SMILES ALL AROUND!

The new stove and fridge have been installed but everything is still kind of a mess. The fridge is in disarray. My dad put everything back rather haphazardly so I'll be spending tomorrow night re-arranging everything...like putting the milk and other such items where they should be (in the kitchen door "shelf"). There aren't as many drawers in the new fridge which is kind of sucky since I kind of had my own drawer in the old fridge. The old fridge had four drawers and each drawers was very loosely categorized into the following:

1. Pre-peeled garlic/dried Chinese items
   
2. Root Veggies (usually carrots/sweet potatoes)
   
3. Fruits
   
4. Dom's Misc. Crap

New fridge only has two big drawers and one (what I'd consider) half drawer. The rest are shelf units. There are lots of door shelves though so maybe I can claim one of those as mine. My misc. drawer usually contained a tub of cheese (typically feta/ricotta), lemons/limes, miso paste, etc. Basically stuff that I would use on a regular basis and/or stuff that wouldn't fit into the mini fridge.

The stove is pretty nifty. We haven't had a chance to use it yet--tonight's dinner was take-out roast duck but I opted for multigrain chicken nuggets and Smiles instead. We've been having roast duck on an almost weekly basis and to be frank, I'm getting sick of it. It used to be considered a treat in this house but it's sort of become regular fare. Plus knowing that I kind of "go to town" on it, if you will, when it's not really that healthy, makes me not want to eat it. Now I know what you're thinking...Smiles aren't any healthier...well yeah, they aren't, but they sure are fun to eat!

But let's back up to Monday night...The last dinner with the old stove was a beef stew with soybeans, carrots and potatoes, along with some sauteed watercress. I should have passed on the soybeans (soy is not allowed in my IBS diet) but I didn't want to go without them for some reason. I ate some, paid for it later, lesson learned.

Post-dinner snacks included half of the following watermelon:and a small bowl of Barbara's Bakery PB Puffins with almond milk:DO NOT WANT! I totally forgot that these are the same flavour Puffins I got in the States! I thought I had previously gotten the cinnamon flavour but I was wrong! I do not like these PB ones and now I have a whole box of them. Ugh!! Hopefully I can come up with some kind of baked snack mix to use these up faster. Or pawn them off to someone. Sean, I'm looking at you.

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23rd...Tuesday (back to work!)
I couldn't make up my mind on what I wanted to top my whole wheat English muffin so I used both organic coconut butter and natural PB. I also brought along this banana to eat in the car but it got eaten during second breakfast with my oatmeal:This is my oatmeal for second breakfast and the little container I use to pack my ground flax and chia seeds: I basically fill the little container with equal parts ground flax and chia seeds, shake it all up and then add about 1-1.5 teaspoons to my instant oatmeal at work. The oatmeal I'm using does have flax in it but it's literally like 10 flax seeds for the entire packet.

Lunch was excellent, however, it was 30 minutes late and I was seriously dying during those 30 minutes. Maybe it's because I was thinking about my lunch all morning long or maybe because my mixture of oatmeal, ground flax, chia seeds, kiwi and strawberries just weren't cutting it that morning. Whatever it is, it was not cool. Baked sweet potato fries, orzo pasta "salad" with roast broccoli on top, baked chicken drumstick, potato Smiles. That Smile looks a little creepy though.

Snacks included kiwi and strawberries:
and a Kashi Dark Mocha Almond bar and a very wrinkly peach:I packed the above two snacks thinking I would eat them on the way home from work but the huge flakes of snow made me angry/confused instead of hungry. I still can't believe that it's snowing when just four days ago it was 18C. I went out in the evening with only a sweatshirt as my "jacket!"

After work I came home and tried to eat intuitively. My brain/stomach told me they wanted some fruit so I obliged with some strawberries, a pear, watermelon and grapes:It also wanted something more sweet and indulgent, which is why you see the salted caramel and mojito macarons from Nadege.

Proper dinner didn't follow until almost three hours later though this dinner is probably more suited towards a five year-old:
Six Smiles and six organic, multigrain chicken nuggets. I ate them with an offending packet of ketchup from McD's. I'm really hoping that the tiny amount of high fructose corn syrup consumed from the ketchup will not lead to a migraine tomorrow. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Oh wait, I forgot...I also had that with a side salad. There, healthy!
And dessert was half a square of a very grown-up piece of Lindt Sea Salt chocolate:followed by some vanilla Earl Grey in this not so grown-up mug:

Sean picked up this mug for me from Urban Outfitters. I think it's hilarious, if not ridiculously expensive (which it was!!). The mug has different cat poses around it. Sean's fave is on the left while my fave is on the right. These cats are hilarious! Between my cat mosaic, cat cookie jar, cat brooch and this mug, I really am a crazy, old cat lady! It's not really my fault though as these were all presents from other people.

I had some of this crack, err, dark chocolate covered almonds while watching 90210:

I'm probably going to regret having bought this bag of almonds. I had the above portion times two already. Brookside is addicting and now I hear they've got some wackadoo options like dark chocolate goji, pomegranate and acai and blueberry. Wackadoo, indeed! Unfortunately I couldn't find them in the store today, which is one of the two reasons I walked into certain store. Boo. Instead I ended up buying those dark morsels of addiction. And I don't even like chocolate that much. Oi. At least I got the dark chocolate ones...anti-oxidants, right? I should probably stop trying to rationalize this segment.

Adios!

RAINBOW REJECTION

I'm a little behind on food recaps. I recapped one day but then forgot about a couple of days last week...oops! Here I am getting caught up:

11th...Thursday
Breakfast was pretty awesome. I made a grape tomato egg scramble and ate that atop a bed of spring mix greens with a pear:Party in my mouth! I'm trying to stay away from carbs during first breakfast. I find myself too full for oatmeal during second breakfast but I know that I need to eat the oatmeal during my break at work, otherwise I won't last the four hours until my lunch break.
It really pays to have pre-prepared lunches. What I mean by that is that on Monday night, I had prepared lunches for the following three days. I know that seems excessive but I knew that I'd be spending the next two nights after work out, so I wouldn't have time to prepare lunch for the following morning at work. Doing all of my lunch prep on Monday work saved me a LOT of work and allowed me to enjoy full meals throughout the week without resorting to calling my dad and begging him to bring me something to eat (most likely pizza) to work.
Thursday was the last of the organic chicken drumstick with cucumber sticks and mini carrots. I also had strawberries, most of which I used for my second breakfast oatmeal:Along with that I had a giant salad of spring mix with goat cheese, sliced radishes and cucumbers: I topped it with a Blueberry St. John's Wart dressing from a Toronto company that I picked up at Whole Foods. I put my name on a Post-It note and stuck it to the dressing bottle in the work fridge in hopes that my co-workers don't throw out/steal my dressing like they did with my last bottle. Not cool.Snacks included a pear and Kashi Dark Chocolate Coconut granola bar:As well as a couple dried mango slices and some Mary's Organic Crackers (Herb flavour):I kept the crackers for the ride home from work. Around 5:30, I get really noshy. Dinner was really unappetizing but I was not in the mood to cook for myself and since dad's dinner involved mushrooms, I decided to eat some:
Basmati rice with some kind of "stew." Spare ribs with weird tofu "balls" (I only had two since I'm technically supposed to avoid all soy since it's an IBS trigger) along with bok choy, some kind of leaf-like funghus I don't know the English name for and shitake mushrooms. It was okay. I didn't finish off my small bowl.

I ended off the night with a cup of peppermint tea and a Tim's-filled bowl of kettlecornbut times the above by two. I'm a kettlecorn addict.

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12th...Friday
Vegan Failure Day, which was so epic (because of my idiocy), it needed a post of its own.

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13th...Saturday
The day started off really early. Too early in fact, but at least I started the day off right:Almond Breeze with buckwheat cereal and Optimum Slim and from what you see below, it was pretty tasty:Also, say hello to my new cereal/everything bowl--though it really is a mug from Urban Outfitters. It's a giant mug, courtesy of Sean. Thanks Sean! I love that mug. He also got a blue one, which you'll see later.
Lunch was vermicelli soup with pork, green onions and iceberg lettuce. Weirdly, iceberg lettuce is really great when cooked. It has a really lovely sweet taste.Snacks for the afternoon included this Kind Bar, which I was finally able to find at Whole Foods. I only picked up two (just in case I didn't like them), this kind being Almond & Coconut. I ate this while in the mall shopping for work clothes and a new stove. Then on the way home I stopped by a nearby Indian grocery for some naan bread and FINALLY found the elusive kulfi that I always saw the kids eating in the shop. I settled on a pistachio one:Eaten on the car ride home:
I'm really glad I don't drive because I tend to eat a LOT of things in the car.

And like I mentioned earlier...dinner was naan bread with leftover Indian food: mattar paneer and my last Vita Coco (with pineapple):
I'm already craving more Vita Coco and have already tried seeking other coconut water at Asian grocery shops with no luck--although the one I did check was a little sketchy to begin with.

Later in the evening I was craving some fruit like mad but the options were limited: apples or oranges. I decided to go with an orange since my dad's apple-picking skills leave something to be desired:This orange was a little dried out though so it's best use was probably for juicing, which I haven't done in ages since it's nearing the end of winter. Wintertime just does not bring out the juicer in me although I really should have done that when we had a bunch of spinach around when it was on sale for a $1/lb.

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This morning the orange decide to take its revenge on me for calling it dry. Out of the six times I've eaten an orange in the past 6 weeks, five of those times, I've ended up befriending the Porcelain. I don't know what's going on with my bowels since oranges are not one of my IBS triggers but the oranges just don't like me!

At first it was any kind of tomato-involving substance last summer; no matter what kind of tomato sauce I ate or where it came from or who prepared it, I ended up with the worst amount of heartburn...the kind that no amount of Rolaids or Gas X could cure. It was painful, extremely painful. Even after enjoying what was a really incredible spaghetti putanesca back in NYC last July, I really regretted my decision the next day. I was in pain all the day long. I ended up in the hotel room taking a nap for part of the afternoon while Sean scoured town for a chicken snack--apparently one that was not to be missed--except for me, who was in pain and can't eat non-organic chicken anyway.

So yeah, it looks like my body is rejecting foods in order of the colours of the rainbow. I can't remember how long the tomato rejection lasted but I figure the orange rejection will last the same amount of time. It sucks because a) I love oranges and b) I depend on oranges as my greatest source of vitamin C.

Next up on the rainbow is yellow so that probably means bananas, which I'm okay with because I don't really like bananas anyway. They're good with PB or AB or possibly CB (coconut butter, which I have yet to try) and Crofter's spread but other than that, I could forgo bananas for the rest of my life. Oh, they're good in baking though. Darn.

Now I'm waiting on my parents to get back home so we can go finish the purchase on our new stove and purchase a fridge and washer/dryer. Woo! Shiny new stainless steel appliances just waiting to be used. I can't wait for the new stove and oven. Finally a new oven that hopefully is calibrated properly so I can make macarons properly!