keep me full for very long.

For lunch I had a Teddy peanut butter and raspberry jam sandwich on Arnold’s protein bread (yes, I love the protein bread now that I finally found some!!) The sandwich was really great. I’m so impressed with how soft and light the protein bread is.

Along with the sandwich, I had a container of veggies and TJ’s(awesome)  garlic hummus. The veggies were orange bell pepper slices, carrots, and cucumber slices.

The veggies went a long way to keeping me going until I got home from work! The afternoon and evening was so busy that I was not able to have my afternoon snack. Thankfully, the day was super exciting – so I did not mind taking home the Greek Yogurt and saving it for another day

Once I finally got home – Ben had ordered pizza for us, and saved the day. After being on my feet for hours, there was no way I had enough energy to think about dinner. The two pieces of pizza I had really hit the spot.  Sorry – no pictures!

I was in bed by 9:15 last night! I read for a while, and then fell asleep around 10. It was a super long day, and I slept really well last night!