Missy Maintains » tofu

The Perfect Monday

MissyMaintains — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 11:35:12 +0000

Hope everyone had a nice week! Mine was super busy but also very fun. Let’s recap back to Monday night…

I originally had plans with Jackie, my roommate, to meet at home after work and go for an outdoor run. As I was about to leave work, I saw a text from her asking if I wanted to meet her and her friend for a pitcher of beer. Of course my answer was, “YES!” I had already gone to two gym classes that morning so missing my run was no big deal. The weather was also perfect for a nice, cold beer! We met at a Japanese restaurant called Oh! Taisho on St. Marks Place.

As soon as I arrived, there was already a pitcher of Sapporo and a ton of food waiting for me. This made me very happy.

Jackie handed me a plate with a bunch of different appetizers on a stick.

The Yakitori plate included bacon wrapped asparagus (yum!), chicken, pork, and squid. I also saw a big bowl of fries with a cheese dip sitting on the table. I asked Jackie if we were really at a Japanese restaurant! I was expecting to see your typical sushi and edamame! They do serve all of that at Oh! Taisho but also serve totally different Japanese foods that I’ve never tried before!

The fries and meats on a stick were both very delicious. I also tried out some fried shrimp over cabbage. The shrimp was also awesome, although I don’t think I’ve ever disliked a fried food before! I really liked that they were cooking all of the food right in front of us. It is always good to know that no one is spitting on your food. The chefs were very entertaining and kept yelling fun things out every time they made a new dish.

We decided to order some more food because everything on the menu sounded amazing.

Next up, a heart attack on a stick!

I don’t think there is anything better in this world than bacon wrapped shitake mushroom. Wow. That is all. I would have been satisfied with just that but Jackie insisted that we order two more dishes. I insisted that we order another pitcher with hot sake! Very nice compromise!

After taking a few sake bombs, we ordered a salmon-noodle type dish.

This was so flavorful! It was like a fancy Ramen Noodles bowl with an awesome sauce and fresh salmon.

We also tried a soup with tofu, mushrooms, and scallion.

I can’t figure out the name of it but it was also really good!

I am always open to trying new foods and really enjoyed every dish that we ordered. The prices at Oh! Taisho are very reasonable and the service was great.

The night did not end there. St. Marks Place is known for having a ton of piercing and tattoo shops. Jackie’s friend Fan never had her ears pierced before so we decided that she needed to do it that night! We found a place that only charged $7.00 for a piercing. Normally we would have been skeptical but we had a ton of beer and sake in our system so we just went with it.

I decided that I wanted one too! Piercing number ten- done! I got a random spot in my right cartlidge. OW! Good thing I was tipsy!

Fan and I both agreed that we needed some fro-yo to make ourselves feel better. We headed to Red Mango and made our own yummy concoctions.

I made Dark Chocolate and Banana fro-yo topped with Oreos.

And that my friends, is how to spend a Monday night. Have a nice weekend!

What is the most unique food you’ve ever tried?

Veggies in the Oven!

MissyMaintains — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:08:30 +0000

Hello! The weekend went by too fast! I had Nutrition School so I didn’t get much of a weekend. Class was amazing as always! I woke up bright and early Saturday morning and made some breakfast before heading to school.

I made a mushroom omelet with American cheese on a Nature’s Pride whole wheat bun courtesy of Foodbuzz. I am loving these buns! I’ll show you some more creations I made with the buns in my next post.

Who needs McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches when you can make this?

In the morning Dr. Mark Hyman, author of Ultrametabolism spoke to us. I read his book a few years ago so I was pretty excited to see him in person. He was amazing and so inspirational. I think I am going to read his book again!

For lunch I went to a fancy Chinese restaurant called Shun Lee with my health coach. Every student is assigned a health coach that graduated from the school last year. I was required to speak to my coach about 6 times during the course of the semester. I had lunch with her and 4 other students who had the same coach. It was nice to see her after speaking to her so much on the phone the last couple of months!

We got there and she had already ordered a few appetizers for the table.

The most delicious string beans I’ve ever had…

Tofu with grilled vegetables…

Broccoli…

My plate:

It was the perfect lunch! We ended up ordering another string bean appetizer since it was so good. Loved this place!

Later in the afternoon, Howard Lyman spoke to us. He used to be a cattle farmer but eventually turned vegan after seeing what went on in the factory farms. We watched some very disturbing videos. He said what went on in real life was even worse than the videos. He even got sued with Oprah when he went on her show and told her the truth about the beef. After 6 years, they won the case. He was another very inspiring speaker.

After school I met my friend Kaity for a nice cold beer!

I got a grilled chicken sandwich with goat cheese and avocado for dinner at the bar.

I pretty much stuck with the salad, avocado, and goat cheese. Those videos from school kept popping up in my head!

A few hours and a few beers later, we left the bar and got some pizza. I got mushroom and cheese. So good!

On Sunday I made the same breakfast before school! I had the other half of the bun while the eggs were cooking because I was too hungry to wait, lol.

I made it a much healthier day after 4 beers and pizza the night before! I got some Whole Foods for lunch!

I spent 45 minutes of my lunch walking through Central Park. My legs are STILL sore from my race! Those 3 miles really wore me out! Our final speaker was Paul Pitchford, MS, author of Healing with Whole Foods. He spoke to us for 3 hours about…everything! One more book for me to add to the list!

I was so inspired from the class weekend that I headed over to Westerly Market and stocked up on tons of organic vegetables. I got home and started cooking!

Kale chips:

Roasted broccoli and onions:

Roasted asparagus (the kitchen was 90 degrees…hence the fog):

I set my fire alarm off 3 times. We don’t have air conditioning in the kitchen or vents for the smoke! All of the veggies still turned out great! I cooked them with coconut oil, lemon juice, pepper, and garlic powder. Now I have lots of veggies to snack on this week!

I made a nice dinner with the vegetables:

A Morningstar Farms Mushroom Lover’sburger with salad, roasted veggies and hummus. I also had some grapes and raw chocolate for dessert! It felt nice to prepare a bunch of veggies on a Sunday! The only problem is that I snacked on so many while cooking that I probably only have enough for 2 more meals! Oh well! Better than no veggies at all!

1) What is your favorite way to prepare veggies?

2) What fun and exciting new food did you eat this weekend?

Salads, Soft Serve, and 1/2 Marathons!

MissyMaintains — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 12:00:07 +0000

Hello! Hope everyone had a nice weekend and Easter if you celebrate it!! I am still going strong with Passover! It ends tonight so I can start eating bread again! I may stick with it at least until I go to Puerto Rico next week since it is keeping me in control of those extra desserts and bowls of cereal. Let’s see how I did over the weekend…

Friday night I went to Whole Foods for dinner and got a nice big salad.

It had edamame, cabbage, zucchini, feta cheese, beats, broccoli, quinoa, and tofu. Always delicious!

After dinner I went to see one of my favorite DJ’s, Armin Van Buuren. It was called the State of Trance tour and there were 5 other DJ’s there performing with him. I love him…

It was extra cool because the entire show was his next podcast! I can’t wait till it downloads onto my iPod! I got home around 6 in the morning, took a 3 hour nap, and got up at 9 so I could see Dori run her 2nd half marathon! It was at a park right near my apartment so I walked over and found her right away! She didn’t see me the 1st time but we did see each other 3 other times! It was fun chasing her around the park! I got my exercise in for the day!

Dori is the happiest runner ever. She is also the hottest runner!!

It was really exciting to finally watch her in a race! Maybe one day I’ll join!

We went to a diner after and I got a veggie egg white omelet with some salad and matzoh on the side.

Dori got to meet Daisy after!

That night I went to Applebee’s for some 1/2 priced drinks and dinner. I got 2 Hurricanes and the usual shrimp and broccoli dish.

On Sunday I took it easy since I got no sleep the day before! I went to Europan Cafe and got a yummy salad. It had feta cheese, cucumbers, broccoli, and pesto chicken.

Dinner was just sweet potatoes, asparagus, string beans, and spinach!

That brings me to today! I had an omelet and matzoh for breakfast but you already saw that above! For lunch I went to the deli and made another big salad! I am going to turn green soon.

I was craving some soft serve after and guess what happens to be Kosher for Passover?? The Lite Choice!!!

I got 1/2 banana and 1/2 vanilla. The banana flavor is the best thing ever (besides Oreo). They use real bananas so it tastes just like the banana soft serve that all the bloggies make! Perfect for this weather!

Guess what! I still have more coupons to giveaway!

To enter: Write, “I want to win some free soft serve!!” at the end of your comment. I will choose 3 winners in tomorrow’s post!

Have a good one!

Lychee Martini Madness

MissyMaintains — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 03:16:55 +0000

Hey everyone! Hope you are having a nice weekend! I am exhausted from going out Friday and then having school Saturday morning bright and early! I may have fallen asleep on more than one occasion in the middle of class today! Oops! I can’t fall asleep now that it is bed time so I decided to do a little Friday night recap!

I had a quick dinner at Whole Foods after work on Friday!

I got tofu, broccoli, peas, edamame, mushrooms, peppers, sprout salad, seaweed salad, kale quinoa salad, string beans, and more! A reader asked me what kind of dressing I use on my salads last week. I usually use vinegar since it has a nice strong flavor and has almost no calories. I used oil and vinegar last night. I also enjoy using salsa and some vinaigrettes too.

I had a Synergy Kombucha to drink. I haven’t had one in months! I got a slight addiction to that stuff last summer and had to quit since it got too expensive! I decided that one every now and then would be fine!

After dinner, I met Dori and her friends at Merchant’s for her birthday! As I said in a previous post, Merchant’s has the best lychee martinis ever! I ended up having 3!

I also had a taste of the Chocotini. Yummm.

After Merchant’s, we decided to go to another bar across the street. I got a vodka soda with a splash of cranberry.

I had a few drinks with Dori and her cousin. They look like sisters, right?? I think so! A really creepy guy started chatting with us so we knew it was time to leave. He brought up girl’s shirts coming off and we quickly ran out the door. Ew.

We ended the night with a drunken pizza stop! I got a slice of mushroom. It was the best thing ever.

I think all that grease prevented me from having a hangover this morning. Maybe not but I’ll just keep telling myself that I got home around 2:30 and had to be up at 7:00 for school! I chugged a coffee this morning and made it to class on time! It was a great day at school once again! I will do a recap of that later with a little summary of what I learned! I have school again tomorrow so I better attempt to sleep now! Have a good one!

What is your favorite alcoholic beverage (if you drink!)??

Excuse Your Bag!

MissyMaintains — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:00:51 +0000

Hello again! In case you missed it, the winner of the EatSmart Digital Scale was announced here!

iChange

I wanted to start this post off by thanking everyone who joined in on my iChange 30-day challenge group. We’ve got 31 members so far which is awesome! So far I am finding the website really simple and fun to use. I already got a little comment from the RD about not eating any fruit yesterday! Oops! Usually I eat fruit with breakfast and after lunch so this was a rare occasion! I am not used to tracking everything I eat with calorie counts so it will take some getting used to. I kind of cheated and estimated a lot of things yesterday I do really love how easy it is to interact with other group members! There is still time to join if you are interested. Just head here: www.ichange.com/partners/missymaintains.

Subway Adventures

On a less positive note, I need to tell you my crazy subway ride today! The morning started off really well. I was up bright and early (5:30 am) for Core Fusion! I went last night too so I was impressed that I was able to wake up again today. Last night was tough since I hadn’t been there in over a week but today was much better. I loved the teacher and felt like I got a great workout in. Despite the awful weather, I was in a good mood after such a nice class….until the subway!

I was standing there holding my purse, gym bag, and iPod while listening to my Paul Van Dyke house music. This ghetto woman gets on and pushes me to get by me. The train is very crowded by the way. She says with an attitude, “EXCUSE YOUR BAG!”

I say, “What am I supposed to do with it??”

She says,”I said excuse your bag, you fuc**n illiterate bitch!”

I ignore her and she continues to curse me out and call me illiterate. First of all….who the hell says excuse your bag? Why would you not say, “Excuse me!” Any respectful person would say that after bumping into another person. Second, how am I illiterate for asking what I should do with my bag? I guess she does not know what illiterate really means. Next time I’ll be sure to make a special pathway for her so she can enter the train without touching anyone. I had so much I wanted to say back but I figured I should avoid fist fights first thing on a Friday morning. Love it. Okay, that was my rant for the day.

Yummy Food!

I’ve been lazy about taking pictures of every meal so I will just show you some favorites from the past few days!

Lunch on Wednesday:

Pesto tofu and chickpea salad from Westside Market. They have tons of little containers of prepared food that always looks so good! This was delicious! I am a huge pesto fan all of the sudden!

Lunch on Monday and Thursday

There is a fruit and vegetable store in Chelsea Market that I go to a lot. You can basically fill your salad with everything possible and it will never cost more than $5 or $6 bucks! I got everything from beets to guacamole to tofu to chickpeas, etc. It was very pretty and fun!

Dinner on Wednesday and Thursday

Turkey and American on an Ezekiel wrap with hummus. I also had Kettle Cooked chips and cucumbers on the side for dipping into more hummus! This is always a fun and easy lunch or dinner for me. I’ve been slacking with my cooking. Maybe next week!

Lunch for Today!

Wild Alaskan Salmon with hummus and lettuce on an Ezekiel wrap. I did not eat it yet but this is what it looks like! I also made sure to bring an apple after no fruit yesterday!

I am excited for the weekend because I have Dori’s birthday tonight! We are also celebrating her first half marathon!! Many lychee martinis will be involved Tomorrow and Sunday is weekend 3 of school! Can’t wait!

1) Do you have any crazy subway, train, airplane, etc. stories?

2) Do you count calories?