raindrops on roses & whiskers on kittens

Now that’s it’s “summer” we have been sleeping with the bedroom windows open, but the thunder and lightning were so INSANE last night, I had to channel my inner Von Trapp and sing “My Favorite Things” to calm myself down…it was scary!

It woke me up it was so loud.  And just so you know, normally I sleep like a rock, so this was no joke.

Clearly I had a rough night’s sleep – enter coffee :)

These are a few of my favorite things…

Peach chobz (not as good as blueberry) and a bowl of melon.

I had a mid-morning snack of peanut butter + banana, just to tide me over until lunch.

Once I was full and fueled, I began my Hawaii preparations (planning meals for Kyle while I’m gone, downloading new music and yoga sessions on my iTunes, etc.) – sure it may be a bit premature (I leave on Sunday), but I know I have lots in the coming week, so the type A in me wanted to get things rolling.

That really worked up my appetite!  Lunch time!

I made a sammich with Za’atar tofu (baked with Sabrina’s spice mix last week) on one side, and roasted red pepper hummus on the other.  I already need another tub!

 

Fan-freakin-tastic.  Random question: Do you guys cut your sandwiches in half before eating them?  Or do you bite right in?  If you cut them in half, which half do you eat first?  I always cut mine diagonally, and eat the smaller half first.  That way I don’t get sad when I finish the first half because I still have the bigger part left :)  Haha, I’m a freak, I know.

Anyways, I feel like soy products have been getting a bad rap lately, so I just wanna say – errrthang in moderation kiddos!!  Tofu isn’t the devil, especially if you prepare it yourself.

On the side I had apple slices with a mini-tub of Tribe hummus…I may have dipped the sammie in the hummus, too (TWO kinds of hummus on ONE sandwich – now that’s my kind of meal)!

You know what this means…fresh lemonade!!

Lunch dessert = dried fruit platter with raw cow hide mango, pineapple, and papaya spears.

The skies parted, so I sprinted to the gym…my workout was good, not great.  It felt good to get my blood pumping, but the whole time I was wishing I was outside :(  On the plus side, I had the new Black Eyed Peas cd AND Jillian’s podcast (thanks Sarah!!) to distract me. 

I did some very necessary shopping on my way home…

I was hardly in the door when I ripped into these babies!  I had a obscenely embarrassing amount (TEN).  Cinnamon may even be better than the original!  The HUGE sugar crystals on top were the best part.  SoSoSoGood!

Even after half the box, I wasn’t full, so I crunched into this bright red loverrr.

And sipped on pounded a Cosmic Cranberry Kombucha (try saying THAT 5 times fast).

In case you were worried, I replenished my Sabra stash today. 

I have GOT to get a hold on myself..I bought 4 different flavors (3 of which were Sabra).  Can’t wait to see Kyle’s reaction when he opens the fridge…

For dinner I dove right into the classic Sabra (FIRST with a fork, and then with an english muffin).

Since yesterday’s “nachos” were such a success…I went with round two of the veggie slices “cheesy” chips – which I then decided could ALSO be dipped in hummus.  I mean c’mon, why not?! 

Who didn’t see this coming…haha.

Once my carb cravings were properly met (and surpassed), I decided to get some other food groups in (wait, hummus isn’t it’s own food group?) and made a plate filled with yum.

Mark your calendars kids, because this will go down in history as one of THE SINGLE best dinners of my life.

Lookie lookie: Chickpeas, edamame, brown rice, tofu chunks, shredded carrots, broccoli slaw, red bell pepps, and dried cranberries all a bed of spinach.

Oh.Em.Gee.

Beeeee-YOOT!

I was quite content after this bomb dindin.  I had some iced tea which required NO ice since this mug was stored in the freezer (the water freezes in the outside part) – so COOL! 

Like a built in cozie!

Eventually it was time for the big D.

Melted carob chips + PB + toasted Alvarado Street bread = mmmm!

This rocked me right into a food coma.  I was barely able to pack my lunch for work tomorrow before the zzzzzzs kicked in.

It’s sunny honey

Sunday came and went and I think I hardly blinked!  Normally weekends that I work creep by so sloooooooowly, but this weekend was over in a flash, which is fine by me, since I have Monday off. 

Sorry to the rest of you with normal work schedules!

Back to Sunny-day, though.

SO excited to try my cute ‘lil tub-o-Tribe hummus. LOVE me some humdaddy, right Brooke!

I sliced an apple up for increased dunking pleasure, but the hummus made it’s way to the salad more than anything else…

YUM!

I also had a new CLIF flav – Cranberry Apple Cherry.  Mr. Clif can do no wrong.  It was the perfect chewy consistency, kind like a cobbler, but in bar form.  Blueberry crisp is still my number one, but this will def be purchased again. 

There are dried papaya spears and organic sugar coated ginger cubes in the bag on top (that’s so effing foggy it can hardly be considered a ziplock).  Let’s just say, I can prob skip the Kombucha for today because of all the probiotics growing on that year old baggie. 

At what point does the excuse of being a hippie cross the line to becoming a homeless person?

I may just be there.  And yet, I still saved the baggie for tomorrow.

Nothing too thrilling to report on the job front.  I had one patient sign out AMA today (against medical advice), but he wasn’t a cardiac surgery patient, so I wasn’t too worried.  He was one of the psych patients I mentioned yesterday…and seriously HOW do you reason with a man who says he has to leave because in the middle of the night someone put a knife to his throat?  Ummmm…pretty sure that’s not in the night RN’s job description.  I managed to convince him to stay for a few IVs worth of electrolytes, but after a lifetime on acid, there’s only so much of the liver you can salvage in 48 hours…if you haven’t heard of hepatic encephalopathy, look it up – if that doesn’t convince you to stay off drugs, I don’t know what will.

By the time I got home, my tummy was grrrrowling, so I threw a plate of randoms together asap, including:

My last home-made seitan cutlet :(

A shredded zucchini, broccoli slaw, and carrot salad (vampires beware – I took off my knuckle with the peeler, so there was some added iron in there too…). 

Alvarado Street bread with the rest of the Sabra hummus solo.

THEN (as if I hadn’t already reached my hummus capacity for the day…) I opened another SABRA container.  Can you believe this was my first time I trying the roasted red pepper flavor!?!?

Holy Yum!  I couldn’t stop myself from chowing down.

After this slice, I couldn’t stop!  I had THREE more!

Mmm…

While I ate, Kyle turned on True Blood (apparently he discovered Season 1 On Demand, and made his way through 8 episodes this weekend…).  See, I’m not the only one with an addictive personality!  Obsessed much?  Next thing I know, I got sucked in (pun VERY intended). 

Dessert #1

Dessert #2

Dessert #3 – ick!  Sorry Erin, but these are just not able to satisfy my PM sweet tooth.  I can handle one piece MAX, and then I start coughing hacking up a lung.

MY place

Workity work.

I was up with the cock-a-doodle-doo this morning…I’m not sure why, but for the fifth day in a row I woke up at 4 am on the dot (without my alarm even going off).  Whatever.  I dragged myself to the subway, and woke up a bit more along the way…

What’s there to say.  Work was work was work was work.  I was craaaazy busy all day, but not really in a good way.  I felt like I was in slow motion and I couldn’t get myself organized, which is so unlike me.  Blah.  I don’t wanna talk about it anymore.

This is for you Courtney!!

The one and only, seaweed salad!  The ingredients read: organic seaweed, organic sesame seeds, organic ginger, organic green onion, organic tamari, and sesame oil.

It is SO good.  Although a bit on the oily side, I usually mix it with other things (salad, veggies, etc.) which neutralizes it a bit…or at least greases up the rest of my food…

Here it is in today’s lunch salad:

Other tuperware attendees included spinach, clover sprouts, broccoli slaw, shredded carrots, dried cranberries, raisins, and heart of palm.

The rest of my packed goodies: Newman’s Own dried apricots, berries gomega odwalla bar, apple, dried mangoes, and Ocean Spring’s harvest of heaven fruit chips.

I was still starving by the time I got off work…

TGIF!

For dinner, Kyle and I decided to do a little something special.  Friday night dinner date!  After I got off work we met for some bomb ass grub at….HUMMUS PLACE

Be jealous.  Be VERY jealous.  It was a cozy little place, but believe me, what it lacked in space, it made up for ten-fold in flavor!

Falafel balls, hummus masabacha (whole chick peas, olive oil & spices), quinoa salad, lebane, hummus tahini (tahini, olive oil & spices), and the most amazing, PUFFY, whole wheat pitas on earth!

Ummm, yeah, it was horrible.

We enjoyed the nice weather and walked home…

And as we both made playlists for our 10K tomorrow morning, I enjoyed this plum and a bowl of dried cranberries and carob covered raisins for dessert.

LAME-o was her NAME-o

I woke up super early for work today, washed my face, brushed my teeth, threw my afro into a pony, and grabbed my pre-packed lunch from the fridge…when the day kinda took a rough turn…

Tumbler full of coffee meet hardwood floor. 

 

Blog world meet the culprit.

**Gena, I TOLD you I shouldn’t be trusted with a cleaver!!!

I headed off to work grumpy and non-caffeinated.  Not a great start to the day.

Today’s pre-packed eats:

Big ‘ol salad, strawberry/pomegranate odwalla bar, apple, dried papaya spears and mangoes. 

Spinach, broccoli slaw, shredded carrots, clover sprouts, heart of palm (!!), and BBQ tempeh.

The newbie to today’s salad was LightLife’s tempehtations.

It was the oh-so-clever-name that won me over :)

They have a few different flavors, but I figured I’d play it relatively safe, and go with BBQ.

The verdict?  Not too shabby.  The BBQ flavor wasn’t overpowering and they weren’t merely cubes of tempeh drenched in BBQ sauce (which I was afraid it would be).  They definitely added a nice nutty flavor and slightly crumbly texture to the salad.  But salads are about the only thing I could see myself using these for.  Would I buy them again?  Probably not, but only because they are so pricey.  The convenience factor still doesn’t outweigh the price tag in my opinion (and that says a lot coming from a lazy ass like me).

I did succumb and stop into Starbucks…but after this morning’s big spill, it was a necessity!

Things started to look up after that – one of my patients told me she loved me and I that I didn’t look “a day over 16” about 500 times. 

I didn’t even slip her extra percocets either!  She was relatively alert awake and oriented, so I’ll take it. 

Anyways, work was work.  Another day, another dollar 50 cents.

I was hungry hungry by the time I got home, so dinner was a random bunch of leftovers.

The above assorted plate consists of 3 HUGE home-made seitan cutlets, BN squash, sesame seed/seaweed salad, steamed broccoli slaw/shredded carrot mash up.

You KNOW I mixed that shiz all up…mmmmm!

Totes satisfied. 

As per usual, I ended the say on a sweet note…natural AND dried fruit.  Why choose just one?

 

Back to the grind manana.  Peace out bloggies!!

Oh and for anyone who asked me yesterday about making seitan…DO IT!!!!  It’s so ridiculously easy, you’ll kick yourself for not trying it sooner (I did).  I can seriously see myself making this every single week.  I think I love seitan better than any other vegan “meat” so if you aren’t a huge fan of tempeh (like me) or you’re trying to limit your tofu intake (estrogen check)…go for seitan.  I promise you won’t regret it.

Now I’m really out.

oil…from the gland of an otter

Apparently I have to choose between saving for a wedding, and keeping up with the food blog fads.  So, in the interest of staying engaged, I’m unable to juice for breakfast. 

No, not that kind of juice.  This kind.

So I settled for the poor man’s version (aka a smoothie). 

Into the blender went: 1/2 cup almond milk, 1/2 cup OJ, 3 oz POM, applesauce cup, frozen plain tofu cubes…

and the juice of 1 orange (hand squeezed).  Nice before and after, no?

The predominant color is the almond milk and plain tofu.  Good thing the POM brightened it up a bit, otherwise it may have looked a bit like Livy’s diaper.

I had to use the most massive thing I could find to put it in (there was just too much)!  My phone is there to show you just how big it actually was.  That’s what she said x2.

BTW, how appropriate is it that the hugest thing I could find was a beer stein from my UCLA days…gotta rep the alma mater (sorry Caroline).

This held me over for a LONG time.  Like, hours.

Eventually, I did need a little java to get me going.  Topped with froth and a dash of cinnamon.

I had a few treats to try out for lunch. 

Anyone ever heard of Za’atar before?  I hadn’t, but if you’re interested you can find out more here.  Basically, it’s a staple spice used in Arabic cuisine, and is believed to make the body and mind strong.  Plus, Sabra can do no wrong in my eyes, so it was a pretty safe “gamble.” 

 

I sliced up some (3!!) apples, popped open my can of Ocean Spring’s Harvest of Heaven Mixed Veggies snacks and dug in…

I practically inhaled this flavor of hummus!  Is it just me, or did Sabra just come out with a bunch of NEW flavors?  The other day at the store there were so many types I’d never seen before, and I had a seriously hard time not buying 5 tubs at once.  The size of our fridge was the only thing that held me back. 

That’s not even the normal 7 oz container, it’s a 14 oz tub!  Practically a VAT    …told you I inhaled it!

As for the Harvest of Heaven Veggie chips, they were decent. 

Pros: They weren’t as salty as I was expecting (47 mg per serving, 2% daily value), and didn’t taste greasy or leave my fingers all oily.  Plus, the nutritionals are pretty good (NO artificial preservatives, artificial flavors, MSG, wheat, gluten, nuts, corn, or added sugar).  There are a wide variety of vegetables, too, including sweet potato, taro, okra, yam, pumpkin, carrot, and green bean – all of which actually tasted like the actual vegetable, but in a chip form.  Not too shabby.  Plus they were thick enough to hold a LOT of hummus, and that’s the only thing that really matters, right?

Cons:  Some of these vegetables weren’t exactly meant to be chips, so the flavors weren’t amazing (ie taro).  Luckily I’m quick on my toes.  Easy solution – add a pound of hummus, and voila!  Any vehicle to get hummus to my mouth faster and easier works for me. 

In the end, I liked Ocean Spring’s Harvest of Heaven Mixed Fruit chips better, but these were still good, healthy alternatives to normal chips.

A bit later I had a Strawberry Chobz and a couple of dried pineapple rings.  Then, after my multi-course lunch, I headed to the gym (finally).

Stats: 60 min on the elliptical, 15 min on the bike, 15 min arms/abs on the mat

It felt great to finally be exercising again.  Woohoo!  Unfortunately, I’m working all weekend, so it’ll be a while ‘til I can get my cardio on again, which is why I made sure I had a solid sweat sesh.

I have no idea what I was doing the rest of the day, but next thing I knew my tummy was growling…dinner time!

I had to repeat my recent “cheesy” garlic bread because it was oh-so-tasty!  2 slices of toast + vegan buttah + vegan parm + garlic salt = Mmmm…

 

In order to even out the butter to substance ratio in my food, I enjoyed the toast alongside a veggie packed salad.  In this salad was half an avocado, cherry tomatoes, shredded carrots, broccoli slaw, cukes, and clover sprouts on a bed of spinach.  The other half of the avocado I ate on the side (plain with a dash heaping mountain of salt). 

I could live off of avocado alone.  Seriously. 

Anyone wanna move to Mexico with me and grow an avocado tree?  We wouldn’t need much with the nice weather and a life time supply of guacamole…

After Kyle got home and ate, I was getting a little stir crazy so we decided to go for a walk.  Perfect night for a PM stroll…

 

I had a bowl of berries (above) before we headed out…and carob covered raisins with medjool dates (below) after we got back.

Who missed my mega dried fruit desserts?  I did!  I did!!

Work tomorrow, so I’m off to hit the hay.  Happy weekend to the rest of you :)