Year 3, Day 153: Dessert Out of Control

In a another fit of baking on gym workout day (3 laps in pool, 6 miles on elliptical 100 ab crunches) I attempt to make a coffee cake. I am obsessed with making a coffee cake and I want it to taste exactly like the Boston Coffee Cake and the Sara Lee coffee cake and they are both really totally different, so I must keep trying. Fine crumb or yeasty layery thing? I remain afraid of yeast. I'll need a master class to take it on. Maybe Jane, my sister-in-law will teach me. At night I attempted a recipe from Gourmet magazine, which was quite nearly a total failure.

breakfast
Kashi Go Lean!
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Banana
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

preworkout snack
1 big slice of coffee cake

lunch
tuna romaine, cabbage, feta

pool snacks
1 bag boston lite popcorn
hot grapes
1 oz peanuts

various snack
2 oz 50% jalapeno cheddar
10 Tamarind Almonds

dinner
two remainders of pizza slices (make at home, 8 inch)
caesar salad
chicken with cashews

dessert
funky chunky popcorn
more cake

Realizing I was going to have to go to surgery, I bought a $14 container of funky chunky popcorn, which aside from being a shameless copy of Dale & Thomas original, is fantastic and impossible to stop eating. I have successfully hidden it in the house, but unfortunately now it has gone stale, so what was a savings in calories was a waste of hard-earned dollars. But even the small bit I had was so so worth it.

Year 3, Day 143: UGH

On a 50 almond day, you don't want to go out to eat and have dessert while you're at it. But in fact that's exactly what happened. Emily, Magnolia, my neice and I went with Ruby and a friend to the Full Moon Cafe in Cambridge, which is one of those rare places where they serve good adult food and it's a family-friendly restaurant, read: your kids can play in a dark, dingy corner. But still it works for most of the meal until some smelly kid wallops yours with a broken toy found in a dirty bin. Then, it's time for dessert and the to go bag. Fast.

Breakfast
Kashi Go Lean!
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Banana
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

Snack
4 Pieces of Jerky
50 Almonds
1.5 oz Boston Lite Popcorn

Lunch: Russo's ($5.47)
Romaine, red pepper, feta
chicken, broccoli, mushrooms
balsamic vinegar, pepperocini

Dinner: Full Moon Cafe
Grilled Asparagus, Feta & Mesclun Greens
Steak, Green Beans & Arugula (I split the steak with Ruby and I hardly had any)

Dessert
1 bite chocolate. chip cookie
1 bite vanilla ice cream

From foodfacts.info/blog:

Wendy's NYC nutritional info
Wendy's has posted the following on their website regarding nutritional information posting in NYC:
We regret that Wendy's cannot provide product calorie information to residents or customers in New York City. The New York City Department of Health passed a regulation requiring restaurants that already provide calorie information to post product calories on their menu boards -- using the same type size as the product listing.

We fully support the intent of this regulation; however, since most of our food is made-to-order, there isn't enough room on our existing menu boards to comply with the regulation. We have for years provided complete nutritional information on posters inside the restaurant and on our website. To continue to provide caloric information to residents and customers of our New York City restaurants on our website and on our nutritional posters would subject us to this regulation. As a result, we will no longer provide caloric information to residents and customers of our New York City restaurants.

We regret this inconvenience. If you have questions about this regulation, please contact the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and refer to Health Code Section 81.50.
Subsequently, a judge has prevented NY from enforcing the new law, stating that the rules, which would have applied only to restaurants that already disclosed calorie data, "would have attempted to punish the very restaurants that are already providing accurate and comprehensive nutrition information."

Year 2, Day 352 Sundays with Chicken Caesar

Another Sunday, another 65 minutes and another seven miles. Now that the gym has become a staple in my life I'm realizing again how important the music element is. Now there are some workouts where I don't even want to listen to music, but most times I find it really makes the difference, between whether you are just doing the standard hamster in the wheel or really going for the Jennifer Beals-while-Maniac-by-Michael-Sembello is playing kind of thing. Because I don't watch videos or listen to the radio a lot every day, I don't get exposed to too much new music. This makes it hard to create new and exciting play lists frequently, and a lot of the music that I grew up on (Beatles, Springsteen, Costello) are not great workout records. Though I did do an all KISS workout today, just for an experiment. It was actually pretty good, but there was a lot of reaching for the iPod's skip button.

Breakfast
Kashi
Heritage Flakes
Strawberries
Blueberries
Bananas
Unsweetened Soy Milk
Coffee

Lunch
1/2 Blue Ribbon BBQ Buffalo Chicken Caesar
Brisket
Cabbage, Onion & Feta Salad

Snack
Almonds & Cashews
2 oz 50% Jalapeno Cheddar

Dinner
Turkey Crumble
Lettuce Wraps

Dessert
~16 Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
2 Kissables

Taking advantage of my post-work high-functioning metabolism, I ate the rest of the BBQ Buffalo Caesar my mother left over. It is a strange experience to eat a wrap as I hardly ever do it. It also happened to be FANTASTIC. I can't say for certain, but I did experience a chocolate meltdown later in the evening, when doling out the dessert for the kids.

Year 2, Day 318: I Have a Dream

A very strange coincidence meant that Ruby and I saw a movie on all three Monday holidays: Christmas, New Year's Day and now Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Today we saw "Flushed Away," which while not the most direct way to celebrate the holiday, was still nice because it was not insipid like nearly all of the other children's animated films. Still reeling from my discovery of the travesty of nutrition contained in movie popcorn, I am compelled to keep sneaking in Boston Lite Popcorn wherever I go to see a film. Today I brought a friend of Ruby's along too and they had a great time. Then after we went to a restaurant for lunch but there was an 30 minute wait so we vamoosed over to the local pizza joint. Ruby's friend wanted a cheeseburger and they didn't serve it on a soft roll but a sub roll and I felt bad because Ruby's friend had lost both of her front teeth. She was plucky, though, and got through half of it before concentrating on her juice and french fries.

Breakfast
1 Slice Balthazar Bread
2 Soft Boiled Eggs
2 oz 50% Jalapeno Cheddar
1 crust of balthazar with Super Chunky Peanut Butter
Coffee

Movie Snack
~3 oz Boston Lite Popcorn
1 Clementine

Lunch: Bill's
Undressed Greek Salad with Chicken
Some Cheese off of a slice of Pizza
1/2 of a chicken nugget

Mindlessly Eaten:
2 pieces of paprikash chicken
2 pieces of hamburger

Dinner: Legal Seafoods
3 oysters
2 shrimp
(cocktail sauce)
house salad, balsamic vinegar
dover sole
broccoli with cheese

dessert
2 bites of egg nog cheesecake
decaf coffee

At night the excitement continued and I went out to eat with my brother and a friend at Legal Seafoods. As always, there were more calories consumed than should be, and according to the book I'm reading, Mindless Eating, it's apparently a common thing that you eat more when you're having a good time and you want it to last. That doesn't say much for eating with friends, does it?