Blog + Break = Bleak (word)

Things have been crazy around here...bugs + Anneka + candy for dinner one night + continuous emotional eating = no blog. That type of behavior will stay in the shady darkness of shame where it belongs. The bright light of this blog will pretend it didn't happen. I hope to resume blogging this week, we'll see how it goes. I'm looking for a new apartment and the stress of it has me veering between over eating like woah and feeling mildly sick and un-hungry for days at a time. Yesterday I had two bites of curry for lunch before tossing it and opting for shredded oats and milk. Dinner was a quesadilla at Sophie's house and then no Second Dinner at all. I woke up famished this morning but since arriving at work have only had interest in coffee. And 2 tic tacs.

I just looked in my phone and I have an overwhelming number of pictures in there, let me see if I can make some sense of them...

Those two make sense, fajitas and margaritas, yes please! That was last Saturday when we had our Mexican fiesta. Those fajitas were so good, I was the sous chef and Nick did all the cooking, thanks Nick! I did all the blending though, mmmmmmmargaritas.

Breakfast

Second Breakfast

I woke up way earlier than Nick the next morning, what's a girl to do? First Breakfast. That cheese is goat gouda from TJ's and whole wheat pita crackers, mucho gusto! Second breakfast was a fried egg on whole wheat toast with a slice of Canadian bacon. Mucho gusto tambien! That might seem like hefty breakfasts but in hindsight it was such a good plan. That Sunday was the day Nick and I spent many many moons (really just many hours but it FELT like many moons) at the VW dealership haggling over a car, an awesome car. Nick went into it saying he wasn't very good at buying cars, and he was RIGHT. What he's good at is beating the car salesmen down to his asking price for 6 hours until they eventually sucumb to his will and grovel at his feet and beg him to buy the car for the love of all the babies in the world! Then he's good at walking away from it all and we drive home still without any AC...Oh well, at least we found out that he is an awesome negotiator with awesome credit. Also during our six hour haggling marathon we left to have some lunch:

Arnold Palmer (classic) and the fanciest PB&J I've ever had. We went to a fancy pants sandwhich shop, I don't know if you can see from the receipt but they call themselves "Urbane Cafe", I hate that name, its trying very hard. Anyway, Urbane's prices were insane so I ordered off the kids menu to avoid paying $10 for a sandwhich (that's just urbane). Can you imagine feeding that PB&J to a child? Its on foccaccia! I thoroughly enjoyed it but I'm not a child. I guess with a kid you would order the chips instead of a salad but I had to order salad...I WISH I was a kid! For dinner that night we had left over fajita stuff with salad and grapes for dessert.

Nick cooked again! I'm not sure why the burrito is so far offcenter on the plate but it didn't stay there long anyway. We used left over chicken from the night before and Nick cooked up a sausage and chopped that up to put in there too. I wouldn't recommend the sausage, it made the whole thing kind of greasy and fatty. The salad and grapes did a nice job of combating that. We also had a bottle of wine, haggling is thirsty work.

On Monday I got up early and cooked breakfast so we could start the week right. Literally one bite in I had to run and spit it out. My mouth wanted nothing to do with that breakfast. That means I didn't start the week right, I started the week by wasting a bunch of time and food, observe:

I went with shredded oats and milk when I got to work, which is really my go-to when my stomach is feeling weird. For lunch that day I went with chicken gumbo, baked lays, and an arnold palmer (classic). It was great and my mouth was all about it. Ditto my stomach.

After work my day really took off. Gibbs had to go to the vet (the excitement really never ends around here) so I didn't go to Sophie's. He had a little hot spot on his leg and apparently hot spots spread because a dog will worry over it and lick it until it is a huge soar. So we went out on Sunday and bought a bandage for him. He is the most relaxed patient ever! You might say he is patient.

After we were done wrapping his leg I thought he was going to bolt right out of there but actually he just hung out with his boyfriend until Nick eventually got up. Shameless.

Amazingly for the first time ever the vet only took 1 hour! 1 hour and lots of dollars but I'll focus on the positive. Afterwards I went back to Nick's and had the best afternoon snack that summer time has to offer, a smoothie:

I first made this smoothie when I was on the detox for the flat belly diet. Its a horrendous four day detox that makes you eat crazy things like a PINT of cherry tomatoes in one sitting. Also you never think you are that dependent on caffiene until someone stops you from ingesting any. That is a four day headache that just doesn't go away. Go to sleep with a headache, wake up with a headache, drive to work with a headache, yell at innocent children with a headache, jump off the roof with a headache, wake up in hospital with a headache, etc. The best part of that detox is drinking the delicious smoothie with a headache though. You blend ice, lactaid free milk, pineapple, and flax seed oil, then you enjoy. That's a great snack.

For dinner I made us chicken tenders and mashed potatoes. I had planned on cooking a veggie but I don't have a picture of one so I guess that fell by the wayside at some point. I made my own breadcrumbs for the chicken tenders and they turned out really well. With Rae's help I came up with a blend of dried whole wheat toast, flour, seasoning and walnuts. And when it comes to mash potatoes you really can't go wrong, I like to crack an egg into them while I mash instead of adding loads of butter and cream. Its gooooooooood.

On Tuesday we had the long awaited Reliability Celebrations at work. The cupcakes that I ordered arrived and they were awful. I know its hard but try to imagine a really awful tasting cupcake, they were worse than that. Someone found a rock in one of them. They charged a $50 delivery fee for some girl to throw them in the back of her Camry and arrive an hour and twenty minutes late. 25 of them were smooshed on the way over, surprising given that they were transported so carefully in her backseat. They tasted like they had been baked one or two days before (read: dry) and the frosting was gritty. I put the pig in the picture because he's so cute and I needed something good to counterbalance the lying cupcake (you sir are no #1).

If you ever come to my office and need to use the projector, the key to that cabinet is in the pig. You're welcome. Guh that cupcake was awful. I still ate it thought. I also ate one the next day, it was even drier and grittier and literally every bite I took I thought to myself, this is awful. Why did I do that? I don't have pictures of real food from Tuesday but for breakfast I had bacon, eggs, and potatoes. For lunch? Your guess is as good as mine. After work I went to Sophie's and she wanted popcorn with dinner so I had some too.

For second dinner Nick cooked noodles with sausage and bolognese sauce, we also had salad.

It was really great, and writing it all up at once like this is making me realize that he cooks for me a lot! Thanks Nick :) This is the second night of a week in which I am not having any wine with dinner. It was a loose resolution that I had in mind for a while and on Monday Nick gave me a nudge in that direction so amazingly I kept it going until Friday. If you are waiting for pictures of wine there aren't any coming up.

On Wednesday I had cheese and crackers for breakfast at work. Then somebody brought me a mini muffin.

That's still the goat gouda from a few days ago, still good.  I didn't have any lunch on Wednesday for no particular reason. I just had lots of work and didn't get hungry. In the afternoon though I ate some MnM's and someone gave me some popcorn. That was a great afternoon.

The thing about the MnM's is especially dangerous. There is a person in my office who keeps an MnM container full of them, and they are for everyone! He had been on vacation and the MnM jar ran dry so that's why you haven't seen them up to this point, but he came back from vacation and brought MnM's with him.

How can I resist that? But I better start resisting because a handful of MnM's every day is a bad plan, always. But even if I don't include it in the blog, you should probably assume that I am eating MnM's quite frequently. Jealous? After work I ate a tortilla for a snack because I was starving and even though I worked late Nick worked later so I was kicking my heals for a minute before dinner.

I try and cook dinner on Wednesday nights because I don't have to nanny and I tend to get home much earlier than Nick. But this Wednesday Nick cooked again. I was really grateful because for some reason I was completely out of energy (strange given my healthy afternoon of eating.)

Here the week starts to get much spottier.

I know that I drank that coke for breakfast because we were out of coffee and I needed a boost. Did I eat something too? Not sure. Then I got those chips from a meeting that I ordered food for. I ordered 'Chips, Salsa and Guacamole' and they brough potato chips, salsa and guacamole. I guess next time I should be more specific. They were good but it was still an odd choice for the cafeteria to send. The cereal, Multi Grain Squares, I had at Sophie's. Cascadian Farms makes it and its the closest things to Shreddies that I have found in the States. It was a delicious First Dinner. I don't know if I ate Second Dinner or not that night.

On Friday morning I opted for French Toast from the cafeteria. Anyone on CP campus reading this, DO IT! Probably one of the best meals I have eaten there so far, look how yummy:

Although the lady making it was in a pretty bad mood, and then tried to tell me that if I was having it to-go I couldn't have syrup. What a weirdo. Note: I GOT my syrup to go. I don't remember lunch, its possible that I skipped it because of my awesome breakfast, but its also possible that I had cheese and crackers. After work Rae and I went to Trader Joe's and I went on a frozen food spending spree! I also bought some pork to cook for dinner that night, because my WORD I am sick of chicken and don't talk to me about fish. So for dinner I made some frozen asparagus risotto from TJ's, it was really good, and I made the pork with an apple, shallot, butter and white wine sauce. It turned out pretty well and I didn't over cook the pork which I was proud of because the slices were really thin.

On Saturday morning I made an amazing breakfast. I guess I got the french toast bug on Friday because I wanted some MO. So I made us scrambled eggs, french toast, and sausages. No pictures because I was too busy enjoying.  I think that for lunch I had salsa chips. Nick made pasta with sausage but I didn't really like it so chips seemed like a good alternative. Rae and I decided to go and do a DVR marathon at my apartment that night. Remember that "Chinese Water Beetle" that I found under my couch a while back? Well, we definitely found three more dead ones there on Saturday night. Although my neighbor told me they aren't beetles at all but ROACHES! Ahhhhh! I'm very squeamish about bugs but really, roaches brings it to another level. That's just disgusting. Rae is not squeamish at all, in fact one of the reasons we were at my house was to re-install me for the coming week and she was going to do a sweep for bugs and convince me that I was being silly. Even Rae was rattled by the giant cockroaches though. The unflappable Rae and the very flappable Anneka ran squealing all the way back to her apartment and there I shall stay. I am moving OUT! Before finding the bugs though I had candy salad for dinner while we watched some Real Housewives and Fashion Police.

On Sunday Nick and I went out to brunch with some of his friends. We went to Proper Pub, right next to Petco Park. It was not good. They had french toast on the menu but when I ordered it (yes, I was ordering french toast again, what of it?) they said its not actually on the menu on game days. French toast and baseball have never seemed incompatible to me before but, apparently I've been wrong. So I had to order the only sort of breakfast food on the brunch menu which was a dutch apple pancake served with two bangers. Not much irritates me more than gastropubs in the first place. Why are you messing with pub food? Why are you trying to make it fancy? Most of all, why are you charging me so much to eat it? This "pancake" was over $10 and was just awful. They served it like some kind of bastard yorkshire pudding fajita, in a sizzling hot skillet. The pancake batter was baked over what they called 'caramelized apples' but tasted more like organic glutten free apple puree for babies. On the side was a ramekin full of cream cheese frosting which I resorted to using to try and give the dish some flavor but to no avail. The bangers served along side were actually really good and luckily I shared them with Nick because his food never came. An hour after he ordered he asked again where his fritatta was and they said that his ticket was 7-8 tickets back and it would probably be another hour. Really?  Two hours to make a fritatta? They said that the kitchen got slammed and they weren't expecting it. Really? You weren't expecting to have a busy brunch? On a Sunday? On gameday? When your restaurant literally overlooks Petco Park? Really? Anyway, I went to ask for our check because at that point I knew I had to get Nick out of there and feed him STAT before he started eating his shoes. While I was trying to get their attention I overheard them frantically talking about how they lost the check for Nick's food and how could that happen and what should they do??? LIARS! So I paid for my food and we left. I told Nick as we were walking out about the lying servers and he turned around and asked to talk to the manager who gave me back my $20, my hero :) When we got home I cooked him more sausages and french toast and he wrote an angry Yelp review. For dinner on Sunday I cooked some frozen chicken tacos from Trader Joes. They were great.  

So far today I have eaten a bowl of Coco Krispies for breakfast, Panda Express Panda Bowl with half chow mein, half fried rice, and beef and broccoli for lunch, a fortune cookie (I will have a very comfortable old age, thanks Panda Fortune) and a handful of MnM's.

Also an Arnold Palmer, coffee and now some water. I don't, as a rule, include water in this blog. In case you are concerned that I'm about to die from never drinking any don't worry. I drink it, I just don't mention it.

In re-reading this I'm noticing that although I said I wouldn't blog about my dark food behavior I went ahead and did it anyway. That's a bit like how my diets go. 

Fish meat is practically a vegetable.

Alright, I have once again fallen behind on my blog. I remembered mostly to take pictures which is a plus and I just found a very short word document that I emailed to myself on Tuesday that includes the beginning of a blog. You know, Tuesday, back when I had the best intentions to write every day and not have four days worth of food backed up on me…that metaphor didn't really go where I wanted it to. In the spirit of getting this thing going I’m just going to use my notes for Tuesday and start from after them. So enjoy the rough and un-edited thoughts of Anneka on a Tuesday:

Toast for breakfast this morning. It was from Nick’s double fiber loaf and it tasted like saw dust in my mouth. I finished it but still.

Lunch at Chopsticks. Miso Ramen, yummy but now my tummy hurts. Was it all the tic tacs I ate afterwards? Note to self, tic tacs and Miso Ramen don’t mix well. Had a fountain soda with lunch. I feel like I have a poisonous balloon in my tummy.

Milk and shredded oats for snack.

 That toast makes me think of Fargo, and I haven't even seen Fargo. I just know that there is a scene with a wood chipper...so maybe that toast just reminds me of wood chippers. But I can't think of a wood chipper with out thinking of Fargo. So just pretend you stopped reading after the second sentence of this paragraph.

 That ramen is DELICIOUS. I ate it even though it was 90 degrees outside if that gives you a clue as to how good it is. Also, that bowl is holding more vegetables than I ate all of last week. Is another picture of fountain soda necessary? Yes.

Well there you have it, that’s all I have written so far, and its Saturday morning. I really need more self discipline, but you already knew that! You read my food journal! I do wonder why I followed up, “I feel like I have a poisonous balloon in my tummy” with “Milk (!) and shredded oats for snack”. That seems like a bold move. Also, my stomach must have really been hurting for me to continually use the word tummy…Which reminds me of a time that my Mum called my work (I was 16) and told them I couldn’t come in because I had a tummy ache. I definitely heard about that one the next day, although sort of my own fault for not having the nerve to call out for myself. If I could to this day I would still have my Mum call me out sick. I hate doing it more than anything. I can say with certainty that unless my ailment is something like, spontaneously bursting into flames, calling out sick is the WORST part of being sick for me. So thanks Mum for doing it that one time, I really did have a horrible tummy ache. 

Dinner that night was fruit salad and a cookie at Sophie's. Then when I got home I had Coco Krispies. I made these frozen ham and cheese puffs from Trader Joes (aside from what I am about to say that have the best frozen foods) but they were gross. I ate five and decided I hated them. I didn't take a picture because I think I decided that my hatred meant that I hadn't actually eaten them. Although now that I'm thinking about it, five is kind of a lot. They are bite sized...but five bites could be a whole portion of meat if I'm taking nutritious advice and only eating something the size of my fist. Which by the way, is a really strange way to measure meat. I mean if I'm angry while I portion out my food I'll probably be getting a whole lot less than when I'm relaxed, and being an emotional eater that really doesn't work for me. 

That cookie was so good! And it was on a baking tray with seven of its friends and I was told to help myself! I consider it a real personal triumph that I only had the one. Oh, and five disgusting ham and cheese pastry bites...

On Wednesday I really shook things up, unintentionally. I took the double fiber toast to work again and I decided it might taste better if I didn't forget it in the toaster for half an hour before eating it. But despite all my good intentions and I forgot about it and an hour later there it was, dry and unappealing. However, I was in luck because:

Just then a meeting let out and there was plenty of eggs, bacon and breakfast potatoes left! I ditched the toast and dug in. I tell you what, there is a real difference between eating toast for breakfast verses eggs, bacon, and potatoes. I didn't even eat lunch on Wednesday. I just didn't get hungry, also there was so much work to do, I mean SO MUCH WORK. I worked late on Wednesday, 2 and a half hours late, and there was still piles and piles to do. Working late makes me crabby. So even though I scared myself silly by re-reading my posts so far and decided to give up drinking I bought a bottle of wine and had some with dinner. I really should have stuck to my guns that night because that was a bad plan. And I mean, I should have stuck to ALL my guns. At first I wasn't going to drink, but then I went shopping for wine. Then at Henry's the wine I like wasn't on sale anymore so I had to look for something else. Nick pointed out the wine that was on sale and I immediately said no. I hated the label and it was a twist open. What can I say? I like to judge things quickly. Nick likes to laugh at me because most of the time I'm wrong and then have to grudgingly admit that I actually like what I proclaimed to hate. In fact, I think that when that happens it is one of his favorite things. Which kind of makes him sound bad but I snap judge a lot of the time, and my snap judgments are harsh people, harsh. Anyway, after staring at the wine for five minutes I grabbed the bottle that was on sale, I may not like the label I thought, but I like the price. Then when we drank it it was horrible! I didn't even get the satisfaction of being initially right because there is no satisfaction when you are drinking a glass of disgusting wine. And then it made me loopy! Not good loopy either, just the kind of weird post-gross-wine feeling you get sometimes. Like I said before, I should have stuck to my guns. Here's what we had with the gross wine:

 

The empty bowl in the second picture was full of salad. So I ate salad too. The meat was tri tip and it was delicious. The potatoes were garlic roasted. The bread was cheddar cheese jalapeno. All of it was just so good. Too bad about the nasty wine. 

On Thursday I decided to make eggs and canadian bacon at home. What's that all aboot, eh? That's aboot me loving that breakfast so much more than sawdust toast.

 

Look at my awesome place mat. Look at it I say! I want a purse like that I think. And if that purse had bacon in it? Well, I wouldn't kick it out of bed if you know what I mean. This was the one and only meal that I cooked at home this week. Everything else was consumed at Sophie's, Nick's, or work, or Chopstix. Last Friday I found a huge Chinese Water Beetle underneath my couch (damn you spring cleaning!) and I've really been too grossed out to stay there since. But all my clothes are there so I have to get dressed there in the mornings. Hopefully I don't find a beetle in my closet or I will probably run naked out of my house screaming. Never a good look.

For lunch I had chicken McNuggets! Need I say more?

 

That was a happy lunch! Nikki and I went to TJ Maxx to look at furniture, I rank furniture shopping directly beneath fountain soda in the list of things I love in case you are wondering how much fun I had at lunch, and then nuggets? Yes, a happy lunch. I didn't really need to have a snack that day but in for a penny in for a pound (or 10 pounds in my case) so when Nikki offered me a FiberOne brownie I made the right choice.

And just in case all my bagging on double fiber toast has made you skeptical of fiber products don't be, this didn't taste at all like saw dust. It was moist and chewy and had chocolate drizzled on top and was just the right size and I would eat it right now if it was sitting next to my computer instead of just inside my computer. One day when I have kids I suspect the last part of that sentence will read more literally.

For dinner Sophie and I had whole wheat mini bagels with cream cheese and grapes. Her grapes were cut in half but I ate mine whole.

I'm supposed to be eating less carbs (per Nikki who laughed at me when I said I would give up drinking because of all the empty calories, she reads the blog, she knows about all the late night carbing...) but I technically ate this bagel before 7pm and also it was whole wheat! And mini! And I skipped Second Dinner! Well almost, I ate a cheddar cheese straw, Gibbs had some too although that was unplanned.

 

Something in this picture doesn't belong...

As I look at all these pictures it makes me think that perhaps I should manicure just my thumb nails. Also, I didn't have wine on Thursday night, is this the first alcohol free day so far? Bravo! I should celebrate that, but what could I celebrate with...? Oh, now I can't drive anywhere today!

On Friday I went with the old favorite, eggs and canadian bacon. I cooked breakfast at Nick's house because I planned ahead and packed a work outfit on Thursday afternoon, which I had to iron! Ironing, to me, ranks up there with asparagus on the 'grown up' list. But I can only iron at Nick's house because I don't have an iron...anyway breakfast was great and I cooked some for Nick too, so I felt generally very pleased with myself. Ironing, cooking for someone else, pre-planning an outfit, all good things. The good things list doesn't include remembering to take a picture, sorry.

For lunch I had a quesadilla. It was filled with steak, onions, green peppers, and a little bit of cheese. If you had looked in my lunch bag you might have thought I was going to have goat cheese, crackers, shredded oats, peach yogurt, and salami, because that's what I brought to work. But it didn't take much for me to skip all that and go down to the cafeteria.

 

It doesn't look it, but that was an awesome quesadilla! And there was more of it than pictured, I just forgot to do anything but eat for the first three slices. Maybe my new rule of Full should be, stop eating when you remember to take a picture. Because I definitely ate that piece after photographing it, and it was definitely one piece too many. I had an apple for a snack a few hours later and it was great. So healthy and nature's tooth brush.

 

there's that thumb again

Although only eating an apple a day instead of brushing your teeth does NOT keep the dentist away. I worked late again, by over three hours, so it was a really good thing I had a snack, otherwise I would have gotten home crabby and hungry. But that just means crabby and crabbier really. I could have stayed five hours more at work and still had stuff to do but they turn off the AC after hours so staying any later was just not an option. About half way through my three hours of overtime I decided I would be needing a margarita when I got home. Maybe it was my lunch suggesting things to me from the other side, ooh spooky. So when Nick called I ordered tequilla and margarita mix, watch out blender here I come! Well, when I got home it turns out that we had a bunch of errands to run so we didn't settle down to eating or drinking anything until 9pm. By that time I was past the point of blending and mixing and who knows what else, I liked the idea of uncorking, pouring, ingesting. So I told Nick to do his Man Work (read: open the wine) and I made us a frozen dinner. I know I said before that Trader Joe's has the best frozen food so you're probably expecting something from there, but you are wrong. With one expception TJ's has the best frozen food. And that exception is Bertolli's Braised Beef with Red Peppers and Yukon Gold Potatoes. So that's what I made and we had it with salad and some stale jalapeno cheese bread. Overall a pretty good meal for 9 o'clock at night. I was too tired to think of taking pictures. For dessert I ate a few dark chocolate covered caramels (picture to follow later). They are awesome. Nick had one and said, there's a bit too much caramel in these. Excuse me? Although he likes almonds covered in chocolate, sea salt and turbadino sugar so what was I really expecting him to say.

Today started off in a strange way, eating wasn't the first thing on the agenda. I noticed a few fleas on Gibbs (ewww) so I went home to get some more Frontline and to PetSmart for some flea shampoo. When I got back we groomed, bathed, and medicated Gibbs, poor thing usually gets a nice walk on Saturdays...After that I had breakfast but I was past the point of getting fancy with it so I opted for cereal:

 

Cereal was a good choice. And the coffee went down nicely too. Lunch today has been me grazing while I sit writing this blog. So far I have had:

Also a small glass of wine to celebrate not drinking anything on Thursday:

 

Just a little though! Tonight we are planning on having a Mexican fiesta. Margaritas and fajitas. What are you going to eeta tonight? While you think about it watch this clip about Ron Swanson. It really reinforces what I was saying about vegetarians and how they look at mushrooms. Thank you Ron Swanson.

http://flavorwire.com/193141/video-of-the-day-ron-swansons-guide-to-food