What I Ate Yesterday

Bonjour!  We’re on vacation (well, staycation, really) this week and next which is just plain awesome!  This first week has been all about “getting stuff done” so that we can enjoy the second week worry free.  Noah was invited to a birthday party on Monday, Tuesday we hopped over to the next town for some hockey training….yes, hockey never really stopped; just slowed down… and yesterday he had a soccer game.  We’re *this close* to finishing our rec room renovation which is uber exciting!  Can’t wait to have that space back.  Monday we Jason mounted the flat screen TV on the wall and we bought a gorgeous electric fireplace.  Left to do is a wee bit of painting, buy 2 book shelves and some furniture.  I’ll be doing a full recap with before, middle and after photos for you.
In the meantime I thought I’d pop up a quick post on “what I ate yesterday”.  So here we go!
Breakfast Overnight oats made with a 1/3 cup each vanilla Greek yogurt, unsweetened vanilla almond breeze and oats, 1 tbsp of chia seeds and 1 cup of raspberries.Delicious!!
Lunch
 
A Silver Hills bagel toasted and smeared with hummus.  I love this type of lunch when I need something quick and portable!
Dinner We’ve been continuing our summer eating theme of BBQ and lots of fruit.  This is a turkey sausage with basmati rice and cantaloupe on the side.
Dessert
Smooth and creamy pineapple, coconut, pecan ice cream from Baskin Robbins.  LOVE!  While out and about I also put back a mango orange coconut frap from ‘Bucks.  And much snackage happened once these bad boys were opened!
So there we have it.  In actuality, most of my meals have been looking very similar to what I’ve posted here.  Summer just seems to be over ruling my desire to be in the kitchen! 
Before I hit “publish”, I want to post a link to a blog that a good friend of mine has started.  Creating Wellness in My Life chronicles Maddie’s journey to a healthier lifestyle after sorting out some health issues that she’s been dealing with the past few years.  Check her out!!!
Bye for now!!

Too Much Ice Cream

Oh eee! It’s been H-O-T this week and I LOVE it!! Temps have been soaring in the mid 30 range which is more my style. I’ve always said I was born in the wrong part of the world because I hate being cold and love the heat. The fam, however, can get quite cranky so I conceded and put the air on yesterday. The only issue I’ve had is that I’ve been eating more ice cream than usual and my belly is NOT happy about that! I don’t bring my IBS up on the blog much because I pretty much have it under control. After YEARS of dealing with symptoms I know what I can and can’t get away with. Dairy is my major trigger if eaten too many days in a row. That is also why I mostly stick to goat’s milk products and almond breeze….much easier for me to digest. But I “fell off the wagon” recently and have consumed ice cream 5 out of the last 7 days. And I feel nasty because of it today. Ugh…But I have eaten some great food over the past 2 days so let’s get on with it, shall we?!

I decided a cool bowl of Dorset cereal with extra blobs was in ordered for breakfast:
This was eaten after I put laundry in and watered my plants. It’s so nice to have Monday’s off!! :)

I got the kids settled at Italian school by 9 and then made my way to Pilates. It’s fun to be in the studio in the morning! I kinda chuckled to myself when I walked in because at 36 yrs old, I’m a good 20 years younger than the rest of the class! LOL!!! It’s all good, though. My butt still got kicked. Actually, we did a lot of arm work and I can certainly feel that today. I had an hour to myself after class and I spent that catching up on blog reading. I’m not quite there yet, but close!! I sipped on a iced coffee made with coffee (of course) and Boathouse vanilla chai:
Next up was making and packing lunches for the 3 of us to eat on the road to DS’s hockey session. I toasted a WW English muffin and topped it with hummus, grilled zucchini and an Yves veggie burger:
Perfect for on the road eating!

The facility that I took DS to not only has a rink but a whole loft area with different stations containing synthetic ice. He loves going and was pretty cocky that he didn’t lose any of his skating in the past 2 months he’s been off the ice. I cracked up when he fell on his butt with the first 2 shots on net he took. He chuckled, too. I took 2 pictures before DD and I went to the mall area to shop:
Before we left I bought us froyo. I tried what they called an “Asian” blend; lychee green tea:
I’d never had lychees before and was surprised at how sweet they were. The matcha tamed them down, though and this was a delightful snack. We had a few more errands to run before we finally made it home at 3:30. The kids crashed on the living room floor and I plopped myself down out on the front porch with a book and very cold water.

We did some salmon fillets on the BBQ for dinner which was fantastic. I paired my piece with the rest of the corn/edamame salad from the other night.
This made for a perfect hot summer’s day meal. And dessert? Ice cream. Ugh…thinking about it today gives me the heebie jeebies! The kids picked out 2 fun new flavours:
I went with a scoop of the root beer float kind which was just OK. It had hard bits of root beer “candy” in it which becomes a real bother after the second spoonful. Even DS decided to “spit” them out. Other than that, the flavour was pretty bang on. As for the other kind? I have no doubt that I’ll love it; I just don’t think I’ll be ready to eat any before it disappears! HA! My hubby and I sat out on the deck until after 10pm enjoying the night. I brought out some Lesser Evil popcorn to nosh on…
LOVE kettle corn….to bits! I had to hide the rest of the bag or it would be gone by now. HA!

It was up early and back to work again today. I found it still too warm for oats so I enjoyed a cool bowl of Nature’s Path cranberry ginger cereal with blueberries:
Work was busy and I felt like I got a lot done. Now that we are on reduced hours for the summer I only get 45 minutes for lunch which equates into 30 minutes in the gym. Before heading over I ate a new (to me) bar; Taste of Nature in the Caribbean Ginger Island flavour.
This was really good. Much like a Kind Bar in that it was packed with nuts and dried fruit. The ginger flavour shone through brightly, too. I have another flavour to try so I’m hoping it’s as good!

I hopped on the elliptical at the gym and bumped the resistance up from my usual level 3 to level 5. I plan to keep inching it up over the summer.

Time: 30 minutes
Avg Hr: 155
Max Hr: 172
Calories Torched: 315
Distance: 3.3 miles

I enjoyed a colourful salad for lunch consisting of beet greens, romaine, salmon, tomatoes, blue cheese crumbles and sweet onion dressing:
Later on in the afternoon I inhaled a pint of raspberries:

My hubby had to work late tonight so I warmed some leftover pasta for the kidlets. Then I made myself an egg “sandwich” using a scallion from the market, a 1/3 cup of egg beaters and a LC cheese wedge. I stuffed this into a hotdog bun thin. I also ate carrots and hummus:

Yummy egg close up coming at you!

DD and I took KC for an hour long walk on a trail after dinner. It was so serene! And he was one tired pup when we got him home! LOL Once I hit publish here I’m going to go spend chill on the deck. Tomorrow’s mid week already!!

Bye for now!!

Salad Mania

Hey, everyone! I had planned on posting last night but then I started gardening/weeding and time got away from me. I kept thinking it was going to rain because it was getting darker and darker, but it was just getting late! HA! Joke’s on me. So I’ll recap yesterday and today right now.

Breakfast yesterday was a simple bowl of oats because I stayed in bed a little too long and didn’t have time for anything fancy.
-2/3 cup water
-1/3 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-2 tbsp Enjoy Life Foods beach bash trail mix
As usual, my Monday workday went by pretty quickly. I snacked on one of my top favourite LUNA bars before going to the gym:
Yesterday was an incline walk day (4mph, 7.5% incline). I also chatted it up with a co worker so the time flew right on by. Love that!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 165
Max Hr: 183
Calories Torched: 501
Distance: 3 miles

Lunch was a wonderful salad packed with spring mix, cucumber, tomato, hard boiled egg and mozzarella. I forgot my dressing, but found some balsamic in the staff fridge which worked out well!
While in the kitchen searching for dressing a tray of sweets was brought in from a morning meeting so I helped myself to a mini butter tart.
Love butter tarts!!! Some ripe, sweet strawberries were enjoyed later in the day;
I’m pretty excited that strawberry season is upon us because nothing beats a ripe berry, IMO.

We did pork chops on the BBQ tonight and I knew I wanted more salad so I just decided to fill my plate with greens and use the rest of the meals as toppers. So on went my chop, asparagus and quinoa, as well as some honey Dijon salad dressing.
The perfect meal for a warm day! Dessert was an almond quinoa muffin.
As mentioned at the beginning of the post, I spent the evening out in my gardens. I got it into my head to make another flower bed at the back of our property and if not for getting eaten by the mosquitoes, I’d have been out there much longer. When I came in I dove into the last strip of Camino coconut dark chocolate bar.

Today started off with a great bowl of over night oats. A success after the last bowl turned out not so good!

This was a combo of Greek yogurt, Quaker oats, ginger pear jam, strawberries and dorset cereal that had HUGE chunks of Brazil nuts in it. This was great.

My pre gym snack was something completely different than what I usually eat;

Check it out! Pretzels with Sabra roasted garlic dip. I’ve never seen these in Canada before but found them at Wal-Mart on the weekend.

I hit the elliptical today at the gym. Young Pup was there so we chatted for a bit. I really enjoy talking to others while working out. Even if I am gasping for breath. :) It helps take my mind of the task at hand, ya know? Are you a chatter when you workout? I’m mindful that some people don’t like to chat and pretty much know who to “leave alone” while huffing it. ;)

• Time: 45 minutes
• Avg Hr: 164
• Max Hr: 179
• Calories Torched: 469
• Distance: 4.8 miles

Lunch was another salad! This one had spring mix, coleslaw mix, cucumber, tomato, hard boiled egg, blue cheese, carrots, the last bit of the hummus from snack and some Japanese ginger dressing.

After work I had to take DS to the dentist to get some silicone coating on his molars. They’re still his baby teeth and this will prevent cavities from forming in them. The appointment didn’t leave much time for dinner. My hubby rushed to get some pizzas in the oven using WW dough that I bought on the weekend. He did his best with mine by adding red peppers and that’s it. HA! He knew I wouldn’t want bacon or sausage and didn’t know what else to add besides the cheese. That’s a hardcore meat eater for ya. :) I ate these 2 pieces + one more;

I hit the road for Pilates with some dark chilli chocolate in hand!

Pilates was hardcore tonight. I’ll be hurting in the morn. Eeek! Some friends of ours stopped by shortly after I got home. It was nice to see them. With our boys so busily involved in sports, it’s been hard to meet up! Once they left I inhaled an almond quinoa muffin and got to typing this post!!

And now hump day is coming to a close and I plan on spending the rest of it watching some TV. Sounds relaxing enough to me!

Bye For now!!

Hot Like Summer

Hi everybody!! Have you all been out enjoying the fabulous weather like I have? I guess that’s assuming the weather is grand wherever you are. As soon as this is posted I’ll be heading back out to enjoy the last of the daylight. Here’s yesterday’s breakfast:

• 2/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup kamut flakes
• cinnamon
• peanut hazelnut butter
• carob chips
• kefir

Sitting in the office yesterday was torture. I wanted to be outside so bad that I could’ve screamed. I’m sure we all have days like that, though. I snacked on a chocolate chip zbar:

I decided to go home at lunch and sit out on the deck soaking up some vitamin D. My kitties joined me which made it that much more relaxing. There’s just something about a purring, content cat.

I ate lunch back at my desk. I packed the last of the pork tenderloin and couscous salad from the other night.

I ate this cold and actually liked it better that way. My co worker surprised me with a small iced cap from Tim Horton’s:

I don’t drink these often so this was a definite treat.

Before leaving work I ate some mango and a blood orange:

I paid Walmart a visit before grabbing the kids to buy them some Easter treats. Our Walmart just turned into a super store so I wandered around the grocery area. It would seem they’re carrying a few neat items that I might have to try soon. ;)

Dinner was late….for us. We had BBQ-d chicken breast, green beans and I ate some leftover butternut squash, too.

Dessert was this most cute chick a dee cookie!

Almost too cute to eat! :)

I woke up today at the same time I would to go to work. Blah! I wasn’t hungry right away so I played on the computer for a bit. When the hunger came on I made a batch of Hungry Girl pancakes:

These beauties were topped with a bit of coconut butter and defrosted blackberries.

Freaking amazing, I tell ya! By 10am all 4 of us were out for a great bike ride. We hit the pavement and some trail. My new bike rides like a Cadillac compared to the bruiser I was using last year. I do think my bum will be tender in the morning, though! HA! We rode for a good hour and when we got back home my legs were feeling pretty good so I went for a quick 15 minute run around the block. The first half was all down hill, the second all up. By the time I made the driveway I was out-of-breath. Whoa. I felt great, though. A nice cold shower helped! Lunch followed:

Egg white, Sabra hummus, LC cheese wedged all between a burger thin and a yogurt topped off with granola. T’was good, but not quite enough so I ate a little bunny:

The afternoon was spent doing some gardening, playing hockey in the driveway with DS (which ended abruptly when I beaned in the head with the ball!) and some gardening. There was some relaxing, too.

I made a really good pasta dish for dinner tonight….shrimp marinara. I simply sautéed some onion and garlic, then added a can of diced tomato and tomato paste. Spices included dried oregano, basil, nutmeg, chilli powder, S & P. Just before the pasta was done I stirred in about a 1/4 cup of hummus and all the shrimp off a shrimp ring, tails removed. This was served with a pillow of freshly grated parm.

There was no talking at the dinner table tonight! I finished off with a little milk & white chocolate:

So, tell me….what have you been up to today???

Bye for now!