gloomy gloomy

It is all kinds of rainy and gross here in Boston. I never minded rain before college, but now being in Boston, and the combination of

1. having to walk everywhere and

2. all the freaking wind

is making me seriously hate it. I seriously have to repeat a mantra in my head: “April showers bring May flowers, April showers bring May flowers”. Plus in Massachusetts they bring awesome September apples!

Lunch I thawed some of the black bean soup I made last week. I’m telling you, making a big batch of soup is what it’s all about!

Topped with 2 tbsp of my low-fat Mexican shredded cheese blend. That was the best purchase ever!

 

And for dipping and some lovely saltiness, Trader Joe’s whole wheat and flaxseed crackers.

I also had half an apple. The other half I packed for a snack, along with some almonds

  

I ended up eating this on the T (subway, for the non-Bostonians), because I left work early because I have another phone job interview! In 8 minutes! Tense, tense. 

I grabbed a cappuccino on my way home to ease the gloom. I was SO MAD; when the T got to my stop, the driver didn’t open the back doors! And there were too many people to squeeze to the front door in time! So I had to walk an extra block and a half in the rain! (I mean, admittedly, it’s ridiculous that the T even places stops a block and a half apart, but STILL, it’s the PRINCIPLE!).

I love cappuccinos so hard. The foam, oh the foam. Apparently in France it’s the height of poor taste to have any beverage with milk in the afternoon, but whatever.

Oh god, but do you know what improves a gloomy day? A FAGE GIVEAWAY! Over at the hungry yogini

it’s been awhile!

I had a weekend at home full of GOOD EATS. My cousin who got married used to work as a pastry chef at the French embassy (!) and got some of her old coworkers to cater her wedding! At some point I’ll track down the menu card I saved, because it was SOMETHING.

Now I’m back to boring eating in Boston xD I really missed my blog, actually!

This morning was trail mix oats take 2, since I’m rather low on fresh fruit/milk/everything, basically. I decided that since it wasn’t fruity enough for me last time, I’d add like 1/4 cup of frozen blackberries. It was good, but surprisingly un-sweet! I don’t like super sweet oatmeal, and NEVER add sugar to it, but this morning I actually did! 

Before, looking pretty and pristine

 

After I stirred it!

on the road

So today, after going to a total of one class, I am hopping on a train and going home for my cousin Rachel’s wedding! (It is the weekend of “Rachel Getting Married”, which I, and only I, find hilarious).

For fuel on the 7.5 hour train ride, I am bringing:

 

A big water bottle (which I forgot last time and sorely regretted), an apple, sliced up, some carrots and green pepper, sliced up, a PB sandwich, sliced up (on the train, I like my food to be as user-friendly as possible- I hate having to use those tray tables, and I also like being able to nosh on a little bit at a time, since on trains I’m just bored and eating gives me something to do)

 

A special shoutout to this guy. These things are SO. GOOD. SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD. I don’t even know how it happens, but there’s this alchemy of tangy yet rich cottage cheese with the sweet yet tart blueberry mixture. They are so good it’s stupid. They’re overpriced, so I only buy them as a special treat.

 

I took my first shot at Trail Mix oats, a la Kath, this morning, using my new ABC trail mix (almonds, dried blueberries, dried cranberries, golden raisins). That blob in the back is cran-apple butter, to give the mixture a bit more fruitiness and flavor.

 

Here are my thoughts: I actually really liked the whole almonds, which I didn’t think I would, but it was really nice having a big solid crunch every few bites. The dried fruit was good, too, but I wanted more of it! Trail mix just has too high a nut to fruit ratio for oatmeal, in my opinion. I am someone who likes to start my morning off with something distinctly fruity, and the fruit was more of an afterthought in this. It was still quite proteiny and filling, though!

tempeh-riffic

Today for a nice snacksie, I had a Z-bar.

These things are the best. They taste, first of all, like delicious homemade cookies, just in bar shape. Their nutritional stats are right on (apparently the people at Clif give adults bars with sugar as the first ingredient, but put a little more consideration into the nutrition for the next generation- these have oat flour and oats, respectively, as first and second ingredients, THEN sugar). And they are among the cheaper of the nutrition bars. This bar made me super happy!

The other product I tried today was GRODY.

The picture is a re-creation, as I had a few sips at work and then threw the bottle away. They were giving out free samples on the T (the subway, for those who don’t know Boston) of the new 10-calorie vitamin water, and I love free food, as everyone knows. Aside from the fact that I think products like VitaminWater are stupid (and, incidentally, original Vitaminwater is super high in sugar), because you should get vitamins from having a varied and healthy diet, not from drinking a big cup of sugar and food coloring, VitaminWater 10 is GROSS. I had the blueberry acai flavor or something like that, and I finally figured out what it tasted like: melted Jello. Don’t buy this. Ew.

Moving on to happier news, I finally had tempeh success! It took umpteen trips, but I am spoiled enough to be within walking distance of two Trader Joe’s, so after a lot of trips and a bit of whining I fiiiiiiiiiiiiinally got my hands on some!

I went on “the google”, as George H. Bush calls it, and found a recipe that recommended making a foil packet and combining the tempeh with some

onions (which I’m so using more of next time, they baked up nicely!) and

 

barbecue sauce, marinading for a bit, and then baking. Into the oven, I also threw

1 cup of parsnips and 1/2 cup of carrots, chopped, tossed with a teaspoon of olive oil and a sprinkling each of chili powder and cinnamon.

 

Afterwords, nicely browned. Roasted vegetables are the best! They get all sweet and lovely!

For a side dish, I made something that honored my Greek heritage a bit: tzaziki! Tzaziki is good with anything roasted!

 

I grated part of a cucumber (this batch included probably 2 tbsp grated cucumber) and salted it. Meanwhile, I combined the other ingredients: 1/4 cup of yogurt, a whole buncha black pepper, and a whole buncha lemon juice! It’s better with fresh herbs, but I don’t got any! As you can see in the above picture, it spread out quite a bit on the plate- draining the yogurt or making it with Greek yogurt is certainly an offer if you want a more thick condiment, but I used it as kind of a dipping sauce for everything, so for me it was perfect.

This was an exceptionally satisfying meal. My ingredients were kind of calorie-dense (I only used a third of the package of tempeh- that’s less than 3 ounces- and it came out to 153 calories) and as a result this is a much smaller spread then some of my massive salads and accessories, but tempeh is definitely filling and satisfying. Roasted vegetables, too, are lots of nutrients packed into a smallish volume (you can’t totally tell how much they shrunk in the before and after roasting pictures, since my zooming skills are nonexistent, but they did shrink!). However, I ended this meal feeling satiated and even though tempeh is sort of a hippie protein, I think it still qualifies as comfort food. The flavors were a nice mix of sweet and savory, and the tzaziki added nice zest and tang!

double fruit

I was out of milk today, so instead of adding that to my morning oatmeal, I doubled my fruit!

 

Half a banana, three chopped dried apricots.

 

Topped with slivered almonds. YUM!

p.s. another sweet treats giveaway!

quality fuel

Tonight’s dinner fueled me through a 10 page paper on the 17th amendment. Mighty impressive.

 

Don’t those look like JEWELS?! They were the star of the dish I made yesterday (well really it all started two days ago) for tonight’s dinner….

Black bean soup!

The recipe:

2 cups dried black beans

1 tbsp vegetable oil

chilis of your choosing (below is my pick, and I couldn’t tell you what type they are, just that they weren’t super spicy- they were in a bag of reduced produce and I said “ooh, fun!”), 1/2 a big onion, 3 cloves of garlic

splash of red wine vinegar

1 tsp cumin

1 can of fire roasted tomatoes

(in my case it was a can minus 1/3 of a cup because I used some the other day but obviously a whole can is the easiest way to list it!)

a lime

Directions:

Cover the black beans with water. Let soak 24 hours (I started this whole operation Monday night). Drain and rinse.

Heat the oil in a pot on medium heat. Chop onion, add it. Chop garlic, add it. Brown up nicely. At the point we hit that stage, I was still chopping chilis, so I deglazed the pan with some red wine vinegar to buy myself some time, and it was tasty! Add chilis, and REDUCE HEAT AND COVER. I stuck my spoon in so it was cracked a little bit, but make sure the lid is tilted so the air coming out is not facing you. You do not want chili vapor in the air! Agh! Let them cook for a few, then add your cumin. Stir everything around for a few seconds, then add your tomatoes. Stir around a few seconds, and add your beans. Add enough water to cover. At this point, there was probably 8 cups or so of stuff in my pot (mine has a measurey thing on the side, which is so nice!). Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer. For a long time. I probably did for like four hours. You do not want undercooked black beans. Ick.

Whenever you want to serve it (in my case, it was the next day, which I recommend because more time for the flavors to meld is never a  bad thing!), scoop out 1/3 or so of the soup and puree it in a blender or food processor. Stir that back in, and finish with more cumin, salt and pepper, and the juice of half a lime (you could definitely add more, that’s just all I had).

FABULOUS!

Dried beans are such an inexpensive source of protein, and they also have the advantage over canned beans of not having a frighteningly high sodium content!

This soup is also almost ridiculously healthy. It’s 110 calories for 1 cup.  My batch made 7 cups, so I had a cup and a half tonight, and packaged the rest in three more 1 and a half cup servings and one 1 cup serving.

I LOVE making a big batch of something and then having it to thaw whenever I need a quick dinner. It’s so much more economical and healthier than takeout, and it’s so much more tasty! Frozen premade soups seriously saved my butt this November. I got in a horrible car crash (not my fault!) coming back from school after Thanksgiving break, and I got to go from a hospital to finals week. NOT FUN. If I didn’t have those soups in my freezer, I probably just would have not eaten, but instead I had comforting, nutritious home cooked food.

Tonight I topped my soup with my leftover guacamole and pico de gallo from Chipotle the other day. Does anyone else find their guacamole to be weirdly sweet? They probably use sweetness to cover up poor quality avacadoes.

On the side, I made seriously ghetto nachos by sticking my tortilla halfs in the toaster, then topping with some shredded cheese and microwaving them.

Ugly, but tasty!

Now I’ll give you a preview of tomorrow’s lunch!

Take a Trader Joe’s whole wheat tortilla. Top with tapenade.

 

Then add half a can of smoked salmon

And some spinach

Wrap adorably in plastic wrap! (To be clear, it was resting atop the plastic wrap the whole time. I do not put food on my bare counter. Ew.)

I’m excited about this flavor combination, although I will definitely have to have a MINT or GUM afterwards.

It will be accompanied by these guys, giving me some lovely fiber, protein, calcium, Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and many other good things, I am sure.

Fab!

p.s. giiiiiiiiiiveaway!

I won the lottery and had caviar for breakfast

April fool!

I did get a free sample in the mail!

But it was tiny.

So I made myself a nice cereal blend- the Total cranberry (which ended up being like 1/2 a cup and was good but the cranberries were kind of annoyingly chewy for cereal), with some Fiber One honey clusters. Along with skim milk and half a banana

And my beloved mango black tea. This tea is so naturally sweet! It’s warm and comforting but refreshingly fruity at the same time.

 

 

And a quick lunch preview- spinach salad with hardboiled egg. I’ll accompany it with an English muffin, a yogurt, and an apple.