17 February 2009

AH!

Sorrry MIA-ness has crept up on me!!!!!!

but…i’ve been doing well, except for eating too much when we went to BJ’s Sunday night…it involved a pizookie. Don’t worry, it was shared. 

i’ve been exercising.

eating a lot of this: toast w/ peanut butter & coconut butter & banana. MMMMM!!

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coconut butter is my new friend.

 

got some yogurt at Tartini:

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This place is good!!! I got mango tart yogurt + plain tart yogurt and mixed in mochi dduk + fruit.

 

ate my favorite roll (tekka maki) at Blowfish.

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hm anyway can’t promise daily posts, but i’m still here!!!! still feeling physically blah. can’t wait for that to get better. refusing to step on scale, till i feel better.

11 February 2009

Surprises & Recipes

When I arrived home in Cali on Saturday, I was greeted by an amaaaaazing package from SHARON!!!!! I was amazed at the amazing-ness of this package.

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Close-ups, of course~

Lots of these cookies (Sharon are you trying to fatten me up?!? jkjk :) )

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Lots of Coffee Crisp & Aero! Ah…brings back memories from my trip to Niagara!

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And these sour mango gummies. Omygosh i am LOVING these!!! I guess its because I love anything mango, sour, and gummy! Its my kind of candy. :)

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Chocolate & Yogurt covered rice cake things and this White Chocolate Amaretto wafer thing.

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Second Cup cookies & tea! Never heard of Second Cup!

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Even a book and pencils! :P

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and lastly Kinder Surprise Eggs!! I was jealous of Matt when he was eating his. :)

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WOW THANK YOU SO MUCH SHARON!! :D

Now onto a little less exciting things. Well oatmeal is still pretty awesome though, and today I didn’t forget the coconut butter! You can’t really see it because it already started to melt. I LOVE it though! The coconut butter is made out of the whole flesh of the coconut so its just all nice and coconut-y. I’m going to add even more next time. :)

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And my family ate all the bananas I bought the other day, so I only had half of a banana I froze from a leftover the other day. Sigh, I gotta take them into consideration now lol.

I had Kimchi Jji-gae for lunch again today.

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Mica asked for the recipe for Kimchi Jji-gae so here’s how I make it, though I’m sure there’s a gazillion variations.

  • Heat a little oil (1t?) in the pot and saute a bunch of kimchi (the kimchi should be the OLD kind. Not fresh. Know what I mean?) and sam-gyup-sahl (any kind of pork). (We didn’t add pork or oil to our kimchi jji-gae though, and it still turned out great. Its just a good option.)
  • After sauteeing for a few minutes, add water maybe about 3/4 of the way to the kimchi – not covering it though. (We used about 3 cups.)
  • After bringing the pot to a boil, add SPAM and if you want, tofu. (We didn’t have tofu on hand that night but I would’ve put it in for sure.)
  • Season with about a spoonful each of gochu gga-ru (hot pepper flake) and da-shi-da (chicken stock seasoning)
  • Just simmer for a long time so the spam can saturate in the kimchi goodness lol.

ENJOY with BAHP (rice)! :D

I made dinner for my brother tonight and I made him his all-time favorite dish that I make him which is Spicy Thai Chicken Salad. I learned this at a Thai Cooking class I took on campus during my first year of college, and ever since then he is always asking me to make it. The only difference I made to this recipe from the original was I used half the olive oil it called for. 

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The only “unique” ingredient in this is fish sauce-

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Ingredients:

  • 1lb ground chicken
  • 2T olive oil
  • 5 cloves minced garlic
  • 1-2 minced jalapeno pepper
  • 1 sliced red onion
  • 4T fish sauce
  • about 1 cup chopped cilantro
  • juice of 2-3 limes

Directions:

  1. Heat oil in wok (or pan), then add garlic & jalapeno peppers
  2. Add in the ground chicken and fish sauce. Break up the chicken so that there are no chunks and cook all the way through.
  3. Mix in the red onion slices.
  4. Lower heat then mix in chopped cilantro.
  5. Turn off heat then mix in lime juice

 

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He ate the whole batch! Oh what a beautiful sight to see~

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I’m trying to eat a little more, because I really didn’t have much energy at the gym today. Guess I’ll experiment a little~ Hm that was a random ending.

Night!

02/11/09 stats:

  • weight: -
  • bodyfat: -
  • waist: -
  • calories in: 1420
  • workout: treadmill & elliptical for 30 minutes

11 February 2009

I’m Going to be Sore Tomorrow

And I am so looking forward to it! :D I actually worked out twice today (at two separate gyms). This morning I got my gym membership at 24 Hour Fitness - yay!

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So I got in a good workout on the treadmill and doing some weights when I got my membership.

Then tonight my friend wanted me to check out her gym and she had a free 1-week guest pass so I went to go check it out and I got another good workout in! It really does help to have a workout buddy. I’m going to try to make her switch to 24 Hour Fitness lol. :)

This morning I made oatmeal, and I was soo looking forward to topping it with some coconut butter but uhh thats the one thing I forgot to put in lol. I remembered after I finished the bowl. Haha oh well, theres always tomorrow. ;)  

The coconut butter-less oatmeal~

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I topped it with chopped almonds, Barney Butter, and banana. I loved the crunch of the almonds!

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At midnight last night my mom and I made Kimchi jji-gae (Kimchi stew). It turned out sooo good – of course its super easy to make though lol. I had that for lunch and dinner today. I could eat this everyday! I think I say that for everything I like though haha..

Kimchi jji-gae ain’t kimchi jji-gae till it has some spam in it. (Spam lite!)

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With some “healthy rice”-

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Such a yummy meal, going to make it more often!

I also made a Starbucks run today. I always drink these too fast. -_-

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I’m feeling better since my weeks of wacko eating, but still not feeling as good as I did before. I’m hoping that changes soon especially with working out now. But yea, I have not even thought about unpacking my scale yet haha.

Oh I’ve decided not to wear an HRM when working out now. I think it kind of restricts me since I have perfectionistic tendencies, I feel like I can’t be active unless I’m wearing the HRM. Silly, but true for me :T. I’m just going without it and going to be active whenever, wherever throughout the day!

02/10/09 stats:

  • weight: -
  • bodyfat: -
  • waist: -
  • calories in: 1350
  • workout: treadmill about 50 minutes, weights about 30 minutes

9 February 2009

All Sorts of Butters

I went for another jog this morning for 30 minutes. I haven’t even exerted myself much during my jogs these past couple days but I am feeling SORE! Not a good sign lol. But I still love the feeling of soreness from exercising. :D

Yesterday I stopped by Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and picked up some stuff. I was really excited to see Barney Butter at WF’s! The one in Chicago didn’t have it.

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I really like it! Of course I love any almond butter ;D. I think the best part is the texture – its really STICKY and GOOEY!

I also picked up some coconut butter-

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I tasted it and I LOVED it! Again, I just love anything coconut though. :D

And $0.19 bananas from TJ’s – slightly green the way I like ‘em!

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I made breakfast for my mom and I this morning and it was our first chance to talk and catch up. =)

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I made mine (the one on the left) with Barney Butter but my family is all about the Skippy-

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So I made my mom’s with that and tried to spread on as much PB as possible without it being gag-able because she definitely needs the extra calories. I also split us a blood orange which was super yummy!

And tonight I met up with an old friend and we went to IN-N-OUT. Haven’t had THAT in a while!

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I got a regular hamburger, but I switched their special sauce with ketchup because I’m a ketchup lover anyway and the sauce isn’t so special anymore and it saves about 100 calories or so. We also split the fries

I think I’m going to go get a gym membership tomorrow. I’m thinking of 24-hour-fitness but I’ll see…

Oh and also I’m LOVING Comcast! Back in Chicago I used AT&T but uploading photos while blogging took sooooo long. Now it only takes a few seconds! Plus their customer service is much better I think…

Anyway good night!!!!!

8 February 2009

Blogging from Cali

Yikes its been a while! I finally landed in California last night. Its good to be home, but I’m missing Chicago more than I thought. :*(

My last couple days in Chicago were mainly filled with packing and going out to eat. Here are some food highlights!

Like I mentioned in the previous post we went to Brazzaz, a Brasilian steakhouse.

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The salad bar-

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My plate, mmm I luuurve olives!!

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And of course the meat!

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The last time I went to Fogo, I said I liked Brazzaz better, but now I think I like Fogo better. Just thought I’d get that out there lol.

 

That same day I met up with some other friends and they took me to two places we used to always go to, so it was a “must” that we went there again for the last time. First we went to Panang where they have some yummy Thai food. As usual we shared Pad Thai and Pad See Ew. I also tried my friend’s Tom Yum (sp?) Noodle soup which was really good too!

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Then we went to Grand Lux Cafe, where we have always gone for desserts for special occasions and birthdays.

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We ordered and shared two (HUGE) desserts!

Strawberry Shortcake-

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SOO good!

 

And New Orleans Beignets-

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It came with 3 sauces – chocolate, raspberry, and Jack Daniels sweet cream sauce. I didn’t touch the chocolate sauce but the Jack Daniel’s sauce mixed with a little of the raspberry sauce was amaaazing with these!

Up close and personal~

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That day was seriously FOOD DAY.

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The day before leaving Chicago we went out to a Korean place and the food we had pretty much looked like this.

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My last day in Chicago (yesterday) we went to go eat at this place called Eggsperience, which I always miscall Eggstraordinary haha. By this day I hadn’t blogged for a couple days so my photo taking was kind of sporadic. But here’s a picture of the table haha. =)

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The dish on the right was basically what I had (my food is covered by the water pitcher haha) – a mushroom & asiago cheese omelette (the one on the right is a Chorizo omelette, which was WAAY better…I only ate about a quarter of mine), REALLY good sweet potato fries, and it came with pancakes. I really didn’t eat much of the food though, which was nice.

We went to Joyee’s afterwards and got bubble tea - I got Taro milk tea. Yum, haven’t had that in a long time!

Then I said good-bye’s =( and got dropped off at the airport. The flight was really smooth, but as usual I couldn’t fall asleep on the plane even though I was DEAD tired. 

Chicago was in the 50’s when I left and when I got to CA it was in the 50’s too! It was great to see my family and also be greeted so excitedly by my dog! =)

And guess what?? Today I actually got out and went for a JOG! I was out there for 45 minutes. But for the last 15 minutes I brought my dog with me so he could have a chance to walk outside, which slowed me down with all his territory marking lol.

I’ve mainly been eating Korean food since I’ve been back. Though I miss Chicago like crazy, its definitely been nice to have some more normal eats. 

And hopefully I will get back to my normal blogging schedule and catch up on some blogs! :D

5 February 2009

Scrabbling Over Cappuccinos

I met up with some people today and we went to go eat at this Mediterranean restaurant called Reza’s.

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We ordered some delicious pita and hummus for the table!

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The pita bread was really chewy and soft and the hummus was of course wonderful~

 

And I split this with a friend:

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(top) roasted vegetables - YUMMM!

(middle) dill rice

(bottom) chicken kabob & filet steak kabob

 

Afterwards we went to Brothers K Coffeehouse in Evanston, where they have AWESOME cappuccinos!

Look an apple!

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We played Scrabble and uh, got a little too competitive lol. We got into an intense debate and had to bring others sitting around us into it by asking whether a certain move was allowed or not. HAHA I ended up losing the debate. :( Though I still think I was right..lol. ;)

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Tomorrow is going to be a day full of major eating out again. A friend is treating me to a lunch at Brazzaz, a Brasilian steakhouse. I’m pretty meated out and its only been about a month since the last time I went to a Brasilian steakhouse, but thats where he wants to go and I’m not the only one who’s going to be there, so I’m just going with it.

And at night I’m meeting up with some friends for dinner. It’d be nice to go out to eat with them on a day I’m not going to be going to a Brasilian steakhouse earlier on in the day, but its the only night that works, so again I’m just going with it.

I’m not really worried, I think right now I’m just kind of going along with things and waiting for SATURDAY.

3 February 2009

Errands & Eats

Going to try and keep this post short!

Today was just a day full of running errands. Jimmy Johns was lunch. And later I decided it was time to eat this purple sweet potato I bought a while back. 

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It was my first time trying a purple sweet potato and of course I liked it, it tasted pretty similar to a regular sweet potato~

My roommate and I had a roommate night and made dinner together, which we don’t do too often. We’re close, but we usually just eat on our own time – plus we usually eat different foods.

Anyway, I made mapo tofu-

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You usually make this with ground meat, but I didn’t have any on hand tonight so I just used turkey sausage hehe :) . I made this with soft tofu.

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My roommate made this really simple sausage dish that ended up being super yummy. She just mixed the sausage with a little soy sauce and a sprinkling of sugar. And at the end added in some toasted sesame seeds.

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So good!

 

Our dinner while we got sucked into a Korean drama which wasn’t even that good lol.

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And now, it is time to sleep…Good night :D !!

2 February 2009

Superbowl & Legoland

The superbowl party last night was super fun, though none of us paid hardly any attention to the game except for the first 30 minutes when we were eating and the last 5 minutes when it got a little interesting. 

That night was all about the pizza.

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We ordered 4 boxes from Pizza Hut.

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Someone apparently thought that wouldn’t be enough pizza so they brought 4 more boxes from Little Caesar’s. We had 4 boxes of pizza leftover. 

Some of the other food:

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It was fun, but sad too because I knew it’d be the last time I’d get to see some of them. Boo hoo. =(

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Today my friend and I treated one of our friend’s kids to a day at LEGOLAND!!!!!

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We were greeted by Lego Einstein, which the kids were extremely TERRIFIED of..

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The coolest part was lego-fied Chicago!

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The details were soo cool. Millenium Park:

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Lego Obama, which doesn’t really look like him haha.

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Okay enough with the legos!!

 

Before Legoland we had lunch at Portillo’s where I had a hotdog and we shared fries. After Legoland we went over to their house where we had yummy Korean food.

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I’ve really just been eating whatever these days. Of course I’m loving these last times I’m spending with people before I leave Chicago, but its kind of driving me crazy with all this off-routine eating and I wish I had bought my plane ticket for an earlier date, lol. Ah well, I’m feeling gross now, but I’m sure when I’m feeling un-gross I’ll look back at this time with fond memories. :D Lets just hope that time comes SOOOOON!

31 January 2009

Back From the Cornfields

I had a great time at IU! It was mainly a time of playing catch-up with my friend. :)

And the drive was really good too. I love driving by myself because I can just turn up the music as loud as I want! But I hate long drives for the sole reason of T.R.U.C.K.S.!!! Especially on two-lane-never-ending-highways. They are the big bullies on the road. Well not really, I just think I’ll be in their blindspot and they’ll switch lanes right when I’m next to them, flying me into the ditch in the middle of the highway.

Starbucks run:

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YUMMAY! But I regretted getting this because I almost immediately had to go to the bathroom and I had just started the drive…

My friend had a wonderful home-y Korean meal waiting for me. =)

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Side dishes, pan-fried tofu + soy sauce to dip in, seaweed, dwen-jang jji-gae (miso tofu stew), rice

 

Other food highlights included Pho +  fresh spring rolls. We also made this for one of our meals:

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“Chapagetti” - instant jja-jang-myun 

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Yumminess in a pot.

 

My friend also took me to a great place called blu boy cafe because she said I “HAVE to try the chocolate cake there.” And now I am telling YOU, if you are at IU and whether or not you like or don’t like chocolate cake, you HAVE to try the chocolate cake there!!!!! You also HAVE to get the organic french roast coffee there. Awesome and toasty!

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Unlike any other chocolate cake I’ve had (most are meh!) and amazing coffee~

 

We went to go see the lake, which was completely snow-covered and we couldn’t tell where the lake started! 

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In an attempt to drive to the lake’s edge, our car got stuck in the snow. What a smart move!! =P But after an hour’s attempt + 3 of her friends’ help later, I have learned the trick to getting cars un-stuck from the snow. I guess that kind of information will become completely useless to me though.

We also watched Gran Torino, which is another movie everyone should watch! Hm seems like there’s been lots of good movies lately…

Tomorrow’s the superbowl!! Of course I don’t really care about it and only started understanding the game at last year’s Superbowl, but I absolutely love getting together with people and watching it. I think we’re watching it at our place tomorrow.

Tchau!!!

28 January 2009

I’ll Be Back Saturday

Until Saturday I’ll be visiting one of my best friends at Indiana University. For the past 4 years or so I’ve been promising to visit since we only live one state over. I have yet to visit, but since I’m someone who keeps her promise I’m finally visiting her one week before I’m outta the Midwest! Better late than never.. :)

Today was another good day – productive and filled with good eats!

cheerios with some blueberries-

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Kind of a weird combo, but it was yummy. =)

 

And some kimchi fried rice:

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This was made with:

  • rice
  • 1 applegate turkey sausage
  • kimchi
  • onion
  • zucchini
  • green bell pepper
  • carrot
  • mushroom
  • peas
  • 1t sesame oil
  • 1t soy sauce
  • 1 egg

 

For dinner I had pretty much exactly the same thing as last night (stirfry) except I had a panfried egg with it. Eggs are great. =) Lately I’ve been taking out the little bold white blob thats found in eggs, usually next to the yolk part. Know what I’m talking about? When we were little I remember one of my friends always took that part out, and I always thought of her whenever I saw it. But its not until recently that I’ve started taking it out myself. Yea…random story.

I had a major chocolate craving today so I ate a good amount of this (chocolate-covered, sweet curry-flavored dried mango) which Miss Tiffie sent awhile back:

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(this picture wasn’t taken today)

SOO good…it was hard to stop eating more! I guess I also had a mango craving because I ate that, along with a bunch of frozen mango chunks I forgot about while cleaning out the freezer.

Alright, well I’ll “see” you guys Saturday! Wish some good thoughts for me that I’ll do fine while I’m there – oh and that the roads won’t be icy. =) 

01/28/09 stats:

  • weight: -
  • bodyfat: -
  • waist: -
  • calories in: 1450
  • calories out-