What Happened to the Weekend?!

Mother Nature dumped another ton of snow on us over the past 24 hours! I swear, it never ends. Because of this, we left extra early for the Monster Truck show last night. Although it was slow going, there was never a point which we were at a complete stop so it took us about 45 minutes longer than usual, but we made it with plenty of time to spare. We had a GREAT time watching the trucks and demolition derby! There was a good smash....

We forgot to take ear plugs for DS so my hubby bought him these stylish ear muffs. They're monster truck tires!

I tried them on and they filtered the noise pretty darn good. DS has had ear problems in the past, so protection is a must for him. The rest of us were OK with the noise.

As I expected, we hit up Subway for dinner to go. I has a 6"turkey & swiss on honey oat bread with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, green pepper, black olives and sweet onion sauce.

Bad photo, I know. I took as it we were driving down the highway. I also found this uber delicious healthy brownie that Subway now carries...
So.Good! They posted the stats which were as follows; 145 calories, 3.3g fat & 2g fibre. AND, it was a decent size! Totally took care of the chocolate craving I've had for the past few days! Again, I took the photo en route. Of course, there was a few handfuls of popcorn at the show...

And I ate this chocolate chip Clif bar on the way home (this woulda been midnight, so I was feeling snacky!)

I must admit, I think I like the Clif bars better than Lara bars. I felt like I was eating a really naughty chocolate chip cookie. Mmmm!!

I fell asleep around 1am and woke up feeling pretty good at 8:30. I had a plan to try something new in my oats so I hopped out of bed and went straight to the kitchen! As well as my free vanilla rooibos latte from 'buck's on Friday night. I also tried a free tall tazo tea fruit infusion in berry.

I don't like fruity drinks but DS does so I thought he may like it. WRONG! I stuck it in the fridge and while driving to T.O. I thought to use it as part of the liquid in my oats.

-1/2 cup Tazo tea berry
-1/2 cup water
-1/2 cup Quaker oats
-2 Tbsp wheat berries
-sprinkle of granola

I might not have liked the beverage, but it sure did taste yummy in my oats! I'm so glad that I tried it!

After my Hubby finished snow blowing the driveway, we went to the farm for our weekly visit. All the horses were up near the barn and I managed to get a good shot of her stallion, Prince;

Lunch was more leftovers today. I still had the last of the canned veggie soup from during the week so I warmed that up and served it with the rest of the pizza from Friday night.

My eyes must've been bigger than my stomach because I left a good 1/4 of the soup and DD ate a slice of the pizza.

Guess who was being a little pest while I was trying to do some blog reading this afternoon?

Pepper is most definitely feeling better today than he was yesterday! He likes to chase the cursor around the screen.

After lunch we hiked up to the mall. DD had a few books she wanted to buy with Christmas money and I needed batteries for my digital scale that I received at Christmas. I also used one of my Starbuck's gift certificate's to get this huge travel mug!

I had them fill it (at no cost) with a non fat chai tea latte. The tea ended up being a venti! WOW! The arena is just around the corner so we went right to DS's hockey game when we were done. That's were the mug picture was taken.

Dinner was born out of need tonight. I had 3 yellow peppers in the fridge that absolutely had to be used up as they were getting all wrinkly. I decided to incorporate them into a quick stir fry. I cooked them up with some grilled chicken breast and the rest of the roasted fennel from the other night. When it was all hot, I added a few tablespoons of roasted red pepper dressing and cooked it all until it was bubbling and hot.

Another bad photo, I know, but the plate looked pretty dull anyways. Too bad the peppers weren't red or green. Oh, well...the taste was there!!

On the agenda for tonight is some muffin making and getting at some work that I brought home with me. Fun stuff, but it has to get done because I can't stay late tomorrow! It's my first Pilate's lesson!! I'd better get a move on as the clock is ticking away! I didn't have much time for blog reading today, but I will catch up with everyone tomorrow!!

Bye for now!!

Monster Trucks!!!!

Hi All!!

Today's post will be on the short side because we're leaving around 5 for the big city (Toronto) to see Monster Trucks! We took DS for his birthday last year and had a great time, so we decided to go again. Luckily, it's only an hour's drive from our door to the Roger's Centre in downtown T.O., but we're leaving early to find some decent parking. Last year, our parking spot was a half hour walk away. No joke and it was just as cold as it is today!

Anyways, Marianne was kind enough to point out the the picture from my trip to the health food store in yesterday's post was MIA. Not sure what I did there, but it seems to be gone from my folder so I can't even re-post it! :(

I was out cold last night by 10pm. That's early for me! I guess all that shopping DD and I did at Old Navy wore me out! I found 2 great yoga outfits for Pilates for dirt cheap! Here they are;


I thought they were pretty cute! We toured the mall for awhile, but I managed to restrain from buying anything thing else. I did, of course, stop for a FREE Starbuck's on the way out! I found a freebie coupon in one of my magazine's for one of their new TAZO infusion blends. I tried the Vanilla Rooibos Latte. Unfortunately, I have no picture. I didn't bring Old Bessy with me because she is just too clunky to carry around! It was pretty good, though. I'd certainly buy another one!

I made a hearty bowl of oats to eat before I started the housework this morning!

-1/2 cup oat milk
-1/2 cup water
-1/2 Old Wessex 5 Grain cereal
-1/2 mashed banana
-1 Tbsp raisins
-1 Tbsp pecan pieces
-cinnamon

This bowl was SO good, just like banana bread, and took me forever to eat! I love the weekends for not having to rush through my breakfast! I might've been prolonging the housework, too! :)

Pepper had an appointment at the vet at 10am for his second round of booster's. He still has a clean bill of health but was none too happy about the poking an prodding that he received! Poor baby!

Doesn't he look sad? He now weighs a whopping 3.4lbs. Cute little runt!

I had a the classic soup n sandwich deal for lunch. I warmed up a serving of my bean soup and sprinkled it with some mozzarella. For the sandwich part, I toasted an Arnold Thin and smeared it with Sabra hummus and topped it with a piece of deli meat chicken.

"Dessert" was a piece of dark chocolate that I bought at Laura Secord last night...

Darn flash! I'm not sure how we are going to handle supper yet. Something will get figured out, though. Maybe we'll bring Subway along to eat on the way.

I've got about a 1/2 hour to do some blog reading, and then I need to hit the shower. I hope you all enjoy your Saturday night! See ya tomorrow with a Monster Truck re-cap and what we ended up doing about dinner!

Bye for now!!

TGIF!

I was so tired last night that it was all I could do to keep my eyes open past 9pm! Needless to say, I slept like a rock! But….I woke up stiff as a board! I definitely used many different muscle groups this past week in shaking my workouts up. The top quarter of me is A-OK, but from my abs down I can feel every muscle that I’ve neglected. This might sound odd, but I relish the aches because it proves to me that I wasn’t slacking in doing something different.

Breakfast was also a little different.

-1 cup water
-1/4 cup Bob’s Redmill 10 Grain cereal
-cinnamon
-1 heaping Tbsp mango/pineapple jam (end of the jar)
-1/4 cup pumpkin seeds (also end of the pack)

The pumpkin seeds were the star in this bowl! They gave it the texture I so love. The jam flavour dispersed nicely, too and there were chunks of fruit in almost every bite!! YUM!

The morning flew by at work! Great for a Friday, I say. I started getting hungry around 9:30 which is very odd for me. I tried different tactics to distract myself, but I was still feeling the grumbles and hour later so I ate a strawberry & cream Curves bar with my Ginger Peach tea.

Here a peek of my flavours of Stash that I keep in my desk…

Us payroll gals went out to Boston Pizza for lunch today. It was great to get out of the office and socialize for a while. I ordered an awesome salad to eat. I think it was called something like “Citrus Chicken”. It was a mix of romaine, celery, carrots, green onions, red peppers and grilled chicken. I told them to hold the crispy Asian noodles. I also had the dressing on the side and when it came there were 2 choices….Apricot apple and honey lime. I liked the honey lime the best!

I ate every bite, garlic bread included! Yumalicious! Have I mentioned lately how badly I want my camera back?????

Moving along to what I bought at the health food store last night! Here’s a photo of the goods;

We have 3 Clif Bars (they were on sale!) in Maple Nut, Chocolate Chip and Toffee Peanut, a bag of Windy Hill Foods flax seed porridge (the whole reason behind the trip to the store), and a box of Lemon Ginger Stash tea. In the back you probably see a brown paper bag. There are wheat berries in there. I haven’t had any in months, so I stocked up!

And here are the 2 recipe books that I borrowed from the library last night…

Skinny Bitch in the Kitch and Mollie Katzen's "The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without". I've marked a few pages to try from Skinny Bitch and I just started the other one, but I've already found tons of recipes that I want to try! many a person has laughed at me for reading recipe books like novels, but I love'em!

Mu hubby stopped at the grocery store on his way home from work and picked up pizzas for dinner. He very thoughtfully bought a healthier one for me.

A quarter of this pizza has 190 calories, 9g fat and 2g of fiber. Pretty good stats for a pizza! While I had the oven on, I roasted a fennel bulb with a little EVOO and S & P.

I went back and grabbed another piece, so I ate a half a pizza! Mind you, they're smaller than a regular frozen pizza! I'd say what I ate equaled 2 "normal" sized pieces. It was tasty!!! I really liked the blobs of goat cheese that were dabbed all over the place. Mmmm...My sweet end was 3 chocolate chip cookies. No pic because I ate them while cleaning up. Not a real good way to enjoy a few cookies, but what can you do?

DD and I are off to buy cat litter. Who knew a 3lbs kitten could poop so much?! :) Then we are going to the mall to hit up Old Navy....they have yoga pants on sale for $15.00! I'll be needing some for PILATES on Monday!!!! Can't wait!

Enjoy your night, everyone!!!

Bye for now!!

Edible Mail & Something Just For Me

Before I get started on my eats for the day, I have to show you all what came in the mail for me yesterday!!!

That there is a box filled with samples from Sahale Snacks!!! The wonderful people at Sahale contacted me last October to see if I would mind sampling their new line. Hell, yes!! DS and I are “nuts” over this stuff! So I was uber excited to find this waiting for me. There were 3 flavours in the box; Almond with cranberries, honey and sea salt, cashews with pomegranate and vanilla and almond with PB&J and berries.

This camera has an uncanny way of loading most pictures sideways! Sorry about that. Anywho, DS dug right into the Almond with cranberries & honey, so I ended up taste testing that one, too.

F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S!!!!! I found this to be the perfect mix of sweet and salty. Great snack! DS practically finished the bag off! I think there’s maybe a handful left! I completely understand the reasoning, but I still say it’s too bad that he can’t take these nuts to school with him. If you’ve never tried Sahale Snacks, you’re missing out. And I’m not just saying that because I got free samples. I’ve bought and raved about their products many times before they ever contacted me. Check out this post here for my first go at these nuts.

So, I’m sure you can guess what I topped my oats with today!! *wink, wink*

-1 cup water
-1/2 cup Old Wessex 5-Grain cereal
-cinnamon
-1 Tbsp dried fruit (I put this in with the water right at the beginning to plump them up)
-1 Tbsp Cashew with Pom and Vanilla Sahale Snack mix

Pure joy! The cashews added a real nice feel to the bowl that I thoroughly enjoyed. I’m also glad that I added the dried fruit right at the beginning of the cooking time. They re-hydrated and were nice and soft and tender. I most definitely enjoyed this meal! Here's a better look at the cashew blend...

Work is starting to ramp up again as expected. The next 5 working days will be very busy, but not as demanding as last week. Because of this, I was only able to take a ½ hour lunch break today. That’s not really enough time for me to get a decent run in but I REALLY wanted to step away from the office for a bit. You know how it is when you try to have lunch at your desk, right? You don’t end up with a peaceful moment! I decided that I would fit as much outdoor adventure on the Wii in as I could to get my heart pumping a bit. Here’s what I accomplished;

Time: 18:01
Time in Zone: 16:11
AVG HR: 149
MAX HR: 182
Calories Burned: 143
Not too shabby for 18 minutes of exercise, eh?! I’m still in awe of the great workout this game gets me….and it’s F-U-N!!!!! Not to mention that I shook the morning cobwebs loose. :)

I ate some blueberries before I went home...

Lunch today was a bowl of my bean soup.

There was just nothing I could do to make this bowl look pretty. I had some nice grated mozzarella to sprinkle on top, but forgot it at home. L You’ll just have to trust me when I say that it was excellent! I chased it with this extra large chai tea from Tim Horton’s.

I wanted to mention what I did with the remainder of last night’s “roasted” chicken. When I got home from the pool, I put the carcass and all the pan juices into a soup pot, added about 4 cups water and brought it all to a boil. Then I let it simmer for about 1&1/2hrs. Once it cooled a bit I pulled what meat was left on the bones off and strained it all into a container. This morning, I skimmed all the congealed fat off the top and popped it in the freezer for another night’s dinner. I was brought up in a home where nothing went to waste and bones from any kind of meat were always destined for a soup pot! I guess some customs stick! This is a fantastic way to stretch your dollar. I mean, you buy the whole chicken, roast, whatever, so you might as well make use of it all! Anybody else do things like this to? I’d love to hear about it!

I put a roast in the crock pot today. I was going to follow Zesty’s fabulous recipe, but I didn’t have all the ingredients. So, in to the crock went the roast, ½ cup stock, and lots of spices…I can’t even remember what all went in! I set it on low and let it go for 8.5 hours. The finished product;

Mine turned into a wicked sandwich which I ate when we got back from DD's skating lessons at 7pm. I was ravenous and almost forgot to take a picture! You're in luck though!

This sandwich is made with an Arnold Thin, Sabra hummus, a Laughing Cow cheese wedge, lettuce and beef. I ate a few olives on the side because I was too impatient to slice them up for the sandwich!

If I may back track slightly, I did eat an apple with the last of my almond butter around 4:30. This is when the family ate dinner, but I wasn't near hungry enough for a full meal that early!

Putting food aside for a split second...one of my goals this year was to do something for myself. The kids have their sports and my hubby plays hockey twice a week, so I figured it was only fair. I was the only one holding myself back. I always just figured that I didn’t have the time….so, I made the time! I decided to try out Pilates because I’ve heard so many positive things about it, I signed up today and even though classes started last Monday, I will be going this Monday. They told me I can make up the missed class during their Wednesday session. I am SO psyched about it!!!! It starts at 5 so my hubby agreed to take DD to dance and I will pick her up. YIPEE!!! This is the first time since I’ve had the kids that I’ve taken some time for me and I think I’m really gonna enjoy myself.

Thanks for taking the time to read this long post! I'm going to go do some blog reading myself. Then I'm going to browse through some cookbooks a borrowed from the library tonight. I'll tell you about them tomorrow. I also stopped by the health food store on my way home so if you're curious to see what I bought, you should check back in tomorrow evening!!

Bye for now!!

Back to the Wii!

It was a COLD one this morning! When I left for work it was -27* Celsius! That’s cold enough to make the insides of my nose freeze and upholstered seats in my van feel like a piece of concrete when I sit on it! I had a nice warm breakfast, though!


-1 cup water
-1/2 flax seed porridge
-cinnamon
-1/4 cup fresh blueberries
-1 Tbsp French Vanilla International Delight coffee creamer

Oh, so superb! I missed fresh berries in my oats!! Not sure why the pictures went sideways, though!!

So far this week work has been uneventful. As much as I enjoy being busy at work, I don’t like when it gets to the “panic” level. I find that type of busyness to be more exhausting than 8 hours of physical labour. I believe it’s much healthier to work in a calm environment!

Here’s my mid morning snack….

Did you miss the medjool dates? I’ve been pretty much eating them all week, but I promised no photos! These were my last three, though, so I decided that they needed a little recognition! :)

Today I brought back Wii Wednesday!!!!!! I didn’t realize until I started up my Wii Fit that it’s been 25 days since I’ve used it! Where the heck did the time go?? The game even “pretended” to forget my name…hehe! Anyways, I did a good 20 minutes of various strength moves and 10 solid minutes of yoga poses to stretch out. My body was thanking me for this workout because my caboose is pretty sore after yesterday’s sprint intervals. Funny side note—as I settled into my 90 second plank pose, Mr. Pepper decided to hop up on my ankles, walk up my legs and then he proceeded to LAY DOWN on my lower back! Now, he’s only about 4lbs, but that’s enough to make 90 seconds feel much longer! Silly feline!

I had a warm bowl of soup for my lunch today…

This is the only canned soup that really, really like. I tried searching the web for a link to it, but couldn’t find anything! It’s just your basic run of the mill veggie soup. I ate it with a Sabra hummus sandwich on the side.

The part of the building at work that our gym is located in is now open so I wandered over to check out the area. Oh, my Lord the gym is a disaster! Due to renovations issues, they had to knock a wall out and make it smaller which is going to make fitting all the equipment back in a challenge to say the least. Also, everything is covered in about an inch of dust. I promptly emailed one of the people on the “committee” to offer assistance with clean up. He told me that it’s scheduled to open January 26. HOORAY! I guess a company will be coming in to do a machine clean up and placement, but we will be going in to do some scrubbing. I can not wait until we can get in there again! Not having to go home equals more sweat time (don’t worry, we have showers)!

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I munched my way through some edamame and carrots for my afternoon snack. This was just enough to hold me over until dinner time.

I pulled a chicken out of the freezer this morning so that I could do a 30 minutes roasted chicken in the microwave. Yes, that's right....the microwave! Using my Pampered Chef covered casserole dish, I gave the bird a fine mist of EVOO and a sprinkle of spices. Then it went in the microwave, uncovered for 30 minutes. When it beeped, I took it out and covered and let it sit for 10 minutes....

Voila! Roasted chicken on a week night!! I ate my piece of breast with a side of corn and a scoop of mango chutney...

I didn't realize how plain my dinner plate looked until I saw this picture! I ate my last Cravings cheese cake cup for dessert. This was key lime pie and it rocked! I'm not usually a citrus-y kind of girl, but this was really good!

While the chicken was doing it's thing, I decided to try out that recipe for black bean soup that I found in a Biggest Loser mini cookbook. I changed SO many elements that I think it's safe for me to post my version. I'd love to share the link for the original recipe, but I can't find it online! I'll just call mine;

Bean Soup

-2 cups low sodium chicken stock
-1 19oz can each black beans & romano beans, drained and rinsed
-1 28oz can diced tomatoes, with juice
-3 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
-1 onion, chopped
-3 cloves garlic
-1 Tbsp cumin
-1 tsp each coriander, oregano, red pepper flakes
-salt & pepper to taste
-1/2 cup corn (thawed if using frozen)

*put first 6 ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil
*lower heat to a simmer and add all spices stirring well to incorporate
*cover partially and let cook over low heat for 20-25 minutes
*remove from heat and, using an immersion blender, puree to desired consistency (I left mine a bit on the chunky side)
*stir corn
*when cool, distribute into bowls

This would be really good topped with sour cream, grated cheddar or crushed tortilla chips! I divided mine into 7 one cup servings to use for lunches. I plan on freezing it as a quick grab n go.

Well, all...I'm off to read pool side while DD enjoys her hour long swimming lesson! Tune back in tomorrow for a very special delivery I got in the mail today!!

Bye for now!!