No dinner pictures. We went out. I had a Greek salad with some hummus and a billion pita pieces. I also forgot to get my dressing on the side, and now I have a stomachache. BOO.
Starting in about ten seconds, I’m on vacation. I’ll try to post a few pictures, but I won’t have my laptop and I don’t have such fancy tools as iPhones, so it’s likely to be sparse.
Please, don’t cry. Be strong in my absence.
So, I know everyone’s been all “OMG, where is See Food? Is she okay? She has no life, so she always posts on weekends.”
Y’all. Don’t worry. I’m back.
It has been so hot. We had a heat advisory all weekend and on Saturday, the heat index got up to 114. Today, the for real temperature got up to 108. I went outside just to say I felt it. Also, I work in a library, and libraries are always cold, so I get all thrown off when my computer says it’s 108 and yet my hands are so numb it’s hard to type. Anyway, starting Friday afternoon, the warnings all basically amounted to, “Do not leave your home.” But we’re getting ready to leave for vacation, so we had to do a couple of things like go to the storage unit and transfer boxes from the car in blazing heat, go get a few groceries, and, oh yeah, we steam cleaned the carpet. It didn’t get that hot, but I’m going to go on record as saying that I don’t recommend it during the hottest weekend of one’s life. Live and learn. At the farmer’s market on Saturday, I got this teeny little apple:
I’m not sure if that really captures the teeniness. I have really small hands.
Oh, at Target I got a Rodney Yee Power Yoga DVD since the gym was closed all weekend. I did it pre-steam cleaning on Saturday. He creeps me out with his tight pants, but his cueing is awesome and it was a fairly tough workout, with something like 837 sun salutations to keep me moving.
Saturday night we had Lime Biryani, a recipe from a recent issue of Women’s Health. It’s quinoa cooked with water and lime juice (genius), carrots, chickpeas, golden raisins, sliced almonds and a lime vinaigrette. It was all cold and delicious and summery and I kind of wish I’d make like ten servings. But I made four. So between dinner Saturday and lunch Sunday, it’s gone.
That’s a fancy new bowl we received in the mail this weekend, handmade by a woman in Vermont. Ahh. Vermont. I bet it’s not 108 there.
Sunday morning I got the completely ridiculous idea that it would be fine to exercise outside. After all, it was only 88. At 8:00 in the morning. By the time I got home at 9:15, it was well into the 90s. This is what happens when the gym is closed. I start to lose it, bit by bit. Anyway, I jogged a mile like an idiot and then I kind of staggered for another three. I came home and we steam cleaned once more, just for kicks. And then I got all sickly and I think I had or have heat exhaustion. The internet doesn’t lie about these things. I’ve been chugging Powerade, for which I have a deep and inexplicable love.
Tomorrow it’s only supposed to be 95! Which is great, because I have 119 things to do, including packing for VACATION. Yay.
Tonight I wanted another salad, so I made tabbouleh with shrimp and feta, inspired by the same magazine that included the lime and quinoa thing.
Also a new bowl, received on Friday. I may have mentioned that in my last post, but I’m too lazy to look.
Okay, now I’m exhausted. It’s time for bed so that I can wake up painfully soon and go back to the (hopefully) cool and open gym. And then it’s just 8 working hours, a bunch of errands, a sleepless night of pre-flight stress, a ride to Kansas City and a 2 hour flight between us and glorious North Carolina. Which is supposed to be getting hit with a similar heat wave later this week. What can I say? We have terrible luck with weather.
Don’t worry, I’ll be posting tomorrow night’s dinner before I go into vacation mode. I’m sure it will be breathtaking and will not at all have an “I’m panicking because we have so much stuff to use up while we’re gone so here’s an onion/orange/zucchini salad mmmmmmm” feel to it.
Just when I start to think I can handle Kansas weather, we have another tornado watch. Which completely ruined my evening, THANKYOUVERYMUCH. We were even planning to go out to dinner in the middle of running errands, but I get too anxious to drive during any kind of potential weather situation, so we had to nix that. Probably for the best, really, as it’s about 110 degrees outside. Also for the best because we took a trip to the campus dairy bar at work today. So, for my afternoon snack, instead of eating a Clif Kid Z-Bar, I indulged in a big cup of homemade mint fudge swirl ice cream. Mmmmm. Worth the heat index of 106 walk over, for sure. AND it was eating local. So. Extra points for that.
So for dinner, I threw together a bean salad so that I wouldn’t have to cook anything. Spinach, corn, black beans, tomato, cumin, lime, garlic, cayenne pepper. Oh, and some goat cheese. Which doesn’t necessarily go with any of that. Except that it goes with everything.
I don’t remember it being this bright and shiny. But whatever.
Okay, it’s time for me to pretend to read but actually sit anxiously until the watch is over. At midnight.
I have a no oven rule when the temperatures hit 90. Today, I decided that I’m going to start enforcing a new rule: when it is 95 degrees or hotter, dinner has to require less than ten minutes of stovetop cooking.
When it is 105 or hotter (this will happen), I will either suck it up and pay for dinner, or we will sit around lamenting the painful state of things and not eat. Either way, really.
Anyway, no kickboxing tonight, as the AC in the Rec Center is broken and they finally decided it was hot enough to fix it. Probably someone passed out or went into a coma or something and they thought, “Oh, it is rather hot in here, isn’t it? Let’s fix the AC so his family won’t sue.” I can’t complain, because it was good timing. I was in a bad mood, and who wants to work out when it’s 100 degrees? Not me. I’m tough, but I’m not that tough.
So, I came home and made dinner, following my new ten minute rule. I started with a salad:
Spinach, grape tomatoes, feta, roasted red pepper vinaigrette.
And for the main dish, we had shrimp scampi with artichoke hearts, served with cute little farafellini:
I used the same bowl. The less time we have to spend slaving over a hot sink washing dishes, the better. And by “we,” I mean Matt.
That’s right. It’s Dark Knight night. Knight.
So, midnight show: it’s going to be awesome.
In order to have energy to stay up, oh, six hours past my typical energy, I hit the gym around 7 tonight. Which means we just got done eating dinner, and it’s 9:15. I’m tricking my body, see?
Dinner was also very active, so that should help, too. And by “active,” I mean, “a disaster.” We used a brand new wedding gift, a stir fry pan from our friends Brynn and Russ (thanks, guys!). Our stove is weird, though, and the oil got too hot, there was smoke everywhere, I was running around, it was a mess. But in the end, there was fried rice with edamame, corn, red peppers and tofu:
Matt did most of the cooking, and I thought it was good, be he found it a little bland. Maybe the excitement of the experience makes up for it?
I’m actually still hungry, though. I think I’ll take a Z-bar to have during the movie.
Okay, now it’s time to go get my costume ready.
No, I’m kidding. I only do that for conventions. It is time to take a shower, though. I need to look nice for Christian Bale.
I don’t feel well, so my plans for making a gourmet meal fell through. I had to force myself to eat. Which, let me tell you, is atypical.
I made a salmon melt with some brussels sprouts on the side. On the monkey plate, because it’s just that kind of day.
Look at that punk smiling at me. I bet he feels fine.
Okay, I think I’ll go crawl into bed now.
I made it to the gym this morning. Score. But obviously, my body wasn’t prepared for the change, because I am now dying of exhaustion and I don’t know what day it is.
I also blame my body on the fact that I ate a bunch of leftover cake right before dinner. Oops. I think that’s why this is a smallish portion of baked pasta:
That’s whole wheat rotini and penne baked with a can of crushed tomatoes, a can of diced tomatoes, some cottage cheese, yellow squash, zucchini, and a little mozzarella and parmesan. Also, side salad with spinach and carrots and Annie’s Goddess dressing. I bought it for the first time this weekend. Why didn’t anyone tell me? It’s so good.
I’m pretty sure there are ten or more things I need to get done before I go to sleep, but now I’m just concentrating on figuring out what tomorrow is, and whether or not I need to pack my gym bag for yoga.
I know it doesn’t seem like it, but sometimes I do put a lot of thought into this blog.
Well, maybe not thought. But definitely time.
Not tonight. I have to post, set up the coffee pot, make muesli, eat some soy ice cream, peel some carrots, get my gym bag ready, and take a shower, all in the next 12 minutes. No problem, right?
I’m doing this because, for the first time in a month, I’m going to really make the effort to actually go to the gym tomorrow morning. Which means getting up at 4:50. NO PROBLEM. REALLY. It’s good training for Thursday when I will stay up almost that late to see Dark Knight the SECOND it opens.
I made it back to kickboxing, so my toe is back to normal. I also did another abs class, which kind of felt like I set my torso on fire on purpose. But whatever, it means I’m tough enough to get back to my morning gym routine.
I’m trying to stretch our food and our dollars this week, so I rummaged around in the freezer this morning until I found some ground turkey, which I thawed for turkey burgers. With them, as usual, we had sweet potato fries. And some roasted broccoli since the oven was at an obscenely high temperature anyway.
My turkey burger was kind of little, but that’s really probably because that bun (one of those Ezekiel buns) was massive. And delicious.
Six minutes! Okay GO.
I rarely make enough portions of a meal to have substantial leftovers. I cut recipes in half or thirds or whatever, just to avoid having food that’s going to sit in the refrigerator. I usually make enough of whatever we have for dinner so that Matt can have another serving for lunch the next day, but it’s my personal philosophy that leftovers are gross and can kill you.
What? That’s totally logical. BACTERIA, PEOPLE. It grows. Plus, our fridge stinks. So there you go.
But last night, I made a gigantic pot of Zucchini/Chickpea/Tomato Curry from Eat, Drink, and be Vegan. It has a real name but all of those components are in it, so if you have EDBV, you should be able to use your deductive skills to find it.
Which I would recommend. Because it’s major.
It’s got pretty much everything I would ever want from a curry: chickpeas, red potatoes (I subbed these in for sweet potatoes), zucchini, spices, a nice tomato base. Matt was also pretty into it, so even though I was worried at first about what we’d do with all the leftovers, we ended up polishing the whole batch (”4-6 servings” according to Dreena Burton) in two nights. Not bad. We had it with Brown Basmati rice, which is really good. I think the company is RiceSelect, and I’ve heard they make a whole wheat orzo, as well. And I’m all over that, so hopefully it’s not just a rumor.
Also - I went to the gym and I did not ride the bike. I hit the Arc Trainer and managed to stick with it for 40 minutes, when my toe got kind of numb and I had to quit to walk the indoor track for a while and then lift in the weight room, aka, the dude section. I hate the way guys at the campus gym lift weights. They go way too fast, they’re always yelling at each other (COME ON, MAN, YOU CAN DO TWO MORE REPS), sharing stores about getting food poisoning from eating raw eggs, and at least once during every trip to the gym, I am convinced that one of them is in labor because of the way he’s grunting. Honestly. Nothing should hurt like that.
There was only one other woman in the area, and she was doing bicep curls with 40 pound weights. Is that normal? Because I don’t think I can do that.
Anyway, the point is.
With all of that activity and weight room anxiety, plus the fact that I spent five hours cleaning and organizing this morning, I was starving for dinner, so the leftovers actually worked out nicely. We also just took a walk because it’s unseasonably nice outside, and now I’m hungry again. LUCKILY, I happened to buy some delicious soy ice cream today with a gift certificate to People’s (thanks, Tara!). And now I’m going to eat it.
I don’t have much time because I am catching up on old episodes of that Legally Blonde reality show my reading. But this dinner was really good, so I’m posting it.
It’s baked shrimp with tomatoes and feta, from my new Ellie Krieger cookbook (THANKS, MATT!). She recommends serving it over rice or orzo, but I was in the mood for polenta. And, with all due respect to Ellie, I’m the boss around here.
My toe is slightly better today, though still a lot of colors I don’t feel entirely comfortable with. I also forgot to mention that I found “evidence” (use your imagination) of a mouse in my filing cabinet at work yesterday. Today they set traps in my office! SO MUCH EXCITEMENT.
Here’s what’s going to happen, I can almost guarantee: my toe will heal and I’ll be able to wear open-toed shoes again. And then I’ll step on a mousetrap. The end.
Okay there’s a lot of crying on this show right now, so I’m going to go enjoy it.
