Shakey’s Pizza: Medium, thin crust, with italian spicy sausage, mushrooms and jalapenos. Actually, substitute the mushrooms with green bell peppers. MMmmm. Perfect.
Of course, I didn’t eat it. I’m dieting pretty hard right now. I keep a daily food journal and have recently begun to count the number of grams of protein and total carbohydrates I consume in a day, along with my caloric intake. So, no Shakey’s Pizza for now.
One of my favorites off the Four Calendar Cafe album, released in 1993. It popped into my head tonight for some reason as I was lying on the rug in front of an old episode of The Golden Girls… My cat Squirrel, was busily clawing into my one and only couch with her little cat claws despite multiple scoldings. “Theft and Wandering Around Lost” has got to be one of the coolest song titles I’ve ever heard, and a great track that has stood the test of time. It still sounds pretty amazing. Just thought I’d post this for whoever’s reading…
They were closed. Friends of the Library, that is. I was in the area to go to Fisher, but their parking lot looked pretty jacked-up, so instead I parked near the Friends of the Library building and Mother Waldron Park, and took some photos. The art work put out by Pow Wow Hawaii is beautiful, and makes traveling around the streets of Kaka’ako feel like an awesome, free art show. So as a citizen, and a fan, I’d want to say “Mahalo!” to them.
Click to view an older post with some other nice works in Kaka’ako by Pow Wow Hawaii
I wasn’t looking for it, but it found me– the Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender. Ahh! I’ve used this baby almost daily since purchasing it. Last week, Macy’s was having a pretty good sale. I’d wanted a blender, but the smart stick called-out to me from the shelf… shining from far in the distance. When I held it, I knew… I had to have it. My main reason for wanting a blender was to make protein smoothies. Smoothies can deceive people and make them feel like they’re not really eating a meal, but don’t be fooled. Check out the nutrition info before you order that Jamba smoothie AND eat a sandwich with it.
Here’s one of the best-tasting smoothies I’ve made so far:
Chocolate, Strawberry, Peanut Butter and Avocado Protein Smoothie!
4 oz greek yogurt
1 scoop SunWarrior Chocolate protein powder
1 oz avocado
4 strawberries (mine were frozen, but fresh is better)
3.5 oz water (more or less depending on your tastes)
1 tbsp peanut butter
313 calories, 24.5g protein, 22.2 carbs
To lighten the amount of calories or carbs, remove the peanut butter (95 calories and 3g carbs), and / or the avocado (50 cals and 3g carbs).
Through experimentation, I’ve made some decent, and some pretty terrible-tasting smoothies. The one I made with spinach and chocolate was a hard one to swallow and flashbacks of Robin Williams getting spinach stuffed into his mouth in the creepy 80s live-action Popeye movie came to mind as I drank it. (This movie freaked me out as a kid! I vaguely remember wanting to see it and then being slightly terrified much of the time).
So, I’m new to the kitchen, and the smoothie game. It’s been fun so far trying to fine-tune my diet as part of my fitness regimen.
Taken 6/28/12. My cat, Squirrel. Sometimes she follows me around the apartment. Sometimes she leans in, and rests her head against my forehead. I don’t know how she got to be such a sweetie pie. I adopted her last year from the Hawaiian Humane Society, and feel real thankful to have such a nice cat. Squirrel is the “Honeybee” and inspiration for the name of this site /domain name. :)
I made these today. The consistency was a lot more like bread than a pancake, so I ended up folding them up and eating them like a sandwich. I referenced this recipe, and tweaked it: carrotsncake.com/2011/08/grateful-thoughts.html I imagine her recipe is MUCH better!
Ingredients:
1 scoop vanilla whey protein powder (Swanson Premium)
10 goji berries (Prince of Peace)
2 egg whites
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 packets PureVia (Stevia derrivative)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp psyllium husks
1 tbsp coconut flour (Swanson Certified Organic)
1 oz. water
Mixed all ingredients in a cereal bowl and fried on a griddle greased with coconut oil
Topped with Avocado (1 oz) and grape tomatoes (5, sliced)
Total including avocado and grape tomatoes:
307.5 calories
30.25g Protein
17.85g Total Carbs (not net because I was told to watch my total carb intake)
Verdict: I wish they were more moist… I was kinda winging it again. Then again, they made a decent bread, and I didn’t have to bake it. I honestly don’t think many people would enjoy this… lol!
I got a couple of offers for free photo books for Shutterfly, from Best Buy, when I purchased my cameras last year. The first one was going to expire in two days. I hurriedly put a book together this morning, and am posting this here so I can get the $10 off my next order… I did have to pay $8 for shipping, but otherwise, got the $29.99 book for free.
Click here to view this photo book larger
It was sitting in a small bag, with a Panda on the package, and the brand name: Bam Boom. A new discovery today while shopping at Don Quijote in Pearl City, HI. Bamboo infused rice becomes green. Green rice is not new, but was new to me. I wanted to try it out…
So, I made green musubi :)
“Ingredients: Premium Milled Rice, Wild-Harvested Bamboo Extract, pure mountain rain, fresh air, abundant sunshine.”
Serving size 1/4 cup dry (55 g)
Servings per container: 24
Calories: 140
Calories from fat: 5
Cholesterol 0g
Sodium 2mg
Potassium 100mg
Total carbohydrate 33 g
Sugars 3g
Protein 5g
I cooked it in my mini Hitachi rice cooker. The instructions on the bag said not to pre-wash, and to add some salt and a dash of oil to it. I chose coconut oil. I don’t know if that was a mistake… the rice tasted a little like coconut, which I like, but I think it masked the flavor of the bamboo rice. I’ll try it again and update this.
As a disclaimer, I’m not known for cooking. It’s something I don’t do too often, but am trying to do more. I finally joined a gym and started lifting weights in September 2011. Along with the weight-lifting, came protein powder. (I primarily use Swanson’s Vanilla Whey Protein Powder). I usually just drank the protein powder with water, because I actually enjoy the taste, but, I also love to snack and when I realized I could make stuff out of protein powder to snack on, that was pretty eye-opening for me.
I have to give thanks to Kirstyn at 24 Hour Fitness here in Hawaii, for being a great trainer and recognizing I had a hard time giving up snacks. She recommended I try out Anna’s =PROTEIN POW(D)ER! website, (thanks to Anna as well)! which has been a huge inspiration to experiment with food and nutrition. I’ve been gathering ingredients, and the first recipe I tried from her site, was for a basic wrap so I could stuff my salmon, crab, etc. into something less carby and more protein-y. I blogged about it in this post: Buzzing in the Kitchen with Psyllium Husks and Egg Whites.
I had one baked Okinawan Sweet Potato left, and knew I wanted to incorporate it into something. I started looking up recipes for protein pancakes online via google. I didn’t have the ingredients I was seeing in most recipes, so I decided to wing it:
Ingredients:
Remove skin and mash baked Okinawan Sweet potato with a fork in a cereal bowl. Add egg whites, protein powder, psyllium husks, and a sprinkle or two of cinnamon, and mix. Slowly add water until the batter has a good consistency for pancake batter.(OK to add more or less than 2 oz. of water).
Fry on both sides in a pan you’ve greased with oil. I greased my pan with coconut oil. I could smell and faintly taste the coconut oil which went well with okinawan sweet potato.
This recipe yielded 2 small pancakes for me.
My (very) estimated breakdown per pancake:
approx. 178 calories, 11.5 g protein.
*This is based off my googling and reading the labels of ingredients used to see how many calories are in everything I listed and then divided by two.
The verdict: It was OK… Not bad for my first attempt at a recipe. It probably needs more tweaking. I think most people would want to put syrup on it. Admittedly, I threw the avocado on there because of the color, and because it was also in my refrigerator. I think this would have been great with some coconut syrup oozing all over it, but I don’t have awesome stuff like coconut syrup in my apartment because I’d go nutz and eat pancakes everyday if I did. Maybe I can find a good coconut syrup recipe though, and then it will be OK.
New Edition, is one of those rare groups I feel like I grew up with. As a kid I remember listening to them on the radio, watching videos on MTV, and remember things like them covering “Earth Angel” for The Karate Kid Part II, and through the years as their sound changed, they were still good. When they went off and did their solo projects, I loved all of them. I bought Bobby’s cassettes, and Ralph and Johnny’s too, and of course, Bel Biv DeVoe got major play at school dances and in my walkman at the time. Sunday night Sifu and I went to check out the show. They still sounded really good! I had the biggest smile on my face when they stepped out on stage. I was excited to be there…
At first, I got scared, because there were only five mic stands and five members on the stage… Bobby Brown was missing! But they psyched-out the crowd (and later teased us about it), and Bobby came out with a hat on and the crowd went crazy. They put on an awesome show. From start to end, there was non-stop choreography, singing, and some funny riffing between mainly Bobby and Ralph, Johnny Gill, and sometimes just Bobby. It was a fun time. I laughed a lot. They announced that Bobby was getting married the very next day. He pulled his fiancee and two kids on stage at a point.
Along with a lot of New Edition hits, they performed some of everyone’s solo stuff.. Johnny’s “My My My,” and a new track off his recent album, Bobby did “Roni” and “My Perogative,” Ralph did “Sensitivity” and was lead on most of the NE tracks… The show closed with a medley of BBD’s “Do Me” into “Poison.” They were on stage for almost two hours, but it felt like it went by so quick.
Macy Gray also happened to be in the audience, and at one point they pulled her on stage, but she didn’t perform. I heard her mic might not have been working? But she was there to watch the show, and it was a damn good show. Johnny and Bobby have recent solo releases out already, and Ralph has one coming soon. They also mentioned BBD and then New Edition coming out with something new!!
Sifu “Jive” Walker, who is a diehard fan and knew every song, kept a setlist and made a spotify playlist of all the tracks in the order played (some were medley’s).
I had a great time. That was probably one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Really glad I got a chance to see them perform. Mahalo to them for coming out to Hawaii and putting on such an entertaining show!
