Rain Rain go away...

Miserable. Sleepy. Cold.

Those are the three best words to describe my mood at the current moment.

It is pouring out!

I had my first day at my internship site this morning (Melrose-Wakefield Hospital), it seemed really nice! All of the dietitians were very friendly, and I got to go on rounds and read medical charts-- and I actually understood 90% of everything that was going on! I was very impressed by myself, though I need to review my medical abbreviations. And of course its only day 1, not too intense so I can't go getting cocky yet! But so far, I am very happy with my placement. So the day started off good... other than the rain.

I then had to drive to Framingham for class. Driving down the highway in that downpour was scary :( Then, it took me a good 20 minutes of puttering around to find a parking spot. I eventually gave up and made my own spot >____<

After class I hurried back to my illegally-parked car (Thankfully, no ticket!)

Upon coming home I informed Ghrey how lucky he was to be an indoor bird today!
I then immediately put on my sweats and monkey slipper socks!



Sookie also appeared to be grateful for her indoor status, as she curled up in her hanging shelves.



I had originally intended on going to the gym right after class, but it was so ghastly out, that plan went out the window.

Speaking of window... This is the view from my window!


I also had a nice hot cup of tea, and made a bowl of oatmeal.

My oats were really just an excuse to satisfy a sweet craving. They included:
~1/2 cup dry oats
1 medium banana
1 tb Almond Butter (Which I know I shouldn't! But I haven't had a reaction to almonds yet and its sooo good.)
1 tsp pancake syrup
2 tb raisins
1 tb butterscotch chips
1 tb fruit preserve
lil bit of vanilla extract
and A-LOTTA hot water!

It was soo delicious-- but as usual just looked like a murky mess due to my insistence on having drowning oats.

After warming up a bit with the tea and oats I did get my butt to the gym. Of course, just my luck, half way down my street my umbrella completely fell apart. But after that- things looked up and I had a good work out, including squirrel elliptical-ing for30 minutes, and a nice, painful (in a good way) whole body circuit.

I am very happy I forced myself to the gym. I really need to kick myself back in shape.

A combination of waking up early, all that driving, the rain and some physical exhaustion made me very very sleepy and I hit the hay by 10 :) noo complaints there! (Except maybe from Ghrey who was not too happy about having to go back into his cage so early. )

Introducing Ghreylin!

Introducing the newest addition to the family: Ghreylin.

I love birds... I had my first bird, a cockatiel named Dermon, in the 5th grade. She was handtrained, and very friendly. Unfortunately, her time with us was short. After Dermon, I got 3 parakeets... they were nice but they never became very friendly and wouldn't let me hold them. The last of the 3, passed away and I've been expereincing bird fever.

It was exaserbated by my best friend Ariane, getting a new cockateil, Ester, who I got to share a very 24 hour car ride with from Florida back to Mass, so we definitely bonded.

Next semester I am taking two online classes, which I am not excited about, but I figured it would be a good time to get a bird, since I'll have time to be home and bond with it.

I was looking at breeders to get a baby bird, since then they are the easiest to train and get them to be friendly and what not. While looking at breeders, however, I kept seeing postings for adopting birds. This past Tuesday, I went to the Animal Rescue League of Boston to check out the little guys there... which is where I met "Whistle". He is about a one year old cockatiel who was left in an abandoned apartment. When they found him, he was just kind of flapping around the apartment, with an injured wing (presumably from the random flapping around) and mlnourished. He was doing significantly better in the shelter but was looking for what they call a "forever home" and so, I took him home!

Since as I mentioned he had been abandoned, "Whistle" was the name the shelter gave him for his stay, so I decided to rename him, Ghreylin, based off of Ghrelin, the hormone in the stomach that makes you hungry, basically because I always thought it would be a pretty name and I am a nutrition dork.

He wasn't hand trained, but he's warming up. He bites, HARD, if you get your hand too close, yet he'll come and chill inches away from me on the bed, and will eat millet out of my hand, so I am hoping this is the start to a beautiful relationship.

The only dilemma, of course, is that Sookie wants to eat him. I keep trying to teach her, Ghreylin is family, not food.

Naturally Sweet

(I admit I wrote this Tuesday, which is why some things, such as the weather, do not make sense haha)

My car still won't start (I need a new battery), and I had to be at St. Elizabeth's for 6 am this morning. J. was nice enough to give me a ride at 5:30 a.m. so that I didn't have to bike there, which was VERY MUCH appreciated especially after noting the thick layer of frost that was present this morning.

Since I was driven to work, afterwards I had to take good ole Boston Public Transportation home, I JUST missed the bus I was trying to get, so I wound up walking a couple of miles (which was good, and maybe I can partially justify my constantly skipping the gym lately?), then I hopped on a bus that took me to Central Square.

Being in the area, and being in need of flour after my cookie making Monday, I stopped into the Harvest Co op. I picked up some whole wheat pastry flour, raisins, and sesame sticks (coming to a salad soon??)



While at the Co op I also recalled a recent conversation with Annabelle, and she told me you can get stevia from the bulk section at the coop, which makes it ideal for giving it a try, since I was hesitant to purchase a whole package of it for like $8 and discover I disliked it.

Stevia is the "new" big sweetener. Elizabeth is constantly talking about it, and at work I have been analyzing more and more food records with people using stevia. There are even stevia sweetened sodas now (I love how junk food products think if they add something natural they are suddenly healthy, but that's a rant for another day...)

Stevia is a natural sweetener made from the leaves of the stevia plant. I'm not going to go too in detail about stevia, since I feel like everyone that reads my blog knows significantly more about it than I do.

At any rate, I decided to give it a try. I purchased 0.06# of the herb, for just over a dollar, - not too harsh of an investment.


When I got home, I decided to have some in a cup of tea. I chose a basic black tea so that I could really get a sense for what stevia tastes like.


It looked a bit more frothy than usual, and there was a definite green tinge in the foam, but as I always say, I've never met anything green that I didn't like (yet)!

I think the excess foam/ powderiness is partially due to the fact that I've recently switched over to using powdered soymilk in coffee and tea etc (basically because it's a lot lighter to carry home than whole soymilk haha).

Sooks was also very interested in this new sweetener and hesitantly inspected the situation.


Stevia wasn't as sweet as I was expecting, but I used it very sparingly since I was a bit nervous from I've heard all these stats that it is like 200x sweeter than sugar, and a serving size I read on one package was 1/40th teaspoon.

It tasted pretty good, and made my tea an adequate sweetness. There was a lot of residue left over from the stevia, and it left me with a bit of a powdery taste in my mouth.


I know this green kind is the more "raw" less refined version, so perhaps the more refined ones have less excess particals to cause this build up and powdery taste.

I'll have to give this sweetener a try in other settings, and perhaps not in the presence of powdered soymilk and see how it fares.

As for now, Sookie and I Signing out!

If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life.....

Being obsessed with food, I have often pondered the question, if I had to eat one food for the rest of my life, what would it be?

My answer: Salad. Ok, I know, it's kind of cheating since salad by definition is a combination of many foods, but I figure in order to get a nutritionally sound diet in you need something that will give you a nice combination of foods. Afterall, if someone said they would eat cheeseburgers for the rest of their life, they are still getting bread, meat, cheese, and possibly condiments and some veggies so I think salad should count.


I just love the diversity of them. You can basically throw anything together and call it salad. What I do not like (much) is those "side salads" you get at restaurants that generally include: iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber and onion. Iceberg lettuce is just so un-fulfilling, I hate raw onion, and tomato and cucumber are just kind of meh in my opinion.

Not to toot my own horn, but I make pretty awesome salads. I think its partially due to the fact that I mix all of my foods together in general, so basically salad making is what I do with everything else, it is just more socially acceptable.

Tonight's salad began with a bed of baby spinach

and Trader Joe's broccoli slaw.


I then added in my left overs from yesterday, including the yuca, peppers, broccoli and tofu. I also had a little bit of random mashed sweet potato.


I'm not usually a big olive person, but today at the grocery store these deli style olives were tempting me, so I decided to splurge on them. The verdict: there is a reason I'm not much of an olive person, but, they're not terrible. And they were one more thing to add to the salad!


I also usually do not bother with salad dressing since I add so many wet ingredients, and then I usually just add some vinegar if it needs something else, but another impulse buy occurred today, so I threw it on too:
I also added in: kidney beans, raisins, pumpkin seeds, a bit of rice vinegar, and salsa. Mix it all together and finished product:

Sookie likes salad too!



So, What would your one food be??

Semester 1 Internship Down!

This past Tuesday was the last day of my internship for this semester. I had been interning at Caritas Carney in Dorchester, working in outpatient counseling.

Overall, it was a great experience. I had previously done most of the work I done at my internship through school or other jobs, but practice makes perfect. Also, my preceptor was AMAZING. She is just one of the nicest women, and was constantly full of great advise. Since I was about the same age as her kids she seemed to form kind of a maternal bond and kept giving me words of encouragement and advice for the future.

Since I was leaving, I wrote her a Thank You card and decided to make some Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies!


I basically used this recipe from allrecipe.com (check out the link):

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• y f1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions

1. Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
2. Add vanilla, chocolate chips and nuts.
3. Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.

I did not add the walnuts, and used less chocolate chips. I also used a about 1/2 white unbleached flour, and half whole wheat pastry flour.

I usually never measure ingredients, and I generally barely follow recipes. but since these were a present, I followed more carefully to ensure they came out good.


I packed up about 20 cookies for my preceptor and kept a few for Dan and myself (have to taste test them!)

Despite decreasing the chocolate chips - they were still a little too chocolatey. I generally love chocolate, but these were just a bit too squishy.

Also, they were a little bland for a pumpkin pastry product. If I were to make them again I would add more cinnamon and some pumpkin pie spice. They were very soft and tasty. THey also weren't very pumpkiny tasting despite having a whole can of pumpkin (they were very orange, but I think the excess chocolate drowned out the pumpkin) so these would be a good option if you were just trying to sneak in a vegetable but were not persay that interested in a pumpkiny taste. I personally love pumpkin, so in my opinion I would want to taste it a little more.

Sookie as usual was being very helpful in the process. She had a fun time trying to play with one cookie as a hockey puck, so I tried to catch her in action. The first time she got her head in the way :

And then she decided to look up just as the flash was going off.

I need to work on my photography skills, and she clearly needs to work on her modeling.