half-productive black day~

Yesterday I only worked half day (6 long intense hours thought) because I went to IMF library to search some old staff papers which turned out to be completely useless!!! grrrrrrr........ All the commute (car, metro, walking) for nothing!! Very frustrating! :( But it's part of life, we CAN'T be doing productive/useful 24 hs a day, right?
I woke up a 6.30 am a little tired since I went to bed at midnight the day before. I did 20 min power vinyasa #3 trying to feel better, but no, I should have known that it was not going to be a perfect day! Boo....
However, the breakfast was delicious. I had AGAIN oatbran. Plain AGAIN: 1/2 cup oat bran, 1.5 cup water, pinch of salt, 1 beaten egg. To add extra flavor and cal. I add GYG as usual and a spoon of chocolate PB.I had it with an apple and a POM tea. You can imagine how full I was after finishing all of them! But it was delicious!!!
Lunch at home was black chicken soup that I made the other night with bok choy. And the rest of Nut-Thins.Have you guys ever seen this kind of chicken before? it's black in its skin, low in fat but high in nutrients. We, Chinese women eat it pretty often because it's very high in iron.
Dessert at office: two black chocolates!the chicken, the chocolate, perfect for the BLACK day.
PM snack: I was craving carbs and fat. So, I had Tj's pop seeds bread with 1 packet of AB. And a tea of course.2 hours later: I was hungry again!!!! More AB. I would have had other snack, but I had nothing but AB in office.Back home exhausted at 7.30pm. I felt needed to reward myself a good meal...but at the same time I was very tired. After struggling for a while, I chose to cook, otherwise my day would be really BLAH.
Sauteed chinese leeks with tofuSauteed soy bean sproutsA soup made with 1/2 cup of diced tomato, 1 cup frozen okra and 1 beaten egg.All together with black aduki porridge as usual.Really yummy dinner~~~ I finish almost everything (not the soup).
Dessert came half hour later: yogurt + frozen blueberries + wheat berries.I ended my day with some leisure readings at 9.30pm.

Question: How long do you spend on commuting? how does it affect you emotionally? Fortunately I live near campus and walk to my office everyday for <15min.>

MUM MUM~~~ ^.~

What kind of title is this? well..... apparently this is the baby version of YUM YUM!!! Why I say that??? Because I found two AMAZING baby foods yesterday in Whole Food.
it's so light and crispy, I usually find every kind of cookie too sweet, but this one is just perfect!!! I love love it! I munched 6 packages on my way home and it was so hard not to finish the entire package which is only 1.76Oz.
The other new find isI only had few bites so far and it has similar flavor than Mum-Mum which I love. Can't wait to try them out in yogurt/milk.
ohhhhhhhh....... I'm so glad to find these goodies for a big baby like me. ^_^
okay. recap of yesterday. I woke up at 4am again but felt as if I slept 8 hours, so it was a productive sleep. With some extra hours I could spend time reading your wonderful blogs, visiting new blogs and I made my next week meal plan. ^_^ so glad that I did that, because I'm finding my eats disorganized and I need to make sure that I get enough nutrients. As I went through books/magazines/blogs for meal ideas, I realized that I've been collecting coupons and never actually used them. So, I organized them too! And look, I have some good dealsbreakfast: another yummy bowl of oatmeal

• 1/3 cup 5 grains OW
• 1/3 cup almond breeze vanilla
• 1/3 cup pumpkin
• 1 beaten egg
• GYG

I used 1/3 cup instead of 1/2 because when I woke up at 4am I had a bowl of fiber one, so I wasn't so hungry at 7am. No yoga yesterday morning because I planned to go to the 90min candle light vinyasa yoga at my yoga studio. Went to work early (8am), prepared for the meeting, taught a discussion, had a yogurt with AB and head back home for a quick lunch: sour spicy soup with tofu, egg, broccoli slaw and broccoli.together with rice and a PB chocolate for dessert (from my secret cupid Becca)nothing fancy but appropriate!
I had a great meeting with my co-author. We're discussing already what journal to send the paper and what title to pick. I'm soooooooo happy that all my work is getting its reward finally! But before that, we need to do a couple of more things (which mean, I have to do it). So, no play no celebration for Valentine's, which is okay for me since my bf is not here and I'd prefer to do something productive instead of sitting there and eat a Valentine's cookie alone.
oh.... I munched this (aduki bean mochi)and this, on the roadDinner was quick (I felt totally relaxed after my yoga class and didn't want to spend time cooking): black rice porridge with a warm green salad (chinese spinach + soy sauce + salt + sugar + sesame oil), dried spicy pumpkin and dry bamboo.As dinner was light, I felt needing a big dessert: fage + pumpkin + blueberries.I called it a GREAT day!
Happy Valentine's for everyone! I love you all! ^_^

sunday flew by too fast! ^.~

hello my lovely blog friends, how was your Sunday? did you have good weather on where you live? Here in MD we had 66F! I enjoyed so much my day!!!!! The only problem with having only 1 day off per week is that I couldn't do all errands that I had planned to do.
I'm being late to do my yoga session now: so, let me do a quick recap of yesterday!
Breakfast: scrumptious combo of black rice porridge (details on how to make it at the end) + strawberries yogurt + fresh blueberries + GYG!
amazing!!!!~~~~ so happy to find a variation to the black rice porridge!
I went to a 90min advance vinyasa flow on my yoga studio with my fav instructor! She kicked my ass.... oh man! I checked the clock at 60 m and couldn't believe that I had 30 min more to go!!! But I did enjoy!
Lunch at 1.30pm (you can imagine how hungry I was without AM snack and kicking ass workout), so 4 oz. fresh noodles with sauteed greens, dry shrimps and tofu.
I was blunt after eating it. but still wanted something sweet:
I was planning to do my week meal plan but instead I went to buy a book shelf for all the book that I bought from China. So, 3 girls assembling it....
final results
fabulous!!! so happy to have two lovely friends!!! I'm enjoying more and more girly times!!! :D
dinner: greens salad + rice + duck feet soup with yam (another comfort meal borrowed from my Mom)it might look scary, but it tastes great and it has tons of collagen which means wonders to our skin!Dessert: as you can imagining it will involve chocolate PB... I had it on 1/3 piece of Tj's 5 grains bread.And then, I had two ice cream puffs in my friend's home (no pic! but looks something like this)
I went to a Chinese new year celebration with my friends... but the shows were poor and I was getting bored. But something great happened: I won't the lottery AGAIN!!! Yes, I can't believe it. Everyone gets a number when we enter the salon and choose 3 winners. Last year I was lucky to get the 2nd price (a humidifier) and this year I won again (50 bucks of gift card in Target). And there were more than 250 people!! How lucky I was! And all the people who came last year recognized me and were exclaiming how lucky I was!!! yeah~~~~ that made my day even better!
What a fabulous day although tooooooooooo short! I'll postpone my meal plan for the week until Monday then!
As many of you asked me about the Black rice porridge, here's the easy way to make it:

• soak the black rice in water for 24 hours
• cook it in low for about 2 hours until you can taste the rice is milk and sticky.
• let is cool and blended it with enough water to get the consistency that you like
• enjoy!

Question: Do you plan for your week meal? where do you find the recipes?

Is it sunday night already??????? grrrrrr.......... Help needed!

I had to ask twice to Savannah whether is it Sunday night already? I can't believe my weekend is over. I think because I worked yesterday, I only had one day for relax, which is way to short. Okay, one more week to go until I fly back home.

I woke up at 6am (so glad that my almost 8 hours of sleep is back). Prepared a very blue bowl of breakfast

• 1/2 cup multigrain
• 1/2 cup almond breeze chocolate
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 cup frozen blueberries
• 1/4 Tj's high fiber
• 1/4 cup oatmeal beverage

I missed my colorful oatmeal.
I was supposed to have my favorite yoga session this morning. Totally excited after one week of no yoga, I drove down to the yoga studio to find out that the class was canceled. I can't believe it!!!! They just canceled this morning. I was about to argue with the receptionist, but it took me just one second to decide not to, because I was sure that Kim canceled it because of something urgent. And as we're human, we all have urgent issue to take care of. So, I just walked out and called Savannah that I was heading home and we'll have a home session of yoga. ^_^
Oh..I had a big spoon of PB before I left home.Lunch was 2 dishes and one soup.
Bambo-chicken stir fry
Stir fry spinach and mushroomsSeaweed egg soupAnd rice
A nutritious, balanced and delicious meal.
We went to shopping mall but didn't got anything interesting, went to Tj's for Fage supply (no food was needed since both of us are going home in less than a week, so just clean the fridge and pantry).
Back home, starving, I made a sammie mess with apple, Tj's High Fiber and oatmeal beverage with tons of cinnamon. mmmmmmm........ so good!!!
Savannah wanted to have pizza for dinner, so pizza we had. And some lentil soup.topping: broccoli and eggplant, sauce and cheese.
Dessert: FAGE + Cinnamon. The most amazing and simplest dessert ever!
I still can't believe that it's Sunday night!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ~~~~~~ grrrrrrrrrrrrrr............

After thinking and discussing with my mom about my birthday, which is Dec 25th, yes it's on the Christmas day (fortunately people in China don't celebrate it), I decided to hold a party at home with family. And I will cook a non-Chinese meal for them, since there is no good western food in Shanghai, I thought it will nice they could try something different. I decided to do that because I am sure that's the way to make me happy on my birthday, spend great time with all people I love, give them good food and cook a lot of delicious dishes!!!!

So, I need your help. I need appetizer/dip/dessert/meal ideas for a buffet for around 15 persons. Preferably if I can prepare one day before the party.
You can send me either by email or leave as comment! I'd really appreciate any suggestion.