Time for a Holiday

Hi everybody!   Hope your weekend is going well!  I’ve got 3 days of eats to cover so I think I’ll just get to it….
Thursday
I had a dentist appointment first thing (ugh) so I had a quick bowl of cereal before giving my teeth some extra attention. This is the Kirkland cinnamon pecan cereal: Very good indeed!  I snacked on the last Kardea bar before going to the gym: Thursday was 30 Day Shred day at the gym and 4 of us sweat and grunted through it.  :)  Later on in the day I ordered the Jillian Michaels “No Trouble Zones” DVD.  I’ve seen it around blog land and heard good reviews so I’m eager to try it out!
Thursday and Friday were still clean-out-the fridge-and-pantry days so my lunch morphed into a salad of sorts. Corn, edamame, cucumber, feta and white balsamic vinegar.  Turned out pretty decent!  I really didn’t get hungry for an afternoon snack, but whipped up an amazing little dinner for myself.  WW pita, lettuce, mayo, dijon and falafels.  Yummy!  I munched on  blueberries, too; Thursday night was soccer night and SYTYCD night.  I was pretty tuckered out so a night in front of the tube was needed.   This asthma business of mine seems to be taking a lot out of me and I don’t like it.  *sigh*
Friday
It was a rainy morning and I just wanted some comfort food.  Enter my dark chocolate cherry mocha oats: Doesn’t that just look divine?  This is probably my favourite bowl of oats ever.  Thank you Starbucks for the inspiration!!  :)
Morning snack looked like this: I’m still not over the moon about these bars.   Have any of you tried them??
I hoped on the treadmill for a sweaty incline walk on the treadmill.  I set the incline to 7.5% and the speed to 4.2.  Thirty five minutes later saw me pretty red in the face!  LOL
I was getting pretty desperate when it came time to pack my lunch and ended up with goat’s milk yogurt, blueberries and Bear Naked granola.  There was also pear ginger jam mixed into the yogurt: Aside from eggs, yogurt and granola is a go-to meal for me.  Tell me your favourite go-to meal, K?  A co worker brought in some carrot cake after lunch and I took a small piece.  Mmmm…not so good.  For some reason it tasted like there were grains of sand in it.  I ate it to be polite….I’m not feelings hurter!  How’s that for improper grammar??  LOL
My hubby finally broke and bought oven ready pizza for supper.  The one he picked for me was a thin crust with spinach, feta, mozzarella and edam:
I enjoyed this so much I had a third piece!  The crust was light and crispy and reminded me of a croissant.   After dinner I finally went to do groceries.  I was a little scared that I would have to spend a fortune, but the bill wasn’t much more than what I usually spend.   Once again I was exhausted by 9pm and just got comfy on the couch with a book.  T’was nice!
Today
After a glorious 10hr sleep I awoke fresh and ready to tackle the day.  I was quite hungry so another bowl of cereal was definitely the way to go This is a fave of mine; Wildroots.  YUM!  We spent a good chunk of the day pulling weeds.  They’re much easier to get out when the ground is wet.  We’re planning on extending our walkout deck so my hubby took all the measurements needed for the job.  After showers and a quick lunch of salad and the last piece of pizza… We went to Home Depot to price out the wood and somehow ended up at Walmart.  Backing up to my salad a minute….I used the last 3 falafels and dressed it with some Renee’s pear & blue cheese dressing;  

At Walmart I came across a very appealing sounding Hershey’s chocolate bar that HAD to come home with me!
BOOYA!!!  For dinner we did a beer butt chicken, quinoa and corn: Dessert was some homemade pineapple coconut froyo.   Oh, yes I did!!!  More on that to come very soon. 
So I’m very excited because we start 2 weeks of vacay on Monday!  YIPEE!!  I plan on kicking back and having a great time while off… And maybe getting a bit goofy, too.
Should be a riot!!
Bye for now!!

Kardea Bars

If you’ve been reading then you will know that I received 4 Kardea bars to try last week. Well, all of them have made their way to my belly and now I’m ready to let you know what I thought of them! A little bit about the bars first (info from the website).

-each bar has 7g of fibre, 7g of protein and 4.5 healthy fats (from the almonds)
-each bar weighs in at 150 calories each (2.5 points if you are on Weight Watchers)
-they’re low glycemic and 1 diabetic starch exchange
-they deliver 4 ingredients with proven heart benefits:
-1g plant sterols
-oats
-psyllium
-vegan proteins
-they are also low in saturated fats & sodium and have no trans fats.

Kardea bars are all kosher certified and vegan, to boot!

Okay! I’ll list them in the order that I tried them in.

BANANA NUT
-as soon as I opened the packaging it smelled like my kitchen does after baking a loaf of banana bread. Awesomeness right there. Much to my delight, it tasted just like banana bread, too! This was my favourite of the 4.

LEMON GINGER-this one smelled just like a lemon tart/square and had strong overtones of ginger. I found it to be very refreshing and light tasting.

CRANBERRY ALMOND
-This one seemed to have larger pieces of almonds in it than the rest. Not complaining…just saying! While eating it I was convinced that it was cherry almond because cherries were all I could taste. I checked the wrapper to see and lo and behold it’s cranberry! HA! Again, not complaining!

CHAI SPICE
-I left this one for last because I LOVE chai anything. I was thrilled to be met with the scent of a Starbucks Chai tea latte when I ripped the wrapper off. I have to admit to being a little disappointed in the flavour, though. I would have liked it to be a lot stronger and at points I almost felt like it was a bit bitter. I have to say that it ended up being my least favourite. I wonder if I set my expectations too high for it?

As an overview; I found all the bars to have a wonderful chewy, dense texture. The addition of almonds gave a nice crunch so for a texture gal like me, I really enjoyed eating them! They seem to be widely available in the US, but unless the Canadian Whole Foods or GNC Stores sell them, I think us Canucks are SOL. Have any Canadians out there seen them around?? Because I would buy them if I could find them.

So tell me, have you tried Kardea Bars? What did you think? Which was your flavour of choice?

Eggs & Allergies

Hi, all! How’ve you been on this fine hump day? I can’t believe it’s here already! Guess that’s what having Mondays off does. I’ll take it! I finally made a great bowl of overnight oats yesterday! I think the trick for me is to keep it simple….not too many flavours.

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1 cup USAB
• cinnamon
• vanilla chai powder
• 1 tbsp chia seeds
• blueberries
• mocha hazelnut sprinkles

Work was pretty busy, but didn’t keep me from getting my morning snack in!

This was AWESOME! Totally worth the $3 I paid for it. The scent was a deep coffee one and it reminded me of chocolate covered espresso beans. I love those! I’d buy this again in a heartbeat!

I brought my laptop to work again yesterday to do the Shred DVD. Two of my co workers joined in on the fun again! This is turning into a bi-weekly event that I look forward to. I think they do, too!

Lunch was a huge salad. You can see the purple carrots much better this time. I dressed it with a little Renee’s Caesar parm dressing:

This lunch stretched out so long that I didn’t eat my afternoon fruit! I did, however, make myself an iced coffee:

While at Starbucks last Friday night I taste tested their new line of Via Iced coffee and fell in love. They were selling the packages for a dollar off so I snapped one up!

The single serve packets are to be mixed with 2 cups of water and are lightly sweetened. I would normally take a little “milk” in my iced coffee but find that I don’t need it with this. The only downside to drinking this was that it was a little too close to dinner and ruined my appetite. DD and I had hair appointments so I knew I needed to eat something. I’m one of those lucky people who gets heartburn if I let myself get too hungry. I toasted an English muffin, spread some LC cheese, egg whites and hot sauce on top and called it dinner.

Sad looking, but my go-to meal none the less. You might even see it again today! ;) It was past 8pm when we got home and DS somehow roped me into playing some Wii with him. Playing with my little man is humorous because as soon as he starts to lose we have to switch games. He thinks he’s being pretty suave, too by telling me that he thinks I was having “trouble” with that one. HA!

I woke to a bright, sunny morning and spend a little too much time relishing that in bed. Needless to say, a quick breakfast was needed so I could get out the door!

All Bran Buds and Nature’s Path optimum cranberry ginger. This box is done now. I might have shed a tear or 2.

I was talked into making a doctors appointment by my boss today because I’ve had a bothersome cough for the past couple of weeks. Guess she got tired of listening to me! On the way to the office I ate a Kardea bar:

Yum! One more to go before review time. In the meantime, what is your favourite Kardea bar??

So, it turns out I have the same type of asthma as DS. I can’t say I’m really surprised because I kinda had a feeling she would say that. Basically, for the both of us, it’s allergy induced. DS has a lot of trouble with his breathing (and coughing) in the spring when all the pollen is out and in the fall when the leaves fall and the mould it out and about. Now, I’ve know for a good 10yrs that I’ve got allergies to grass, ragweed, birch tree pollen, cats and dust. Just like lots of other people out there. In all those years I can honestly say that these allergies have never bothered me. To the point where I didn’t even like to admit to having them after seeing my Dad and brother suffer with horrible symptoms over the years. Well, I guess ragweed is in full swing and this is the year that I’ve started to react to it. I walked out of there with a prescription for the exact same 2 inhalers as DS has. Bummer. Even more humbling is that now I know what my poor child has been going through his whole life. Sheesh!

No gym as my appointment was over the noon hour. When I got back to my desk I pulled out the tuna salad I had packed.

I’ve had these before and they’re pretty decent in a pinch. This was part of my efforts to clean the pantry out.

It was a tad spicy, but nothing I can’t handle. :) We got SUPER busy at work to the point where I left an hour late. That doesn’t happen often, but we had some balancing issues that needed to be taken care of before we could do our transfer. Then I spent a 1/2 hour waiting for my prescription to be filled. I was HUNGRY by the time I got home and just wanted to stuff my face. Enter eggs again.

Two slices of WW bread, toasted, hummus and farm fresh easy over eggs. Then I had a scoop (or 2) of ice cream:

This is a surprise flavour that I will be sharing at the beginning of next week.

Weeellll….I’ve got a few things to take care of before I tune into SYTYCD at 8. Hope nobody gets hurt this week!!

Bye for now!!

What I’ve Been Up To

Hello! I pulled a bit of a disappearing act the past few days but I’m back! Some relatives of my hubby were down for the weekend and staying with my in laws so we’ve been busy visiting! In this post I’ll cover how I’ve been spending my time.

Breakfasts have been hot and smooth: But mostly cool and crunchy! I’ve never really been a cereal gal, but I’ve really been digging cold cereal this summer. It’s all good!! I made my weekly trip to the market for produce. Snacking has been kept to a minimum (this is 3 days worth). Lunches have been green, multi coloured and recycled; Much time has been spent enjoying nature: Dinner’s have been 100% summer foods! With some comfort food thrown in…

Good conversation was had. Marshmallows have been roasted to perfection and thoroughly enjoyed!!!

I prefer ice cream cake over marshmallows, especially when it’s Baskin Robbins chocolate PB ice cream cake!!!

I braved the trampoline….and LOVED every minute of it!

Sorry about the netting. It was necessary, though, because I’m not very coordinated flying through the air. LOL And I just put back a grande iced Americano with soy….

To prevent this from happening too soon!

I’m pooped out!!! HAHA!

Bye for now!!