OakMonster's Den

10 weeks. 1 accidental egg. I think I’m doing pretty good!

Breakfast:

• A tall decaf Americano with half-and-half, Sugar in the Raw, and Caramel Sauce…not syrup.  And YES, I like my coffee like my men: tall, decaf Americano, white and sweet topped with caramel sauce.   I was too stressed out to eat anything else that morning.  However, lunch came at me fast.

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Lunch:

• The Vegan Spicy Soyrizo & Black Bean Wrap from Mendocino Farms in my building.  The place gets PACKED very quickly so by 11:45 I was already ordering.

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Dinner:

• Homemade French Onion soup from scratch topped with a slice of toasted French bread and heaps of Gruyere.
• Ghirardelli 62% dark chocolate and a Cutie orange.

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Satisfaction level: Awesome.

Thoughts: I did VERY well resisting a fondue cheese sandwich at Mendocino Farms for lunch, knowing that I was doing French Onion soup for dinner.  Soyrizo was a total surprise. It WAS really, really good!  This place managed to change my mind on 2 vegetarian/vegan items already.  First is the Veganaise.  I’m hooked on that sucker.  I was never one to like traditional American mayonnaise to begin with, having grown up on mostly the sweeter Japanese one.  Veganaise, however, is still very good without that greasy, oily after taste. And now the Soyrizo.  Don’t get me wrong. As one heck of a pork advocate, I’m never giving up the real chorizo.  But dang, that was super good.

Mendocino Farms is great for Meatless Tuesdays because they have a lot of vegetarian and vegan option that are super tasty.  If anyone is thinking of crossing over, I’d try their foods first.  All of their veggie sandwiches I had there never left me hungry.  If I could eat/cook like that everyday, I would consider becoming a lacto-ovo-bacon-vegetarian.  Heh.

I fell off the wagon.

Just a little bit.

Having been up very late on Monday night, I rolled out of bed on Tuesday and made myself an egg on toast.

*sigh*

Breakfast:

• A slice of buttered 7-grain toast topped with one sunny side up egg cooked in a pat of butter along with slices of vine ripen tomato.
• A mug of English breakfast tea

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Lunch:

• A small Caesar salad with no croutons. Hey, I’m already off the wagon on the egg today, I might as well!
• A few spoonful of butternut squash bisque which was absolutely disgusting
• A big chocolate chips cookies

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Dinner:

• A square of veggie Perry’s pizza…with generous sprinkle of Bacon Salt. – YES it *is* vegetarian!

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Satisfaction level: Very satisfied but incredibly guilty.  Grrrr…

Thoughts: I was doing SO WELL!  Then again, lack of sleep contributed greatly to the lapse there.  Otherwise, the rest of the day I did pretty well.

Holy CRAP! It’s all ready been a week?!

My god. Am I a bad blogger!

But I promise to have something much more entertaining than my weekly food journal in a day or two.

For now, on to Meatless Tuesday.

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Breakfast:

• Open faced “grilled cheese” sandwich: one slice of 7-grain bread, buttered, topped with slices of one whole vine-ripen tomato, sprinkled with Nature’s Seasons seasoning blend, and a few slices of snack-sized cheddar cheese, toasted in the toaster oven until the cheese is melted.
• A mug of full-leaf oolong tea.
• Mid-morning snack: 2 whole grain crackers (they’re like 2.5 inch across!) from Fresh & Easy with generous schmear of whipped cream cheese, my mid-morning snack of choice these days.

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Lunch:

• A bowl of vegetable chili based on the recipe in Food & Wine magazine (which I will blog about later).  In that: heirloom carrots, daikon, red bell peppers, kidney beans, hominy, onion, garlic, chili powder, cumin, and generous shakes of Chipotle Tobasco.  And a piece of 7-grain toast.
• Late dessert/afternoon snack: a Godiva dark chocolate truffle.

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Dinner:

• Because it was a buy one get another one for $2, I got 2 rustica pizzas from Z Pizza: Moroccan (egg plants, pine nuts, feta, basil pesto, caramelized onion) and Mediterranean (artichoke hearts, feta, roasted red peppers, greek olives, pili pili oil).  I ate a few squares out of each.
• A glass of organic peach oolong iced tea.

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Satisfaction level: Meat? What meat?  Nope.  Didn’t miss it one bit.  And I was full all day.

Thoughts: It’s getting easier and easier each week, I have to tell you.  I even didn’t miss the meat too much today.  But I did have an egg for breakfast.  I did crave some proteins for dinner but I didn’t go for my usual burger or ribs, but salmon.  A little weird, I know.  I’m sure I’m going to want me a juicy burger in a few days.

I’m also more conscious now of what I’d eat on a Meatless Tuesday and Brandon has been helpful in keeping me in check on that too.  He’d try to help me think of places I could get something meatless to eat at.

Now, I’ve been thinking about it today that since I’m doing this a Buddhist reason, perhaps I should also not do alcohol on Tuesdays as well to make the whole religious day out of it.  After all, abstaining from alcohol is one of the Five Precepts a good Buddhist should follow.

By not eating meat/eggs on Tuesday, and having not kill anybody, abstaining from taking life is checked off the list.  Abstaining from alcohol? One day a week, I can do that.  Abstaining from sexual misconduct is everyday…although I wonder if lusting after  Taylor Lautner and/or Sam Worthington or dreaming about Jason Mraz counts.  Abstaining from taking what is not given, no klepto here so check.  And finally, abstaining from false speech aka lying. Well, that might be a little hard to swing in a corporate world, but we’ll do our best, won’t we?

Alright. It’s decided. Tuesdays will be meatless AND dry.

Oh boy.

Breakfast

• Half of a giant blueberry peach scone I got from the farmer’s market over the weekend. I ate the other half on Monday.
• A mug of lemongrass-pandan tea.

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Lunch

• An avocado tomato sandwich: 2 slices of 7 grain bread lightly toasted, mayo (yeah..I didn’t think about the egg content…), seasoning salt, a few shakes of Tapatio, strawberry tomatoes, and half of an avocado.
• The other half of the avocado with seasoning salt.
• Split a giant Asian pear with coworkers.

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Snack

• Beard Papa’s Cream Puff, courtesy of best boss/friend in the world.

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Late Dinner

• Room service at the Marriott Downtown LA: Chicken rigatoni, hold the chicken, with extra mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, and ricotta insalata.
• A chocolate chip cookie.

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Satisfaction level: Very high.  I have to say I didn’t really miss meat at all.  But then again, I was preparing for a work event we were putting on Wednesday morning, so a) I wasn’t really that hungry, and b) I didn’t really care if I was hungry–I didn’t have time to.

Thoughts: I was really surprised that I didn’t miss the meat.  I mean, not even when I got to the hotel absolutely starved.  I didn’t even think to break the deal and get a burger.  As a matter of fact, I was looking forward to having some vegetarian pasta for dinner all day.

I think this whole eating meatless is growing on me.  Being conscious of what I eat does change a lot of things.  I’m sure I annoy people to no end with my new found path.  But hey, I still succumb to factory-grown bacon and I still cook the commercially-farmed chicken because I can’t find any ethical one close by.  A little bit is better than nothing at all.

Asian pears (thank GOD they are still in season because winter fruits are sooo boring!) from farmer’s market over Trader Joe’s blueberries from Chile.  But…well…what the hell, I had a couple of the blueberries anyway.  (Nhien brought it.)

Breakfast

• Ritz crackers with cream cheese
• A mug of Ecchaenacea Defense tea with honey

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Lunch

• A few bites of brown rice and garlic tofu with vegetables from Pick Up Stix before the fire alarm went off in the building.  I came back and just ate the tofu about half an hour later.  Mother fuckers on the 33rd floor really need to get fined for all their burnt popcorn, I swear to god.
• One of my home made dark chocolate covered–are you ready?–Not Quite Nigella’s recipe of salted maple honey bacon caramel.  A failed experiment, the caramel did not set but I found another delivery vessel that works perfectly.  Hehee.

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Dinner

• Garlic mashed potatoes with cheese and green onion, mac and cheese, sauteed vegetables and a little bit of a salad.  All the sides I ordered for our barbecue family pack from Maderas Steak & Ribs.  Everyone else was having baby back ribs and chicken.
• Lots. Of. Wine. 3 kinds to be exact.  Amount consumed among 3 ladies and one taster comes down to one full bottle and half each of the other two.  It was a Fresh & Easy twitter tasting party.

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Satisfaction level: Pretty high.  Breakfast and lunch were both interrupted so I got hungry here and there.  And PISSED off.  But oddly enough, I didn’t crave meat like I did last week.  However, dinner was very, VERY satisfying.

Thoughts: This week seems effortless.  And less junky.  LOL.  And I’m very happy about that.

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MORE on the fantastic all-girls wine tasting night here which was an awesome cap to each of our Day from Hell episodes.

Breakfast & Through out the day Snacks

• Starbucks decaf soy caramel macchiatto.  I ordered a tall but they gave me a grande.
• Starbucks chocolate croissant I never got to finish.  We had birthday party today in the office so I was saving room for cake.

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Lunch

• Brown jasmine rice with 2 sticks of barbecue “beef” skewers and 4 cherry tomatoes.  The skewers look like poop, seriously like a log of poop.  It did have very meaty texture, though, and less soy tasting.  Unlike the marinaded “chicken” I had a while back.
• A mini red velvet cupcake…more like a shot of cake and frosting…from Big Man Bakes at the office birthday party I threw and a very thin slice of pineapple rum cake the Big Boss brought back from the Caribbean.

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Dinner

• Red Robin queso and chips…and a couple of fries. I swear that bowl is bottomless.  I had my fill and it didn’t look like I made a dent!  That was washed down with a strawberry lemonade.
• A side of guilt.

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LOST snacks

• A glass of Jacob’s Creek shiraz.  Very appropriate, I know.
• Coconut truffle from the box of XT Patisserie treats Nhien sent me for Christmas. Again, very appropriate.

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Satisfaction Level: Very satisfied albeit the GUILT!!  Seriously.   I had a choice to get a Gardenburger or a soup and salad but noooooo.  I got queso. AND fries!!  Not to mention all of the products with eggs in them that I completely ignore and dove in headfirst like the cakes.  Meatless in the worst way today, folks.

Thoughts: Um. Yeah. I totally suck at being a vegetarian.  The guilt alone will kill be before anything else.

Special Thanks: For those who’ve witnessed/read about my ordeal last night, please give thanks to the handy guide I used to battle the problem.

Well crap. I’ve been so busy that this blog is slowly becoming all about my Meatless Tuesday.  Sorry guys!

Just to catch you up, last Wednesday was our 8th wedding anniversary.  On our way to our tradition dinner at Benihana through the infamous SoCal rainstorm, we were rear-ended.

As we crested over the 405 close to Fairview exit, we got out of the carpool lane to get to the 73.  Suddenly in front of us, a black sedan was sideway on the #1 lane.  Its visibly damaged trunk was partly in the carpool lane and the hood in #2 lane.  Unable to swerve around, Brandon slammed the brakes.  We stopped many cars length from the black sedan.  Far enough distance to be safe but yet close enough to see the people in the car trying to get out of their vehicle.

See?  Driving at speed limit, leaving plenty of room in front of you in a torrential rain actually works. Unfortunately, the guy behind us didn’t follow the same rule.

All we could see out the rear view mirror was a smaller car than our Santa Fe disappearing behind us.  And *CRUNCH*.  We bounced around in our seats.  Not too badly, but enough to know we would be in pain the next day.

Some folks had questioned me why we moved from the crash site.  Well, among the many unwise reasons to get out of our vehicle or stay stalled in this lane–oh, I don’t know.  It’s dark.  It’s rainy. We are in the fast lanes with fast cars whizzed recklessly by each side of us? Um. No. We were not sitting out here to cause MORE accidents.

So we started to pull over to the shoulder.  The car that hit us started to follow.  Oh, goodie.  However, by the time we got to the shoulder, there was nobody behind us.

That motherfucker was GONE.

We called 911 and waited for the CHP to show up.  We couldn’t see what became of that black sedan either.

The tow truck showed up first and he told us that he was here for the black sedan that was reported by several people to be blocking the #1 lane.  But there was nobody out there except us, he said.

Soon after that, CHP pulled up and got us off the freeway to file report and talk about the incident.

In short, somebody hit the black sedan and left the scene.  The black sedan, having caused our accident, left the scene.  The guy who crashed into us also left the scene.  If it wasn’t for decent people calling that black sedan in to 911, it would’ve sounded like we made the whole thing up.   I am forever grateful to those good Samaritans who called that in, by the way.

Back to us, with fading adrenaline rush, Brandon and I continued onto Benihana to make the best out of the rest of the evening.  We popped some ibuprofen and went in to enjoy our dinner.  Our necks were tensed but we didn’t quite feel the impact yet.  I tried to dull it with a sample flight of sake…which didn’t really work.

The kicker of it all is that we had just finished fixing up the Santa Fe from Brandon’s day-before-Thanksgiving rear-ending.  (That one was paid for fully by the lady who hit him.)

AND we now found out our insurance apparently only cover physical injury from a hit-and-run/uninsured motorists but NOT the damage to the car.

Then again, this is now a week after the incident, my lower back still is  VERY tensed.  Brandon has been doing well so far but, true to what our doctor told us, sometime the muscles don’t react to the impact until many days later, now the Mister also has the problem.

Now, to top off the cake that was yesterday in the Kingdom of Crazy (aka the office), my back was so tensed I had to go get a massage.  The journey home on the bus took FOREVER as the jackasses, trying to creep up to the congested freeway entrances, blocked intersections all over Downtown LA.  Seriously, if you set LAPD out to ticket all of those bastards blocking traffic, endangering pedestrians as well as impeding traffic, City of LA would totally pull out of the financial shithole they’re in.  But I digress.

The massage part of Meatless Tuesday was nice, but not so much the rest of the day.

It all started at breakfast…

Breakfast

• Half of the Honey Nut Cheerios I originally intended to eat.  I tripped and spilled most of the bowl full of cereal and milk onto my cubicle floor.  *sigh*
• Snack: a slice of lemon poppy seed cake someone brought in.

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Lunch

• Veggie burger at Rowdy Red with only half of the buns.  A bit of the sweet potato fries with ranch dressing. It was really tasty and I personally liked it.  However my guts didn’t want any of that.

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Dinner

• 2 slices of Pizza Hut Veggie Lover pizza.
• A general scoop of Ben & Jerry’s Neopolitan Dynamite.

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Satisfaction Level: I WANT A FUCKING MEATY CHEESEBURGER NOW level.  I was hungry all day.  And cranky because of that.  Well, the botched attempt at breakfast got me nice and hungry through lunch.  I have to give the veggie burger credit for being thoroughly satisfying.  But then it acted up, leaving me miserable and quite literally drained for the rest of the afternoon.  I was so busy I didn’t get to snack before the evening massage either.

Thoughts: Yesterday just sucked in general. *sigh*

Formerly known as “Veggie Tuesday”. 

Breakfast:

• Granola with blueberries from the farmer’s Market with milk
• English Breakfast tea.

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Lunch:

• Roasted eggplants and red pepper dip from farmer’s market and one pita bread. Well, I didn’t really get to have lunch that day so I ate what I could in a meeting.

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Dinner:

• Trader Joe’s frozen entree of Paneer Masala with spinach basmati rice. Yum-may!
• A couple of flutes of Fresh & Easy Ogio prosecco with lemon sorbet–a Scroppino without the vodka.

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Satisfaction level: Moderate.  The lunch for thoroughly disappointing because I have stuffed grape leaves waiting in the wing.  No time for the worker bees that day.  I was *this* close to say fuck all and get a burger for dinner at that point,  not because I miss meat but because I was starved.  However, the hearty paneer was VERY satisfying as a meat substitute.

Thoughts: A viewing of Food Inc. also motivated us greatly to go out to the farmers’ market on Sunday.  (Will post about that over on the food blog soon. It’s going to be an epic post.)  We stocked up the fridge and the fruit basket to the brim.  This time I had the mind to actually plan my Meatless Tuesday while I’m at the market on Sunday instead of panicking on Monday night because I had nothing veggie to eat.  So, now I have more than enough to last me all week. LOL.

I’m getting a hang of this vegetarian business.  I even wrote a rant to Fresh & Easy about their lack of vegetarian/vegan selection of the grab-and-go meals.

Breakfast

• A small bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and milk.
• Mid morning snack – a few bites out of the 2-lb. tub of Fresh & Easy low fat strawberry yogurt.

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Lunch

• Homemade mac and cheese, half of Barefoot Contessa’s recipe.  Essentially shells, gruyere, and cheddar with a pinch of nutmeg. I also infused the milk with thyme and garlic.

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Dinner

• Brandon made us Top Ramen…
• Dessert: Ben & Jerry’s Neapolitan Dynamite. Lots of it.

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Satisfaction Level: Satisfied.  Didn’t miss meat once!

Guilt Level: Very high for the lack of veggies when they could totally be had.  Oh, and the ice cream gorge.

Thoughts

I took a mental day off on Tuesday (keyword there is MENTAL) and had an ortho appointment in the morning.  I pretty much stayed in all day except for when I ran the books out to mail for Operations Paperback. I mean, I could have gone to the store and get some fresh ingredients to make ratatouille as inspired by the previous night’s Heroes episode.  But I didn’t.

And of course, the blues got me diving into the arms of Ben & Jerry.  I usually enjoyed a couple of bites for dessert anyway.  However, I went to town with that.  Then again, I did avoid the wine which was my original idea for dessert.  One shouldn’t consume a depressant when depressed, a lesson I learned the hard way after my mom died.

That brought us to the blues.

A friend has been waiting for her grandmother to pass away for a few weeks.  This weekend was it.  Having had talked about the experience with the friend all week, it was like reliving the days with my mom again.

Obviously, once I got to work and found out the friend’s grandmother had passed away, feelings beyond my control were set in motion.  I was sad for my friend’s loss.  I was sad for my own loss.  Which brought me to miss my family, my friends, and overall being home.  I was sad for things I don’t have in my life, an interesting form of envy.  You get the picture.

I hid behind my pile of work all day as an excuse to not be social.  Thank god for that because I would’ve started crying.

The next morning, I cried in the shower. For not much of a reason but all of the above.  I knew I couldn’t go to work like that.

Grief is a VERY odd thing.  I mean, soon after my mom’s death?  I get it.  The random sadness and the crying.  2 years after and I’m still affected by some stranger’s death?  That I don’t understand.

Then again, I *am* doing this veggie Tuesday thing in honor of my mom.  So, I guess in someway it’s all related.

One of my goals this year is to bring back my Vegetarian Tuesdays ritual.  This time, I hold on to the dairy but ditch the eggs, but not in the strictest of sense.  I mean, I’m not looking at the back of the box for baked goods with eggs in them.  Just not visible eggs, I guess that’s what you’d call it.  No egg salad or omelet, but okay with cake.  Sort of thing.

I figured, I’d try to document my success and failure this year. It’ll go something like this.

Breakfast

• A slice of Fresh & Easy’s Il Fornaio panettone.
• A FREE grande decaf soy toffee nut latte which I sipped through the day.  So it’s a breakfast AND a snack.  AND because I had a coupon for a freebie, that stays within my once-a-week Starbucks goal as well.

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Lunch

• Fresh & Easy’s jasmine rice in a tub. (Best thing ever!)
• Wildwood Organics teriyaki sproutofu…which wasn’t all that teriyaki-y.
• A side of Fresh & Easy Thai peanut sauce for dipping…which improved the overall result tremendously.
• 2 small organic vine ripen tomatoes from local farmer’s market.
• Most of an Asian pear. (Coworkers helped me eat some.)  And one bite of cake but all of the frosting on my half of a not-very-good Starbucks red velvet cupcake my coworker shared with me.

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Dinner

• Red Robin: The queso with half of the chips and some of Brandon’s garlic fries.  I didn’t even put a dent into the bowl of queso. So much cheese!
• Red Robin: A cup of French onion soup.
• Red Robin: An electric lemonade…or something like that.
• Baskin Robbins: A scoop of strawberry cheesecake ice cream.

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Satisfaction Level: Full but a little guilty

I’m pretty satisfied with all the meals today, actually.  Not horribly proud of my dinner choice but since I had a burger yesterday and about to eat the other half for lunch tomorrow, I wasn’t going to throw a veggie burger in the mix as well.

Other Thoughts

I did come home to check the box for the panettone for the egg content out of curiousity.  And there it was.  That was when I started to ponder how strict I am going with the whole no-egg thing.  Same with the cake I had.  There were eggs in that.  My instinct says that if I was going to do the whole no egg thing, I should definitely be mindful of that and start checking the ingredients.  On the other hand, I don’t want to be so strict I don’t enjoy the foods.

I guess I came to term in the middle.  Avoid eggs if I can.  But if it’s too much to ask, don’t worry about it.

Day 1 hasn’t traumatize me just yet.  I can get through the year and beyond, I’m sure!