Tag: Stephen Lanzalotta

The day I ate whatever I wanted: Part 2 B (the day of)

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, fitness, Life in the cube, local fun, Midlife Crisis, restaurants, yoga
Chocolate Croissant from Standard Baking Co.

My friend Susan told me to have a: “Happy Birthday!!! Enjoy the whole day and do what YOU want!!”

My response: “Well, since I’m working it will be hard to DO whatever I want, but instead I’m going to EAT whatever I want!”

🙂

So here goes: Day 2B of “The day I ate whatever I wanted”…I’m starting to fear that this is a slippery slope…better reign it in after today. This is what I did on the actual day.

I decided not to go to the gym so that I could sleep an extra hour. Good decision. I decided not to do any laundry and not to stop to gas up the car. Those things could wait. My mantra for the day: “If it’s not ‘all about me’, I’m not doing it.”

Breakfast: Decided to wait until I got to Portland then sprinted over to the Standard Baking Company (no website, unbelievably) to get a chocolate croissant. Monument Square was packed with dressed up, suited up people at 8am; usually it’s a ghost town on the weekend at that hour. I heard there was some sort of a convention going on which almost made me late for work (reference: “sprinted” to the bakery!).

Note: Around noon I started rethinking the whole shorts thing;  may not have been the best idea…it barely made it out of the 50’s in Portland.

I continued to go where the whim took me. I didn’t follow any plan at all. I had two days to celebrate: the day before my birthday with my husband (which was awesome), and the birthday itself, which was kind of the icing on the (cup)cake after Friday.

For lunch, Micucci’s Pizza was a no-brainer. I was in luck too; they were just putting out the slabs of pizza when I ran up the stairs and grabbed one out from under the noses of the slower people assembling boxes to my right. When I ran down to pay I got to say “Hi” to the baker, Stephen Lanzalotta (author of  The Diet Code), who was just putting out the fresh cannoli…I resisted, since I had a piece of tiramisu from my son and a chocolate coconut cupcake from Two Fat Cats waiting for me for later on. A colleague at work, Laurie, handed me a chocolate shortbread cookie chaser after lunch, which enabled me to save the cupcake for later.

🙂

Had to miss my regular yoga class (with Kristen of Windsong Yoga)  in the morning so I was thrilled when a colleague Mary Ann said “Hey, want to do this yoga dvd with me at 2:00PM?”  I just happened to have my mat in the trunk, so that’s what we did.

To balance it all out, I ate half the Micucci’s slab for lunch then had the other half with a salad (with greens from the garden) for supper, followed by the cupcake and my favorite  (which is unfortunately seasonal) Keurig coffee that I saved from Christmas: Spicy Eggnog.

When I got home from work at 8:30PM I had a surprise waiting for me: gifts from the kids:

  1. An adapter that allows me to play my MP3 in the car from my son Anthony that I’ve been wanting forever and
  2. A handmade card with 3 dark chocolate covered cherries from my daughter Izzy.

What can I say? My kids know what I like. 🙂 My husband gave me my gift The Day Prior, but actually started it last fall. He got all of the raised beds ready for my fruit and vegetable gardens (not to mention most of the actual planting and watering thereof), and he bought many more lilac bushes for me (my favorite flower) and scattered them around the yard.  He knows what I like too. :D.

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This was the best birthday week ever.

Snow day! Top ten (fun) things to do

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, italian, Karen's Kitchen, movies, recipes, writing

I have not had a snow day for quite a while  (the Christmas Blizzard doesn’t count because I was too worried about my husband and son driving home from work in it to enjoy it). I decided to plan ahead for the next one, so I was ready to dive into distraction at a moment’s notice.

Stuff to do:

  1. a.Crack out the crock pot. The big one. Make soup. Here’s a recipe for Minestrone using whatever you have in the pantry and fridge. Whatever is left over can be frozen to bring to work to eat for lunch during the week.  b.Pull out the frozen gravy, meatballs and sausage from the freezer; place in crock pot. Add whatever odds and ends of meat you have leftover. Supper is almost ready!
  2. No crock pot? Here’s a great recipe from Stephen Lanzalotta (author of The Diet Code, and baker extraordinaire at Micucci’s on India Street in Portland) that uses stuff (once again) that you have in the pantry right now. Really. I’ll wait while you go check. It’s for Tomato and Tuna Soup for one. Not alone (or just really hungry)? Just employ a little math to double or triple the recipe. Done.
  3. Got Netflix? Load up your instant queue so now that the flakes are flying, all you’ll have to do is hit the “play” button.
  4. Bake! You can mix up a bucket of bread dough (keeps in fridge for up to two weeks) so it’s ready when you are. Not much gets those endorphins going like the smell of fresh bread baking.
  5. Read! Got a stack of books by (or under) the bed? A stack of magazines you’ve had no time to read? A Kindle? Go for it.
  6. Write! Keep a file that you toss your little scraps of napkins, post its, notebook paper on which you’ve jotted down ideas that came to you while driving, watching TV, listening to a boring lecture at school so you will always have your own prompts and projects ready.
  7. Got kids? Play Wii! (or Uno, or checkers, or whatever!)
  8. Take a nap. You know you want to.
  9. Virtually  visit with friends and relatives via FB or email. In other words…DON”T DRIVE!
  10. Be grateful the fam is all safe and sound.

🙂