It's All About You*

*And by you, I mean me**, of course.

**And by me, I mean YouBars and YouShakes.

Unpictured in my loot last night was a lovely package from the nice folks at YouBar, which is a company whose premise I love. Much like Mix My Granola, they allow you to fully customize their product, which in this case is nutrition bars and protein shakes. Considering how many "nutrition" products we see with weird and wacky ingredients that don't belong in our bodies, it's about time we were offered the option of being in control of what goes into those bars and protein supplements.

This morning, I refueled with one of my YouShakes after having my butt kicked (30 times x 4 circuits) by Jillian Michaels. I chose the Breakfast Shake for my first sample. You can (hopefully) read the nutrition stats in the photo below. The ingredients are just Whey Protein, Organic Cane Juice, Egg White Protein, Organic Bananas and Cocoa.

I stayed boring and shook it up with just water because I wanted to be sure I was really tasting just the YouShake itself, and it was just as good or better as any other protein supplement I've ever experimented with. It tasted like real food (as much as a powdered version can), and there were even a few dried banana bits that weren't quite ground into dust, which was a fun surprise.

I have a new love, and it's You. ;)

For REAL breakfast on my way to work, I took advantage of dollar oats at Jamba Juice one more time (only a week left of this deal!) and got a cup with bananas only. Turns out this is a popular deal, understandably, and I was lucky enough to get the last serving of the batch! The cashier yelled this out to the long line of people behind me, which included one of my coworkers. Whoopsie daisy!

Now that I've had Jamba's oats 4x, I have found my favorite way to enjoy them (just in time for the dollar deal to end!). I stirred in the bananas along with 2 tbsp of chocolate PB2 that I brought from home, and it was baby-bear-just-right.

I could get a little bit too used to not lifting a finger to feed myself on Mondays because if you ask me, anything I can (not) do to make the first day of the work week a little easier is just as well. And since one of my colleagues has been raving about a certain grilled zucchini sandwich from Tarallucci e Vino, I figured that today's lunch was as good an opportunity as any to give it a try.

I'm pretty sure I could eat this sandwich every day for the rest of my life and be happy. The foremost adjective to describe it would be buttery, and not because it was greasy, but because it was perfect and smooth and light yet rich but soft though crunchy and dang it I've ruined the description by using more adjectives other than buttery. Let's put it this way: if you love zucchini, fresh mozzarella, olive oil and garlic, this is your sandwich.

One of my other coworkers just returned from Spain, so for dessert, I had this lovely chocolate that he brought from Valencia. Secret ingredient? Pop Rocks! Or whatever it is that pops and fizzes when it hits your tongue and makes it seem like your ears have suddenly become speakers that are broadcasting the sizzling noise on your tongue.

If my next blog post comes from a hospital room, telling you my stomach has exploded, I guess you'll know whether or not I chased this candy with Pepsi. ;)

In the meantime, I broke out another YouBar sample for my afternoon snack, this time their Great Date with Chocolate bar. It was stickier than Bernie Madoff's fingers (ZING!), but I loved it - tasted something like brownie batter.

Great nutritionals too:

Ingredients: Dates, Whey Protein, Honey, Cocoa

Serving Size: 1 bar (50g). Total Fat: 1.5g; Sodium: 15mg; Total Carb: 31g; Fiber: 4g; Sugars, 24g; Protein: 8g; Calcium: 35%!

And the beauty of YouBar is knowing that if you don't like those stats/ingredients, you can just go online and change them until you do!

I think I mentioned last night that acquiring more bars was perhaps not the most practical idea (especially in light of my YouBar delivery), and case in point, my bar bag overfloweth:

Granted, that is just one of those tiny bags from Sephora, but I never dreamed that I'd have so many bars between what I bought and the samples I receive that I'd barely be able to see what I have at all! Oh well, nothing wrong with being prepared for a hungry-rage blackout at the office.

In case I was afraid of drowning in a snack bar-rut, I needn't have been scared, because maybe I got another package today:

Almonds are indeed awesome, and I am grateful to Dr. Lankin for sharing the awesomeness with me in three different flavors a dozen times over. Look out for these lil guys making cameos in many meals to come. :)

Since I hadn't yet actually prepared any of my own food once dinner time rolled around, I figured, why start now? and heated up the other half of my entree from last night's dinner at Spasi in Danbury, plus a little asparagus for extra volume.

Still Italian and therefore still delicious.

For a last bit of something sweet, I sprinted to the microwave during the first commercial break of Gossip Girl and heated up my latest obsession: PB Puffins in vanilla soymilk. Yeah, it's just cereal for dessert, but when you microwave Puffins in milk, they soak it up, dissolve, and after a few minutes of sitting, you have a glorious Puffin porridge.

Yes, that's a peanut butter Newman O's crumbled on top. I don't mess around when it comes to dessert. Go rich or go fish.

But just in case the big Tastemaker in the sky hasn't blessed you with much of a sweet tooth, Missy is hosting a Michael Season's giveaway, and those snacks look mighty tasty, even to a sweet tart like me.

P.S. Is it just me and the roomie, or does Gossip Girl kind of suck right now?