Happy Memorial Day

Like I said yesterday, I had to work today. But, I didn't start until almost 11 and went out for an hour lunch midday, so that was nice. I couldn't even get myself out of bed until 9:40, which is usually about the time I'm supposed to leave. Guess it was good luck that today that was (sort of) okay.

For a quick breakfast I finished up the last of the Lucky's breakfast and also added in an english muffin topped with vegan "butter" and lingonberry jam. I also had hot water with lemon squeezed in. I always mean to have this every morning, but rarely do for some reason.

Luckily this held me over for far, far longer than I anticipated, as lunch was delayed until 2:00.

On the way to the office I picked up a venti iced coffee with soy (no sweetener, though I did add a wee bit of my own stevia after awhile).

We decided to use one of our groupons for one of our fave (but slightly pricey for lunch at full price) Mediterranean buffets. I always fill up my plate with 80-90% vegetables, but it still always gets a little out of hand.

 

I cannot tell a lie. About 5 or so of those creamers may have made their way into my purse.  I can't convince myself it's okay to buy that faux cream product, but if I happen to pocket a few I can't very well let them go to waste, now can I? It only makes sense. (Also: the first beverage pictured is unsweetened iced tea, just fyi).

 Soo yeah. Aside from that center pictured dessert bite which was not my thing, I ate pretty much everything and more. 

 

Even good buffets (or should I say especially good buffets) are evil, evil things!  I have to say everything was extra good today too. And SO SO busy, even though we went at an odd hour. Hopefully that means they won't be closing anytime soon! (And will continue to pump out Groupon offers!)

I was full for the rest of the day and night, but I promised to grill when I got home, so grill I did. I only had a sample plate, though. I likely would not have even had that, but I spent a lot of time and energy making everything, so I wanted to see how it turned out. 

Before, during, and after, I also kept the sangria I made last night flowing.

It was slightly too citrusy and oddly not strong at all, but it was good enough to drink!

Steak with mushrooms & half of a small sweet potato with a pinch of whipped butter & a shake of cinnamon

For dessert I finished off the last of the chocolate cake, unpictured.

Happy Memorial Day all. And a special thank you to all of the men and women for your service.

xo,

Amanda

Weekend Eats

Saturday I had my aforementioned breakfast meeting at a new-to-me restaurant in the Highland Park area called Lucky's Cafe. Online it's mentioned that they're "noted by the Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue as a 'must see' Dallas dining spot with 'perfect pancakes and awesome omelets.'" Sounded promising.  I'm not sure when A&F became known for their critiques, especially of food, but I must say in the parking lot everyone appeared to have stepped right out of an Abercrombie catalog. Unfortunately, once inside mostly everyone just looked "normal." Darn. 

I started off with coffee and water, as always. 

But after looking around and noticing what I suspected were mimosas, suddenly I *HAD* to have one too. Just a feeling.

Intuition, baby. Always trust it. That was the best damn mimosa I think I've ever had. Oddly, at first sip I thought it tasted like orange juice and beer, but then it mellowed out. Yum, yum. Definitely worth $4. That was the one thing on the menu with no price, so I was a little cautious. I hate restaurants that charge $10 for a mimosa. C'mon. But this was just right in every way.

I had decided my meal the nite before when I was perusing the menu. 

 

The Lotto omelet aka pick your own 4 ingredients. I chose spinach, mushroom, chicken, and cream cheese. I asked for egg whites only, but they used the whole egg. I love whole fried eggs, but usually hate scrambled, cooked yolks. I didn't want to cause a scene, so I just ate it and it was pretty good. Woulda been better just whites. I had planned on wheat toast, but read rave reviews about the biscuits and these did not disappoint. And I'm not much of a biscuit person either. YUM. VERY dense, yet fluffy and mmm. I filled the middle of mine with apple cinnamon jam (LOVE when places have any jam besides grape or strawberry-yuck) and drizzled a little honey on top. Pefection. I ate about 1/2 of my meal and took the rest to go.

I didn't eat again until dinner, except for a couple samples at Sam's Club. I went the gym in the late afternoon and did a quick chest & back weight routine and then headed around the other side of the building and picked up Chinese takeout :). A friend had mentioned eating Chinese the evening before and I couldn't get it out of my head! 

 

Half an order of moo goo gai pan with brown rice. Topped with low-sodium tamari sauce & sriracha

An hour or two later I went back and ate the rest plus a frozen egg roll I remembered we had in the freezer (with sweet chili sauce). My muscles needed fuel! (Or that's what I'll keep telling myself).

I finished off the night with a slice of leftover cake, a lil frozen yogurt on the side, & a fortune cookie. Sugar fest!

 

I slept in embarassingly late today and headed straight to "breakfast."

That gingerbread pancake was so good

While running errands, I needed something to pick me up and quench my thirst. Starbucks to the rescue! And it was my 15th drink (I swear it was my 16th, but my 'Bux app swears it's the 15th), so I get a free drink postcard soon. Thumbs up to that.

Unsweetened iced green tea

And my dad grabbed me a sample of my favorite dark chocolate covered honeycomb at the grocery store

For dinner I finished off my brother's chinese from yesterday. I ordered him orange beef with fried rice (though it looked more like brown rice, so I'm not positive which it ended up being). I'd NEVER order that for myself, but I didn't want it to go to waste. He's SO picky with Asian food. He said he'd eat it, but most of it was left behind. 

 

It tasted only slightly better than it looks. I mean it was okay, but not my thing. I didn't know that (aside from chicken fried steak) people breaded beef? Weird. After taking that coating off each piece it was good enough to finish at least. 

A little bit later I tried out one of my new Sam's Club finds:

I wish I had a better review, since this has great stats, but it wasn't very tasty. Bummer. Here's hoping the strawberry is better, but I don't have high hopes. I also don't understand why the first ingredient is skim milk and not greek yogurt. Maybe another company will do it better. If I had my say, I'd make a plain greek yogurt flavor with chunks of frozen fruit. That would be so good. Or maybe with honey. A chocolate one might be interesting too. Hmm.

THEN, I ate half of the half (got that?) of my leftovers from Lucky's breakfast. Well, all of the second biscuit. Even reheated it was awesome. It didn't photograph well, so just look up if you must :). 

Hope everyone has a great third weekend day tomorrow! Unfortuately I'll be working, but we'll still bbq when I get home. I just put together some sangria, so here's hoping it tastes good!

For now I'll leave you with my besties. 

 

Ohhhh that smile

LOL he'd just gotten out of the bath. Silly boy. 

xo,

Amanda

Happy Birthday, Lovie!

 honey wheat alternative bagel with a fried egg, slice of white american cheese, and blueberry jam + a side of fresh blueberries

 iced gingerbread coffee with coconut milk. No almond milk this time and it still didn't taste like coconut at all. I don't get it!

You'll have to excuse the bite mark in the bagel sandwich. I got a little too excited to dig in. It only ended up on a plate because I eventually remembered to take a pic. Truth be told, I'm kind of a savage when I eat breakfast most mornings. Picture this: a paper towel serves as my plate and I tilt my upper body forward over the stove for each bite. I'm not too proud to admit there have been a couple egg yolk incidents using this not-so-fail proof method. And no, I did not change my shirt after, oh no.  A little sprinkle of water is good enough for this hot mess. Half the time I walk into the office with my hair still in a bun from how I slept the night before or how I tied it up before I put on my shower cap. I'm sexy and I know it...


For lunch I dug in a little early and started with half of my wrap.

 

Whole grain wrap with homemade guacamole, diced compari tomatoes, organic mixed greens, and a last minute addition of spicy mustard

It was pretty gross. It was one of those things I could tell would have been great when it was freshly made, but sitting in the fridge overnight sucked the life out of it. Shortly after I went ahead and finished off the other half just to get it over with. You know that's a bad sign, when you want to eat it just so it's gone. 

B-T-Dubs, If I'm a savage eating breakfast, I'm a beast when it comes to lunch, Or any office snack really. You would think that my brain would conceptualize the work place environment as public domain, but alas that is not the case at all. I at least have the common decency to wait until no witnesses are present. This sometimes means hours of starvation before consumption. But once the food comes out, I am an animal. Case in point, popcorn. This eating technique is the opposite of the morning bend-forward tilt. You see, with popcorn one must dig into the bag to grab as much as your grip allows, tilt you head back, and stuff as many kernels in your mouth as humanly possible. Only then do you commence chewing. Usually this also entails digging some runaways out of the old cleavage at some point. You do what you gotta do. 

  

I also made some coffee to accompany my kettle korn. I mixed the last of the Godiva pecan (which I had already mixed with the last of a random Aldi bag of gingerbread flavor) with the rest of the Godiva chocolate truffle. My coffee beans get around. 

 

I never ended up eating the rest of my lunch (a small sweet potato + the last of the leftover mashed cauliflower), so I was famished by the time I left work at 6:30. I try to get in a weights workout at the gym on Friday nights, but I knew I had to eat first today.

vodka soda with a splash of cranberry

Fried mushrooms. I did not encourage this decision, but I did eat about 10,000

I had ranch on the side, but it was pretty tasteless, so I used the bare minimum. I should have opted for balsamic. I thought it would be the real-deal ranch. Come on, Snuffers. Get with the program!

Remember that cake I mentioned in my last post? It was for none other than Bella's 9th birthday! Yes, Bella is my dog. Also known as the best dog in the universe: past, present, and future. 

For the humans, I made a chocolate butterscotch gluten free cake with homemade half vanilla-buttercream/half cream cheese frosting. It wasn't the best I've made, but it was pretty tasty. 

 Lazy man's way of frosting only the top and between the layers. Hush.

And for the puppers?  Banana oat cake with carob chips topped with peanut butter as their frosting+  a side of frosty paws dog ice cream. Yep, I went there. Actually, I just so happened to have one lonely frosty paw in the freezer for the past year, but whatever. The humans didn't even have ice cream lol. Although now that I think about it, the frozen yogurt I bought yesterday would pair perfectly. Next slice! 

 

I just mashed banana, oats, and carob chips and nuked it for 2 minutes. Almost exactly like a version I make for myself (but mine contains stevia and cinnamon). Yum, yum. 

I think they approved. Bella wolfed hers down in less than 5 seconds flat, while Buster savored his.

 And yes, we did sing Happy Birthday to Bell. And you're fooling yourself if you think she didn't know what was going on. She danced along and even smiled. A lot. She knew it was her day. SHE KNEW, OKAY? I watched a dog show recently that said bichons are known for smiling and being expressive. I'm not crazy!

After stuffing her with food, she wasn't too interested in her present like she normally would have been. She loves clothes, I swear. But after we settled upstairs I made her put it on anyway and she didn't protest.

 

My little 9 year old baby. Where does time go?

Oh yeah, before I forget: here's my crappy quality shirt-of-the-day mirror pic(s).

 Photo take one. Then, I realized my hair was blocking the flower-thing on the side. Because for some reason it was imperative you saw that.

Eh. Blurry, but you get the gist

 P.S. No,  I did not make it to the gym. Shoulda had a pre-dinner snack and gone first. Oops. 

Aaaaaaand now it's after 1 am and I have a business breakfast early tomorrow. Double Oops. Why must I always do this to myself? No sleep for the wicked.

xo,

Amanda 

Sneaky Splenda

NEWS ALERT.

I worked out this morning.

Wait, wait. Don't get too excited. I (really!) almost went to the gym, but couldn't get up quiiiite that early. Come on now. But I did sneak in a 20 minute treadmill workout at home. Yessss!

I also had time to not only make a proper breakfast, but eat it at a table. That's almost unheard of!

I started with my beloved iced coffee. I couldn't find almond-coconut milk this week, so I got creative and used a little from column a, a little from column b.

 

Eh. I mean it's iced coffee. It was good. But I couldn't really taste the coconut. Maybe if I mix them together in the container? Nah. It feels weird to look at green mountain coffee in a starbucks tumbler.

In order to sneak in some veggies since I knew I'd be lacking at lunch, I sauteed up nearly half a container of fresh, organic spinach with a drizzle of garlic olive oil and some seasonings and dumped a bunch of egg whites on top. Easy omelet! At the end I dabbed a tiny bit of veggie cream cheese in the middle and folded. Mmm. I also heated up half a honey wheat Alternative Bagel (my latest breakfast fave) and topped that with the cream cheese as well. I would have eaten a whole bagel, 110 cals for the win, but someone else left half in the bag, so I just decided to finish that off.

 

I threw my lunch in containers right before leaving and packed a little strangely. Lots of protein, little else.

As a pre-lunch, er, appetizer? I finished the last of the garlic lemon chicken from the other night.

 It's almost too lemony, but still really good.

Here's the marinade:

 

An hour later, I finished off the last turkey burger patty (nuked it too long, sorry cheese) with leftover baked beans. Didn't taste that good today, but it got the job done.

 

 I love mustard

I went to the store on my way home from work/the chiro to pick up ice cream. Mmm. I also picked up flan and rice pudding. I must have been hungry, oops. I didn't mean to get anything filled with splenda, ugh, yet somehow I came home with splenda rice pudding and splenda-filled.....

 

Oops. I guess I should have realized "smart" and fat free in a mainstream brand = chemicals. Dammit. I still ate a bag. Alongside a glass o' vino.

 For dinner I planned on making mushroom risotto with shrimp (don't get too excited, both would have originated from the freezer), but then I remembered the sweet potato I'd already stuck in the oven and didn't think I needed both potato and rice. Instead I put a little butter spray (more chemicals...), cinnamon, and all natural peanut butter (Marantha aka the best) inside the potato and served it with leftover mashed cauliflower and a simple salad topped with the last of the lemon thyme raw pecans.

 

Delish!

Dessert?

+ a few taste tests of a cake I made for an occasion for tomorrow. :)

xo,
Amanda