Salads, My Garden & Pie

Is everybody ready to celebrate a few holiday’s??? I’m off work tomorrow for Canada Day and plan on spending it out at the park where the city puts on a HUGE party. Rides, games, music, contests and fireworks once dark it’s what I’m looking at. And being as Sunday is July 4, I think I’ll celebrate then, too! :)

Yesterday evening the sun was shining like nobody’s business, but it was chilly. Brrr! I curled up on the couch under a blanket and just felt so peaceful. I didn’t even touch the computer, or my cell, nada. I just went old school and watched some Food Network, Losing It with Jillian and America’s Got talent. So now I have yet again 2 days to talk about! HA!

I had some yummy oats fro breakfast. That’s always a good stat, right?
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup Quaker Oats
-cinnamon
-Boathouse vanilla chai
-walnut & pecan pieces
I enjoyed the Boathouse chai MUCH better when mixed in with the oats. Like I mentioned, straight up is too sweet, even for me! I think I’m gonna try it in some coffee next.

Before heading over to the gym I ate a piece of my banana snack bread:
I took a nice walk on the treadmill to get the blood pumping. I needed to get warm! :)

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 159
Max Hr: 174
Calories Torched: 431
Distance: 3.2 miles

Lunch was a big green salad with romaine, peas and cucumbers. I topped it off with some Renee’s roasted red pepper dressing:
Looks kind of like Christmas, but tasted ALL summer! Here’s a shot of the dressing:
I’ve been a little obsessed with Renee’s lately. Such a wonderful product!

Later in the afternoon I inhaled a pint of raspberries and chomped on some almonds:
I changed as soon as I got home from work and went down to my garden to take some photos and cut off a head of Boston lettuce. Here’s how things are looking right now!
Dinner was another huge salad, streamed broccoli, a chili lime turkey sausage and one random hotdog:
There was a time were I adored hotdogs on the BBQ. Sadly, I now find them unbearably salty. Boo!!! For dessert I had a slice of apple pie from pit stop #1 with vanilla ice cream. Now that I’ve tried everything I bought from there I’ll put up a review! And something else I will be reviewing is the butterscotch sauce that I drizzled on top of said pie!
SO GOOD!!

The kids finished up school yesterday and what a treat it was to have no lunches to make or backpacks to prepare! I slept in a few minutes longer than usual, fussed over my appearance a wee bit more then settled down to EAT!
Here we have a bowl of Dorset cereal, sliced strawberries and USAB. I don’t know which blend this one is because I chucked the box, but it has humongous brazil nuts and whole hazelnuts in it! Awesome!

I enjoyed another favourite (to me) bar before the gym today…chocolate peppermint stick!
Sadly, it’s another case of “my last one”. No worries; another month and I’ll be able to restock while in Michigan! :)

I walked again today. I’ve been sticking to 4mph with a 7.5% incline.

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 157
Max Hr: 172
Calories Torched: 446
Distance: 3.2 miles

Lunch was salad again….surprise! Today’s version was Boston lettuce, carrots, cucumber, tofu, blue cheese crumbles and Renee’s Japanese Ginger dressing:
I just really can’t get enough of salads these days! My afternoon snack was a cut up orange and sliced strawberries.
Great combo!

Even though it was sunny again today, it was still cool. It’s been feeling more like late September this week! I had pulled chicken breasts out for dinner and decided to cook it on the stove top rather than BBQ it. I cut the breasts in half then sautéed them until pretty much cooked through. Next up was a topping of salsa and grated marble cheese. I let it all cook together for about 10 mins. I also made some brown rice and steamed broccoli;
I only ended up eating one piece of chicken. I wanted room for dessert which was the very same as last night! YUM! There’s not much on the docket for tonight. I do know that I will be watching SYTYCD in a bit! For all my Canadian readers out there, what are your plans for Canada Day tomorrow??

Bye for now!!

My Weekend Travels

What a weekend!!! Lots of driving, wedding stuff and (food) shopping! I think to save some time I’ll recap the weekend and wedding details in this post and interject the few fun places we stopped in posts throughout the next few days. I don’t want this to get too long! So, Saturday morning we left town by 9am. The last thing I did before we left the house was eat breakfast.
-1 cup water
-2/3 cup oats
-cinnamon
-Enjoy Life Foods Mountain Mambo trail mix
It started raining when we left and rained the whole 3 hour drive. Yuck. The only good thing was that we didn’t hit any traffic at all going through Toronto. I guess all the world leaders were already where they needed to be by the time we rolled through! The rain let up enough for me to get a photo of our destination town!
The further east you get from T.O., the prettier, IMO, and I think Belleville is just gorgeous! My hubby and I both agree that we’d like to spend at least a week down in that area sometime soon.

Before checking into the hotel we stopped at our eating out stand by, Subway. Just by fluke, DD and my MIL showed up at the same time so we all ate lunch together. My MIL and I have both wanted to try the new (to us) orchard salad sub so that’s exactly what we got!
Ooooh, did I ever like this! I kept it simple by just adding tomato and lettuce and it was just perfect. I’m actually going to recreate it at home sometime this week. From what I can tell all I need to do is combine chopped up chicken breast, raisins, dried cranberries, diced celery and mayo (or Greek yogurt) and I should come out with something very similar. With my sub I also had about half of this bag of chips:
DS took care of the other half for me! Next up was hotel check in, rest a bit and then get ready for the wedding. I tried to take a few photos at the hotel, but I think I just look goofy!
LOL! We had a half hour ride to the church which was in another (smaller) community. Thankfully, the rain stopped by the time we got there. After the ceremony the bride and groom were able to take all their photos outside at a park that was walking distance from the church. Here are a few pics from that area:
On the way back to the Jeep we passed a small ice cream shop and DS asked to stop for a cone. The sign read “ice cream hand made daily in small batches” so I was curious to try it out. DS chose peanut butter banana, my hubby had razzaberry and I went for the ginger rhubarb:
Quite honestly, I have never tasted ice cream so good! I was just like frozen cheesecake! Creamy, thick and silky all at once! The scoop was small but it was rich enough that it was all we needed to be 100% satisfied. We drove over to Picton which is where the reception was held. This is another small town of 4000 people and is right on the shores of Lake Ontario. It’s really too bad that the weather was less than stellar because we could see some stunning boats and yachts at the docks and there are some beautiful homes along the shore, but it was too wet to get very close. We were able to stroll up and down the main strip, though. One of my purchases will show up in the form of a review later in the week. :)

Finally it was time to head over to the reception! This is where we really got a chance to catch up with my hubby’s side of the family. Mostly all of his cousins are female which is a lot of fun! We ate:
Drank (not me….I’ve never really liked the taste of alcohol!) and danced.

My hubby took this and wouldn’t it figure that my eyes were closed!! That’s DD in the floral dress and Aunt Darlene in the purple....HI, Aunt Dar!! . DS had had enough by 11pm so we said our goodbye’s and drove back to the hotel. I crashed by 12:30am and slept like a rock until 8am. And did I ever wake up HUNGRY! The boys were still passed out so I got myself ready with plans to head down for breakfast while they slept, but just as I was heading out the door my hubby woke up starving, too. LOL! DS was still passed out so we gently woke him up (you do not want to wake that boy up fast or he will be impossibly grumpy the whole day. We’ve learned that lesson the hard way!). By 8:30 we were sitting down to some chow. I had full intentions of making a bowl of oatmeal with banana and some walnuts that I brought from home, but when I saw that they had a waffle maker I knew that’s what I wanted. I used enough batter for half a waffle and topped it with banana slices and maple syrup:
It’s been a long time since I indulged in one of these and it was delightful. I was still a little hungry when that was done so I grabbed a vanilla yogurt, too.
Surprisingly, this meal kept my tummy from growling for almost 6 hours! We had to check out of the hotel by 11am, but DS had time for a swim before doing so. Well, he ended up spending more time in the hot tub, but whatever! He was happy! My MIL dropped DD off just as we were checking out and we hit the road for home. AMEN! Even with 2 pit stops along the way, we still made it home in just under 3hrs. We were amazed (and thankful) to not hit any traffic coming across Toronto again. I’ll reveal pit stop #1 later in the week, but pit stop #2 was lunch….at 2pm! We hit up Subway again as soon as we got off the highway. This time I ordered a 6” turkey and Swiss with pretty much the works.
This went down SO good! And my belly was happy, too. Once home we pretty much crashed for a few hours. I brought my book out onto the deck and read for a few hours. Glorious! Dinner was a fend for yourself kinda deal. The kids ate leftover pizza and I grilled some tofu and asparagus for myself with some Dijonnaise on the side for dipping.
Then I enjoyed a bowl of apple crumble from pit stop #1 with a little Cool Whip!
It rained like nobody’s business after supper. It felt like we were in a monsoon in the rain forest! No joke. Our satellite bit the dust so I took the opportunity to catch up on all my blog reading while the fam watched Monster House. We all crashed pretty early.

If it wasn’t for the breakfast I had planned getting out of bed would’ve been much harder this morning. While at pit stop #1 yesterday I bought some fresh, homemade apple bread that was just begging to be turned into French toast:
I dipped a nice thick slice into a mixture of egg whites, USAB, vanilla and cinnamon.
I let it cook until golden brown on both side and just topped it with a bit of butter as it really didn’t need anything else.
This turned out spectacular! The bread has a brioche like consistency which made for a nicely textured piece of toast. No disappointment here! LOL

Work was the usual Monday stuff. No surprises which is always a good thing. I ate my very last WCMN Clif bar before heading to the gym:
The gym saw me on the elliptical.

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 156
Max Hr: 168
Calories Torched: 427
Distance: 4.9 miles

I had about a ½ a container of goat’s milk yogurt in the fridge that needed finishing so I brought that for lunch:
I mixed in some honey and thawed blueberries for a very pretty looking meal!

My afternoon snack was a cut up orange;

This fella was kinda dry, but still sweet. It was a little strange, actually! The fam had pasta for dinner and in a round about way, I did, too. I stir fried some tofu, asparagus and mango with Japanese ginger dressing and then stirred in a 1/2 cup of high fibre pasta. A bit of freshly grated parm was sprinkled over the top.

This was really darn tasty! HA! Right after dinner I went a did the groceries. We were down to bare bones. I’ve been eyeing up a smoothie type drink for the past few weeks and it went on sale today so I snatched myself a bottle. I tried some as soon as I got home!

Anyone ever had this before? It’s awfully sweet so I’m glad I only poured a very small glass. It’s definitely something I’ll enjoy in small doses. The kids really like the strawberry banana one. I also had more of this:

My hubby just finished it off, thank God! There’s a very good reason why I rarely have food like this around the house….I eat it all!

Well, That would be it. Kinda lengthy, I know, but I hope you enjoyed anyways!

Bye for now!!

Watermelon Eating Contest

Hello, hello! How’s everyone doing? I’ve been keeping pretty busy, spending lots of time outside in the warm weather. I love summer! By the time I settled in last night it was 9pm and I watched SYTYCD. For those of you who watch it, do you have a fave dancer yet? I really like Kent cuz he’s so goofy and *real*. I think Billy, Robert and Alex are awesome dancers, though. I’m really not feeling any of the girls this year, though.

I was back to oats for breakfast yesterday…
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-almond butter
-yogurt chips and shaved coconut
I went with a chocolate almond fudge Clif bar for a pre gym snack:
I’ve had this one for awhile but always hesitated in bringing it to work because it really unleashes that chocolate monster inside me. I was OK today, though. The beast stayed quiet. LOL

My gym time was spent on the treadmill doing an incline walk. I walked at a pace of 4.2mph and put the incline up to 8%. Add that to an extra hot gym and I was one red faced, sweaty gal once done.

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 160
Max Hr: 174
Calories Torched: 433
Distance: 3.2 miles

We had no lettuce left (the stuff in my garden is just about ready to go!)and I was lazy when it came to packing a lunch so I ended up with a mix of goat milk yogurt, Crofters Superfruit jam and pineapple granola:
This was actually really refreshing after getting so hot in the gym and satisfied me just fine. A baggie of cherries completed my (at work) eats.
Dinner was fantabulous because it was something I don’t indulge in very often. (Turkey) meatball subs! I baked up some Dempsters oven fresh baguettes (for the fam) and WW buns for myself. **You can check out my review of this product under my “product review” tab. I bought this bag with my own dinero because they’re that good!** I layered shredded mozzarella on that hot buns, then the meatballs and finally extra sauce:
YUM! On the side I had a small salad with just some romaine, carrots, more mozzarella and sweet onion salad dressing.
The kids LOVE this type of meal. They split one of the baguettes and then each had another in a bun. Momma likes to see her kids eat hardy…especially my boy! :) Dessert was a piece of the banana snack cake with a Cool Whip hat!
Soccer followed dinner and another trip to Walmart followed soccer! Which is why I didn’t settle until 9pm! I finished off my raspberry tea infused chocolate when I got home along with a cup of decaf. I didn’t take a picture if the actual chocolate, but here’s the packaging again!

I woke after a great night sleep. We took our chances with the birds and left the windows open a bit last night. What a difference fresh air makes! I was raring to go a ½ hour earlier than normal! DD left with my MIL this morning to go to the wedding town which is normally a 3hr drive. Going across Toronto this weekend poses a bit of a problem with the G20 Summit going on and anticipating heavy traffic, DD’s company was wanted. She was thrilled! After packing her up I made some breakfast:
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-blueberries
-walnuts & pecans
Delicious! My hubby is also off work today so I didn’t even have to rush to eat this.

Work was S-L-O-W!!! I was almost falling asleep in my pile of keypunching. What a drag. This Clif bar perked me ups some, though:
I’ve had this flavour before, but today it felt like I was eating a scoop of PB right off the spoon! That’s a good thing!

I won’t lie…going to the gym today took every ounce of energy I had. I did 40 minutes on the treadmill at my normal speed but only set the incline to 4%. I also did 5 random minutes on the stepper.

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 140
Max Hr: 171
Calories Torched: 359
Distance: 2.8 miles

Lunch was a toasted Ezekiel muffin with a LC cheese wedge and egg whites. I ate it open faced to make it last longer:
I also ate some grapes and watermelon that I saved from a staff meeting.
The boys ordered pizza for dinner so I whipped up a quick mix of a ¼ cup (dry) couscous and a can of curried beans:
I rinsed the beans in a colander to get the marinade off. Enough of it soaks in that you can still taste the flavour. Here’s what I used:

After dinner the 3 of us made our way down to the school (which is beside our church) for the annual bazaar. This year DS entered himself in the watermelon eating contest. I was amazed because he doesn’t really even like watermelon. HA! They did it by grade level starting at 1 and ending with 8. DS is in grade 2 so he had a chance to watch the grade 1’s in action.
I think at this point the was starting to wonder what he got himself into! Nervously waiting for his slice.

Checking out how big it was. He was pretty concerned. I think he thought they were going to give him the whole melon!

And they’re off!!!

Glad it’s over!

What a blast! After washing the stickiness off he played a little mini golf:

Then we made our way home. Fun times! And that’s all for now. I likely won’t be around until Sunday night the earliest. I decided to leave the laptop at home because i don’t think I’ll have time to use it. I’ll still be checking blogs on my cell, though! I hope you all enjoy a fabulous weekend and I’ll catch you on the flip side!!

Bye for now!!