Hello! Yesterday was a nice and healthy day..until dinner. That’s usually the story of my life so it’s okay! Margaritas were involved but did you expect anything less in this warm weather?

After my morning gym session I picked up some pineapple cottage cheese for breakfast.

I’ve never had it with pineapple but really enjoyed it. There were little chunks throughout the container.  I also had some crack espresso Click Espresso to drink. Love this stuff. It has 15 grams of protein and wakes me right up!

I also snacked on an apple later in the morning.

During lunch I walked around a little and tried to get a 30 minute tan! I also stopped at Westside Market and created my own salad.

It had chickpeas, broccoli, goat cheese, and pesto chicken. Delicious.

After work I got my taxes done. They were very generous to me this year because of my tuition bill! I decided to go celebrate with some margaritas! I met a friend and we wandered around near Union Square until we found a cute Mexican restaurant called EL Cantinero. It had an outside patio which I was very excited about.

We were trying to get a shot of the patio without people thinking we were taking pictures of them eating!

We were served chips and salsa of course. I was dying of hunger so I may have went a little overboard on the chips.

We weren’t even halfway through the basket and the server brought us a fresh basket of chips without even asking if we wanted more. Nice service!

I was debating between a margarita and sangria but decided I needed to see if any margarita could compare to the one at 5 Burro! I went with Mango.

At first I thought it was not as strong as the one at 5 Burro. I ended up being very wrong. This one was very refreshing and not too sweet. I downed it..a little too fast!

I got the Vegetarian Fajitas. I had to see if these could compare to 5 Burro’s fajitas too!

I loved how pretty the plate was! The orange slices gave the dish a nice touch. There was also tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, celery, carrots, lettuce, and peppers, and avocado slices. I love giant piles of veggies!! They were less greasy than the veggies at 5 Burro which was nice. I do prefer the zucchini and mushrooms at 5 Burro instead of celery and carrots but this was still very impressive. There were too many onions once I got to the bottom of the pile so I took that was my cue to stop eating!

The dish also came with Spanish rice and flour wraps but I skipped those since I had plenty of chips before the meal.

Sorry about the finger. The tequila was setting in.

Halfway through my meal I ordered another margarita.  Totally not necessary. I went with Blackberry this time!

It was delicious but I could only drink half. Missy not able to finish a drink?? That should probably tell you something about how strong the drinks were!

Overall I was very impressed by El Cantinero. The prices were a little steeper than 5 Burro but the food was delicious, the drinks were strong, and the service was great! The outdoor patio was a nice bonus as well.

I’m not sure how I ate dessert because I was stuffed but I guess I can never be too full for The Lite Choice! Cookies N’ Cream softs serve is always a wonderful way to end the night.

Hmm… I guess we can disregard yesterday’s post about continuing on my Passover diet! I did wake up for the gym again today at least! I did 35 minutes on the elliptical and 15 minutes on the treadmill. I ran for 7 of the minutes until I got a cramp. Very annoying. Tonight I am also going to Core Fusion with a blog reader so margaritas and soft serve are fine in my book! 

P.S. CALL FOR GUEST BLOGGERS! I am going on vacation next week and do not plan on bringing my laptop so let me know if you interested in doing a guest post! Have a good one!

Related posts:

1. Birthday Margaritas!
2. Margaritas and Lite Choice Meetup (Giveaway!)
3. 5 Burro vs. Garcia’s!

Hello! Hope everyone had a nice weekend! I was super busy and did not get online even once! I am not complaining because school was amazing this weekend. I never thought I’d say school was fun! I am going to do a recap of my day Saturday and save Sunday for tomorrow’s post. I had lots of yummy meals and also wanted to share some of what I learned! It will be a nice refresher for me and I’m sure most of you are interested in the topics we covered.

On Saturday I woke up and had to grab something fast for breakfast and run out the door. There is no snacking allowed in the theatre so I downed a cottage cheese mess on my way to the subway.

I added cinnamon, Stevia, banana, and Kashi cereal. I loved it with the cinnamon and Stevia but don’t think I can eat it anymore! Missy and cottage cheese do not agree. I haven’t been eating much dairy lately so I don’t think it was the smartest breakfast. Oh well; at least I know now.

In the morning we covered high carb and low carb diets. I like the fact that the school believes in bio-individuality. This means that people’s food choices depend on their gender, age, DNA, climate, and lifestyle.  While one person may feel great with a vegetarian diet, another person could need meat to feel good. We are learning about all of the dietary theories and are able to choose which one works best with our body. Our teacher makes everything very neutral so no one feels bad about eating meat or feels weird for eating raw. We are learning the pros and cons of each of the theories.

High Carb: Pros

• Fiber
• Nutrients
• Energy

High Carb: Cons

• Won’t work for everyone
• Some gain
• Some lose
• Blood sugar levels
• Indigestion
• Gluten
• Phytic Acid

I had no idea what phytic acid was before class but learned that brown rice contains phytic acid. My teacher was eating a ton of brown rice and had perfect health except for extremely low zinc levels. He learned that the phytic acid was binding with the minerals and leaching them out. To prevent this from happening, soak your brown rice or cook it with wakame or seaweed.

We also spoke about macrobiotics. It is a way of living with respect for physical, biological, emotional, mental, ecological, and spiritual order of our daily lives. We learned about yin/yang and that everything has its polar opposites.

We spoke about lifestyle suggestions:

• Give generosity of yourself
• View everything and everyone you meet with gratitude
• Live happily
• Sing a happy song every day (we all had to sing “Row Your Boat” after!)
• Treat yourself to quiet time
• Exercise
• Scrub your skin
• Less jewelry
• Reduce chemicals in soap, shampoo, perfume
• Keep home in order
• Plants for oxygen
• Chew food well
• Less TV
• Give thanks before and after each meal
• Be on good terms with people
• Learn to make an enemy into a friend

I really liked all of these suggestions. Singing “Row Your Boat” with 1100 people in a theatre definitely made everyone much happier!

Next Andrea Beaman, author of The Whole Truth spoke. She teaches the art of cooking in a fun, easy, and simple way and was featured on Top Chef. She showed us how easy a brown rice vegetable stir fry was to make. She suggested making a lot on a Sunday night and then turning it into a wrap, porridge, or rice pudding later in the week!

Lunch

I met up with about 20 other women at a restaurant called Gabriel’s. It was basically a brainstorming lunch to come up with business ideas and to simply share our stories about why we were there. I have no pictures since I did not feel comfortable pulling out the camera in front of 20 people I just met! We all got the pre-fixed menu. I had:

Appetizer: Toscana Soup. Italian Sausage, Beans and Kale in a light Tomato Base.
Entree: Seared Tuna Salad, Horseradish Cream sauce, Watercress, marinated Cucumbers
Dessert: Strawberry sorbet

Everything was delicious and it was great hearing what everyone had to say!

The afternoon was all about marketing and building our business so I won’t bore you with that!

After class there was a meetup for drinks at the Dream Hotel. We all met in the Ava Lounge which is a beautiful penthouse suite bar. I started with a Lychee Martini (3 by the time I left!) 

It was really nice inside!

We had a beautiful view of the city.

Some lovely girls I met…

It felt like a blogger meetup! Who else would pull out Kale Krisps and Edamame at a bar??

Around 8:00 at night, I finally left. 3 martinis was enough! I met a few other girls from California and New York so we decided to go to dinner at Blossom! There were 6 of us so we almost got one of everything!

Appetizers:

Quinoa Salad:
Red quinoa, red and yellow peppers, cannellini beans, mango guacomole, lemon vinaggrette.

Autumn Sweet Potato Rolls (Raw) ~
Serve Coconut noodles, jicama, carrot, red and yellow pepper, scallion and avocado with an almond ginger dipping sauce

My first plate:

Both appetizers were delicious! I loved the sweet potato rolls! I also split Butternut Squash soup with another girl.  It was thick and perfect!

Entrees

Moroccan Glazed Tempeh ~
Glazed tempeh in an eggplant-chickpea stew with red bell peppers and sweet potato topped with a creamy fennel-black olive relish

Zucchini Linguini (Raw) ~ Almond pesto, cherry tomatoes, portobello mushrooms, kalamata olives, v-parmesan cheese
*Gluten Free

Plate of spinach, sweet potato fries, mushrooms, and brussels sprouts!

Four Onion Risotto ~
Roasted acorn squash, swiss chard, sweet potato crisps

My first plate!

I loved everything we got! I’d say my favorite was the zucchini linguini and the vegetable plate! I never knew if I liked tempeh either but this dish was extremely flavorful! Everything was heaven!

Dessert was soy cookie dough ice cream!

I had 2 of the bowls. Another girl got the Chocolate Peanut Butter Shake. I was slightly jealous.

2 other girls got a green juice and blueberry shake! So pretty!

We also tried a raw cinnamon raisin oatmeal cookie! So good! Oh..we also tried the chocolate cake which surprisingly was not good. It tasted like a fake Hostess cake so we sent it back. Everything else was amazing and I will be back there soon!

I got home at midnight and woke back up at 7 on Sunday for more school! Long day! I will save Sunday for tomorrow but it was another great day!  All 1100 people in the room are so happy and passionate about their health so it is just a great environment to be in.

I am off! Have a great day!

P.S. I found out 5 minutes ago that I am going to FitBloggin!!

Related posts:

1. Weekend 3 at Nutrition School!
2. More Fun at School and Skinny Margaritas!
3. Blossom Vegan Dinner and Swanson Winner!

Hope everyone survived their Monday! I had a long weekend because of the snow on Friday but am back in the swing of things now! I haven’t posted my eats in a while so I will do a little weekend recap with the highlights!

Let’s start with one of my favorite parts of the weekend….

An apricot margarita from 5 Burro! I also got the best salad ever!

I got the Vegetarian Mexican salad. They LOADED it with veggies! I could barely finish it! You can never go wrong at the 5 Burro!

I tried a new cereal for breakfast on Saturday morning..Kashi Strawberry Fields!

This only has 120 calories per serving and has a really simple ingredient list:

Ingredients:

Organic Long Grain Rice, Florida Crystals Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Organic Whole Wheat, Organic Freeze Dried Strawberries, Sea Salt, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Organic Freeze Dried Raspberries.

The cereal was really good. The flakes were very crunchy and they almost tasted like Frosted Flakes! There were tons of strawberries that got nice and soft once they melted in the milk. Definitely a new favorite cereal.

I had dinner at CheeburgerCheeburger Friday night and got another great salad.

I got the Portobella Mushroom salad with carrots, cucumbers and feta cheese. I also split the most amazing fries with the roommate.

Saturday night I took the train home to Philly to pick up Daisy! She got spayed last week. She is sad and confused but has been extra cuddly lately!

My mom and I drove to Atlantic City because my dad’s band played at Hard Rock Cafe! My dad is in a Grateful Dead cover band called Steal Your Face. The actual Grateful Dead were doing a concert in the same hotel as my dad’s band so basically Steal Your Face was the Grateful Dead’s after-party!

My dad is the one with the black shirt and guitar. See a resemblance?

Some random guy decided that he liked me and stood with my mom and I all night. He got annoying and I eventually had to ditch him but I got 4 free beers out of it at least! Haha I am mean but it saved me..or my mom at least $25.00

Once the Grateful Dead concert let out, everyone came in the Hard Rock to watch Steal Your Face. It got packed but was really exciting to see so many people watching my dad!

He played for everyone until 4:00 in the morning! Fun night!

On Sunday, my mom and I drove Daisy back to Philly (we brought Daisy to A.C). My mom practiced her Zumba routine with me since she just got Zumba certified. Pretty soon she will come to New York and teacha little class for my friends and any NY bloggers! Later that night I took the train back to New York.

I made a cottage cheese plate for dinner!

I steamed broccoli, mushrooms, and parsnips and topped them with soy sauce. I mixed everything in with some cottage cheese! Fun dinner. I am almost sick of cottage cheese again but I just need to mix it with some new ingredients I think!

I will save yesterday’s eats for tomorrow because I made some amazing pizza that deserves it’s own post!

As far as workouts go, today was the first day I’ve worked out since last Tuesday! Oops! Today I went to Core Fusion Yoga so I hopefully I am out of my little rut. Class was amazing and extra challenging since I hadn’t worked out in so long. I plan to go to Core Fusion for the rest of the week which will be nice!

I will leave you with one more of the baby (can you tell I really missed her?)

Did you try any new foods this weekend?

What is your favorite kind of cereal?

Have a good one!

Related posts:

1. Night at the Jersey Shore!
2. Sicky Eats!
3. Passover Eats

Morning! It is time for a little food recap since I haven’t done one yet this week! I have a few reviews to do as well. Let’s start with my breakfasts for the week!

Breakfast!

A few days ago I received a cool water bottle and bag of Pomegranate Power from Navitas Naturals.

About the Pomegranate Power:

I also added some Oikos and FitNutz Peanut Butter. This was a great combination. The pomegranate added a nice tangy, fruity flavor to the oats. I am using my water bottle at the moment too!

Yesterday I had some extra time to get to work after Core Fusion Yoga so I decided to stop at this new deli and get an egg sandwich.

I got egg whites, spinach, and feta on whole wheat bread. Really good! They were pretty generous with their eggs! I will be stopping there more often.

Today I decided to try adding cottage cheese to my oats (hi Julie!) Julie and I tweeted about how I must try it with lots and lots of cinnamon and Stevia for my first time!

I tried cottage cheese once last year and wasn’t crazy about it but now I am giving it another shot. It always looks so delicious on the blogs! I actually really enjoyed it in my oats today! It made them nice and fluffy. I will be trying it more ways this week!

Lunch!

Dori told me that she’s been bringing hummus and frozen veggie wraps lately so I decided to try one out for myself! I actually haven’t bought frozen veggies since I got my steamer but they really are much easier to make. They don’t taste as good but are handy for when I don’t have 10 minutes to sit there and steam a bunch of veggies.

I added Sabra hummus, sprouts, and an asparagus, squash, mushroom, cauliflower mix to an Ezekiel wrap.

I also had some Mary’s Gone Twigs on the side. I loved the wrap! I actually brought the same lunch every single day this week Nice change to my turkey sandwiches.

Dinner!

Dinner on Monday did not occur till 10:00 at night since I was at Core Fusion Cardio all late! I wanted something fast and found this in my cabinet!

All I had to do was stick the packet in the microwave for 2 minutes. I also made some edamame and salad.

I had about half the packet of rice and a lot of edamame (more than above). The rice was just okay. It was kind of mushy. There was a second option of cooking it with water which I think I would do next time to make it more moist. The edamame was great of course! I just boiled it and added a little salt.

Last night I got home from work and my heat was broken. It was 66 degrees in my apartment so I knew what I was having for dinner!

The nutritional stats are a lot better than some other soups I’ve tried in the past.

Nutritional Facts
Serving Size: 1 cup
Servings Per Container: 2
Serving Weight: 245 g
Calories: 100 Calories from Fat:20
% Daily Value
Total Fat: 2.5g		4%
	Saturated Fat: 0g	0%
	Trans Fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 0mg		0%
Sodium: 290mg		12%
Carbohydrates: 20g		7%
	Fiber: 2g	6%
	Sugars: 4g
Protein: 2g		%
Organic: 100%
Vitamin A: 50% • Vitamin C: 10%
Calcium: 4% • Iron: 6%

I had the whole can so it was 200 calories and 580 mg of sodium. Most soups are over 1000 mg of sodium for the whole can so I was happy with this. I added some frozen vegetables to make it more interesting.

It was delicious! It was very smooth and creamy and did not taste salty at all. I munched on some Dr. Kracker Apple Crisps as well. Definitely my favorite flavor.

That’s it for food! I have a fun giveaway starting tomorrow so stay tuned! Be sure to check out Mari’s popchips giveaway! I will leave you with a few questions:

1) What is your favorite way to prepare veggies (steamed, roasted, frozen in the microwave??)

2) What is your favorite way to eat cottage cheese?

Related posts:

1. Soup Craze!
2. Ow!
3. Kale Salads and Yogurt Combos!