Yowza!!

It's almost the weekend... I CAN'T wait!

For breakfast yesterday I had an egg and egg white with cholula and lightly sauteed onions so they were crunchy:

Also, another skinny water. I liked this one, too!

Yesterday morning I still felt a little not-so-great from my headache troubles on Tuesday. I decided to skip a workout, and just shower at the gym (because we STILL DO NOT HAVE HOT WATER. Apparently I am bad luck because the landlords were never this bad until I moved in!!!). I am, however, planning a Saturday workout to make up for it!

The weather was lovely; in the mid-60s. I settled in with an iced coffee (un-sweetened with a pour of skim milk), and a banana to do some work on a terrace in the heart of campus.

After a few hours, Ky joined me for lunch. We food-courted it up, and I got my favorite... Panda Express! I know, I know. Bad News Bears. But it's soooooooooo good!

Veggies (lots of broccoli!), sweet fire chicken, and lo mein. Plus water to drink.

I was starting to resemble a tomato after sitting in the sun, so I went home to finish my work. While there I tried another Fuze:

This was pretty good; I prefer white tea WAY more than green tea. Green tea leaves a filmy feeling in my mouth! However, this is more caloric than the Slenderize Fuze's I've been drinking. I had about half the bottle over the afternoon, and accidentally let the rest get warm so I tossed it.

No problem... I had a Sapporo to drink while I cooked our Asian dinner.... Lab Gai!

This is a spicy lime chicken dish I love to get at Thai restaurants. It's VERY healthy, and is made almost entirely of natural ingredients. It is so spicy, you need to add a lot of veggies to help absorb the spice. Not to mention, red pepper flakes are very good for you (in moderation). Healthy goodness.

Lab Gai

Ingredients

• 5 shallots, minced

• 1 can of water chestnuts, quartered

• 3-4 slices of fresh ginger, minced

• 4 Tbsp fish sauce (found in Asian section of most chain grocery stores)

• 4 Tbsp lime juice (you could squeeze your own limes, of course)

• 2 Tbsp red pepper flakes

• 1 lb. THIN SLICED chicken breast, minced/cut into tiny pieces

• 1/2 red cabbage, halved and then cut into thin strips; rinse well

• 1/2 bag of carrots cut into bite size pieces
• 2 heart of romaine, washed and cut
• green onion, sliced (for garnish)
• fresh mint leaves (for garnish)
• lime wedges (for garnish

Directions

1. Mix shallots, ginger, chicken, fish sauce, red pepper flakes, and lime juice together

2. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a wok or skillet; cook chicken mixture through

3. Place a scoop of chicken on a bed of romaine, carrots, and cabbage

4. Garnish with green onion, mint, and limes

THIS WAS AMAZING! It tasted JUST like the one I had at Chef Secret last week. A keeper recipe for sure. It takes a while to prep, but less than 5 minutes to cook. This made about three servings.

*Note: the recipe is from my looking at about 10 recipes on line, and going with my cheapest options for ingredients!*

The evening was spent watching Beavis and Butthead on DVD (ah, memories!) and sipping on champagne. The champagne of BEER that is ;-)

This morning I had a strange breakfast; a veggie burger and a skinny water:

Strange, but good fuel for the gym:

• 30 minutes elliptical, level 10 on random*
• 30 minutes stationary bike, level 13

*I liked the elliptical today! I put it on a higher level and went at a slower pace; much preferred to a lower level, faster pace! This felt much more my speed and I could really feel a burn.*

I packed a ton of food to have on campus with me today!

Turkey on an Arnold's thin with 1/2 a laughing cow herbed cheese, spinach, and red peppers:

Then a banana, carrots, trail mix, and a luna since I wouldn't get home until after 7:

I ate ALL OF IT. I burned about 500 calories at the gym today, and I went through all my food by 6:30pm except for the Luna. Even though I would be home for dinner around 7:15, my stomach was so loud I owed it to my classmates to eat it.

I came home feeling satisfied but ready for a small dinner; however, my honey had made an amazing dinner too good to resist, with a surprise dessert:

That would be pork tenderloin, brown rice (cooked with carrots!), and a medley of roast purple (!) potatoes, red onion, butternut squash, and red peppers. This was delicious.... I stuffed my face despite not being hungry; probably not the best idea. But it gets worse.

I have been wanting, needing, DESIRING something sweet for a few days now, specifically a cupcake.

I had the chocolate one with blue frosting in the back. YUM. Thanks, honey!

I am now watching NCAA play (love love love!), while sipping on a pom mocktail:

It's about 1/3 cup straight pomegranate juice mixed with soda water. Mmm mmm good!

Alright, I'm off to do a bit of work before hitting the sack!

Kyle's Chili Recipe #1

Hello again.... I told you I'd post the chili recipe!

Like I said yesterday, Ky and I are not so good with recipes. We just seem to be able to throw things together and have good results most of the time. However, a few months ago Kyle made an AMAZING zucchini and sausage stew with mushrooms and tomatoes and spices. However, we didn't write down the recipe, and never got it to taste quite right again.

Hence why we got the pretty new recipe book to record/comment on what we make at times:

The Ingredients

Meats

• Hot Italian Sausage (1 lb)
• Ground Turkey (1 lb)

Produce

• Roma tomatoes (12)
• Celery (3 stalks)
• jumbo white onion (2)
• green peppers (2)
• habanero pepper (2)
• serrano pepper (1)
• jalapeno pepper (1)

Preserved

• evoo (1 T)
• frozen corn (8 oz)... fresh can be used when in season
• kidney beans (1 15.5 oz can)
• pink beans (1 15.5 oz can)
• diced green chilies (4 oz)
• low-sodium beef broth (3 cups)
• pace chunky salsa (16 oz)

Spices

• garlic powder (1 T)
• minced garlic (1 T)
• black pepper (1.5 t)
• paprika (1/8 t)
• ground cumin (1.5 t)
• Italian seasoning (1 T)*
• cayenne pepper (2 t)
• celery salt (3/4 t)
• chili powder (1 T)

* We only use this when using Italian sausage.

Preparation.

1. De-case sausage and place in a dutch oven with turkey over medium heat. Stir often to add in crumbling/browning the meat

2. While meat is browning, de-seed and finely dice all SMALL peppers, then place in skillet with evoo

3. After 2-3 minutes, add in garlic

4. Let the peppers and garlic cook while coarsely chopping green peppers and onions

then add them to the peppers

5. Dice celery, and also add to pan, and continue to stir occassionaly

6. Once meat is browned drain excess fat and liquid into a can

7. Cover meat with beef broth, and let it and the veggies cook while you prepare the rest of the meal

8. Chop tomatoes and place them in the crock pot along with corn

9. Add both cans of beans to crockpot after draining half the liquid from each can

10. When veggies are tender, add them to crock pot

11. When meat is fully cooked, drain 1/2 the liquid in the dutch oven and add the rest to the crock pot

12. Measure out spices, and blend thoroughly

13. Cover and cook on high for 4 hours, or low 6-8 hours.

In terms of our comments, we thought we added the garlic too early so it burned slightly, even though it did not affect the taste negatively. Also, we loved cooking with our fresh, deli made italian sausage. It brought a whole new level of flavor!

If you try it, enjoy! Also know that you can tinker with the meats, veggies, and spices you use to your liking!

Lots of food!

Alright, I'll try to make this quick and snappy!

For dinner Saturday night, Kyle and I wanted something quick and less-mess, so we had a frozen pizza:

For 1/3 a pizza there is 32% sodium, 370 calories, and 16 grams of fat. For a frozen pizza, that's not so bad! Usually the stats are that bad for a piece or two, but I felt satisfied with my 1/3. I added a bunch of chopped tomatoes before popping it in the oven.

It was really good, I've never had goat cheese pizza, but I am a fan of warm goat cheese now :-). I also used some cholula to kick up my crusts!

The party was pretty crazy... it was for President's Day, so you were supposed to dress up as a president or an authority figure of some kind. Kyle dressed up as Peter Griffen from the Petoria Episode of Family Guy:

Don't worry, that's padding, not an actual gut. I was...me! As in the secretary of Phi Sigma Pi, Gamma Iota Chapter at CofC:

Not very creative, but when you are battling a tight budget and a winter storm x2, you make due!

There were many more interesting outfits, for sure,

Martin van Buren:

Joe, who runs South Jersey:

There were also people who think Hawaii has a president, CIA agents, and even a president of Enron. It was a good time!

In terms of beverages, there was everything from a keg to vodka to rum to jungle juice; you name it, Chris had it. I had a bit of everything, and probably way too much calorie wise. But, it was a party at my own house, and I had a great time!

Definitely detoxing this week, for sure!

The next morning, I woke up feeling fine but had NO VOICE. On Valentine's Day, my favorite day of the year, and I couldn't even make a peep!

I persevered, and as I set up Kyle's valentine's surprise, I had a huevos rancheros wrap from Starbucks:

It was really really good, I was quite surprised! When Kyle got up, he had this waiting for him:

It was a spread of candies, valentines, a home-made card, and a coffee and muffin from Starbucks. It wasn't much, but we hadn't been able to leave the house at all to shop, and we also hadn't been apart for over a week, so it was impossible to do much given the circumstances.

Then, we went out to Gaithersburg for lunch and a movie. We figured that would be cheaper and less crowded than going out at night. We went to Pasha, a Moroccan restaurant we had noticed and wanted to try for a while. They had a Valentine's Day 4 Course Special we both got.

It was so. Much. Food. Omigosh.

1st Course, Moroccan Salad:

It was okay, just tomatoes and cucumbers in a light dressing. The dressing was very vinegar tasting, but I'm glad I got this instead of the house salad which was iceberg lettuce drenched in ranch dressing. I ate about 2/3s of it to get some good veggie intake.

2nd Course: Black Lentil Soup with Bread and Olives:

The soup was good, but nothing special. I felt like I could easily make it myself. The olives were tasty, and so was the bread which was very similar to foccacia. I ate about 1/2 the soup, two pieces of bread, and some olives.

3rd Course, Hummus and Pitas:

The hummus had a LOT of tahini in it, so if you don't like that taste you wouldn't like this hummus. Can you believe they brought EACH of us one of these plates? It was killer amounts of food! I had about half... the entire meal took over 2 hours for everything to be served, and we had over 30 minutes with these plates before our entrees came.

4th Course, Chicken and Vegetables:

This was pretty good, the chicken was so tender it fell of the bone. And the seasoning was great! I ate about 1/2 the chicken, all the veggies, and 1/2 the rice. Kyle had an amazing pastry dish, but I lost the photo :-(

All in all, the place wasn't amazing, and Kyle agreed. However, you can't beat a 4 course meal for $20.

After lunch, we could barely move we were so stuffed. If it weren't so cold, we would have walked around the shops for a while, but it was horribly cold and we had a movie to get to.

We went to see Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridge's new movie. I absoltely love Jeff Bridges, and he was amazing in this role. The plot was really interesting, as well as the cinematography of the south west. The movie was even better because I was too full to even contemplate getting a snack from the concession stand ;-)

After the movie we headed home and hung out for a few hours before ordering Thai for dinner from Chef Secret. It was CRAZY busy, probably because its the only "date" place in College Park. We had to wait over an hour for our food (unheard of there!), but it was still good.

We started with the Autumn rolls, which are filled with salmon:

So good! Then I had mixed veggies in a brown sauce with shrimp... only 3 shrimp :-(

Love this meal, though. It is full of good veggies, lots of cabbage, brocoli, mushrooms... yum! And it is all steamed. Delish! I ate all the veggies, and gave all my rice to Kyle.

For dessert Ky let me have one of his chocolates:

We watched Donnie Darko (hadn't seen it in year, forgot how cool it is!), and crashed by 10pm.

This morning I woke up feeling HORRIBLE. Despite getting almost 9 hours of sleep, I still couldn't speak and I felt incredibly stuffy and congested. Therefore, no gym today. Exercise when you are sick is incredibly debilitating to your body, and is never a good idea.

Once Ky left I dozed off and on until 11am, and I finally got up and head some vitamin-C:

I heart these. So good and good for you. Sadly, I couldn't really taste this one, but I was hopping by drinking the whole thing and getting 500% of my daily value of vitamin C would clear me up.

No such luck. But I was able to do a few hours of work. I also sipped on a big mug of tea:

Sadly, I also could not taste this :-(

A little later I thought I should try and get some food on my stomach, so I made some Annie's mac and cheese. The box says there are 3 serving sizes per box, so when it was prepared I separated it three ways to avoid over-eating. Another thing you can do if you feel like you migh go over board on food, only make that item when someone else is around to split it with. Trust me, splitting it up or sharing are GREAT ways to unknowingly cut carbs.

This did not sit well, and came up later :-(. Luckily, Ky is picking up some stuff for me to make soup for dinner that I love having when I feel like this.

I'm off to nap and do some more work; hope everyone is nice and healthy and safe and warm!