What’s Been On The Menu

The summer sure does seem to keep me away from the computer, eh???  I wouldn’t say I’ve been busy exactly the last few days; occupied is probably a better word.  I’ve been up to the usual stuff, like eating oats for breakfast:
Nature's Path Maple Nut porridge with granola and a little cream:
Nature’s Path Flax cereal with coconut butter and carob chips;
More oats with zucchini jam, walnut pieces and this coconut milk.
Now that I’m back to work (and the gym) I’ve been digging into my bar stash that I stocked up on in the States:
This Odwalla bar was just awesome!
Smores zbar!  This was the last box on the shelf at Target.  Phew!
And a good ole PB Cookie LUNA bar. 
I’ve been rocking at the gym, too!  I ran on Wednesday for the first time in a good month.  I did 3 miles in 30:46 which was better than I thought I would do.  I woke up with a sore hip the next day, though.  Boo!  Thursday we did the 30 Day Shred.  Have I mentioned that there are 6 of us doing it now on Tuesday’s & Thursday’s?  It’s GREAT!  I only had a half hour lunch today so I cranked out 2.6 miles on the elliptical.  I’ll take it! 
Lunches have been…..rushed.  With the kids in camp all day I’ve been back to making lunches at night and I have to admit that it’s a chore I don’t like very much!  My creativity gets tapped out on the kids food and I’ve been just grabbing whatever.
Cottage cheese, crushed pineapple & walnuts.  One of my favourite combos!
Oikos honey yogurt, Archer Farms blueberry flax granola and strawberries.  YUM!
Ocean’s tuna & sundried tomato salad.  Looks like cat food, I know, but it was really tasty. 
I’ve been trying to keep to fruit for my afternoon snacks:
2 very ripe, sweet peaches….
A mini Hawaiian blizzard!  It was Miracle Day at DQ and a few ladies at work took our orders and picked them up.  This was the perfect size for a treat!
Boring grapes.  “nuff said.
Let’s see what dinners have been like….
Looks like some leftover quinoa salad and tuna salad on one of these Dr. Kracker crackers!

Then there was… Chinese!  Neither of the kids were home for dinner last night so my hubby and I treated ourselves to take out.  What you see here is suppose to be a meal for one.  HUH???  I ate maybe a quarter of it.  All the sesame chicken, a little rice and some veggies.  Lots leftover!   And tonight’s feast:
Tomato and cucumber from the garden and a “BLT” with tempeh bacon:
 
I’ve been enjoying my sweet ends like always.  Another little treat for our childless dinner last night was Baskin Robbins!  I went for my fave; pineapple coconut froyo.  And yes, I had ice cream 2 times in one day.  There was a time were I would beat myself up for that, but those days are LONG gone.  Amen!
So, what have I been doing the past 2 nights to keep me offline?  Well, Wednesday night we had company over to watch SYTYCD.  Awesome night of dancing or what???  And last night I went to pick DS up from his buddy’s house and got chatting for over an hour with the Mom.  Ooops!  I got home in time to see the very last hour of the SYTYCD season 7 finale.  GO LAUREN!!!  Love Kent and Robert, but I’m so glad Lauren took it!  
And I’m SO GLAD that Friday is finally here!   I will be spending as much time as possible outside on the deck soaking up the last of the warm summer nights.  AND, I will be posting a review tomorrow so you have that to look forward to!  :)
Bye for now!!

Just Enjoying Life

Happy Thursday!  How is everybody doing?  I could get used to not working.  Too bad I would miss the dinero, too!  HA  The past 2 days have been fairly low key as we wind down the last few precious days of vacation.  We stayed out on the deck until the wee hours of Wednesday morning, then I was awake by 8.  Needless to say, I drank a boatload of coffee.  But breakfast came first. This is a packet of Nature’s Path flax oatmeal jazzed up with some coconut butter and carob chips.  DELISH!  Nature’s Path was kind enough to send me a few items to review, so I’ll be getting to that just as soon as I try everything out.  One review I can share now is for their newly revamped line of granola bars: These were in the box that was sent (YAY!!) and you can read all about what we thought about them by clicking right here.
I pretty much spent ALL morning reading blogs.  Time really flies when you’re having fun!  I know I haven’t been commenting as much, but I’ve been reading each post.  Once I’m 100% caught up I’ll be back to full fledged commenting!
I eventually got hungry for lunch and whipped out my smuggled turkey artichoke sandwich half from Panera.
I opted to eat it cold and liked it lots better!  I’m not a big re-heater of things like pizza, sandwiches, etc.  I much prefer those kind of leftovers cold.  My hubby, on the other hand, likes everything to be steamy hot.  He was kinda grossed out that I ate this cold.  LOL  And the last few deck photos, I promise.  Just wanted to show the completed projects that I’ve been babbling on about so much!  :)
And here are how the deck lights from Target look, both with and without the flash(taken last night at dusk):
And here are some shots of the gardens I’ve been working on.  Ya know, in case any of you thought I was slacking the past few days!  HEHE
In both the above photos I turned all the dirt by hand with a shovel.   I also did the edging and extended them a wee bit.  The picture underneath is still a blank slate.  That patch is under a huge maple tree and doesn’t get much light so the grass never really grew properly.  I finally decided to clear out all the weeds and roots and in the fall I will be transplanting some of my perennials there so it will look gorgeous in the spring.  This one was a back breaker and my hands are still sore from clearing the space!  DOH!

We had a great summer dinner last night.  I made bison burgers with my smuggled ground bison and there was also fresh corn on the cob the my neighbour gave us.  I served my burger on a bagel thin with pickle, roasted red pepper, tomato and lettuce.  For dessert I cubed a ripe, sweet pineapple for us all to share:
My kids have been helping the neighbour with some yard work so she took them to DQ last night and treated them to Blizzards.  While they were gone my hubby and took our adopted doggie for a walk:
 
When we got back I tried this Skinny Cow ice cream cup:
This was not very good.  Wegman’s was selling them as singles so we bought 4, but I wasn’t hungry for mine after my salad so I threw it in the cooler and popped it in the freezer when we got home.  It didn’t have a lot of taste to it except for the bitter aftertaste.  Good trial run, though.  I know now not to fork over the cash for them here!
We were late going to bed again last night and early to rise.  I spent another morning on the computer entertaining myself.  LOL  While at that I downed a bowl of my favourite Kashi cereal ever; Kashi U:
Crunchy flakes, walnuts, blueberries….Mmmm!  I won’t say where I enjoyed my morning activities, but I’m sure you can guess!  ;)  Before I knew it lunch time had rolled around.  I wasn’t terribly hungry, but knew that eating lunch where we were heading would be a challenge so I took one for the team and used all the burger topping leftovers and a few extras to make a light salad. 
A little bit of lettuce, tomato, corn from the last cob, cuke, tuna and pear & blue cheese dressing.   I also enjoyed half a Panera chocolate chip cookie. So!  We took the kids to a water park that’s one city over from us.  Can’t believe I haven’t been since I was a teenager.  DS had never been down a “big” waterslide so I wasn’t sure if he’d like them or not, but he had a blast.  And I knew without a doubt that DD would be jazzed.  Here she is hitting the bottom of one slide. Unfortunately, everyone one I took of DS shows just a big splash!  But here is is at the bottom of a tamer slide: DD went down some “cyclone” slide that dumps you into a cylinder and spins you before you get dropped in the water.  No thanks! And lastly, the 2 of them happy as clams! Before we left they each got a “fake” tattoo… The fun and sun made us all peckish and the fam got soft serve cones at Mc Donald’s.  I wasn’t feeling one so I waited until we got home then had a piece of Stonemill pumpkin seed cranberry bready with a touch of butter,
I tended to the veggie garden a bit and picked myself some kale for dinner.  It’s so pretty! We did a beer butt chicken on the BBQ so I decided to turn my dinner into a big salad.  I tossed the kale with some cucumber, yellow tomato, green pepper and a dressing made with some olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, chili powder, honey, salt & pepper.  Then I topped the whole beast with some chicken breast! My sweet end was a chocolate Oikos yogurt.
Last time I bought the caramel and I like them both very much.  A  great healthy treat!!  After dinner we hauled butt over to DS’s soccer game.  He’s got one friend from school on his team as well as one of his All Star teammates and on the opposing team were 2 classmates as well.  I had the camera so I annoyed them all taking pictures!  Here’s the 5 of them;
DS is in the centre.  The little rascals….but they’re all great kids! 
Well, my hubby just came outside from having a shower and his back is BURNT.  Guess he didn’t do such a good job with the sunscreen.  I’m off to lather him in aloe…..  ;)
Bye for now!!