Knock Knock

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Today as I was unpacking my suitcase (yes it’s taken me this long and still not done), piled among my clothes was a prize I won from Carrots N Cake‘s 12 day of giveaways!  Pretty exciting!  I had never won a giveaway!

My prize was to choose anything I wanted from Knock Knock.  Naturally, I chose the most food related thing on there… The Chef Planning Kit!

I can’t wait to put it to use for a gathering! I especially love the pin:

They have a bunch of my funny things.  I’ve seen Knock Knock products in gift shops and card stores a lot.  They’re always entertaining.  Some of my favorites: the Shit List and the Fashion Citation Nifty Note.

In other news, I’ve been a bit of a Debbie Downer the past few days.  However, I’m changing that now!  Today, I’ve been trying to smile more.

When you smile, you feel better!  Smile! Click Here for some reasons to smile!

But really there’s no reason not to smile!

Fabulous Lunch for a Boring Day

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This morning I was up at 6:30am, because I want to try to get back on a schedule.  Despite waking up so early, I had no where to be, no one to see and nothing to do.  I e-mailed the professor I am working with this semester to see if she wanted to meet to talk about my research position, and she wants to meet on Friday.  This is a little upsetting as I could have been home right now.  Instead, I’m bored in Ithaca.

So instead of productiveness, I sat around all morning watching Mad Men and reading blogs.  Finally around 12:00 I started to get hungry so I made lunch.  Kind of sad that lunch (and something I got in the mail… more on that later) has been the most exciting part of my day!

After talking to my cousin about her Cesar salad for lunch, I decided I needed a salad too!  Mine was not a Cesar salad but bright colorful and delicious nonetheless!  In my salad: Romaine, Carrot Ribbons and One Hard Boiled Egg.

I had half as a salad and the other half I put in a Flatout Sun dried Tomato Wrap with a Morningstart patty.  Delish!

These wraps are pretty good.  I found them at Wegman’s and decided to get them since they were pretty low cal (90 calories per wrap) and the ingredients weren’t horrendous (still has preservatives but I sucked it up).

I rounded out my meal with a delicious organic honeycrisp apple!

Soo good! (For nutrition info, see my sparkpage)

I was enjoying a cup of this tea (apparently I don’t want to let go of the holidays):

when my roommate came in with the mail.  I got something!

My friend Celia’s Save the Date postcard!  Very cute!  I love the design!  Congratulations Celia and Chris!

Now I’m off to Target to get some floss then to the gym.  Hopefully a good work out will make me less of a Negative Nancy today!

Have a great day!

Stocking up + New Thing!

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Yesterday was all about getting settled back into my apartment.  I was so exhausted when I got back on Friday that I fell asleep at 8:00pm.  Needless to say I saw up early on Sunday (6:30am, I slept a ton!).  I lounged around for a bit (aka watched Ugly Betty and Mad Men), cleaned the apartment then finally got around to going to the grocery store.

I love grocery shopping, but I always get a little flustered when the grocery store is crowded.  I like shopping on a weekday better, but oh well!

Anyway, so I loaded up on a ton of stuff.  Somehow it managed to all fit in my handy DSW bag!

Do you use reusable bags? They were very common in Berkeley and to some extent here as well.  In Berkeley, I kind of felt like I was getting a glare if I didn’t have one and the cashiers were all smiles when you had a reusable bag!

I loaded up on tons of healthy things.

I also bought a few new things to try out.  The first is almond milk (almond non-dairy beverage?).  Ordinarily I buy lactaid to use in coffee and cereal.  I’ve realized that since I have to take lactaid I probably shouldn’t be drinking milk… It also kind of scares me that lactaid lasts for so long and doesn’t go bad as regular milk does.  So I decided to try out something new.

This morning I had almond milk in my coffee and I’ll say it was pretty good.  I could definitely get used to it.  It doesn’t have the same amount of protein as milk/lactaid but the amount of milk/lactaid that I drank was so small that I feel like it’s not really significant.

While I was visiting the lovely fella in the Bay Area last week, we went to Whole Foods one day.  In the bulk food section, I came across Chia seeds, which I had been seeing on about 8394002779 million blogs. Yes this kind…

I got a very small amount ($0.35 worth) and have been waiting to try it ever since.

I added some to my oats this morning.  Honestly, it didn’t really change the flavor but made the texture slightly different, a little more gel-like.

I’m going to look around for these in Ithaca.  I liked the texture and the health benefits sound great!

  • 15g (2 tbsp) has about 75 calories.  (I added 5g to my oatmeal)
  • Chia is richer in omega-3 fatty acids than flax (source)
  • Chia is rich in antioxidants and vitamins (source)

Are you a chia fan?

New Leaf Update:

In case you missed it, I’m turning over a new leaf.

Day 1 went well!  Starting on the right foot is always a good sign!  I stocked up so I’m ready to go!  I went to the gym for a short work out since I’m sick I took it easy.    If you’re curious about what I ate all day, check out my sparkpage and click “Shared Food & Fitness Trackers” on the right to see it all!

Anyway, the rest of today will be spent unpacking and cleaning up… probably watching a few episodes of Mad Men too because apparently I’m obsessed!

Happy MLK Day!

Just curious… Anyone doing a day of service?

Turning Over a New Leaf

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The past few weeks have been very indulgent for me.  Between the holidays and visiting the lovely fella, I’ve eaten out a lot, had a ton of sweets, and over all eaten a lot of calories, fat, salt, etc.  Now that I’m back in Ithaca waiting for the semester to start, and I’m ready to be done with overindulgence.  I’m getting tired of always feeling a little bit uncomfortable in my skin, and I’d also like to keep up with my goals for 2010.

Starting now, I’m reevaluating my approach to food and eating.  This means a little bit of revamping of this blog and concentrating more on the health aspect.

One of my goals for the year was to stop talking about the parts of my body I don’t like.  So instead of complaining, I am going to be proactive.  Since writing my thesis in the Spring of 2009, applying to grad school, graduating, moving across the country and starting grad school, I’ve put on a few more pounds than I would like.

That being said… for the next few months, I am going to count calories.  I know this is quite unpopular in the food/health blogging world, but I’ve come to find that it’s what works for me.  I like having schedules and plans to follow, and I don’t find calorie counting to be as tedious as people make it out to be.

I don’t really want to call this a diet, because it’s not.  I’m trying to change the way I eat permanently.  Ordinarily, I don’t eat too unhealthily; however, there is always room for improvements.

So here’s the plan (subject to change), at least for the next few months:

  • Count calories for the next few months. I will use SparkPeople.  If you are interested, you can see my food and exercise log on my SparkPeople page. (Note: I’ve used SparkPeople before and I really like it.  It’s an online community and food log/journal, plus it’s free!  If you’re curious check it out!  or feel free to ask me questions).  I still haven’t decided if I want this blog to be my food journal.
  • Try to eat more natural foods and cut back on processed things (i.e. tofu and veggie patties).
  • Do some sort of cardio exercise 4-6 days a week.  This can mean any number of things.  The point is to get my body moving.  I’ve never lived in a cold climate so I’m very concerned that the cold will make me want to stay indoors.  I need to make a conscious effort to get moving.
  • Strength training 2-3 days a week. This was also one of my goals for 2010.  I tend to concentrate on cardio but strength training is also important.
  • I will give myself one day to eat something I really, really want.  I’ve lost weight many times in my life (I should probably do a post on this but at one point I lost about 50lbs.  I’ve kept off about 30lbs but always fluctuate about 20lbs… I’d love to keep those 20lbs off permanently).  The times I’ve been successful is when I give myself a day to eat whatever.  If I know I can’t have it then I’ll want it more; If I know I can have it on Sunday then all is well.  I love food.  I can’t give it up!

On to the weight… Ideally, I would like to lose 20lbs or fit comfortably in a size 4/6. 

This isn’t unrealistic, as I have healthily weighed 20lbs less in the past.

Roughly 20lbs lighter... Summer 2008... Those pants are a loose fitting size 6

There really isn’t a deadline for this but for the sake of goal setting, I would like to lose this by end of the semester (middle of May).  SparkPeople recommends I consume 1,200-1,550 calories per day (this includes burning 1500 calories per week from exercise, which is not very much and therefore may change).  I’m going to try to stick to this 6 days a week (I won’t count one day per week).  Obviously, some days I will consume at the lower end and other days on the high end of that range.  I’m going to try my best to listen to my body and ask myself whether or not I’m actually hungry before I eat something.

Having read many blogs, I know many people will take issue with my revamped approach to eating.  I’m going to give it a try anyway.  I would love to be one of those people who simply says “I’m going to cut back on the sweets,” then magically loses 5 lbs, but that’s not me.

I need a change.  I need to commit.  I need to do what works for me.

If you’d like to join me in turning over a new leaf (no matter what way works best for you), I would love to do this with others!

Embarrassing End to a Flight

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I arrived at JFK!  I’m waiting for my connection to Syracuse, then I’m waiting for my ride who will pick me up in the afternoon.  It’s going to be a long day!

For the long day, I packed a pb & j along with an apple and some carrots.

Looks tasty… right?  Err not really but I’m sure it will be 🙂

I’ll enjoy those at some point when I get hungry.

Now I’m enjoying some coffee (tall soy misto, no foam, please!)

Glad to know I’m back in NY.  I didn’t even get a smile from the girl working at Starbucks… Oh happy day!

On to the embarrasing-ness… So we were making our initial descent into JFK when I started to feel really sick.  I was nauseous, hot then cold.  I seriously thought I was going to throw up.  So I got up and headed to the bathroom.  The bathroom closest to me was “defective” according to the sign so the flight attendant told me to go to the front one.  She was walking behind me the whole time.  Then all of a sudden, I was on the floor with the flight attendant holding my head!

I managed to pass out on the floor of the airplane!

It was really embarrassing!  The strange thing is I felt a million times better after I regained consciousness!  I’m feeling a little shakey but overall okay.  I don’t know how that happened.  The rest of the time on the plane, people stared and it was awkward and the flight attendant constantly asked how I was feeling!  Thanks Delta crew for being so friendly and caring!

Anyway, I guess I’ll watch a movie or write future blog posts (food security maybe… it’s kind of been a while…).

Have a great day!

Edit: I found an interesting article about skin lightening on the NY Times just now.   In India, there were TONS of commercials for skin lightening products.  I had no idea that people used them here!  While I’m latina, I’ve always been very pale.  I didn’t really think people would really want to lighten their skin in the US.  The grass is always greener on the other side, I guess?   Any thoughts on the subject?

Reaching My Goals

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I made it back to LA tonight.  I spent the evening watching the news with the madre.  She then informed me that she had something for me.  This is quite strange in my family… not the buying things but the surprise aspect…

Example: The past few Christmases/Birthdays I’ve been buying my presents and wrapping them myself then signing the card “Mami y Papi” or “Santa”… get the idea?

What was this surprise?

A fantastic sparkly, leopard print sweater that I saw at Macy’s last week when we went shopping.  This will come in handy as one of my goals for 2010 is to dress better (or really just get dressed everyday…).  I love sweaters!  Thanks, Madre!

The next exciting thing is this: the Madre’s make up drawer (my mom is a sassy one in case you haven’t noticed)

Eye shadow and lip gloss.

I’ve decided to start wearing lip gloss.  How does this fit into my goals for 2010?

One of my goals was to stop talking about the things I don’t like about myself and accept myself the way I am (if not fix it).

Well, I’m going to do that.  I never wear lip gloss or lipstick (with the exception of Halloween or themed parties) because I don’t like my lips.  Certain things can’t be changed.  I can’t make my lips smaller.  So instead I’m learning to accept myself.  My brother can tease me all he wants but I’m embracing the bigness/fullness/voluptuousness of my lips and rocking some pink lip gloss from now on!

Is there anything you have learned to embrace about yourself?  Any works in progress?

P.S. Another step toward reaching my 2010 goals will be revealed as I get back to Ithaca on Saturday!  Stay Tuned!

January Recipe Challenge: Asia

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The lovely fella lives in the Silicon Valley.  The first time I visited him here was when I had just gotten back from India in July of 2009.  I kept noticing a ton of Indian markets, restaurants and shops.  I’m not sure if it’s because I had India on the brain or there are legitimately just a lot of Indian places!  Apparently, the Silicon Valley (or the South Bay in general?) has a large Indian population.  So for yet another addition to the January Recipe Challenge, I decided to make something Indian!

Indian is probably one of my favorite foods, I love everything from curries to dosa, but I’ve always been too scared to make it as it seems really daunting. With the availability of Indian products and the January Recipe Challenge as my impetus, I sucked it up and decided to try making something Indian.

Tonight, I actually made two recipes!  Palak Paneer (Spinach and Cheese) and Channa Masala.  Both are fairly common at any North India/Punjabi restaurant.  They are also vegetarian!  Actually in case you didn’t know… A lot of people in India are vegetarians for religious reasons.

I found two great recipes from Manjula’s Kitchen.  I really liked her site because she had videos of her making the recipes!  This inspired great confidence in her!

Just as in the Swedish recipes I made earlier this week, I had to make due with the appliances the lovely fella has, which means no measuring cups or spoons or a blender which was kind of necessary.  I had to eyeball it all but surprisingly it turned out really well!  So here are the recipes with the tweeks that I made to them (remember I eyeballed these amounts).

Palak Paneer

Inspired by Manjula’s Kitchen Palak (Spinach) Paneer

4 cups fresh spinach, chopped
6-7 oz store bought paneer
1/2 can tomato puree
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
1 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1-2 tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
salt to taste
2 tbsp all purpose flour
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 tomato, sliced for garnish

Ingredients all together:

Can you believe they have Goofy on the spinach package?! Not sure how I feel about this...

First we quickly browned the paneer in a bit of oil and then set aside.

Then we added a tad more oil (probably a total of 2 tbsp, you really don’t need to add more in my opinion…) and added the spices (coriander, turmeric, cumin seeds) and cooked those for about a minute.

Then we added the tomato puree and ginger and let that cook for a few minutes.  Once the tomato sauce reduced by half, we added the spinach and a little bit of water (I saw her do this in the video that’s why I did it too) and covered it and let it simmer on medium/low heat for about 10 minutes.

In the meantime, we combined the cream and flour in a small bowl.  After the spinach mixture has simmered, we added the cream mixture and let it cook for a few minutes.  Then cover it again and let is simmer for about 5 minutes.  Then added the paneer back and and let is simmer for a few more minutes! Then it’s ready to eat!

Ours didn’t look quite right but I think it was the lack of blender.  It still tasted great!

Next we made the Channa Masala.

Again we didn’t have all the necessary equipment (mainly a blender and measuring spoons so I eyeballed it all and just finely chopped all the ingredients).  Also note that the channa masala is also vegan!

Channa Masala

inspired by Manjula’s Kitchen’s Chola (Channa Masala)

1 can (15oz) garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 can tomato puree
1 tsp finely chopped ginger
1 small green chili (use less for less picante!)
2 tsp coriander powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp red chili powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chopped cilantro
1/4 tsp garam masala powder

I forgot to take a picture of all the ingredients for this one but they were kind of similar to the Palak Paneer ingredients.

First, we heated the oil in the pan.  Once the oil was hot, we added the cumin seeds and cooked them til they made a cracking noise.  Then we added the flour and cooked it for about a minute. Once that had cooked for a minute or so, we added the tomato puree, ginger, green chili, coriander, turmeric and red chili powder.  This simmered for about 4 minutes.

Then we added the garbanzo beans plus 1/2 cup of water and let that simmer for about 7-8 minutes, stirring every so often.

Lastly, we added the cilantro and garam masala and let that cook for a minute and it was all ready! Serve with rice, naan, raita, tomato slices or anything else you like!

We enjoyed these two fabulous dishes with some Naan we got at Costco (the Costco here sells a ton of India products… large Indian population I guess…).

Of course, it was eaten with fingers not silverware…

I thought this was very delicious!  The lovely fella liked it too!  The Channa Masala was a little too spicy for him but nothing a little water couldn’t fix.  We actually realized we pretty much doubled the green chili, so it was extra spicy.  I thought it was perfect but I really like spicy food.

I know Indian food sounds intense and complicated (or at least it did to me) but give it a try!  It really wasn’t that difficult, just requires a bit of ingredient hunting!

Tomorrow I’m headed back to LA then Friday I go back to Ithaca!  I don’t want break to end, but I have a little bit of a blog revamp coming when I get back to Ithaca so stay tuned for that!

Have a great night!

His and Hers

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This morning I used some old bread and made the lovely fella some french toast.

His Breakfast:

I, on the other hand, don’t care much for french toast.  Okay really, I hate it… So instead I had some broccoli and a black bean burger.

Her Breakfast:

Tasty!  I’m in desperate need of fruit and vegetables!  I feel like I’ve been on food overload the past few days!  I do however LOVE the lovely fella’s big white plates!  They make everything looks so good!

Do you eat differently from your significant other?

Have a great day!

Napa: Wine, Wine and More Wine

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Yesterday we left about mid-day and headed up to Napa!  It’s only about an hour and a half drive from the lovely fella’s place in Mountain View.  We found a deal on Travel Zoo for a hotel plus wine tastings at 3 vineyards and 3 half bottles of wine!

The first stop was Peju.  This was one of our free wine tastings.  The vineyard and tasting room was very lovely!

They had some interesting trees in the entrance…

We tasted 5 wines: 1 white, 1 red/white blend, 2 Cabs and a Port.  My favorite was the 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon.

This also happened to be the half bottle that they gave us!  So that was convenient.  I liked this place but sadly there was another couple tasting next to us so I felt really rushed.  They flew through it and it felt like we needed to go at their pace.  Oh well.  It was still fun and tasty!

The next stop was: Castello di Amorosa.

It was a lovely location with a great view, not to mention the winery was in the shape of a castle! This wasn’t included in our three free tastings but the lovely fella heard it was good so we went.  I’m glad we did! This was my favorite of the three we went to!

We tried some wonderful wines here too!  I don’t usually like sweet wines but the ones here were particularly delicious!

The final winery we went to Madonna Estate for a free tasting.  It was very small but nice.  We were the only ones in the tasting room.  They didn’t have half bottles so we got a free full sized bottle of Riesling.

The man in the tasting room suggested a restaurant for dinner.  He was Italian so naturally  he suggested an Italian restaurant (Zagat also said it was delicious).  So for dinner we went to Bistro Don Giovanni.

We were wined-out so we stuck to water.  First, we were served some rosemary focaccia.  It was extremely oily, but naturally very delicious!

The lovely fella and I shared a beet and haricot verts salad with avocado, fennel and roquefort vinaigrette.  This was very good.  Light and flavorful!

As an entree, I got the Ricotta and Pesto Ravioli with a lemon cream sauce.  This was OOH SO GOOD!  I can’t even tell you how delicious it was!  I love lemony things but this was literally out of this world!

The lovely fella got an (unphotographed) Rigatoni with lamb meatballs.  He enjoyed his as well!  I definitely recommend Bistro Don Giovanni for anyone going to Napa.  It was delicious and reasonably priced!

We decided to skip dessert there since nothing looked too good.  Instead, we stopped by Whole Foods for a bakery treat!  I got a cupcake (which took me hours to eat since it was so sweet):

The lovely fella got an almond cannoli.  I’m not a huge fan of cannolis but he really enjoyed it…

Warning: Hipster Hating Ranting to Come!

The next day we left and stopped in San Francisco for breakfast/lunch.  We went to Tartine Bakery.  This hipster watering hole was delicious!  I got a 3 Cheese Pressed Sandwich and the lovely fella got a ham croque monsieur.  Mine was simply to die for!  It was also HUGE!  I ate 2/3 of it and thought I was going to explode!

The food was fantastic (I seriously can’t get over how good this place was); however, I didn’t like the cafe itself.  It was ridiculously crowded with hipsters talking about Europe and art.  I didn’t feel like I could really enjoy my meal to the full extent.   I also felt silly pulling out my camera, maybe I would have if I had been sitting outside with a little more arm room.  I literally felt like I was living in the this blog.  I’m not sure why I was so irked by the patrons of this place.  I think it just felt a little pretentious to me.  Strangely enough, the place was kind of dirty too.  You bus your own tables (which isn’t a problem at all) but that means all the tables were really dirty.  The occasional wipe down would have been appreciated.

I would love to go back!  It was seriously amazingly good!  But next time, I’ll get it to go and enjoy my sandwich or pastry elsewhere 🙂

Now we’re back in Mountain View trying to figure out what to do the rest of the day!  Maybe we’ll have some more wine… because obviously we haven’t had enough…  On that note, this blog is supposed to be about healthy eating… don’t worry that will resume soon!  When I’m back at home (aka Ithaca) I rarely eat out plus I have a healthy plan for the next few months, more on that later!

What’s your favorite type of wine?

January Recipe Challenge: Europe

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The lovely fella bought a Swedish cookbook at Ikea last week.  So I thought it would be a great for the January Recipe Challenge.  Again, I don’t know much about Sweden other than its neutrality in WWII, they have a lot of immigrants and Alexander Skarsgard is from there… so I have no idea how authentic this is but it looked delicious and vegetarian (which seems rare in Swedish cuisine from looking at that cookbook!).

We decided to make Forest Mushroom Soup (Soppa på blandsvamp).

The only difficulty in making this recipe was finding the right mushrooms and the fact that the lovely fella doesn’t have measuring tools.  So here’s our tweeked version (estimated as we couldn’t actually measure):

Forest Mushroom Soup/Soppa på blandsvamp

inspired by Ikea’s Swedish Cooking

2 tbsp butter
8oz cremini mushrooms
3.5 oz shitake mushrooms
6 oz portabella mushrooms
1 onion
1 garlic clove
3-4 tablespoons whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons red wine (or really just a splash!  The recipe called for sherry but we didn’t want to spend money on it so we decided to use red wine instead… not the same… I know but it was still really good!)
3 cups low sodium vegetable broth
about 1/4 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper to taste

We enjoyed a glass of wine while we cooked!  The lovely fella got me this bottle of wine for Valentine’s Day last year with the intention that we would drink it then but it didn’t happen and he’s had it ever since.

It was very tasty, especially after it aerated for 20 minutes!  So we gathered the ingredients:

Then cleaned and sliced the mushrooms then chopped the onion and garlic.

From what I’ve heard… Mushrooms should be wiped with a damp cloth or paper towel not run under water.


We melted the butter then sauteed this all for about five minutes.

Then added the flour and stirred it.  Added a splash of red wine.  Next we added the broth, cream, salt and pepper and let it simmer for a few minutes.

Then we served and enjoyed it with our wine!

This recipe was quick, easy and delicious!  The mushrooms were fantastic and made it really “meaty.”  It was a perfect light meal!  It would be great with a big hunk of crusty bread (unfortunately we ate our fair share of bread and cheese while the soup simmered!).

Then we went to see It’s Complicated, which was hilarious!  I won’t spoil it but I really enjoyed it!

Tomorrow, we’re headed to Napa for wine tasting and all around fun!  Hope you had a great weekend!  Goodnight!