Back To Real Life

So the first day back to work after the holidays was pretty painless. I worked 7:30-5 instead of my usual 8-4, but that was something that I had banked on ahead of time. The next 2 days will see similar hours. Because I am not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, I prepared a baggie with all my breakfast ingredients last night so I could make it at work this morning. Please ignore the messy plastic bowl….the was cooked in the microwave!
-3/4 cup water
-1/3 cup Windy Hills flax seed porridge
-cinnamon
-raisins
-walnuts (these were packed separately)
-splash of milk
I ate these while keypunching. Not exactly optimal conditions, but it won’t kill me!

Over the course of the day I snacked on some Clementine’s;
I love these. I’ve been eating a good 8-10 a day which my tummy hasn’t been too thrilled about. It’s been starting to send me some warning signals. Now we’ll have to see if I listen or play dumb. ;)

It was nice to get back into the gym for some cardio today. The elliptical was my machine of choice.

Time: 45 minutes
Avg HR: 163
Max Hr: 180
Calories Torched: 476
Distance: 4.9 miles

I’m sure that none of you will be surprised to see leftover stew & quinoa in my lunch today!
Gotta love “lunchovers” as DS would say! :D

I started fading fast around 3 so I broke out an oat bran applesauce muffin;

I really like the oat bran in these. It makes for such a hearty muffin.

I had to make dinner quick because by the time I got home I only had 45 minutes before DD had to go to dance class. I had set out sausages for the fam and decided to cook them in the George Foreman grill. Awesome decision because it only took 7 minutes for them to be grilled to perfection! For myself I spread some sun dried tomato pesto on a flatout wrap and then topped it with chicken breast, green olives, mushrooms and goat milk cheese. I folded that in half and popped it in the grill for a few minutes. Here’s the inside;

While that was doing it’d thang, I threw a side salad together. I made a very simple dressing that was 1 tbsp EVOO, 1 tsp vinegar and 1 tsp of honey. I topped it off with some dried cranberries and sliced carrots. It turned out to be a great little meal!

Then I ate a couple of these Mrs. May’s clusters as I was walking out the door.

I can’t believe it’s already 7:30pm! I plan on doing a whole lot of nothing for the next few hours. Ahhhh….sounds like a wonderful plan to me.

Bye for now!!

Friday At Last

I pretty much knew by the time I fell asleep last night that I was catching a cold. I just had that weird feeling going on in my nose. Sure enough, I woke up with sniffles to add to my weird feeling nose. Hopefully this won’t turn into a full blown cold. Hate those! And we’re short staffed at work so I can’t afford to be ill. Tis the season!

Here’s my breakfast combo for the day…



-1/2 cup water
-1/2 cup unsweetened vanilla almond breeze
-1/3 cup Bob’s Red Mill 10 Grain cereal
-1/4 cup Enjoy Life Foods Cranapple granola



I was stuffed by the last 2 bites, but ate them anyways. It was too good to throw away even 2 measly spoonfuls!

Work went rather quick this morning. When I got in it looked like a tornado had hit my desk! How so much can accumulate in 1 day is beyond me. Around 11am I realized my tummy was growling at me. I ate a piece of my cake which held me over another 3 hours.

I decided against running today. I want to save my energy to fight this cold! I took a quick run to the store to pick up another box of Quaker Dino Egg porridge for my son. This is his newest addiction. He’s been eating it every morning for a few weeks now. Actually, he’s been eating anything and everything constantly for the past few weeks. He must be growing again!

I packed the rest of last night’s soup for lunch today. This stuff kept me full enough that I didn’t even eat a snack last night (although I did have this hot chocolate....I liked the dark better!).




That is some miracle, I tell you! I had some crackers on the side, too.



Around 3pm I munched on about 1 cup of green grapes. I love grapes when they’re firm and sweet. I could probably eat the whole bag!



Tonight will be a night that I suffer what I like to call “claw hand”. That’s when you wake up in the night and your hand is in the middle of a muscle cramp! EEK! I get this when I’ve had a heavy keypunching day at work…AKA….today!

I pulled some sauteed onion turkey sausages out for dinner tonight. My hubby did them up on the BBQ along with some onions wrapped in foil. I also roasted some butternut squash for 25 mins in a 425 deg oven. I just tossed them with salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin, coriander, cinnamon and a drizzle of agave.



My sweet end tonight was a muffin (the ones I made on Sunday).



I tried these little cashew clusters today from Mrs. May's
. They were very good! Crunchy with a sweet/salty thing going on. I would've taken a picture of an actual cluster, but DS ate the rest of this little bag when he came home from school. Too bad because I wanted to use some as an oat topper for tomorrow. Oh, well! I'll just have to but more. :) Just in case you missed what the baggie looked like, here's another picture.



I think I'm going to go brew at big cup of herbal tea and read my book. I think I'll grab a warm blanket, too! This will be a good night to chill out and go to bed early!

Bye for now!

Old McDonald Had A Farm....

Today I attended my son’s class trip to a farm as a parent supervisor. I knew I’d have a long stretch between breakfast and lunch, so I prepared a hearty bowl of oats.

-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Old Wessex 5-Grain cereal
-1/2 a banana
-1 tsp almond butter
-1 tbsp Sahale walnut mix



The breakfast did the trick! I was almost too full by the time I was done, but it stuck with me a good long while!

We hit the road by 9am in a school bus. I haven’t been on one of those since high school! Nothing has changed…it was a bumpy 45 min drive. Once we arrived at the “Yee Haw Farm”, we got organized into our groups. I had 5 kids to look out for while there. First stop was a petting zoo of sorts….pigs, sheep, roosters, bunnies and ducks. After that we went to the barn where we saw these really cute baby chicks...



The kids played a guessing game and enjoyed some drinks and snacks while lounging on hay bales. Off to the pig races we went! This was pretty cute...



The second race out was ducks. That cracked the kids up because they were expecting pigs again!



At this point we stopped for lunch. I packed an apple and a flat out wrap stuffed with a laughing cow cheese wedge, cranberry chutney, lettuce and some leftover crock pot pork.



I only had enough time to eat the apple because I was busy helping the kids with their food containers and making sure that everything was put in the garbage as they finished. Truth be told, I wasn’t really even hungry yet. I ended up eating the wrap when we got back to the school at 1:30pm.

Before we left, we took a wagon ride through the corn fields. We stopped at one point to “pick” pumpkins. Here’s my little man with his prize.



It was a fun trip! All the kids were beat out by the time we left so the bus ride home was quieter than the one going there. I had a few hours to kill before school was out for the day so I made a stop at 7-11 for something warm to drink. Imagine my surprise when I went in and saw that they have pumpkin spice latte in one of the machines! I bought a large that was ¾ latte, ¼ coffee..



Mmmm...heavenly! I made my way over to WalMart to purchase a birthday present for a party my son is attending on Saturday and I also picked up a new place mat, some tea towels, 2 pairs of pants for my boy whose legs won’t stop growing, mittens, hats and these 2 new finds...



Maple flakes (ingredient list states pure maple syrup only) and these Mrs. May's cashew crunch clusters. I can’t wait to try this stuff! After all that, I went to get the kids from school and we filled 4 large paper bags with the leaves that I raked last weekend. Needless to say, it was time for a rest before I started on dinner!

For dinner I made a small pot of soup. Pretty much anything I found in the fridge that would work in soup went in the pot.

-1 1/2 cups chicken broth
-1/2 cup tomato sauce
-1 cup mixed veggie’s
-1/3 cup brown rice
-1 Chris & Tal’s Swiss & Mushroom burger
-S&P
-1 tbsp grated asiago cheese



I served it with 2 Grissol Rustic Flatbread crackers. These guys are really flavorful and go well with soup or broken up into pieces and put on a salad in place of croutons.



And what was my sweet end, you ask? Why, a piece of my Banana Cranberry Pumpkin Cake, of course!



I put a little spray butter on it tonight. I love the way this cake isn't too sweet and the cranberries pack a nice tart punch! Well, I'm off to get things ready for tomorrow so that I can settle in to watch CSI at 8pm. Enjoy the evening!

Bye for now!