Guess What's For Dinner...

Another busy day, made a little easier due to the fact that IT'S FRIDAY!!!  I did get a decent break over lunch time and met Matt at the Spicy Pickle.  I was craving a sandwich with good bread and lots of veggies...I guess I was a little over zealous because I totally forgot to take a picture until I was more than halfway through.  Sorry!

Here's the rundown:  roasted chicken, provolone, sun dried tomato mayo, portobello mushrooms, roasted red peppers, spinach, sun dried tomatoes, avocado, kalamata olives, and artichoke hearts.  It took me about 5 minutes just to order this sandwich because of my long list of veggies, Matt made fun of me.  :)  Holy cow was it good!  Seriously good! 

I did get a short run in tonight and it felt great!  I hope to do a longer run this weekend, but I'm not sure yet what day that will happen.

Time for dinner!  Here's a hint:

Tomatoes, avocado, cilantro, red pepper, jalapeno, roasted corn, black beans, lime, salt.

Obviously I was on a veggie kick today - I was craving more salsa fresca.  I made it a little different this time.  I didn't have any red onion so I left that out and I added black beans and red bell pepper.  This salsa fresca went into flour tortillas with cheese and hamburger.  Yum!

Organization!!

I had a yummy bowl of steel cut oatmeal this morning.  I've been trying to change it up a bit and added walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and chia seeds to my normal banana/pecan/maple syrup combo.  I'm not sure why, but both pictures I took turned out blurry...sorry!

This has really been a blah week, I haven't had very many interesting things to blog about.  Today was so busy at work but I love those days.  Usually my motivation is directly proportional to how busy I am - very busy = high motivation.  I went from one meeting to the next and tried to answer emails in between and that went on non stop all day!

I did manage to break away at lunch to grab a ham, prosciutto and mozzarella panini.  I took it back to work and ate at my desk.  The sandwich had kind of a funny flavor to it and was dry.  It would have been better with some kind of flavored mayonnaise.

I also got a chai tea latte with my sandwich.  This is the second one I've had in a week that I just wanted to throw in the trash after a few sips. This one was too sweet and tasted like the seasonal lattes that Starbucks has during the holidays (Egg Nog or Gingerbread).  I much prefer the chai lattes I make at home.  Maybe I'm not doing it "right", but it's better for me so I guess I don't care.  Someday I'll post about that and show you how I make them.

I didn't get home until almost 7pm and this is what I came home to:

I wish I had "before" pictures, it was totally full and unorganized.  I wish I could take credit, but I'm really not capable of such organization.  I wish I were...but it was all Matt.  Thanks honey!  :)  I love opening the pantry now and I just stand there and admire it!

Chile With Beans

I was in a hurry this morning.  I had my coffee (almost never miss that), but had to run out the door without breakfast (almost never miss breakfast either!).  Luckily, someone brought donuts to work so I snagged one of those to satisfy me until lunch.

One of our VP's was in the office today and I had meetings with him that pretty much took up my whole lunch hour, so I resorted to my stockpile of Lean Cuisines again.  I chose some kind of flatbread sandwich and it was DISGUSTING!  I choked about half of it down and then remembered I had thrown a multigrain bagel and some almond butter in my bag yesterday, and I always keep some honey at my desk.  Woo hoo!  I tossed the rest of the nasty flatbread and enjoyed every bite of my bagel!

I also had a greek yogurt later in the afternoon.  I was planning to run after work, so I figured I would need a little afternoon snack.  When I left work, however, it looked like it might rain.  This provided an easy excuse for me to bag the run for today.  As I got closer to home, the skies looked clearer and seeing all of the people out walking, running, and biking made me feel really guilty.  I decided I should at least go for a short run.  As usual, I was so glad I did!  It was a good run and I was able to stay under a 10 minute pace (barely, but it counts!)!  Having that new pace goal gave me the extra challenge and motivation I needed to make it through the run.

Here was the prize waiting for me after the run:

This is a Pinot Grigio from Chile.  I drank about half of this glass. This is the third "half glass" I've wasted from this same bottle.  I've tried several wines from Chile, and I have never found one that I liked. 

While I sipped on the mediocre wine, I started making dinner.  I tried a bean salad recipe tonight that was really good.  I had several veggies that I just needed to finish off before they go bad.  Here's my salad:

Black beans, pinto beans, red bell pepper, corn, red onion, cilantro, cucumber, grape tomatoes.  

I mixed up a vinaigrette dressing with evoo, cider vinegar, dijon mustard, cumin, salt and pepper.  Here's the recipe - the only things I changed was to use pintos instead of lentils and I added cucumber.  It was so fresh and good!  We also had grilled hamburgers.

I'm really tired and ready to go to bed!  Sorry it wasn't a very exciting day, but tomorrow is Friday and I expect things will be hoppin'!  :)

Asparagus "Tips"

It was a busy day at work today, which is a good thing because I stayed up SO late last night that I probably would have fallen asleep if I didn't have anything to keep me occupied. 

This was my lackluster lunch - a Lean Cuisine (Fiesta Chicken).  It really wasn't bad, and I ate it with some chips and salsa.  Not sure why, but I was craving chips and salsa today.  I love these chips:

It was only about an hour after lunch and I was ready for a snack.  I had a Pecan Pie Larabar in my desk.  It's been sitting there for a while because I really wasn't sure if I would like it.  I've tried the Cherry Pie Larabar and really like it, but it's pretty tart.  The pecan pie version was just sweet enough to satisfy my sweet tooth.  It was good - I like this flavor!

If you haven't tried these before, you should.  They have tons of different flavors and most of them contain only 3-5 ingredients (usually just fruit and nuts), they get their sweetness from dates.  I can't wait to try more flavors!

As I mentioned before I stayed up way too late last night, and for no good reason other than I just wasn't ready to go to bed.  I got about 5 hours of sleep.  On days like this, I'm not going to beat myself up too much about a lack of motivation.  I NEED MY SLEEP!  Since I knew a run was out of the question, when I got home the first thing I did was pour a beer to drink while I cooked dinner - Fat Tire, my fave! 

I got a phone call this afternoon from a sweet little boy who asked me to make his favorite thing for dinner tonight...hamburger steak with gravy.  How could I resist?  I also made roasted asparagus to satisfy the veggie "requirement".  :)

The whole family likes asparagus, but we usually eat the tips and leave the rest of the stalk.  Since I started making Green Monsters, I don't even bother cooking the stalks anymore. 

I roast the top third, toss the bottom third, and save the middle to put in my GMs.  It makes me feel good to put more of the asparagus to use and make it go further.  That's my asparagus "tip", pun intended.

Yes, paper plates...again!  I'm really bad about that, but after working all day sometimes I just don't want to deal with dirty dishes!

Golden Saturday

Saturday started slow, but quickly shaped up to be pretty productive.  I woke up and made a kind of nasty looking, but very tasty, greenish-brown monster!

 

Peach/Mango Vita Coco, chia seeds,  banana, frozen cherries, asparagus, and spinach.

I'm finally ready to unveil a project that I started last week.  I grew my own sprouts!

 

By Saturday they were ready to eat, so I set them in the window for several hours to let them green up a bit.

I had never heard of this before reading this post by Today's Lady.  It sounded like an interesting project and something that would be fun to do with the kids.  We grew a mixture of mung bean, alfalfa, and red clover sprouts.  So, for lunch today we had sandwiches with sprouts.

I enjoyed it, but it's like pulling teeth to get the rest of the family interested in eating something "unfamiliar".  I doubt we'll do it again, but it was fun and if your family will eat sprouts I highly recommend growing your own.  It was really easy!

Remember these...?

 

After putting it off as long as possible, half of it is on the walls now!! :)  My goal for today is to finish the job.  I used the roller to get most of the walls done in color #1.  Next up will be rolling on color #2 and then I have to brush the edges to cut in around the trim, ceiling, and corners.  Just getting some paint on the walls was half the battle.  Now I'm motivated to get it finished because who wants to live with a half-painted room?  Hopefully I'll be able to show pictures tonight!

After I finished my Saturday painting, it was time to get ready for a party.  Our neighbors/friends were celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary (the "Golden Anniversary")!  It was a fun night of eating, drinking, dancing, and laughter.  

They are a fun-loving couple with a great sense of humor (see his hand in the second picture!).  It was a joy to help them celebrate their 50 years together!

Sometimes you just need a big, greasy breakfast to get you going on the weekend.  We started off our Sunday with hash browns, spicy sausage, and over easy eggs.  I hope this will give me the energy I need to finish that big painting job!  :)  Stay tuned!

I've Created a Monster!

This morning I just wasn't in the mood for my oatmeal (I know, shocking!), but I had some Strawberry Papaya left over from the Exotic Fruit Plate the other day and I got an idea...

 

I made a Green Monster!  I believe I first read about Green Monsters on Healthy Tipping Point (she writes a great blog - check it out!).  Since then though, they seem to be popping up in lots of things I'm reading.  Everyone raves about them, so I decided to give it a whirl.

I used a Zico passion fruit flavored coconut water, 1 scoop of chia seeds, 1 banana, 1/2 strawberry papaya, and a bowl full of spinach.  Here's how it came out:

It was REALLY green and REALLY yummy!  Totally sweet with no spinach-y taste whatsoever!  It kept me satisfied most of the morning and it felt good to have such a healthy breakfast.

I had some errands to run at lunch, so just grabbed a half sandwich with a side of mac 'n' cheese at Panera.

 

Thier mac 'n' cheese is really good, but it just tasted so rich to me today that I couldn't finish it.  I didn't eat any more of it after I took this picture.  

Later, I wanted a snack and I had these to choose from:

The choice seemed obvious until I looked at the nutritional info.

 

Wow...not at all what I expected.  I have never been one to count calories, but I was shocked that this yogurt has so many calories and so much fat!  I'm typically a "full fat" type of person but I think I will have to check out the lower fat version of this yogurt if I'm going to keep eating it. 

I still chose the yogurt because, even though it was chock full of calories and fat, it still seemed like it would be more healthy and it just sounded better to me.  

I didn't make it home in time to run, so I have been bummed all evening!  I'm going to begin my countdown to the beginning of Daylight Saving Time!!  After March 15, it will be so much easier to get home in time to run before the sun goes down and I'll just be a happier person in general! :)

Dinner tonight was pretty simple, but still yummy.  We grilled chicken, roasted veggies, and served it with couscous.  The couscous was for my son who decided he really likes that stuff!

I covered my chicken with Texafrance Cilantro Pesto.  I don't know if anyplace other than Texas carries this brand of pesto, but it is fabulous!  They have several different variations such as Cilantro, Poblano, Chipotle, regular, etc.  I've tried the Poblano and now the Cilantro and seriously I could have eaten them with a spoon!

 

I have a big day tomorrow since I'm facilitating an all day meeting.  Off to bed I go!

CH-CH-CH-CHIA!

We now have a new staple in our house and it's the Chia seed.  This little thing is a power house even though it's about the size of the seeds in a kiwi fruit.  I found a new blog a few weeks ago that I really love to read - it's called "Eat, Live, Run" - you really should check it out.  Anyway, I kept noticing that chia seeds were mentioned in a few of her posts (I think she normally puts them in her oatmeal) and wondered what in the heck they were.  See them below next to the penny as a size reference.

I did some research and learned that there's pretty much nothing bad about these tiny seeds that are considered a "Super Food".  I brought some home last night and we all tried them and decided we will incorporate chia seeds in our food.  Every so often throughout the evening my son would break into the chia song, "Ch-ch-ch-chia!" and Matt and I would just crack up!   

We woke up this morning and Matt and I were both craving eggs.  When I found out there were only two left, I let him have them and started digging in the fridge for my oatmeal.  Oh how disappointed I was when I realized I had eaten the last of it yesterday and didn't prepare a new batch last night.  I could have eaten rolled oats, but I'm telling you - they're like night and day, they don't even taste the same to me so I just didn't bother.  Instead, I fixed one of my multi grain bagels with almond butter and honey.

 

I took the kids with me to run some errands.  We had several places to go including buying a birthday present for Matt/Daddy.  Our first stop was the grocery store where we had fun picking out several exotic fruits to try. 

 

Here's our loot.  Watch tomorrow for our fruit tasting!

 

Our next stop was to get some supplies for a new project which will remain secret for a few days, but I'll give this picture below as a hint.

After our errands, we picked Matt up and went to our favorite local burger place.  

 

Everything there is fresh and made on site, they even form the patties and cut the fries behind a window for everyone to see.  It's so worth the thousand calories!!

 

This was a very late lunch, so it served as dinner too.  

I felt like I accomplished a lot today, but I didn't do everything I intended to do.  It was a jam packed day and a couple of the things that have been on my To Do list for a while now keep getting carried forward as time runs out.  I MUST get them done tomorrow!  I am making that commitment now "publicly" so it's harder to back out (forcing my motivation)...tomorrow I WILL run at least 4 miles and I WILL paint the game room!

Hello Motivation!

Even though I was REALLY tired today, I had more motivation than earlier in the week.  The weather was beautiful and I'm starting to plan for the weekend so maybe that had something to do with it.

I briefly talked about it only once so far, but coffee is a daily ritual for me.  I always have my coffee even though I don't mention it in the daily posts.  One of these days (soon) I'll dedicate a post to coffee "my way" because it is a wonderful thing! 

I was running late this morning, so took my breakfast with me to eat at work. 

 

I decided to try something new with my SCO so I added raspberries, almonds, 1/2 a banana, and some maple syrup.  Not bad!  

I went out to lunch with a friend from work and, as usual when I'm out at lunch, I forgot to snap a picture.  We often go to one of Austin's most popular local restaurants, Chuy's, and we always order the same thing.  I have Deluxe Chicken Enchiladas and my friend has the Chicken Fajita Burrito.  They also have awesome sopapillas, but we were trying to be good today so we restrained ourselves. 

I've been so hungry lately.  Even though I was stuffed after a big lunch, I was still ready for a snack around 3:00 this afternoon.  I had the other 1/2 of my banana and some greek yogurt with honey (I'm so hooked on this stuff!).

I rushed home around 6:00pm, did a quick change, and headed out for a short run.  Really short - I ran just under 2 miles before it started to get dark.  That's ok because I've been having some pain in my leg and I'm afraid I have a shin splint so I don't want to overdo it.

(FINALLY I got the screen capture to work on my iPhone!)

When I got home I fired up the grill and got to work on dinner.  I marinated broccoli, red pepper, red onion, grape tomatoes, and carrots in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, oregano, basil, salt and pepper.  I grilled the veggies and a pork tenderloin that Matt started marinating in the afternoon in Wasabi Teriyaki sauce.  I cooked some couscous and voila!

 

Notice that I used the same "spinach trick" I tried the other day.  Because of the shape of the pork tenderloin, it didn't wilt the spinach quite as much but it was still good.  

 

Here's a close up of the grilled veggies:

 

It's late and I'm hungry again.  I think I've had plenty of calories today so I will skip the late night snack and go to bed. 

Big Ol' Meatballs

Today started with a ho hum bowl of oatmeal.  I forgot to make my steel cut oats last night so had to settle for rolled oats instead. :( What a difference!  I won't forget tonight.

As I headed to one of my mid morning meetings I heard the scary news that someone flew a plane into a nearby office building (seriously, just a couple of miles away).  Wow...flashes of 9/11 went through my mind and it was happening in my town!  Things settled down pretty quickly as the story of a disgruntled tax payer came out.  I'm just so glad that there weren't more people hurt.

It was such a nice day, I had to get out for lunch.  I went into a place I've just walked by many times before - The Steeping Room.

I grabbed a Turkey BLT on ciabatta bread with basil mayo and a side salad to go.  It was yummy!  I couldn't resist the Starbucks next door and had a gift card burning a hole in my wallet, so I grabbed an Iced Chai Latte too!

 

It was a busy afternoon, but I like it that way.  It makes me feel like I'm accomplishing something and makes the day go by faster.  I had a quick snack in between conference calls to give me some energy for the run I had planned later in the afternoon.

 

This is only my third Greek yogurt experience and it's really starting to grow on me.  It was already flavored with honey, but I couldn't resist drizzling a little extra on top!  

 

The whole way home from work I was already thinking of excuses not to run.  Believe me, it took some motivation to actually come home and get my running clothes on and get out there.  I just set my mind to it and didn't give myself any other options.

I know...not a very long run or a very fast run.  But I just finished a half marathon on Sunday!!!  Just that measly 2 miles were much harder than I thought they would be.  I was satisfied to just get out there and do something after taking a few days off.  

Now for the finale...

I made some BIG OL' MEATBALLS for dinner!  Washed them down with a nice Pinot Noir, and called it a day!  Cheers!