I’m back to blogging!!!  Man, I missed it  It’s funny how blogging has become such a huge part of my daily life and missing five whole days seems like ages!  With that said, I’ve decided to cut down on frequency of my posts because it’s too time consuming to do it every day and I don’t want it to feel like a chore.  I ran my idea by my friend Katie and my sister Inna (the two readers I know in real life) and they agreed that this should work.  I think what I’m going to try to do is give you guys a recap twice a week, say Wednesday and Saturday.  I’ll try to squeeze in additional posts of random stuff if I have time or have something super cool to share with you (btw, the bakery reviews will continue soon – and those will be separate posts)  but at least there should be some consistency with the Wed/Sat posts and hopefully I won’t be too boring  My sister told me that my pictures (and those of other bloggers) are the most important to her (and give her enough inspiration for her own cooking) so I’ll definitely continue taking lots of pictures to keep you guys coming back for more  How does this sound?  Please let me know if you have any other ideas about how I can make this blog interesting to you, without daily, journal like posts.

Ok so let’s get to this week’s recap (not on Wednesday because I was traveling)… Sorry in advance for a super long post!

I really REALLY fell off the wagon with the mindless eating challenge.  And when I fall, I really fall… it was bad.  I basically was stuffing my face Monday-Thursday (I got it out of my system now so Friday was good and I plan on being healthy going forward). I just couldn’t stop… I don’t know what happened.  So there is definitely some unphotographed food that was eaten on top of what’s here, mostly chocolate

BREAKFASTS

I made some cranberry sauce on Sunday morning using this recipe from Cooking Light.  I cut the sugar in half because I wanted to keep it pretty versatile (so I could use it on sweet and savory things).  I was ready to add more sugar if it didn’t taste sweet enough, but it was plenty sweet even with just 1/4 cup.  It came out great!  Here it is in a pot:

And here is the whole batch in tupperware ready for future use

So my Monday oats, of course, utilized this delicious goodness…

This bowl had 1/3 cup oats, 1/2 banana, some pecans, almonds, white chocolate chunks and the star ingredient, 1/4 cup of cranberry sauce.  The white chocolate chunks melted all over and were heavenly!  I wish I added more (ok, that would probably make this bowl a lot less healthy).

Tuesday breakfast: my usual banana/barney butter waffle sandwich…

 

On Wednesday I wanted to try the Bear Naked fruit and nut granola sample I recently received in the mail.  I combined it with about a cup of TJ’s nonfat European style yogurt and a juicy pear.  Yogurt ingredients: 

 

And all mixed in:

I liked this granola a lot!  It had whole almonds in it, which is a huge selling point for me… I just love nuts!  It was also a little sweet but not too sweet.  I’d definitely buy this again (although I’m still in the market to find the perfect granola so I will be trying other kinds before settling on this one)… maybe I should try making my own.  I hear it’s the best

Thursday morning breakfast was at my sister’s house in NY.  I loaded my yogurt bowl with lots of toppings.  I kind of went overboard a little

I know you can’t even see the yogurt under all that stuff… it was there though, about 1 cup of nonfat yogurt, 1/2 banana, a serving of TJ’s nutty american trek mix (my favorite!!! I was so happy she had some), a handful of frosted mini wheats and a healthy spoonful of crunchy Barney Butter.  The yogurt had kind of nasty consistency (sorry I’m spoiled with TJ’s yogurt and other greek yogurts) but all the topping more than made up for it

And to finish off breakfast I had a cupcake.  Yup, I had a cupcake for breakfast.  My sister made some and I couldn’t resist the chance to try one.  I was eating breakfast at about 10:30 (went to a yoga class in the morning) so this also counted as my mid-morning “snack.”  I wish I could have a cupcake for a snack everyday!!  Anyways, this was a carrot cake cupcake with cream cheese frosting.  Sorry it’s kind of overexposed… the frosting is practically glowing

This was the best carrot cake (cupcake) I’ve ever had!!!  Inna, I need the recipe asap.  Wait, no, I don’t want the recipe.  I don’t think I can be trusted with these things around the house.  A.mazing!!!

Here is another shot of the best carrot cake cupcake ever:

Today’s breakfast was a simple egg and cheese sandwich on a Food for Life english muffin.  It was super delicious.  I love home-made egg and cheese sandwiches and those english muffins are the bomb!  Yes, I said “the bomb” when referring to english muffins

All breakfasts were of course accompanied by cups of coffee sweetened with agave nectar.

LUNCHES

3 slices of turkey, 1 laughing cow wedge, 1/4 cup of home-made cranberry sauce on When Pigs Fly sourdough bread with some steamed broc.  I tossed most of the broccoli when I decided I just wasn’t in the mood for it.

Here is the sandwich up close.  Very delicious!

Tuesday lunch was not healthy (I kind of lost it Monday night so that’s when sh*t hit the fan).  I wanted something greasy even though I brought a healthy lunch so I went out for some pizza at Upper Crust.  This was their daily slice of tomato and basil pizza… I requested it on whole wheat dough and paper toweled away some of the oil.

This was honestly kind of disappointing.  I’ve had Upper Crust before and it was amazing, but their whole wheat crust apparently tastes like cardboard.  Good to know!  I still ate the whole thing though

Later in the day, I wanted to redeem my less than stellar pizza experience so I went to Pizzeria Regina and got a slice of their Sicilian tomato basil pizzas.  It has onions under a layer of cheese so naturally tasted pretty nasty to me  Not cool!!

Wednesday lunch was a bunch of leftovers: freekeh grains with roasted grapes in white wine/thyme sauce and some orange chicken (from Tuesday’s dinner to be discussed further).  The grapes and the chicken were both sweet so they worked well together and I still really like those freaky grains… hehe.

Thursday lunch was eaten at a meeting, so there is no picture.  I had a tiny sandwich with ham and cheese and two 1-bite brownies (this was the day I ate the cupcake after breakfast so I wasn’t very hungry).

Last lunch in this recap (ok this was today and I had to find the picture to remember what I ate… scary!):

This is a crab cake from Legal Sea Foods (we received a gift basket from my husband’s work so I baked them last night) with a simple mixed greens/tomato/cucumber/carrot salad dressed with 1T of Annie’s goddess dressing.  This was super delicious!!!

For lunch dessert I had some chocolate covered toffee:

This stuff was crunchey!  A cross-section pic just to get you salivating a bit

DINNERS

On Monday I made some beef chili in our crockpot.  I just love crockpot soups because they are ready when I get home.  This was a winner!!!  We had my parents over our house and polished the whole thing off, without blinking.  I used this recipe from Bread & Honey as the base (no onions, oil or corn used) and added a little over a pound of 96% lean ground beef.  I browned the beef on a skillet with some EVOO Pam and then just dumped everything into the crockpot and set it to 6 hours (it switches to warming mode after cooking).  Oh btw, I originally only used 1 cup of chicken broth but it was waaay too thick, not soup like at all.  I added another 1/2 cup later and it was perfectly thick but more chili like.  I’d do the same next time (and there will be a next time!).  Here is my bowl (a little less than 1/4 of the whole thing) topped with shredded 2% Cabot cheddar cheese (awesome cheese btw!) and a dollop of nonfat yogurt.  So good!!

And since we had guests over I had to make dessert.  I baked some Trader Joe’s chocolate chip dough cookies.  Unfortunately my parents were trying to behave themselves and didn’t eat nearly as much as I thought they would, so I ended up polishing them off (2.5 in total).  The whole tray…

And my first cookie:

Tuesday night since I already blew my diet I was craving Chinese food (my co-worker had it for lunch and that definitely triggered the craving).  We went out to Golden Temple in Brookline and I started with the Peach Tea cocktail.  Here I am… this is an action shot

This thing was SO sweet!  I don’t think I drank half of it.  It was pretty strong though, so I was still feeling it a little

My husband ordered some chicken wings for an appetizer.  Here is the whole dish (I think I had four of those babies)… they were the perfect balance of sweet and spicy – this was definitely the highlight of the meal!

I eat Chinese food very (!) rarely so when I do, I usually go for the orange chicken.  It’s typically fried and super unhealthy but since it’s usually a treat of sorts when I have it, I go for the real thing.  So this time was no different, I was craving it and that’s what I ordered.  Here is the dish:

Unfortunately this was kind of healthified.  Normally this would be a good thing, but I wanted the good old orange chicken I used to have back in the day without thinking twice about how bad it was for me.  This actually tasted like orange (instead of just super sweet flavor that only slightly resembles orange).  I was disappointed

My husband ordered Szechuan Pork, which we shared… and also some steamed brown rice.  Again, this is the entire dish:

I was kind of grabbing everything in random amounts from both plates so I don’t know how much I actually had… maybe 1/3 of each dish?  The pork was yummy but I was definitely upset about my un-fried chicken.  Golden Temple is actually proud of the healthy ingredients they use (although they certainly serve fried versions of foods) so that’s probably a good thing for a time when I don’t want to be unkind to my waistline.  The atmosphere is also very nice… definitely temple like.  I snapped a photo, but I don’t think it does it justice.

We’ll definitely be back!  I’ll just ask more questions next time to make sure I’m getting exactly what I’m looking for, whether I’m going for the healthy or the unhealthy option.

Oh, and of course I had a fortune cookie for dessert.  It has a stupid message.  I don’t remember what it was… you’re not missing any words of wisdom here

Wednesday night dinner was in NY.  My sister wanted us to go out to Pala for wine and pizza.  I had two disappointing slices the day before so I decided to have pizza again to hopefully redeem myself.  Pala is awesome!!

I started with a glass of a Tuscan sangiovese.  It came in a stemless glass – so modern!

Do you see the little rosemary bush on a plate?  So cool!!  You can use it for your pizza too.  They actually bake rosemary straight into the dough.  Yum!

While waiting for our pizza, I snapped a photo of their pizza counter.  Again this picture totally does not do the decor justice – it was modern, classy and cool.

We got some pizza dough bites to snack on.  I had just 2 or 3 before we got the pizza since I didn’t want to spoil my appetite, but after dinner I really dug into this bowl.  I’m so bad sometimes!  These were really really yummy, though, so at least I was mindlessly munching on delicious food

And here is the star of the dinner: romana pizza with sweet pecorino cheese, field mushrooms, tomato sauce and fresh parsley.  It was so unique – they use the highest quality ingredients.  You taste that in every bite.  I loved it! I ate 1/2 of this…

Thursday dinner was on the train back to Boston.  I grabbed a sandwich at Pret a Manger for the ride – train food is gross!  This was a balsamic chicken/avocado sandwich.  Very delicious!  I wish there was more chicken in it – it was perfectly marinated!

+ Dessert…

Tonight’s dinner couldn’t be simpler (I’m back to more “normal” eating): TJ’s mushroom/provolone ravioli with some peas.  No sauce required.  This was pretty yummy but it had onions, so I won’t be buying these again.  I hate when I forget to check the label!!

LOTS AND LOTS OF SNACKS

This is going to be a lot of pictures!  There was a lot (!) of mindless (and mindful) snacking.  I took pictures of most things but as mentioned before there were a few treats that snuck into my mouth because I felt like being gross.  I can recall a Dunkin Donuts Boston Creme donut and an apple.  I know there were others too… I just can’t remember right now.  So yeah, here goes…

Random work trail mix:

The most amazing fudgy cookie:

Here is another shot of it.  I wish I got my hands on more of them!!!

A lot of grapes (I ate a lot more than this handful):

A pistachio/apricot blondie.  My friend Katie made them using this Martha Steward recipe, replacing dried apricots for dried pears, I can’t believe it’s not butter instead of real butter and I think whole wheat flour instead of white.  They turned out so good!  I think I’ll be making them in the near future.  Seriously delicious!!

I think this is called toffee bark (?)  I don’t know… it was super crunchy.  I went back for seconds, and thirds, and maybe fourths of this.  My memory is blurry at this point.  I had a lot of this.  It was amazing.

Au Bon Pain‘s creme de fleur:

Inside:

Legal Sea Food’s boston cream pie:

Edible Arrangements fruit sticks:

(Every bite of this was savored… I’ve been dying to try these forever).  This Baked brownie was delicious, although I would say Flour Bakery’s is still the best brownie I’ve ever had!  Here is a side shot (excuse my nasty chipped nails)

WORKOUTS

Monday: 45 minute weight training + 15 minutes elliptical = 4 HBBC points

Wednesday: 15 minutes abs + 45 minutes weight training = 3.5 HBBC points

Thursday: 90 minutes yoga = 3 HBBC points

I know, so much eating and hardly any exercise.  I’l be better… I promise!  Total for the challenge: 38.55

And that ends this super long recap.  Sorry it was so long… hopefully I got your drooling at least one time  I promise to keep these shorter in the future.  I just had a lot of catching up to do.  Hope you’re having a great day!  We have a crazy snow storm in Boston which means we’re staying in and watching a movie (there may be wine involved).

See you tomorrow with a post!