Sigh of relief!

Ahh I've had a very productive day. Thanks for the comments about my little rants earlier-- hopefully everything is calm for the rest of the weekend :)

I've gotten a good chunk of my studying/reading done so I think I will be good for my exam if I keep up this pace. I also had some delicious eats :)

I had an a-mazing snack of strawberry Chobani with Kashi Vive. Such a good combo.

For dinner I had a salad with spinach, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, sprouts, broccoli, blueberries, feta, and vinaigrette. Yummmm so gooooood!

I also had an apple, a Vitatop, a couple of pieces of candy, and some Goldfish pretzels. I wasn't hungry at all until late evening! I don't get it... probably the salad wasn't enough for me.

While I was at Help Center, some friends and I started talking about food blogs. It turns out that my friend Rachel reads a lot of the same blogs that I do. Not only that, but one of her friends was featured on a guest post on KERF! Such a small world!

I am very excited for another whole day of weekend! And the sleep I'm getting tonight! Also, tomorrow starts 31 Days of Yoga! I'm pumped!

Anxiety provoking.

I really can't stand it when people in my house are being rude to the point that it affects me. I went out to the gym earlier, and not only were the "guests" still being rowdy, they just got worse. I'm also worried because there are potential-leasers coming by later to look at the house and I'll be at my Help Center Saturday shift. I don't like the thought of strangers being in my room when I'm not here... it's making me kind of anxious.

After the gym I had a cup of chicken and egg noodle soup:

I also made a tuna melt with tuna mixed with lemon juice and olive oil, tomato, some cheddar, on a whole wheat english muffin.

New product! Kozy Shack Simply Well pudding in Dark Chocolate.

Tastes good to me and natural ingredients. Not too shabby :)

I am sooo ready to get out of the house again. HC for 8 hours, along with some studying and application-filling. Whew! Time for a change of scenery.

Butterscotchy goodness.

Ahhh. Saturday morning. I am ready to get the move on and get some things done today. I need to clean, go to the gym, and just take care of some odds and ends.

I have been seeing a lot of butterscotch oats out there, so I really wanted to get in on that :)

In the bowl: 1/2 c. oats, 1/2 c. skim milk, 1/2 c. H2O, 1/2 banana, light brown sugar, cinnamon, butterscotch chips, walnuts, and almond butter. It was pretty good. The bananas stayed a little chunkier than I would have liked. And it was sweet, but I'm OK with that. It's Saturday morning!

I really need to get moving. One of my roommates is being ridiculously loud and I need to get out of the house before it drives me nuts. Have a good Saturday!

New whip.

That weather really changed on me. By the time I got out of the house it was raining and windy, BUT still 65*. So weird how quickly it can turn around. I went to the Adventist health food store, but totally forgot that Friday begins the sabbath, so I'll have to try again on Sunday. Just something to look forward to :)

My hunger has been really weird all day. I wasn't incredibly hungry for lunch, or even dinner. But I could tell I needed refuel. I guess those eggs really did stick with me all day.

Dinner. I made a curry with tofu, potato, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, broccoli and Patak's mild curry sauce on top of wild rice.

This was good, but the curry sauce could have been stronger. Maybe I'll use more next time or add some heat to it. I like anything spicy.

I also had my evening cocoa with a new addition tonight. I picked up some Tru Whip earlier and tried it for the first time.

My thought is that it's good, but different. It has a sort of soy taste to it (which makes sense because it does contain soy). Plus it's all-natural, which is a LOT better than you can say about Cool Whip. Even though I totally wouldn't mind still eating Cool Whip.

I just finished watching Margot at the Wedding. Anyone seen it? I'm not sure how I feel about it. I think it may have been too independent for it's own sake. But I did like Squid and the Whale which is by the same writer/director. I'll think about it...

Good night. Tomorrow is Saturday!

Blogger Cookbook!

Such a lazy morning! It's been more like a Sunday than a Friday. But I like it. I'm planning on going by a health food store later to scope things out, and I've made that my main focus of the day :)

Also, I submitted some recipes to the Blogger Cookbook that is being put together by Abbie at Foods that Fit. It seems like SUCH a good idea and I know that it's going to have some amazing recipes!

Had a really nice/different lunch: grilled cheddar and apple on yoga bread. Yum. Also used Smart Balance for the grillin. And ate the rest of the apple :)

Yikes, I gotta run! Hang in there! Friday's almost over!

Good mornin, good mooooooornin!

Good morning! It's another beautiful day! I really need to get myself outside today. Pretty much the only thing that I need to do today is an appointment at 3pm, so I should take advantage of my down time :)

I decided to switch breakfast up a little bit this morning. Instead of oats (gasp!) I made a scramble from 2 eggs, spinach, and crumbled feta. On the side I had a whole wheat english muffin, 1/2 with lemon curd, 1/2 with almond butter.

Yummy. I hope it keeps me as full as the oats. We'll see how I feel in a couple hours. I also had a Carnation Instant Breakfast in order to use up some of my milk.

I am super excited because I just won a Griddler on ebay! I have been wanting to get one, but I didn't want to pay excessively. But I got it! I'm probably going to be looking through recipes until it gets here. Paninis, pancakes, grilled veggies, grilled chicken.... ahhh I can't wait!!

Enjoy this beautiful day!

What a feelin!

Mmmm I feel really good right now. Made some headway on my health needs assessment project, which really makes me feel better about this group project.

I also had a REALLY good workout today. I did 30 min on the bike and 30 min on the eliptical. THEN, yoga was really, really nice today. We did yin yoga, which I had never heard of (and if you haven't either, it's explained nicely here). Basically boiled down it's holding stretches/poses for longer amounts of time (about 3 min). Some of the poses (dragon especially) were a really deep stretch, and I know that I'm going to be feeling it tomorrow! I liked it. Definitely trying it again :)

I ran by the grocery store after class for a few staples that I had run out of. I go to the store a lot, but I just find it so relaxing and it gets my creative juices flowing.

Dinner was a salmon recipe that I modified from this one. I used seasoned bread crumbs and olive oil instead of butter.

Here's some prep:

And the finished product (which was delicious!):

I had it with these veggies (yellow carrots, navy beans, spinach, in an herb sauce), which I wasn't too impressed with. Eh, you can't win em all.

After my evening cocoa, I decided to indulge in a Chocolate VitaTop. This was my virgin VitaTop experience, and I was pretty pleased. I also put some almond butter on top to add some gooiness. Yummm.

Not much going on tomorrow, so this is a laid back night :) For everyone else, get psyched for Friday!

Time flies.

Mornin' mornin'! Can't believe it's Thursday already. How does the week go by so quickly?? Definitely not complaining, especially with some of the projects that I'm working on that I'm ready to pass.

I hadn't used my TJ's pumpkin butter for awhile, so I decided to crack it out this morning.

In the bowl:

• 1/2 c. oats
• 1/2 c. skim milk
• 1/2 c. H2O
• 1/2 banana
• 1 t. brown sugar
• cinnamon
• 1 T. pumpkin butter
• 10 g. walnuts
• 10 g. almond butter

It was good, but I don't know if I was really feeling the pumpkin butter this morning. I think I might like it better as a spread instead of a mix-in.

My first class is canceled, but I have to meet up about a group project for that class. That means going into campus anyway. I'm hoping that grad school has a lot fewer (if any) group projects. I know that as a social worker I am going to have to be able to work with people, but I think that that will be sooo much different.

For lunch/snacks I've got a veggie sandwich (hummus, tomato, cukes, avocado, sprouts, on yoga bread), mango, vanilla bean almonds, and a Vitamuffin. This seems like a winning combo to get me all the way through yoga.

Have a wonderful day :) Enjoy the nice weather if you're getting it.

Help Center love.

I really do enjoy being at Help Center. It’s so nice to be around a group of people who all want to help others and are genuinely compassionate. It’s so refreshing. I truly love volunteering here and having the opportunity to affect people's lives in a positive way :)

I had brought a couple of snacks with me for my shift. One of them I didn’t really end up getting in to; I made cream cheese and apricot cracker sandwiches, but I only ended up eating one.

I was WAY more concerned with getting into my vanilla Chobani and topping it with one of my granola bars. No one on my shift had ever tried Greek yogurt, so I let them all try some and they were amazed at how interesting the texture is.

I led some yoga for about 20 minutes while I was there for a couple of my friends who haven’t really tried it before. It was fun, but I felt a little spastic trying to figure out what moves to do. I think they liked it though :)

For dinner, I really wasn’t super hungry. I decided to make a TJ’s Chicken Chile Lime Burger. I served it on a wheat bun with avocado and tomato. Pretty darn good! I wanted to have a side of veggies, too, but I really wasn’t that hungry. Weird. I'm glad that I'm getting better at listening to my body, though.

Of course, I have to have my sweet before bed. I'm drinking my customary cocoa right now :)

Time to plan out my tomorrow. Good night!

Everything salad!

The weather is GORGEOUS for February. It's almost in the 60s!

I am at my Help Center shift right now, so this won't be a super long post. But I had such a good salad for lunch! It had pretty much every veggie in the fridge!

My Everything Salad:

• spinach
• tomatoes
• avocado
• carrots
• mushrooms
• kalamata olives
• asian medley (broccoli, baby corn, carrots, pea pods)
  
• feta
• mango
• vinegarette

I brought my granola bars with me, and I think they're going over pretty well, so far! Love.

Beware the senioritis!

I had some computer problems this morning, so I didn't get a chance to do my normal b-fast post. All better now, hopefully. I know that I need to get a new computer before I go to grad school, I just don't know when I should do it...

Breakfast was a lovely assortment of: 1/2 c. oats, 1/2 c. H2O, 1/2 c. skim milk, 1/2 banana, 1 t. light brown sugar, cinnamon, 1 t. flax (finally ground it up last night for the granola bars!), 10 g. walnuts, handful of blueberries, and 10 g. almond butter.

Delicious, per usual.

I almost skipped my class today, because I really can't stand it. But I went. But I left 1/2 way through it. I just hate when I have instructors that do nothing for me that I can't get from the book. So, I'll just read the book. It's a 400-level class, I expect more. I also have that really bad case of senioritis... I sort of feel guilty... but not really. Are these the common symptoms of senioritis?

Alrighty. I need to get some work done before my HC shift. Have a lovely afternoon!

Pumping it up.

What a long day! But it was also really fast... make sense?

After classes I went to the gym and did 60 minutes on the stationary bike. This is a pretty big deal for me, because I don't think I've ever done a workout by myself for that long (excluding yoga). I'm pretty sure it kept me pumped all day :)

Yoga was hard today, though! Maybe because of my long workout? We did a lot of core and upper body work, and my arms were feeling it! We'll see how I feel in the a.m.!

For dinner, I met my friend Dana at the student union. We decided to try Saladworks, since neither of us had tried it yet. I got the Newport salad (romaine/iceberg blend, black olives, chopped eggs, tomatoes, shrimp, tuna) with lite caesar and a wheat roll.

Overall, it was meh. A good choice for the food court, but nothing too special. It WAS a big salad, though, and filling. Good salad, not great salad.

Back at home, I picked up with my weekly baking :) Tonight I decided to make a granola bar recipe that I adapted from a recipe on Allrecipes.
Flax and Berry Granola Bars

• 2 cups rolled oats
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup ground flax
  
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup TJ's Golden Berry Blend
  
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350*. Combine all ingredients through salt. Make a well and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix with your hands and spread into a 9"x13" greased baking pan. Bake 15-20, until edges begin to brown.

Very yummy! I had 2 :)

Mmm, I love how you can see the flax:

Alrighty, time to get things together for another day. Have a good night!

WO Stats: 60 min stationary bike, 60 min yoga

Adjusting.

GOOD MORNING!! I feel 100% better than I did yesterday; still kind of hard to actually wake up, but now that I am, I am gooooood.

It helps that I had an awesome breakfast planned :)

In the bowl: 1/2 c. oats, 1/2 c. skim milk, 1/2 c. water, 1/2 banana, light brown sugar, cinnamon, 1 T. lemon curd, 1 T. toasted coconut, handful of blueberries, and walnuts. YUM!

I also made my lunch/snacks since I'll be on campus for a while.

Almond butter and 1/2 banana on yoga bread, apple, Pumpkin Pie Bar, and vanilla bean almonds. Lots of goodies to hold me over.

It looks like it's going to be another windy day here. Hopefully I can hold it together til I get home! Have a great morning! And Happy Mardi Gras!

To-fun!

Amazingly I DID get a lot done tonight. Laundry, assignments, cooking, and best of all: RELAXING! I've been reading and listening to music and I feel so much better than I did earlier. Hopefully the caffeine stuff is over, or at least easier, tomorrow.

I was so hungry when I got home! It's that late class that always gets me! I decided to finish off the rest of this plank of tofu. I used the bella eats method again, just used apricot preserves instead of honey. Didn't really make a difference, but I always like to experiment.

Along with the tofu were assorted veggies and Kashi rice. This was amazingly good. I'll say it again: best way to make tofu, EVER. Just look at the tofu beauty:

After some work/lounging I made a snack of Quaker Mini Delights (chocolate) that I had received as a sample, with 1 T. almond butter and 2 figs.

I was hungry a lot today. I'm thinking it might have been because of the smaller amount of oatmeal this morning. Well, we'll see to that in the a.m.! Hoping for nicer weather! G'night!

Caffeine downer.

I am definitely in class right now. I can't stand this class and I figured that I would be able to update during this time.

The non-caffeine is really killing me already. I knew that it was going to suck because I've done it before, but my energy is soooo low. I forced myself to the gym and to the grocery store, but I feel like the rest of the evening after dinner is going to be pretty draggy.

Pre-workout I got in an apple.

Lunch was a cup of chicken noodle and an interesting sandwich combo: Yoga bread, 1 Laughing Cow Swiss Wedge, spinach, cucumbers, and turkey bacon. The flavors were different, but good. Loving the yoga bread :)

I also had a cup of cocoa in an attempt to perk me up, but no luck.

I had a wonderful discovery at the store! I've been wanting to try Greek yogurt, but I wanted to wait for a sale. And there was one today! I picked up some Chobani and had the honey flavored one as a snack.

I knew that it was supposed to be thick, but the texture was totally not what I was expecting. I was thinking that it would be like the Thick and Creamy Yoplait, but it was more like sour cream texture. It was thick, but still smooth. I also packed a Dark Chocolate Coconut Kashi.

I am really ready to sleeeeeeeeeeeep! Sorry for the negativity, I just need to get my energy back! Have a good afternoon!

WO Stats: 20 min eliptical, 20 min treadmill

Caffeine cut.

Happy Monday!

Today might be a little bit rough because I've decided to kick my caffeine habit (again). I've been getting headaches and I've been irritable and I think it's my morning coffee's fault. So I'm drinking some decaf now, hoping that I don't get my butt kicked by more headaches later on. Anyone have any tips for making the caffeine cut?

Last night I had the Whitman's sampler that my mom had sent me for V Day. They were good, except there wasn't a coconut one! What gives, Whitman?

This morning I had a yummy bowl of oats. Gustl said that I act like I've never had oatmeal before, and I kind of feel like I haven't. I mean, I pay attention more to how it affects my hunger and I've never tried so many manipulations. Speaking of:

Today I did 1/3 c. oats, 1/3 c. skim milk, 1/3 c. water, 1/2 banana, cinnamon, light brown sugar, 1 piece of zucchini coconut loaf, and a spoonful of almond butter.

Also, check out Kashi's website! Free frozen entrees! Have a good morning!!

New layout.

Little bit of a face lift... the black was starting to get me down!

Weekend 2/20-2/22

Phew! What a weekend! I seriously thought that I was going to have more down time, but the good thing is that I finished BOTH of the papers that I have due in the next couple of days! Yay! Hopefully that means that I get to catch my breath.

Friday Night:

Before I headed home, I grabbed a Pumpkin Pie bar and an apple for the road.

For dinner, we decided to go to Plaza. Plaza Tapatia is my favorite Mexican restaurant, period. They have the best homemade salsa and everything else on the menu is amazing. One of my favorites is the shrimp quesadilla, but I decided to go for the two chicken tacos with rice and beans.

We started out with that amazing salsa and chips. Plus the white sauce, which no one really seems to be able to identify, but it's soooo good :)

And the main course (there are 2 tacos).

For dessert (not pictured), I was fed some cookies and cream ice cream. Definitely didn't need it, but it was good :)

Saturday:

We woke up ridiculously, embarassingly late, so the whole day sort of got skewed. Breakfast was a bowl of Raisin Bran crunch with 1% milk and 1 1/2 pieces of cinnamon raisin bread with margarine.

Gustl and I both needed to get school work done so we headed over to campus. I had a Soy Vanilla Latte and a Nature Valley Sweet and Salty Almond Granola Bar for my study snacks.

After a few hours of work (and finishing my first paper!) we decided to FINALLY see Slumdog Millionaire. Before the movie, we picked up some Japanese Take-out. We both got the Chicken and Shrimp Terriyaki with vegetables and rice. I hadn't had it for a while and it was delicious!

The movie was so good! Everyone should see it. During the movie, I had some chocolate, but it was too dark for pictures :(

Sunday:

Today we made sure to wake up earlier! Gustl made french toast with the cinnamon raisin bread. I had it with margarine and a Fiber One peach yogurt. He's a good cook :)

Back to campus to study again. I had another latte, and finished my other paper.

We were so excited, because today we decided to use the one-day Sam's Club pass. Gustl is in love with their pizza, so we'd had a plan to eat that for lunch.

The funny thing is that we didn't buy anything. I just couldn't see myself actually finishing anything! Plus, I'm so fickle and I need to switch up my products a lot.

On the way home I grabbed a fruit cup and an Oatmeal Walnut Raisin Clif bar from Wawa. Again, I didn't get a picture because of travel (I've been bad about it this weekend!!).

For dinner, I was feeling pretty lazy and tired, so I just had a SmartOnes Thai Style Chicken and Rice Noodles. Not wonderful, not horrible. More sodium than I'd like, but what can you expect from most frozen meals?

I really need to pull my stuff together for tomorrow. Still need to proof my paper and print. Have a good week!!