It's the End of the Month Already?!

Happy last day of November! Can you believe it?! I seriously cannot! Today has been insanely busy, but really really productive, so I am thankful for that. I am actually still working on my paper (I’m finishing tonight) been working since 3, but I thought I would take a break to blog! (Oh and my paper is 22 pages!! SHEESH!!)

This morning started off in a brand new way, with the much discussed on health blogs, GREEN MONSTER!! After getting my new blender, I was dying to see what all the hype was about. There are a million different recipes to make it, but this is the one I tried out:

2 cups spinach

1 banana

1 tbsp almond butter

1 tbsp flaxseed meal

4 ice cubes

I must tell you I really enjoyed it! I can’t wait to try out different recipes! (My Joey tried it too and although he didn’t think it had enough flavor, he said it was pretty good!) I also had a red delicious apple and coffee. Yum!

After breakfast I worked on some homework for a while and then headed to the gym. (All my free time for the next week or so will be CONSUMED with schoolwork, silly end of the semester!)

The gym today consisted of a 20-minute jog on the treadmill at level 7, then 10 minutes on the elliptical, interval, level 12. Then it was weight-training time. I did a 8 exercise circuit today:

1) Bench Press. 15 reps.

2) Tricep overhead dips. 15 reps.

3) Bicep curls. 15 reps on each arm.

4) Squat and overhead press. 15 reps.

5) Dead lifts with bar weights. 15 reps. Stand with lefts shoulder width apart and bend knees slightly. Start standing upright and then bend over at waist letting your arms hang down with weight in hands. Then come straight back up.

6) One leg squat. 25 reps on each leg.

7) Bosu squat thrusts. 15 reps.

8) Side squat on bosu. 25 reps on each leg.

After my circuit I Whittled My Middle.

*Side note: my Green Monster fully sustained me until lunch!

Lunch was a quick “meatless” ground meat sandwich, full of meatless meat, salsa, vegan cheddar cheese, and fresh salsa, on 2 pieces of sprouted grain bread. Then I just popped it in the George

with a side of green beans and a few dates for dessert! Check out the water with all my meals. Cutting out soda has been a godsend for me, it has basically forced me to drink more water; bonus!

Then off to class, and I’ll tell you, after not having class for a week it is rough going back!!

Straight home after class to start working on my paper, with a break for a snack. Oskri sesame and molasses bars. These are seriously THE BEST bars I have ever had. I highly recommend them!! I also had a carrot.

Dinner tonight was kind of a bummer because I was trying out a new recipe that didn’t exactly pan out (don’t you hate when that happens?) I saw this chickpea patty recipe on Carrots and Cake website and I thought it looked amazing, so I have been waiting till I had a blender of some kind to make it with (well it says to use a food processor, but my blender says it can be used as both……..its better as a blender). Well I put all the ingredients in:

Cooking Ingredients:

15 ounce can of chickpeas (I used fresh)

1/4 cup cilantro (original recipe calls for 1/2 cup parsley, but I only had cilantro)

1/4 tsp cumin

salt and pepper to taste

1 clove minced garlic

.....and blended away. The mixture is supposed to create something you can form into patties, but mine was more like dust (don’t get me wrong, the dust tasted awesome, but dust none the less).

I’m not sure if using fresh chickpeas has anything to do with what went wrong (I used the same method for cooking my remaining chickpeas up again), who knows. Well anyways I decided to use it as an add-in to a great big salad instead. So I threw together some spinach, cherry tomatoes, walnuts,

Annie’s Goddess dressing and the chickpea dust.

It ended up being a really good salad!

And quite filling, so it wasn’t a full bust of an evening. As a little side I had a mini-bowl of organic popcorn; yum!

Well its back to the books for me! Blogging is always a sunny spot in my day so thank you to my readers! You always make me smile :-) even after a long day!