sweet potato « Healthy and Sane - A healthy lifestyle blog

Entries Tagged as 'sweet potato'

Help me re-energize

March 10th, 2010 · 14 Comments · Italian, smoothies, snacks, sweet potato

I’m not sure what’s going on lately, but I’ve been TIRED… like all I want is to do is sleep- tired. Hoping to avoid looking and feeling like a zombie, yesterday I decided to start my day with a super nutritious green smoothie.

In the blender – 1+ frozen banana, frozen blueberries, 1c water, 1c 1% milk, Greens+ wild berry burst, 8 ice cubes, baby spinach and 1/4t xantham gum and 1/8t guar gum

It made 2 awesome smoothies – Adam and I shared them.

I paired my smoothie with a Food For Life millet toast with Barney Butter

[300 calories]

MID-MORNING SNACK

[70 calories]

LUNCH

Leftover savory pumpkin pudding

Still delicious the next day

[450 calories]

MID-AFTERNOON SNACKS

TJ’s 100 calorie dark chocolate bar

+ 2 somersault packets

[All together: 240 calories]

WORKOUT

I had a lunch meeting, which meant I had to go to the gym after work. I REALLY hate working out after work but for some reason I got a burst of energy right at 5pm. I left a bit later and found Adam on one of the treadmills finishing up his workout. It never gets old seeing my husband running! Unfortunately, the second I started running, all that energy disappeared. I was dragging. I had 4 miles with 6×200 on the schedule but I wanted to get off the treadmill a minute after starting running. I finished 6×200 with walking for recovery for most intervals (I NEVER do that!) and then got off. I probably ran a little over 1 mile instead of 4. Ugh This is my 3rd crappy run in a row. I considered quitting all together last night. Something is off with me on the running front, and I feel trapped. Maybe the 5K I’m running this weekend will be the perfect fun distance for me, and then I can get back to distance running. We’ll see how it goes.

DINNER

Sweet potato gnocchi with brussels sprouts and walnuts (recipe can be found here, originally discovered through Tri to Cook)

To make this, I used the Nuovo sp gnocchi (purchased at Whole Foods). This was super quick and Adam and I both really enjoyed it. The brussels sprouts overwhelmed the sweet potato taste a bit when eaten together in one bite, but alternating bites between the gnocchi and the brussels sprouts resulted in a great balance between sweet and earthy. The walnut pieces added a nice crunch as well. Great, great dinner!

Oh yes, and there was a bit of vino involved. This bottle of Cono Sur pinot noir was fantastic. So smooth. I had this glass and another splash after that. What a fun treat on a Tuesday night!

Label close-up:

Dessert: the infamous peanut butter chocolate chip granola bar cookie

This time I ate it like dessert and enjoyed it immensely. It really is kind of a perfect bar cookie (minus the calories).

Are you ever super tired for several consecutive days? Any ideas on how to re-energize? I’m all ears!

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Vacation booked

March 3rd, 2010 · 20 Comments · breakfast, sandwich, snacks, sweet potato, yogurt

I followed Inna’s eating rules today and this turned out to be a great day of mindful eating. It’s amazing how just paying a little more attention to simple things adds up to so much more. I’m liking this new motivation! What else is motivating me? Our vacation in FIVE weeks! We booked a little 4-day getaway to Aruba today. I am so excited! I think it will get busy at work soon so I should be more than ready for some time in the sun at the beginning of April.

Now onto today’s eats…

BREAKFAST

TJ’s european style yogurt, pear, fresh blueberries and 1/2 blueberry muffin + coffee

The muffin chunks tasted like CAKE for breakfast! Best idea ever.

All messy… mmm

[302 calories]

MID-MORNING SNACK

The other half of the muffin + orange slices

[206 calories]

Man, it hurts me to post this ugly picture. It was crazy delicious though. I promise!

WORKOUT - abs + spin. Nice and sweaty

LUNCH

Baba ganoush, turkey, cucumbers and mustard on white whole wheat bread

A garlic pickle <3

+ baby carrots and cucumber slices

All together:

[326 calories]

I know this is obvious, but I just wanted to remind you all that cucumbers in sandwiches are awesome!!!

MID-AFTERNOON SNACK

Strawberry Soyjoy I got at a conference ages ago.

[130 calories]

I liked it a lot. It kind of tasted like a strawberry cookie.

DINNER

Did I mention how much I love our new kitchen? Because I do! It’s seriously a pleasure being in it. I can’t get enough! I hope Adam can keep up with all the dish washing because I kind of want to live in the kitchen for a little while

For dinner tonight I made some sweet potato falafel by following this recipe from the Pink Apron. My pita bread totally fell apart so this was one messy meal, but it was quite tasty nonetheless. I loved how crunchy the baked falafel balls were and the subtle sweetness of the sweet potatoes added a fun twist to the traditional recipe. The tomatoes + cucumbers added a nice freshness to this meal. Unfortunately, the sauce, to be honest, was just okay. I didn’t thin it enough so it was quite thick and Adam is not a fan of parsley so I just used a bit of dried parsley instead of fresh and the sauce ended up tasting kind of like plain sour cream. Not that exciting (not Kelly’s fault since I didn’t follow her directions properly). I’d make the falafel again but probably use hummus for sauce.

[395 calories]

I just totaled up my calories for the day and realized I’m a bit low. I’m munching on a clementine and calling it a day.

See you later alligators!

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Giving ecto another go

February 2nd, 2010 · 17 Comments · Boston, salad, snacks, sweet potato

I am still on the lookout for the most efficient way to blog. It seems that so many people figured out what works for them, and I still haven’t had my perfectly smooth blog posting experience. WordPress is okay, I just constantly have to do 4 things before my images upload in the order that the pictures were taken (instead of backwords – most recent first) and then once I start moving them around (especially since I just started using 2 cameras – that really messed up their order!), each one has to be fixed manually or else they disappear from the post when you click on it. It’s kind of annoying, and it’s time I’d rather be spending working on content of this blog, learning about photography or hanging out with my husband or family and friends.

So last night, I finally asked Tina for help – she LOVES ecto. If you’re not familiar with what it is – ecto is basically an offline blogging platform. You should be able to write your post, insert images, etc. offline and once there is an internet signal, the post can be published. Tina uses it mostly to upload images because of the aforementioned trouble we all have with uploading pics through wordpress. Anyways… I guess that was a long introduction to my coffee date with Tina. She happened to be in my hood this afternoon and promised to show me the ecto ropes. I was so excited! Could my previous ecto frustrations be finally put to rest? Was it time for my ridiculous daily ritual with wordpress to come to an end?

We met at Wired Puppy – a cute little specialty coffee and tea shop on Newbury st with all organic offerings.

The muffins in the display case looked divine! I was a good girl and stuck to just a simple calorie-free beverage.

I got a loose leaf tea, and being the great blogger than I am… I forgot to write down exactly what I had. It was very fruity and flavorful. I also loved that glass mug!

Tina and I caught up on recent life events and then we got to our little demo from the ecto expert. My ecto was messing up a bit for Tina, just like it did for me, but I seemed to learn a few tricks from Tina.

Tonight, after a very long day at work, I thought I’d give this (ecto) baby a whirl. Um, it still sucks!!! My images imported at a different size from what I wanted them at, so I tried to change them all at the same time – no luck. I decided to stick with the default size, and then all of a sudden, my next batch of images started uploading at the right size. WTF?! How did that happen, and will it stick around? I manually changed the size of each of the previously imported images, and I hope that was the end of that. Is anyone out there an ecto genius? (Sorry, Tina, I guess I’m a bad student). I think this is the least intuitive program ever! I thought Apple was supposed to be great for media stuff like that. **Ok, ending the rant here. Thanks for listening, guys.

Let’s jump to the rest of my eats, shall we? Ah, much better!

BREAKFAST

2 mini Holey Donuts cinnamon buns + coffee

[200 calories]

SECOND PART OF BREAKFAST / MID-MORNING SNACK

A super juicy pear with plain oikos – no other sweetener required!

[135 calories]

LUNCH

A gigantic salad: mixed greens, sweet potato, ham, pinto beans, cherry tomatoes, broccoli + 1T Annie’s balsamic vinaigrette

[275 calories]

The salad had so many flavors and it was SUPER filling. The sweet potato chunks were definitely the best. I may have to recreate this exact salad asap.

MID-AFTERNOON TREATS

Things I was able to avoid at the office:

I am EXTRA careful today with my teeth.

Things I sank my teeth into:

[150 calories? They were small and had some nougat in them]

This was followed by a healthier treat…

[180 calories]

Which contributed to this…

[135 calories]

… being my DINNER! I planned on attending a 7:30pm sweat box class and the only thing I could stomach prior to it was a small snack (which due to work, I ended up having like half hour before class – dangerous!!)

And now I’m snacking on this little love