Sushi I

So where have I been lately?  I’ve been mostly eating roasted chickpeas, drinking juice (new favorite – beets!) and doing overtime. I think last week’s overtime hours made me a little tired. Here’s a little recap of the days I missed:  I had a persimmon.

 

Carrot, apple, orange, tomato, beet, celery juice.

And more carrot apple orange beet juice.

Minus beets

Dinner of broccoli, potato slices, and chickpeas. I had this twice.

 

Roasted cajun spiced chickpeas- had this every night this week.

And I went to Vinh Phat to buy goodies for our Sunday Sushi.  It’s a good Vietnamese run grocery store. I found so much stuff! I almost bought a whole frozen octopus, but I didn’t think we would eat it.

From Vinh Phat we bought some of this awful stuff, an herbal low sugar drink.

The fine print boasted that it was “kind of popular”. When you opened the envelope it looked like All Bran and smelled like celery salt. Mmm!  Bottom’s up!

It was a tad bitter. And now we have 30 to drink.

On Sunday we made sushi for the first time. It was fun. My mother and I made the rice and appetizers, and my boyfriend rolled and sliced all of our sushi rolls.

The sushi rice wasn’t as difficult as I anticipated. I bought a jar of rice a while ago labeled sushi rice and we followed the instructions on it. We made one cup of rice on the stovetop and one in a rice cooker.

Once they were cooked we had to put the rice in nonmetallic bowls and mix with a seasoned vinegar and fan the rice.

This is the best shot I got of Mr. Greens fanning the rice (with a pizza peel no less). I am no longer allowed to fan the rice because I am not a good judge of distance and smacked him hard in the elbow with the peel. Ooops.

After the rice was ready, the rolling began. I was busy prepping other things like vegetable dumplings I “made”  so I didn’t get a shot of the rolling. I promise we made it though and didn’t get take out.

Here’s the first group of sushi: A smoked salmon and avocado roll, a philadelphia roll, vegetarian vegetable roll, and california roll.

Also a black cod with scallion roll, and the same thing with ginger rolled in.

The one with masago on top is the california roll (it switched plates).

A trio of appetizers: miso soup, dumplings, and cabbage salad. 

Sake (Ozeki)

Dig in!

We’re planning on doing it again next week!

I found a little pint of red bean ice cream that we split 4 ways. I “don’t eat” ice cream because it makes me sick, but I’ll eat a little red bean once or twice a year because I like it and can eat it in moderation at a restaurant. Don’t ask me what the logic is there. 

Out of the Closet: I hate Cilantro

This morning I woke up in a pretty good mood. November does that to me.

For breakfast I had greek yogurt, honey, and granola. 3 Cheers for this breakfast!

Yum. I snacked later on half a Clif that I had never tried: Peanut Toffee Buzz. It was so-so. There are a few other flavors I want to try before settling on my favorite.

My mother gave me a loaf of homemade sourdough bread this weekend, so I used a couple of slices to make a sandwich today.

For the filling I used brie and blackberry jam.

The brie was very cold so it didn’t want to spread

But it ended up being very tasty nonetheless. I could’ve eaten 4 slices.

With lunch I had a few leftover roasted chickpeas.

They were good reheated in the microwave although not very crunchy.

After a couple of hours I had a TLC bar.

For dinner, neither one of us had many ideas, mostly because we are completely out of fresh food. My fall back food is red beans and rice, but we quickly came up with the idea of going to Duang Tawan, our favorite Thai place. Well, when we arrived we found out that they aren’t open on Tuesdays. So we went down the street to an indian restaurant that I’ve always wanted to try called the Bay Leaf. Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures. I got the chana masala, a chickpea curry, which looks like this. source

I might have also eaten some of my date’s lamb curry, naan, and sampled an appetizer.

The only negative about Indian food is cilantro. I belong to the Ihatecilantro.com mass uprising. There’s debate as to whether the cilantro haters have more sensitive tastebuds or the cilantro lovers do. I think it doesn’t matter, just keep the poison weed away from me!

Confessions of A Diet Cokehead

This morning’s breakfast was hastily thrown together, but good. I had a small Valencia orange, a  Bartlett pear, and dry Peanut Butter Puffins. 

Yogurt would’ve made this a complete breakfast! But I liked having two different fruit for breakfast, I should do that again sometime instead of the usual banana.

I snacked on half a Carrot Cake Clif before working out.

Not long ago I read that Clif wrappers can be sent back to the company to be recycled,  so I have a stack on my desk and a few pinned to the wall. One of my coworkers asked me about it. I look like a crazy pack rat sometimes.

Lunch was leftover spaghetti and meatballs, all chopped up. 

After that I was stuffed.

Toward the end of the day I ate a Pumpkin Pie Kashi bar. These are rather dry and hard. 

I like the dark chocolate coconut ones better, but they aren’t even that good! I was just curious when I bought these.

I’m still curious about Cascadian Farms granola bars and Vitatops. I predict that I’ll probably buy both of those in the future, although not too soon. My boyfriend loves Clif bars, so we’ll probably stick with Clifs and Zbars.

On the way home I ate a carrot.

 

I’ve decided that I like eating carrots and apples in the car. They’re so crunchy and loud that I feel weird grazing on them at work (that’s a problem I should get over). I still eat carrots and loud things at work, but I definitely chomp more when I’m alone.

The boyfriend was working late, so I stopped by Subway to pick up a sandwich for myself. I got a 6” turkey on wheat with all the veggies, pepper jack cheese, and olive oil and vinegar. Next time I would nix the olive oil and vinegar because it was soggy and I would rather have the cheese if we’re talking fat grams.

Flash-errific!

With that I got a diet coke*, and a bag of Sun Chips Spicy Chipotle. The woman in front of me in line coerced me into getting them.

She said they were tasty, and she was not lying!

*Long story ahead: My views on diet drinks and aspartame in particular have flip-flopped a bit in the past. I used to drink lots of Diet Coke and Diet Dr. Pepper. Then I decided it was not good for me and avoided aspartame and other sweeteners like the plague. Now I mostly drink water  (and coffee and alcohol – if I’m being honest).

I had a real problem with Coke for a while. It was almost like a cigarette addiction. For years I would drink 5 diet cokes a day, then I switched to one or two Cokes a day, and then I decided the calories weren’t worth it (and Coke in particular makes me burp for hours – unladylike!) so I would have one Coke Zero a day, and then I finally cut it all out. I remember being on the elliptical thinking about my one Coke Zero I was going to have at lunch. Tough times, I tell ya. Now I have a Coke once in a blue moon, although I find water and club soda (don’t forget beer) are pretty good replacements. Tonight I just decided that Coke wasn’t worth the calories so I went with Diet Coke. Thus concludes the “in my head” portion of this blog. If you’re still reading you’re either a sucker for punishment or my mother (or both!). Haha!

Taco Salad and FSM

This morning for breakfast I had a fitnessista inspired breakfast cookie. I won’t dwell on the specifics, because it wasn’t my best effort. But I know what the problem was – I wanted to try mashed banana in my cookie, but I didn’t have any fresh, so I took a frozen banana and nuked it. Let’s just say the flavor was a bit off this morning.

I only ate a little bit of it. Oh well, I’ll definitely try again!

A mid-morning snack was a very crunchy carrot and hummus. I gnawed on it a little before I remembered to take a picture.

 

The gym was pretty good today. I did 35 minutes on the elliptical. I know I need to do more, but thinking about it kind of stresses me out so I don’t.

For lunch I brought beans and rice, and a quarter of an avocado. A coworker offered me tomatoes, salsa, and lettuce mix. then I remembered that I had half of a flat bread – taco salad!! The flat bread toasted so nicely, it was similar to a flaky tortilla bowl.

There were about 10 grape tomatoes under the mound of beans and rice and salsa. I could eat this again right now!

Snack mid afternoon – I wanted Halloween candy, but I ate a Kashi bar instead.

Dinner was a nice surprise. I came home to the smell of cooking! Mr. Greens made homemade meatballs and spaghetti. All I know about his meatballs is that he uses part beef and part pork. The rest is top secret.

My serving looks a little like the flying spaghetti monster.

Is that sacrilicious?

Banana Gun

Breakfast was a Clif bar on the go, and a banana.

I know you can’t really see my cat in the picture (she’s a ninja), but just be aware that she is deathly afraid of bananas, especially if they are pointed at her. Also if you say, “Bang!” while doing so. We think she was a victim of banana gun violence as a kitten.

Lunch was a bowl of vegetarian chili, cheese, and half a flat bread . This was Hormel Chili, which I feel *meh* about. It’s good in a pinch and cheaper than fancy schmantsy stuff (like Amy’s and Wolfgang Puck). I was surprised this had textured vegetable protein in it. It would’ve been better with just beans and tomatoes, but nobody’s perfect.

Dinner was prepared by Mr. Greens. We’ve been watching Dexter (love that show!) lately. The intro has been making us want eggs and ham steak, so he made a nice version of Dexter’s breakfast. Deboned pork chop, fried egg, with chipotle hollandaise, and a side of tomato, spinach and avocado. Yum.

I need more light in my house. Jebus!

*I’ve switched to using Windows Live Writer, and have had a few snags, so we’ll see when this post ever sees the light of day.

Playing Catchup

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Sorry I've been absent - I had work out of town. In case you wondered, yes the weather was bad! My coworker and I narrowly escaped 2 tornadoes and the electricity went out in our hotel. By narrowly escaped I mean we were eating at a mexican restaurant when all the action happened. It's still relatively warm here, so we were hot all night.
Also I haven't been feeling too well, so I took a break from blogging. My cure has been TV, boyfriend, snuggly cat, and sleep. Here's a few pictures I found from Sunday though:

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We went to my parents' house Sunday to have pizza. We tried a delicious hummus spread with Galilee olivesI have no idea what galilee olives are.
a spicy artichoke spinach dip, veggies, and a medley of crackers.
My mom has a new water carafe which is quite handsome. There's a joke in the family about the word carafe. We all pronounce it "care-uh-fay".
The main meal was my mother's famous pizza, and a simple salad. The first pizza came out beautifully. I love artichoke hearts. I took two pieces, but only ate one out of a small sense of delayed gratification. I knew the next pizza was going to be even better!
The next pizza was an herb pizza with sundried tomatoes and goat cheese. We've made this before, and it's always a success. Before the oven:After:
During lunch I had a Killian's:
Plus one of these: (That's quite a hard pour - I tend to get carried away.)
I also stole a few Halloween candies. My parents hardly got any Trick-or-Treaters this year.