Category Archives: Uncategorized

Monday Already?

Posted on January 11, 2010 | 6 comments

Weekend Recaps – In Case You Missed It:

Friday: I Heart Artichoke Hearts
Saturday: My First Race of 2010!
Sunday: Sharz, A Show and Sleepy Sunday

Good morning – welcome to the start of a new work week. Groan – I know. But before I get into this week, I’m going to do a quick recap of the rest of Sunday.

After waking up a bit late on Sunday, I set to making a quality breakfast. I had planned on making some for Hubby as well, but he had to leave to go play football in the freezing cold. So instead, I made some oatmeal pancakes for myself using Tina’s adapted recipe, which I guess came from KERF. I topped my pancakes with a mashed blueberry, water and sugar mixture. I also had a cup of hazelnut coffee.

My huge breakfast kept me full for most of the day. I had a light lunch pretty late in the day consisting of an apple with cheddar cheese.

After I did two loads of laundry and cleaned the apartment a bit, I decided to make some soup. I popped out to the store to pick up a few items and then set to work making tomato-basil soup (from cookinglight.com) with a side of sautéed brussels sprouts.

Tomato-Basil Soup

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 1/2 cups)

Ingredients

  • 2  teaspoons  olive oil
  • 3  garlic cloves, minced
  • 3  cups  fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
  • 3/4  teaspoon  salt
  • 3  (14.5-ounce) cans no-salt-added diced tomatoes, undrained
  • 2  cups  fresh basil leaves, thinly sliced
  • Basil leaves (optional)

Preparation

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic; cook 30 seconds, stirring constantly. Stir in the broth, salt, and tomatoes; bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer 20 minutes. Stir in basil.

Place half of the soup in a blender; process until smooth. Pour pureed soup into a bowl, and repeat procedure with remaining soup. Garnish with basil leaves, if desired.

———-

For the brussels sprouts, I just sautéed them in a little olive oil to start, along with some mushrooms. Then after about 5 minutes I added 1/4 cup of chicken broth along with some salt, thyme, pepper and onion salt. I sautéed until they were tender and then removed.

The soup was pretty good and I had enough leftover that I can bring it with me to work two days this week – I love that! Do you plan meals ahead to make leftovers for taking to work? I always try to if it’s a meal I think would be a decent lunch.

After dinner I finished up the blueberries I opened this morning as dessert – but I gobbled them up so quickly I didn’t take a picture.

Then I read a little bit of my new book before bed. I’m reading The Weight of Silence and it is definitely a quick read. I’m already about 80 pages in. I’m liking it so far, but I will keep you posted and will write a review when I’m done.

And so we begin our second week of the New Year – I have a bunch of projects I’m working on at work so I’m hoping my week will fly by. I’m also going for a run with a fellow blogger tonight after work – finally getting a chance to run outside during the week despite the darkness. And then this coming weekend I’m attending a bachelorette party! 2010 is shaping up to be a busy year.

How was your weekend? Did you do anything fun, have any great workouts, good eats or good reads?

Have a good Monday all!

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Posted in Recipes, Uncategorized

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Sharz, A Show and Sleepy Sunday

Posted on January 10, 2010 | 5 comments

Good afternoon blog world. It’s Sunday and I have to say it’s been kind of a sleepy one so far. It’s been a busy and fun weekend and it’s left both the Hubby and I a little tired today. Yesterday after my race, I had a second small breakfast – I was hungry after that run. I had some pineapple Chobani yogurt with granola and some light cranberry juice.

I may have also had a cup of coffee after my snack. I was feeling kind of tired after the race. But I also drank a lot of water throughout the day. The Hubby and I lazed around and watched a movie before getting ready for our night out. During the late afternoon I snacked on a Larabar.

I loved the Peanut Butter Cookie flavor – yum! But when don’t I like foods with peanut butter?

Around 6:00 p.m. we headed out for a quick bit to eat in our neighborhood. We went to Sharz Cafe, one of my favorites in our area. The Hubby doesn’t have the same love for it as I do, but I always enjoy the food. I also like the “Twilight Dinner Special” they offer. If you arrive before 6:30 p.m., you can eat a 3-course dinner for $21.50. A pretty good deal in my book. I have to apologize – I did not take any pictures. The restaurant is very small and Hubby got especially uncomfortable when I started to whip out the camera. My 3-course meal was:

Appetizer: Mesclun Salad with balsamic vinaigrette
Chef’s Special: Spinach Fettucine with wild salmon in a pink sauce
Dessert: Arborio Rice pudding with dried cherries

I loved everything! As I always do. Do you like dinner specials like this or do you prefer to have the entire menu from which to choose? The Twilight Dinner Menu was quite extensive, so there were plenty of options for me.

However, our late-ish dinner meant we cut our commute to the show pretty close, we arrived at about 7:58 to the theater. We raced from dinner to the theater on 45th and got there just in time.  For Hubby’s birthday in November, I bought tickets for God of Carnage.

It was a really funny show. It was pretty short, about 90 minutes with no intermission. It was only the four characters on one set, but it was hysterical. I really enjoyed it and recommend it. We tend to always see the musicals, but this was a nice change of pace. Do you enjoy non-musical shows?

After we left the show, Hubby went to meet up with one of his guy friends that was having his Bachelor Party that night in the city and I headed home. I tidied up a bit when I got home and went to bed. But when Hubby rolled in at 3:15!! he woke me up. So we both ended up sleeping until 9:45 this morning – very late!

Now it’s time for laundry and cleaning around the house. I pretty much have to do laundry every week or the pile gets out of control. Do you have a weekly laundry schedule? Do you do it on the weekends or during the week?

I also wanted to thank Meg for passing along the Beautiful Blogger Award to me. I did receive it from Katherine a little while back, so I won’t bore you with seven more random facts. But I feel honored to receive the award from Meg – I love reading her blog!  I added a new section on the right side of the page to display my award. 🙂

Have a nice Sunday everyone – back to the grind tomorrow. Boo!

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Posted in Races, Restaurants, Running, Uncategorized

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My First Race of 2010!

Posted on January 9, 2010 | 21 comments

Good morning – happy Saturday! I’m back from my first race in 2010 and I have to say it went surprisingly well, much better than I expected. I was very nervous last night and slept terribly – I was actually up before my alarm even went off. So I got up and had some breakfast before the race.

Then I commenced with the layering. I had spandex pants with knee-high socks on underneath. On my top half I had a Nike base layer, a long sleeve shirt and an outlayer jacket. I also had a hat, neck warmer and gloves. I was very hot by the end of my layering.

I headed out of the house around 7:30 and got to the start right around 7:50 a.m., which was perfect timing. So here’s the race recap:

Race Recap – Fred Lebow Classic (5 miles)

When I got to the starting area up near 98th I looked for my corral. They had asked what our fastest mile time was and I had put down 7:45. I found my corral, which was closer to the start than I expected, and then I got nervous that perhaps I overstated my capabilities and everyone in my corral would run me over. I tried not to worry about it too much. After much talking and singing of the national anthem, they finally started us.

Even though I was closer to the front than expected, it still took me about 1 minute to reach the actual starting line. And then it was really time to run. I started my Garmin and got to work. It was COLD! I totally forgot to mention that. When I left the house it was 21.6 degrees outside. But I quickly started to warm up as we started racing,

At 1 mile my Garmin beeped and I looked down to see that I had run the first mile in 8:29. Not too bad, but I wasn’t sure if I maybe wanted to go faster. So I started to pick it up a bit during the second mile. The second mile flew by and so did the third. But, as I got to the fourth mile things started to get tough. We were on the East side and things started moving up hill. We hit the BIG hill around 73-79th Street and it was HARD. I was thrilled when we reached the top and hit mile 4 at just about the same time.

From 4-5 I was able to pick things up a bit. I checked my Garmin and saw that we had hit 4.5 miles and so I really kicked it in. Finally, I hit the finish and felt wonderful that the race was over and I could head back to a warm apartment. Here are my race stats:

Mile 1 – 8:29
Mile 2 – 8:01
Mile 3 – 7:57
Mile 4 – 8:10
Mile 5 – 7:51
Total – 5.04 in 40:44

Yup, my Garmin said I actually ran a little over 5 miles. I didn’t stick tightly to the inside of the Central Park loop, so I can see how that would be right. So overall, I’m pretty happy with my times. It was the first really cold, winter race I’ve ever run and it didn’t feel awful. It at least makes me a little more confident that I’ll be able to finish the half marathon in two weeks. I’ll have to check the NYRR site tomorrow to see what my official time was.

I’ll just do a quick recap of yesterday’s eats and then I want to relax a bit!

Breakfast was oatmeal with raisins, almond milk and agave with a side of light cranberry.

Lunch was leftovers of the previous night’s Ham and Brussels Sprout Bake:

As well as Chobani yogurt with granola.

Later on I had a Larabar – the Banana Bread flavor. I really liked this flavor.

After work, I picked up my race packet and came home and made some dinner.

Pasta with carrots, goat cheese, artichoke hearts, grape tomatoes, raisins and walnuts. YUMMY!

So that was my night, then I headed to bed early for my race. Now I’m going to go enjoy my Saturday afternoon and a fun evening. Have a great weekend everyone!

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Posted in NYRR, Races, Uncategorized

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First Book Review: Ahab’s Wife or, The Star Gazer

Posted on January 8, 2010 | 1 comment

I finally wrote my first book review for this blog! I had originally planned to write it on David Cooperfield (otherwise known as the book that took me three months to read – grrr), but I just didn’t have any desire to review it. Sorry.

So, instead I offer up my review of the latest book I read: Ahab’s Wife or, The Star Gazer.

All my reviews will be under the Read page under “Book Reviews.” As long as I don’t encounter another Copperfield, they will continue to be pretty regular.

Have a great weekend! 🙂 I’ll try to post a race recap tomorrow.

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I Heart Artichoke Hearts

Posted on January 8, 2010 | 13 comments

Good morning – Happy Friday!! We made it through the first whole week of 2010. Yippee! Are you all completely ready for the weekend? I am.

I’ve got to eat well today and remember to drink a good amount of water for my race tomorrow morning. It’s a 5-mile race, which is a distance I’ve never raced before, so I’m interested to see how I handle that. It might be tough to find the right speed.

Let me do a quick recap of yesterday. Breakfast was oatmeal with raisins and pumpkin butter and a side of light cranberry juice.

I had an early morning snack of an apple (unpictured) and then for lunch I had the last of the quiche I made earlier this week. That certainly lasted a while.

Afternoon snacks were peach Chobani yogurt (pineapple remains my favorite) with granola and some carrots.

I may have also had some unphotographed rice chips 🙂 If you eat Chobani, what is your favorite flavor?

Toward the end of the day, I prepared to leave work and head to the gym and realized as I was going through my bag that I didn’t bring any workout socks or a sports bra. Where was my head? I considered going home and getting that stuff and then heading to the gym, but knew in my heart it wouldn’t happen. I’ve been a big 2010 slacker so far when it comes to hitting the gym and treadmill. I’m hoping my first race of 2010 will get me back into the swing.

So instead, I came home and experimented with this recipe. Here’s how I changed things a bit:

Ham and Brussels Sprout Bake

Ingredients

  • 20 Brussels sprouts, halved
  • 1 cup cubed ham
  • 1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped green white onion (white portion only)
  • 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 tablespoon grated Asiago cheese
  • 1/2 cup sauerkraut, drained
  • 1/2 cup of halved artichoke hearts (drained)
  • 1/2 cup olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 2 teaspoons dried basil
  • ground black pepper to taste
  • 1 tablespoon Italian-style bread crumbs

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
  2. Toss together the Brussels sprouts, ham, mushrooms, green onion, Parmesan cheese, Asiago Cheese, and artichoke in a large bowl until combined. Add the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, basil, and pepper; toss until coated. Pour this mixture into a 2 quart baking dish and sprinkle with Asiago cheese.
  3. Bake in preheated oven until the Brussels sprouts are tender, about 45 minutes.

I purposely picked a recipe with meat in it for the Hubby, but then he tells me that he’s not the biggest fan of ham. He did eat all of it though. Here is the result:

While this was the first time I ever cooked brussels sprouts (YAY!), apparently artichoke has been the real star of my week. I had the artichoke and spinach dip at dinner with Katie on Wednesday night, this last night and I plan on making a pasta salad and adding the remaining artichokes tonight.

But why shouldn’t it be my star this week? Artichoke has many health benefits. This site discusses some of its benefits at length, including:

“Globe artichokes are an excellent source of dietary fiber, magnesium, and the trace mineral chromium. They are a very good source of vitamin C, folic acid, biotin, and the trace mineral manganese. They are a good source of niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, vitamin A, and potassium. The artichoke has strong choleretic activity (promotes bile secretion in the liver), and choleretics increase the excretion of cholesterol and decrease the manufacture of cholesterol in the liver.”

Not only that, but I love the unique kind of bitter taste of artichoke. It definitely adds a punch of flavor to any recipe.

I will say that although I’m not a huge fan of ham, I did really enjoy this recipe. I might try it again with vegetarian sausage as a replacement for the ham.

Lastly, before it hit my bedtime I had a little dessert:

I spent most of my evening at home trying to organize my email after switching my personal email address from my maiden name to my husband’s name. There is still quite a bit that needs to be done, but gmail is a system that definitely helps make things easier and I thank them for that. Gmail is one of the best “technological” decisions I made in the last decade, along with buying a Mac.

What about you – are you a Gmailer? What tech-savvy things did you try in 2009?

In August of this year it will be time to upgrade my phone and it seems I’ll need to choose from either the Droid or a Blackberry (Verizon). Both really scare me – I am so behind the times when it comes to phones. I hate the touch screen stuff, but everyone else seems to love it! I might be forced to get with the times. :-/

That’s all for now folks! I may have a book review of Ahab’s Wife coming later this evening though. And tomorrow I’ll let you know what I’m reading now…so far it’s pretty darn good! Have a great Friday!

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I’m Okay With a Little Stray

Posted on January 7, 2010 | 9 comments

Good morning blog world! Happy Thursday – yay it’s almost Friday. What fun things do you have planned for the weekend?

I have a few things going on this weekend. Friday night I’ll be laying low because I have a 5-mile race bright and early on Saturday morning in Central Park! Then Saturday evening the Hubby and I are having our first 2010 date night (sticking to those resolutions). We’re going out to dinner and then going to see God of Carnage on Broadway. It’s supposed to be really funny – don’t mind the name. I bought these tickets for Hubby’s birthday and when I originally bought them months ago James Gandolfini (Tony Soprano) was the lead male. Bill loved the Sopranos, so I was kind of disappointed when they changed the cast. But I still happen to recognize two of the actors in this cast: Jimmy Smits and Christine Lahti. Sunday we are contemplating going to see Avatar. Everyone is raving about it, but neither one of us is too pumped to go see it. Have you seen it – feedback? 

Before I get into yesterday’s eats, I wanted to share this link with you from Foodfit.com – it’s their Winter Guide to Fruits and Vegetables. I get their newsletter and thought this list was pretty useful. There were definitely some fruits on the fruit list that I’d never heard of before, but sounded tasty.

Now onto eats:  I remembered to photograph my breakfast yesterday – it was oatmeal with banana and pumpkin butter. I hadn’t used my pumpkin butter in a while and it’s starting to get low. I also had a side of light cranberry juice.

For lunch I might have had a piece of pizza during our Marketing and Communications celebratory lunch. Some of our publications recently won awards, so we were celebrating. I can’t pass up celebratory pizza! Sorry – no pic. And then a little later I got my fill of veggies with cucumbers, carrots and grape tomatoes drizzled with balsamic vinegar.

A little later I had a few chippers…

And even later in afternoon I had two clementines for a snack.

I left work right at 5 p.m. because I was soo excited to go have dinner with my friend Katie! I looked for a restaurant near Union Square, but didn’t want to go to big place or a chain place – I wanted something smaller and cozy. I found some good reviews about Vintage Irving on the NY Magazine website, so I decided we should give it a try. It did not disappoint. Our food was so good. Here’s the rundown – I had to use flash because it was very dark and my photos were not coming out at all:

Truffle Chicken Mini Meatballs, thyme-scented sherry wine sauce

This was a Spinach and Artichoke dip, which is not shown on their online menu:

We also had an amazing cheese and meat place from the Chef’s plate portion of the menu. The Manchego cheese was amazing – if you ever make it to this place, that is a must. We both loved this plate a lot (half of it has already been eaten – we dove in before I could get the camera out).

We had a lovely mesclun salad as well, but it definitely fell behind the Chef’s plate.

And finally, we topped the meal off with some cheesecake. It was amazing!!

We also had a few glasses of wine with our many mini meals, of course 🙂 As you can see, I did not limit myself on this outing at all. But I agree with Katherine and Meg’s recent posts that healthy does not have to equal perfect and we should learn to live a little! Plus, I don’t see Katie all the time, so when we are able to get together we kind of go all out. Here we are (I turned it black and white to hide the our wine-stained red lips and mouths):

Don’t you hate when that happens? Or does it only happen to me? Katie’s red stains were not nearly as bad as mine.

So it was a delightful dinner and then I headed right to bed when I got home. How about you – are there times when you stray a bit from your healthy ways? I certainly did last night, but I am proud to say I don’t feel guilty about it at all! 🙂

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Posted in Dessert, Restaurants, Uncategorized

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Over the Hump and Through the Week…

Posted on January 6, 2010 | 9 comments

…Toward the weekend we go! Get it – like the song: “Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go..” Yeah, I don’t know why that’s in my head.

Anyway – happy hump day! First full week in a while – how’s everyone doing? I’m going to jump right into Tuesday’s eats.

I completely forgot to photograph breakfast yesterday – I was busy reading blogs and doing a few other things while eating and it slipped my mind. I had a honey wheat English muffin with peanut butter and topped with banana and side of light cranberry juice.

My late morning snack yesterday was a nice big apple.

For lunch I ventured out and grabbed a salad. It was filled with romaine lettuce, cheddar cheese, walnuts, carrots, chic peas and raisins – topped with balsamic vinaigrette.

My late afternoon snack was Chobani yogurt with granola and it hit the spot.

I didn’t make it to the gym last night – very bad I know. So I came home and had dinner – leftover Quiche from the previous night.

After dinner, I had a spot of tea – a new kind: Candy Cane Lane.

This tea was delicious – way better than the Sugar Plum Spice. I don’t think I’m a fruity tea drinker. This tea was softer with vanilla and peppermint flavors. It was yummy. I also had my last piece of Coffee-Nut Scone for dessert.

Speaking of tea, my Examiner.com article for this week happens to be about top tea trends. Check it out!

I was on the Celestial Seasonings website yesterday and searched for a store in my area selling Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride. It directed me to Food Emporium on 86th street. I went, I searched, it was not there. Sadness. Candy Cane Lane served as a delicious replacement though. And it happens to be green tea – one of the most popular healthy teas I talk about in my article.

What is your favorite kind of tea? Or what kind of tea have you been sipping on a lot lately?

I’m not sure I have a favorite tea really. I’ve been drinking Echinacea tea at work a lot. It’s very aromatic and soothing. At home I’ve been trying a variety of flavors. I also went through a black tea a while back kick when I was first cutting down on coffee.

As the Hubby and I settled in to watch The Biggest Loser last night, I also ended up making us a bag of popcorn to share (no photograph).

Did you watch it? Thoughts?

I was utterly amazed at the size of this group of people. Like they said over and over, the contestants just keep getting bigger and bigger and it’s not a good thing. I was sad that the one brother had to go home because they both really needed to be there.

It’s too bad they couldn’t keep everyone on there for at least a month just to give them a basic start and healthy principles to follow. But I guess one week is better than nothing and losing 23 pounds during that time definitely showed him he can do it.

I have to say I think Mike will be my favorite (the biggest person on the show: 526 pounds). He was really funny and I loved him after his weigh-in with the comment, “Can you see my abs?” I hope he sticks around for a while, but his team is going to need to drop some serious weight to stay competitive.

If you watched, who did you like from the first episode?

Happy Hump Day Everyone – have a good one!

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The First Tuesday of 2010

Posted on January 5, 2010 | 11 comments

It’s the first Tuesday of 2010, which means we made it through the first Monday of 2010!! Hopefully this week will fly right by. But that means my first race of 2010 will be here before I know it. Eeeks!

I’m running the NYRR Fred Lebow Classic 5-miler in Central Park this Saturday and am a bit nervous because of the frigid temperatures predicated and my lack of recent good runs. Is anyone else out there running it as well?

I’m going to try not to think about it or worry about it too much till Saturday. So let’s recap yesterday’s eats:

Breakfast was boring old Kashi Heart to Heart cereal with almond milk and a side of light cranberry juice.

I was pretty busy at work on Monday considering the amount of vacay time we’ve had lately, so I squeezed in a mid-morning snack of a Coffee-Nut Scone around 11 a.m.

I got pretty busy and then all of a sudden at 1:35 I remembered that I had a phone interview scheduled for 2:00. That wasn’t going to leave me much time for lunch, so I decided to eat my snacks first.

I had a strawberry Chobani yogurt with granola and some carrots.

Then around 2:45 I was finally able to have lunch and I had leftover venison chili.

After work I hurried over to the gym to try to beat the after New Year’s rush of people. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too bad. However, they were giving a lot of tours, which tells me the onslaught is coming soon. I hopped on the  treadmill and ran the following:

4 miles in 35:05

Definitely not my fastest, but I was still a little stuffy in my nose and congested in my chest.

Then I did some abs: 75 crunches; 50 twist crunches; 15 leg lowers

I stopped at the store quickly on the way home to pick up a few things for dinner and was overwhelmed by how busy it was. Note to self, Monday is not a good grocery-shopping day.

For dinner I adapted this recipe for a Crustless Spinach Quiche. The red text and cross-outs show where I added or made changes:

Crustless Spinach and Mushroom Quiche

3 ounces reduced fat free cream cheese, softened
1 cup fat-free milk
1 cup egg substitute
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 ½ cups shredded reduced-fat Cheddar cheese
1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
½ cup of frozen broccoli, thawed and well-drained
½ cup of grape tomatoes, halved
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 cup of fresh mushrooms, sliced

Directions

In a small mixing bowl, beat cream cheese. Add milk, egg substitute and pepper; beat until smooth. Stir in remaining ingredients. Transfer to a 10-in. quiche pan coated with nonstick cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-50 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean.

The result:

My first piece – I had two pieces in total.

The recipe was very good, but I used a smaller dish than recommended, so it took longer to cook, which was annoying because I was hungry. But all in all, a good dinner.

And then dessert was another Coffee-Nut Scone, but Hubby suggested maybe adding some frosting to the remaining scones. I gave in and it wasn’t too bad actually.

The rest of my night was very quiet, I read a bit, watched part of a football game Hubby was interested in and I’m ashamed to admit I also watched part of The Bachelor. I had to turn it off at one point because it was so awkward and the girls were terrible. It was kind of funny at the same time though.

Health in the news…

Sleep loss may affect health by curbing exercise – Better get that rest to keep up your workout schedule.

Five ‘eating better’ foods to slip into your diet in ’10 –  A lot of this is common sense stuff, but it does remind me that I need to drink more green tea.
 
Study Says Women With Mate Get Heavier – Essentially the study found that women living with a man (married or not) gained weight after co-habitating, and if they had a child, their weight went up even more. I’ve heard from people that they gained weight once they got married (although I don’t think you can state this is the norm), but this sentence made me laugh out loud:

“This does not explain the still larger weight gain in women who became pregnant.”
 
Did they not get the memo that a woman’s body changes after she has a baby?
 
I don’t put much stock in these kinds of studies, but it does raise some interesting questions:
 
Has your eating changed at all since living with a significant other (either currently or in the past)? What about after marriage?
 
I can tell you that I weigh less now than I did when I met my husband. I think I’ve actually started to eat healthier foods and exercise more since we’ve been together. It helps, of course, that he is an active person who also eats well. I wonder if things would be any different if he weren’t that kind of person. Food for thought…
 
Have a great Tuesday everyone!

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What’s Better Than Breakfast for Dinner?

Posted on January 4, 2010 | 11 comments

Weekend Recaps – In Case You Missed It:

Friday: Great Start to 2010
Saturday: I Love My Garmin!!
Sunday: Slowly Recovering…

Happy Monday – I’m pretty sure it’s not too happy for anyone. Back to the grind. At least the next day off isn’t too far away. And I’m excited because I have a bunch of fun things happening in January: 5 mile race, broadway show, bachelorette party, half marathon and a wedding! This month is going to fly by.

Ok – let me recap Sunday’s eats before I get any further: I woke up feeling much better on Sunday morning – 10.5 hours of solid sleep really helped with that. I was feeling less congested and my throat wasn’t sore. I started off with a nice warm breakfast of oatmeal with apples and agave. I had a side of Emergen-C, my norm as of late.

Then the cleaning fury commenced. Hubby and I did a bit of cleaning throughout the weekend (packing up Christmas decorations and vacuuming), but Sunday was all out cleaning mayhem. We cleaned the place from top to bottom.

Around 1:00 I was feeling hungry so I had a light lunch of Chobani vanilla yogurt with a crushed granola bar and choco chips:

And I also had the rest of my breakfast apple with some cheddar cheese, and carrots and grape tomatoes with garlic organic hummus.

At 4:00 we hosted a board meeting in our newly-cleaned apartment – Hubby is the co-op president. It was a good meeting and we made plans to take care of a bunch of building “must-dos.” It was almost like our co-op resolutions. Hopefully we can stick to our plans.

After the meeting I had the urge to bake. I had some sort of bread stuck in my mind – thinking maybe banana bread or something with apple. But upon asking Hubby what he would like, he reminded me that he basically doesn’t like any fruit in his bread – not even raisins! After scouring http://www.cookinglight.com, I settled on this recipe for Coffee-Nut Scones.

Recent baking experiments have revealed that our oven is essentially a super oven and cooks everything twice as fast as a recipe states. So I ended up cooking the scones for only 10 minutes to be safe. They turned out pretty good (of course I had to try one when they were still warm)…but would have been better with some fruit!

For dinner we did the “breakfast for dinner” thing. I love doing this. I am such a breakfast lover that I could probably eat it for every meal. The Hubby whipped up the remaining venison sausage and I paired it with some organic waffles. I topped the waffles with a homemade blackberry spread. I used the remaining blackberries, added a bit of water and heated them in the microwave for 1 minute 15 seconds. Then I smushed them up and added 2 packets of truvia. It was the perfect topping. Lastly, I had one clementine with my breakfast dinner.


What about you? Are you a fan of breakfast for dinner? What’s your favorite (eggs, pancakes, french toast, waffles, etc.)?

Finally, I had a nice cup of Sugar Plum Spice tea while I read before bed.

I am feeling much much better today. It’s funny, a blog friend said yesterday that she feels like I’m always sick. The truth is, I rarely actually get full-on sick. Even this weekend, I felt pretty awful, but I still didn’t feel like I was totally sick. I wasn’t bed-ridden and could still kind of function. A lot of time I think I start to get the beginnings of a cold and I just medicate the heck out of myself and that makes me very tired. I may have had a full-blown cold this past weekend, but what was very clear was that I needed a lot of rest. I also tend to take it easy even if I think a cold or illness might be coming on. That’s probably what I should have done on Friday, rather than going for a run. Live and learn.

What about you – how do you cope with an impending cold? Do you let it hit you and take its course or do you fight it with all you’ve got like I do, or somewhere in between?

Have a nice Monday everyone!

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Slowly Recovering…

Posted on January 3, 2010 | 6 comments

Good morning. I woke up today at about 9 a.m. after sleeping for about 10.5 hours. I was optimistic about my state of health yesterday morning, but it slowly declined. I was coughing, my chest was congested, I had a bad headache and then later in the day I became nauseous. It was a rough one.

And because I felt so awful yesterday, my eats were kind of bad. Here they are.

For breakfast I had Kashi Heart to Heart with almond milk and a side of Emergen-C.

I started to help with some of the household chore – we desperately needed to do two loads of laundry. I managed to get most of it done, but then felt really sick by the time the last load was ready, so Hubby had to go down to get it.

Here are my snacks for the day – they were all over the place.

This Larabar (coconut cream pie) is officially my favorite bar. It was so good. Unpictured snacks include triscuits and ginger ale, and some cashews.

I basically stuck to the couch most of the day and watched a lot of t.v. I hate that feeling soo much.

For dinner, Hubby made some delicious venison chili:

It was warm and a little spicy and very good. So here’s the deal with the venison eats this weekend – I haven’t mentioned this little fact on the blog yet. My Hubby is a hunter. As in, put on the camo gear, go sit in a tree stand for hours and hunt deer. Now, I know this may be something many of you are against (and you have every right to feel that way), and at first I kind of was too, but then I thought about a few things and changed my mind.

Why I Support Hubby’s Hunting

1. The deer he hunts are not brought up on factory farms, caged or raised simply for their meat. They live a full and happy life in the wilderness.

2. Deer are overpopulated in the area he hunts and end up coming into more residential areas and being hit by cars, so hunting them actually helps keep their numbers in check.

3. Hunters are only allowed a certain number of deer per year – so they can’t go out there and hunt as many deer as they want.

4. The meat he brings home has no chemicals, antibiotics or hormones added to it – it is organic and completely natural.

5. Venison is very high in protein and very low in fat, especially saturated fat. It is also chock-full of minerals.

So these are all the reasons why I support the Hubby in his “hobby.” If he didn’t use the meat and was simply hunting for the sake of saying he killed a deer, then I would have a huge problem. But he uses the meat all the time. A lot of nights when I am making something he doesn’t particularly care for or if I’m too tired to cook he makes venison.

I’ve only eaten the meat in a few forms: chili, stew and breakfast sausage. But I did buy him a “gourmet” venison cookbook for Christmas, so if he makes any of those dishes, I may try some of those as well. I’ve mentioned venison a few times in my blog, so I felt like I needed to provide an explanation. I go back and forth with not wanting to eat any meat, but if I’m going to eat meat, I’d rather it be venison.

Have you ever tried venison? Would you? Have you ever tried any other “different” kinds of meat?

Anyway – the venison chili he made last night was great. And then afterwards I had this for dessert.

A while after dinner (and dessert), the Hubby went into the kitchen to clean up a bit and came out to find me completely asleep on the couch. He basically told me it was time to go to bed – it was 10:30 p.m. I went into bed and was sound asleep within minutes. I hate being sick!!

This morning I feel much better. We still have a little cleaning to do and a board meeting at our apartment at 4:00 p.m., so time to get moving. I’m hoping now I am almost completely recovered or quickly on my way.

Have a great Sunday everyone – who else doesn’t feel like going back to work tomorrow?

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