What I Ate Wednesday, we meet again. Hope your week is off to a good start. Mine is all over the place since I’m balancing a few days at the hospital with a bunch of writing projects and prepping for an event this weekend, but busy is good, especially when you’re throwing yourself into your work so you don’t have to think about how much dating sucks.

I thought I’d share what I ate on another Saturday at the hospital. I hadn’t been able to sleep much the night before for some reason, so it was a great excuse to treat myself to an iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts. I usually avoid adding sweetener or milk to my iced coffee—unless it’s Dunkin Donuts—I think it’s  mental thing, since that’s what I drank when I was in high school. That iced coffee is a comfort food from my childhood probably says a lot about me. I’ve been drinking coffee regularly since I was 12 or 13—I always used to ask my mom for sips of hers. No wonder I never made it to five feet tall! Also, no wonder I never got into drugs—why waste your money on cocaine when you’ve got coffee? I guess we’ve all got our stimulant of choice.

After a few crazy Saturdays in a row, it was nice to have a more manageable patient load. Still, it was busy. I don’t know if it’s different in other professions, but I have pretty much always eaten lunch at my desk. The concept of “going out for lunch” in the middle of a workday is weird and ridiculous to me, even though I know it shouldn’t be. However, I still make sure I use my time to take a walk or run errands. Eating while I look up patients or type notes frees me up for that, so it still works out. Per my contract, I have 45 minutes of unpaid time for “lunch” and then 15 minutes of paid time as a break. I used to feel guilty about taking a break, but then I realized that it helps me hit the reset button in the middle of the day so I can give my patients the best quality of care. Besides, burnout = no bueno.

• Breakfast: Hard-boiled egg before my workout; yogurt w/ chia seeds & cocoa powder and blackberries while screening
• Lunch: A giant salad with Tuscan chicken and olives; later I had a plum and some dry-roasted edamame and sipped at an iced coffee I picked up on my lunch-break walk.
• After-work snack: Sliced pepper and a little truffle cheddar cheese.
• Dinner: Pasta—about 1/2 c whole wheat fusili with spinach, peas, yellow cauliflower, roasted tomato, shrimp, and a ton of freshly roasted garlic. Of course a little parm was needed.
• Snack: A sliced banana in PB2 sauce/fluff. I will never know what to call this. I pride myself on not eating a lot of weird food “products,” but this powdered peanut butter is hard to let go of. It could be worse…

So there it is, another Saturday. I’m looking forward to having a few Saturdays to myself in the coming months.  

To see more WIAW from other bloggers, visit founder Jenn’s blog Peas & Crayons.

How do you take your iced coffee?