Winning Friends with Salad

Hey guys - I decided to do a weekend recap because there were just two many things going on to post! I ended up not going to the gym Friday night - just too tired.

Saturday was interesting. I had some family issues come up that had to be dealt with - everything’s alright, I just had a very tiring and emotional day on Saturday. P and I decided to do a late brunch to lift our spirits. We went back to Good, a local favorite of ours. They make lots of different homemade breads, and there’s only one that we hadn’t tried: Hand-rolled Orange Sour Cream Donuts:

These babies were great - hot and crispy on the outside and warm and doughy on the inside - with a sugary orange cream sauce to dip into. Yum! - I had the one on the left.

For an entree, I had an egg and bacon sandwich on a roll.

I had one half, and half of the other half (3/4ths of the whole sandwich) plus half of the greens. I wasn’t really impressed with the roll - it tasted like a McDonald’s hamburger bun - blech. I also had an iced coffee.

After brunch, we walked around for a bit and went home. I got some new, awesome smelly soap from Sabon that smells like fresh cut grass. Yum!

We decided to go see a movie, but we wanted to have a small dinner before we left the apt. P offered to be in charge - which meant PB&J on whole wheat challah bread:

and a 3 oz glass of wine:

He’s always so nutritionally focused. After dinner, we headed up to Times Square - on the way, we stopped off at Balducci’s to get some snacks for the movie. I got another bag of Grand Pop’s Best Authentic Kettle Corn - seriously the best kettle corn out there.

I also got us each a single mini Peppermint Patty - my fave candy (unpictured). We saw Get Smart - and we totally loved it! I was expecting it to be good - but it was great!

After the movie we started to walk home when Peter announced that he wanted to see another movie - Kung Fu Panda - tonight! I laughed it off, but he was really serious! We Rock-Paper-Scissored to see if we would try to make the 12:15 show - and I won, but we decided to go see it anyway. Since we had 45 min to kill before the movie and we wouldn’t get out before 2, we wanted to get more snacks. We hopped into a Duane Reade and got some Baked Vegetable Wheat Thins and Twizzlers. Not the most nutritious, but we had a rough day and were trying to blow off some steam.

We bought tickets to the 12:15 show, but for some reason it didn’t start til 1 AM. We killed a good 45 min in the movie theater laughing at the same 10 trivia slides playing over and over - such an unexpected and special memory. Kung-Fu Panda was awesome too - it was really funny and had a pretty great story line. It was fun doing a ‘Double Feature’ too - I haven’t done that since I was 12 yrs old!

We didn’t get home until 3:30, and both immediately passed out. We woke up at 12:30 and goofed around a while before heading down to the New Amsterdam Market. My friend and colleague Sarah tipped me off to the market which is held several times a year in the South Street Seaport. From their site,

In its ongoing effort to foster a regional, sustainable food system by establishing a permanent, indoor public market in the City of New York, the New Amsterdam Public Market Association will hold its third market on Sunday, June 29th at the Seaport in Lower Manhattan…The June market has galvanized interest from over 50 farmers, food producers, purveyors, distributors, bread bakers, caterers, and chefs, as well as photographers, filmmakers, food systems advocates and other pioneers of a regional, sustainable food economy from diverse locales extending to Quebec, the Finger Lakes, and southern Virginia. By gathering these proponents in one setting, New Amsterdam Market will help place New York at the forefront of this emerging and evolving movement.

So we went, and it was awesome! Here’s a shot of the market at large:

It was under a bridge! True New York - we’ll find space where there is no space. We browsed around for a while, nibbling samples here and there, but it was super crowded. About 5 min after I took this picture, thunder and lighting started to crackle above. We decided to duck into a nearby restaurant to wait out the rain and the crowd. But that wasn’t in the cards! On our way to the restaurant, the sky opened up and came down in a hailstorm - literally hail and rain just pouring down. We managed to hop into a Haagen Dazs for safety just in time.

Can you see the hail??

Since we were in Haagen Dazs, we decided to turn lemons into lemonade - or in this case lemons into smoothie! We shared a Blueberry and Strawberry Smoothie while waiting for the rain:

I had about 1/2. The rain stopped after about 10 min, and we continued on to lunch. We ate outside under an overpass and got to watch the ships take off and leave from the shipyard. Here was our lunchtime view:

I got a grilled veggie sandwich on foccacia:

(with a little nibble taken out, sorry!) I had 3/4ths the greens and 1/2 the sandwich. I’ll probably have the other 1/2 for dinner tonight. I also had an iced tea, for a change of pace:

After lunch we headed back to the market, which had thinned out due to time (only 30 min before closing) and the rain! We signed the guest sheet, shown here with the market program:

This time around, we really got down to business. We tried this Orange Creamsicle homemade soda from Heartland Brewery:

I had about 3 big sips - which were absolutely freakin incredible! I don’t drink soda - I haven’t for almost 10 years - but this baby was incredibly worth it!

I also insisted we get this jam, even though P didn’t want to because we have that amazing Strawberry Rhubarb. So what?, I said, you can never have enough jam!

Paumanok Preserves in Whale of a White Peach Jam. The sweet woman who makes the jam recommended this flavor as a special one - and I definitely agree! Whole pieces of peach - absolutely amazing.

We also got:

Metropolitan Bakery All Natural Granola. The girls at this booth assure me that this granola is amazingly addictive - I’m not sure I need that in my life (haha) but I cannot wait to try it! At the same booth they had these biscotti samples that P and I kept going back for. Neither of us really like biscotti, but these guys were amazing. At the last minute P insisted we get a bag:

Gilda’s Biscotti in Almond Anise. I LOVE these babies. I think I may portion these guys out into Ziploc baggies to keep myself from digging into the bag at all hours of the day!

Our last purchase was this delicious juice:

Red Jacket Orchards Joe’s Summer Blend. Peter is a juice-lover - I’d rather have the whole fruit, but I have to admit, this juice was awesome. Definitely an inspired blend of apple and lemon. We both couldn’t get enough of it.

So that was our bounty! Getting down there and navigating the crowds, and getting home was definitely a challenge - but both P and I agreed it was worth it. We’re trying to go to more events these days - and this was a great choice! Peter is off having some down time after the busy market (I think he’s looking at computer stuff - what a nerd :P), and I think I may read some magazines and hit the gym. We did a ton of walking today and yesterday, hence no gym yesterday. Also no calorie counts today and yesterday because - frankly, I couldn’t be bothered. Saturday was too emotional/busy and Sunday there were too many nibbles to count! I will be back to calorie counting tomorrow, though don’t worry.

I’d also like to announce that I had a weigh-in Saturday morning and I’m down another .5 lb! Every bit counts right? Bye guys!