Daily Eats & Struggles! January 5th & 6th

These past few days I've been very busy... you'd think it would be easy to find a decent place to live in NYC, but think again! It actually takes a pain staking amount of work. If it weren't for the poor insulation in this building (and lack of heat), we'd never be moving again already, as we just did last January. So understandably my eats have been all over the map... Here's what I had yesterday...

For breakfast I tried one of the new Luna protein bars. I had tried the cookie dough one the other day (see here), but this time I tried the peanut butter one. I thought it was really good! It almost tasted like a Reese's peanut butter cup!

For lunch I tried out a new asian restaurant in the village... I say "new" because it is relatively new, and I've never been there before. I walk by it often, so I thought I'd give it a try. It's called Ritz Asia on Bleecker St. (b/w 6th Ave. & MacDougal St.).

For starters I tried their vegetarian spring rolls. These were good, although they were very generic and NOTHING like the description on the menu (which is really weird!).

The waitress told me they made vegetarian steamed dumplings, even though they aren't on the menu. So I figured I'd give them a try. You can imagine my surprise when 2 small dumplings arrived on my plate with no sauce to even dip them in! When I asked they told me to use the spring roll sauce! These were pretty good, but charging me $6 for 2 dumplings is criminal.

Since I was obviously not full from what I had just eaten, I decided to get dessert. Big mistake. I never thought I could dislike cheesecake, and mango cheesecake sounded interesting. But alas... First of all, it took them FOREVER to bring this to me. Their service was miserably slow (which is shameful considering I was one of the only two people in the whole restaurant!!), and this is weird considering most asian restaurants are SUPER fast! But worst still was that the cheesecake was kind of frozen and had this odd texture. It was supposed to come with fruit too, but they didn't give me any. I mean, why bother?! (I was so angry I felt like making a run for it when the bill came! lol)

Suffice to say I will not be going back to Ritz Asia. In fact I hope they close down and they put up another Wild Ginger in their place!!! :) The service and food sucked (oh, and there was this weird perfumey smell too to top it all off!), and I now see why there was no one there during peak lunch hour. It's a shame too because it's a pretty big restaurant and the location is nice. Oh well, this Veggie Girl will not be returning!!

So anyway, with all this stress, plus hormonal issues (aka "that time of the month") gave me a SPLITTING headache yesterday. I ate next to nothing the rest of the day, and the french toast my Mom made me for dinner I couldn't keep down. But I did manage to take a few pictures of Peanut! He looks like a little wooly bear with his winter coat! :)

Luckily I felt better today. I was very hungry this morning since I had nothing in my stomach, so I made myself a Food for Life cinnamon raisin english muffin topped with PB&J and had some orange juice with it.

I stayed in most of the day, on the internet and the phone looking for apartments. After yesterday's disappointment, I decided to order the reliable... spring rolls and pineapple fried rice from Qi Asian Eatery! They deliver & they're cheap. God bless them.

After I got back home from Tribeca (where I was apartment hunting), I made this CedarLane omelette thing that I found at Fairway. It's an egg white omelette with spinach and mushrooms and you can microwave it! It was pretty good, although it didn't cook that evenly. Oh well, I was hungry and ate it anyway (along with an orange - not pictured).

To get my chocolate fix I had a Cadbury Double Decker bar. These are AWESOME. And I love that you can find UK chocolates in some Manhattan grocery stores. I had eaten some of it for my snack on the way downtown, and had the rest after dinner.

For my snack tonight I made a favorite... my almond parfait. I use a container of Fage 0% greek yogurt, mix in some maple syrup and a dash of vanilla extract, then add in some chocolate chips and sliced almonds. And I top it off with some amber agave nectar!

I got this idea from that nut Bethenny Frankel. She eats two bites of everything (if you read her book "Naturally Thin"), but hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day! lol She has some good ideas too. :)

So my goal is to find an apartment this week. Then comes the packing, then the moving. And we'd better hit the lottery somewhere in between to pay for it all! That's all for now! ;)