Surprise! Food Blog!

So I haven’t been here in a long time. But recently I realized that some of my eating habits were getting a little… sloppy. And I realized that I probably would not be making some of the same choices if I were still food blogging. One day last week I decided to resume with the picture taking even if I knew I wouldn’t have time to post a blog.

Here’s some stuff I ate/photographed/noticed:

fish tacos from place near work

one package = 6 PPV

This is an example of something I would not have eaten or chosen if I were “actively” food blogging. But I did eat it. I chose to eat half a package which was 3 PPV. But.. hmmm.

Moosewod Gypsy soup

This soup is so awesome and comforting. I think I ate it 3x last week.

Satsuma orange

I’m eating tons of these. Zero points and so so good.

tomato-onion scramble

I got to work early one day last week, and the nice lady at the lunch counter made me breakfast.

fancy tea sandwiches

I went to a fancy holiday tea last week and boy was it yummy. They also had a gorgeous arrangement of fruit.

tangerines, blackberries, pomegranate seeds

required to wear fancy hats

So that’s the highlights of this week. There have been a fair number of holiday celebrations and I am managing to hold my own.

Better Sporadic Than Never?

So as all of you (two) readers must have noticed, posting here has dropped off as in lemmings off a cliff. I’ve just been working insane hours, more than I have in my adult life, and I have not had the time nor energy to post my food. I am still taking my photos 90% of the time, but as for the uploading and cord-finding and writing and linking, well………. uh. Not so much.

I’ve decided not to shut this blog down, but to surprise my readers with posts every now and then, and when I have something to say. Nobody needs to see a parade of endless mugs of coffee, do they? But sometimes I DO eat things, and they are either so blogworthy I just have to mention them. Because they are delicious or strange, or because I made some kind food choice that is remarkable (to me, anyway).

Here are a few highlights since I’ve been here last.

Yesterday I went to the hippiest grocery store I’ve ever been in. It makes Whole Foods look like NPR. Anyway, they had this great vegan hot-food bar and I got a beautiful snack of two kinds of eggplant, brown rice and quinoa. And heaps of self-satisfaction.

Oh. Just when I said “no more mug photos” I realize I have to post this. It mysteriously appeared in my kitchen cabinet. It makes me laugh no end. Maybe it came from Junior. I have no idea. I just love it. What does it mean???

I had some of this irresistable jam in my oatmeal this morning. YUMBERRIES. For real!

Okay, now here’s a story. Anyone who knows me know that I have a terrible weakness for macaroni and cheese. I LOVE IT. So a few weeks back I was really, really hungry. I found myself at a Wolfgang Puck fast foodie kind of restaurant. I ordered a salad (also ordered below) but I was sooooooooo longing for that mac and cheese. I paced around that counter like a shark for about 15 minutes before I ordered. I ordered the mac and cheese.

And guess what. It was not all that. I ate about 3 forkfuls and it just was not sending me into paroxysms of ecstasy. So what you see here, dear readers, is what I LEFT on the plate. I LEFT THIS! UNEATEN!

Can I have about ten bravo stars, please? Because this was a huge breakthrough for me. It was GOOD mac and cheese but it just was not GOOD ENOUGH.

The salad, on the other hand, was wonderful.

Did I show you my insanely large bowl o’hummus topped with eggplant? MMMMMMMMMMMM. Considering that we normally measure hummus in tablespoons rather than VATS, this is a gigantic portion. I ate about 1/3 of it and then waddled out.

Totally worthy treat: pumpkin cupcake from the Cupkates Truck. Made me SO happy.

“First Date Soup” (which I made for Mr. Mcbody on our first date, in 1982!) aka Moosewood cookbook Spinach soup. SO GOOD. And quite the aphrodisiac.

So that’s what I’ve been up to the past few weeks.

How about you? What’s the most memorable thing you’ve eaten this week?

Rainy Day: Chili & More Chocolate

It poured rain all day today. I decided, since I had nothing scheduled, that I would spend the day reading and hanging out. It was very lazy but amazing since I never do this.

Started out by sleeping late and then, oatmeal.

Later on, I had ideas about what I might like to prepare and eat but I did NOT want to go out to shop. We often fall into the ridiculous notion that “we have nothing to eat here” but really, look at our refrigerator.

And our pantry (sorry for the blur; you get the idea). It is insane how much food we have.

I scrounged around and found this packet for black bean soup/chili.

It took a good 3 hours to cook, which pretty much explains why it’s been sitting in the pantry for I don’t know how long. It came out pretty good.

Meanwhile,  I continued experimenting with various chocolate concoctions.

The Fiber One chocolate and PB Haystacks: Um, not very tasty. I’m not bringing them to the event on Wednesday.

The choco-fudge bites from the WeightWatchers.com site: tasty but tiny. I sprinkled half with powdered sugar and half with Mexican cocoa. Both good.

Finally, I tried some chocolate-dipped strawberries. For some reason I can never get the chocolate to be liquid enough to actually dip. It was way too thick, and a little lumpy. And didn’t stick to the strawberries very well. However: very tasty.

Chocolate! Chocolate! (and chicken)

Wellll, I didn’t eat breakfast. My bad. I just got distracted (again) and then it was too late so I just had a brunchy kind of lunch.

Half a pumpkin bolani, some carrot sticks and hummus. I tried the hummus on the bolani and… blech! So I added a little dollop of garlic yogurt cheese after I took this picture.

Went for a bracing and wonderful 5k walk in the RAIN with my WW BFF. Yay! We discussed our upcoming Chocolate Social at Weight Watchers next week.

I had this snack in the car after our walk.

For dinner, I made Jamie Oliver’s Chicken with Milk recipe, which several people have enthusiastically (no, passionately) recommended to me over the years, but which I have not been able to make sans Dutch oven. It DID make the chicken meat unbelievably tender and juicy, but it was a tad bland. I did have two helpings.  With rice. Yum yum. We also had a very nice salad.

It was full of these amazing soft giant cloves of garlic which were sooooooo good.

After dinner, I momentarily forgot about my after-dinner baking task and I had two Mallomar cookies. I have quite a history with these cookies, which I won’t go into now, BUT I have written a poem about Mallomars, and essay about Mallomars, and I am currently working on a solo performance piece that features Mallomars. Trivia point: how many of you know that Jean Nidetch (WHO? The founder of Weight Watchers!!) loved Mallomars and she used to hide them in her clothes dryer. In fact it was her obsession with these cookies that drove her to start WW.

But one of the highlights of the evening was this: a glass of whole milk over ice, which is something I might prefer over even a milkshake. I adore milk, and whole milk is the best of the best, and I love it icy icy icy cold. But I rarely drink it these days. There was some leftover from the chicken dish, so I had this as part of my dessert. It was almost better than the Mallomars.

After dinner, I made a batch of peanut butter mini chocolate cupcakes (WHOA! Yes, I was on a roll) for my upcoming Weight Watchers chocolate social event. (I am so excited about this) I decided I needed to test it out to see if they taste good, before actually bringing them to WW members. I think they passed the test. Slightly dry. I am considering adding some applesauce, and also cutting down on the baking time. They LOOKED done way before the timer went off. But they were truly good. I ate one and packed the rest up for my mom to take to church in the morning.

Grilled cheese & tomato!!

Didn’t eat until after workout. I went straight from gym to shower to a work meeting where they were ordering takeout. I got some pesto pasta chicken salad. I couldn’t decide between the carbiness of a pasta salad vs the carbiness of a big sandwich. I took the pasta salad and sort of regretted it. It was really oily and the pasta was too chewy and I didn’t know if it was because it was al dente or stale. But I was really hungry. I ate the whole thing.

Late WW training. I had a plum and piece of cheese on the run, then ate a bunch of grapes and strawberries at the meeting.

I was hungry when I got home. Made the best grilled cheese and tomato ever, with more tomato and avocado on the side. It was seriously one of the yummiest sandwiches I’ve ever had. Yay for that panini grill!!

I was shocked at how good that sandwich was. Partly it was the key ingredients: Dubliner cheese and Early Girl tomatoes. The best of everything. I’ve been searching out an amazing grilled cheese for a month, ever since I missed the legendery Toastymelts grilled cheese stand/truck. Little did I know I could make the best grilled cheese ever in my own kitchen. YUM.

And… Some beautiful concord grapes!

Oatmeal, Salad, Pot Roast and.. Choo Choo!

Not the most thrilling food day ever, but, whatever! I ate. Here it is.

Started with my beloved Better Oats oatmeal (I love it!) with craisins and almonds. YUM.

Lunch was salad bar at place near my work. I was working with a colleague yesterday, an uncommon thing. (I’m usually alone) She looked at my salad container and said, “You don’t eat very much.” I was sort of taken aback. Inexplicably, I said, “I have chicken in here,” and pointed out some little chicken chunks among the other stuff. She said, “Oh, okay!!” as if that were a satisfying explanation. It made me think, what was THAT all about! And I wondered if it fell into “No More Fat Talk” week. I was sort of scratching my head. People don’t usually comment on my food. On the other hand, she seemed nonplussed that I took a picture of my “not very much” food. Ha!

My job was an actual workout yesterday! I’m training to do these assessments where I have to physically assess whether a person can do a job they’ve been offered. Yesterday we tested out the Railroad Worker assessment. It was HARD. I failed every test. It’s a good thing it’s not my dream to become a railroad worker. Here I am trying not to fall off the “train.”

LONG day. Led my last Thursday-night WW meeting for a while (sob!). A bunch of smaller meetings are being consolidated and mine is one of them. I’m really going to miss them.

Got home. Leftover pot roast (YUM) and a WW mini bar. Chocolate pretzel is my fave.

 

New Dutch Oven! Pot Roast! Yum!

Back to the food blogging!

So, I’ve decided to focus on the food and leaving off the morning coffee. I don’t generally photoblog every glass of water I drink. Just take it for granted that EVERY morning, I start it out with a mug of hot coffee with half and half. No sugar. That’s it. They pretty much all look like this.

I just had a small piece of Ak-Mak cracker with some peanut butter before going out to work out this morning. I forgot to take a picture. (oops!)

After coming back, I had a beautiful piece of pumpkin bolani with garlic-cheese on top. SO good. Like a toasted pumpkin pastry. Delicious. Man, I love bolanis.

A while after that, I was still a bit hungry so I had a couple of… tomatoes!

dry farmed Early Girls

I am going to be so sad when these little babies aren’t available anymore. They are SO GOOD.

I was very excited about dinner because last week, I got my very first Dutch oven. I’ve wanted one forever but finally decided to go for it. It’s an inexpensive ($49 including free shipping) Lodge. Isn’t it pretty? It also weighs about a metric ton.

My first recipe was something that somebody recommended on Twitter: Cooking Light’s Classic Pot Roast. I had bookmarked that a while ago in anticipation of this day.

It took a long time to cook, so I threw it all in the oven and ate it when I got home from WW. It was delicious! and it was almost all gone, so I think it was a hit with the fam as well.

After dinner, I had some trail mix from JFK airport that I’d bought for my trip, but didn’t eat on the plane. It hit the spot.

I’m going to bed just a little hungry tonight. I’d saved up my points for the pot roast, but didn’t end up eating a huge portion. But that’s fine.

Do you have a Dutch Oven? What’s your favorite recipe you make with it?