Three Days Worth

The weekend is here, boys and girls!!  Are we all excited?  I am even though I don’t have a whole lot planned.  The past few days have been the usual…read “not exciting”.  LOL  I have to relish the quiet of my days right now because hockey for DS starts up Sept 1 and DD’s dance starts on Sept 13 so I’ll be hitting the ground running from then until the end of June.  Sheesh…before I know it Christmas will be here!  OUCH!
WEDNESDAY
Breakfast was a pack of Nature’s Path Maple Nut oatmeal which I’m happy to report had lots of nuts in it!  That didn’t stop me from adding more along with a splash of coconut milk:
A 100% enjoyable, easy to prepare breakfast! 
I noshed on a PB Mojo bar before hoofing it to the gym:
This one is great, but not as great as the mountain man bar.  That one I buy by the boxful!  :)
I hopped on the treadmill at lunch for a great ½ hour, incline speed walk.  I haven’t done that since before my vacation and it felt great to get on there and huff some.  And better yet that I woke up pain free unlike the morning after my run last week when my hip bothered me.  Getting old sucks!  LOL
In my quest to get back into eating loads upon loads of veggies again I chopped 2 tomatoes and a cucumber from the garden and topped them with ½ a can of tuna and some fig balsamic dressing for lunch.
WHOA baby!  I packed the veggies and tuna in separate containers so I didn’t realize how much was there until I combined the 2.  I loved the simplicity of it, though and it filled me up.  May have been mostly water, but I digress!
Just before I left work for the day I snacked on a packet of cocoa roast almonds:
Yum in my tum!
I made the fam pasta for dinner because I needed something quick.  Just as eggs and toast are my go to meals, pasta is my go to meal for the fam.  Why did I need something quick?  Well, DD had plans to go to the movies with a friend for 6:30.  After dropping her off we had to attend a meeting for DS’s hockey team across town.  Did I start this post by saying that my evenings were still calm? HA!  Anywho, they ate pasta and I ate a big salad made with kale (from the garden), a hard boiled egg, ½ an avocado, carrots and some freshly grated parm cheese.  The dressing was a mix of white balsamic vinegar, olive oil, honey chilli powder, salt & pepper.
I think I filled my veggie quota for the day with this one.  Delicious!  We made it home just after 9pm and the first thing I did was tune into SYTYCD Canada.  Then I sipped on a vanilla chai and snacked on a chocolate chip All Bran bar.  Unfortunately, the lighting was poor and the photo was awful.  Boo to the nights getting dark faster!!
THURSDAY
I lounged in bed a bit too long and started the day off in a rush as the result!  I’ll never learn.  With 10 minutes to go before I had to leave for work I slammed back a bowl of Wildroots cereal.
Insert work, work, enjoy a Nature’s Path sunny hemp granola bar, work, work:
Thursday was our last day at level 1 of the 30 Day Shred.  Some of the ladies are a little freaked out about moving to level 2, but I just told them to do what they can and if it’s too much to just do some exercises from level 1 till they catch their breath.  I think they’ll be just fine!
I made a big salad fro lunch with some odds and ends thrown in; a hard boiled egg, ½ an avocado and carrots.  I used Renee’s pear & blue cheese dressing to spice it up:
It was another busy night with it being DS’s last house league soccer game of the season.  The kids wanted leftover pasta so while I got that going I made some quinoa for myself which was topped with tuna, feta, roasted red pepper and freshly grated parm:
Simple and easy on the taste buds.  I also had some beat up orange segments.
My neighbour injured her knee so when we got home from soccer the kids went to make sure she was OK and to help her put the garbage out.  We chatted for a bit and before long it was after 9pm.  I crashed on the couch for a bit then crashed in bed.  The nights have been cooler and sleeping has been marvellous!
TODAY!
Had some great oats!
-1/2 each water and coconut milk
-1/2 Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-pecan pieces & mocha flavoured agave
The consistency was just right today.  I got side tracked and they sat a bit on the counter.  I think that’s the key to getting the texture the way I like it.  Pre gym snack was a strawberry pomegranate Odwalla bar:
I LOVE these bars!  They’re my new best friend.  I haven’t met a flavour I don’t like.
I climbed on the elliptical at lunch today for 30 minutes.  The perfect ending to a work out week, if you ask me!   I grabbed a quick yogurt and container of granola for lunch today which went down perfectly.  For some reason it was just what I wanted!
Following my usual routine throughout the work week, I ate a snack before punching out for the day.  Today’s snack was carrots and almond butter:
I really don’t know why I don’t snack on this combo more often.  It really is fantastic! 
Dinner tonight was a dinner for champions!  ;)
The fam was having juicy jumbos and mac n cheese so I decided to eat “junky” too!  LOL  I sautéed some green bell pepper to use as a topper on the “sausage”.  AND, I served it in a fluffy white bun!  It’s been a long time since I rocked the white bread!
I’ve never had a Tofurkey product before and I really enjoyed these sausages.  The bun was great until the halfway point.  I’d had enough by then.    This was a great Friday night meal!
My hubby did some yard work for the neighbour after dinner so I visited while he worked.  I also shared my bounty of tomatoes and zucchini!  It’s getting to the point where I’m being overwhelmed by produce from the garden.  While typing this out I’ve been sipping on a tea and enjoying the last few squares of my dark chocolate bar.
So tell me, what are you doing this weekend??
Bye for now!!

Hooray, It’s Friday!

Happy Friday! Aren’t you glad the weekend has finally arrived??? I know I am. I decided to put my baking hat on last night and whipped up a batch of Hungry Girl Caramel Pumpkin Pudding Cupcakes;

These were easy to make and I had all the ingredients on hand. I doubled the recipe to justify starting the oven in the heat. They turned out pretty darn tasty. I tasted tested 2 of them (a few hours apart) just to make sure! :D The first one I ate had a bit of macadamia nut butter on top.

The second, which I have no picture of, had some cinnamon honey on it. The fam ate theirs straight up and liked them that way.

Seeing as I had some leftover pumpkin puree in the fridge, I went with a bowl of pumpkin pie oats this morning;

• 1 cup water
• 1/3 cup Quaker oats
• cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, nutmeg
• raisins
• pecan pieces, shredded coconut & carob chips

Mmmm…a taste of fall!

I took the afternoon off work today so I was only there for 3 hours. BONUS! I did still go to the gym before leaving, though. Talk about dedication! I munched on a cranberry apple cherry Clif Bar before heading there.

This was not too bad but I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I prefer the non-fruit ones. I just find them cloying sweet by the time I’m half way through.

I got my sweat on using Mr. Elliptical today.

• Time: 30 minutes
• Avg Hr: 157
• Max Hr: 177
• Calories: 278
• Distance: 3.4 miles

I cleaned up and made my way home to eat some lunch. The tomatoes I used couldn’t get any fresher than these were.

I picked them off the plant, washed them and mixed them up with tuna and feta for a quick little salad.

The reason I took the afternoon off work was so that I could go to DS’s final hockey game at camp. My hubby and DD were there, too. We could see that he improved on his skating and stick handling while at camp this week. He had a blast and was sad that the week was over. Here’s a shot of him with one of the Storm (our city’s Junior A team) players…

We were home in time to start preparing dinner. We went the burger route again tonight….bison burgers to be exact! Mine was served up on a WW bun with pepper jack cheese, lettuce, mayo, chipotle mustard and pickles. On the side was grilled zucchini, also picked fresh out of the garden!

While waiting on the burgers, I finished off a bag of Pop Chips. There wasn’t much more than a serving left anyways! :/

These salt & pepper ones are my favourite flavour. We also tried the multi grain cheddar the other night which I did not enjoy at all. They had a horrible consistency to them and the cheddar flavour tasted really fake. All the other kinds are light and crisp….and addicting!

Tonight will be spent pretty low key. I have plans to read my book until my eyes droop! I’ve also got a bowl of Maple Walnut froyo with my name on it. Mmmmmm….

Bye for now!!

Vacation Day 13 - Ontario Place

We finally made it to Ontario Place! Only took us almost 2 weeks to get back there. We left a little earlier today to try to avoid traffic and it worked. I made a quick bowl of oats before we left;

• 2/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup PC 5 grain cereal
• cinnamon
• raisins
• cinnamon honey
• Sahale snack mix-walnut

It was smooth sailing all the way into the city so we were there by 11:30. Even though it was still a bit early, we decided to eat our lunches so that we didn’t get to deep into the park and have a long trek with hungry kids back to the Jeep. I made myself a WW bagel with fig preserves, LC cheese, deli chicken breast and lettuce;

Pretty much the same as yesterday, but still delish. I also ate a handful of each gold fish and pop chips…

Then off we went on our adventure for the day!

It’s nice now that the kids are a bit older and we don’t have to really chase them around. While they were in the play areas, my hubby and I sat in the sunshine and waited for them to come back. I waited a lot of years to be able to do that! :) Here they are with the Kool Aid guy;

And waiting to get buckled into a ride very similar to “Drop Zone”;

We all went on a water ride where you go along a “river” in a canoe enjoying the sights and the final hurrah takes you up a steep hill like a coaster and down you go into the water. This is what the end of the ride looks like;

And here’s DD and after after getting off. We were wet, but not soaked!

After 4 hours of fun, it was time to come home. When we got back to the jeep I ate a refreshing mango:

We hit a bit of traffic but nothing crazy like yesterday. We’re really only on the major highway for a half hour…the other half is a normal 2 lane highway. Once we got to that point I pulled out a Nature’s Valley Fruit & Nut bar as I was getting pretty hungry!

We were sitting down to dinner by 6pm….good timing for us! I had an Yves Veggie dog…half in an English muffin with ketchup, Dijon and relish…the other half on the side. There was also grilled zucchini that I picked from the garden yesterday.

And to finish the meal off? I savoured a Cravings cheesecake that I came across in the freezer!

We’ve got friends coming over shortly for the SYTYCD finale, and I have a couple of PB & chocolate chip cookies with my name on them! Mmmmm…

I may be blogging at a weird time tomorrow as I have very fun dinner plans back in the city with a surprise companion and I have no idea when I’ll be home. You must keep a look out for my post, though because you don’t want to miss who I’m meeting up with!!!

Bye for now!!

Day 6….Time to Relax

I woke up to very heavy rain and thunder this morning. A good day to sit around and recoup after 2 days of travelling about. Tomorrow is suppose to be wonderful weather wise, so we’ll be heading back to Ontario Place, armed with the $20 tickets this time!

I made pancakes for breakfast again this morning using a packet of berry flavour Amazing Grass. I find that this is my favourite way to use the product and it makes some pretty mean pancakes!

Once again, I smushed some raspberries on top and served a bit of syrup on the side for dipping. And all on my new shell plate, too!

Yes, I took this photo on the carpet by the sliding glass doors! It was so gloomy out and it was the best source of light. :)

I was so lazy that I didn’t even get out of my PJ’s until almost 1pm! Granted, in that time I went down to the garden and picked 2 more zucchini and the last head of lettuce, cleaned the produce up and baked up some mini Blueberry Chia muffins!

These little guys were pretty good, but had no spice in them. Next time I will make it a point to add some cinnamon for sure. I ended up topping the next 2 I ate with a little cinnamon honey. I got 24 mini’s from the batch which will make great grab & go snacks for the rest of the week.

I utilized some of the red leaf lettuce from the garden in a humongous salad for lunch!

• red leaf lettuce
• the “salad” from Wendy’s that I didn’t eat the other night
• patty pan squash
• grilled red onion
• feta
• leftover pork tenderloin
• Ted Readers peach & bourbon sauce
• Raspberry walnut vinaigrette

A “clean out the fridge” salad for sure! It was so big that I ate it right out of the salad bowl. Greedy me! :) Here’s the dressing that I used….another Buffalo purchase.

I knew that meal would need some help digesting so DD and stole the neighbours pup and went for a nice long walk. I remembered to take a photo of said doggy today so you can all bask in his cuteness! His name is Quesi which is short for “Quesadilla”. I can’t remember his breed, but he’s a type of Cuban dog I believe. Anyways, here he is!

Don’t you just love that face?! I spent the remainder of the afternoon on the front porch reading. Nothing equals relaxing to me like diving into a good book! I was feeling snacky by about 4pm so I dug into my bag of Salt & Pepper Popchips…

I have got to find these in my area because they rock like no other. This coming from someone who doesn’t care for potatoes. I ate about 2 handfuls before I put them away. You see, until I find a Shopper’s in my town that sells them, they are like gold.

When dinner time finally rolled around we grilled up the Al Fresco sweet Italian chicken sausages that I smuggled brought over the border yesterday.

I’ve tried the buffalo wing style before and thought they were better, but these were OK, too. I served mine up with a big side a pan cooked zucchini from the garden that had a drizzle of avocado oil and S&P on them,

My sweet tooth has been in high gear all day so I caved and tried a baggie of the Smart Food popcorn that I bought yesterday;

Holy jeez, was this ever good! Dangerously so. The popcorn is liberally coated with caramel and the are mini chocolate chips and pieces of cookie mixed in, too.

Seeing as I enjoy my sweet stuff, the single serve pouches are great for me. And there was a decent amount in there. What you don’t see that came after the popcorn was 2 PB & chocolate chip cookies. My hubby came home with 2 bags last night! I’ve asked for them to be hidden from me!

Well, that’s all for today. I’m going to go do some more reading while the sun is still out. Then I might take a stroll around the mall to kill some time. Hope you’re all having a wonderful evening!

Bye for now!!