WHERE'S THE BEEF?

Dinner last night was courtesy of my brother. We were the only two home since my parents and other bro were in Niagara overnight for a soccer tournament. Go Dad's team!

No photos of dinner but it was half a t-bone steak with french fries. Needless to say, with IBS, a swift trip to the bathroom ensued. Ugh. It probably wasn't the best of ideas considering my stomach's still on the mend from the funky chicken but lesson learned. No more beef. Sean came by to hang out and asked if it was worth it and normally my answer would have been an excited "yes!" but tonight, it was a sad "no."

This morning's breakfast was whole wheat flax seed banana pancakes. I know that sounds like a mouthful but the pancakes were actually made from a mix and dead easy. I love this mix. I was on the search for a whole wheat pancake mix for ages, without having to revert to Whole Foods. I finally found one at Longo's (yay, Longo's to the rescue) and love this mix because it contains ground flax seed. Here's a look at the package:
It was $3.99 for the whole thing and one prep's worth makes 10-12 four-inch pancakes. The best part is that you can keep them vegan by using non-dairy milk (almond works well) and omitting the egg. The mixture will thicken on its own due to the combination of ground flax and chosen liquid. I don't have any photos since the pancakes were actually for Sean. I'll take it that they were good though...how could they not be...pancakes with bananas? Who doesn't like those??

My breakfast, since my stomach was still a little bit queasy, was a bowl of egg thread soup with minimal asparagus and a small slice of some multigrain prebiotic bread:I have no idea what the deal is with this bread. I'll have to read the package a little bit more carefully next time. My dad is the one who picked it up at the grocery store and I'm glad he's into checking out the various healthier items on offer.

Lunch was a few hours later. I wanted something that tasty good but wouldn't take too long to cook. I had spent much of the morning reading up on recipes from The Single Dish when I stumbled upon her recipe for beef stroganoff. Her recipe can be found here. Instead of using sour cream (because I didn't have any), I used whipped cream and also subbed beef broth for organic chicken broth since I had a carton already open in the fridge. Here's my gigantic portion that I really should not have eaten all of but the mushrooms were impossible to resist:
I used waaaay more than the six mushrooms her recipe lists but I'm obsessed with mushrooms. I probably used at least double and I still thought it could have used more mushrooms.

3/5 of the family is still not back from Dad's soccer tournament (he's the coach) so I'm guessing that his team is headed for the final match. If his team had lost, they probably would have been home by now or at least will be home within 30 minutes. I'm bored out of my mind. I really want to bake muffins but we don't have any whole wheat flour (that I know of) and we don't have any blueberries or raspberry jam or sliced almonds (for three different recipes I've been eying all weekend).

Well I'm off...the toilet is a callin' but this time, the beef stroganoff was totally worth it--mostly due to the mushrooms so I'm going to have to find some kind of meat substitute next time. Perhaps pork. My stomach seems to deal with that one okay.

Toodles!

WEEKEND MADNESS!

The weekend was awesome! Not so much Saturday because I actually spent most of it (a good six hours) re-organizing my room (under my desk and closet) but Sunday was great! Let's do a recap:

Saturday morning started out rather well with a breakfast of whole wheat pancakes, a banana and pure maple syrup...The banana was so sweet and so ripe though that after one dip of the maple syrup, I decided to nix the rest of it and just enjoyed my pancakes with the banana slices.

And from breakfast we go straight to midnight snack of fruit:which consisted of an orange and a kiwi. Okay, okay, I lied...there was definitely more food consumed than just these two photographs show but not much more.

Between re-organizing, of which I'm become a big fan since becoming unemployed, I had a couple bowls of vermicelli soup, half a raisin bun and ummm...that's it. Cleaning pretty much consumed me on Saturday. Other than a phone call from Sean on Saturday night, that's all I did. So clearly Saturday wasn't the high point of the weekend.

Sunday was definitely the best part of the weekend but I'm saving Sunday's food photos for a restaurant review. In the meanwhile, check out this hilarious restaurant photo:Until next time...

Money spent: $0 (staying at home to clean is awesome!)

QUICK AND EASY

A very weird post on yesterday's eats...

Woke up late yesterday, sun was shining, decided to pretend it was spring and warm. Made a "springtime" lunch:Cream cheese and radish sandwich on rye with kiwi, baby carrots and more radishes. What can I say...I'm a creature of habit...and good taste. Plus I kind of love this picture:Spent the afternoon making whole wheat pancakes, here's my portion:Delicious and cute.

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Sean and I watched Pretty in Pink yesterday. I've seen that movie a whole bunch of times but Sean had missed out on the ending so I watched it with him. It was fun being able to watch it with someone and pick out things I had previously missed out on, like the couple dancing up a storm on the dance floor in the prom scene. Why have I never seen them before??

Dinner was with Sean at "our" Chinese restaurant. He had deep-fried squid tentacles in spicy salt and I had rice noodles with beef and scrambled eggs, which is actually more of an egg sauce than actual scrambled eggs.

I'm happy to report that my cold is pretty much all gone. I think I was using some soon-to-be-expired Tylenol Cold that just wasn't doing the trick and switching to one that wasn't expired was a good idea.

Money spent: $0 (Sean paid for dinner)

HEALTHY WHOLE WHEAT PANCAKES

My cold is not relenting. I thought I was getting better yesterday but after finishing what I'd consider to be a big meal and a mug of hot water, lemon and honey, I feel worse than yesterday. I'm afraid of catching pneumonia. So far, so good because I have no signs of a cough but I've now got a slight headache and my chest still hurts. I've added more layers of clothing and have put on thicker sweatpants in hopes that the warmer clothes will help. I've also turned up the heater in my room. Sorry for the increased heating bill dad, but I'm not risking pneumonia again.

For those of you not in the know, I had pneumonia five years ago this month and it was seriously the worst illness I've ever had. I was out of school for three weeks, mainly because it was misdiagnosed as bronchitis the first week. After the first week I finally got the right medication but it took two more weeks to recover from and then after that I was told by my doctor to take it easy at school and work (which was easier said than done). I feel like I never fully recovered. As a result I have a weakened immune system and lower pain threshold. Pneumonia is not something I would mess around with. Five days in I didn't think I was going to make it.

Anyway, what's with the title...well, I want pancakes. Ah, pancakes. What an interesting relationship we have. Let me start from the beginning...

My childhood memory of pancakes doesn't involve a lazy Saturday morning or a box of a pancake mix. In fact, it involves my mom, my brothers and pancakes from scratch. My family makes almost everything from scratch: pasta (when we were younger), tomato sauce, cakes, bread, for a while even ice cream and heck, even fish paste! So it came as no surprise to me when my brothers and I all gathered around a large stainless steel bowl and as my mother let us dump in the ingredients for pancake mix: flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, eggs and milk.

My parents' penchant for making everything from scratch kind of marred my delight of eating-out; nothing really tasted as good. When your parents give you your first taste of bone marrow or beef tongue, it's hard to imagine that an all-day breakfast diner could measure up.

As a result, I kind of hate pancakes; the light, fluffy texture that everyone adores...well, I detest it. I find it repulsive. It reminds me of stuff you eat when you're a toddler. I also hate how bland they are and how "exciting" they become only until after you've poured over a truckload of maple syrup. Oh and don't get me started on maple syrup; that brown viscose liquid you get in those plastic bottles? That's not maple syrup.

But I digress. I will eat pancakes if they're filled with fruit...for example, the strawberry pancakes Sean's dad made for his family and I on Valentine's day several years back when Sean was out of sorts because he had just gotten his wisdom teeth taken out the day before. Or banana pancakes...the last time I had them I can't remember from where, or blueberries pancakes that Sean had from...from...well I can't remember but they were good. I also like pancakes topped with actual fresh fruit or made with whole wheat or buttermilk or just something that tells me that they didn't come from a box and you just added milk and eggs.

And so I found this recipe for whole wheat pancakes that didn't include any oil and used whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose white flour. It also gets bonus points for allowing me to incorporate applesauce and an almost-rotten banana sitting on the kitchen counter!

About an hour, I had a plate of these beauties:Nom, nom nom! Satisfying! The added banana and applesauce gave them a texture that wasn't quite light and fluffy and therefore not "dough-y" as traditional pancakes are, thankfully. They also contain whole wheat flour and will fill you up longer than regular pancakes will and my mini pancakes mean you can dip them into your cute heart-shape silicone baking cup filled with 100% real maple syrup.

Sorry for the long post but the end result was worth it. To me anyway.