Get ‘er done

I was a busy little bee today. I basically didn’t have time to be in a mood again, so at least there’s that, but I was slammed at work. This doesn’t happen that much in the summer, because my teaching load is lighter and I’m usually working on projects with more fluid deadlines, but today was back to back to back. To back. And back again. And I’m still not done - I have a few more things to wrap up at home tonight. The good news is that it’s Wednesday, which means two more days and then it’s smooth sailing into a weekend of… cleaning.

Anyway, on to the food. I was all excited to make this saffron lemon chicken salad thing from Ellie Krieger’s cookbook, and then I went to the store to buy saffron and I definitely came home without it. It was in the spice area with all the other normal spices, but instead of being, you know, 4.99 or whatever, it was 19.99. And there were about 6 strands of saffron in there. What kind of jackass business is that? Those strands of saffron probably cost more than my outfit that day. So what we had was lemon chicken salad. Sans saffron.

That chicken salad was awesome. I chose it specifically because I had a pound of green beans from the farmer’s market that needed to be used, and this recipe called for a pound of green beans. Lucky me. I was also intrigued because it involved cooking a lemon, scooping out the the insides and chopping up the peel for the salad. Zesting would’ve been easier, but this had really good flavor. So it was green beans, marinated grilled chicken breast, lemon peel, and a nice lemon-honey vinaigrette. With some bulgur on the side. Oh, bulgur. How I’ve missed you.

Okay, time to work and get myself psyched for a 5:30am gym trip.

Yay?

I don’t feel very chatty.

I’m in a mood, but I know if I don’t post then my mom gets “curious” (read: nervous) about whether or not I ate dinner. So, here’s dinner:

Frittata with red potato, tomato, green pepper, spinach, and goat cheese; salad with tomato, more goat cheese, walnuts; bread.

I think I might have an Edy’s fruit bar, too. I just don’t know. I’ve had to make too many decisions today.

Ten minute rule.

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.

Sunday. Again.

I was more or less productive today, so I only have 21 things left on my list. Not bad!

In other good news, it was a lovely day, with temperatures ranging from ten to twenty zillion degrees. Approximately.

Okay, not really, but when I drove back from the gym at 7:00pm, I passed one bank sign that said it was 100, and one that said it was 106. Mmm. Steamy. I thought I was hallucinating when I passed the first one, as I had just spent 90 minutes in a big gym with an air conditioner malfunction, doing yoga with four other clearly deranged women. I just kept telling myself that people pay big money to do yoga in 108 degree rooms, so really, I was getting a great deal. This powered me through the eight times I almost passed out.

So, I came home and made a tasty dinner to lift my spirits and get my energy back. I got a huge bunch of chard at the farmers market yesterday, and I was planning to make this recipe again, but I decided to get fancy and do my own variation.

Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients (measures are approximate):

• humongous bunch of swiss chard
• garlic
• 10 ounces whole wheat pasta (I used linguine)
• 2 cups (or 1 can) of cannellini beans (rinsed well if canned)
• 1 can of stewed Italian style tomatoes
• 1 cup of tomatoes (I used grape tomatoes, but you could use whatever), roasted
• 1/4 cup of white wine (dry works best)
• 1/8 cup of chicken or veggie broth
• 1/8 cup of water
• Tsp olive oil

How to cook them:

1. Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain.
2. Heat olive oil in a large pan over medium-low. Add chard, white wine, garlic and cover. Let chard wilt, about three or four minutes. Stir a few times.
3. Add beans, tomatoes, broth, water, and more garlic to taste. Cook through, about six minutes.
4. Stir into pasta, heating over low heat for a few minutes until sauce thickens.

It makes about six servings. Plenty for dinner and leftovers for Matt’s lunches.

I added some parmesan to mine. And I had a salad, too. Baby spinach, roasted red pepper vinaigrette, and parmesan. Hey, it was out.

While cooking, I enjoyed my new favorite beer, Old Cherry from New Belgium Brewing Company. Brewed with the juice of real cherries. Cherries and beer? How could it go wrong?

Okay, an hour before bed. Let’s see if I can knock anything else off my list.

Oh! I almost forgot. In the midst of my productivity, I took a break and actually wrote things about me on my About Me page. It’s like See Food: The E! True Hollywood Story.

Refrigerator raider

This was a “clean out the stuff that’s going to go bad in the fridge” kind of night, so we had two mini-meals that didn’t necessarily go together.

First course was baked tofu and a spinach and carrot salad with a ginger-lime vinaigrette:

This is the first time I’ve actually used leftover tofu. I usually prefer to leave it in the fridge, forget about it, and throw it out when it turns black. Fun!

Second course was mushroom barley risotto with whole wheat sourdough toast:

I think it’s well-established that I love risotto, especially risotto that is not really risotto, but this was especially good. Probably because the recipe explicitly said that I didn’t have to stand there and stir it, so I just brought broth, barley, mushrooms, and a little soy sauce (this was a new one for me) to a boil, reduced it to a simmer, and skipped off to read my book. Basically, I got 45 minutes of my life back.

Also, it was 92 degrees and I didn’t want to stand in front of the oven. I’m not ready to die yet. I have more to give.

I didn’t get much done today, so our list for tomorrow now has 39 things or something great like that on it, including cleaning every single room in our apartment, vacuuming, trying to get our carpet back to its original color, grocery shopping, looking for new running shoes, going to the library, writing wedding thank yous because we were finally able to get those printed, and possibly doing some deep breathing to ward off anxiety attacks. You know, no big deal. If I get started by, oh, yesterday morning or so, I should definitely be done in time for Sunday night yoga.

I think I’m going to need some ice cream.

The best Knight of all.

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.

The return of the monkey plate.

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.

What day is it?

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 have five minutes.

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.

Mas stretchy

We had another busy day, and my toe was kind of sore, so I decided to skip my usual Cardio Craze class in favor of a 90 minute yoga class. All classes are hit or miss at my gym, since the instructors are primarily undergrads, so I don’t venture out and try new ones often, but this time I’m glad I did. I’ve been having lots of hip pain in recent weeks, and when I went to get a massage last weekend, I almost started screaming whenever my left hip was touched. She gently suggested that I might want to come back and work on that and recommended yoga in the meantime. But I didn’t make it to noon yoga all last week, so this was my first opportunity.

I was nervous when the instructor walked in wearing platform flip-flops, but she was actually really good. It was a nice blend of vinyasas and balancing poses and tons and tons of leg stretching. Now my hips feel all stretched out. Next stop: hamstrings! I will be able to touch my toes one day. I BELIEVE.

The only bad part was when there was a brown recluse crawling across the floor towards the woman in front of me. They’ve had an “outbreak” of them at the gym, which just makes everything more exciting. Whatever, I pay 13 dollars a month, so I can’t really complain. The instructor killed it and then, visibly upset, told us that she usually doesn’t kill bugs. Um. Not a bug, my young friend. An agent of death.

When I got home, we ate some peanut noodles that I prepared earlier.

Tasty. We took a short walk, as it’s nice again today, and then stopped at the grocery store behind our house for a few things. I was overcome with a craving for chocolate milk, and we could only find reduced fat kind that also had HFCS. I bought it anyway and mixed it with my regular milk. Even at a 1:3 evil chocolate to skim ratio, it’s awesome.

Now I’m going to go make my muesli for tomorrow morning and read and pretend tomorrow isn’t Monday.