BIG breakfast & weekend re-cap

Wireless is back at the hotel! Hallelujah! Seriously, I was really beginning to miss it. Pathetic, I know, but for a blogger without a day job, what the heck else was I going to do?

After going almost three days (gasp!) with only one picture-less post, I feel I owe my loyal readers (ha!) a bit of a re-cap:

First, this morning (since it’s more timely–it’s the journalist in me):

BIG BREAKFAST! Plain yogurt flavored with 1/2 banana, mashed, and 1/2 tbsp Trader Joe’s Mango Butter, blueberries and granola, AND Great Harvest whole-grain cinnamon raisin bread with 1 tbsp Justin’s Maple Almond Butter, the other half of the banana and a tablespoon of maple syrup. I was craving maple this morning.

It was 526 calories and felt pretty heavy in my stomach on the way to the gym, but I’m glad I had it! It powered me through an hour of Pilates, 45 minutes of hard swimming (did some sprints!), and kept me going for an additional two hours of putzing around after I got back from the gym. Usually I’m RAVENOUS by the time I pull out of the parking lot of the gym, if not before!

Back to Saturday:

This was my post-run breakfast on Saturday. I went out for a quick three miles while Andrew took Hadrian on a walk/ball-throwing session, then we both did a nice four-miler in the neighborhood near our hotel. This is one of my best shots yet, so I had to share.

I love granola. LOVE. This is Wegmans Granola with Raisins, and unfortunately, it’s only OK. I mean, what did I expect? It’s just light and not very cluster-y. I’d rather it be chock-full of goodies and in big chunks. Alas, it was cheap. It was the peach, blueberries and coconut milk that really did it for me!

(I did order the OpenSky cherry chocolate granola fundraiser that Kath recently sent out in support of another blogger–I would want some nice stranger to order granola to raise money if I got cancer, too–so that should be here soon. Will post when it arrives!)

The rest of Saturday, as I said here, was filled with laziness and movies. Mad Max is STILL on TV as of yesterday and if Andrew puts it on one more time, I might go through the roof.

We tried a new church Sunday, and liked it enough to go back. We’ve been a bit discouraged in the church department, so we’re excited that we found something we felt was authentic and like it could be ‘home’ to us. If we decide it is, I’ll let you know!

As Abigail will be leaving for college in less than a week (where did the summer go?), we popped over there for an impromptu visit. I brought the computer and snagged some of their internet to catch up on calorie-counting (I was trying not to get obsessive about it, but I’m less than a pound from my goal and my OCD tendencies make it hard to just ‘let things go.’) and check my email.

Did you know you can pickle things just by putting them in the juice from your pickles? I didn’t…I think I read it in this month’s Shape. I’ve pickled green beans before, but always using the canning method and pickling salt. The article said you basically just throw veggies into the juice after you finish off a jar of pickles. Go figure.

So, I bought a half-pound of green beans (for 50 cents!) and blanched and shocked them before packing them into the jar:

Don’t they have great color?

I also made two batches of Jeni’s sorbets, but they will get their own post 🙂

dinner theater

I made a recipe from scratch tonight. Well, mostly from scratch.

Yet again, I was on a quest to empty our freezer… I happened to have an abundance of frozen cranberries (you gotta stock up when they’re in season!), and a bag of pearl onions, and more ground beef. I remembered a brisket with cranberries recipe from Everyday Food that I’d found a couple years ago and have made a few times that we love. How could I turn that into a recipe with ground beef?

You make it into soup! I had a beef soup bone in Andrew’s mom’s freezer (points for using up even MORE from our frozen stash!), so I boiled that and made some broth. Then I made meatballs with parsley (also frozen into ice cubes from our garden), sun-dried tomatoes and herbs.

I tried to make them as small as possible–kinda like italian wedding soup. I assembled them early in the day and then refrigerated them.

I boiled the cranberries down with a little tomato sauce, tomato paste and garlic. It smelled awesome! Can I just say that I am SO READY to have a house? I need more than two burners, and my knives need to be sharpened and I just miss my kitchen stuff. Moving on.

I rolled the meatballs in flour and browned them in a skillet, then added them to the soup. I added the last of our whole-wheat egg noodles (score!) and cooked until they were al dente.

By the time I served up the soup, the cranberries had all but disappeared.

Andrew’s face said it all when he tasted the broth–too tart! It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t the “beefy” soup flavor I was going for. So much for making something from scratch! I saved the leftovers but discarded the broth; I’m going to try to find a fancy-schmancy spaghetti sauce at Wegmans tomorrow to use with it for dinner.

We rushed out the door to catch one of the last performances of “As You Like It” at Shakespeare in the Park. Each summer (for the last 36 years!), the troupe has been performing most nights (all but Mondays) in Delaware Park and it’s free. You can bring lawn chairs or blankets, food and drink. In retrospect, we should have packed a picnic dinner or picked something up on the way, as most people did. Lots of people were drinking wine. So fun.

Next year we’ll have to be more prepared with chairs (we brought a blanket from the room), sweatshirts and dinner. I so wanted to snack, but was full-ish from dinner.

We ended up leaving at intermission because we were cold and Andrew was a bit bored. I had gotten into it, but it was pretty hard to follow since it’s Shakespeare, we didn’t have a great view, we arrived late and neither of us knew the plot. Next time we’ll brush-up on the particular play before going.

We didn’t want to end our night just yet, and I was craving some hot tea, so we went to Cafe Aroma in the Elmwood section of town. Very alternative, very trendy, very “happening.” I caved and split a cupcake with Andrew, but stuck to tea to drink. I did try sips of his white mocha–YUM.

I’m looking forward to my laid-back (but hopefully productive!) Saturday!

my chef/cobb salad

It feels like early fall here today. I guess that might be because it IS ‘early fall’ since there is snow by Halloween here. It’s not even the middle of August yet…

My run this morning was fantastic. Blue skies, enough of a breeze to give you goose bumps… I even wore a t-shirt, which for this tank-top-only girl, means it was cool. Running in the park here this morning reminded me on Montreal. I can’t wait to visit Quebec again.

We had just about a serving of honey ham left in the fridge, plus all the fixings for a great salad, so I decided that’s what I would have for lunch today. (I sent Andrew to work with a yogurt, fruit and chips so I could have the meat!)

While I love all the flavors that go into your typical chef or cobb salad (avocado, deli meat, bacon, bleu cheese, egg), it’s not often I have everything on-hand at home and they are pretty dangerous menu items at restaurants, so I don’t eat them much.

My lunch was absolutely BRIMMING with goodness! The bottom was 100% spinach (not baby, the kind you have to stem–it lasts way longer in the fridge) and the toppings included: 1 oz. cheddar cheese and 1 hard-boiled egg (both nabbed from the breakfast bar this morning), 1/4 avocado, cucumber, carrots, celery, green onion and about 2.5 oz. deli ham.

I topped it with a serving (2 tbsp) of Wegmans Yogurt Ranch dressing, which is only 80 calories–SWEET!

Actually, that’s what the salad was: sweet. The honey ham was sweeter than I anticipated, so the whole salad took on a less-than-salad-y flavor. The total calorie count for the salad was 460, which is somewhat high (for a salad) but since this was FULL of protein, it should keep me full for quite a while.

And because I like my salads fully mixed before eating them, I dumped it all into a large bowl, topped with dressing (1 tbsp at a time to see if I needed both–I did) and stirred.

Voila! Can you tell I’m using Andrew’s un-ironed shirts as tablecloths?