Jan 31, 2012

Tasty Tuesdays- Take 1

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Take 1 of Tasty Tuesdays! Over the past week I would say I have been trying to get back on track with healthy choices… my will-power does fail me sometimes but I’ve been doing my best to ensure the right choice is right in front of me!

Veggie Burger Salad w/ Strawberries

So I headed back to my faithful veggie burger on a salad! This time I even added a pickle on the side… ahh the good life! So this salad had everything on it… lettuce (which I need to eat A LOT of us because I bought a massive things from Sam’s Club), olives, fat free shredded mozzarella cheese, Morning Star Veggie Burger, and a hardboiled egg. It didn’t seem right to put salad dressing on a burger that day so I actually topped it off with a teaspoon of Breakstone Fat Free Sour Cream! DELICIOUS! Seriously, the best fat free sour cream I have ever had.

Then I ate my masterpiece. I didn’t finish the entire thing but needed something sweet afterward… so I ate a few big and delicious strawberries!

So filling I couldn’t finish the entire thing! 

and of course I need a little dessert!

Chicken Sausage and saladI had a soccer game this past Sunday that my parents attended! It is so nice to have my parents there to support me just like they did when I was a tiny little thing. They placed themselves perfectly in the spectator section so my dad was able to offer up helpful words of advice while I was on the field. I remember getting frustrated by this in high school but I found it VERY helpful! It is amazing what other people can see on the field from a different view point.After the game we headed back to our house for dinner! Tim and I cooked up some chicken sausage from Sam’s Club (which we are OBSESSED with) and had peppers and onions on the side. The boys made sandwiches and the girls had them “naked”. My mom had brought over a tasty salad that we enjoyed with the sausage and I made some guacamole as an appetizer. That disappeared too quickly and I didn’t even get to snap a picture but you can just take my word for it that it was delicious!Chicken sausage makes for a great family meal!

 100% Steel Oats for Breakfast

So clearly we had a very successful trip to Sam’s club based on my other meals! While we were there I also spotted these 100% steel oats (less than 200 calories) breakfast treat in the frozen section. A girl at work has been eating these for a few weeks and I eye it up every time I see her coming out of the kitchen so I bought them to give them a try. They are “Good Food Made Simple” and they have all natural ingredients. They come in a box of 8 individual wrapped servings on the oats and all you go in unwrap and pop in the microwave for 3 minutes.

Now I will say that they are not as sweet as the tasty instant oatmeal that comes in all sorts of flavors now but they are good and very filling. Any time I can find a breakfast that will keep me full is a win for me. Plus, it’s an easy thing to travel to work with which is more than an added bonus.

What I love most is that the box of 8 comes in 2 different flavors. 4 with honey and 4 with berries… which is perfect for me because sometimes I am feeling a sweet honey flavor and other times I just want come fruit.  I may even put some extra fruit in it next time I have it!

This is the box it comes in...

and the package comes individual like this...

and after 3 short minutes in the microwave, you get this!

Egg Salad

Tim loves egg salad! We don’t eat it often but anytime I start to hard-boil an egg I hear a little voice from the living room saying… “are you making egg salad with that” usually it wasn’t my plan but it is delicious and it makes him happy so we almost always do!

While Tim loves to EAT egg salad I should mention here he is not a huge fan of making it… he claims that I make it better which I guess I do make it with love because I know how much he likes to eat it and I don’t mind at all!

So this time around we made the egg salad with this mayo that the lady at the Asian market recommended. She recommended it for potato salad but Tim said go for it and I’m glad we did… just delicious! I have no idea what brand of mayo or anything because it just came in an unlabeled bottle with a red cap. If I find out exactly what it is- I will let you know!

So in our egg salad we put about 5 hard-boiled eggs, mayo, a little blast of regular mustard (we use Frischs yellow mustard), a small amount of vinegar and a little bit of sugar! Let it sit and get cold overnight and it makes a heck of a lunch! One time I did make this was Greek yogurt instead of mayo and I think I may have used a little bit of that delicious Breakstone Sour Cream but this new mayo was a nice treat!

Tim LOVES egg salad!

A Special Drink

I should mention here that I don’t really have any drinking habits… well I mean besides my love obsession with red wine. I don’t drink coffee on a daily basis, I’m not a big tea fan, and I try not to drink pop/soda if I can help it… but every now and then I do like a taste (especially Fresca)! But when I travel to Miami for work I always get spoiled with a delicious espresso beverage… oh the joys of working on an espresso business.

Now I can’t go crazy and do a serious straight up espresso. I get it with milk and well a little bit ok I lied.. A LOT of sugar. In Spanish they are called a “cortadito” and this lovely woman makes the most delicious ones! She knows I can’t really speak a lick of They are some serious business and can keep you up all night long but oooo I love them. I have no idea how she makes them so delicious but if I wanna give it a try google it and see what happens!

Look at that delicious(ness) I really wish that was a word!

Running

And I managed to sneak in a 3 mile run yesterday before I headed to the airport! I did 2 miles outside and 1 mile on the treadmill (in the opposite order haha). It was great to meet my mom and see her before I headed out of the cold and into the sunshine!!

it was cold but it was worth it!

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Sep 16, 2011

Where does the time go?

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I mean seriously… where does it go? I feel like I am sooo behind on all of the fun updates but here I am finally trying to get things back together as I head into another fun filled but very busy weekend!

Let’s see… Sunday! Sunday was just a lazy day. After the fun night out for Kara’s bachelorette party I spend most of the day doing homework and managed to fit in a good 3 hours nap. Yea so what if that is more like an entire nights sleep and less of a nap, I needed it! When I finally got up and was moving around I did make it out to the grocery store to get a few things for the week. With Tim’s new slow carb thing we were in need of some more black beans and a few other tasty treats (like fruit haha). The worst was trying to pick out avocados… none of them were ripe enough! I grabbed two thought in hopes that they would ripen up after sitting out for a few days.

When we made it back from the grocery store we made dinner together! Tonight we made a burger salad but with out turkey burgers instead of the usual Morning Star Veggie Burgers. They were equally tasty but things always seem to get a little messy in the kitchen.


But I cooked up some mushrooms to make it tasty!

Tim did the grilling

I cooked up the side dish.. yummy asparagus!

And then we ate…

Monday I thought I was sick! My allergies had been terrible after I left Kara’s house so all day Sunday I was kind of blah and sneezing a lot. Monday morning didn’t go much better so I assumed it was some sort of sickness.

I know I don’t usually take pictures of my lunch from work because, well, I feel weird but I ate at my desk today and it was pretty delicious so I did.

Tasty Lunch!

So like I said, I eat a lot of veggie burgers for lunch. 1) because they are easy to pack 2) they are even easier to make for lunch 3) because they taste great and 4) they are too bad for you and fill you up. So you can see that I just put the Morning Star veggie burger on lettuce pretty much just like my favorite dinner but not as much of a salad and more of a lettuce bun. I love tomatoes so I ate some of those on the side! Tasted great!

So after the word day my head felt stuffy and my nose was running so it really could have gone either way. Regardless I pushed myself through the work day and the allergy/sickness didn’t seem to clear up much but I still went to workout class to get my fitness in for the day!

We did a little bit of everything in workout class that night from rowing to lifting to abs to arms to legs. It felt GREAT. It was exactly what I needed but after I was finished I knew that was enough. Even though I wanted to go for a run (yes I truly did want to) I decided not to only because I wasn’t sure if this was sickness or not and I didn’t want to set myself up for disaster. So I went home for dinner.

Tim and I had chili planned for dinner since our grocery shopping trip the night before. So we cooked up some ground turkey (hopefully not the stuff in the recal!) put in some spicy chili seasoning along with beans and lots of other spices and peppers and called it dinner. I’ll tell you what… I didn’t even miss the sour cream and crackers I usually put in. As a matter of fact I went back for seconds!

Tuesday was going to be a long day from the start because Finance class is on Tuesdays from 6-9. I actually enjoy this class (unlike the other 2) so I like going. The teacher is pretty entertaining and a really good instructor. He is patient with those of us that forgot everything about undergrad so I am appreciative of that!

For lunch we had a working lunch with my first manager who just recently got a new job with a different department! We will miss her but at least we were able to share a last group lunch with her. When our cafeteria caters almost everyone orders the breaded chicken fingers which I mean don’t get me wrong are freaking awesome but not on the menu plan for healthiness. So I decided on the strawberry salad where I attempted to scoop around the feta cheese but fortunately still managed to snag a few and had the grilled chicken strips on the side. They weren’t nearly as good but still very much served their purpose.

For dinner Tim treated me to Tilapia when I walked in the door. I HATE eating that late but I don’t really have a choice. No one eats during class and it takes me around 40 min to get to class so I can’t eat on the way or when I get there. So that leaves me eating at 9pm at night and going to bed at 10. Terrible for you I’m sure but hey a girls gotta eat!

These pieces of fish were HUGE. And they were also breaded… a no no for Tim and I but they were easy to cook and we needed to get some type of quality food in our diet so we did just that. Ate it with some healthy side choices and BAM there was dinner! This is probably on my list of top 5 things I like to buy at Sam’s Club/BJ’s… wherever we get that fish from!

So yea that is my food updates for the first few days of the week! You probably noticed there was NO running involved on these few days. For 2 of them I just wasn’t feeling up to par and for Tuesday I just didn’t have time. My goal now that I am able to do some longer runs is to run 3-4 times a week and do my weight lifting as often as I can. Now that running feels more like a reward to myself I think this schedule will be easy for me to handle with everything else going on (grad school, wedding planning, going to weddings, work, house cleaning, ect). Feeling good about Wednesday!

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Aug 1, 2011

A Breakfast and Lunch Worth Reading About!

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It has been just a crazy few days! But here I am finally updating you on my life!

Let’s starts w/ Wednesday’s Run

I think today was the easiest run I have had yet. Putting aside that I once again forgot my inhaler (I sound like suck a dork!) it was great. It has rained the night before so it was a little muggy outside but it was kind of nice to just get out there and run. The interval app works wonderfully so that was just an added bonus and Tim and I got to talk about the weekend activities. I did get a few more tid-bits on where people lived and who was who’s tutor but I don’t remember most of that but it was interesting when I heard it!

Today I started to realize that it is really important to take care of your body. You wash your face every day right? You brush your teeth every day right? Well, running for me is becoming one of those things. I have really started to see the value is treating yourself well. First off, it’s nice to feel good about yourself. I can’t say for sure whether my body has physically seen any changes from this new adventure but I feel better. I feel like I walk with my head a little higher and that I have some more self-esteem that I was missing before. I mean, don’t get me wrong. Generally speaking I am always an outgoing in-your-face kind of girl but we all have those things about us that make  us a little self-conscious. I realized that I feel really darn proud of myself when I tell people I get up in the morning and run and I feel like I want to share it with more people. I mean, I am not that type of person that actually likes to wake up before the sun isn’t out so this has not been an easy task for me but I am trying… and I feel like I am getting there. This may very well be one of the hardest things I have done in my life though. I am constantly challenging my body (especially those big soccer girl legs) to get out there and work themselves. I just know that when I get home and I get in the shower I feel like my body smiles at me and says “thanks”. You know it says “that was tough and I struggled but I got through it and I’m proud of myself.”

So yea I am telling you two things right now… #1 My body talks to me in the shower, try not to be too jealous about that and #2 It feels good to challenge yourself to do something out of the ordinary so let me ask you this… What have you done to challenge your mind or body today? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Wednesday Breakfast

It was sooo good!

Breakfast Sandwich

Cooking up the egg whites!

Check out that baby hu? I made it all by myself haha! I made 2 fried egg whites (1 just isn’t enough) and melted some Munster Cheese on top then added some tomato and basil on an everything bagel thing. I mean this thing tasted like a dream. I can’t even tell you what part of it I loved the most… the mixture of everything was just perfect. I enjoyed it in the car on the way to work even though I had Brody in my face trying to steel it from me. Don’t worry- I would just breathe on him so he would pretend to taste it haha.

Wednesday Lunch

Today’s lunch was a delicious Morning Star Burger… so good! It was a veggie burger and it turned out to be burger day in our cafeteria here at work too. So Casey went to buy lunch and snagged me some delicious toppings that I didn’t bring from home. So I enjoyed my burger with 2 pieces of lettuce wrapped around it instead of a run and had tomato and pickle on the burger. I also had 2 of Casey’s curly fries which were very good! Other than that I don’t think I had anything else… or at least I can’t remember.

Wednesday Dinner
I wanted to branch out a little for dinner but we hadn’t already thought ahead to thaw anything so we had to go with something we could cook frozen or thaw easily. Tim and I opted for the thaw easily option and got out some salmon from the freezer. It is just plain salmon so once thawed we coated it with hot chili powder or something and then put it on foil and on the grill. While it was cooking I was trying to rummage through the fridge to see what I could do with this and I decided on making a fish taco. We have an enormous amount of tortillas that looked delicious as we walked through Sam’s Club one day so I thought that would be a good open.

The other fillings to my tacos consisted of chopped up tomato, cilantro (yes I LOVE cilantro) lime juice, and some jalapeños. I mixed that all together added a dab of sour cream and salad on top and added some green onions mostly to make it look pretty. And WOW it was so good! I will definitely be making these again and maybe even get Tim to try it. He kept it nice and simple with just the piece of fish and a few side dishes. It still looked really good though but I thought mine looked MUCH better!

Toppings on the fish taco!

Mixed this up myself!

We concluded our evening with some high quality TV of course and then headed off to bed early so that Thursday morning wouldn’t feel soooo early.

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Jul 25, 2011

So I guess your name is Tim now….

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Ever notice how fast the weekends go by yet the weekdays seem to drag on forever? That just really stinks doesn’t it? Well this weekend was jam packed with a lot of fun.

Before I tell you about the fun, yes I made it running Friday morning! We did the last day of this week’s interval

Warm Up 5 min
Run 5 min
Walk 1:50min

This run went really well this morning. Must have been that MaraNatha Chocolate Almond Butter that kept me going or the fact that it was FRIDAY and I only had 8 hours of work standing in my way. Tim and I must be working harder now during our runs because we aren’t able to talk very much during the running parts which means we fit everything in we can during the 1:50min walk we have!

Friday night we headed out to celebrate Mark’s birthday so we went to a restaurant called Whitey’s Booze n Burger. You can probably guess what we already ordered for dinner right? Burgers of course! I had never been to this place but most of the other dinner crew did. It is pretty well known for it’s pretty good burgers and cheap drinks but mostly because it had a sand volleyball court outside that you can just go and play. We didn’t end up playing volleyball because 1) it was kind of raining and crappy out and 2) there were this reeealy competitive guys that were playing the entire time we were outside. So since volleyball didn’t happen our 4 boys decided to play some cornhole and the girls sat around drank beer and hung out!

The fun atmosphere I would give a 8 out of 10 to because it was something different and fun. The guys that were playing looked like they went there all of the time so it was a little intimated to other people to want to play. The good I would give a 7.5ish. It was good but not the best burger I have ever had. I did opt to put mine on a bed of lettuce rather than a burger and they were very accommodating so that was very nice. The burgers are about 8-10 bucks and they don’t include fries or anything so just something else to consider about checking it out.

Saturday morning was a blur but we pretty much just prepared for our friends Rose and Adam to arrive! We spent most of the morning on the couch and just laying around. They got here in the afternoon and we all hung out and ate lunch together. For lunch I decided on a Morning Star veggie burger on a Sandwich Thin with tomato and avocado with Stacey’s Pita Chips on the side. Rose is just amazingly good to me and brought me some wedding goodies!

Magazines from Rose

She ADAM even brought Tim an engagement gift! Something I hope he finds very useful.

Tim's gift from Adam

After lunch we decided to go golfing, which ended badly because after 3 holes it started storming so we had to leave. It was kind of good timing because I was getting a little frustrated- okay a lot frustrated and didn’t even play the 3rd hole. So what this means is that I lasted 2 holes because I was just tired of being so bad at it. Haha- I have been trying but I have a very long way to go! After golf we headed home to make some dinner.

I found a new chicken recipe that sounded great so I thought I would try it. I followed it pretty much exactly except that my box of stovetop was a little bigger than the one specified so I added in some additional water as well. I thought this recipe was REALLY good.  There is a pretty good chance that I am biased because I happen to LOVE chicken and stovetop so the fact that I was able to combine the two made dinner that much better. Rose also made some roasted brussels sprouts in the oven, which I really enjoyed. She just topped them with olive oil and parmesan cheese. I also made some corn in case we needed some extra veggie and added a role on the side with the salad. Rose and I love green olives so we enjoy making salads together!

Dinner conversation turned out to be pretty hilarious. So Tim has this TERRIBLE habit of leaving a glass, yes a single glass, on the coffee table every single night. Well most nights. So every morning when I come down first I take this glass off of the coffee table and put it in the dishwasher. Conversation somehow turned to this glass and I got an earful about being to anal about cleaning up glasses. Haha. It was quite the conversation. I found out that my glass in the dishwasher obsession really bothers Tim! He seems to think that I just go crazy over these glasses lying around and I just think he is silly for leaving the one glass on the table at night. So word to the wise don’t put glasses in the dishwasher until you have asked your other half if they are finished with it! Ha.. see engaged life isn’t always perfect!

After dinner we sat around and talked and finally decided to play a game. No one else seemed to want to pick the game so I decided on Handbandz. This game is from 1991 and I think I must have taken it from my parents house. You play by putting a card in this band that goes on your forehead. You don’t know what is on the card you just know if it is a who, what, or where card. For 1 min you can ask yes or no questions to try to figure out what is on your card. This game is HARD even though I somehow guessed Lucy from I Love Lucy on the first one! Rose ended up in the lead when we decided we just weren’t into the game anymore.

Card on top of my head

However in the middle of this game Adam, who is just hilarious and truly does say the darnest things looked at Tim and said… “Tim or whoever you are now that everyone decided to change your name now that we are in our mid-twenties”. When I met Tim and most of the way through college most people called him Timmy still and then somehow after we graduated I started calling him Tim. It has caught on for most people so it was just so funny to hear Adam bring it up. As I type it I realize it is not that funny for all of you but it was really funny… just trust me! The night ended with a lot of laughing and Adam falling asleep on the couch… which is GREAT because usually I am the one sneaking up to bed hoping that no one notices I am the first to go to sleep!

Anniversary Breakfast for Rose and Adam

Tim and I woke up early to make an Anniversary breakfast for Rose and Adam! They have been married 1 year today so we wanted to do something a little special. We decided on cinnamon rolls, pancakes, and bacon and of course mimosas. It was a good thing we were able to use these candles for 2 anniversaries! I think they enjoyed their little surprise and we enjoyed their company until they had to head home for a full day of anniversary fun! Tim and I ran some errands and I got some dry shampoo (an update will be made when I try it) and then came home to try to do some wedding planning and to watch up on some TV. For now, we are thinking Mexico because it seems like a reasonably well-priced vacation for our guests! We have dinner with Tim’s grandparents tomorrow so we are going to see what they think about it! Their opinion is very important to us.

For dinner we made a quick batch of sloppy joes, which I put on a few pieces of lettuce along, side a rice dish and some corn. Tim’s went on a Sandwich Thin and he seemed to enjoy it!

My sloppy joe dinner

Tim's sloppy joe dinner

I am hoping this week flies by because I am headed off to Casey’s hometown this weekend for a bridal shower! New interval tomorrow… so wish me luck!

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