I’ve been MIA all week! Has it really been a week since I posted? Whoopsh.

Life has been pretty uneventful for the past week. I’m just counting down the days until I leave for Hawaii – for the record, there are five left with only one workday! Yay!

You know how knowing you have a day off makes the days before go so much slower? Well, considering this is my first vacation all year, the slow day feeling has been times a million this past week. I leave on Wednesday!

On another note, I’ve been eating out more than I should considering I’m about to go on a week and a half long vacation to Hawaii that costs a little bit more than chump change. But it’s been delicious!

Last Saturday, I ate at Qi in Times Square. It’s a Thai restaurant with good food, fast service, and reasonable prices! Total win. I got the tofu pad thai and loved it. My dad and I may be going to the one in Union Square tonight.

On Wednesday, I went to Raaz in Newport for dinner. It’s one of my favorite Indian restaurants, but I usually go for the lunch buffet which is a good deal. For dinner, I ordered the Veg Jalfrezi, a mix of veggies cooked in a tomato-based curry. We also had a basket of naan for the table. I’m still working on those leftovers!

I had two spectacular lunches at work this week. The first: romaine lettuce with corn, bell peppers, quinoa, hummus, and grilled chicken. Loved this combination!

Second: tofu with a sweet chili sauce, hummus with toasted pitas, and roasted zucchini. The tofu was especially good!

At home, I’ve been eating some good stuff too. The other night, I made a veggie burger and roasted zucchini hummus wrap for dinner. Definitely a combination I will have again! And some Rainier cherries on the side, which I recently realized I’m no longer allergic to. I can’t get enough of them now!

Lots of corn. It’s so sweet this time of year! Though I read that the prices will be going up soon due to the drought.

And yogurt bowls whenever I eat breakfast at home. I had this one this morning! Greek yogurt, blueberries, homemade granola, raisins, chia seeds, and peanut butter. I need to figure out a way that I can have this breakfast at work too.

And finally, I have been staring at this picture of my baby Cissie that my mom sent me two days ago. So precious! I miss her.

Tonight my dad and I have our advanced photography course from 6 to 8:30 in Central Park. Can’t wait!

My dog Cissie turns 5 today! I can’t even believe we’ve had her for so long. I feel like a parent – it seems like just yesterday that she was a puppy!

Happy birthday to my little bear!

Now onto the weekend recap!

On Saturday, Steph and I completed the required pool dive for our scuba diving certification! It was hard for me to figure out how to breathe at first, but a lot of fun once I got the hang of it. Even though we were just in a pool, it was cool to swim around at the bottom and be able to look up at all the people bobbing around above us. I can’t wait to go open water diving in Hawaii in two weeks!

By the time we were done, it was 4 and we were both starving since we hadn’t had a chance to eat lunch. On our way back, we went to Satay Malaysian in Hoboken and had a bite to eat.

Steph ordered the chicken pad thai. She was excited!

I had the coconut milk bubble tea and a brown chicken curry. The bubble tea was delicious and the chicken curry had quite a kick to it! It filled me right up.

Later, my sister was in the mood for a second dinner so I made her one of my egg white and hummus wraps and we shared some sweet potato fries. I love when she comes to visit because I usually don’t get the opportunity to show her that eating healthy can be quick, easy, and delicious.

The next day, we hit the mall before going to my favorite Indian place, Raaz, for lunch! It was all really delicious, as usual. I finished off with two gulab jamun.

For dinner, I threw together the following in a bowl: lemony whole wheat pasta with kale and chicken sausage. Yum!

Lastly, I’ll leave you with these two photos of the birthday girl being sleepy!

Happy Friday!

To start with a somewhat controversial topic, I read an article on Blisstree today that says McDonald’s is now paying bloggers to talk up their food. Now I know a lot of bloggers out there get perks for talking up various products, including a bunch on my blogroll. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, yet I’m kind of disgusted by this news. Personally, you couldn’t pay me to eat McDonald’s pink slime burgers, and I would never advertise something that I wouldn’t touch myself. I imagine a lot of the healthy living bloggers I follow share this mindset.

The article also mentioned that many of the bloggers Mickey D’s has been essentially bribing in an exchange for some advertising are moms. I know there are parents out there that let their kids eat fast food, but growing up, it was just not a part of our dinner rotation. To me, it’s crazy that these moms might not only be raising their own kids on an unhealthy diet of fast food, but also encouraging others to. Now I’m really curious about these mom bloggers writing about how great McDonald’s is!

Speaking of food that is fast, I managed to take a speedy lunch away from my desk around noon today! Sadly, I didn’t make it out of the building, but my office building has a small food court on the first floor and I was craving some Indian food so I hit up Tandoor on the Hudson for lunch today. They offer an Indian buffet with some serious spice!

In the takeout box was a super spicy lamb dish, some naan, a spinach dish with cottage cheese, a chicken dish, and a roasted eggplant dish. That lamb had me burning the old taste buds off! So much so that I manage to chug a whole bottle of Poland Spring in the process. Still good though!

Can’t wait for this long and slow Friday to end!

From Wikipedia:

Gulab jamun is a popular dessert in countries of the Indian Subcontinent such as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. It is made of a dough consisting mainly of milk solids, traditionally, khoya, an Indian milk product (buffalo milk) is rolled into a ball together with some flour and then deep fried, but at a low temperature of about 300°. It is then put into a sugar syrup flavored with cardamom seeds and rosewater, kewra or saffron.

What it doesn’t mention is that it is both delicious and dangerous for the waistline!

To backtrack a bit, my sister and I decided to hit up a brunch buffet at an Indian restaurant just around the corner, Raaz, after a full morning of shopping. It’s by far one of my favorite places in Jersey City! My boss and I try to go to their weekday lunch buffet whenever we’re having an especially slow day.

We absolutely inhaled the food, so the only thing I managed to get a photo of was the gulab jamun! I didn’t taste any rose water or anything else in the syrup though. It just tasted like ordinary maple syrup to me. Still good though.

I dropped my sister off at the train station in the afternoon and went to the gym for a short run and a full body circuit.

While making dinner, I spotted this article in my new issue of Women’s Health. To sum it up in one quote: “If your food and dishes have a high color contrast, you’ll serve yourself less.” Interesting…

Dinner was whole wheat rotini with turkey meatballs, spinach, and my favorite red sauce: Francesco Rinaldi’s hearty tomato and basil sauce.

So keeping in mind the color control article I just saw, I decided against using my favorite bright red bowl for my pasta and instead used my new green and white bowl. It’s part of a set that I just bought at TJ Maxx a few days ago. Love it!