Cold Weather Meals & Pumpkin Carving

The weather has taken a turn this week and it has been dull and cold.  This is the kind of weather that has me making really hearty, stick-to-your-rib meals for dinner.  Wednesday DS had a hockey practice from 5:30-6:20 and then had to be across town for his 6:45-7:30 swimming lesson.  Thankful this doesn’t happen very often.  I needed a meal that was fast, had staying power and most importantly, was something that he likes.  With no immediate plans in mind I put a turkey breast in the crock pot with some water, carrots, celery & onion so I at least had a starting point.  While on the treadmill I thought to turn it into a pulled “pork” type of meal, but we already had that Monday.  Hmmm….the next idea was to shred the meat, puree the veggies with some of the broth and stir it all together with some tomato sauce.  Perfect!  I served it over WW macaroni noodles with freshly grated parm on top:
My next creation came about Thursday night in the form of stoup.  I thawed out a smallish pork tenderloin and had a ½ pack of TJ’s Harvest Blend and some tomato sauce hanging around.  These ingredients started my thinking process.  Here’s what I did:
*chop an onion, a few carrots and some celery and sauté for about 5 minutes in deep pot with about a tbsp of olive oil
*add 1 pkg of chopped Portobello caps and spices of your choice and cook another 5 minutes or so
*remove veggies from pot and add sliced pork tenderloin (or chicken) and cook until both sides are golden brown
*add veg back into pot along with 3 cups of stock and a 19oz can of tomato sauce
*bring to boil then add your grain of choice
*bring back to boil, lower heat and cook covered as per the grain you are using.  (The harvest blend took 15 minutes.)
* serve piping hot with some grated cheese on top
This was a real winner and really helped in using up some odds and ends I had floating around.  I took some for lunch today and added a good splash of water to bring it to more of a soup consistency.
Yum!
In my last post I promised pumpkin pictures and we’ve had quite the carving party tonight so it’s time to deliver on my promise!  First, these are the “templates” the kids chose:
DD went the simple route while DS must think his Dad is an artist!  The pumpkins have been on the front porch so the guts were not only slimy, but COLD!
Hard at work: And the finished products! Aren’t they AWESOME????
A peek at my eats! For a quick pre pumpkin carving meal I made some scrambled eggs with turkey and this cheese:
Then I nestled the eggs in one of these wraps: With salsa… Dinner is served!  I’ll be back Sunday night with Halloween pictures,  the Thanks & Giving food item of the week and a giveaway!!!  Until then, tonight’s sunset….
Bye for now!!

Office CSA!

Hey! I’m happy to report that everyone seems to be back in good health at my place. Amen! And I slept like a rock last night. Amazing. It occurred to me in the shower this morning that I was such a zombie yesterday morning that I totally skipped my moisturizing step! I haven’t missed that in years. I had enough bounce in my step after such a good sleep that I made it downstairs to the kitchen 5 minutes earlier than usual. Spare time…YES! LOL That meant my breakfast wasn’t rushed.
-1 cup water
-1/2 cup spelt flakes
-cinnamon
-blueberries
-kefir
Simple, filling, delicious. ‘Nuff said.

All morning I was excited to get into the gym for a power walk. It’s always nice to have something to look forward to, right? I found a lonely Sencha Tea Bar among the many Clif & Lunas in my basket:

I wish these guys were more readily available around here because I love the texture of them. They’re chalk full of seeds! Check it out…
I found a few of these in the colder months at Winner’s, but they don’t seem to have them anymore. I’ll have to see if I can source them out in Canada. Any fellow Canuck seen them around???

Back to my walk; it was glorious! I set the pace to 4.2mph and the incline at 7%. AND, I chatted with a co worker who just started coming to the gym (YAY!) for 20 huffing minutes.

Time: 50 minutes
Avg Hr: 159
Max Hr: 174
Calories Torched: 484
Distance: 3.5 miles

Speaking of finding lonely (food) things, I happened upon a forgotten about Fage that had been pushed to the back of the fridge last night. That little honey quickly became my lunch! HA! I mixed in a scoop of Crofter’s Superfruit jam and the last of my granola.
The expiry date on the yogurt said “April 18/10”, but when it comes to yogurt/cottage cheese/sour cream that has not been opened yet, I don’t pay much mind to the dates. Unless, of course, it’s months past. I just make sure to use it all up in a speedy manner once it has been opened. How much attention to do pay to expiration dates???

My afternoon pick me up was a bowl of honey dew and cantaloupe chunks:

A few of these jumped into my hand on the way out the door…

There’s a fella at work who runs an organic vegetable farm nearby and this year is running a kin of CSA at the office. Basically, he will email what he’s got in season and whoever wants some just has to reply with how much. This week was asparagus and I bought 2 bunches, $3 each:

I grilled some to go along with my dinner which was a pizza made on a WW pita with sun dried tomato pesto, turkey pepperoni, mushrooms, roasted red peppers, kalamata olives and freshly grated parm.

This was a great meal! The pita got nice and crisp after being in a 450* oven for 10 minutes and the asparagus was tender and sweet. This is the pesto I used:

Shortly after eating we left for Pilates class.

Now that I’m back I’m sipping a hot coffee (decaf) and just noshed on a granola bar (no photo). I’m excited to see that at almost 8pm, the sky is still bright! Love it! I’ll be settling in to watch the Biggest Loser momentarily then it’ll be bed time for me. Did you do anything out of the ordinary tonight?

Bar Review and Valentine Day Treats

I had another great sleep last night. That’s 2 in a row! Go me! Actually, the whole day was super productive which leaves me feeling satisfied. I revisited an old favourite for breakfast this morning:
-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-cinnamon
-chocolate PB2
-carob chips & walnut pieces
I lapped this up with pleasure! :D

I ate a Sencha Green Tea Bar in “Morning Lychee” this a.m. before hitting the gym:
THOUGHTS:
-at first I was very hesitant because I’ve never tried a lychee fruit before and the smell kinda threw me off. I couldn’t quite place it, but it reminded me of some type of alcohol. Not gonna lie, the first bite threw me off, too because it tasted boozy!! But I’m a champ and kept at it. After a few more bites the taste really grew on me. The packaging states “a tropical fusion of lychee berries & sweet coconut”, I couldn’t taste any coconut at all which was a bit disappointing.
-I love the texture of these bars. They’re chewy like a rice crispy square, but there are loads of seeds to give it a great consistency.
-They’re 220 calories but a good size bar so I feel it’s totally worth it. Because they are thicker and denser than a lot of bars, they take awhile to eat so there’s no rushing through it. And they are gluten & wheat free which I appreciate even though I don’t have issues surrounding those ingredients.
-1 bar = 3 cups of green tea. Enough said.

RATING: 4/5
**NOTE: This bar was not sent to me for review. I bought them myself to try. See here for my thoughts on the “lively lemongrass” flavour.

The gym was awesome today! I decided to run and did I ever show that treadmill whose boss. BOOYA!

Time: 45 minutes
Avg Hr: 164
Max Hr: 193
Calories Torched: 501 (!!)
Distance: 4.4 miles

That is hands down the best run I’ve had in a long time; since at least before Christmas. I got into a groove early on and never looked back.

I packed myself a serving of quinoa stew for lunch today:
I always add a little hot water before heating my (thawed) frozen foods in the microwave. It helps to loosen the mix up a bit so it’s not like a glob of paste in my mouth. LOL! I also found a box of cute cookies in the staff kitchen so I helped myself to one:
This was SO freaking good! The base was cracker-like and the chocolate topping was filled with caramel. SO worth it!!!

Just before quitting time I ate a pink grapefruit that I butchered cut up this morning.
Grapefruits are something I’ve always loved, but I hate the pith on any citrus and I find this in particular to be the worst culprit. Cutting and sectioning the fruit, while a pain in the ass, eliminates this problem for me. Oh…I’ve still been eating way to many of these:

My hubby and I put a Valentine’s order in with one of our local high school’s (CHSS) bakery for some treats. This particular school is a trade school so it’s the students that make and decorate all the food. I always support them come “special occasions” such as V-day, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc and have never been disappointed with the product. Take a look at this stash that landed at my desk this aft!
This is a 4 layer chocolate/banana cake with chocolate ganache. My hubby ordered 2. Yes, you read that right…2! Next is 6 dozen cookies.

One dozen is my hub’s, the other 5 are for the kids classes. Read on to see what we did with those.

I popped a roast in the crock pot this morning because the boys were on the ice at 4:30 and DD had skating lessons at 5:20. Us gals ate first. Along with my meat I ate a few potatoes that were also in the crock and some mixed veggies:

Once back home the kids and I assembled their Valentines using a cookie, some chocolate and v-day baggies. Here are a few of them….

So right now I’m in the middle of baking mini muffins for a “coffee break” my department is hosting at work tomorrow. I used this recipe for blueberry chia muffins and replaced the blueberries with cinnamon chips. I doubled the recipe but only have 1 mini muffin baking tin so the second batch is still in the oven. I’ll take a picture of the finished product for tomorrow’s post.

Needless to say, I’m feeling pretty exhausted right now. I plan on making a tea and settling in to watch Vampire Diaries. The only kind of candy I want right now is eye candy!! ;)

Bye for now!!