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!!

Yesterday & Today

Hey, hey, hey….look who went MIA yesterday! By the time I actually sat down last night it was pushing 10pm and I was BEAT. I’ll do my best to keep this 2 day post short and sweet!

My lovely Friday breakfast…

-1/2 cup water/USVAB

-1/3 cup Sunrise blend w/ quinoa
-cinnamon
-banana
-small scoop of pumpkin butter & almond butter

I realize it looks like a puddle of goo, but it was so good that I didn’t want it to end!

Work went by at a nice pace for a Friday. I spent part of the day calling people for interviews which isn’t a normal job function for payroll, but I welcomed the change! I broke at 11am for a Clif Mojo Mountain Mix bar;

I’m almost out of these. Thankfully I have a road trip to Buffalo planned for mid-November!

I was not feeling the gym, but didn’t want to miss it seeing as I didn’t make it there on Tuesday or Thursday so I bargained with myself. I went all out on the treadmill for a half hour and then beat it home for a bit of downtime. Yes, I live that close to the office! :)

Time: 30 minutes
Avg Hr: 165
Max Hr: 179
Calories Torched: 315
Distance: 3.2 miles

I had packed a Fage and muesli for lunch but when I went to the staff kitchen there was lasagna, bread and salad leftover form a meeting. Pasta and bread do nothing for me, but I did forego my yogurt for a big bowl of salad with some tasty balsamic vinaigrette.

There were cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, feta, pumpkin seeds and black olives in this mix and it was delicious! I also munched my way through a sweet navel orange;

I massacred it while peeling it. I have a real problem with the pith and kept picking at it even after I took the picture, but the orange itself was worth the work!

My hubby had plans with my uncle last night so I ate a quick dinner of a grilled turkey cutlet with Ted Readers peach bourbon sauce and the last of the sweet potato fries with some honey mustard for dipping;

Then I enjoyed a Skinny Cow caramel/vanilla bar;

I swear, these taste just like frozen pudding! :D

Straight after eating I trucked the kids across town to DS’s coach’s house to pick up his warm up gear and track suit that had come in. They needed them for the game this morning, so that was a must. Then we went to the mall to buy a present for a party DS had this afternoon and to the dollar store to buy supplies to make POM POM’s for the season opener. We even checked out a Halloween store that opened up and tried some masks on. Check it out!

My hubby, the jokester, says that this is what I look like in the morning! :D Lastly, I felt I deserved a tall NF pumpkin spice misto!

We started on the POM POM making festivities as soon as we got home. It took us an hour to make 4 of them. Now, I’m not very creative, but I think we did OK! I used toilet paper rolls, streamers in the team colours and some silver tinsel for flare! Here’s DD modelling them!

We did use them at the game and they were a HIT!

Let’s move on to today, shall we? I started the day out with some kamut flakes;

• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup kamut flakes
• cinnamon
• chocolate PB2
• raisins
• maple flakes
• hemp seeds
• splash of USVAB

We left for DS’s game at 10am. Thankfully most of his home games are Saturday’s at 11am. They lost 4-2, but put out a great effort. The team they were up against is in their second year of this league and were expected to win by much more. All the parents were quite impressed with our little players!

We rushed home, got some lunch in DS and then I turned around and drove him over to a bowling birthday party. With one kid down, I vacuumed, cleaned cat litter and the laundry room and had some lunch. I baked up the last of my butternut squash fries and dipped them into Dijonnaise;

You truly can not beat freshly picked produce. I consider myself very lucky to have the space for a vegetable garden. I also ate a b-nut squash muffin with some macadamia nut butter;

Later on in the afternoon I made another batch of homemade marinara sauce. I mixed 3 cups of it with 2 cans drained tuna to make a pasta sauce. I served mine over a pack of Shiritaki noodles, feta and steamed butternut squash;

Superb!

As soon as super was done I got busy making Veggie Girl’s Banana Butternut Pecan Bread;

Sorry about the flash…it’s been getting dark here at the un-Godly hour of 7:30pm! Ugh…Back to the bread! I had to make a couple changes due to what I had on hand. Pecans were replaced by almonds with pistachio’s on top and I used a 1/4 cup of butter as I’m out of oil. This is cooling right now, but I’m looking forward to trying a piece later on.

In other blog news…Zesty Cook put up a very exciting post today about a great challenge that he’s part of with Quaker and goobite.com. Go on over for a visit to see what it’s all about and vote, vote, vote for him!!! Good luck, Zesty!

That’s it for now. Bet you’re all breathing a sigh of relief! :D I hope the weekend has been going great so far for all of you…

Bye for now!!

Tick Tock.....

Does this week seem to be dragging for everybody or is it just me? It seems like Friday is still forever away!!! Jeez, Louise!!!

I got this dreary, cool day started off on the right foot with a comforting breakfast;
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup old Wessex 5 Grain cereal
-1/4 cup pumpkin puree
-cinnamon & pumpkin pie spice
-raisins & walnuts
I cut back the portion size of cereal from ½ a cup to a 1/3 and didn’t get hungry any sooner than normal. I’ve been feeling quite full after breakfast lately so I wanted to see if a smaller meal would affect my hunger throughout the day. It did not and I felt much more comfortable after eating it.

While I’m on the topic of oats, I was really craving some around 9pm last night. Weird, I know! I went with it and made myself a bowl with 1/3 cup Quaker oats, 2/3 cup water and some maple flakes.
This is exactly what I wanted!! I know that if I had resisted the urge to eat this, I would have eaten everything else in the kitchen to try to satisfy the craving!

I got a lot of little picky things off my desk this morning which is a good thing because we are heading back into pay week and I always like to have those bitty things out of the way. I snacked on some prunes mid morning, but I’ll spare you the picture today!

I was really undecided about going to the gym today. I did have a few errands to run, but it was nothing that couldn’t wait and the weather was pretty gross so I ended up going. In trying to rest my ankles I did 25 minutes of weights and 20 minutes of walking on the treadmill. That really left me feeling kind of blah. I know I need to be doing more strength training, but I really missed the cardio today. Patience is not a virtue of mine, so dealing with this “injury” is going to be trying to say the least!! To add to my grief, I stepped on my glasses (I took them off to do some push ups because they fall of my face) and broke them….good. ARGH!!! Thankfully my hubby hadn’t left for work yet and was able to bring me my contacts. I don’t normally wear contacts to work because I spend a lot of time staring at the computer keypunching and my eyes dry out and I end up with a headache. Good thing DD has an eye appointment tomorrow so I can order some new ones! All said and done, I guess I did still get a pretty decent workout in because I burned 260 calories. Much more than if I had just sat around! ;) Oh! I should mention that I ate half this Clif Bar before I went...
DD took the other half in her lunch. This flavour was just OK. The mint really over powered the chocolate. I have to admit that this is one kind I won't buy again. :(

Holy ramble! Sorry about that! I grabbed a portion of chicken divan from the freezer this morning for lunch. I added a handful of fresh broccoli to beef it up. Can you see the difference in the frozen to fresh broc? WOW!
My afternoon snacks included some grapes and strawberries….
No shredding for me tonight. The kids are back in the pool at 7pm so homework had to get done first thing. I made a quick bean & cheese quesadillas dinner tonight using a recipe from Family Circle. It was in the May issue.
They turned out really well! I made mine with a flatout wrap folded in half and I didn't use much cheese as what was called for. They came together much quicker than I anticipated so I had no time to get some veggies cooked up. Strawberries to the rescue!!
My sweet end was 2 yummy cookies....

Well, I am off to read pool side for the next hour! The only thing that would be better is if I was some place warm!! :) Have a great night, all!!

Bye for now!!

A Little Baking, A Little Fun & A Little Shopping

What a fabulous Sunday I had!!! I made sure to set the alarm for 7:30 before I fell asleep last night so that I would have ample time to shower and get ready for the hockey carnival at 9. Turns out the boys both slept until 9!!! Lazy guys, I tell ya! My hubby told me later that when the alarm went off he felt like it was 3 in the morning! Fortunately, they only need 15 minutes to get ready and eat something so we still made it by 9:30.

Seeing as I opened a can of pumpkin to make last night's dinner, I decided to make use of some more of it in my breakfast this morning. It's been like, forever since I had this orange veg in my morning bowl!!
-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Old Wessex 5 Grain cereal
-cinnamon & pumpkin pie spice
-1/4 cup pumpkin puree
-2 tsp maple flakes
Scrumptious, I tell ya!!! And it kept me full until lunch time without needing a snack-a-roo!

After I posted last night, and my parents came and went, AND I did my Shred DVD, I was really itching to bake something. Out came the new Hungry Girl cookbook for about the 100th time yesterday where I chose to make a banana bread (seeing as I had all those ripe bananas!).
Of course I can never follow a recipe verbatim, so I'll tell you what I switched up! I ditched the 2/3 cup of Splenda (eww) for a 1/4 cup of agave nectar and I was fresh out of Egg Beaters from my lunch so I used 1/2 cup egg whites instead. And I added a 1/3 cup of carob chips to the mix right at the end. The result was a marvelously moist bread!!
DD detected the carob right away...she doesn't like it and I couldn't trick her. **A little side, she insists on calling them "carrot chips"! :) Anywho, my hubby thought it was good and didn't mention that he noticed any difference with the carob.

The hockey carnival was a lot of fun. They had quite a few inflatable games, tattoos, (velcro) darts, mini hockey nets and sticks and much more. The kids had a blast at this one inflatable game where you wear funny looking helmet's and whack your opponent with a "stick". Here are the 2 of them during their turns (not against each other)...
Then they hit up the tattoo artist. These were no peel and stick'em jobs! He used an airbrush to apply them and I really wanted one, too! Here's what the kids chose;

By the time we left it was lunch time and we decided to hit up Swiss Chalet. This is the kids choice second to Subway. I wasn't starving by any means so I ordered a bowl of their Chalet chicken soup with a bun.
I am guilty of dipping said bun into Chalet sauce!!! We stopped in Walmart on our way home to check for a better pair of running shoes for DS when he plays ball hockey, but we had no success. The guys had had enough so DD and I dropped them off and made our way to the mall. We use to go pretty much every Friday night, but haven't been since my hubby was moved to afternoon shift. We did some window shopping and just before we left I detoured into Pier 1 where I found a cute plate (on sale) and bowl with a little spoon. Who can resist????
Then we treated ourselves to Starbucks! DS had a tall vanilla bean frap and I ordered a tall NF green tea latte. The barista made a mistake, though and I ended up with a grande. No complaints here!
Last stop was a grocery store that is normally out of the way for me but because I forgot to pull something out of the freezer for supper and we were on that side of town, I thought that fish would be a good idea. You all know me well enough by now to know that I can't just walk into a food related store and come out with one thing, right?! Aside from tilapia for din din, I bought these items;
Strawberries (3/$5), cinnamon honey(can't wait to try that!), SF creme brulee pudding cups, Sol veggie burgers and Renee's Pomegranate Blueberry, Acai salad dressing (on sale for $2.99 plus another $0.75 off coupon). Next stop? HOME!!!

I parked my rear in front of the computer for the next hour catching up on all your wonderful posts before getting supper started. Once I did start cooking, though, I made a good one!!! I baked up the tilapia fillets with some seasoning salt and butter for 10 minutes in a 350* oven. While that was cooking I chopped up and steamed some orange cauliflower and whipped up some of the Harvest Grains Blend that I received from Coco.
Although this was a very orange looking meal, it was fabulous!!! Afterward, we went to my parents place for a visit. I did good with the cookies this time! I only had one chocolate chip one and 2 tea biscuits. Back home now and I'll be doing some shredding as soon as I'm done posting this. After that will be the Amazing Race and then beddy-bye!

There's still time to send me your lemon recipe!!! Email it to kristaskravings@gmail.com and I will make sure that it gets entered. Come back tomorrow to see who won and who will be hosting next weeks challenge! :)

Bye for now!!

Sore Ankles????

HELLO!!! How’s everyone doing today?? Despite falling asleep on the late side last night I had a fabulous sleep and woke up before my alarm feeling refreshed. I hit the shower with images of a nice bowl of berry filled goodness in my head!
-1 cup water
-1/3 cup oat bran
-cinnamon
-4 big mashed strawberries
-lots of blueberries
-maple flakes
-walnuts
I ran the first four items through the immersion blender and then added everything else. I just love getting some fruit into me first thing in the morning!

Work was busy again today. Around 10:30 I found my hand in the office candy jar where I stole 4 chocolate eggs. Once I ate them I realized that if I wanted something sweet, I had brought some figs along.
I’m happy to report that no further chocolate damage was done to my thighs once these beauties were consumed!

Just before going to the gym I ate a big juicy navel orange…
So, the weirdest thing happened when I got out of bed this morning! My ankles hurt! I’ve never had sore ankles before! I’m thinking it was probably from running on a steeper incline yesterday. Anybody have any ideas on how to clear that up quickly??? For that reason, I hopped on the elliptical today.

Time: 50 minutes
Avg Hr: 163
Max Hr: 176
Calories Burned: 473

I also did 3 one minutes sets of walking lunges. KILLER!!!

Here’s my lunch….
SURPRISE!!!!! As I warned in yesterday’s post, today’s lunch was a replica of last night’s dinner. And just as delicious, too! For those of you who missed it, there's WW couscous, pork tenderloin and asparagus spears. My sweet end was a freezer muffin!
I enjoyed a bowl of sweet strawberries at the end of the work day…
The weather was absolutely spectacular when I left work! And when I got home I had one heck of an awesome package at my door step!!! The most fabulous Coco sent me a whole bunch of goodies from Whole Foods and TJ's!!!! here's a peak at what was inside....

Dark chocolate edamame....

Harvest Grains blend....
BARNEY BUTTER!!!
This neat little sweet treat...
I have NO idea what this was, but it was tasty!!! The filling was especially good! Mmmm!

THANK YOU so much, Coco!! This box made my day! There was also another non-edible surprise waiting for me in my mailbox!!! My MIL picked me up a copy of Hungry Girl's newest cookbook!
BOO-YA! As soon as the kids are in bed I'll be reading through this baby!!! THANKS, Mom!!!!

The excitement of all these fantastic treats propelled me through another round of level 2 shredding, but not before I ate the last quarter of my carrot cake Clif Bar...
I gotta tell ya, I have one sore hiney right now from this DVD! I suppose that means it's working, right? RIGHT?! :)

Dinner was a quick affair because the kids wanted to go to the park and I was all for that. Anything to tire them out! I made some really quick turkey burgers which I pan cooked and topped with some melty Swiss cheese. I didn't feel like taking the time to cook veggies and certainly didn't want more asparagus....one can only handle so much stinky pee....so I peeled and chopped up a pear as a side. The kids had the rest of a cucumber with dip and some noodles.
I know, this plate of food looks very boring indeed, but I assure you that all the contents were tres tasty!!I ate a coconut lime oat bar as my sweet end as well as a handful of chocolate covered edamame.
As you can well imagine, I have some goodies to put away and some recipe reading to do. Plus my kids need showers desperately for I fear they brought half the sand from the park home! :0 I hope everyone has a great evening! Oh! One more thing! If you are Canadian, go check out Kashi's website to get yourself a free box of granola bars!!! And don't forget to email me your BSI Lemon recipe submissions!!!!

Bye for now!!