Thanksgiving Dinner

Hey everyone! I’m back for round 2. After I posted this morning I made one heck of a wicked breakfast;

• 1 cup water
• 1/3 cup sunrise blend with quinoa
• cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, vanilla extract
• 1/3 cup pumpkin puree
• currants
• cashew butter
• maple flakes

This was SO good….dessert-like, really.

After visiting out at the farm, we came home to a quick lunch. I made a sandwich with a WW Arnold Thin, Monterey Jack cheese, the last of the ambercup squash and a 1/4 cup of Egg Beaters. On the side was the apple that I didn’t eat yesterday with cinnamon sprinkled on;

Then I baked up some Pumpkin Coconut Chocolate Chip Bars;

These bars are stellar and VERY easy to make!

I spent the afternoon watching a cheesy cheerleading movie with DD before getting ready to head over to my parents place for dinner. As usual, Mom put on a great Thanksgiving Day spread. Here’s my plate;

Turkey & gravy, sausage stuffing, a WW bun with some butter, sweet potatoes and pecan green beans. DS ploughed through a turkey leg. The bone was as big as his forearm!

Dessert was a beautiful piece of pumpkin pie with a dollop of Cool Whip on top;

This is pretty much what I looked like after eating all this food;

That’s my parents ancient cat, Sinjin. She’s something like 17yrs old!

I had a small piece of my Green & Blacks Maya chocolate bar when we got home, but that’s it for tonight. The Amazing Race just finished and I think I’ll watch Criminal Minds before hitting the sack. Here’s to hoping you all had a lovely Sunday!

Bye for now!!

Thanksgiving Treats

Hi all! Today’s my Friday! How about that? It’s a good feeling knowing that I get the day to myself tomorrow.

• 2/3 cup water
• 1/3 PC 5 grain cereal
• cinnamon
• 1/3 cup pear sauce
• sprinkle of Dorset cereal

Yum in my tum!

I had another really productive day at work. It’s great knowing that I’m going into the busiest part of next week prepared. Mid morning I ate a piece of apple butter bread;

I hopped on the elliptical today at the gym. I felt a little off my game for some reason, but still managed to get a good workout in.

• Time: 40 minutes
• Avg Hr: 150
• Max Hr: 166
• Calories Torched: 386
• Distance: 4.4 miles

I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed my lunch today. I packed a container of V8 Corn & Chipotle soup and was pretty excited to try it out because it had lots of whole corn kernels in it. I also brought 3 Ryvita crackers;

I can’t pinpoint what I didn’t like about this soup. It was just a strange blend of flavours, I guess. Blah… I chased it with some cocoa roasted almonds.

MUCH better! Just before leaving work my Thanksgiving baking order from a local (trade) high school, CHSS, came in. Check this out!

These sugar cookies are for the kids to bring to school tomorrow to share with their classmates.

The next layer had Mom’s ginger snap cookies, pumpkin pie tarts and mine and Mom’s whole wheat buns. The buns are $1/doz. Can’t go wrong with that!

The bottom layer had my hubby’s pumpkin pie and Mom’s pecan pie. My hubby tore into the tarts as soon as I walked in the door. Here’s what they look like;

While on break today, I walked over to Tim Horton’s and bought myself a box of their Pumpkin Spice tea;

SO, both the the kids were on the ice tonight from 5:30 until 6:20…but at different rinks. :/ I baked up a frozen pizza for them and warmed up some ambercup squash with a dollop of Dijonnaise as a snack for myself;

I took DD to her lesson and popped into the adjoining library while I was there. I found 5 cookbooks that I’ll be going through a bit later. YAHOO! When we got home all I wanted to eat was some comfort food. My tummy’s been a little sour all day so I went with some Windy Hill Farms cremo cereal;

This was 1 cup water, 1/3 cup cremo cereal, cinnamon, raisins, almond butter and fig preserves. It went down real nice!

CSI and The Vampire Diaries are on in a bit so I’ll be shutting down soon. I’m totally hooked on the Vampire Diaries even though it’s kinda cheesy. All the eye candy makes up for that, though! :)

Bye for now!!

Dinner Pancakes

This post has got to be right down to business because I’ve got me some TV to watch!! :D Just got back from Pilate’s and SYTYCD Canada is on and then The Biggest Loser follows that. I can be such a couch potato!

I took breakfast to work with me today because DS had a 7:30am doctors appointment and I didn’t feel like eating beforehand. Please excuse my orange stained, plastic dollar store bowl!

-2/3 cup water
-1/3 cup Quaker oats
-splash of milk
-carob chips, shaved coconut & walnut pieces

I did this in the microwave and it was surprisingly good! I’m so used to the stove top method now that I tend to forget how creamy the oats become when nuked.

Work, work, work….blah, blah, blah! ;) Here’s my tea quote of the day;

GYM! Yes. More Rach today with a little Christian Slater on the side. For all who may be interested, Hungry Girl will be on the show tomorrow. You bet I let out a little yelp when I saw that!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 158
Max Hr: 174
Calories Torched: 452
Distance: 5 miles

I should mention that I was on the elliptical today…

Lunch was a simple one. A Stonemill bagel with a shmear of almond butter;

These bagels seriously reminded me of croissants. They were flakey and buttery and delicious. I also ate these monster sized grapes;

Aren’t they HUGE?! I also grabbed some fruit salad from the work kitchen which looked pretty tasty, but was not.

I only ended up eating the grapes and pineapple. I’m not a big fan of fruit when all the flavours blend together. What I ate actually tasted like it’s suppose to. Just before going home I snacked on a piece of apple butter bread.

I know that I ate this mostly out of boredom, but at least I stayed of out the office candy bowl and stuck to something wholesome and homemade!

When I got home there was a treat in the mailbox!

There was a little pouch of cereal in here that I plan on trying out very soon!

Dinner was a cool one tonight! My hubby grilled sausages for the fam and some Yves veggie burgers for me. While he was at that, I was making some super cool corn cakes. I didn’t make the bean topping, only the ‘cakes. On my plate I had some reheated ambercup squash and a burger on top of a corn cake with some Fage and peach pineapple salsa;

I turned this into a burger that I ate with a fork and knife. I left for Pilates pretty much as soon as dinner was over. And now it’s time for me to sign off and get to my TV watching!

Bye for now!!

Barley-rific Monday

Happy Monday! A lot of people think I’m nuts, but Monday is my favourite day of the (work) week. It always seems to pass by so quickly. Seeing as the temps have turned much cooler, we’ve added an extra blanket to the bed which has been keeping me very cozy indeed. So cozy in fact, that I’ve been staying in bed until the last possible minute. Hence the coffee in my oats again this morning!

-1 cup coffee
-1/3 cup PC 5 Grain cereal
-almond butter
-carob chips

Hit. The. Spot.

Our computer software crashed this morning; thank God it’s not pay week! Anyways, this little blip afforded me the time to read all the blogs I missed over the weekend. By the sounds of it, you all had a good one! Lots of tasty baking happening out there….LOVE it! :D I enjoyed some of my baking pre gym in the form of a thumbprint cookie;

Chomp, chomp!

The gym was peachy! Now that we have TV’s in there, I’ve been getting some Rach on while I sweat. My lunch this week starts at 11:30am so I watched the second part of the show first and the first 20 mins of the show second. A little back-asswards, but it works!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 166
Max Hr: 181
Calories Torched: 503
Distance: 4.5 miles

Craig Ferguson was on the show today and boy did I laugh. What an amusing fella! Almost made me want to stay up until 12:35am to watch the show!!

You should not be surprised to see that I brought cauliflower & barley pilaf for lunch today.

What can I say? I can’t get enough of it! You’ll be glad to see further on in this post that I finished it off at supper time! Then I got into the chocolate macaroons from the office candy dish;

Pretty sure I ate at least that many more!

Now on to a pretty little squash I bought at Knapp’s yesterday. I will admit that I bought it for the pretty orange hue and had NO idea what kind it was.

Pretty, isn’t it? I put the internet to good use and discovered that this is called an “ambercup” squash. (scroll down a bit in the link to see the info). It would seem that it is very similar to a buttercup squash…only better looking! I washed it really well, cut it in half, scooped the seeds out,

sprayed it with some olive oil and roasted it flesh side down on a greased cookie sheet for 45mins at 375*

Oh, la la! I ate a portion of this with a bowl of homemade chicken soup. Remember all those beer butt chickens we’ve been eating? Well, I saved all the bones and on Saturday they spent 3+ hours simmering away with some tomatoes and a whole lot of water. Once the broth cooled off I strained all the pieces out and put it in the fridge for a day. All I had to do tonight was scrape the hardened “fat” off the top and it was ready to roll! I threw in some leftover steamed veggies from last night and made them disappear with my immersion blender. Once boiling, I added a handful of alphabet shaped noodles and a package of ravioli (for the fam). Presto! Here’s my meal for your viewing pleasure!

And a soup bowl close up!

The perfect end to this meal was a slice of apple butter bread with a smidge of ginger pear jam on it;

DD is at dance now and the boys are not back from hockey yet so I have a few minutes to myself. Can’t wait to cozy up under a blanket with a tea later on. I hope everyone has as relaxing an evening…

Bye for now!!