A Chocolaty Wednesday

I must’ve had turpentine up my bum this morning because I was ahead of the game right from the get go! I was out of the shower, downstairs packing lunches, eating breakfast and out the door way sooner than normal! You watch, tomorrow I will be rushing around like a mad woman! LOL!
-2/3 cup water
-1/3 cup flax seed porridge
-cinnamon
-kefir
-carob chips
-chopped peanuts
I’m really enjoying the addition of kefir to my oats. It makes them unbelievably creamy and lush.

Work whipped along at a pretty decent pace today. I brought a raspberry oatmeal muffin to snack on before going to the gym:
Speaking of the gym; I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do there today. I knew I wanted to go, but nothing was sounding appealing. I ended up starting out with a 20 minute walk at 4.1mph with a 7% incline. Then I ran for 25 minutes at 6.1mph with a 0.5% incline. I finished up with 5 minutes of walking the same as how I started. Turned out to be a great workout!

Time: 50 minutes
Avg Hr: 157
Max Hr: 177
Calories Torched: 471
Distance: 4.25 miles

I ate the quinoa stew that I had brought for lunch yesterday today.
I chased that with 2 caramel filled chocolates.
Lucky for me that I got 2 of these as they were the only ones left! My kidlets must’ve gotten into the box. HA!

One of the ladies at the office retired today so there was a big do at 3pm for her with cake and squares and funny stories. I helped myself to one of the smaller pieces of chocolate cake and a raspberry coconut square.
Peeps, as much as I lurve me some chocolate in any form, the square kicked ass. I purposely stayed away from that part of the building for the rest of the afternoon because I just knew I’d take another. And that is just being piggy, no?

The only thing on the agenda for tonight was swimming lessons and they don’t start until 7pm so I had some time to roast a pork tenderloin for dinner. I put ½ a big onion and some mini potatoes in the pan, too. I used one of the kids “divider” plates to eat my dinner off of because I also had a small salad with honey Dijon dressing and some pineapple pieces. I am one of “those” people who hates my food touching! Haha!

I took some new reading material to the pool with me:

Doesn’t that avocado look awesome?!

I just got home from the pool and ate a blood orange that I didn’t get to at work while preparing lunches.

And now I have a coffee (and to be honest, a chocolate chip cookie!) and plan to watch a little Law & Order: SVU. How did you spend your evening?

Bye for now!!

A Foot On Either Side

That’s what this post is….the last day of 2009 and the first of 2010! Both days have been really low key which is just the way we wanted it. All to soon we’ll be back to the craziness of “real life”. So let’s get started on the “bridge” that is this post!

Last Day of 2009

I decided to use the last of my quinoa from the fridge in my breakfast which turned out to be a brilliant idea!

• 3/4 cup of water
• 1/4 cup Quaker oats
• 1/2 cup cooked quinoa
• 1 tsp instant coffee
• walnuts
• splash of 5% creamer
• drizzle cappuccino flavoured agave

I finally had some good enough light to take picture’s of my new gym bag and shorts that I bought at Lululemon Wednesday;

I even got the inside of the bag. I’m pretty excited about it (doesn’t take much, I know!) because I’ve just been using a reusable grocery bag for the past year. Now everything has it’s own spot.

My bestie came over for another visit in the afternoon. We’re in the very early stages of planning a class reunion for our high school. I hope we can find enough people to swing it! 2012 will be the 20yr mark for me…YIKES!!! My MIL also popped by and I was content to spend time with family for a few hours.

Lunch was late….like 3pm late! I toasted up a WW English muffin and topped it with sun dried tomato basil, turkey, green olives, cranberries and goat milk cheese;

I chased that with a few Clementine's:

For dinner I made a dish from a recipe that piqued my interest in the Eating Well Magazine that I received in the mail a few weeks ago. It It was a mango dal. Here’s the photo in the mag;

It called for yellow lentils but I only had green so that’s what I used. I served it with some WW couscous and leftover broccoli.

This was one of the best tasting dishes I’ve made in a long while. And it was really easy to throw together. Everything is pretty much cooked, chopped and ready to go by the time the lentils are done. If you come across this recipe, I highly recommend it! :D

After dinner my parents came over for a bit and then a friend of ours came with his 3 kids to bring in the new year. It was a very tame night. We watched Canada beat the US in hockey (YAY, CANADA!!) and then tuned into the festivities that were going on in Niagara Falls. I partook in a little too many Lindor chocolates and chips, but I’m cool with that once a year! And somehow all 5 kids managed to stay awake to celebrate with us. Cool.

First Day of 2010

I didn’t wake up until after 9 today! Holy smokes!!! I’m gonna have to work on getting to bed at my normal 11pm so 6:30 am will be doable come Monday morning. I was not hungry in the least so started the day off with a big mug of green tea;

I became quite absorbed in blog reading and finally realized about 11:30am that my stomach was getting noisy. Ooops! Guess I missed breakfast. Buuuutttt…I still made oats! Just a bigger portion than normal!

• 1 and a 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 cup Quaker oats
• cinnamon
• raisins
• banana
• 1 tbsp chocolate PB2
• hemps seeds, pecans and carob chips

I knew this would do a good job of holding me over until our early (4:30pm) dinner at Mom’s place. I was a LAZY bum all afternoon watching a Criminal Minds marathon on TV. The kids got some Jenga going on;

But soon became bored and went down to the park for some tobogganing fun. Ahhh…quite time! :D

Around 4 we made our way to the ‘rents for some New Years Day grub. Mom made a huge lasagna which I passed on so I started off with some salad and a WW bun.

Next up was stuffed turkey breast (compliments of Butterball), roasted sweet potatoes and onions. This is where everyone else ate their salad!! Mom made a cake that she said was called a “Charlotte”. It was done in a spring form pan with chocolate pudding, raspberry jam and chocolate chips layered between a vanilla cake. Lady fingers brought up the sides. It was delish, but fell apart when Mom cut it which ticked her off. Didn’t bother me! Check it out…

I was super stuffed after this meal. *sigh* We’re home now and you better believe I’m in my yoga pants! I think I’m gonna finish up some magazines that I’ve got sitting around tonight. I’m also planning on an earlier bedtime so I wake up at a decent hour in the morning. How did you spend your first day of 2010?

Bye for now!!

Work Fun

Work was really fun today, but more on that in a bit! After posting last night I enjoyed a cup of white hot chocolate. This is the brand I have;

I’ve always really, really liked white hot chocolate so when I saw this at Winners last night I knew it was coming home with me!

I found one last serving of crock pot oats in the freezer last night so that’s what I warmed up this morning.
I added some hot water to loosen it up and then sprinkled some Bear Naked granola on top for some crunch.
Yum!!

The morning was pretty uneventful. I’m still drowning in paperwork, but at least I’m not bored stiff. I took an early lunch today (11:30) so there was no morning snack. Unless you count this chocolate mousse truffle that I ate!

I hopped on the treadmill for a run today and it was hell as I expected it would be! The gym was on the hot side again which is never a good omen for me and I hadn’t run in over 2 weeks! I can’t remember the last time I went that long without a run. Anyways, I hammered out 30 minutes of running, 5 of walking fast on an incline and 5 just walking at a fast pace. That’s all I had in me, but it was enough.

Time: 40 minutes
Avg Hr: 164
Max Hr: 188
Calories Torched: 434
Distance: 3.75 miles

At 1pm one of the departments at work held a scavenger hunt! It was SO fun! Each group of 5 (which just happens to be how many of us are in payroll) was given a clue to start with and then we proceeded to complete 10 challenges. Afterwards, they announced 3 winners and put out a GORGEOUS spread of food! The pictures I snuck are not great, but will give you a good idea of what there was;
I loaded my plate up with some fruit, 2 crackers with cheese, a chip with dip and some pinwheel roll ups.
I know there is a lot of sweet stuff on there, but the mincemeat tart, the macaroons and the chocolate chip bar came home to the fam. I ate the thumbprint cookie, fruitcake, truffle, biscotti and a bit of apple crisp. And it was all 100% worth it! Also home to the fam went some peanut brittle and popcorn.

Around 4 the sugar high wore off and I was feeling like I needed something a little more nourishing in my system so I ate most of this container of pineapple that I packed in my lunch;

The necklace/earring set that I ordered from one of the kid’s fund raisers came in today. I’m pretty impressed with it! I tend to shy away from ordering items unseen so this was a nice surprise! Here’s what it looks like;

As per the menu plan for the week chicken and peppers was what we had for dinner tonight and man, oh, man was it good! I cooked 3 red and 1 yellow bell pepper, 2 red onions, broccoli and 4 cloves of garlic in about 2 tbsp of basil infused olive oil. Once they were soft I pulled them out of the pan and added the chicken breasts with some McCormick steak spice. Everything got added back to the pan with a bit of water to get all the good bits off the bottom. Here is the finished product;

Divine!

I just got back from my last Pilate’s class of 2009. We had a really fun class tonight which was a great way to end the 12 week session. Seeing as the Biggest Loser is done now, I’ll be settling in with a new (to me) magazine that I got in the mail today;

I skimmed through it while dinner was cooking and there seems to be some really good recipes in there! Does anybody out there get this mag? Do you like???

Bye for now!!