Long Weekend Lull

Home again home again, jiggity jog.

Holy cowww does it feel good to be back. And to realize that there are only four days of work left this week. And to collapse on my couch with a healthy amount of dark chocolate and milk while watching the new Housewives episode. And to ignore the very sad reality that I have no groceries in my apartment for tomorrow.

Looks like I may finally get to put my GF pancake mix to use in the morning! (Anyone ever used Bob’s before…?)

Anywho. In lieu of a dinner “recipe” or poorly lit photograph of my Tupperware breakfast, I’ll give you a few snapshots from this weekend.

First: a run in NYC. Amazing weather. 80 degrees in October? In New England? Yesplease.

(Blue on blue workout gear–classic.)

Next: dinner at Bleecker Street Pizza, named best pizza in NYC by Food Network. We got the Nonna Maria with a deal from Gilt City, which ruled. (Both the fresh mozz pie and the deal. Best pizza in New Yawk? Mmm maybe, maybe not.)

Unfortunately I didn’t take any pics at Maialino, the fantastic restaurant at the equally-fantastic Gramercy Park Hotel, where we ate dinner last night. Just trust me when I say it was pretty incredible. Highlights included the fig & ricotta crostini, the fried artichoke appetizer, the bucatini all’amatriciana (a savory bacon-infused tomato sauce…uh huh), and the warm plum upside down cake with vanilla mascarpone cream. I think I want vanilla mascarpone cream on everything I eat from now on. Pancakes (!!), oatmeal, baby carrots. Everything.

Oh and spotting Danny Meyer himself at the table next to us (!!!!!!) wasn’t too bad either. Again, you’ll have to trust me on this.

What I DID take a picture of was this yummy lunch the Boy and I made. Sautéed chicken over salad with balsamic pesto dressing, a farmers market fresh Mutsu/Crispin apple, and sliced heirloom tomato. Light yet filling!

Now I’m off to bed with visions of (pumpkin-laced) meal ideas dancing in my head.

…and of this gorgeous view. Night!

3 Ingredient Marinara

I know. It sounds impossible, right?

Or boring. Or tasteless. Or just plain lame.

But I swear! This marinara sauce is the real deal. It’s super flavorful. Light yet buttery, savory yet fresh, full of unadulterated tomato goodness.

Canned whole (peeled) tomatoes.

Butter.

Onion.

It’s as simple as that! Really really. Pour your tomatoes (I used San Marzanos) into a pot with some buttah and an onion and let simmer away. If using the whole 28 oz. can, you’ll want about 5 tbsp of butter and a whole medium onion, chopped in half and plopped into the pot. Yup, plopped. Science people.

I cut the recipe down to 1/4 of the original (taken from Iowa Girl Eats, one of my first and most favoritest bloggers!) so I used about 1 tbsp of the good stuff and 1/4 of a decent-sized onion. In the end I think it simmered for about half an hour; all I did was stir and break up the tomatoes every few mins while getting everything else ready.

And no, you won’t miss the herbs. Not the oregano, not the parsley, not the garlic. This is coming from an herb fiend. I promise you. This is simplicity at its best.

Including…another GF pasta! This time I went with some brown rice spirals. They were delish.

Side note: so far the only difference I’ve noticed in cooking GF vs. regular pasta is that you’re actually supposed to rinse the GF in cold water after cooking to keep it from getting gummy. This is, of course, a major no-no for your usual spaghetti as rinsing would strip normal noodles of all their starchy pasta water glory.

Back to dinner. In addition to the marinara, I cooked up one turkey sausage link with garlic and mushrooms while also roasting broccoli (shocking!) and some sweet potato. To speed up the cooking process for the tuber, I nuked it first for about 2 mins. This way, it had already started baking by the time it entered the oven–ensuring creamy insides and crispy outsides. Awesome.

In the end, dins came together in about 45 minutes.

And dessert, in about 3.

Cottage cheese + Libby’s pumpkin (sweetened with stevia and cinnamon) + chopped apple. Ohmygodsogood.

TGI(A)F!!!

To wake up early or not to wake up early?

That is the question.

Since starting my new job, I’ve been struggling with finding a morning routine I like. In the past I’ve woken up and had a leisurely breakfast with the NYT xword puzzle…or DVR’d episodes of Say Yes to the Dress.

What, you don’t love SYTTD? I find it uplifting.

Anywayyy since now I’m expected to be at school + ready for action by 7:30, I no longer have that luxury. So far I’ve been bringing my bfast into the classroom and scarfing my food while reading blogs lesson planning in about 15 mins. Exhibit A:

Mmmm Tupperware. Not exactly my idea of a relaxing or soothing (or appetizing-looking?) way to start the day.

The problem is that if I eat much earlier than 7, I’m hungry by 10:30 and want to chomp my kids’ heads off (more than I already do) before lunch finalllyyyyyy arrives at noon. Halp!

So this morning I tested a new plan. I woke up at 5:30 and ever-so-slowly relished my delicious pumpkin oats over the new Rachel Zoe episode. They were awesome. The oats and RZ. Unfortunately I didn’t snap a pic of the food…sowwy.

As expected, I was starving by 10:30 so I grabbed another naner from the cafeteria and gobbled it down in .2 seconds. Worked pretty well! Just a little more sugar than I wanted in my system so early in the day.

Lunch rolled around, then classclassclassRECESSclassartclubhome. Went for a quickie run after polishing off the last nugget of a Ginger snap Larabar (loved it!) and made dinner. Another mishmash leftover remix. This time:

Last night’s sausage/butternut squash/caramelized onion/mushroom ragout combined with sauteed tomatoes, corn, more onions and shrooms. Add in an egg (protein!) and roasted broccoli and more butt. squash (ha) andddd you’re done!

Purdy, ain’t she?

Don’t answer that.

Followed by this beaut:

That would be a slice of Life Is Good’s GF brown rice bread slathered in a cinnamony pumpkin/stevia/almond milk mixture and toasted for a few minutos. Alongside a honeycrisp apple sprinkled with–surprise!–more cinnamon. Fall on a plate.

THIS WAS AWESOME. Super doughy, slightly sweet and subtly spicay. A lot like real pumpkin bread without all that baking fuss.

P.S. I miss gluten about zero percent. I feel so much better: less irritable, less tired, less lethargic, and yes, less bloated. No, I haven’t cut it out completely (especially on weekends seeing that it’s physically impossible for me to resist an Essabagel) but I like avoiding it as much as I can whenever I can. During the week my meals are not only completely GF, but absolutely dericious. That’s a victory in my book.

Anddddd now I’m zonked and need to shower (ew) and go.to.bed. Night!

To the city…and back

Happppy October!

Um, when did that happen? I seriously feel like yesterday was August 1st…and it’s October 3rd. Where have I been? What have I been doing? Who am I?

Don’t mind me.

So here are some catch-up pics from the weekend and then I’ll get to tonight’s eats.

First up: truffle mozzarella crepe from Bar Suzette at Madison Square Eats. Literally, a crepe sprinkled doused in freshly shredded mozz, truffle salt and truffle oil. Ohhhh my cheese.

And how cute is their stand??? THEY EVEN OFFER GF CREPES.

…no, I didn’t order it. I didn’t want to risk it. In this case, taste trumped GI tract.

TMI?

Moving on…here’s the only memento from one of the best meals I’ve had in a while (and, appropriately, probably the worst photo I’ve ever posted on BwB): pear and cranberry crisp with brown sugar ice cream from Blue Smoke.

This came at the end of an eatathon of Man vs. Food proportions. Iceberg wedge with bleu cheese and bacon dressing. Pulled pork platter over housemade white bread (…gluten free what?…) with pit beans, sesame cole slaw, corn on the cob and a bite of the Boy’s cornbread. Because one form of corn simply isn’t enough at a BBQ feast.

From Sunday: lunch at Broome Street Bar. Tuna salad sammy on rye for me, never-ending nachos for him. Equally satisfying meals for a crisp Sunday afternoon!

The side salad was the perfect complement, too! Thinly sliced cuke + teeny shrooms with an herby vinaigrette. Very refreshing.

And now here I am, back in the ‘burbs, cooking bowls of mashed up goodness for myself. Tonight featured something new–stir fry!

I chopped up some onion, red bell pepper, and butternut squash (okay okay I bought it pre-chopped. Sue me.) and threw it in a hot pan with salt, pep, and smoked paprika. While that got going, I set up a pot of boiling water for the brown rice I knew I wanted to serve the fry over.

Once the onions started getting translucent, I tossed in some broccoli and frozen corn. It was about now that I threw the brown rice boil-in-bag into the pot, knowing I was about 10 mins away from being done with the veg.

Then came the best and easiest part. With the heat turned down to low, I cracked a whole large brown egg into the pan and let it fry up and bring all the veggies together into one glorious savory mess.

A few squirts of sriracha on top and it was ready for inhaling.

…followed not long after by a whole honeycrisp apple chopped and dusted in cinnamon. Perfection.

New RHOBH and Most Eligible Dallas on tonight. Must go. Night!

One of my best dinners yet

Let’s keep this short and sweet. First, I survived my field trip. With both my sanity and all of my limbs. Win-win!

When I got home there was about a negative 80% chance I was going to the gym. No siree bob, it was just me, the couch, and the BAU at Quantico (Criminal Minds again) this afternoon tonight.

So I figured I could at the very least make something new for dinner. Behold, a non-mashy-jumbled-mess-of-food!

Twice baked sweet tater with corn, cheddar, red bell pep and BBQ sauce alongside some chopped avocado and roasted broccoli. Oh and a bagel. What?! I was hungry.

…clearly that wasn’t enough to satisfy my 4th grade appetite because 30 min later I whipped up this weirdo concoction of pumpkin, milk, coconut flour, sweetener, and baking powder. Oh and some flax (for binding purposes). Nuked for a few mins and topped with shards of Ghirardelli’s amaaaazing new chocolate, plus some sunseed butter. The chocolate got all melty and delicious in there and I just about died.

Until this happened. Add toasted coconut and I officially die. Because everything’s better with toasted coconut.

Lazy girl’s guide to grocery shopping (or lack thereof)

I don’t like buying ingredients for recipes.

Around the holidays, maybe. For a special birthday cake, sure. But on a daily basis, I’d rather use what I already have to make my dinners. The challenge is to use and combine them in new ways to keep things interesting.

Sound like that’s easier said than done? I beg to differ. Here’s how I make it work:

Yes, that would be the dry erase board in my kitchen right now. Scary? Maybe. Helpful? Heck yes!

On the upper left you’ll see the “what I have:” heading followed by a longgg list of stuff. Here I try to include my most recent purchases as well as pantry staples and especially older items that I know I need to use up. I like the dry erase board method because it’s easy to erase/add things and it’s suuuper easy to read/work from.

So tonight I took the shrooms, broc, tomatoes, corn, GF pasta (!!), and chicken breast to make a truffle-oil-and-garlic infused primavera pasta dish. Aka pasta with sauteed chicken, mushrooms & broccoli sauteed in truffle oil, sweet corn (fresh!…out of a freezer bag), and raw cherry tomaters.

And a baby spinach salad on the side with the last of my figgies and goat cheese + balsamic. A great, great combo.

So now not only have I polished off some valuable produce before it went bad, but I have leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch! Possibilities for tomorrow’s dinner? Stir fry with broccoli, bell pepper, corn, and sriracha; veggie omelet with avocado and baked sweet potato with cheddar; curry chicken with brown rice and roasted broc. Or some other kooky combination of my ingredients I haven’t thought of yet. I saw a recipe for pumpkin-laced chicken enchiladas recently…hmmm.

Anywho I’m off to prep for the day…it’s our first field trip of the year. Yikes. Hopefully this will ease my pain. Night!

Happy weekend