Humpity Hump Day

Happy mid week, everybody! The day here started off with rain, but the sun decided to come out and play around noon so all was well! I ate a nice, filling breakfast this morning;

• 1 cup water
• 1/3 cup Windy Hill Cremo cereal
• cinnamon
• blueberries
• almond butter
• splash USVAB

This may not be the prettiest bowl of food, but the taste was bang on!

We had another meeting today that lasted most of the morning. There was actually a lot of useful information so I didn’t mind sitting there for 2+ hours. The only issue was my more than full bladder. By the time the meeting was over, my eyeballs were yellow! :/ I pulled out this Chocolate Peppermint Stick Luna Bar when I got back to my desk;

I love. love. LOVED this flavour! YUM-O! Too bad I haven’t seen it here in Canada. :(

The gym rocked again today. I ran until I hit the 4 mile mark which took 39:10 and then I walked the remaining 6 minutes at 4.1mph with an incline of 5%. Then I got some great leg stretching done.

• Time: 50 minutes
• Avg Hr: 164
• Max Hr: 183
• Calories Burned: 490
• Distance: 4.35 miles

Awesome..and so was my lunch!

• romaine & spinach
• grilled chicken breast
• cherry tomatoes
• feta
• balsamic fig dressing

I actually got full before this was done. I picked out all the chicken and feta and left about a 1/4 of the greens. Interesting trait of mine that I picked up in childhood. When we were kids and got full at a meal, Mom would always say for us to finish the meat and leave the rest. Looking back, I would thing finishing the veggies would’ve been healthier for us, but I’m sure the cost of meat played a big part in why we were to eat that at least. Does anybody else have any traits held over form your childhood that don’t necessarily make sense now?

The fam ate a mixture of tortellini an ravioli in a meat sauce. While this looked exceptionally tasty, I know that pasta sits in my belly like a rock so I made myself something lighter. I read about this cool little quinoa dish at Sarah’s blog and decided to try it out. I served it with a toasted English muffin;

The only things I switched up was mushrooms in place of carrots and 2 tbsp of this tapenade;

….as the “sauce”. I’m very glad that I made this as it was marvellous! I highly recommend checking out Sarah’s post and trying the recipe out yourself! My sweet end was a chocolate chip All Bran bar;

Every little bit helps, you know! ;) And they taste awesome….just like a chocolate chip cookie! DD and I are going to be taking the pup for a walk and then I’ll be settling in with some cantaloupe and SYTYCD Canada! Have a great night!

Bye for now!!

Bock Bock

Just a little warning…I ate lots of chicken today!! I may wake up with feathers and a beak in the morning! :D

I enjoyed a cool breakfast this morning;

I combined a vanilla Chobani and 1/2 cup of TJ’s blueberry muesli. I liked the yogurt mixed with the cereal much better than plain.

I munched on another blueberry muffin again this morning pre gym. Check out all the blueberries stuffed in there!

I had a hankering for chocolate so I paired the muffin with a mocha;

I worked it on the elliptical today as well as doing some strength work. I really need to focus on doing weights a little more often so my goal is to do that on the days that I don’t run.

• Time: 50 minutes
• Avg Hr: 151
• Max GR: 176
• Calories Burned: 402
• Distance: 3.5 miles

Lunch was my first round of chicken for the day. I ate the last of the beer butt chicken with mushrooms and broccoli;

Lunch dessert was a pack of strawberry flavoured Yoga Chips;

I have to say that I’ve enjoyed all the flavours I’ve tried so far! The ingredients on this pack was 100% organic Fugi apples and natural strawberry flavour. Yum! I also snacked on grapes later on in the day.

I had to pick up the kids and my hubby after work as the Jeep was in the shop getting a sensor replaced. I knew dinner would be later than usual so I brought along a baggie of dark chocolate cocoa roast almonds to get me through.

Ready for more chicken? Dinner was grilled chicken breast with a Thai seasoning, a sweet potato and tomatoes from the garden;

This was a great dinner and I was comfortably full after eating it. We took K.C. for another long walk tonight. I’m going to miss doing that once the weather turns raunchy. He knows now when it’s time to go because when he sees me he started dancing like a mad dog! Too cute…I made a tea when I got back and while waiting for the water to boil I grabbed a handful (or 2) of fruit loops from the box that the kids had out. That is something I have to stop doing, but I’m working on it. I've always been a big night time snacker and it’s a hard habit to break. :/

Anyways, off to watch SYTYCD Canada! WAHOO!!

Bye for now!!!

I Wanna Be A Hockey Player

Well not really, but let me explain! My hubby bought a HRM last weekend to wear during hockey as he’s always been curious as to what his stats after a game are. He wore it Saturday and I almost fell out of my chair when he showed me that he burned a whopping 1778 calories!! Oh, my lord! That would explain why he’s famished after a game, though. Sheesh!

Here’s my breakfast!

• 2/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup Sunrise blend w/ quinoa
• 2 tbsp unsweetened applesauce
• cinnamon
• carob chips and shaved coconut

SO tasty!

I had another meeting until 11am so the morning went by quickly. I dove into my blueberry muffin late morning as a pre run snack;

I used muffin liners despite knowing better and true to form, the muffins stuck. URGH! I’m not sure why I always have this problem with liners! I ended up gnawing half the muffin off the paper!

My legs were on fire during my run today. I was sad to have run out of time because I could’ve kept going.

• Time: 50 minutes
• Avg Hr: 162
• Max Hr: 175
• Calories Burned: 503
• Distance: 5.1 miles

BOOYA! That’s a great run for me!

I enjoyed a great salad at lunch today. I bought a marinated bean salad that I’ve never tried before and used it as the protein topping on my greens. It was a mix of 3 beans and I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was!

Because it was already dressed, I used a fork to pluck the beans out and shook as much of the “sauce” off as I could. There was enough flavour that I didn’t end up using the dressing I had packed.

• romaine & baby spinach
• feta
• tomato
• mushrooms
• beans

Much later in the afternoon I snacked of some delicious red grapes;

I love grapes when they are firm and juicy. Soft ones are just wrong somehow.

My hubby grilled up some steaks on the BBQ tonight so I had a small piece of one along with the last 2 pieces of polenta (also grilled) and the rest of my kale/Swiss chard/beet green mix;

I could’ve done without the meat. I’m just not a huge red meat fan. Besides, I was looking forward to some much anticipated banana soft serve for dessert! I blended up 1 large banana and then stirred in a handful of blueberries;

Aside from the ice cream like consistency, I really like how the berries get semi frozen and pop in my mouth. It’s all about the texture, baby!

After dinner DS and I took K.C. for an hour long walk as he was full of P&V and needed the exercise. I’ve decided that he’s the perfect dog….We can walk him, give him treats and love him, and then we bring him home! :D

I just realized a few minutes ago that my whole fam is at the neighbours across the street. Not one to want to miss out on anything, I’m going to head on over myself! Have a great night!

Bye for now!!

Cookies, Cookies

I can’t be the only one that wishes the work week went by as fast as the weekend, can I? I’m sitting here amazed that in less that 12 hours I’ll be back at my desk. Yelp! :/

I had a pumpkiny breakfast again this morning, but this one was in the form of pancakes! Another breezy Hungry Girl recipe to be exact. I added blueberries to the mix and just look at how good these turned out!

It says the recipe makes 3 pancakes, but I got 5. I think it’s because instead of just hand mixing the ingredients, I whip them up in the Magic Bullet which in turn makes the batter runnier. Hey, the more the better, right???

Out at the farm this morning I got involved in a bit of a cookie feast. My MIL brought up 4 different kinds….almond, chocolate, gingerbread and maple……and I enjoyed one of each. Yum! This ruined my lunch appetite so I made up a small GM to sip on.

• 2 big handfuls baby spinach
• 1/2 cup USAB
• 1/2 frozen banana

I got showered after this and then we drove over to Costco which we haven’t been to since April. We used to go once a month at least but couldn’t justify the money over the summer this year. I picked up house stuff like toilet paper and Kleenex and the such. I also bought a box of Kashi granola bars, sliced baby Portobello mushrooms and salmon burgers. The best deal by far was a flat of blueberries for $5.99.

DS and I LOVE blueberries so I know these will get eaten fairly quickly. On the drive over I ate a pumpkin cupcake “frosted” with some almond butter;

Once everything was put away I went down to the garden to pick some veggies. Here’s what I brought up;

DD picked my butternut squash and let me tell you that I was not impressed as it’s not ready yet. :( I’m going to see if it’ll ripen a bit more in the sun, but I have a feeling not. There are 3 more still on the vine and I told her once again to NOT touch anything in the garden. Kids.

I had some time before dinner so I decided to put some of the berries to use in another Hungry Girl recipe….Big Fat Blueberry Muffins.

I’ve made these before but this time I doubled the recipe and omitted the Splenda. I didn’t replace it, either and they turned out just fine! Check it out!

These’ll make great lunch snacks this week.

For dinner we did up another beer butt chicken. Loving this cooking method! It’s pretty much 20mins per pound. So easy! I served my juicy breast with leftover grilled zucchini and sautéed sliced Portobello mushrooms;

I didn’t have a sweet end because we were going to Mom’s and she always puts cookies out. After this mornings cookie fest, I was kinda glad that she put out crappy ones this week!!! :) I did enjoy a blueberry muffin when we got home, though.

Well, SYTYCD Canada is in in 20 minutes so I must wrap this post up for today. Catch ya all on the flip side!

Bye now!!

Lump On A Log

That was me today. It was a dull day with rain on and off, my hubby was gone a good chunk of the afternoon playing hockey and I pretty much sat on my derriere for the majority of the day!

I started out with another great pumpkiny breakfast.

• 2/3 cup water
• 1/3 cup of PC 5 grain cereal
• cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and nutmeg
• dried currants
• almond butter
• Nature Valley granola cluster crumbs

The taste of pumpkin has really brought out the urge to bake. I have a few things in mind to put together in the next week. Here’s a shot of the granola clusters that I’m talking about. I found them at Meijer’s in Michigan.

After eating I threw some laundry in and then DD and I went to get the groceries done. That was the most ambitious thing I did all day! :) When we got back I did a few more chores, got some computer time in and then it was lunch.

I went with a toasted WW bagel, pepper jack cheese, a slice of deli roasted chicken and 3 tbsp of egg whites. On the side was some leftover grilled zucchini;

Then I enjoyed this Rachel’s yogurt;

The kids wanted to take K.C. for a walk so off we went around the big block at a very leisurely pace. We took umbrellas just in case but didn’t end up needing them. When we got home I was craving some chocolate so I indulged in a handful of carob chips while reading out on the deck;

A few other snacks that weren’t photographed were a handful of corn chips, the crust from DS’s grilled cheese and a 1/2 decaf, 1/2 hot chocolate from Tim Horton’s brought to me by my hubby. Yes, it was that kind of day where boredom sets in and munching mindlessly begins!

I was able to read out on the deck until about 4 when it started to rain so I brought myself inside and parked my butt on the couch to watch some Food TV. Very exciting, I know. The fam had requested tacos for dinner so I pulled out a trusty El Paso soft taco kit and got to work chopping tomatoes, lettuce and cheese. For myself, I steamed down a huge pot of kale, Swiss chard and beet greens as part of my dinner. Check out how full my Dutch oven was!

Of course by the time it cooks, it loses tons of volume! I decorated my portion with some sharp aged cheddar, pistachios and dried cherries. I also baked up some polenta rounds that were just seasoned up with some S&P. Voila!

Here’s a close up of the salad just because I think it’s pretty!

Dessert was a small serving of Maple Walnut fro-yo. I use a very small bowl to keep my portions in check!

And that about sums up my day. I can see some dark clouds moving in so it looks like the rain will be here again sooner rather than later. Ugh…Another movie will likely be in store for later on. Last night we watched “What Happens in Vegas”. Not a bad watch as long as you’re not wanting something too deep. As far as I’m concerned, anything with Ashton Kutcher is worth watching! :D

Anybody out there who has great plans tonight…remember to send some fun vibes my way! :) I’ll sign off with a picture of my baby…Pepper;

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!!