This and That

Give it up for hump day!  We’re in the last stretch to the weekend, peeps!  Hopefully you are all having an awesome week thus far.  No complaints over here.  When I posted Monday night I mentioned that I had some baking in the oven so we’ll start with that today.   A wonderful loaf of Erica’s delicious Multi Grain Bread.
This bread is so versatile.  I usually pair it with sweet, but I’ve done savoury with amazing results as well.   My intention for it this week was to replace the bars that I’ve been eating before the gym.  I’m all out and didn’t want to make a special trip to the store for them.  Not that I even had the time!  So yesterday I spread some zucchini jam on a thick slice:
And today I partnered it with peanut hazelnut butter.
The absolute best aspect of this bread, IMO, is that it tastes really buttery with not a hint of it in the recipe.  Me loves!
The mornings have been rather brisk so I’ve been sticking to my oats for breakfast.  Yesterday was a blend of Nature’s Path hemp seed oatmeal topped with blueberries and pumpkin butter:
This ended up being a bit too sweet.  Lesson learned; don’t use blueberries and pumpkin butter together in oats.  Today followed a tropical theme with coconut extract, crushed pineapple and Hawaiian trail mix & yogurt chips on top:
This bowl was really good!
Tuesday’s gym session included day 7 of level 2 of the 30 Day Shred and 10 minutes of incline walking on the treadmill.  I’m excited to hit level 3 because I’ve never made it that far.  When I first did the DVD a year ago I buggered up my ankles by day 15.  Back then I was doing the disc every single day and I know that’s how I injured myself.  Keeping it tame with Tuesday’s & Thursday’s seems to be the ticket.  Today I popped on the elliptical.  I was feeling really tight across my back and figured the motion of the machine would loosen things up….and it did.
Lunch has been all over the place.  Yesterday I had tuna on a toasted multi grain English muffin with a LC cheese wedge:
Like the birthday plate?  LOL  These English muffins are perfect for me because they have seeds in them which give them some great texture.  And we all know I’m a texture kinda gal!  Today was totally random; cottage cheese, Crofter’s jam and thawed blobs:
Sorry for the less than stellar set up.  I was too lazy to walk halfway across the building for a pretty bowl.  :/
I ate a bit bigger of an afternoon snack yesterday.  I didn’t get out of work until 5:15 and wanted to be at the rink by 5:30 for DS’s game (I made it).  That and dinner was uber late for us.  I had a ginger gold apple plus some walnuts rescued from the depths of my desk drawer.
Today’s 3pm-er was much lighter; a chopped up navel orange:
I’ve been keeping to the meal plan for our dinners and it’s been going smooth.  Last night was pasta night and the fam had the regular spaghetti and homemade meat sauce.  I went with a cup of the WW pasta but topped mine with a mixture of tempeh bacon, 2 diced garden tomatoes, garlic and some grated Romano cheese.   It was splendid!  The only issue is that pasta NEVER sits pretty in my belly.  I know this but thought I’d see if things have changed.  Nope…..I was chomping on Tums at 10pm last night.  What a bummer!  Dinner tonight made my tummy happier…chicken stir fry night!
I kept this simple in using red & yellow bell peppers, chicken breast, oregano and fig balsamic dressing.  A bed of brown rice sealed the deal.
Random snacking that has happened looks like this:
Homemade oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookie x 2 from co worker;
Lots of ginger chews.  I also just polished off a bowl of Wildroots cereal that missed the camera.
In other news, the boys won their hockey game last night 3-0!  As you can imagine, they were pretty stoked!   Tonight’s soccer practice turned into a 2 hour one.  The weather held out so it wasn’t too bad.  Plus I had a few other Mom’s to chat with so the time whipped by.  ;)  Tomorrow is free and I’m SO looking forward to it!  As for the rest of tonight?  I think I’m gonna hit the sack early and read a little longer than usual. 
Tell me something exciting you’ve done so far this week!!
Bye for now!!

Watermelon Eating Contest

Hello, hello! How’s everyone doing? I’ve been keeping pretty busy, spending lots of time outside in the warm weather. I love summer! By the time I settled in last night it was 9pm and I watched SYTYCD. For those of you who watch it, do you have a fave dancer yet? I really like Kent cuz he’s so goofy and *real*. I think Billy, Robert and Alex are awesome dancers, though. I’m really not feeling any of the girls this year, though.

I was back to oats for breakfast yesterday…
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-almond butter
-yogurt chips and shaved coconut
I went with a chocolate almond fudge Clif bar for a pre gym snack:
I’ve had this one for awhile but always hesitated in bringing it to work because it really unleashes that chocolate monster inside me. I was OK today, though. The beast stayed quiet. LOL

My gym time was spent on the treadmill doing an incline walk. I walked at a pace of 4.2mph and put the incline up to 8%. Add that to an extra hot gym and I was one red faced, sweaty gal once done.

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 160
Max Hr: 174
Calories Torched: 433
Distance: 3.2 miles

We had no lettuce left (the stuff in my garden is just about ready to go!)and I was lazy when it came to packing a lunch so I ended up with a mix of goat milk yogurt, Crofters Superfruit jam and pineapple granola:
This was actually really refreshing after getting so hot in the gym and satisfied me just fine. A baggie of cherries completed my (at work) eats.
Dinner was fantabulous because it was something I don’t indulge in very often. (Turkey) meatball subs! I baked up some Dempsters oven fresh baguettes (for the fam) and WW buns for myself. **You can check out my review of this product under my “product review” tab. I bought this bag with my own dinero because they’re that good!** I layered shredded mozzarella on that hot buns, then the meatballs and finally extra sauce:
YUM! On the side I had a small salad with just some romaine, carrots, more mozzarella and sweet onion salad dressing.
The kids LOVE this type of meal. They split one of the baguettes and then each had another in a bun. Momma likes to see her kids eat hardy…especially my boy! :) Dessert was a piece of the banana snack cake with a Cool Whip hat!
Soccer followed dinner and another trip to Walmart followed soccer! Which is why I didn’t settle until 9pm! I finished off my raspberry tea infused chocolate when I got home along with a cup of decaf. I didn’t take a picture if the actual chocolate, but here’s the packaging again!

I woke after a great night sleep. We took our chances with the birds and left the windows open a bit last night. What a difference fresh air makes! I was raring to go a ½ hour earlier than normal! DD left with my MIL this morning to go to the wedding town which is normally a 3hr drive. Going across Toronto this weekend poses a bit of a problem with the G20 Summit going on and anticipating heavy traffic, DD’s company was wanted. She was thrilled! After packing her up I made some breakfast:
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-blueberries
-walnuts & pecans
Delicious! My hubby is also off work today so I didn’t even have to rush to eat this.

Work was S-L-O-W!!! I was almost falling asleep in my pile of keypunching. What a drag. This Clif bar perked me ups some, though:
I’ve had this flavour before, but today it felt like I was eating a scoop of PB right off the spoon! That’s a good thing!

I won’t lie…going to the gym today took every ounce of energy I had. I did 40 minutes on the treadmill at my normal speed but only set the incline to 4%. I also did 5 random minutes on the stepper.

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 140
Max Hr: 171
Calories Torched: 359
Distance: 2.8 miles

Lunch was a toasted Ezekiel muffin with a LC cheese wedge and egg whites. I ate it open faced to make it last longer:
I also ate some grapes and watermelon that I saved from a staff meeting.
The boys ordered pizza for dinner so I whipped up a quick mix of a ¼ cup (dry) couscous and a can of curried beans:
I rinsed the beans in a colander to get the marinade off. Enough of it soaks in that you can still taste the flavour. Here’s what I used:

After dinner the 3 of us made our way down to the school (which is beside our church) for the annual bazaar. This year DS entered himself in the watermelon eating contest. I was amazed because he doesn’t really even like watermelon. HA! They did it by grade level starting at 1 and ending with 8. DS is in grade 2 so he had a chance to watch the grade 1’s in action.
I think at this point the was starting to wonder what he got himself into! Nervously waiting for his slice.

Checking out how big it was. He was pretty concerned. I think he thought they were going to give him the whole melon!

And they’re off!!!

Glad it’s over!

What a blast! After washing the stickiness off he played a little mini golf:

Then we made our way home. Fun times! And that’s all for now. I likely won’t be around until Sunday night the earliest. I decided to leave the laptop at home because i don’t think I’ll have time to use it. I’ll still be checking blogs on my cell, though! I hope you all enjoy a fabulous weekend and I’ll catch you on the flip side!!

Bye for now!!

A Walk in the Park 2010

Hello! We ended up having a great day today. The weather held out, there was a super turn out at the walk (over 2300 walkers), DS played his last ball hockey game of the season and they won 9-1, soccer photos were taken and some relaxation took place! I started the day quite early for me on a weekend (6:30am), but I was too excited to sleep. I got up, checked emails and then made a hearty bowl of oats to carry me through a 5km walk.

• 1.5 cups water
• 1/2 cup Quaker oats
• cinnamon
• almond butter
• Crofter’s jam

This is the Crofters that I used:

We were at the park by 8:30 to meet with our team. Here’s a shot of me and DD before leaving the house…

Because I see her everyday, I didn’t realize that she’s almost as tall as me! At eleven!!! LOL! Next are a few photos I took throughout the morning. Hope you enjoy them!

The boys weren’t able to do the actual walk because they had to leave for the ball hockey game, but they were there for the start and came back for the finish. Once everyone was back we got in line for some lunch. This year lunch was sausage on a bun with peppers and onions and pasta salad:

I ate some of the bun, but I’ve never been a big bread fan so I ditched it about a quarter of the way through and just ate the sausage and peppers. KC was one tired, satisfied pup by the time we were ready to leave. He decided to chill with my hubby as we were going back to the Jeep:

Look at that little face! His “Mom” told me that he slept ALL afternoon! I’m not surprised one bit. Over lunch the walk organizers made a few announcements about which teams and individuals raised the most money and the best news of all was that with today’s fundraising totals added, the past 5 years that the walk has been taking place has officially raised over a million dollars for paediatric brain tumour research! Isn’t that amazing??? A special THANK YOU to my readers who donated money to our team!!! :)

We had just enough time when we got home for DS to change into his soccer uniform and head out for pictures. We were on the Starbucks end of town so we made a pit stop on the way home. DS usually gets a chocolate milk there but he had it in his head to get a frap so I let him roll with it. He went for a tall vanilla bean frap, 1/2 whip;

He wouldn’t let me near that baby with a ten foot pole and got right down to business slurping it up. It was almost gone when we got home which amazed me because I didn’t figure he’d get half way through the sucker. :) I went with a grande NF, 1/2 sweet iced chai tea latte:

Numma! I spent the remainder of the afternoon power washing my driveway and chilling on the deck with a magazine. A great afternoon for sure! We’re going to Mom and Dad’s for Father’s Day dinner tomorrow so we did our little meal tonight. My hubby opted for Chinese so DS and I went to get takeout. Here’s my plate of goodness!

We also ate on the deck which was just perfect. An unpictured Skinny Cow chocolate fudgsicle was my sweet end. My parents stopped by for a visit and Dad was feeling like watermelon so he made a trip down the street to the grocery store for one. The 6 of us killed a big, sweet melon and it was glorious….although I feel like exploding right now! HA!

I’m off now to wrap my Hubby’s Father’s Day gift before he emerges from the shower. Will you be seeing your Dad or someone special tomorrow?

Bye for now!!