Day 5 without a camera: The Big Fat Greek Kids Birthday Party

Hi everyone! Today was a beautiful day in Chicago! I slept in a bit which was fabulous - it's surprising how little sleep I've been getting this summer. During the working school year I always plan to get a good 8+ hours a night, but once summer rolled around I started slacking in this area, and it has been great to catch up the last couple of days.

I quickly ate a banana while checking my email, made Mike a Green Monster per his request, and then went to the gym for spinning class.

I haven't been to spinning in weeks, and part of me was dreading it - spinning always kicks my butt in a major way! It's always amazing that I can run an easy 10 miles, but will huff and puff my way through an hour-long spin class. However, though it started a bit tough, today's class was great! I felt as if I had an abundance of energy that sustained me through the class, which was noticeably different from the last few times I attended spinning. I can tell that "cleaning up" my diet is definitely helping my workouts!

Then I snacked on another huge, avocado salad, this time made with avocado, carrots, homemade dressing, spinach, and turnip greens. This was my first time buying turnip greens (I got them by accident!) and they worked out ok. They were a bit tougher than spinach, but not as thick as kale. I probably would prefer spinach for its milder flavor, but it's nice to switch things up to get the benefits from different nutrients!

Mike and I hit the road, and our first stop was Sports Authority where I stocked up on Body Glide, and Mike got a new pair of roller blades. This is great news as it means that we can resume going for our run/rollerblade excursions along the lake together! :)

The rest of our day was spent at a Greek fam birthday party for two siblings. Our godson was turning one years old, and his brother turned six. Like all good Greek parties, this one lasted well into the night and involved large quantities of alcohol, about 56 different types of desserts (no galaktabutiko, to Mike's chagrine), and of course,

The wet t-shirt contest!! What, you don't do this at your family parties?!?! And all this time I thought this was normal....

Yes, my adult husband was the unofficial winner of the wet t-shirt contest that he apparently entered into with his toddler-aged cousins. It basically involved a lot of young children trying to attack my husband with water balloons and squirt guns. Clearly, college Greek systems across America stole the wet t-shirt idea from Mike's Greek fam - the nerve. "Hey IU, I want my wet t-shirt contest back!"

Aside from watching my poor husband get pummelled by small children, the other highlight of the night was that my fabulous Greek (and Italian :) ) in-laws told me that they bought me a JUICER!!!! Not just any juicer, but the head honcho of all juicers, the Breville!!!

I haven't seen this marvelous piece of machinery yet, but my understanding is that it is the Brevile Fountain Plus. I was soooo excited to hear about this and I would like to give a shout-out to Yaya, John and Dora!!

The party was stocked with an enormous amount of delicious-looking food, but I stuck to the basics - tons of veggies with guacamole, a HUGE plate of Greek salad, and some fresh watermelon. I also snacked on an Amazing Meal bar and some awesome samples of yummy-flavored walnuts and almonds that I received in the mail this week - once I have my camera back I will write more about the company that sent these.

When Mike and I got home tonight it was late but I of course was still hungry for something to snack on, so I made my version of a Raw Almond Joy.

So simple - In a food processor (although you could probably mix this easily by hand), add 1/2 c. almond meal, 2 T. cocoa powder, 2 1/2 T. agave nectar, a pinch of salt, and a splash of vanilla.

Blend, and this becomes just like a melted, gooey Almond Joy. I was too impatient and dug in immediately, but I would imagine that you could easily make these into cookies - either by baking them "traditional" style, or dehydrating them to make them more "raw-acceptable". Since I don't have a dehydrator, I'm going to start experimenting with using my oven on a low temp and leaving the door cracked - have any of you tried this before?

Tomorrow I don't know what I am more excited about - getting my hair cut, or getting my camera back!! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend :-) and don't forget to enter my Holey Donuts giveaway!

More from Monday

I spent most of the morning fiddling with this blog - I am STILL having a hard time with pictures (how to put them within the text and not just on top of text), how to get them to show up in the correct order, how to make links work, etc.... fascinating stuff :)

Early afternoon I wanted to figure out something to do with two leftover sweet potatoes that I had bought to grill, but that we didn't use. I LOVE sweet potatoes (mashed, fries, anything!!) but I find them to be a huge pain to cut. I'm no wuss, but my hand hurts when I'm trying to cut them with a knife to make fries! So I am trying to think of an easier way to make them.

Today I decided to stick them in the microwave without peeling them. I wasn't sure how long it would take, so I started with 5 minutes, then added another 5, and then another 5! It probably would have been easier to just steam them, but I hated to have two more things to add to the dishwasher and the microwave seemed easier.

After they were thoroughly cooked, I threw them into the blender with a half cup of Silk light vanilla soy milk, a few dashes of cinnamon and some pumpkin pie spice. It was very good!!! It tasted very similar to the gluttonous sweet potato + marshmallow + brown sugar + loads of butter dish that you may find a Thanksgiving, but is much lighter :) And super easy!

After devouring the sweet potato dish, I walked to the grocery store. I needed to stock up on some staples for Mike and I to have around (mostly produce), and I also needed to get the ingredients for the dinner I'm going to make tomorrow when we have company over.

Because it is a beautiful day, and to save gas money, save the environment, and to get some exercise and fresh air, I decided to take what some people (affectionately?)call my "homeless person cart" to the store instead of driving. The grocery store is about a mile from my place, so with the cart it's about a 15 minute walk - not bad. I got the cart when I moved to the city last fall and was living in the Gold Coast in a building that was literally right across the street from the grocery store, and it's been very convenient to have! For all you city dwellers out there, you can get one for about $25-40 at a Bed Bath & Beyond, Ace Hardware, Walmart, etc.

When I got home, I was anxious to make something with my newly bought groceries. I have what seems like thousands of eggs in my fridge (I went on a bit of an omelette kick for a while but kind of fell off that wagon...) so I knew I wanted to make something with eggs. I also had some green beans that were getting a bit old, so I made an egg white omelette with some green beans and about 1/4 cup of reduced fat BLUE CHEESE that was simple, but absolutely devine. I love me some cheese, and although it's hard to keep the basics (like cheddar or mozz) in the house because I can easily tear through the entire package, but when I have a more "specialty" cheese I find that I am a little better about making it last longer :)

Before I headed out for the evening, I had a pear and a nectarine.... and when that didn't fill me up, I decided to finally make my single serving sample size of the Amazing Meal mix, chocolate flavor! I had high hopes for this flavor - as well all know, chocolate makes everything better!! - but it still needed a bit of doctoring up. I mixed it up with one cup of vanilla soy milk, and I still didn't care for the texture too much so I through in a bit of acai juice and a bit of chocolate soy milk. This made it very drinkable and good :) so I downed most of it, and then a small portion of it into the freezer to see how it tastes frozen... I'm hoping like chocolate ice cream? Probably that's wishful thinking, but we shall see ;)

Tonight I went to visit one of my fellow coworkers from Turner-Drew, who is a Mary Kay lady (are they still called this? Mary Kay sales rep perhaps?). Her daughter is also a Mary Kay rep (and also started the Chicago Chocolate Tours company - can you have a better job than that?!?!), and she was hosting a Mary Kay event at her condo, which is a mile from mine in the South Loop and has the most spectacular view of the skyline I've ever seen. There, I learned a lot about the Mary Kay company, tried some new products, and snacked on cheese, crackers, and cookies, although I apologize that I did not take pictures.

Once I was home, Mike.... AGAIN... begged me to make him a Green Monster the minute I walked in the door!! I love turning people into Green Monster converts ;) However, he got tired of waiting for me to make him one that he turned to some Wheat Thins instead, haha. He then heard of my plans to make cookies tomorrow and his new request was for me to make them tonight so that he could sample the dough... since cookie dough is his favorite food of all time. So - coerced - I decided to throw the cookie dough together. I am basing this recipe off of one of Tina's recipes on http://carrotsncake.com/. Before I tell you the ingredients, I will tell you that I at first doubled this recipe, knowing full well that Mike and I would be sure to eat our weight in cookie dough, leaving little for the actual cookies. Well, this was still not enough, so in the end I found myself tripling the recipe!

Here's how I made them (for a single batch, but I guarantee you it won't be enough!):

* 1 c. pitted dates (I usually prefer the bulk bin Medjool dates from Whole Foods, but for this recipe I found that it was immensely more convenient to use the prepitted dates that are prepackaged, like the Sunsweet brand)

* 1/4 c. oat bran

* 1/2 c. shredded coconut

* 1 tsp. baking powder

* 1 tsp. vanilla

* 1/4 c. brown sugar

* 1/4 c. date sugar (you could use brown sugar for this too, I just love date sugar and it is much healthier!)

* 1 T. applesauce

* 1/4 c. soymilk

Blend all ingredients - at first I tried using my blender, but the poor thing must be worn out from all of my Green Monsters, because it simply refused to chop up the dates. So, I threw everything into my Kitchenaid mixer and it worked great! Then, bake at 350. I made bigger cookies and it took about 16 minutes.

Wow.... SOO GOOD!!!!! Way to go, Tina!!!!! I am super impressed that she made this recipe up. I just made a couple modifications to tailor the recipe to the ingredients that I had on hand, but the creative license belongs solely to her! This is a fabulousssssss vegan recipe, although I did non-veganize it by drizzling some melted chocolate chips on top. They truly did taste like the Girl Scout Samoa cookies... my favorite!!! Mike could not get enough of the dough, and now I'm going to go give him an actual cookie and I'm sure he will love those too :) Goodnight!

Pictures!!

Hi everyone! I’m so excited to report that I found my camera’s USB cord – I’ve had to replace it once already because I lost the first one…. Which goes to show you how infrequently I actually hook my camera up to my computer. I’ve been so technoglogically inept for so long that it’s just been easier to take it to Walgreens or CVS and print them out there. Soooo that means it may take me a bit of time to really get good at this attaching-pictures-business. Thanks for bearing with me! :)

Since I think pictures add a fun dimension to blogs, I’m going to try to do this as often as I can, or at the very least as often as I remember to! Sunday I didn’t think to take any picture during the majority of the day since I hadn’t found the cord at that point – but I did take two pictures at the end of the night, so here goes.

Protein/energy bars: to eat or not to eat? That’s the question that I actually got asked the other day at Jewel by the cashier as I was stocking up on Luna and Odwalla bars. She had never tried them before and wanted to know if they were for energy, meal replacement, etc... and they can definitely serve a variety of purposes.

There are tons of these bars out there that are full of nasty, unhealthy ingredients and are primarily comprised of sugar and fat. Almost all bars out there do contain some type of sugar, whether it is cane sugar, sucralose (Splenda), rice syrup, etc. So that makes it hard to qualify any of them as “health food” but I do think that in moderation they can really be a nice addition to a runner’s diet. I have a HUGE sweet tooth, and while I often have a bar for a quick, easy-to-consume source of vegetarian protein in the mid-afternoon or before the gym,I have also been known to frequently have one simply to satisfy a sweet craving!



Z Bar: Yesterday was the first time that I had tried one of these, which the packaging says is for kids, but I know there I no reason why I couldn’t act like a kid for a bit and enjoy one anyway ;) My synopsis was that it was really good! I tried the chocolate brownie flavor which was great - very similar to the Clif Bar’s chocolate brownie flavor, which I am a huge fan of. My only gripe was that it was too small for my liking, but it was only 120 calories so I guess that’s how much food you get for fewer calories than many other bars.

Earlier in the week, I made my second trip to Whole Foods since I moved to the South Loop four months ago. I had been making a conscious effort not to go there since I am easily addicted to anything and everything Whole Foods, and my husband has the assumption (sometimes correct, sometimes not) that WF is more expensive than Jewel or Dominick’s. So, to keep costs down I have not allowed myself to go at all - until this Wednesday!

However, after reading so many bloggers mention the Amazing Grass and Amazing Meal products, I HAD to try them!! I didn’t want to commit to buying it in a large bulk size, even though that would be the cheapest, until I knew that I liked the product. Good old Whole Foods came through for me, as it always does, and had single-portion samples! I love that WF has that for a lot of their protein powders too. I bought one regular flavor Amazing Meal, one Mango Pomegranate (?), and one chocolate flavor.

(I also bought one of the chocolate bars – which was HEAVENLY!!!! It is essentially a bar chock-full of healthy stuff like alfalfa and wheatgrass and other greens and nutrient-rich foods, and then is covered in a chocolate coating. Do not write this bar off – I found it to be absolutely decadent – not exactly a Hershey bar, but it is NO less tasty than another other chocolate protein bar. Honestly, I was so excited to try this that I opened it up as I was walking through the parking lot, telling myself I would have a bite then and would finish it once I got home. Let’s just say it got devoured before I even turned the key in the ignition!! If they were cheaper I would have stocked up on them that day!!!)



The regular flavored Amazing Meal I tried the next day. For more information about it's ingredients and the reported benefits, you can check out the company's website at: http://www.amazinggrass.com/ I know a lot of bloggers sometimes throw the Amazing Meal into a Green Monster (more on that later) or mix it with water, but when I opened the package, it smelled extremely “greenish” and not at all sweet, so to be safe I blended it with a cup of my favorite soy milk (Silk Light Vanilla). It wasn’t awful – but wasn’t as palatable as I wanted it to be – so I threw in a tablespoon of plain cocoa powder and one packet of Truvia, and it easily morphed into something delicious. Then the flavor was much improved and I enjoyed the drink.

Last night I decided to try the pomegranate mango flavor. Again, I blended it with some ice and a cup of light vanilla soy milk. I’m a bit undecided about this flavor – I tried a sip out of the blender and at first really liked it, but then it had a bit of a “chalky” aftertaste and texture. So, again I threw in some cocoa powder and stevia and was good to go!

I look forward to trying the chocolate flavor in the future and I’m quite certain that will be my favorite! ;)