Lose 2 Inches in 2 Weeks.

Holiday season;
A time to stuff your faces
And fight with family.  

Don't mind if I do!!

It’s been a great few months blogging at diyhealthydishes. Having this blog was a great opportunity to consistently share my health-related insights and food-related activities; which, up until four months ago, like, NEVER happened.

I hope to continue to blog my healthy-eating journey. This blog helped me stay incheck (most of the time!) because every time I ate something that would contradict what this blog was all about, I instantly felt guilty and signed on to blog about it (re: snack attack  while studying). So, thanks for that!

I’ve discovered I don’t like eating healthy on vacation or on holidays. Not in the general sense of the words, but I don’t feel people should diet when on vacations and during the holiday season. So this holiday season, I’m simply not going to diet or refrain from taking a bite or two (okay, three) of my aunt’s delicious peach cobbler. Holidays and vacations don’t come around or happen enough for me to give a crap. So I won’t. And you shouldn’t either!

Happy Stuffing Your Faces!

How long had I run for?

How far had I run?

How many calories had I burned?

At the mention of this problem to a friend, an iPhone app called RunKeeper (http://runkeeper.com/) was recommended to me. Not only would this app keep track of my time, distance run (via gps on my phone) and estimated calories burned, but it would keep a log all of my runs and show me trends such as my average page and distance. In addition to this, I am able to post my workouts to my social networks such as Facebook, which is a great way to keep myself motivated. Lastly, it works great for other exercises besides running. Below is a log of a post-Thanksgiving dinner walk I took to burn off some turkey!

Until this day, I have maintained that that was the tastiest falafel sandwich that I have ever had. Not in the United States, but in the world (and I’ve had falafel in Egypt, home of the falafel!).

Now that I found myself in New York again, my husband and I decided to try to locate this restaurant. Unfortunately neither of us could remember the name of it. All we could remember was that it was near 86th and Amsterdam. We drove out to that area and scoured the street on both sides but no sign of the restaurant. Feeling a bit let down we decided to search for “falafel” restaurants in the area. One came up a few blocks down on 79th and Amsterdam called Sido. We drove to the address and did not find the Sido restaurant where it should have been. Instead we found a pizzeria. However, we both had a strong feeling that we were at the right place so while my husband waited in the car I decided to run into the pizzeria to ask if there used to be a falafel place there. The guy at the counter was no help (Frankly, I’m not even convinced he understood English) but this sure felt like the right place.

When I got back to the car to tell my husband that I didn’t get any info he told me that there was another place by the same name, Sido, only a few blocks away on 73rd and Columbus. We decided that we needed to eat anyway so we might as well head over there. Once we got inside, I recognized the pattern on the tabletops (crazy, I know) and I confirmed it with a picture I dug up on Facebook from the last time we were there. We had found the restaurant!

After talking with the gentleman at the counter we learned that there had been 2 locations but they ended up moving out of the Amsterdam location and that this store was owned by the same person. That was good enough for me! I ordered 1 falafel sandwich. Sido still makes the best falafel I have ever had!

Image by igorschwarzmann via Flickr

This week I am in the Tristate area to spend Thanksgiving with some family friends in New Jersey. Often times we found ourselves wandering out to Manhattan to walk around and take in the city. What is a visit to the Big Apple without food? Naturally we wandered around a lot and ate a lot (diets get paused on vacation, right?). Eventually my friend told me we had to try this really good pizza place in Greenwich Village called Artichoke Pizza. Actually, “really good” is an understatement. I believe his exact words were “best pizza I have ever had”. Skeptical, I asked, “Artichoke Pizza is just the name right? They don’t *actually* have Artichoke on their pizza do they?” It turned out it wasn’t just the name and they DID have Artichoke on their pizza! In fact that pizza was very strongly recommended by everyone in the group I was in who had been there before. My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give it a shot…

Artichoke and Alfredo sauce on a pizza. Surprisingly, it was pretty tasty. While I wouldn’t call it the best pizza I’ve ever had (much to my friends’ disappointment), I was sufficiently impressed. So much so that when we found ourselves nearby a few nights later we decided to swing by for a slice!

Image via Wikipedia

Over the weekend I went and visited a friend at her new house. It was a beautiful, Victorian style house with a large backyard. One of my friend’s favorite things about her new house was all of the fruit trees in the backyard. Among them was a pomegranate tree. She invited me to pick some pomegranates off of the tree as they were growing faster than her and her husband could pick them and they didn’t want them to go to waste falling and rotting on the grass. I was initially hesitant (Truth be told, I hadn’t had pomegranates too often before and I didn’t want to get stuck with a bag of fruit that I wouldn’t eat). She picked one off of the tree, cracked it open and offered me a bite. WOW was it tasty! Fueled by my newly discovered pomegranate addiction, I agreed to take a bag home with me.

Once I got home I found myself faced with a bit of a conundrum. Eating a pomegranate off of the branch was no problem outdoors but let me assure you it was quite a messy experience. There is no way that I could eat it in the same fashion indoors…

Ok, no worries, I thought. I will just get the seeds out into a bowl and then eat them with a spoon. This proved much trickier than expected as the seeds were very difficult to take out. Furthermore, they were rather delicate and putting too much pressure on a seed caused it to pop, sending pomegranate juice all over the kitchen. I seriously lost count of how many times I had to wipe down the counters. My shirt also was hit many times, but I decided I would worry about it later.

Image via Wikipedia

Positive that there was an easier way to do this, I decided to look online. It turns out that the preferred method of taking the seeds out is to first soak the pomegranates in water for 5-10 minutes. This will loosen the seeds from their casing and allow them to come out easier. Hmm ok. I decided to give it a shot and it worked beautifully! The seeds came out of the casing almost effortlessly!

Once I worked my way through a few pomegranates and had a few seeds to work with it was time to clean up, sit back and enjoy. Now I know why pomegranate seeds are so expensive in the stores while pomegranates are relatively cheap!

Oh, also, pomegranate stains clothes (and counter tops). RIP white t-shirt and goodbye security deposit!!

Image via Wikipedia

I am a big fan of The Cheesecake Factory. I have yet to try anything that I don’t like on their menu. My husband and I make it a point to go there once every few weeks even if only for dessert. Upon finding out that they started a low calorie program called Skinnylicious I was very excited. Especially since this coincided with a  new calorie counting diet I was trying.

The premise of the Skinnylicous menu is simple – Great tasting food. Modest sized portions. Less calories.

Not only were we excited about the option of being able to select anything from the new menu and not worry about calories, but let’s be honest – the menu at The Cheesecake Factory is more like a book. As much as I love the restaurant, it was a relief to have a much more narrowed down selection to choose from. The faster we chose, the sooner we ate!

As an appetizer we decided to have the edamame and for our main course we decided to split the chicken soft tacos. Both dishes were pretty tasty and we are looking forward to choosing off of that menu again!

If you live in the Bay Area (more specifically, San Francisco) you may have heard of a little sandwich shop that took the area by storm about a year and a half ago called Ike’s Place. Rumor has it that their sandwiches are so tasty that people wait in excess of 1 hour in line just to try them! Now, please understand, I have never been one to buy into the hype. Nine times out of 10, when somebody gives me a recommendation telling me how “amazing” a place is, I end up being disappointed. The hype ends up being too much for the restaurant to handle. Surely this could not be different.

However,

After noticing a 4.5 star review, out of a whopping 3,922 reviews, on Yelp I knew that this many people could not be wrong. I looked up the nearest location to me, which happened to be on campus at Stanford University, and decided to give it a shot.

Finding the correct location on the Stanford campus proved to be a bit tricky and even trickier was the parking situation. Finally, after about 20 minutes of circling the tiny garage I was out and ready to try this “amazing” sandwich (not to mention I had worked up quite an appetite by then).

As soon as I entered the building I was greeted by a line that went to the end of the modest sized cafeteria. Surely these people could not be serious? It was 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon, well after lunch time. Didn’t these people have classes to attend? Frustrated, I stood in line. When I reached the halfway point, the person in front of me handed me a menu. I started looking through it, amazed that a sandwich shop had so many options. As if that wasn’t enough, all of the sandwiches had non-descriptive humorous names (things like Hot Mama Huda, Vegan Womanizer, Naco Girl). Between all of this, I started to feel a bit overwhelmed. I finally decided on a sandwich called “Menage a trois”. The ingredients of which were: halal chicken, real honey, honey mustard, bbq, pepper jack, swiss, cheddar.

After a surprisingly quick 5 minutes they gave me my sandwich. I took a seat at the table and took a big bite… Delicious!

Tonight we decided to make this as the main course of our dinner. Preparation was simple. Simply throw the chicken into the oven (preheated to 375) for 40-45 minutes and you’re all set. Within 20 minutes of putting the chicken in (if not less) the delicious aroma began to fill the kitchen. We couldn’t wait to try it! 

For our sides we decided to whip up some garlic mashed potatoes and our famous Greek-salad-inspired-not-so-Greek salad. We decided to remain healthy by having some mango lemonade which we also got from Fresh & Easy. What is nice about this juice is that it is 100% real juice, not from concentrate.

Once the chicken was ready we set the table and dove in. The chicken was absolutely delicious and at the price we got it, a total steal!

Following our trip to Greece we made a stop in Egypt to visit some family. Similar to Greek salads, the primary ingredients of salads in Egypt are tomatoes and cucumbers. While having dinner at my husband’s grandmothers house, we tried a salad she made that had not only tomatoes and cucumbers, but onions and yellow bell peppers as well. While I am not a huge onion fan, I found that the yellow bell peppers were delicious! 

Upon our return to the Bay Area, my husband and I started experimenting with different kinds of salads using different ingredients from the salads we tried on our trip. Here are the ingredients of our favorite salad so far (feeds 2):

- Cherry tomatoes

- 2 cucumbers

- 1 red bell pepper

- 1 yellow bell pepper

- 1 tbsp olive oil

- salt

- pepper

- lots and lots of feta cheese!!

We make this salad at least once a week. It takes no time at all and is very tasty! Bon appetite!