Toppings: CSA scallions, tomatoes, tempeh, cheese, broccoli, mushrooms.

Trust me: fresh is BETTER.

However this morning a furry beast of an arachnid decided that we would be sharing a workspace. I said nay, nay (albeit from across the room. I don’t mess with big, fat, juicy spiders that may or may not have the ability to JUMP.)

EEP!

While I can deal with tiny spiders, large ones have a high ICK factor. Unacceptable and highly distracting in an office setting.

In the end I manned up. And totally moved my chair a solid foot over from its normal spot. Mutual respect, Mr. Spider. You do your thing, I’ll do mine.

After a while he disappeared, which was almost worse. I blessedly left the office at 1:30 and hurried home for lunch before a shopping date with my mother.

Lunch was a delicious and monstrous salad of greens, tuna salad, chopped apple, and feta cheese. Fitting that I had a huge salad before meeting my mother, as she is a great crafter of ginormously tasty green salads.

(In case you’re interested, I mix my tuna salad up with hummus instead of mayo, cutting down on fat. If you do this but find your tuna salad is a little dry, try adding a drizzle of olive oil. This tuna salad also had some frozen corn and chopped celery.)

So good with lots o’ crunch and a sweet and savory mix from the juicy apple and the salty feta. I was planning on having a yogurt as dessert, but this left me satisfied so I had a malted milk ball and called it quits. I’m full and energized for an afternoon of shopping!

Now I’m sitting down for a hasty (but tasty!) lunch before work.

I used hot sauce and pepper olive oil as dressing. I also sprinkled some Parmesan on top, too. It might seem random but I find there are few situations where Parmesan is the wrong choice. The end product looked more like this:

Super filling with a spicy little kick!

*********************

Do you have a dog? Mental_floss has an article today claiming people get more exercise from owning a dog than having a gym membership. I agree! Jack is a great motivator to get up and moving.

Off to work and then I’ve got super rockin’ evening of laundry at my mother’s!

Lunch was thrown together before work:

My review? Delicious! I love most Larabars, but this flavor is near the top. I was really excited when I saw them in Price Chopper this weekend.

After my snack I started work on dinner.

Stir fry! I didn’t mention this earlier, but I’m avoiding meat, too. Normally I don’t eat much meat at all, but lately I’ve been ordering meals with bacon on them or craving chicken on pizza. It’s weird for me and truthfully I prefer a diet light on meat.

The Boyfriend made (unpictured) sweet and sour chicken to go with the stir fry, but I went with marinated tofu.

We ate our dinner with brown rice and this incredibly yummy peanut sauce:

The sauce was a recipe from this book:

I’ve had this book for a few years, back from the time when I was a vegetarian. It’s extremely resourceful and I recommend it for anyone, from a newbie vegetarian to a cheeseburger lover who needs a reference cookbook on grains. I took the recipe for my mushroom barley soup from here.

The players:

Barley

Mushrooms, carrots, onions, and garlic. I let it all simmer together while we ate dinner.

The photo may be a bit unimpressive, but the smell was incredible. I cannot wait to eat this for lunch tomorrow!

So what is the result from my first day of hitting the “refresh” button on my system? In one day I’ve definitely inspired myself to get back on the meal-planning and veggie-eating wagon. The only bump in the road was about seven minutes ago when I was cleaning up the kitchen. I saw cookies The Roommate made this weekend and moved to grab one before remembering my challenge.

Not being one to deprive myself a treat, I searched for ways to calm my sweet tooth and decided to whip up chocolate banana soft serve. If you read food or fitness blogs you may have seen this wandering around the blogosphere. All you need is a frozen banana and a blender/mixer/food processor.

I used my immersion blender with decent results. A food processor is just better, but my kitchen already looked like this and I didn’t feel like lugging the thing out:

   

Delish! Jack and I ate dessert in the kitchen together. His tasty treat was the last licks of the peanut butter jar.

I’m off for an episode of Criminal Minds with The Roommies and then bed!

The other night we pulled out frozen lasagna from the freezer (care of the Boyfriend’s thoughtful mother) and roasted some chopped carrots with rosemary olive oil my own mother gave me for Christmas. (Dinner was a family affair — thanks, moms!) It was a simple dinner that called for a lot of oven time. To occupy myself I made a quinoa salad that I’ve had on the brain for a while.

• 1 c. quinoa, cooked
• 1/2 pepper, diced
• 1/2 c. cheese, diced (Cheddar is okay; Feta is betta)
• Olives (any variety), sliced
• a drizzle of olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Bring 2 cups of water to a boil and add the quinoa. Turn down to a simmer and cook quinoa for 12-15 minutes. The quinoa will completely absorb the water when it is done cooking.

Add the quinoa and the other ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly.

I think capers or pigeon peas would have been such a good addition to this! The salad was tasty but there could have been more flavor. Next time I make this I think I’m going to go all out and buy feta and roast some red peppers, too! Yum!

The most important thing about this salad was the hearty and healthy quinoa. Quinoa is very fast to make, which is a huge plus in my opinion. And I love having a large grainy salad to portion out for lunch throughout the week. Zesty Cook seems to agree: check out his tasty-looking pasta salad from today’s post.

The two of us spent about a week with his family between Christmas and New Years.  On Monday we planned a date day in Manhattan which commenced with a very necessary trip to Rockefeller Center so I could pretend to be Liz Lemon.

30 Rock is my absolute favorite show. I have been telling people since season 1 to watch and, thank goodness, they are starting to listen to my good advice.

The tree was pretty cool, I guess.  The Boyfriend finally dragged me away from the 30 Rock sign for a festive couples shot in front of the tree.

Next we scooted over to MOMA.  Did you know that if you are (or, cough, were) a SUNY student, you can get into MOMA and other NYC museums for free?? Just show your student ID card at information.  It’s pretty sweet.

We wanted to see the Tim Burton exhibit there, but it was sold out for the day.  Boo! So instead we strolled the floors.  And then made some art of our own using my camera, a MOMA window, and city lights:

We had plans to see Avatar in 3-D after the MOMA trip.  Before the movie we stopped for dinner at an Italian restaurant near Union Square.

We were hungry so we started with garlic bread and salads.

I ordered the arugula salad as I have been craving arugula since Mom’s Christmas dinner.  The thing is, I sort of expected there might be more to the “Arugula Salad” than just lettuce.  I was wrong in my assumptions.  The salad was okay, but that was it.  I did eat it all, though, because I do love me some leafy greens.

While we waited for dinner I played with the settings on my camera and had a photoshoot with my wine glass.

I’m such a little kid.  I need something to keep my wandering mind busy when I’m sitting still.

Dinner arrived on huge platters and there was much rejoicing.  The Boyfriend got chicken parmesan and it was amazing.

I had one of the specials which was chicken with mushrooms, artichokes, red peppers, and olives with a marsala wine sauce.

Plus a side of pasta.  This is my favorite part about Italian restaurants.

Two clean plates and one stop at a bar for martinis later, we headed over to the theater for Avatar. The animation in that movie was insane! Your brain gets tricked into forgetting that you’re not watching live action for most of the movie. Plus you get these sweet 3-D glasses.

New fashion trend for 2010? I think so.

]]> http://notesonapage.com/2010/01/the-city-so-nice-they-named-it-twice/feed/ 1 http://notesonapage.com/2010/01/christmas-wrap-up/ http://notesonapage.com/2010/01/christmas-wrap-up/#comments Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:35:04 +0000 Page http://notesonapage.com/?p=1361 I don’t know where this week has gone.  It seems like Christmas was yesterday. I’ve been off in La La Land a little, but now I’m back home and ready for a holiday recap!

After presents Christmas morning, my mother got to work on Christmas dinner.  The main course was Cornish game hens:

Jack gave her some cooking pointers.

As soon as the family arrived, appetizers went out.

Pita crisps, gorgonzola toasts with pine nuts, and smoked trout with dill dip on cucumbers.  Yum!

We opened presents while we ate:

Look at this pillow my sister made for my cousin’s family.

It’s so cute! She needs to open up a store ASAP.

Once every present was tore into, we moved into the dining room for dinner.

We started with arugula, pear, and parmesan salads topped with my mother’s vinaigrette.

This was incredible.  Next we had the hens with roasted potatoes.  There were Brussels sprouts, too, but apparently I snapped the photo before they made it onto the plate.

Dinner was superb, but everyone knows the highlight of Christmas dinner is the dessert.  There were several plates of Christmas cookies…

But the main event was this chocolate tart with macadamia nut crust and caramel drizzle that my mother concocted.  Hello dessert coma!

After chowing down on all this sweet and savory food, we were ready to take a cue from Jack and take a nap on the floor.

Fast forward several meltdowns, many sarcastic comments, and a few lost posts later, and I am 20 bucks poorer and a happier blogger. Worth it.

We got our first snow in Albany this weekend. I am a little ambivalent about snow, honestly. (Although I was pretty clear about my feelings when I was 10 minutes late to work Sunday morning from digging my car out from beneath a sheet of ice.) Sure does look pretty, though….

Jack took his first walk in the New York snow. He is a bit of a princess and WILL NOT go out in the rain, so I was unsure how he’d react to the snow. We asked Sid if he wanted to accompany us, but he declined.

Jack seemed to enjoy the snow. He looks sort of like a reversed Dalmatian, doesn’t he?

The rest of the weekend was uneventful. By the time Sunday dinner rolled around, my body was craving veggies. Does Sunday night usually find you craving salad? You realize you may have had one too many beers/desserts/potato chips during the weekend and suddenly your body is longing for greens and bright, fresh veggies.

That was my thinking as I cobbled together some faux Cobb salads for the Boyfriend and me. We ran out to the market and bought some lettuce mix and vegetables. We started with mesclun mix, hard boiled egg, cucumbers, and broccoli, and added different toppings. I tried to save some money on croutons for the Boyfriend by making our own using sliced bread, olive oil, and spices.

Chop up one slice of regular sandwich bread. I used whole wheat. Add it to a bowl and toss with a little olive oil, oregano, basil, salt, and pepper.

Bake at about 275 for 10 minutes or so, until they are crusty like croutons!

On the Boyf’s salad: croutons and bacon bits.

I just added tuna and corn to mine.

Just kidding.

Behold my salad art.

Instead of bottled dressing I made a vinaigrette the way my mother and aunt do.

In the jar: olive oil, lemon juice, dry mustard, rice vinegar, and salt. Shake well. Super tangy.

Dinner wasn’t TOO healthy, of course.

Off to take on the work week! Christmas is almost here!