Stop: Pancake Time

November 9, 2011 by 1 Comment

The air is crisp, the leaves are falling, and I’m spending my day writing about some emotionally harrowing stuff. I think this calls for comfort food.

My favorite meal of the day is breakfast, but that doesn’t mean that omelets, waffles, and pancakes need be pigeon-holed to the wee hours of the morning. Today I made pancakes for dinner. But not just any ole pancakes, I made Jamie Eason’s Pumpkin Spice Pancakes.

Jamie Eason is a fitness model and writer that used to contribute regularly to Oxygen, but is now one of the spokeswomen of Bodybuilding.com. I follow her on Facebook because she’s really great when it comes answering fitness related questions. She also posts a bunch of her recipes for homemade protein bars, and healthy versions of classic favorites. I had a can of pumpkin in my pantry and I figured I’d give these a shot. I’m glad I did. They don’t even taste healthy!

The recipe says it makes 10-1/4 cup of batter pancakes. I got twelve out of the recipe. Since I’m not looking to binge on pancakes tonight, I’m wrapping the leftovers up in Ziploc bags in sets of two, and voilà: instant breakfast for those days that I don’t feel like cooking.

 

Here’s the recipe from BodyBuilding.com:

Pumpkin Spice Pancakes

Calories: 64
Fat: 1.3 grams
Carbs: 9.5 grams
Protein: 3.5 grams
Sugar: 0 grams

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 cups oat flour
  • 2 tbsp Splenda, Truvia, or Ideal
  • 1 tbsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 2 tbsp cinnamon (honestly, I think it’s too much cinnamon. I would cut the cinnamon in half in the future)
  • 1/4 tsp allspice
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 4 egg whites
  • 1/2 cup raw pumpkin
  • 1 1/2 cups unsweetened Almond Breeze

Directions:

  1. Preheat griddle to medium heat.
  2. Mix oat flour, Splenda, Truvia, or Ideal, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg in a bowl.
  3. Wisk egg whites and pumpkin. Mix in Almond Breeze.
  4. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix together.
  5. Spray griddle with non-stick butter spray.
  6. Scoop batter with a 1/4 cup measuring cup onto griddle. Cook 3-5 minutes on a side.

Makes 10 pancakes.

Breakfast


Egg white omelet with asparagus and lite cheese
Grapefruit

Lunch


Grilled (albeit somewhat mangled) tilapia
Collard greens

Snacks


Chocolate whey protein with almond milk
Banana


Orange

Dinner


Pumpkin spice pancakes with maple syrup

Exercise: No exercise, writing, writing, writing.

Kim

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Keeping Busy

September 21, 2010 by 1 Comment

Being bored has never been my problem.

By nature I have always been the kind of person that compulsively needs enjoys having a full schedule.

It will come as no shock then that I’ve done a little sprucing up to my class schedule.  I’ve been taking running since May.  In that time, wow has my running aptitude changed!  Now, with the impending onset of winter (it’s not technically Fall yet, but I’m already starting to worry about Winter because I’m crazy like that) I’m realizing my outdoor running days are numbered?

Sure, people run outdoors all year round.  Some people jump out of planes, and eat monkey brains too.  There are things that just aren’t my idea of fun.  So, in order to get the most out of my running class experience I’ve decided to double up my class time.  From now until December 14th I will be taking running class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  After that I will banish myself to the confines of the YMCA and their pretty treadmills until New York thaws out a bit.

Two days a week of grueling, peer pressure fueled runs.  Good times.

In addition to more running class time, next week I start German classes!  I’ve wanted to learn German for a long time now.  I think the root of this desire is that my dad’s family is German, he used to live in Germany and speaks German.  I, still being a toddler in many ways, think my dad is the coolest and have always wanted to do everything he does.   Obviously this will be a very useful endeavor. Did you know that German was in the running to be the national language of the US?  And, that it’s spoken in 40 countries worldwide.

I’m very excited about this.

Having said that, I think I might have an addiction to scheduling.  I really hate seeing empty space in my planner.  I wonder if there is rehab for this sort of thing.

Breakfast

Fiber One pancakes with banana and syrup

Snack

Orange

Lunch

Shocker: Split Pea Soup

Dinner

Speaking of running class, I totally skipped it tonight.  I was having a really bad day and my friend took me out to dinner to cheer me up.  I had originally planned on a dinner of tofu and brocolli stir fry over brown rice, this was more comfort foodie:

Grilled cheese and fries

The sundae of all sundaes.  We shared it and didn’t come close to finishing it.

Kim

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That’s what Buddha said

March 11, 2010 by 1 Comment

The Secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

Buddha

The quote above, by none other than Buddha, was exactly what I needed to see yesterday after a day of eating for all the wrong reasons.  I started out with a big breakfast, mainly because I was craving hot sauce.  This is nothing new, I’m pretty sure most of my life is spent trying to find a vehicle for delivering hot sauce to my taste buds.  Breakfast was fine, I felt okay about it.

When it came time for lunch, however, my food choices started to come from an emotional place…mainly avoidance.  It was a stressful day at work.  I’ve made no bones about being unhappy in my office life.  I’m working on being happy in life in general, but the 8.5-hours I spend in the office can feel soul crushing.  When I went to Whole Foods for lunch I bypassed my usual salad bar or soup, and went to the hot bar.   I actually consciously thought the bigger the lunch the more time away from the office.  It makes me sad to write that, it’s just an icky feeling to let something in my life make me so miserable that I would actively avoid it by eating.

When it came time for dinner, I ate out of obligation.  I met up with my “writing partner”, a fellow writer who I met while taking classes to help me with my book.  She’s working on a memoir, and now, I’m working on a memoir.  It was great to put some work out there and get critiques and feel like I was working toward a goal that at its root was all about doing something for myself.  We met at a restaurant, it was an accident, she had told me the wrong place, when she really meant a coffee shop.  I felt obliged to order a “meal”, I’ve been a waitress and I know how disappointing it is when people come in and only order an appetizer.  The mac & cheese was amazing, maybe the best I’ve ever had, but it was an indulgence that came from the wrong place.  Tuesday when I went to Hooters, was an indulgence I was planning on and savored, yesterday I just felt weighed down my my choices.

Perhaps that mental weight was more about the reasons behind my choices all day, than the actual food itself.

Anyhoo, when I came home I saw that quote by Buddha and thought, forget it, let it go.  My only goal today is to “live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.”

Breakfast

Black bean burger, egg, avocado and hot sauce

Lunch

Indian buffet at Whole Foods
My eyes were way bigger than my stomach, I didn’t make a dent in this.

Dinner

Mac & Cheese

Kim

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What are “letil gairles”?

February 27, 2010 by 3 Comments

Well it looks like someone, somewhere was getting a lot more action than I am.  Yesterday, someone stumbled upon my blog by Googling:

“strang sex with letil gairles sex tube”

I don’t even know what that means but it sounds very adventuresome.  It always amuses me the keyword searches that lead people to this little blog of mine.

Friday was a snow day for me, and it was spent like any good snow day should be spent when not having “strang sex with letil gairles sex tube”.  Which probably won’t happen for a while…or well, ever.

I spent the morning curled up on the couch watching as much Jane Austen themed movies I could get my lovelorn hands on.  Sigh, that Jane Austen sure knows how to woo  a girl.  Seriously swoony.  I totally recommend Lost in Austen, for those Pride and Prejudice fans.  Except of course, that I just read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and kept expecting the Bennett girls to break into roundhouse kicks.

I’m a total closet romantic.  Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone I have a reputation to protect.

Once I got word that the trains were working a-okay I headed out to visit the family for some good ole fashioned family bonding. My dad, who works for the school system, had a snow day too!  It felt like being a kid again.  I had a little friend bonding time with the BFF and then headed home for some TLC.

Yay for work getting cancelled.

Here’s the food rundown:

Breakfast

Whole grain & reduced

Lunch

My new favorite food combo:
Avocado, veggie burger, fried egg doused with hot sauce

Dinner

My mom made my favorite soup:
Homemade French onion soup

Happy weekend everyone!

Kim

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To Slut or Not to Slut, that is the question

October 31, 2009 by 3 Comments

Thank you all for your great Pumpkin ideas.  I’m going to do it, I swear I will eat that pumpkin and most likely I’ll use one of your suggestions.  Whatever I end up making, I’ll take pictures.

Speaking of pumpkins: Happy Halloween! I’m feeling a little nostalgic about Halloweens past.  Therefore, a Pretty Imperfect episode from last Halloween:

Sigh, those were the days.  I actually had a conversation with a friend (a male friend) yesterday that reminded me of this video.  He was asking if I were going to be a slutty something and I said that no, I never dress slutty.  He said, “why not, it’s the one time a year you can without it effecting your reputation.”  I kindly informed him that I’m not particularly concerned with my reputation, but I’m not necessarily comfortable dressing scantily.  This seemed to baffle him.  I’m pretty sure in his mind all women are just dying for the opportunity to take their clothes off.  It must be nice in there.

What are you dressing as?

This year I’m heading out to Long Island to hand out candy to the kids in my parents neighborhood.  I’m sure that since it Halloween is on a Saturday this year there will be trick-or-treaters all day long, and that can be quite a workout for the folks.  My parents always give the best stuff, so I’m pretty sure word has caught on by now ;)

In preparation I started out my morning with an AM Yoga DVD.  I was so inspired by my really fulfilling workout the other day I’ve decided to give yoga another opportunity to woo me.  It really is a great way to start the day!

I fell asleep last night without recapping my Friday, so before I set off for my day of feeding junk food to children here’s a recap of my Friday:

Breakfast 10.30.09

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Apple pie oatmeal!
I had left over apple pie filling (basically just apples, brown sugar, cinnamon, and lemon juice) from a treat I made the family a few weekends ago.  I decided to unload the leftovers on my breakfast.  It was AMAZING.  I topped it off with some walnuts for crunch

Lunch

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Kale & white bean soup
Pear

Snack

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Hummus and whole wheat mini-pitas

Dinner

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Penne a la vodka with shrimp

Sorry, the lighting at the restaurant was pretty rough to work with.  This was such an indulgence, and worth every morsel it was exactly what I needed at the end of a super stressful week.

Have a great weekend!

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Slow food…

October 9, 2009 by 2 Comments

I wasn’t always the most normal of children.  I remember very distinctively eating very, very slowly in second grade so as to make my classmates think that I had more food than them.  I’m not sure why I was quite so pre-occupied about having more food than other people, but it probably says a lot about when my food obsessions started.

I’ve been doing the same thing lately.  Well, not exactly the same thing.  I’m no longer concerned about whether or not I have more food than others.  I am however timing myself in accordance with other peoples eating and trying to slow my eating down.  I’ve been buying lunch a lot lately, a habit I’m looking to break, I just haven’t gone grocery shopping in a while.  So, while I join the ranks of the working world at Whole Foods each afternoon, I pay specific attention to the time between spoonfuls.

What I’ve noticed is that I eat a lot more slowly when I’m alone.  Not sure why.  But when I go out with friends, there’s an energy, we’re talking, we’re eating, I’m not even tasting my food.  When I sit and eat by myself, my eating cadence is a lot slower.  I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with this information, but it’s an interesting observation.  Perhaps I need to take a page from my second grade book and start slowing down my public eating.

Today was all about comfort foods and big portions.  I’m just having one of those days I guess.  I did however workout for the first time in weeks.  I’m going to be sore tomorrow!

Breakfast 10.8.09

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Whole grain bagel with egg, turkey bacon and low fat American cheese (my ultimate comfort food)
Grapes
Orange Juice

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Grande Soy Latte

Lunch 10.8.09

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Chicken & Rice soup
Multi grain roll
Cheese

Snack 10.8.09

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Smoothie w/Banana, strawberries, soy milk, protein powder

Dinner 10.8.09

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Leftovers: Chicken, string beans, 1/2 a sweet potato and wild rice w/squash

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A Day Without Veggies

July 21, 2009 by 2 Comments

“I can’t wait to see what your blog says today.  Tomorrow, I’ll make you something healthy like lentils.”

Kim’s Mom 7.20.2009

I’m visiting my parents for the week.  My parents love me very much, and when I come to visit, they get very excited and want to treat me to all sorts of comfort food.  Today was very comforting.  I’m looking forward to a salad tomorrow.

Breakfast

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Strawberries and peach
I brought fruit with me from home, since I figured it would go bad while I was visiting the folks this week.

Lunch

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Bagel with Brummel & Brown Yogurt “Butter” Spread

Pre-Dinner Dessert

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My dad announced that he was taking us out for dessert before dinner! This is the stuff 8-year-olds dreams are made of!
Reeces Peanut Butter Cup Friend-Z (at least the ice cream was low fat)

Dinner

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BBQ Ribs

Honestly, the food was great, and sweet, and I love my folks, but I feel totally gluttonous and more than a bit gross right now.  I’m looking forward to going for a run in the morning and taking over kitchen duty and giving my mom some time off.

On an up note, I went for a walk yesterday with some friends and took some pictures around Long Island.  Growing up I couldn’t wait to move away from Long Island.  It seemed like pretty much my entire life centered around graduating and moving to the city.  Now that I’ve lived in New York City for some time, and quite a few other places, I can really see what’s so charming about this place.  It really is beautiful, and there’s something to be said for never being more than 10-minutes from a beach.

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When I was in high school and my friends and I wanted to do something besides go to a diner we would drive to “the docks” and just watch the water.  There’s something so relaxing to me about being around water, it still brings back that feeling of being home.

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