spontaneous chicken

So I'm pretty much in love with oatmeal. I have discovered the magic of brown sugar. Added a bit of that and some ground cinnamon to my Quaker Oats Instant Oatmeal apple + cinnamon flavor. Sooooo good. Of course, orange juice! This was my lunch.

Back at my internship today. I brought with me yoplait light rasberry cheesecake yogurt (woo 100 calories!) but I noticed the sell-by date was October 1st... and you're supposed to consume it within 7 days.. and today is the 12th. I *think* it was okay... but I'm iffy with yogurt on the best of days. Not a fan of jiggly food. So I went with the super delicious Kashi cherry dark chocolate granola bar. I am officially out of these, so I must go buy more.

Due to sudden series of random events, I found myself at Applebee's with the fam. On a whim my mom ordered a white peach sangria to share. After a few sips, we both decided that sangria was not our kind of drink. So I didn't have much of it, but it looked pretty. For the record, I also had a sip of that pepsi there. I've actually gotten to the point where soda just doesn't taste good to me anymore- which is a good thing!

Mozzarella sticks appetizer! I snagged one of these.

And I realized as I was getting this post together that I completely forgot to take a picture of my dinner! I got the chicken finger basket and subbed out the fries for mixed veggies. I ate all but one chicken tender and all of the broccoli and carrots from the veggies, and then ate a bunch of fries from my mom's chicken finger basket. Augh fried food. It stopped tasting good after a few bites. Applebee's had some yummy looking pasta dishes on their menu, but I personally feel their quality has been declining for several years now, and didn't want to eat not so good pasta and the sauces that go with it and rack up calories. Calories are only [sometimes] worth it if the food is amazing.

pesto experiments

Foodings for 10/11/10 include....

breakfast as lunch! I woke up with a craving for Cherrios. All breakfast foods are accompanied by orange juice!

Then... dinner time! I was so surprised I wasn't hungry the six hours from lunch til dinner. Mom was late at work again, so I got the go ahead to actually cook. I made my dad hash (ground beef and potato pieces), but I can't stand the stuff, so after digging around in the cabinets I found a packet of pesto sauce mix! So off I went to making it.

It came out pretty good! I undercooked the noodles slightly, but other than that it was fine. I steamed some frozen broccoli and tossed it in with a little parmesian cheese and topped the whole thing off with some feta and a tiny bit of mozzarella (like, 10 little of those shreds worth. Nowhere near a handful.) The best part was the pesto was less than 15 calories! I believe it was Knorr brand. Experimental cooking = success.

Afterwards I splurged and ate a Ghiardelli milk chocolate + caramel square. Love this stuff.

My mom always has a bowl of candy around the house, and since it's fall we're stocked up on candy corn. it's next to impossible to not take a few pieces from it.. so this is about what I had late last night. 6 or 7 about.

october picnic

I didn't get a chance to post yesterday's eatings yet, so here they are today!

Breakfast is apple cinnamon oatmeal with a bit of OJ. I really enjoyed it the day before so I wanted to have it again. Yeah cinnamon!

Lunch consisted of the leftover chicken+bacon+apple+avocado sandwich! Even reheated it was still amazing. I put a teaspoon's worth of French dressing on the plate to dip it into, because it really makes the sandwich.

Two of my best friends who are away for school were both back in town for the weekend! We met up at our usual Starbucks haunt, where we caught up and had tasty coffee. My poison for the day was a tall pumpkin spice latte. Soooo good. I love fall flavors.

We roamed around town for awhile, and due to an epic game of musical cars (my phrase for when driving somewhere is randomly ridiculously long and/or unorthodox. There was a lot of back and forth.), we ended up at one friend's house and her parents generously invited us to have dinner. Since it was such a beautiful day (80s in October?), we had a mini picnic outside. Dinner was a grilled burger with a little mustard and more liberal amounts of Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce, tostada chips, carrot sticks, a bowl of peaches, and a glass of 7Up.

After bringing everything back outside, my friend's mom suprises us with an offer for cake! I love cake.
We continued "musical cars" until we all ended up back at my other friend's house, where we looked at engagement photos, watched music videos, and snacked on wheat thins while watching the Studio Ghibli film Ponyo. Good times.

yummy avocado

Breakfast.. wait, breakfast!? Yes. Instant Quaker Oats oatmeal, apple and cinnamon flavor! I sprinkled a little extra cinnamon on top. Mmm.

I met my mom for lunch at this wonderful local brunch cafe that opened up a few weeks ago. I'd tried a few of their breakfast selections, but I really wanted to try one of their sandwiches. This is the 'Brunch Chicken' sandwich. Grilled chicken, lettuce (the good kind, not iceberg), sliced apple, swiss cheese, avocado, and french dressing on a.. oh I forget the name of the bread. Something I hadn't heard of before. Tasty bread. They didn't have a light or fat free french, so I asked for it on the side. I subbed out the fries for fruit!

The sandwich was *amazing*. I ate juust over half of the sandwich and took the rest home. It was my first time eating straight avocado (as opposed to guacamole). The sandwich was so big! My mouth wasn't big enough.

I snacked on a few pieces of candy corn and I believe I ate the last gobstopper today. Then dinner arrived. Parental unit 1 (aka mom) had to be at work late and no one will eat my cooking unless I am specifically told to cook. It's not that I'm necessarily bad at it, it's just one of those weird family things. My family is also under some dietary restrictions, so there's not too much wiggle room for experimentation.

So I picked up dinner for parental unit 2 at the local pizza place down the street. I decided to try the chicken parmesian sandwich, subbing in grilled chicken and whole wheat bread instead of getting it fried. So I opened the box and find...

Those are a lot of french fries. I didn't realize it came with them. I'm trying super hard to limit fried foods. I usually do a pretty good job, though every so often if I'm at one of my favorite places I'll get some.

So below is a picture of what I actually ate. I cut off the corner of the sandwich, because there was no chicken in it. I also really wanted root beer, but we had none. I think I had maybe half a glass of apple cider instead.

I found Keebler chocolate covered graham cracker cookies in the fridge. They are so good, and so addicting. I realized after I took the picture there isn't really a scale for how big these are.. they're maybe an inch and a half long. I wound up having two.

I also had three Cheez-it crackers. Just for records sake.

can I cook yet?

Day three and I'm still here.

I was contemplating what to have with lunch and was sorely tempted by the leftover Chinese in our fridge... but I wanted to at least try to be a little healthy. I decided to make an egg sandwich, so I know I succeeded at least in the sodium department.

I have mentioned before I have very little cooking ability. I am working on it! But the scene below illustrates this nicely. I have to toast the english muffin, scramble an egg, and cut a piece of roast beef all at once?? I was legit slightly intimidated. I mean, those eggs cook fast. Also, somehow one half of the english muffin got wedged under the wire bread normally sits on, so it was nice and stuck.

But it all worked out in the end, and I was left with a tasty roast beef+egg+cheddar sandwich! And Simply Orange orange juice, because I can't have eggs without orange juice. I'm not sure what the roast beef was leftover from (I didn't know it was roast beef until my dad said so... I have much to learn.), but it was pretty good.

Of course, then the brownie. This is like, half a brownie. They're almost gone.

Later for dinner, I went to my brother's house. For starters there was iceberg lettuce, chopped carrots, a little cheddar cheese, and just a drizzle of light Italian dressing. Just enough to kind of make everything a little moist. Sorry about the poor quality of the next photos, I left my camera at home and only had my phone.

My sister-in-law made chicken alfredo! She makes a really great marinade for chicken, which my brother grills outside. No, it is not warm outside, but he will do it anyway. That's how he rolls.

Two pieces of grilled chicken, mostacholi noodles, alfredo sauce, and a piece of garlic bread. I only eat the insides of garlic bread. Not a fan of crispy things.

My sister-in-law always makes dessert for us. Today was triple chunk chocolate chip cookies. Ooooh my gosh. Halfway through my cookie she made an ice cream sandwich out of hers with vanilla bean ice cream, so I split another cookie with my mom just so I could make a mini sandwich with two quarter pieces. Sooo good.

Evening snack. Serving size of Cheez-it crackers are 27 crackers for a 150 calorie serving. I have 7. Go ahead and count 'em. I also had another half brownie... sigh. I love chocolate, what can I say.

english muffins are tasty

Today we start out with an english muffin, apple butter, and orange juice. This was more of a brunch, at about 11am, before heading out to my internship. I hated english muffins as a kid, but now I think they are great. The apple butter I got at the local apple orchard that I talked about in my previous post. Soooo much apple in my life right now. And I love it.

Mid-afternoon snack at my internship. I'm normally not too terribly thrilled with granola bars, as they usually taste bland to me, but Kashi Dark Chocolate Cherry chewy granola is amaaaazing. I love it.

The woman I intern for was selling candy for a fundraiser for her son, so I bought Gobstoppers. I like hard candy because I don't down it as fast as I would chewy candy. I got really hungry near the end of my day, about 4pm, so I had a few. They're addicting...

Dinner was Chinese take-out. I resisted the temptation to get BBQ lo mein and went with 'Chicken Cashew Nut.' It has really tasty chicken, carrots, celery, snap peas, some kind of crunchy mystery vegetable, and of course the cashews. This was paired with some beef fried rice and white rice. I'm sure there was far too much sodium in this... and yes I know white rice is bad... but it's really good. And I got to use my Japanese dishes! Just because I could.

Augh, the brownie strikes again. Just one. (The others are in that container calling to me... I will resist! For today.)

I can't tell, is this a lot of food? I know it's not super healthy, but it's not super bad for you either. I believe in moderation.