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.

Matt called me at work just before 5 to ask what we were having for dinner and how long it would take so that he could decide whether or not to go to the food court at the mall (aka Picnic Place) to pick up some Chinese food to hold him over. I convinced him to wait with the promise of a 30 minute meal, and then I came home and put this together:

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

• 1 block of extra firm tofu
• 2 T rice wine vinegar
• 2 T soy sauce
• Garlic to taste
• Crushed red pepper
• 1 C green beans, trimmed and chopped
• 1 broccoli crown, trimmed
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1/3 huge zucchini, sliced lengthwise and chopped
• 2 C mushrooms
• Handful of rice noodles

Cooking instructions

1. Press tofu under heavy pan for a few minutes
2. Mix rice vinegar, soy sauce, garlic together in a baking dish
3. Cube tofu and place in baking dish with marinade
4. Marinate for the length of time it takes to chop your veggies, or about 10 minutes, flipping once
5. Heat a wok or large stir fry pan over medium (mine’s non-stick but you could heat with oil if needed)
6. Reserve marinade and cook tofu for about 6 minutes, turning once. It should make a few popping sounds. Remove.
7. Soak rice noodles in warm water.
8. Add green beans and red bell peppers (or whatever your longest cooking veggies are). Cook for 3 minutes.
9. Add zucchini and broccoli. Cook for 3 minutes.
10. Add mushrooms. Cook for two minutes.
11. Add tofu, rice noodles, and reserved marinade. Stir gently until well-mixed. Reduce heat to medium low for about 3 minutes.
12. Enjoy.

Makes 4 servings if you’re me. Probably 2-3 if you’re Matt.

This was really simple, but it was probably one of my best stir fries ever. I credit the fantastic stir fry pan we got. Also, the cute bowls in which I served it, more great wedding gifts.  You could use any veggies or proteins here, really. I’m sure chicken or seafood would work well, I just wanted tofu.

Now I need to go deal with a few issues, including the fact that our laptop power cord is broken again and I really want to go buy pretty shiny things at Target.

Well, last night we went out for dinner, and tonight I’m having leftovers cleverly disguised as a different meal:

That’s a tempeh melt with grilled veggies on the side. I polished off the veggies no problem, but I’ve only had half of the sandwich so far. I had a bigger lunch than usual, and I’m having a lot of trouble with my hunger cues today.

The AC is still broken at the gym, and yet they still keep opening and then (BIG SURPRISE) having to close early due to “extreme heat.” Today they opened up at 5:30 and then had to close at 9:00am. This is really throwing me off my routine, and I’m all agitated and I feel like I could just start yelling at any moment. I’m hoping to take a walk later, but the heat index is still 100 and it’s already 7:00pm, so yeah. We’ll see. I did some yoga this morning, and I would do another round, but it would require 1) getting off the couch and 2) moving things out of the way. That feels like so much effort.

Because I care (and because I had the afternoon off), here’s my lunch and snack for your viewing pleasure.

Lunch

Deli chicken breast, some reduced fat Colby Jack cheese, a little cream cheese, and some mushrooms, all shoved between two slices of Ezekiel bread and tossed on the grill pan. I also split a nectarine with Matt when he got home from work at 2.

Snack

Delicious Brown Cow Maple yogurt (the only sweetened yogurt I ever buy anymore because it is awesome and worth the overload) with some flax and some sliced almonds. I never take yogurt to work because I can’t be relied upon to eat what I bring with me, so sometimes it goes to waste. Since I was home though, it was perfect.

Except when I knocked it over and some of it got on Matt’s records. I told him it was okay because it was healthy. Good thing we’re still in that “honeymoon” period.

Anyway, the sad part is that this is actually more interesting than my usual daytime fare.

The AC is still broken at the gym, but today I’m smart enough to skip it. I randomly picked out a yoga DVD from the library, so I think I’ll do that. As much as I’d like to take the opportunity to skip exercise altogether, I am feeling the need to stay active before our trip to NC (in a week!) because I have a really cute dress to wear and I keep looking at it on the hanger and wondering if I bought accidentally bought it for mini-me. As opposed to regular me.

The stars were aligned against my workout today. Somehow, I powered through in spite of:

1. Knee pain the morning that ruined my 5:30 workout plan.
2. The AC being broken at the gym. Again.
3. Yoga being canceled due to #3.
4. My iPod crapping out 12 minutes into my workout.
5. Did I mention the AC was broken?

They had two floor fans. Two. Floor. Fans. Yeah. That helped. When I was leaving, I think I may have noticed a slight change for the better, but at that point, the damage was done. My kicky green workout top may never be the same again. I also heard one of the kids working there, who was walking around with some sort of temperature gauge, say that it was 88 degrees.

So, I somehow made it through 45 minutes on the Arc Trainer. Seriously, I think I already blocked it out, because I know it happened, but I can’t really recall it.

I was pretty wiped out when I got home, so I wanted a nice, replenishing meal. And I came up with grilled veggie and tempeh fajitas.

I marinated the tempeh in a tapatio/honey/paprika/garlic/black pepper mix and grilled it. I left the veggies plain and just grilled those, too. You probably can’t tell, but there’s also zucchini, yellow squash, a green pepper, and some mushrooms under there. And, of course, cheese.

I really love tempeh, but I’m always hungry an hour after I eat it. I’m waiting for that so I can have another snack. You know how I love my snacks.

I’m having an RA flare, and while it’s relatively mild, I’m still finding it quite annoying because it’s all spread out - left knee, right hip, left hand, and jaw. Fun times all around, basically. So, no kickboxing for me, but I did hit the gym after work to do some cardio and weights. I’m always really proud of myself when I manage to exercise through pain - as long as it’s not excruciating, it really helps.

But enough self-congratulation. Wait, no. I’m not done. This meal was really delicious, too:

I’m going mostly meatless this week, just because meat is expensive and I didn’t want to buy any before we go on vacation. Good thing, too, because I took some WebMD diet assessment today and it was all DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! TOO. MUCH. PROTEIN.

So the main course (top right corner) was a delightful barley and walnut salad. It was inspired by a recipe from Food and Wine, with some major modifications. I’m more of a Cooking Light kind of girl, so I was a little appalled by the fact that the recipe called for 1/3 cup of olive oil. Just the idea of that makes me feel kind of sickly. Anyway, it’s barley, a few toasted walnuts, some spinach that I threw in with the barley at the last minute, a nice lemon vinaigrette, and some feta.

Close up:

I also roasted some veggies to have on the side, because I wanted to take advantage of the fact that it was only 78 degrees.

Now I’m off to clean and read and stress out over whether or not I can make it to the gym in the morning.

Tonight was the last night of Sunday night yoga for the summer, which was sad. I usually feel a lot of exercise guilt if I don’t do my five days of 45 minutes of cardio, but yoga has really been giving me an attitude makeover this summer. I look forward to it, which is kind of strange, since I’m really not that good at it, and I usually only look forward to things I’m good at, like beating Matt at Trivial Pursuit. Every. Single. Time.

But that’s beside the point. I can’t go to noon yoga anymore because it’s way too hot to do vinyasas in a room with a dinky little window unit and then go back to work and pretend like I don’t smell bad. There are two night classes this week, and I’ll try to make them, but I need some DVDs or something, I think. So, I’m looking for any and all recommendations. Please, help me. You’re my only hope(s).

Now for the food. It was insanely hot again today, and I had a really hard time eating. Especially after I went to the grocery store in 100 degree weather and had to witness the carnage that is a 10/$10 sale of little organic raspberry cartons (I managed to salvage three for myself).

I made dinner before yoga, because it was a carrot-apple-peanut soup that needed to chill. I think it’s my first chilled soup? I’m pretty sure. I was really nervous about it, but that turned out to be ridiculous because it had four of my favorite foods: apples, carrots, potatoes, and peanut butter.

The recipe suggested garnishing with crushed peanuts, which sounded like a fine idea to me. This was a pretty small serving for soup, maybe 2/3 of a cup (seriously, it’s the heat. I passed a bank sign that said 108 on the way home from yoga). To balance things out, I had some Kashi crackers and a plum. My first plum ever. It was good.

And now my arthritis is flaring up so I need to go. Hopefully I’ll get my appetite back in time to eat some ice cream or something.

I’ve been looking for good party foods because we’re heading to North Carolina in a few weeks, and we’ll be having a few celebrations of our recent nuptials while we’re there. And I want to be ready to showcase my mad healthy cooking skillz at a moment’s notice. You know how it is.

So here’s one that was pretty successful: pesto potato salad. I made pesto for the first time, and it was pretty hardcore because it was from my very own basil plant, which has been living in the kitchen window, baffling me. I’m not good with plants. My boss has been on vacation for the last two weeks, and one of my biggest fears was that her plants would die under my care. Luckily, they haven’t. And my basil hasn’t either! I was only able to harvest like a cup, so this was a very small batch of pesto, and for that reason, my processor couldn’t really handle it, so it didn’t unify as we’ll as I would’ve liked. Oh well, it tasted good.

There’s my serving. It’s just red potatoes, peppers, and pesto. I hate traditional potato salad, so this was a really nice alternative.

Though I could have eaten enough potatoes to make a meal, I decided to round things out, so I made my fave black bean burgers from Veganomicon:

I only ate half of the bun. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today, but I’m just not that into food.

Oh, also tried parmesan squash chips, which didn’t turn out as well as I’d have liked, but were still pretty good:

I ate a few more than this, but they weren’t as presentable.

Sorry the light is extra weird in these, but we’re supposed to have storms and it’s all dark out.

And now, I’m going to avoid even looking at my to do list in favor of reading, since I’m not terribly interested in going outside.

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.