Bagels! and more...

I'm in a fantastic mood today. I got so much accomplished and still have a few hours in the day! Making the bagels was a big project. I'll start with how that went...

So after my breakfast post, I started with the bagels' prep. I used this recipe from KathEats, which was very detailed with lots of pictures. I read it carefully and thought that it was do-able. I'm no cook, but in general, I think I can follow directions and Matt (Kath's husband) seemed to cover every detail of the process so I thought I had a good shot at actually producing some edible bagels.

I didn't take too many pictures during the process, because honestly they would look identical to Matt's (we even have the same scale!). But here is the dough, resting by the window enjoying the sun :)



And then an hour later I separated and shaped the dough into 14 bagels... This took quite a while and made me a bit nervous. By the end, though, I was proud of my little babies :D



This was taken right before refrigerating. Six hours later I boiled and baked them. I topped a few with some poppy seeds, a few with oats and left the rest plain. They are peacefully resting on the cooling rack right now.



Here are a few up-close:



I sounds like a proud mama, huh? Well, that's because I feel like I gave birth to these. It took that long to make them. And here is the problem: they are very small. These are mini-bagels, which nobody warned me about. I was hoping they would puff up, and they did a little bit, but they are still quite small. Also, because they are on the small side, they are not that soft. Did I screw this up? They look yummy. Hmm. I better ask Matt. Anyways, my bagel sandwich was still the bomb, but I'll get to that later.

Right after I put the bagels in the fridge, I snacked on my last cocoa oatmeal bar (with a magazine in the background (I'm so artsy heh?):



And then I went to the gym. I had an awesome 6 mile run + some warm up and cooldown walks. And it felt good to be done with a workout relatively early in the day :)

After a shower, I started cooking up some lunch: a fritatta with mushrooms, beet greens, potatoes and cheese. I was being a good blogger and took pictures of every step of the way, but the results were a bit disapointing so I guess I'll skip posting these. I followed a recipe from cookinglight.com. It tasted just ok. Here is my HUGE slice for under 300 calories:



I put a whole bunch of hot sauce over this baby after a few bites. It was kind of bland tasting. I think it's possibly because I used low fat cheese when the recipe called for something stronger tasting. This is my first frittata ever, and now I see how easy it is to make! I'll be making more of them, just not this exact recipe. I think I used too much parsley for my husband's taste, so lucky me, I get to eat the leftovers 2 more times, because he doesn't want any more of this stuff :( It's really not bad, just not great and I want every meal to taste amazing. I guess that can't happen every time.

Oh, while all of this was cooking, I did a load of laundry. I told you I was productive today! And then we met up with some friends at the Apple store. I want the new laptop, now! I'll wait for a few months though, because we also bought a cooling pad for my current laptop, so this will extend its life. It's kind of ghetto (I may take a picture of this mostrosity at some point just for fun) but it works.

So while we were laptop "window shopping" I got hungry, but I didn't bring any snacks with me so I waited until I got home. Then the bagel boiling/baking started and I knew I could wait until they were ready to make my sandwich. So here it is, a turkey/bacon/tomato/laughing cow cheese bagel sandwich, with some baby carrots on the side:



It was delicious, but as mentioned earlier a bit on the small side. Due to all the sandwich fillings this did end up being a very filling sandwich, though :)

A little while after polishing this off, I realized that I was actually quite low on calories for the day. And what's the best way to consume calories? By eating chocolate of course!

I did too much baking/cooking for the day, so I took a bit of an easy way out on this one. I made brownies from a mix. I picked this mix because I liked the picture on the box and because it was all natural. This is what I used:



And this was my portion with a bit of vanilla frozen yogurt and some strawberry sauce (homemade a few weeks ago to accompany pancakes, then frozen, and defrosted last night):



Sorry this picture isn't very nice, but that's the best I got. I went back for a bit more sauce. This was delicious, although did not really taste fudge-brownie like... more like warm chocolate cake really, which fit me just fine. I don't know if these will transport very well though. Maybe after they cool. I couldn't wait.

Ok, I am beyond stuffed now and need to catch up on other blogs :) Overall this was a really good day! My husband is at a bachelor party so I have the apartment to myself. I think there are some girly shows to catch up on...

Dogs and roses

I'm back from a little trip to the nail salon and lunch. Since we're going out to dinner, we wanted to have something simple for lunch (not too meal-y if that makes sense). I proposed sushi but my husband wanted hot dogs. Hot dogs are not really one of those things I ever crave, but this place was supposed to be pretty good. I ordered the German Shepherd dog, which is a beef hot dog topped with sauerkraut and dijon mustard + a diet coke.



It was sooo good! I removed a bunch of the sauerkraut (too much!) and actually after a few bites realized it was too much dog, so I cut it in half, length-wise, and removed that too. The bun, which was freshly baked was the best part. I didn't want the meat to distract from the buttery taste of it :) Quite the atypical lunch for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

But before that, on my way to the nail salon, I had to stop by my favorite bakery these days, Tatte. This place is like an art gallery with baked goods. I absolutely cannot get enough of their stuff! Last night I thought about passing by it on the way to the nail salon, and of course could not get it out of my head this morning. I had the chocolate rose.



This is the third time I've had this pastry. The first time it was super chocolaty and gooey on the inside and I devoured it in seconds. I had it again a few weeks ago, but it was more bready/doughy. I wanted more chocolate (shocker!). Today I had it "for here" so the girl warmed it up for me. I was hoping the chocolate would be all gooey like that first time and it looked promising when she served it to me, but honestly once I dug in, there wasn't that much chocolate there - mostly just bread. I'm going to pretend like it was healthy :D The good news is that I think I finally got it out of my system, but their nut boxes are still worth coming back for. It's going to have to wait 'till next week... at least!

I'm off to assemble the spinach artichoke dip I'm bringing to the party tonight. I found the recipe on cookinglight.com and served it a few weeks ago at a party I hosted at my house. It was a huge success! In fact, when I was getting my nails done today, a friend of mine called me asking for the ingredients list... she's making it tonight too to bring it to a different party. So funny! I'll try to remember to take a picture when it comes out of the oven.

I'll be back tomorrow with the recap of the party + my breakfast.