Turquoise Cafe

Last night, I had dinner at the fantastic Turquoise Cafe. I've heard loads of wonderful things about this place, for its Turkish cuisine is supposed to be one of the best in Chicago. My friend, Amy, joined me and we had a great time catching up. I've known Amy since we were ASME interns in New York City in 1999 and this is the first time I've lived in her city. She's one of the smartest, coolest, and most down to earth people I know and I'm lucky to know her.

First things first: I need to get better at taking photos when the sun is still present. And more of them! Apologies for the darkness in some of these.

On my walk to the restaurant, I saw these cute chalk drawings. How cool are these?

It was extremely warm in the Windy City today, with temperatures as high as 90 degrees. By the time I got to the restaurant, the humidity had dipped a bit, making it more pleasant to eat outside. The outside eating area at Turquoise Cafe is secluded with several hanging plants and really nice. But once the sun went down, the mosquitoes were in full effect. Yikes!

For an appetizer, we snacked on fresh-baked Turkish bread, yum! I have no idea what the orange spread was, but it was lite and tasty.

I had a chicken kebap (or kebab) for dinner and it was really lovely. It was marinated in various herbs and served with grilled vegetables, rice pilaf, and yogurt sauce. The yogurt sauce was especially great!

 
The green pepper was also recommended by our waitress, but I thought I'd save that and half of the dish for leftovers. But Ryan, however, ended up eating it when I got home. I had a piece of No Pudge brownie and read my latest issue of BUST. Yours truly has been contributing to this magazine for six years and has an album review of the new School of Seven Bells in this very issue.

Here are my numbers for Wednesday and they're a tiny bit off. I'm still trying to master calculating my nutritional data for dining out. I hope all of you had a great Wednesday. Thanks for reading.

Calorie goal 1,210-1,560: 1,561
Carbohydrates goal 164-237: 227
Fat goal 32-57: 32
Protein goal 60-128: 41

Fighting Fat

I really hate going over in my fat calories. It truly bugs me, like it did on Monday. I had to do some reorganizing with today's menus in order to avoid any repeat of that. Having a cup of Cranberry and Almond Granola for breakfast at 524 calories ... I don't know. Across the blogosphere, granola seems to be celebrated and championed as a something healthy for breakfast. Is it really? Today, I'm totally to blame since I had a full cup instead of a half cup serving. I ended up skipping the banana.

I split up my late morning workout with a 45-minute power walk outside and 30 minutes on the elliptical. I spend A LOT of time inside, with various freelance projects, blogging, and job hunting. I just had the urge to take a break and get outside yesterday. Plus I was able to complete an errand, too.

For lunch, Ryan prepared Ellie Krieger's Four-Cheese Macaroni the night before. This mixture makes enough to fill an entire casserole dish, so we always have more than enough to last us throughout the week. We like to add broccoli to the squash-cheese base, giving a little more umph to the veggie goodness. Ryan added some salami to his portion as well. While it sounds super good and tasty, I'll won't be indulging in that section of the dish. Haha.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon wrapping up loose ends and preparing for other deadlines happening later in the week. For dinner, I turned to Ellie Krieger again for her Salmon Cakes with Sesame-Ginger Sauce. This is another dish that yields several helpings, and we end up putting half of it in the freezer for a later date.

For the ingredients, we used six five-ounce cans of Chicken of the Sea's pink salmon, six pieces of Brownberry's Healthy Multi-Grain Bread, half a can of water chestnuts from Dynasty, one Egg Beater, five fresh scallions, ground black pepper, and a fourth-cup of fresh cilantro from my herb garden. Cilantro makes everything better! I love me some cilantro!

Really good and so easy to make! It has a nice Asian flair with the water chestnuts and the Ginger-Sesame Sauce. The Sesame-Ginger Sauce includes drained non-fat plain yogurt from Green Valley Organics (lactose-free for the hubs), some soy sauce and fresh ginger. I paired mine up with an herby green salad with some cherries tomatoes and a bit of BelGioioso Parmesan Cheese.

Since I kept my calories in check today, I also had some No Pudge brownie. YUM!

Back to the grind tomorrow. Interview transcriptions and then some. Cheers!

Calorie goal 1,210-1,560: 1,461
Carbohydrates goal 164-237: 173
Fat goal 32-57: 53
Protein goal 60-128: 78

Manic Monday and 8-9-10

Well this week certainly kicked off with a bang, hence my title of today's post. Also kind of fitting with 2010's sequential date day. Anyhow, my morning started with a quick bowl of Post Shredded Wheat with some skim milk and fourth-cup of blueberries. Nothing special, but certainly enough to get me through the morning and my trip to the dentist.

Mine and Ryan's dental appointments lasted nearly two hours, which also means I lost time on prepping our lunches for the week. We were close to Whole Foods, so we picked up lunch instead. I had my regular spinach with veggies, balsamic vinegar, and BelGioiso Parmesan Cheese plus cucumber, tomato, and feta salad and tomato basil soup. A cool iced coffee rounded things out.

With phone calls, deadlines, and several in-house duties taking over my afternoon, my workout never happened. UGH!!!! I didn't have time to feel guilty because things were definitely busy. In between deadlines, I snacked on a nectarine.

For dinner, Ryan prepped his own version of chicken stir fry. We used brown rice from Minute Rice with red pepper, pineapple chunks (in water) from Dole, and Eating Right's Broccoli Stir Fry mix (broccoli, carrots and snow peas).

As my deadlines finally came to a close, I made some No Pudge brownies for Ryan as a thank you for dinner. Plus he prepared this week's lunches (more on Tuesday) and his Cranberry and Almond Granola for breakfast. Since I wasn't able to help, I thought he deserved a yummy dessert. I didn't partake in such chocolate-y goodness, however. Maybe tomorrow night.

Back in the exercise game tomorrow, man. I ended up snacking on some of the almonds in the Cranberry and Almond Granola that Ryan made earlier, which made me go over in my fat numbers. BOO! I did walk plenty around the city this weekend, which was nice. But I gotta sweat it out on my elliptical. I miss it and I know it misses me, haha.

Calorie goal 1,210-1,560: 1,353
Carbohydrates goal 164-237: 165
Fat goal 32-57: 66
Protein goal 60-128: 98

See you Tuesday. Thanks for reading xx

** UPDATE (08.10.10): I double-checked the recipe calculations for Ryan's chicken stir fry and learned that it was definitely off. I still went over in my fat count just slightly. My carbohydrates count was off by one, but my calorie count was 19 less that I should have. Yikes! Monday's totals should be:

Calorie goal 1,210-1,560: 1,191
Carbohydrates goal 164-237: 163
Fat goal 32-57: 62
Protein goal 60-128: 70