Kitchen Mats

 

Today’s What I Ate Wednesday post comes from yesterday, mostly because today was a bit of a whirlwind when it came to meal times.  I literally scarfed down breakfast on the way out the door, inhaled lunch twenty minutes before my afternoon prenatal patient while reviewing records, and chowed down my snack in the midst of a patient letter.  Anyways, let’s chat about yesterday’s eats, which I guarantee were just as yummy as today’s.  Breakfast was a green monster with strawberries, peanut butter, vanilla protein powder, chia and flax seeds, and spinach.

Combined with almond milk, this smoothie was almost overflowing!

In the midst of drinking, I came to the realization that I don’t particularly like smoothies made with frozen strawberries.  The whole thing tasted kind of bland and icy.  Frozen bananas for me from now on!  Lunch was a helping of vegged-out quinoa leftovers and a hard-baked eggs.  The best part was my own version of greek yogurt with fruit on the bottom.  Strawberry jam and mini chocolate chips too for a kick of sweetness!

Afternoon snackage was a nice bowlful of sweet potato wedges with sunbutter on the side.  This was an unexpected, awesomely delicious combo.  Must do this again soon!

Yesterday’s dinner was a work of art, probably one of the greatest salads to date.  All forms of veggies plus cranberries, manchego and goat blue cheeses, and lite Caesar dressing.

I ate this baby in front of the TV watching The Biggest Loser.  Hey, at least it was a salad.  I have been known to order Chinese takeout for Biggest Loser nights.  Haha.

Even my dessert was healthy-ish.  Another paleo brownie was almond butter, topped with Arctic Zero and chocolate chips.

See, a fabulous day of eats!  I was most pleased and actually really nice and satisfied all day.  And I wasn’t only satisfied with food, but with my brand new clothes.  I love how awesome you feel wearing all the new things you got for Christmas.  Like a million bucks.

Even matched my earrings perfectly.

That awesome outfit were yesterday’s dubs.  Today was more of a lace day.

Pretty and functional.  I normally wear the purple shirt without anything underneath but given the incredibly conservative Catholic hospital I’m currently seeing patients at, I figured I should add a few inches just to be safe.  Plus, the white lace matched my shoes…which you can see here, kicked off in the middle of Bed, Bath, & Beyond.

I went to the store for an iron and ended up talking myself out of that and into a stellar gel kitchen mat.  It was on my Christmas list and I didn’t get one so I figured I could just buy one for myself!  Thank you gift card.  Why did I have my shoes off you ask?  It’s not like I was going to buy a mat without trying it out for myself!  That would be silly.  This one that I bought felt amazing.  I used it while cooking up my skinny cajun pasta tonight.

Loved how comfy I was the whole time!  Now I’m off to do some more population genetics problems and get to bed early.  I have a patient at 8:20 tomorrow morning which means I need to be on the road by 7:15am.  Not sure I’m going to have enough time to work out before I get in the car so I might have to move the sweat session to Thursday evening.  So g’night all, sleep well!

Questions: Do you use a gel kitchen mat?
What’s your favorite pasta dish?

Groceries And A Pregnant Lady

Today was my first day counseling prenatal patients.  And boy, did I just in with both feet [and an anchor]…  More on that in a moment.

My day started off at 5:45 in the morning.  It was much too early, honestly, however I still got my booty to the gym and lifted in accordance with Stage 4 of NROLFW.  This stage, being a repeat of a previous stage, is kind of mindless which is nice though I admit that I haven’t increased much weight in the exercises.  Instead I went from two sets to three sets of everything.  Technically the whole stage is 2-3 sets of 8 reps per exercise.  Since it had been almost a month since my last lift before I started this stage, thanks to the holidays, I started with my finishing weight from the copycat earlier stage and only did two sets of all.  I then moved up to three this week, exactly halfway through the stage.  I think it’s working out well so far.  After doing my weights workout I rounded out the morning with a ten minute HIIT session on the elliptical.

Once I got home I showered quickly and then made myself a fast breakfast.  I wanted to get into school fairly quickly because I had some things to print off before class.  On my plate around 7:30 were two waffles topped with peanut butter, cottage cheese, and cherry jam.  Delicious as usual but not photographed given my bit of a rush.  Once at school I made myself pay attention through three and a half hours of classes.  Molecular Genetics was fairly boring, a lot of review, and Population Genetics was taught by a substitute professor who was not prepared to tech this class.  She was a last minute fill-in and obviously uncomfortable in front of the class.  All in all though we got the information we needed which was the whole point.  Best of all, we got out early!

After class I had a few moments to start an Excel spreadsheet to track my job inquiries, responses, interviews, etc.  Hopefully I’ll have a bit more to fill it in with soon.  I especially felt behind the ball when one of my classmates mentioned that she just got an in-person interview with a job in her prime location.  Am I jealous? Yes.  Am I proud of her?  For sure.  Am I surprised?  Heck no.  She was the one of us who got into every single graduate program she applied to.  Can you say superstar?  Post spreadsheet creation, I had my lunch in two parts.  Part one was my chipotle mayo egg salad sandwich at my desk since it was the messy part.

Then I had part two, my orange sides of carrots and whole grain Cheeze-Its, in the car on the way to my prenatal rotation location.  Yay for cup holders!

I arrived at the hospital 50 minutes before my first pregnant patient.  That gave me enough time to check out the records and see what I needed to prep.  Turns out that the referral I prepared for was, in fact, not the referral I was going to counsel on.  Nice little change of plans for my first time around, huh?  I still felt kind of comfortable with what the referral ended up being so I went through with it.  I handled the entire session alone.  For the most part, it went well though there were certainly things I could improve on.  For one, my flow really sucked.  I was talking about cell-free fetal DNA testing and realized there were four conditions I really should have talked about prior to actually getting to testing options.  I was really proud of my psychosocial skills though.  I think I handled the emotion in the session like a pro.  I held on to that as my strength while being critiqued after by my supervisor.  That part NEVER gets easier.

Once I wrapped up things with my only patient of the day, I headed to Walmart for some grocery shopping.  I had been building my list for a few days so I was ready to hit up the store.

I started with the buying of the iron.  I figured that would take the longest since I knew the least about them.

Sadly, I knew a little too much to justify spending over $10 on one.  In the midst of googling and such on my phone, I remembered that I had a Bed, Bath, & Beyond gift card that should probably be used.  So my solution turned into put off the purchase, go and learn more about brands of irons, and hit up BB&B in the future.  With that decision made I moved on to the food part of the list.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that Great Value has crossed over to the greek yogurt side of things. 

I know I can make my own greek yogurt by straining, but it was real hard to pass up this full container.  I looked at the stats and with only ten more calories than Great Value regular yogurt and double the protein, I couldn’t say no.  Also, after thinking about it, one tub of regular makes about half a tub of greek through straining, so if I multiplied the regular yogurt price by two, this was cheaper by about a dollar.  Score.  While I was in the yogurt section I noticed a glorious thing: Chobani bites!

These babies are fairly new and in some great flavor combinations: fig and orange zest, pineapple and caramel, coffee and dark chocolate, and raspberry and chocolate.  I nabbed a pineapple and caramel foursome with plans to grab the fig and orange zest variety the next time.  Can’t wait!  Next up was garam masala.  I have plans to make chana masala from scratch at home next week so I was in need of the Indian spice blend.

I had found some online for price X which I noted in my grocery list so I could compare.  Walmart beat it, just barely.  On my way to the register I walked through the pasta aisle to grab parmesan cheese and came across the exact sun-dried tomato spread I needed for the skinny cajun pasta I’m making this week. 

Figured I would just grab it when I saw it instead of banking on Trader Joe’s having it.  With the jar in the cart I checked out and drove across the street to the TJ’s.  When I walked in, I was taken by the cheese wall, like usual.  I picked out the smallest hunk of blue goat cheese I could find.  Oh my!  Can you say super?

I then went to look for what I actually came for: nut butters.  The sunbutter was easy to find but the almond butter was sadly gone from the shelves.  There was some unsalted crunchy but that’s not my style.  Not willing to give up I asked the employee who was actively performing restocking and, wonder of all wonders, he said they had just gotten a shipment of the salted kind.  He went into the back room and emerged with a jar all for me.  How sweet of him!

On my way out I grabbed some more curry powder, for the chana masala next week, and paid for my things.  I then headed home only to unpack my stuff and find a funny thing going on with my spices.  Check it out, two jars of curry powder, two very different colors.

How interesting?  I know that curry is just a spice blend, not an actual “elemental” spice if you will, but I never thought there would be such variation!  Today I learned… Shortly after I stored everything I sliced up some sweet potato to roast them as wedge leftovers for the next few days.

While the baked I made myself dinner: black bean soup with rice mixed in and blue goat cheese on top.

Fantastic dinner, which was only outdone by my delicious dessert.  I had a rice krispy treat topped with a hefty smear of sunbutter.

Gosh it was heavenly, sinful, perfect, you get the picture.  Great way to end the first day of prenatal.  Here’s to one patient down, a million more to go.  By the way, if you haven’t noticed, I added a countdown clock to the blog in the top right corner to help me keep track of just how much longer I have until I am a genetic counselor!  Excitement abounds.  G’night all!

Questions: What is your favorite kind of cheese?
What is your favorite nut butter?

Salty/Sweet Sunday

Today was pretty bland.  And, really, this whole weekend has been fairly bland/lonely/[insert downer adjective here].  There are really times when I wish I didn’t live alone.  It’s hard to be by myself for days on end.  Makes me sort of look forward to class tomorrow, if only just to hang out with people, anyone/anything other than my television and laptop.

As for the day, I woke up around 9am and got up rather quickly because I had big breakfast plans: almond joy pancakes.  I used chocolate protein powder, whole grain flour, baking powder, almond extract, and vanilla almond milk.  I then added in some coconut flakes.  I cooked them up silver dollar style and loaded my plate.  The topping of the morning was almond butter mixed with maple syrup.

Some additional maple syrup was required in the end.  Seriously delicious breakfast though, really.  I honestly love pancakes and its been way too long since I’ve had some.  Well played, Sunday, well played.  Speaking of a certain first day of the week, I headed to church a little after 10:30.  Mass was nice.  We baptized a cute, little, very outspoken outcrying newborn girl.  It was kind of adorable.

After church I came home to more Vampire Diaries and thesis work.  I made some progress though it continually feels like it’s not enough.  The whole presentation needs to be something like 45 minutes and I don’t think what I have now will last that long.  But I also feel like I have said everything I can.  Hopefully my committee can help with the addition of new slides.  After working I got hungry.  My late afternoon lunch included some vegged-out quinoa and a halved chicken sausage dry-fried in a non-stick pan and topped with spicy brown mustard.  Orange on the side for some fruit goodness.

Nomnom, gotta love the slight caramelization on the sausage with its hint of salt.  Sad, dreary day backlighting though.  It rained like crazy today, so much so that the temperature dropped like a rock and my windows fogged up.  I keep my apartment real warm.  =D  Through the late afternoon I continued to work and watch TV.  I also menu planned a bunch for this week.  I also did an inventory of leftovers in the fridge and started a running tab of how many servings I have left on my fridge’s whiteboard.  I figure this will give me an easy way to eat my extras in a timely manner.

Dinner came in the form of a salad.  They say to eat the rainbow and I’d say I certainly did.  I used a bed of romaine lettuce and chopped up some celery, carrots, yellow and red pepper, mushrooms, onion, grape tomatoes, cranberries, manchego cheese, and southwest ranch dressing.

I must say that manchego cheese on a salad is pretty darn awesome.  I loved how salty it was in contrast to the cranberries’ sweetness.  For a bit more sweetness, I had a little treat: vanilla cupcake pudding with a giant glob of almond butter. 

I could honestly probably eat this every day of my life.  Again, the salty AB and sweet pudding just makes a killer combo.  Mmmm, love.  And now, dear readers, I’m off for some one on one time with my visual aids.  I need to work up my new prenatal specific speeches.  Better to do it before than during a session in front of a patient, huh?  Yea, that’s what I thought.  See you all later!

Questions: What’s on your docket for this week?
What would be your ideal nut butter/pudding combo?

Another Day In PJs

Check out this weather we had today!?! Damn.  I’ll take sunshine and cloud and sixty degrees over twenties and snow any day.  Beautiful.

Not that I can say I really went outside and enjoyed it.  I again spent the day in my pajamas doing school work on the couch and watching more of The Vampire Diaries.  Despite my lack of sun-induced vitamin D production, I got a bunch of work done.  Or at least enough to feel like I had a worthwhile day.

I woke up on my own around 9am and lazed around until finally pulling myself out of bed to go to the gym.  I did 35 minutes on the elliptical and then went to the weight room to do some ab work.  It was brief, I wasn’t really in the mood to work my core.  I had had my fill of cardio and was just wanting some food.  Home in my kitchen I indulged a craving for cereal.  In my bowl: Fiber One, Life, a dash of vanilla almond milk, cottage cheese, some Stevia, and Trader Joe’s coffee chocolate grinder.

A few bites in I realized I needed some more milk.

A few more pours later I scarfed down the whole bowl and proceeded to completely blow the rest of the morning.  Around noon I finally showered, haha, and then did some work before breaking for lunch at 2:00.  I spiced up the leftovers of the disappointing egg salad from a few days ago with paprika, garlic, and onion powder.  A nice dash of salt rounded it out with some cheddar cheese on my sandwich.  On the side: carrots, tomatoes, and crunchies.

I continued to work as I watched the rain roll in during the late afternoon.  At some point I called my parents and chatted.  They happened to be with my maternal grandmother so I got a chance to catch up with her too.  Admittedly it was probably one of the most lucid and interactive conversations I have had with her in a while.  It was very nice.  Several episodes of vampires later, I warmed up dinner in the form of last night’s leftovers minus some of the extra marinade, plus some light sour cream.

Man have I been on a sour cream kick lately!  This stuff is just too good.  The tempeh and the quinoa were just as good the second time around.  A good dinner overall.  For dessert a while later, I made myself a paleo mug brownie with almond butter, cocoa powder, and some egg white.

I topped it with some non-paleo Arctic Zero (chocolate peanut butter flavor), lite chocolate syrup, and 63% dark chocolate chips.  Oh the chocolate-y goodness.  Delicious dessert.  Now I’m back to devouring episodes for the rest of the night.  There are moments I think I’m really, super duper lazy but then I remember that I work incredibly hard during the week so let’s call this justified and well-earned laziness.  I’m sure I’ll enjoy it.

Question: What is your best lazy pleasure?

BBQ Goodness

Today has been kind of like the first day of a three day weekend.  I spent the majority of the time in my pajamas.  Homework is always better in PJs.  I woke up to an alarm at 7:30 mostly because it was still a weekday and I figured I should really get some things done.  I admit I spent a half hour in bed doing a crossword before actually getting out of bed.  When I finally rose, I did the dishes and then headed to the gym.  I spent a little over 30 minutes doing stage four of NROLFW followed by ten minutes of HIIT on the elliptical.  Then I took advantage of my warm muscles and did split stretches.  I must say I am fairly impressed and really surprised at how close I am to the splits already.  Aerial silks, here I come, though I’m sure an intro class doesn’t get to this kind of move for a while.

Love it.  May not be the most comfortable position in the world but it is doable.  I’m going to keep working on it.  When I got back from the gym (speaking of, it is sooo weird to be going to and from the gym with light in the sky)…

…I made myself a refueling breakfast.  I topped two whole wheat waffles with a good slathering of peanut butter, some 2% cottage cheese, and strawberry jelly.

Very yummy meal.  Managed to keep me full for a bit over four hours in which I did a bunch of work.  I prepped the five patients I intend to see Monday-Wednesday of next week.  I edited template letters.  I read my thesis paper a few times over.  I also organized my visual aids binder and color coded it so I can easily find everything I need, the moment I need it.

By two in the afternoon I was getting hungry.  I made myself a plate with brown rice on the bottom, black bean soup on top, and baby carrots on the side.

It was a delicious lunch and, honestly, I can’t get enough of the light sour cream on top.  And the soup, geeze, yum.  I may need to make this every month.  Or, even better, I should make a bread bowl and truly get my Panera on.  =D  I continued my work throughout the early afternoon and then broke to run to the grocery store.  Snacked on an apple during my walk, thanks to the gorgeous 55* weather.

In the spice aisle I found the neatest spice mix: Moroccan.  I seriously love this kind of food so maybe some day soon I’ll suck up the $5 and buy it.

It would probably be cheaper actually than trying to make it at home, especially considering that coriander is some $11 a bottle…  When I left the mart, I ended up being proud of myself.  I have a hard time sticking to my grocery list when I go to the store and typically come out with things that I have little control around, like chocolate, cookies, chips, you get the picture.  This time, I didn’t stick perfectly to my list but the extra buys were a bag of frozen brussel sprouts and three sweet potatoes.  I’d say those are acceptable additions.

I whipped up dinner 45 minutes after I got home (and changed back into my pajamas!).  I made some vegged-out quinoa which ended up really, really good.  The honey and the salt, yum.  I served myself one portion and threw the other five into the fridge.  Yay, leftovers!!  The tempeh I made was drenched in a stellar, spicy, zesty BBQ marinade for a couple of hours and then pan fried.  One awesome thing about pre-cooked tempeh is that you can reuse marinade on your dish because nothing is raw.  I poured some remaining marinade straight onto my “steaks”.

Verdict: perfection.  The BBQ sauce is incredibly delicious and soaked into the tempeh extremely well.  I mean, really, what doesn’t tempeh just soak up?  It’s one of its best qualities.  Anyways, this BBQ is so great that I wanted to share it with you.

Zesty BBQ Sauce and Marinade
Inspired by this recipe.

A lovely recipe for a spicy and flavorful sauce/marinade.  Be careful though, it really does have a building heat the more you eat!  This makes about 2/3 cup of sauce.

Ingredients:
¼ cup plus 1 tbsp BBQ sauce (I used one with a bourbon base)
½ tbsp each ketchup, spicy brown mustard, white vinegar, and soy sauce
3 tbsp beer, any kind
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
½ tbsp each salt, black pepper, crushed garlic, and onion powder
1 tsp each dried basil, dried oregano, and curry powder
¼ tsp each red pepper flakes and paprika

How to:
1. Mix all the ingredients together in a small jar.  It’s super easy to layer things in and then shake the whole thing up.  (Beware when adding the salt, it causes the beer to foam up so make sure you have some room in the jar.)
2. Use to slather any protein, or veg, of your choice.

You should try some, really.  And let me know if you do!  I finished up dinner and stared at the dishes long enough to know that I didn’t want to do them.  I made my way back to the couch and my crossword.  I also enjoyed the rest of the beer that I used in the marinade.

Yes, that’s Vampire Diaries in the background.  I may or may not have watched a crazy number of episodes today while doing my work.  Call it my own mini-marathon.  =D  One thing I have to say, however, is a lot of people die in this show.  All from the same small town too.  Geeze, if I lived there I would get the HECK OUT!  Doesn’t stop me from watching it though.

Questions: Have you seen The Vampire Diaries? Thoughts?
What is your favorite protein/veg to marinate?

Copycat

 

Today is my return to What I Ate Wednesday posting.  I have been gone for far too long so let’s get started!  Breakfast was meant to refuel me after my lifting session this morning at 6am.  Weirdly there was already a crowd in there.  I was amazed and then I remembered it’s January and resolution season.

No wonder.  Anyways, I broke my fast with a hard-baked egg sprinkled in curry spice mix alongside some peanut butter waffles with chia seeds.

It was a yummy first meal of the day.  Not super front-loaded but better than yesterday.  My second class was cancelled today, much to everyone’s delight, so I spent the extra time getting a few more tons more visual aids.  My binder seriously weighs at least six pounds I swear.  Haha.  I ate lunch while I caught up on old prenatal lectures about first and second trimester testing.  I had an egg salad sandwich with cheddar cheese and some [rather ashy] baby carrots with edamame hummus to dip.

Sadly, the sandwich fell short, really short.  I couldn’t taste the cheese and the egg salad was in desperate need of salt and pepper.  Maybe garlic too, or onion powder.  On the way up to my prenatal clinic site, I treated myself to a rice krispy treat.  The subsequent afternoon was spent editing template letters and observing one session.  To give you an idea…there were six patients scheduled.  Yea, it was one heck of a no-show, reschedule-me, I-don’t-need-genetic-counseling afternoon.  Oh well.  I’ll get some more observation in tomorrow.

I wasn’t terribly hungry for the majority of the afternoon but I snacked on some jerky on the way home around 5:15 when I started to get a wee bit rumbly.  I probably should have had more because I planned on making some copycat Panera black bean soup.  It started out with lots of rainbow-y vegetables: onion, celery, red pepper, and yellow pepper.  Some garlic in there too.

Next up came the double strength vegetable broth.

That simmered and then I added some black beans before pureeing in Vera the Vitamix.

That went back into the pot and got a can more of black beans added to it.  Then we stirred in cornstarch and lemon juice.

Simmer, simmer, simmer some more to thicken… Then decide you want cornbread.

I whipped up a quarter recipe to make three little muffins.  And, beause I was silly and hadn’t preheated the oven, I snacked on an apple while everything was heating/cooking/simmering.  I was so hungry, I couldn’t wait anymore.

For actual dinner, I had some cornbread, cut in half, slathered with butter and drenched in honey.  Oh my gosh.  It’s been so long since I’ve had honeyed corn bread and I couldn’t get enough.

The soup was incredible too.  I honestly will be making this again.  Not to mention having a helping tomorrow for lunch and maybe even for dinner…haha.  I love it when I find something so yummy.

Questions: What’s your favorite Panera soup?
What’s your best copycat recipe?