Monday, February 14, 2011

Valentine’s Weekend 2011

Happy Valentine’s Day! I know a lot of people are cynical about this day but I love love so it makes me a happy girl :)

I won’t recap everything because I haven’t posted since Thursday and that is a lot of food to cover! But I will show you this delicious, albeit not pretty looking, quesadilla I made on Friday. I took some leftover chicken, broccoli, black beans and mixed it with diced tomato, onion and garlic. Put it in one of my Trader Joe’s whole grain tortillas with some cheese and slapped it into the George Foreman. I forgot to spray the grill though so it got stuck – hence the ugliness. On the side – some fresh guac. OH YEAH!

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And for dessert, a much more visually appealing dish of grapes and clementine in natural light.

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So for Valentine’s, Raf and I celebrated early by going to the Cheesecake Factory on Saturday night. We hadn’t been there in at least 2 years and I just really wanted to go! Lucky for me, they now have “small plates” selections so I was able to save room for dessert by picking lighter choices for my meal :) But really there is always room for dessert! Sorry for the horrible quality of photos!

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Yes I dug into the bread right away. We had a 45 minute wait (they don’t take reservations!) so I was starving by the time we got in. The 45 minutes was fun though since we perused Barnes and Noble during that time.

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My “small plates” of Beets and Arugula salad and a Margherita Pizzette. I finished almost everything but a couple bites of the pizzette.

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Chocolate Coconut Cream Cheesecake. It has a chocolate macaroon crust with coconut cheesecake and coconut custard on top. It was super rich so I ate half at the restaurant and the other half later that night ;)

We also went to see “Just Go With It” last night which was much better than I thought! It got bad reviews (which I don’t usually pay attention to) but I laughed a lot and was pleased with the ending.  Plus I just love that girl, Bailee Madison. She did an amazing job in the movie “Brothers” and is just a great beginning actress!

Now it’s back to school stuff. We are out of milk (!) so I resorted to throwing together a different kind of breakfast before heading to campus.

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Banana w/ almond butter, Chobani Champion Verry Berry, and a BlueBran Vitatop!

I attended a lecture at Harvard School of Public Health this afternoon discussing the reversal of atherosclerosis with dietary intervention. Very interesting talk! Some of their research alluded to the benefits regardless of weight which I thought was great.  They discovered some beneficial effects on certain biomarkers, like HDL and adiponectin, that continued to improve even if the person regained some of the weight that was previously loss. Hopefully more research will be done to improve upon these results.

Then it was off to Boston Latin School to hand out healthy afternoon snacks. We made trail mix to hand out to kids on their way out :)

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Lots of dried fruit and grains. We even got fresh blueberries! Most of what we handed out were bags we put together ourselves but we set up the table for kids to make their own if they wanted. It was a whirlwind but lots of fun as usual.

Time to hit the books now! Hope you are enjoying your day <3

7 comments:

  1. Omg that cheesecake looks delicious!

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  2. love your smiley breakfast :) happy valentine's day!

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  3. @ Lindsay - hahaha I didn't even realize I made a smiley face with it! Happy Valentine's Day :)

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  4. Chocolate coconut cream cheesecake looks AMAZING! I love cheesecake factories desserts!

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  5. I agree...the cheesecake looks amazing! I could eat a whole cup of cheesecake factory whipped cream as well, that stuff is too good! Happy valentines day!!

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  6. I looooove margherita pizza! Good choice :)

    Also, posting pictures of things like chocolate coconut cream cheesecake should not be allowed. It's just..mean. ha.

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  7. I love Cheesecake Factor but avoid it because the portions are insane and the food is so delicious I always end up eating too much! Glad to hear they have the small plates!! There's gotta be room left for CHEESECAKE after all!

    Happy (belated!) V-day! I love Valentine's Day, too :)

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