Broke My Challege!

I regret to inform everyone that today I did not have a salad. How embarassing. I posed a challenge and didn’t fulfill it. I have been so busy with other things that I didn’t realize that my salad bin ran on empty. I am beginning to think that I should maybe buy 2 large containers instead of one. I was so close too. Today is only Wednesday and the challenge ends on Sunday. How disappointing ……

….even though I missed one day, I will continue to try my best to fulfill the rest of the challenge. Just gotta prepare next time.

I don’t have any food pictures to upload tonight. I am away from home, so I have to try and transition to this new environment, even though I have been here a million times in the past. By new enviroment I am referring to my in-laws house in particular. Normally, when I am away from home, I don’t function as well. I know kind of weird. Anyone else like that?

Well, because it’s hard for me to adapt to new surroundings, I baked this year’s holiday pies at home rather than at my in-laws. I tried baking here before and the good didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped. Anyway, I baked apple and pumpkin pie. This is my second time baking apple pie from scratch. the first time that I made it, it turned out really runny. Kind of gross. The dough tasted great though. Actually, I think this is my first time baking pumpkin pie. Normally I make sweet potato pie, but now I realize they’re exactly the same pie, just different filling. Can’t wait to dig into them! Well……. I kind of dug into the apple pie already…. … now there’s a smalle hole in the middle….oops! It was delicious though!! Best apple pie I have ever had! Can’t wait until tmw!

Well, I have a photo from the pre-wedding shoot to share with everyone, since I can’t download any food photos just yet.

These are just a proofs, meaning that they are not finished yet; not the final quality. The photographer is going to do a little photo shop magic to get rid of unpretty things (underwear line) and a little lighting, color schemes etc.

Well…this is me in my tradional Ao Dai. My favorite part is the hat. teheh. It this isn’t the best there were nicer looking ones, but I didn’t want to show the actual pre-wedding photos that will be displayed during the wedding (on canvas). Again, gotta leave some to imagination!

Still Here!

Sorry bloggees! I have been neglecting you! I have legit excuses though!

Good news: I think I aced my exam today! I also got my grade back for my other class and I got 100% on the midterm! Yay!

Bad news: I still have a lot of hw catching up to do. I have to try to figure out how I can get everything done this thanksgiving week/weekend while cooking, baking, spending time with fam, cleaning (argh!), blogging. In addition to all that I have to work on a Case Study for my child development class.

I am sorry to say that I am not sure that my blogging schedule will be as routine as it has been for the past week. I will try my best though. If I don’t post, I will probably be lurking around your blogs. As it’s faster (and more interesting) to read and comment than to blog and write about myself.

Below is a gallery of my eats for the past few days. I only wrote descriptions for some that I thought necessary. I am sure everyone knows what a banana looks like. haha. If not it’s the first pic

Today’s Eats:

 

Yesterday’s Eats:

Butter pecan ice cream from Ben and Jerrys. Here’s a close up of the hot fudge on top. Mmmmmm……….

 

Sunday’s Eats:

I get these all the time.

Here’s a pic of me in Make-up from last Sunday.

Fairy Tale Story

Quick recap of today’s photography shoot.

When we got to the photographers house, I had to go into hair and make-up right away. (!!) I sat there getting all dolled up for about 1-1/2 hours. then I went off to get dressed in my Vietnamese wedding dress (here’s a link to see a traditional Ao Dai) , while Long took my seat in the make-up chair. Once I was dressed, we headed into our photographers garage (he does photography as a hobby). There, we posed for the camera with props such as lanterns, cameras, and bamboo in various positions. It felt sort of awkward being under the spotlight because Long and I are normally the ones taking photos–especially me! Then when we finished there, we headed outdoors to take photos with fall colors. Our photographer found two amazing spots. One was in an empty parking lot that looked like a surreal jungle. We played there for a bit with the fallen leaves, pretend kisses, and pretend “look into each other’s eyes like you’ll never look into them again” haha!! So corntastic!

Once our photographer decided that he had enough pictures to solidify our love, he drove us 2 minutes or so to a street that he designed (he is a civil engineer during the day) nearby. He had us take pictures right in the middle of the street! What made it surreal were the parallel trees and fallen orange leaves on the ground. It was almost like we were in a fairy tale story holding hands.

It is so hard to describe how beautiful the scenery was. I wish I had pictures of us getting photographed, but sadly I don’t.

Long and I had soOO much fun today cuddling with each other in front of the camera. <3 Hopefully the photos will capture how much love we have for each other That’s all that matters really.

OK now quick recap of my eats because I gtg review for my exam.

Snack:

sesame seed ball. I am showing you the insides after I took a bite. Whenever I eat these (which is every time I head out to San Jose), I feel like the mung bean filling is like a golden surprise. Gotta learn how to make these myself.

Cafe Sua Da (Vietnamese Iced Coffee).

The back of my head after I went into make-up. More pictures to come later!

Lunch:

When everything was over, I snacked on a veggie spring roll. You guys should know these by now. I eat them all the time.

My daily salad; mixed greens topped with parm and very little ranch dressing.

PBR (peanut butter and raspberry) sandwich.

Dinner:

incomplete….will have to fill everyone in tmw am. Good night!

Good To Go

Hi All! It’s Sunday morning! we’re about to head out soon for our photoshoot. so excited! Ok I gtg shower soon let me give a quick recap of breakfast.

I made a bowl of oatmeal for myself. Lately I have been preferring the waterier kind verses the thick and gooey kind.

 

What I did:

1/4 cup of rolled oats

1/3 cup of cold water

1/3 cup of plain soy milk

1 very ripe banana

pinch of salt

Once they were cooked, I added 1 T of ground flaxseed, 1 T of brown sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla extract, 1/4 tsp of ground cardamom, 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon. The result: “scrump-tu-is-lious” -Long

 

 

Cup of black coffee.

Have a good day and hope to see ya for Dinner!

Hard to Keep Quiet

Whew! It’s been a long day. I almost told myself that I would post tmw morning. Luckily I didn’t because there are a ton of pictures to show! Plus, tmw is going to be a busy busy day. (EEEK!!) Movie star for a day! We’re leaving around 10:30 tmw, which gives me enough time to eat breakfast, relax, spend time with the fam, and post my meal before I leave. The whole session is going to last about 5 hours (2 hours make up (!), 1 hour traveling, 2 hours taking photos) Afterwards, I hope to pick up my bridesmaid dresses. They came in earlier than expected (ahem!….Chanmary).

Breakfast:

started off very relaxing. I woke up, spent a little time with the hubby, then headed out to have breakfast with the two coolest girls ever! One is an amazing chef, she cooked breakfast and made the papaya-avocado smoothie below.

This was probably the most delicious batch of beans I’ve ever had for breakfast. I gotta get the recipe! The bottom is a pita bread and of course there is an egg sprinkled with jalapenos. Really very delicious.

The best part!! CoffeeeEEee! When I took the first sip, I swear I tasted dark chocolate.

and biscuits, I had two!! Fasika you’re so sweet! (Again thanks so much for cooking for us!)

Lunch:

The day went by so quickly that I didn’t even realize how many hours past since I had breakfast. I think I had this bowl of salad around 4 o’clock in the early evening. I was really shocked that I let myself go without food for so long. Must have been the beans that held me over. haha. I was just so caught up with the wedding favors. No, we’re not done with them yet-we’re still working on the first part. It’s not tedious or anything, it’s quite fun actually. Gosh, they’re turning out really REALLY nice. It’s so hard for me to keep it in. I just want to tell everyone what we’re making, but I can’t.  If you can’t tell I can never keep my mouth shut with secrets, so this is hard to share my excitement without giving details.

This salad was just the usual mixture of greens topped with carrots and parm. and a few crackers on the side.

Later I had a cup of iced coffee made with my bodum expresso maker. Miss Dottie is in her favorite rocking chair.

Dinner:

Cambodian Hot pot. It’s basically fermented soy soup base (store bought) and a load of veggies, and quail eggs with vermicelli noodles.

I’m getting sleepy and so is Max (below), so I am going to say goodnight and hope to see ya’ll tmw!

Addicted to Parm

Friday is officially over and the weekend is finally here (almost 20 minutes from now)! Can’t wait to dress up for the photo shoot. on Sunday! So exciting. I’ll try to periodically update on the wedding stuff, but I am going to try and keep some things covered until the wedding day (Sorry Sharon!). Gotta keep some suspense going no? haha.

Lunch:

Salad of mixed greens, red onions, and parm. This salad tasted so good, that I went back for a huge bowl of seconds. I didn’t have a picture of it because I didn’t want to put my salad down. It must have been the crispy romaine lettuce. It tastes so fresh and clean. It also pairs very nicely with parm cheese. Is that why Caesar salad is always served with romaine lettuce?

Tea to warm me up and give me a little kick while reading. I have no pretty chandeliers to reflect in my cup, but I do have air bubbles! You can also see the dark tea infusing with the white soy milk.

Even after two salads, I was still hungry. Must be because my breakfast was so light. I didn’t want to really get caught up in making something extravagant for lunch, so I toasted up a slice of whole wheat bread and topped it with apples and pb. Hit the spot.

Dinner:

Mock fish pan fried, drained on paper towels and topped with freshly chopped cilantro. Even though it was pan fried, we try to use very little oil at a time. As you can see there’s not much oil to be absorbed by the paper towels.

Main dish: bok choy stir fry with tofu. All that water is actually from the bok choy. Shocking to see how much water a vegetable holds.

Snacks:

1/2 a pomegranate

cheese and crackers. Look at that big log of goat cheese!

Tmw is Saturday Woo Hoo!!!

TGIF!!

I am so happy that Friday is here! It has been a long week for me and I can’t wait for this weekend to come. On Saturday I am having breakfast with some friends, while on Sunday Long and I will be having our pre-wedding photo shoot! We get to play dress up yay! But, for now I gtg get ready for my internship. Happy Friday!

Breakfast:

Tea (no chandelier here)

kashi h2h + cascadian farms maple nut cereal in soy milk

Time for Improvement

The XC race went well. Overall the majority of or students improved. Our top runner actually won 1st place! Then another came in 4th, then 7th! I am so proud of them. I am actually a little saddened that it is the end of the season. The season started a little on the rough side, but over time they have really grown on me. I think I have also grown on some of them as well. I never knew how amazing it feels to help someone improve over a period of time. The thing that stood out to me the most was that 99% of them did not want to run at all. Now it’s completely different. A few are actually running on their own! I am definitely sad that the season has ended. The good news is that I will still be coaching XC as an elective instead of an after school program until mid January. You can actually go to the school blog and see pictures of the races and students. There are some videos of them running. I am the annoying female voice yelling in the background (I am holding the camera) Our student are proudly in purple.

After the race, the coaches and I all decided to take them out for pizza at Round Table. They completely gobbled up 4 XL pizzas! Long and I ordered a vegetable gourmet pizza. It had mushrooms, artichokes, green onions, cheese, zucchini, and onions. Not much flavor to it. The slice of cheese pizza was better tasting. Makes sense, just look at all that grease!

Dr. Pepper

Speaking (typing) of improving over a period of time, look what I found in one of my journals. I wrote this note to myself a loOOoong time ago. I have no idea when. Probably in 2003-2004…? I am pretty sure I gave myself a couple of years to accomplish the listed goals.

Here they are. 14/17 ain’t bad….well, it is more like 15/17 because I did graduate from college with an accounting degree, just not from MJC, the local com. college(#10).

Goodnight!

Chatty

It’s unbelievable that I woke up this morning actually refreshed!! I didn’t go to bed early last night, but I did get lots of sleep yesterday. I guess that’s all that my body needed. It was telling to give it some rest and I wasn’t listening. Feel soOo good! In fact, this morning Long had was complaining that I was talking too much. I didn’t get up right away, but when I did get up I was chirpy! Imagine that.

Breakfast:

Coffee + cereal in soy milk

  

Snack:

I had a spiced pumpkin pie cliff bar in class. I didn’t get a picture of it though. Kind of weird whipping out my camera to take a photograph of my food and have people ask a tons of questions. Uh…I think I’m good for now.

Lunch:

Vege Chips from Whole Foods

Last night I had a dream that I ran out of salad. How funny is that!?

Salad: no dressing, just parm cheese on top. YUM!

 

Then there was this beauty. I made sure I ate my salad first before I dug in though. It was soOo delicious.

Yesterdays Eats:

Study snacks: Chips and sesame-rice  crackers with pepper jack cheese.

 

I prefer the sesame-wheat crackers better. These crackers reminded me of the Japanese snack bags that you get on the airplane.

I hope to be back to post dinner, but I highly doubt it. The last XC meet is tonight from 2-7. I probably won’t get home until 8 pm though. I’m going to try and squeeze some studying in between now and 2. That gives me about 30 minutes!

Running Low on Salad and Energy

Well, there’s not much to report, other than that I am super tired. haha! What’s wrong with me. I guess I gotta get to bed earlier eh? I normally sleep past midnight and get up around 7 to 8ish in the AM. I know pretty bad huh? For some the hardest part is going to bed. For me, going to bed and getting up are both hard!

Lunch:

Vietnamese sub left over from this Sunday. The bread was a little hard, so I zapped it (haha) in the microwave for 30 seconds. That did the trick; the bread was nicely warm and soft. The insides were warm also, even the crispy noodles still had a crisp to them.

 

Salad Day 4.

This is the bottom of the salad bin. No! I have to get more tonight, so that I can have some tomorrow.

 

I made gingersnaps for Long to take to his potluck for school. I really couldn’t think of anything to make. I kept flipping through pages of my baking books, I racked my brain a little, then I finally gave in and went online. Thanksgiving and Christmas is approaching, so I wanted to make something a little festive. I also didn’t want to make anything that forced me to run to the grocery store for ingredients. I found this recipe for gingersnaps from: Joy of Baking. I, as always, made changes:

-I used oil to substitute for the margarine (didn’t have any)

-used my own brown sugar (white granulates sugar + molasses)

-I didn’t have any eggs, so I used Ener-G egg replacer

-and I also added a few crystallized ginger candies.

The result…..eh….I have and made better cookies before. The recipe only called for refrigeration for 30 minutes, while the ones I made in the past required the dough to chill for at least 2 hours to overnight. Maybe the flavors weren’t as developed as I liked. I felt shameful that they didn’t turn out as well as I liked. I guess in my sadness I ate like 3 cookies…..ha!

Dinner:

From Whole Foods. This was more of an emergency meal than a wanted one. The kitchen sink is full of dirty dishes that I do not want to even touch. I thought about ordering a pizza, but that never really satisfies me. This meal below (pricey!!) was filled with Szechwan green beans, mashed potatoes, tofu fried rice, vegetable lasagna, and mac n’ cheese.

Also I wanted to add that I because I was so tired yesterday, I completely forgot that one more person had signed up for the Salad Eating Challenge. Sorry!!! OK here is the correct list of Salad Eaters:

• Julz from Simple and Devine
• biz319 from Biggest Diabetic Loser
• Maggie from Say Yes To Salad
• Monstermome
• Sharon from Snippets and Bites
• VeganCowGirl

Ok gtg and review for my upcoming exams!!!