Yikes.  This afternoon was definitely a lesson in the need to plan ahead! Before I left work, I had a Luna Bar:

Snack was 180 calories, 24g carbs, 5g fat, and 10g protein.

I got out of work early and managed to get the laundry and do my chores on time.  I was in my gym clothes about to walk out the door when I decided that, yes, I definitely did want to bake something tonight.  I looked around the kitchen and noticed we only had about 1/4c of sugar left.  So it had to be something that didn’t need a bunch of sugar.  I grabbed Veganomicon and flipped through it, finding a recipe for Vanilla-Yogurt Pound Cake that used firm tofu.  Well, I knew I had a block of tofu that was on it’s way out  – so even though I can take or leave pound cake, I decided on that.  I was reading through the recipe and saw that you needed to whip the tofu before using it.  And before I knew what I was doing, I was elbow deep in whipped tofu, when I was supposed to be at the gym!  Grr!  So fine, I’m making the recipe, cruising along, and I go to add the next ingredient, I find to my surprise that it’s 1 1/4c sugar!  Grr again!  So in the middle of the recipe (Martha Stewart would be appalled), I had to run next door to the expensive grocery store (Balducci’s) for an extremely overpriced bag of sugar (Grr three times!).  When I finally got it in the oven, it took over an hour to bake, keeping me trapped in the apt all that time.  During the baking, I calculated the recipe and was shocked to find that a thin slice was 207 calories, 30g carbs, 8g fat, 4g protein, and 18g sugar!! Grr, grr, GRR!  After it finally got out of the oven, it occurred to me that most pound cakes are light blond, and mine was dark – because I had used whole wheat flour!!  Oyy.  And although the cake is pretty good (Peter loved it),  there were just too many mistakes involved for me to be happy with it.  (Plus I don’t even love pound cake that much.)  Here’s the cake cooling:

And here’s Peter’s piece, smothered in warm raspberries:

I saved three pieces and am bringing the rest to the office tomorrow.  Between bowl liking and crumble snacking, I’m assuming I ate about 3/4 of a piece.  Snack was 155 calories, 23g carbs, 6g fat, and 3g protein.

While the cake was cooling, I grabbed a Pre Workout Snack of Cinnamon Raisin Ezekiel Bread with a tbsp peanut butter:

Pre Workout Snack was 175 calories, 21g carbs, 9g fat, and 7g protein.

I had a great workout at the gym!  I did a Cardio Smorgas: treadmill with weights, Cardio Wave, Step mill, and Elliptical.  The real star of the workout was the Cardio Wave.  I had such a great burn on that guy!  Towards the end, I was really in a great groove on the Elliptical – total workout high!  I was on my last song – one of my favorite cardio jams – when I got a bad case of Elliptical foot.  You know, that painful, twitchy feeling in your feet after too many machines?  Ow!  I worked through it though.  Cardio Smorgas – 506 calories burned.

When I got home, I had minimal appetite, as per usual after a hard workout.  But I needed something, so I grabbed a yogurt and threw in some berries:

I ate about 3/4 of this.  Snack was 90 calories, 17g carbs, 0g fat, 5g protein.

I’m exhausted!  Night guys!

After brunch this morning, Peter and I walked around the neighborhood to soak up some of this beautiful day. I managed to drag Peter into the kitchen supply store to pick up some new kitchen tools, yay!  I got a pair of tongs, a Y-peeler, and a mini-muffin pan!  To celebrate, I made Carrot-Pineapple-Sunshine Muffins from Veganomicon.  I followed the recipe basically, but I used hemp milk instead of soy milk, and lemon zest instead of orange zest.  This baking experience was much more normal, with bowl licking and messy kitchen. :) Muffins cooling:

For lunch/dinner, I had a smoked salmon, spinach, capers and Laughing Cow sandwich on Ezekiel Bread, along with one of three mini-muffins I ate during the baking/cooling process, and a small smoothie made from blueberries, banana, pineapple and nonfat vanilla yogurt.

Dinner was 717 calories, 118g carbs, 15g fat, and 31g protein.

P and I are off to a movie – we bought tickets online this time, so we should to be good to go!  Happy Saturday night everyone!

Hey guys! Whew, I’ve had a long evening in the kitchen! I decided to make two types of cookie for my recipients: “You Got Your Peanut Butter in My Chocolate” Cookies from ED&BV, and Chewy Raspberry Cookies from Veganomicon. I used the basic recipes, except I subbed Cashew Macadamia Butter for PB, and Blueberry Preserves for Raspberry Preserves. Here are all the cookies cooling:

PB on the left, Blueberry Chocolate on the right. I have to say, neither of the proportions were correct for me. The PB recipe was supposed to make 12, but I made 18! And the Blueberry Chocolate was supposed to make 12, but only made 10. Go figure. The PB batter was soooo delicate, though. It was impossible to scoop with a spoon! Luckily, before I met Peter, he had a jones for chocolate chip cookies one night and went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond where a saleswoman led him around buying the most random kitchen utensils, including this:

A batter scoop. The first time I saw this, I believe my exact words were, ‘Ah, you got taken for a ride.’ Well, I bite my tounge! This little baby saved these cookies! They would have been a crumbly disaster if not for this guy. Whew!

Two weird things about this baking experience: a) I’ve known for a long time that the best way to cook is to clean as you cook. You use something, you put it away, you use something, you put it away. But I’ve never actually had the maturity to do this. Well, tonight I was positively rigid about it – the kitchen was sparkling the entire time I baked! I even stopped in the middle to sweep. Bizarre…and even more bizarre… 2) I didn’t nibble at the batter AT. ALL. Not once. I knew it was delicious, but I knew it wasn’t for me. So I just didn’t eat it…weird.

Anyway, I’m going to give some of each to Ira and Martha; and also to my friend Ian’s (Hi Ian!!) girlfriend who is a student at the Bumble and Bumble Academy and will be giving me a haircut for free tomorrow as part of her class. Score! I took a ‘before’ picture tonight, so I’ll show you guys the finished product tomorrow!

For dinner, I wasn’t really that hungry (mostly I’m just tired) so I had a TJ’ Chicken Sausage on an Ezekiel Bread ‘Roll’ with about 20g of kale chips.

Well, after I did the math, I realized I was about 200 cals short for the minimum of my calorie range, so I needed more. I made a little parfait: 105g nonfat vanilla yogurt, 67g blueberries, 85g strawberries, and 12g Fiber 1.

Dinner was 347 calories, 56g carbs, 7g fat, and 21g protein.

I feel really proud of myself today. I feel like I made really responsible choices for my life and body. Night all!