WIAW: Sunday! (Cake for Breakfast)

April 1, 2015March 30, 2015 / Melissa (I Crashed the Web) / 11 Comments

I decided to switch it up a little bit this week – I’m sharing with you a day of Sunday eats! I typically share a weekday post but guess what – I remembered to take food pics on Sunday!

I woke up fully intending to have a great breakfast of eggs and beans – and B was ready to make it of me! – but somehow ran out of time and only had 15 minutes for breakfast before my Sunday morning plans, meeting Nicole for a walk and tea. Oh well. That meant breakfast was quick – but still delicious! I had made lemon cake Saturday so it sounded perfect for Sunday breakfast. IMG_20150329_164012 Then it was time to meet Nicole. We took a nice walk and enjoyed a pot of tea while we caught up. She just got back from Australia so it was awesome to hear some of her stories. That’s my favorite from Cleveland Tea Revival – ginger turmeric.

a whole pot of ginger turmeric for me!

I got home about 1 p.m. and was starving. Guess lemon cake doesn’t fill you up? I luckily had some leftovers from Friday night waiting for me. Note – I forgot to take a photo of it on Sunday, but here’s the photo of my veggie burger on Friday. I had about half leftover.

And with the veggie burger I had some more veggies! I did some meal prep and ate some of the veggies I was preparing – spinach, brussels sprouts and some additional frozen veggies. Oh and this new flavor (for me) of La Croix. Pretty yummy!

20150329_140616

Sunday dinners are typically with B’s family, but I had to work and we had tickets to see a final movie at the Cleveland International Film Festival, so we had a quick dinner planned. Below – my concoction from the Heinen’s salad bar. I assure you it was really good and about 1.3 lb. of food. #notashamed

20150329_173558

Some questions for you:

Do you have standing Sunday night dinner plans? We typically go to B’s parents house for dinner and I love it!
Dessert for breakfast – anyone else guilty?
Favorite salad bar toppings? Quinoa salads, edamame, hummus, beans and the Heinen’s roasted red pepper tofu (in the photo above on the bottom) – so good! Oh and I also love some good Krab (fake crab). I don’t know why – but it’s something I enjoy!

What I Ate Wednesday: A Real Wednesday

March 18, 2015March 15, 2015 / Melissa (I Crashed the Web) / 6 Comments

Guess what – for this week’s What I Ate Wednesday, I’m actually going to share with you a Wednesday of eats. I tend to share Monday or Tuesday (because those are the days I remember to take photos of everything), but this week I’m showing you an actual Wednesday!

For those of you that have followed my WIAW posts before, you know that breakfast for me are typically the same. My hubby B makes me egg whites with an assortment of vegetables and/or beans. This week was no different – I put some cholula on my veggies and wolfed this down around 8 a.m. at my desk. No coffee today – I don’t drink it daily and instead focused on hydrating with my crystal light. Yes, I have a slight addiction.

20150311_084726

Work was busy, so lunchtime came and went. Whoops! Thankfully, I was able to heat up my lunch I had prepared the night before – an assortment of roasted cauliflower, sweet potato and onion with smoked paprika and hot sauce (I like spicy food) and tofu. I give up meat for Lent and sometimes I take the easy way out to get in some protein.

20150311_140458

For snacks, I had a whole cut up yellow pepper, some peanuts, carrots and of course, tea with honey. I love decaf herbal tea and this lemon ginger tea is so yummy.

20150311_160056 20150311_180831 20150311_140448

B went for a run outside after work, and since I had already worked out, I made dinner while he ran. I was craving some brinner and was happy to see we had the ingredients on hand. Thankfully, I was able to throw something delicious together quickly – we had everything for my sweet potato zucchini hash, and I added a runny egg and avocado. I love this meal so much!

IMG_20150311_203932

And for dessert? Some homemade browned butter chocolate chunk cookies I had made and of course more tea and honey.

20150306_085001 20150311_210140

Some questions for you:

How do you like your eggs? I like the whites the most, but do love the yolk when it’s runny. Yummy!

What are some non-meat ways you get in protein? Eggs, tofu, beans, etc.

WIAW: Case of the Mondays = Cookie for Breakfast

February 25, 2015February 25, 2015 / Melissa (I Crashed the Web) / 6 Comments

I decided to switch it up a little bit this week – I’m sharing with you Monday’s eats for this edition of What I Ate Wednesday. I typically share a Tuesday eats but guess what – I remembered to take food pics on Monday!

Full disclosure: Today (Wednesday) I’m going out to eat for dinner and likely having chips and guac, tacos, margs and dessert. Sorry you’re stuck with viewing pictures of zoodles (and some treats) instead of Mexican 🙂

Monday morning I started my day with a cookie. That’s right – a cookie. I ran before work and was hungry before I even had a chance to make breakfast (B had to pick up his dry-cleaning so I made my OWN breakfast!) so I had a butterscotch oatmeal coconut cookie bar. Delicious! And there’s oatmeal in them so it’s totally a great pre-breakfast treat.

butterscotch oatmeal cookie

When I got to work, I had my egg whites and veggies – this time a mix of spaghetti squash and frozen vegetables. Oh, and coffee with cinnamon. I don’t drink coffee daily, but when a colleague puts in Vietnamese cinnamon AND it’s Monday, it’s hard to resist.

breakfst

Lunch was a mix of leftovers from our dinner out with my parents on Friday (salmon and lentils – both my mom’s and my leftovers) and some roasted broccoli and tomatoes I had prepared on Sunday.

Salmon, lentils, roasted broccoli and tomatoes. Yes, my lunches often look like a dinner.

Snacks during the day included:

Bag of red and yellow peppers

20150223_154411

A few werthers (not pictured) and tons of tea with honey (also not pictured)

A sweet potato with honey

sweet potato

Some Arctic Zero! Yes it’s cold, but I still have a sweet tooth (as evidenced by the cookie for breakfast)

I didn’t quite eat the whole pint ..

And for dinner – I made some shrimp scampi-type dish with zoodles! I don’t know what is officially in shrimp scampi, but this was sautéed onions, garlic and shrimp over zoodles with some peperoncino flakes and fresh basil.

Shrimp scampi over zoodles!

Some questions for you:

Does anyone have a spiralizer? What do you recommend making?
Cookies for breakfast – anyone else guilty?
Arctic Zero fans – what’s your favorite flavor?

*Note: The original WIAW linkup seems to be on hiatus sadly – but I’ll be sharing this here too!

WIAW: A Not-So-Fat Tuesday

February 18, 2015February 17, 2015 / Melissa (I Crashed the Web) / 6 Comments

Guess what – I’m back again for another What I Ate Wednesday post!

I was super excited to share with you a Fat Tuesday post, complete with King Cake, jambalaya, these cupcakes and lots of food. Because – why not? It’s Fat Tuesday? But I have a confession – my Fat Tuesday was really pretty normal.

Per usual, my day started with egg whites and veggies, made by B. I was too lazy to make spinach or Brussels sprouts for breakfast so I had some frozen organic veggies from Whole Foods and tomatoes from the West Side Market to fill me up.

breakfast

Our office celebrated Fat Tuesday with paczkis! Don’t know what a paczki is? Don’t worry, I didn’t either until I moved to Cleveland where apparently they’re a BIG deal. (Note – they’re Polish so also a big deal in Poland. And according to Wikipedia, also in “Philadelphia, the Boston area, the Greater Detroit and Mid Michigan areas, Central Connecticut, Northern and Central New Jersey, Chicago and Northern Illinois, Northwest Indiana and Southeastern Wisconsin”). Some people even call Fat Tuesday Paczki Day!

Paczkis are basically powdered donuts with a filling. And honestly, the only donut I really enjoy is an apple fritter so I passed. But I took a picture anyway – pretty, huh?

paczki

Lunch was a ginormous salad! I had made some roasted chicken over the weekend (I know! B typically roasts it but this week I did it with his help when I did some meal prep) and paired half a breast with roasted Brussels sprouts, butternut squash and cauliflower – but this morning I decided to add some extra salad mix to the container and it was a good decision! For an unintended salad, it was pretty! I didn’t need any dressing because I’m picky about dressings and the roasted veggies had enough oil/flavor for me.

Yup, a HUGE salad that wasn’t supposed to be a salad.

Snacks during the day included:

Bag of celery

celery

A red pepper, sliced. Yup, that’s one entire red pepper. #Notashamed

red pepper snack

Chewy ginger candy. Yes, again. And I’ve run out so I don’t know what I’m going to do!

wiaw ginger chews

One of many cups of tea!

And dinner! I know – you’re like “wait those are the only snacks today? You usually snack so much more! Where are the granola bars? Where are the nuts? And carrots?!” but I had a dentist appointment in the afternoon which prevented me from snacking so much – snack time became dentist time. And good news – no cavities! Anyway, I digress. Dinner.

I was planning on making dinner but after the dentist I had some work to do, so B ~~tried to convince me to pick up McDonald’s~~ graciously made the meal. And it was SO good! We had bought sushi-grade tuna at the West Side Market, along with tons of veggies, so we at them for dinner. Seared ahi tuna, roasted cauliflower, roasted asparagus and 1/3 a sweet potato. Because what day wouldn’t be complete without a sweet potato? (I only had 1/3 of it because I reallllly wanted leftovers for today. It took a lot of restraint. And I didn’t take a picture it because I ate it after my meal)

When B makes me dinner it looks a lot better

After dinner I enjoyed that 1/3 of sweet potato and tea with lots of honey. Yes, I have an herbal tea problem.

tea and honey after dinner!

AND here is an update of my Fitbit for the day! I decided to take it easy this week and not run every day (big deal for me!) because next week starts my Cleveland half marathon training. So today’s workout included a really slow and easy 60 minutes on the elliptical followed by some ab and weights. As usual, you’ll see practically no flights of stairs on my end. I don’t have any stairs in my life!

Screenshot_2015-02-17-21-30-45

Some questions for you:

Well, how did I do?
How was your day? Which of these foods would you eat? Any you wouldn’t enjoy?
Did you have a REAL Fat Tuesday? Please let me know and I can live vicariously through your indulgences.

Meatless Monday: Eggplant, Potato and Pepper Stew

March 11, 2013April 28, 2013 / Melissa (I Crashed the Web) / 1 Comment

A few weeks ago I finally reactivated my library card! This means trouble – I now have a ton of library books on my night stand, and even more on hold. In between all the best-sellers and fiction books, I also made room for a few cookbooks. The first one, Meat Free Monday, is by Paul McCartney and has a collection of meatless meals – breakfast, lunch and dinner – for a whole year. I tagged a few recipes, including one for a meatless dinner stew.

I really really enjoyed the recipe – the book said it made 4 servings, but B and I had dinner, and I froze 5 cups for leftovers, even a few without potatoes for B, who is starting a low-carb diet this week.

vegetarian eggplant, potato and pepper stew labeled

Eggplant, Potato and Pepper Stew (slightly modified from the Meat Free Monday Cookbook)

Yields 5-8 servings

Here’s what you need:

3 tbs olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
3 garlic cloves, diced
1 red pepper, seeded and cut into large chunks
1 eggplant, cut into large chunks
1 zucchini, chopped into chunks
2 medium Russet potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
1 tbs dried oregano
2 14-oz cans stewed tomatoes
1 1/3 c vegetable broth
14-oz can white beans, drained and rinsed
4 tbs greek olives, chopped
Feta and parsley for topping

Here’s what you do:

Heat half of olive oil in a large pot. Add onion and celery, cook until tender but not colored. Add garlic and saute for another minute.
Add the remaining oil, chopped peppers, zucchini, and eggplant to the pan and cook for 3-4 minutes.
Add potatoes, oregano, canned tomatoes and vegetable broth. Bring to a boil, cover the pan, and reduce the heat to low
Simmer for 25-30 minutes until veggies are tender.
Add beans and olives, cook for another 5 minutes.
Taste the stew! Add salt, pepper or other spices as needed. Serve with crumbled feta and chopped parsley.
Chop the veggies ahead of time … it’s easier

saute the celery, onion and garlic first

Let the stew simmer

closeup of stew