My Daily Grub

Happy Saturday! Did you all catch my Dr. Kracker review yesterday? Aside from ball hockey last night and this morning and some shopping this afternoon, I haven’t been up to much. The weather has been horrendous….rain, hail, crazy wind and near zero temps. Boo, Mother Nature! Bring back our warm, sunny days, please! Breakfast have looked like this:

• 2/3 cup water
• 1/2 cup kamut flakes
• cinnamon
• almond butter & coconut chocolate spread

AND….

• 1.25 cups water
• 1/2 cup Mother’s oats
• cinnamon
• blueberries
• coconut & yogurt chips

Snacks included a lemon blueberry muffin:

And some of Mama Peas delicious homemade Kind Bars that I whipped up this morning.

Freaking AMAZING! And to think that I just spend my hard earned money on 2 Kind Bars the other day! HA. Jokes on me.

Rainy, cold days call for comforting lunches:

Falafels, asparagus, Egg Beaters scrambled with a LC cheese wedge.

Toasted Ezekiel English muffin stuffed with a LC cheese wedge, salmon and garlic pickles. Afternoon snacks have been cookies:

And a smoothie made with 1 cup of kefir, 1 cup of frozen strawberries, a splash of USAB and a touch of agave:

I’ve had some “pizza” for dinner:

WW pita, sun dried tomato pesto, kalamata olives, turkey pepperoni, mushrooms and havarti cheese. And the more labour intensive pork tenderloin chops, quinoa and asparagus.

Post picture some ginger wasabi sauce joined the party on the plate,

Much chocolate has been consumed for dessert:

And I couldn’t leave the mall today without a stop at Starbucks for a grande NF, 1/2 sweet green tea latte!

An that’s all, folks! How was that for a to-the-point-post? LOL! My parents are due over any minute for their weekly Saturday night visit. After they leave I think I’ll tuck in with a movie. It’s that kinda night. Are you doing anything special for the “Mom” in your life tomorrow???

Catch you all on the flip side!!

Bye for now!!

Flu Take 2

Happy Monday! So I disappeared again yesterday! I did have full intentions of blogging last night but then the inevitable happened and by 8pm it was DS’s turn to ride the porcelain school bus. *sigh* It hit him fast, too. He was perfectly fine until 7pm and then BAM, he was sick. So needless to say, I was otherwise occupied. The one good thing to come out of it all is that both kids have it out of the way now so we should be clear from any illnesses for a while.

For breakfast yesterday I made a bowl of Dark Chocolate Cherry Mocha Oats.
This time I just mixed all the cherries right into the pot. Call me impatient! LOL!

DS had a ball hockey game at 10am at the rink just down the road from our house. Seeing as there’s no need for DD and I to be there half an hour early, we opted to walk down. I love being able to do that! The boys played great and tied 5-5. Here’s a shot of their warm up. DS is #21 and you can also see my hubby, too:
In this next shot DS is behind the ref.
Right after the game DD and I went to Walmart as I needed some new curtains for my rec room windows. I picked up a few other items and my wallet was none too happy about it! Eeek! For lunch I toasted a flatout wrap in a pan after stuffing it with sunflower seed butter, a LC cheese wedge, chicken breast, grilled zucchini and ginger wasabi sauce;
I also enjoyed a small bowl of fresh, juicy pineapple!
After lunch I hit the backyard to weed, weed, weed. Ontario has a pesticide ban (which I happen to agree with) which means that there are more than your fair share of dandelions out there. I half debated picking, washing and eating the greens like Mom did when I was a wee thang, but I hated them then and didn’t want to chance all that work only to still not like them. Hehe! After an hour and a half on my hands and knees picking weeds and trip after trip down and up my sloping backyard, I was a hot, sweaty mess. Homemade iced coffee to the rescue along with a granola bar. (Erica’s recipe)

I relaxed for about an hour before getting dinner ready which happened to be chicken again. Ooops! The BBQ ran out of propane almost right away so I finished the meat in my Rachael Ray grill pan (LOVE!) and served it with brown rice and steamed broccoli. My rice had a scoop of peach and Vidalia onion salsa on top. Mmmm…I ate 3 chocolate chip cookies at Mom’s but they were camera shy. We already know how the rest of my evening went but I did manage to watch The Amazing Race through all the drama….and eat another granola bar!

After a less than stellar sleep, I dragged my bootie out of bed for work. My hubby decided to stay home with the sicko today, so he got night duty. I really wasn’t feeling like a hot breakfast so I broke out of my mould and ate a big bowl of Wildroots cereal instead:
Doesn’t that strawberry look great? I love freeze dried fruit! As usual when I have cereal, this was paired up with USAB.

Work chirped by at a nice pace today. I knew the gym was not an option as it’s yoga Monday so I brought….you guessed it….a granola bar for a morning snack (as opposed to something more calorie dense to power me through a work out). LOL!
I also drank more coffee than usual this morning but switched it up to water for the rest of the day. Upon arriving home at lunch I heated up what I packed last night…beer butt chicken, brown rice and broccoli. There’s also a squeeze of mango wasabi sauce for dippage;

The afternoon saw the rest of my pineapple chunks disappear!

When I got home from work I changed, popped back a handful of cocoa roast almonds…

And went back out to do more weeding. They keep calling for rain so I wanted to get more done beforehand. After an hour and a bit I came in to clean up and take DD to dance class. Dinner was next and came in the form of a HUGE salad!

This was 1 head of romaine, chopped tomato, cukes, grated marble cheese, falafels, walnut pieces and honey mustard dressing. T’was wonderful, but gave me a big food baby! And just because that wasn’t quite enough fibre (enter sarcasm) I ate a chocolate chip All Bran bar:

So, that’s my story for now. I’m looking forward to a great, solid sleep tonight!!! I’ll sign off with a photo of a squirrel teasing my baby cat.

Bye for now!!

The Treats I Ate

Happy Monday!!! My day went pretty well. How about yours? My hubby is off this week while I get to go to work. Fun times. Not having to get the kids out the door gave me some extra time which was a nice treat, though! I straightened my hair and enjoyed a more relaxing breakfast;

• 1/2 cup chocolate peppermint soy milk, 1/2 cup water
• 1/3 cup Quaker oats
• pecans, walnuts & hazelnuts

AWE-SOME!!!

Work was extremely busy today, but it went by lightening bolt fast. I did make it to the gym which was a bonus seeing as I wasn’t sure if time would allow for it. I hopped on the elliptical and watched some Rachael Ray to pass the time.

• Time: 45 minutes
• Avg Hr: 156
• Max Hr: 175
• Calories Torched: 432
• Distance: 4.8 miles

I brought myself a serving of last night’s white chicken chilli for lunch;

As delicious as this is, it just does NOT photograph well. I also ate some grapes as was I was checking back some paperwork.

My hubby and the kids brought me a 1/2 decaf, 1/2 hot chocolate this afternoon, too. T’was a nice treat!

And like the title of this post would indicate, I did eat some treats today. Christmas is just one season that I’m not willing to give everything up! That being said, I kept myself in check because believe you me, I could’ve porked out on a lot more!! ;) HaHa! Here’s the damage…

That’s not so bad, right??

Seeing as my hubby was home he got some dinner going for us. Turkey sausages and corn which I mixed into 2 tbsp of WW couscous that got sprinkled with some parmesan cheese. Oh!! I also had some mango wasabi mustard to dip the sausage into.

I was still feeling………something after eating this so I warmed up a lone piece of morning glory bar then coated it with almond butter and topped it with raisins.

That took care of whatever was missing! I decided not to do a meal plan this week seeing as the fam is home. We’re also doing Christmas dinner here on Friday so that will take up a day. I’ll get back to it in the new year.

On tonight’s agenda is present wrapping. Lots of it, too! I came home to some presents for me under the tree! YAY! I’m starting to get excited now…..

Bye for now!!

Menu Planning Week 4

Here we are at a brand new week. How about that? And it’s another closer to Christmas! I’m starting to get a bit excited about it. I brought some decorations out over the weekend and am just itching to finish the job. Anyone else excited for Christmas? I imagine all my American friends are totally psyched about Thanksgiving on Thursday, eh?

I was flipping TIRED after getting up at the crack of dawn to go to the rink. Yowzers! But it was DD who is still suffering from her lack of zzz’s after her weekend sleep over that really felt the early morning. Poor me! :D I whipped up an egg sandwich to eat on the drive over;
This is toasted WW bread, ¼ cup egg beaters and a LC cheese wedge. I didn’t think it would hold me over for long, but it ended up sticking around for almost 4 hours.

Today was strictly data entry at work which succeeded in making me one dozy gal. LOL! I broke for a pumpkin nut muffin around 11am.
I’m on 12:30 lunch this week so I pushed my snack back a little further.

I opted out of the gym today. I’ve been fighting a headache for the past few days which I thought was odd until I went home at lunch and noticed all the pollen floating in the air! Regardless, I was really just too tired and wanted to spend an hour at home with my fur babies. No guilt involved! I watched Dr. Oz, flipped through my new Shape magazine and sipped on a cup of pumpkin pie flavoured coffee. I went back to work ready to face the next 3 hours.

Lunch was leftovers, of course! I packed up the last of the roast from last Wednesday along with Thursday’s potatoes and a good squirt of mango wasabi mustard;
Classy plastic container, eh? The meat was on the dry side, but I reasoned that that’s what my teeth were for. Good think I keep floss at my desk, though!! Hehe…

Later in the afternoon I snacked on some of these grapes.
Hey! Like my faux flower arrangement?
I bought the rocks and “flowers” at the dollar store yesterday. Here’s the one I put together for the house;
LOVE this one! So festive and pretty….and CHEAP!

Dinner tonight followed the meal plan below. I cooked up some chopped onion in a bit of basil infused olive oil, then added 3 cut up turkey tenders. Once they were pretty much cooked through I added some TJ’s spinach sauce, some tomato sauce, oregano, chili powder, nutritional yeast, salt & pepper. I served it over about a 1/2 cup of penne;

Yum! Guess what’s for lunch tomorrow? LOL! The fam had pretty much the same only their sauce was made with extra lean ground beef.

Here’s what the food is looking like for this week…

Meal Planning Week 4

Monday – Dance (6-6:45)
-pasta with veggies and turkey cutlets

Tuesday – Pilate’s (6:15-7:15)
-Chicken Kiev (pre made) for the fam
-baked tofu for me
-veggies
-jade grain blend

Wednesday – Hockey (5:30-6:30 out of town)
-chicken Caesar wraps for fam
-mango wasabi chicken wraps for me
(wraps prepared Tuesday night)

Thursday – hockey (5-5:50) & skating (5:30-6:20)
-turkey sausages
-couscous
-veggies

Friday – FREE
-roasted pork tenderloin
-peas
-leftover jade grain blend

Wednesday night will be the wonkiest of the week. I decided on wraps because they’re easy to eat while driving. I’ve really enjoyed getting back into meal planning and am going to continue for the next 2 weeks (after this one) for sure, but with a twist! I’ll reveal said twist next Sunday so stay tuned. I think later in the month of December will be too difficult to adhere to specific meals, but I may try regardless.

After dinner we made our way to DD’s dance studio for their Christmas open house. I love getting the chance to see what she’s been learning. She's into hip hop again this year. One thing I learned tonight was that the instructor works those girls! Man alive! Here’s a shot of her in action;

She’ll kill me if she finds out I posted this. Too bad I can’t get a video to load for me!

After dance was done I picked my Mom up and we went to the mall so she could do some Christmas shopping for the kids. Two hours later we were finally done. Good thing, too, because the mall was closing! I stopped at Starbuck’s on the way out for a grande 1 pump pumpkin spice NF Earl Grey misto;

Right now I kinda feel like the lady in the crispy mini commercial…”I didn’t go to the gym today, but I did walk the mall for 2 hours…I think I will have a treat!” Enter one of Manon’s raw mini orange cheesecakes!!

Bye for now!!