It’s getting hot in here.

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.

Thirty minute meal

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.

I am a loser

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.

Whole grains are delicious.

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.

Indoor picnic

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.

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.

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.