Barley-rific Monday

Happy Monday! A lot of people think I’m nuts, but Monday is my favourite day of the (work) week. It always seems to pass by so quickly. Seeing as the temps have turned much cooler, we’ve added an extra blanket to the bed which has been keeping me very cozy indeed. So cozy in fact, that I’ve been staying in bed until the last possible minute. Hence the coffee in my oats again this morning!

-1 cup coffee
-1/3 cup PC 5 Grain cereal
-almond butter
-carob chips

Hit. The. Spot.

Our computer software crashed this morning; thank God it’s not pay week! Anyways, this little blip afforded me the time to read all the blogs I missed over the weekend. By the sounds of it, you all had a good one! Lots of tasty baking happening out there….LOVE it! :D I enjoyed some of my baking pre gym in the form of a thumbprint cookie;

Chomp, chomp!

The gym was peachy! Now that we have TV’s in there, I’ve been getting some Rach on while I sweat. My lunch this week starts at 11:30am so I watched the second part of the show first and the first 20 mins of the show second. A little back-asswards, but it works!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 166
Max Hr: 181
Calories Torched: 503
Distance: 4.5 miles

Craig Ferguson was on the show today and boy did I laugh. What an amusing fella! Almost made me want to stay up until 12:35am to watch the show!!

You should not be surprised to see that I brought cauliflower & barley pilaf for lunch today.

What can I say? I can’t get enough of it! You’ll be glad to see further on in this post that I finished it off at supper time! Then I got into the chocolate macaroons from the office candy dish;

Pretty sure I ate at least that many more!

Now on to a pretty little squash I bought at Knapp’s yesterday. I will admit that I bought it for the pretty orange hue and had NO idea what kind it was.

Pretty, isn’t it? I put the internet to good use and discovered that this is called an “ambercup” squash. (scroll down a bit in the link to see the info). It would seem that it is very similar to a buttercup squash…only better looking! I washed it really well, cut it in half, scooped the seeds out,

sprayed it with some olive oil and roasted it flesh side down on a greased cookie sheet for 45mins at 375*

Oh, la la! I ate a portion of this with a bowl of homemade chicken soup. Remember all those beer butt chickens we’ve been eating? Well, I saved all the bones and on Saturday they spent 3+ hours simmering away with some tomatoes and a whole lot of water. Once the broth cooled off I strained all the pieces out and put it in the fridge for a day. All I had to do tonight was scrape the hardened “fat” off the top and it was ready to roll! I threw in some leftover steamed veggies from last night and made them disappear with my immersion blender. Once boiling, I added a handful of alphabet shaped noodles and a package of ravioli (for the fam). Presto! Here’s my meal for your viewing pleasure!

And a soup bowl close up!

The perfect end to this meal was a slice of apple butter bread with a smidge of ginger pear jam on it;

DD is at dance now and the boys are not back from hockey yet so I have a few minutes to myself. Can’t wait to cozy up under a blanket with a tea later on. I hope everyone has as relaxing an evening…

Bye for now!!