Quarter Life Wellness

I'm Moving!

2009-12-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

I'm officially fed up with blogspot so I am moving to WordPress! My new address is QuarterLifeWellness.wordpress.com I am trying to get stuff together over there, and it will be a slow process since I am in the middle of super busy times at school, but I will be blogging there from now on! Excited for the new page and hope everyone else is too!

It's Friday!

2009-12-04T05:24:00.000-08:00

Morning to all! Really quick post this morning because I had such an AWESOME breakfast I wanted to share!

Pumpkin Oats:

1/2 cup almond milk

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup oats

1/2 packet stevia

A few shakes of cinnamon

1/2 banana mashed in oats

1/2 banana sliced on top

1/4 cup organic pumpkin puree

1 tbsp natural peanut butter on top

This along with some Sugar Cookie coffee! YUMMY!

Last night Joey got us gyros for dinner.

It was my first encounter with meat in over three weeks. Don’t get me wrong they were very good, but I’m in a current state of purgatory about meat eating. I’m going to think about it and start a new year with a decision. Any comments/thoughts about this are more than welcome!

Time to start studying and hit up the gym! Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

It Feels Like the Weekend to Me

2009-12-03T16:23:00.000-08:00

Good evening to everyone! Hope everyone had a wonderful day! My days have just been wearing me out here lately. I got a very pleasant surprise today when I went to foodbuzz.com and saw my profile featured on the front page!! VERY EXCITING!!

Started off the day with another yummy Green Monster and a cup of sugar cookie coffee!

Today’s Recipe:

2 cups spinach

1 tbsp almond butter

1 tbsp flax seed meal

1 tbsp chia seed meal

1/2 scoop chocolate soy protein powder

1 cup almond milk

1 banana

It was quick downhill after breakfast because I started having really bad stomach cramping and such so I had to lay back down for a bit until I was feeling better :-(

Once I felt okay, I headed to the gym to do 45 minutes on the elliptical, interval, level 12. I also did the aspects of Whittle My Middle which I need an exercise ball for (I was short on time, so I’m going to finish up the rest at home later).

I hit up Walmart and picked up a few necessities: apples, natural peanut butter, razors (I HATE when I have to buy these, because I have to get really expensive ones because I’m crazy prone to razor burn if I use anything else, which bums me out because I’d MUCH rather spend $12 on something else!)Burt’s Bees Deep Cleansing Cream (I wanted to try this because it was natural, and I have some acne problems so I am always looking for good products that don’t overly irritate my face),

and a few LaraBars (apple pie, cashew cookie, and peanut butter cookie).

Lunch was 2 leftover vegan pancakes smeared with my new natural peanut butter, 2 organic carrots, and 3 dates! Yummy!

I had to work today from 2-630 (well I was SUPPOSED to, I got let off at 5, so irritating), so I brought the Cashew Cookie LaraBar for a snack.

It was pretty good, but Apple Pie is still my favorite so far.

Work was something else today. As I said before Banana has been really lagging lately in sales so they are cutting hours all over the place. Very stressful, cuz Jill needs some cash money. But oh well, what can I do!

To pep me up after work I stopped by Price Cutter for the few items I forgot to get at Walmart, ha, and got some Van’s organic waffles

and Raw cinnamon honey for fun.

When I got home first thing I did, after letting Noodle out, was to make up a snack! (having a late dinner tonight with Joey) so I toasted a waffle and spread some honey on and DAYUM, this stuff is sooooo good!. Its kind of a weird consistency actually, a little thicker than not raw honey, but it is so vibrant and fresh! I spread a little on the waffle and popped it in the microwave for 5 seconds and then it was very easy to spread the rest. I HIGHLY recommend this goodness.

Well I gotta practice my presentation a few more times before Joey gets here. I have started practicing out loud a few times every day (I’m very anal about presentations, I get so nervous so I like to overly practice, it makes it a lot easier).

Here’s a picture to make everyone smile. My puppy Noodle is the cutest :-)

Vegan Pancakes

2009-12-02T17:01:00.001-08:00

Helloooooooooo everyone! Man, it has been a very long day, but let me tell you, my dinner just made it so much better! Tonight’s recipe: Vegan Pancakes! So, I also found this recipe in the Student’s Vegetarian Cookbook, and I must say, I was a little skeptical at first with the amount of ingredients, but I tweaked it slightly and it turned out so good! I am loving the recipes from this books because they are seriously simple and fast, and I have no time lately so they are exactly what the doctor ordered!

Cooking Ingredients:

1/2 tbsp baking soda

1/2 tbsp veggie oil

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup almond milk

*That’s IT, seriously!

Cooking Instructions:

1) Mix all the ingredients together

2) Spray a skillet with Pam (ok, not sure this is vegan, but oh well)

3) Heat the pan on stovetop at medium heat

4) Cook like regular pancakes

5) Enjoy!

This batter made 6 large pancakes (I only ate two for dinner) and am very excited for leftovers!

*Side note: The batter is much thicker than a normal pancake so I kind of had to use the bottom of my spoon to spread it out on the skillet. And of course, they don’t taste exactly like pancakes, they are fluffy and delish, but they grow up more like a biscuit.

I didn’t want to use syrup so I heated up some of my frozen blueberries from my HUGE bag, ha,

and added a smidge of agave nectar to the mix. It turned out great!

In a totally unrelated to breakfast for dinner kind of way I had a little broccoli and chickpea mix as my side dish.

Overall, fab dinner! I can’t wait to try to pancakes next time with vegan chocolate chips! YUM!!!

Lunch today was leftovers: 1 green chili quesadilla,

a little whole wheat pasta/chickpea dust and some broccoli,

and 2 dates!

Snack was a LemonZest Luna bar,

which tasted a little fake sugary to me, some blueberry tea from Khaldi's (best coffeeshop! I just learned today it was actually named one of America's top 10 coffee shops according to GQ magazine, pretty cool!) and an apple.

Overall it was a long but good day. I have so much to do tonight still with my presentation. As I told Joey earlier today, I keep working on my presentation and waiting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it just still isn’t insight. Boo! Wish I could watch Top Chef tonight, but no time. Love any kind of cooking show. Well I best stop procrastinating. Hope everyone has a fab night!

Recap on Taco Tuesday

2009-12-02T06:22:00.000-08:00

Good morning! Hope everyone had a wonderful night! I wanted to start off the day with a quick blog about my awesome dinner. It was Taco Tuesday, so I had to make something Mexican. I decided to try a quick and easy recipe I got from the Student’s Vegetarian Cookbook (something I picked up from home because years ago I was a vegetarian for about a year). I chose the Green Chili Quesadillas. Let me tell you this meal took me about 10 minutes from start to finish and it was soooo good!

Cooking Ingredients:

1/4 can vegetarian refried beans (I used a green chili mixture)

2 tbsp diced green chilies

2 tortillas (I used Ezekiel sprouted grain)

Shredded mozzarella cheese (I used vegan)

Salsa (I used fresh)

Cilantro

Cooking instructions:

1) Spray a pan with Pam and heat on stovetop at medium

2) Add green chilies to the refried beans and mix

3) Place tortilla flat on the skillet and spread the bean mix, shredded cheese, and cilantro on one half

4) Once tortilla has softened fold in half, let heat for around 2 minutes, then flip and heat the other side 2 minutes.

5) Enjoy!!

These were SIMPLE and really delish. Wonderful crunch to the shell and soft, spicy beans on the inside.

I heated up some Birdseye Steamed broccoli for a side and I was set! (*I forgot to mention the other day when grocery shopping I stocked up on 5 bags of Birdseye steamed veggies because they were on sale for 88 cents each! Score!)

For a late night snack I had some Ezekiel cinnamon raisin sprouted grain cereal in almond milk. This cereal actually tastes pretty weird, but I have already acquired a taste for it and now I really enjoy it.

This morning started off again with a Green Monster!

Today’s Ingredients:

3 ice cubes

1 tbsp almond butter

1 tbsp flax seed meal

1 tbsp chia seed meal

2 cups spinach

1 banana

1/4 cup organic pumpkin

It was very good, I meant to throw a little cinnamon in, but I forgot! Bummer.

Well its homework time for me! I have today off for my workouts, every body needs some recoup time, always remember that! Hope everyone has a great day!

Get Up, Get Up, It's the First of the Month- Thank You Bone Thugs :-)

2009-12-01T15:35:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon to all! Hope everyone is having a beautiful day. Things are busy here, again!

Started off this morning with another Green Monster, red delicious apple, and coffee. YUM!

Today’s recipe:

1 tbsp almond butter

1/4 scoop chocolate soy protein

1 heaping tbsp flax seed meal

1 heaping tbsp chia seed meal

2 cups spinach

1 cup almond milk

1 banana

3 ice cubes

It was super delicious, thick, and filling!

After breakfast I did some reading for class, fun!, and then hit up the gym for a 45 minute hill walk

Minutes	Incline	Speed
1-5	2.0	4.0
5-40	3.0	4.0
40-45	2.0	4.0

and yoga class which was desperately needed. I have to remember to put myself/my health first sometimes when it comes to school and getting stressed out. In my masters program at school last semester was pretty miserable (2nd semester of 1st year is known to be really tough). The last month of school I started getting horrible stomach pains and it got so bad I was in and out of the ER on multiple occasions,

and basically living off barely any food because when I ate it induced too much pain :-( A few years ago I was diagnosed with IBS, but my symptoms went away and hadn’t been heard from since. I went to a bunch of specialized doctors and all they could tell me was IBS, which basically saying “we can’t really pinpoint what’s wrong, so here’s our broad diagnosis.” After school ended my tummy problems eventually, but slowly faded away. Because of this I have made a real effort to not let school stress me out too much. Sometimes you just have to breathe and realize what is truly important in life and what is worth getting upset about.

After the gym it was lunchtime and I was bound and determined to do something with this Chickpea Dust (ha). So I whipped up some whole-wheat pasta, tossed it in about 2 tbsp of Annie’s Goddess Dressing

and poured the chickpea dust on top.

Then I popped it in the oven for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, and it turned out great!

I had it with a couple organic carrots and dates (of course!).

Snack today was a GenSoy chocolate bar.

My mama was nice enough to buy a bunch of bars for me when I came home for thanksgiving; she’s so good to me!

I know what you’re thinking, “but it’s taco Tuesday jill!” ha. Well don’t you worry, I am trying a new Mexican recipe for dinner tonight! I will update you on it later for sure.

Tonight is lots and lots of homework again, boo. But I always make time for The Biggest Loser on Tuesdays. I seriously love that show. How amazing is it that one reality show can single handedly produce millions of weight loss programs at organizations across the world (basically every organization has a BL weight loss challenge; especially around the holidays, GO MAMA!!). I have started to dislike aspects of the show a little though:

1) Product placement; TOO FREAKING MUCH!!

2) Jillian Michaels is awesome, but now she is hawking weight loss pills (ok, pills to supplement in your weight loss, whatever) and that pisses me off. I think it goes against everything they are teaching and is just her trying to make a quick buck.

3) Concerns me that it may be setting too high of expectations for people at home watching the show. When people live on the ranch they have no lives except weight loss, so of course they loose tons of weight. But normal people at home should be so proud of themselves losing a pound or two a week!

4) Last one! I heard them talking up some biggest loser retreat ranch last week, gag me with a spoon! Stop trying to make money off people.

Ok, I’m done ranting I promise. I honestly do really like the show though! Ha.

Well it’s about that time to start making dinner. Hope everyone has a wonderful evening.

For a picture to make you smile today here is my boyfriend’s sister’s dog Chewie, being the most adorable yorkie on the planet :-)

It's the End of the Month Already?!

2009-11-30T18:28:00.001-08:00

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!

Busy Busy Sunday

2009-11-29T17:42:00.000-08:00

Good evening! Wow, today has been an incredibly busy and productive day. Got up this morning and started the day with some pumpkin oats (1/2 cup almond milk, 1/4 cup water, 1/2 cup oats, 1/4 cup organic pumpkin puree, 1 tbsp almond butter, 1/2 packet of stevia, and a few shakes of cinnamon), a red delicious apple, and some coffee; YUM!

After breakfast I had to order a few last Christmas presents, now I am completely done! I feel liberated :-)

Then I started in on the homework. 3 hours later I took a break for lunch. The last few rounds of sweet potato, leftover Amy’s vegetarian chili, and a little vegan cheddar cheese. I also heated up some edemame that I had in the freezer from a soup I made quite some time ago. It was a nice different choice for a veggie because it takes awhile to eat them since you have to suck the seeds out, so you feel like you are eating even more than you are. I also had a few dates for dessert.

After lunch I worked a few more hours on homework, blah! Around 3 I decided to call it quits for the day on my presentation/paper and head out to grocery shop. I set up my meal plan for the week last night so I knew exactly what I needed (that DEF helps a lot at the store). First I hit up Mama Jeans Natural Food Store for those few products that I can’t get at Walmart (flax seed meal, chia seed meal, organic beans, and my Ezekiel sprouted products).

Then it was off to Walmart for all my fresh veggies (eggplant, onions, potatoes, bananas, spinach, tomatoes, garlic, carrots, and apples; phew). All of that being said I had a success this week at the stores and spent less than $50! Yippee! That was my goal.

Snack today was a Cookies and Cream Luna bar. It was pretty good, tasted like your average energy bar (it was no iced gingerbread clif!)

It was gym time after the store. I did a 20 minute run at 7.0 on the treadmill and 25 minutes, interval, level 12, on the elliptical. Then I Whittled My Middle!

Dinner tonight was AMAZING. I had one leftover Tandoori Naan flatbread (I have been BUTCHERING the spelling of this the past few times on my blog! Whoops!) which I wanted to use before it went bad (you know me!) so I decided to whip up another little pizza.

Cooking Ingredients:

Tandoori Naan

1/2 white onion

1/8 cup chopped walnuts

1/8 cup feta

1 portabella cut up

1 small clove garlic, minced

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp chopped cilantro

Cooking Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2) Put 1/2 tbsp olive oil in a saucepan and heat up to medium

3) Add mushroom, garlic, and onions to saucepan and sauté until onions are browned

4) Drizzle 1/2 tbsp olive oil over flat bread

5) Add saucepan mixture onto flatbread

6) Add the feta, walnuts, and cilantro over the flatbread

7) Pop in oven for 12 minutes

8) Enjoy!! IT’S SOOOO GOOD!!

I had steamed green beans for a side and it was a perfect dinner after a long Sunday.

Now I am just waiting around for Joey’s flight to come in, it was delayed. Boo!! I cannot wait to see him!! (*Family picture)

Hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend for Thanksgiving (minus the Canadian readers, sorry guys!) It’s back to the grind tomorrow, but I think I’m ok with it, at least I tell myself that now…… ha! Here’s an adorable picture of Noodle to put a smile on everyone’s face!

Crazy Saturday Night

2009-11-28T20:48:00.000-08:00

So this is how I spend a Saturday night when my boyfriend is still away in Texas. Pictured: L.L. Bean catalog, vegetarian cookbook, soy ice cream sundae, water, and 17 Again. Haha. Today has been quite the busy and successful day though! My road trip back to Springfield involved some Hardees coffee

and a really hot look I was sporting!

After my drive back to Springfield (it’s always a little depressing to leave the family after a visit) I made a quick lunch for myself. I had actually baked a sweet potato last week to bring to my parents house for an easy side dish (I really like sweet potatoes baked, then refrigerated for awhile, and then to reheat them; I’m weird) which I forgot to bring with me so I heated up half for it

along with some Amy’s Veggie Chili (SO DELICIOUS)

and some steamed broccoli. Then I added them all together, potato on bottom, then broccoli,

chili and some vegan cheddar cheese,

and let me tell you, it was a REALLY good meal! I was pleasantly surprised with it. After lunch I unpacked a little and headed to work. Work was pretty slow tonight, I don’t really know what is going on with sales at Banana, but overall, I don’t think things are going well right now for the company. Oh well. After my shift I headed to the gym and did a 45 minute elliptical workout on cardio and Whittled My Middle. When I got home I had a little dinner (leftover tofu from thanksgiving

and ezekiel sprouted grain cereal with almond milk)

and then the real work started! I had to unpack everything, I had soooo much stuff, who knows how that happened. I cleaned out my closet a little, cleaned the kitchen (set up my new blender),

put up my new bathroom stuff (I got a new shower curtain and towels! Oh they are wonderful)

and put up my minimal, but wonderful, Christmas decorations. That took me hours! Phew! Now I am watching a little Zac Efron and mapping out my meal plan for the week. I am trying to shop on a budget from now on, so I will keep you posted on how that all works out! Well time to plan away. Hope you all are having an exciting of an evening as myself!

Back to Springfield

2009-11-28T06:52:00.000-08:00

Good morning everyone! Hope everyone had a wonderful evening, I know I did. Before I make the 3 hour journey back to Springfield (I have to work at 3, boo!) I thought I would post a few photos from last night and breakfast this morning.

Before I headed over to Kellis last night, I made sure to have a little snack/dinner (sprouted grain bread with almond butter, carrots and celery, and a red delicious apple).

I knew that we were having some appitizers, but not till around 830 and if I waited until then I would be super hungry and just graze too much over the apps. When you have diet restrictions of any kind (or food preferences) you should not assume there will be something to eat at the get together you are going to. My best tip, bring something of your own! I made my date and feta pizza into a mini app form! I was a little dissapointed because I had to use these little whole grain sandwich things (best substitute I could find for Naan Tordoni bread which they didn't have at the store) and so I don't think they were as good as the pizza typically is, but still very tasty!

I also brought over some wine from the Cupcake Winery (so cute!)

Too bad it wasn't chilled, whoops!, Kelli you will have to give me a review on it.

Here are the only two pictures I took:

Kelli and I

Sara, Libby, Me, and Jenny

I headed home from STL around midnight since I had to be up early this morning to drive back to Springfield. Had two pieces of sprouted grain toast with almond butter and a red delicious apple for breakfast,

and after packing up the Civic I am heading out!

I will most likely blog late tonight after work. Hope everyone has a fab saturday!

Happy Day After Thanksgiving!

2009-11-27T14:56:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! Woke up quite early this morning because I went to bed at around 10, ha! I started my day with the pumpkin breakfast cookie I brought, a red delicious apple, and this tea someone from my dad's work gave to him (it was not good).

Since I don't get exerciseTV at my house in Springfield I decided to try it out and did a Namaste Yoga 30 minute program. I thought it was so nice to be able do yoga in the comfort of my own home, but there were 2 sets of commercials in the middle of the show, took you out of the zone quite a bit! After that I was feeling good so I worked on a presentation that I have due at school in about a week and a half (thinks are about to get REALLY serious at school; always too much to do between thanksgiving and christmas break!) I must say I was quite successful in my progress, so when James and Katie(my sister) came over around 11 I got to play :-) James and Noodle got in some quality time together too!

Don't mind the redness on James face, poor little guy just has a little rash. I decided to put up this picture because I wanted to show you my sister, even though I'm sporting the heavy "bed-head" look. Eek!

My mom and myself then went to meet Dad for lunch, but first we stopped by his office and had a little fun!

Dad being goofy.

Me in deep thought about what prescription I should give to my patient.

Mom checking her vitals.

Look what I found first on the rack in my Dad's office! I knew I got my Jonas love from someone!! Ha.

Lunch was very delicious at McAlister's Deli. I had veggie chili (nice and spicy just the way I like it) and a greek salad.

After lunch we dropped dad off back at his office and hit up a few stores! I got a blender,

now I can try a Green Monster, and I spotted some Ezekial cereal which I have never seen at the supermarket.

So one of the supermarkets are here is Dierbergs, and it is AWESOME. It has most of the natural foods that I eat, amazing! I have to shop at totally different stores in Springfield. Man! When we got home I tried a new bar I found Oskri Sesame Seed and Date Syrup.

OMG, TO DIE FOR! This thing tasted just like a PayDay candy bar. That's my mom favorite candy bar and she tried this Oskri bar and was LOVING it! There are 3 little flat bars in each package, here's what a piece of one looks like.

After my awesome snack I hit up the treadmill for a 45 minute hill walk (another nice thing about my parents house, treadmill included!) Now I will Whittle My Middle (I am proud to say I forced myself to do this last night, even though I did have to modify slightly with no exercise ball here), shower, and then off to one of my best friends Kelli's house for a girls night! I am soooo excited! Hope everyone has a wonderful evening! I'll close with an adorable picture of Noodle who I met for the first time 2 years ago today!

Thanksgiving Photo Recap!

2009-11-26T18:22:00.000-08:00

Hello all! Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! If it was half as good as mine, then you must be quite blessed. As you know I was overjoyed to come home today and see my family. Before hitting the road I made a quick lunch. Baked the tofu that I marinated in Annie’s Goddess Dressing (305 degrees, 20 minutes) and added half a bag of steamed broccoli and the end of my leftover chickpeas. It was quite refreshing and delicious.

After the 3-hour car ride home, we started the afternoon off Jubinski style, with vino of course!

It was really nice to get to have a little alone time with mom and dad to finish cooking and catch up before my sister, brother-in-law and nephew came over. When everyone showed up it was wonderful time! Here are some photo highlights.

James and Noodle are best friends.

Sometimes they share a little too much though :-)

And again.....

Cutest nephew ever! I just want to hold him all day long!

As for food...appitizers were a veggie spread. I opted out of the ranch dip

My dinner: Baked tofu covered in agave nectar and rolled in cracked wheat (it was delish this time!), celery sticks, mashed potato casserole, and green bean casserole.

* I'm kinda "lucky" when it comes to eating healthy on thanksgiving because I have never enjoyed gravy or stuffing.

Mama's plate: Turkey, stuffing, mashed potato casserole, green bean casserole and this fruit thing that I do not enjoy :-)

James giving me the stank eye at dinner.

Daddy cleaning, or doing his "woman's work" as he likes to say ;-)

Dessert: Mama with the pumpkin pie. We had both apple & pumpkin pies.

My dessert: I opted out on pie and had one of my pumpkin muffins with Oikos greek yogurt plus honey. I was going to have pie, but last minute I felt like going for a lighter option because I was really full, but I HATE missing dessert!

Sweet Cinnamon Spice Tazo Tea to accompany dessert. (My parents have this machine that heats water in like 15 seconds, makes tea a lot quicker!)

Overall it was a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving and I am very thankful for everything in my life!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T07:18:00.000-08:00

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Waiting here for my coffee to brew so I thought I’d send in a quick race recap! I finished! Ha. My time was 24:48, on a 3.1 mile race that’s about an 8 minute mile, pretty good if you ask me! It was a great way to start off a wonderful Thanksgiving. I got up 2 hours before the race, 6 am phew!, to eat breakfast (two pieces of sprouted grain bread with almond butter and a granny smith apple)

and get all ready. I awoke to a freezing more, 28 degrees! Eek!! I drove to the race route about 30 minutes before and waited to go. (oh and here’s me before I left, it was just me this morning so I had to use the Mac for a good photo

the far photo with self timer didn’t work as well

Since this is my first race since I was a little girl (my dads a runner so we used to walk the short races while he ran) I will give my review:

1) I don’t really like when you start a race and there are like a million people around, I feel really claustrophobic

2) It’s kinda funny when people think they are gonna sprint for the whole race so they rush by you, and then u see them .3 miles later walking.

3) It is MUCH harder to run outside in the cold weather and not always flat surface than on the treadmill!

4) It’s hard to know your “real” time without measuring it yourself (which I do not have a garmin or anything) because the race clock starts when the shotgun goes off, and unless u are the first person in line, that’s not going to be your time.

I sound like I’m complaining a lot, but I’m not. I really had a great time! Its always great to push yourself in new ways and just be active in anyway you can. My friend D’A is also running in a Turkey Trot today, so shout out to her!

Well still trying to warm up a bit before I shower (I can’t get in the shower when I’m cold or else it feels like pins or something on my skin, not fun!). After that I’m heading to my parents house to hang out with everyone and I CANT WAIT!!!! I sure love my family!

Hope everyone has a glorious Thanksgiving!

Late Night Food Post

2009-11-25T20:56:00.000-08:00

Good evening! Quick food recap for the day before I head to bed; it’s race time in the morning!

Since I’m going home tomorrow and I eat differently than some of the rest of my family, I don’t rely on them to stock special food for me, so I always prep food beforehand. (I have always done this since I recovered from my eating disorder. I like to always have snacks on hand, and it’s your own responsibility to supply the type you want!). So, I cooked up a couple types of tofu (goddess dressing, plain to stick in the freezer so it doesn’t go bad like my last batch, and retrying to cracked with mix, this time with agave nectar).

Also made a breakfast cookie (they don't look as pretty in that little container).

I'm also bringing some popcorn, sprouted bread, and almond butter. Always important to bring a few fallback essentials so you can eat guilt-free.

For lunch I cooked up another boca/mushroom burger in the George with carrots and dates.

Snacks were a granny smith apple (envision your own picture) and a pumpkin muffin (I must say it was quite delish!)

Dinner was light since I worked from 530-10, so I just had two pieces of sprouted grain bread, one with organic grape jelly and the other with almond butter. (They are in separate containers since I had to leave early to run errands and didn't want to smush these two together!)

When I got home aka right now, I am having some blueberry greek yogurt with some of my homemade crumble/granola. YUM!

Topped off a LOOOOOOOONG day with some tazo cinnamon spice tea and E! news :-)

Heading to bed now to catch some Zzzzz’s. Hope everyone has a wonderful evening and a FABULOUS Thanksgiving! Race recap will hopefully be positive tomorrow! :-)

Whittle My Middle Halfway Mark

2009-11-25T12:19:00.001-08:00

Well here we are two weeks in and I wanted to give you the Whittle My Middle update numbers and photos I promised!

First, measuring at the waist.

Before: 26 1/2 inches.

After: 25 inches!

3 inches below the belly button.

Before: 33 inches.

After: 31 1/2 inches!

Butt area.

Before: 35 inches.

After: 34 inches!

Success on all fronts! This routine has been working amazing for me, and I can't wait to see my final results in two more weeks!

Just wanted to post these quickly while I took a minor study break! Hope everyone is having a wonderful day, maybe a little less hectic than mine!

Good EARLY Morning!

2009-11-25T03:49:00.000-08:00

Good morning all! Had to get up VERY early this morning to take Joey to the airport :-( Just got back and ate some breakfast before heading back to bed for a few more Zzzz's. I wake up in the morning ready to eat breakfast, so even though it's early I had to eat!

I think i finally found the perfect mix for my oatmeal, 1/2 cup almond milk and 1/4 cup water to boil for every 1/2 cup oats. I got a really nice consistency! Yippee!

As my add-ins I used pumpkin (of course), raisins, and almond butter.

Having oats in the morning just works for me, it fills me up and keeps me full till lunch, and this is hard to do.

I also had a red delicious apple and some water for sides.

*Also, check out Noodle in the background of this picture! Ha.

Well, it's back to bed for me! I have sooo much to do today:

homework
pick up race packet (no workout for me today, as to rest for my race)
pack for my trip home
prepare some food for the trip home
work
return christmas dvds
I'm sure there is more!

Phew! Can't wait to go home tomorrow! Yay for the Holidays! Hope everyone has a wonderful day. Whittle My Middle Update pictures to come later today :-)

Updated Muffins and Date Pizza

2009-11-24T18:55:00.000-08:00

Happy Tuesday everyone! Hope everyone is having a wonderful day! Things have been quite hectic here the past 24 hours with meetings, schoolwork, baking, cooking, packing, working out, etc, all to prepare for the trip home on Thursday! (So it’s all worth it!) Things always get so crazy around the holidays, but I definitely thrive on it, especially as I get older and get to see my family less and less, I want to make sure I have everything prepared so we can have a wonderful time together.

Today I hit up the gym in the morning and was planning on getting in my second weights workout of the week (planning ahead because I know I will not have access to weights later in the week when I am at my parents house) but I my legs were still feeling a little sore (I’m pretty sure I killed them with my Monday calisthenics workout!). Normally, a little soreness is not concerning, but since my race is Thursday, I want to be in peak condition. So, I decided to do a 45-minute elliptical workout (on interval), and then do a 5-exercise arm only circuit.

1) Side and then press in lateral raises, all in one fowl swoop. 15 reps. OK, so I kind of snuck in 2 exercises in this one :-) Just do your typical side arm raise and then when your arms are up, change the weights from horizontal to vertical and bring your arms together (keeping them straight), so the weights meet in front of your body. Then reverse this entire motion to get the weights back to the starting position.

2) Back rows. 15 reps. Bend your knees slightly and bend over so your leaning forward at about a 60 degree angle (just in between 45 and 90). Start with your arms down, weights facing you

Pull your arms back till you make 90 degree angles with your elbows, you should be squeezing your shoulder blades together.

3) Inclined bench press. 15 reps.

4) Bicep curls on bench. 15 reps, each arm.

5) Overhead tricep dips with weight. 15 reps.

After this I Whittled My Waist (are you getting excited for update photos tomorrow?!)

After the gym I worked on some homework, super fun (can you hear sarcasm? It’s palpable over here!)

Then it was lunchtime! It’s Taco Tuesday so I decided to keep with my Mexican theme. Since I am now OBESESSED with putting things in my George Foreman, I decided to make a little quesadilla. I took an Ezekiel tortilla, heated up a vegan boca burger, and cut it up a little so it would fit.

Then I shredded a little of both types of my vegan cheeses

and put a little salsa on that.

Next, I just folded the tortilla and popped it in the George for 2 minutes.

It turned out incredible!

The cheese melted so much better than it does in the oven. It was vegan cheese heaven ;-)

On the side I had some leftover butternut squash, a granny smith apple, and a zevia. An overall A+ meal!

Joey leaves for Texas tomorrow to see his family so we planned on having a fun day together when he got off work at 1. And what is one of our favorite things to do? Cooking of course, well actually baking today. We both wanted to make something to bring home for our families for thanksgiving. I decided to try a new twist on the Apple “Raisin” Muffin recipe I got from RhodeyGirlTests. So, I followed the recipe from my earlier page, but instead of adding walnuts, apples, (and raisins, ha), I used 1/2 can organic pumpkin (you know my new love of pumpkin) and 1 tbsp agave nectar as my mix-ins. I also wanted to try to add a little crust so I thought of using a crumble I used when making a SkinnyandtheCity cobbler recipe and adding it to the top of my muffins. The crumble recipe is so simple; you just mix all of these together:

1 1/2 cups rolled oats

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/ rcup chopped walnuts

1/ r cup chopped almonds

1/ rcup maple syrup (*I started using real maple syrup because it doesn’t contain artificial sweeteners)

1/4 cup canola oil

1/ rteaspoon vanilla

2 teaspoons cinnamon

Use your hands to mix all of these together and voila! It’s really good. I just put my pumpkin muffin batter into muffin tins and then covered the tops with the crumble.

So the outcome was pretty good. I have a few things I would have changed:

1) I would have pressed the crumble into the mixture more when I was adding it to the batter in the muffin tin

2) I might have added a bit more agave nectar

Besides that they turned out really well! I think that next time I would add some raisins. But regardless, my family is getting them! Ha. Joey said he liked them better than when I made the apple walnut ones, a little less “wheaty.” So maybe these would be better Kelli :-) I think they would be delish with greek yogurt too! So although I would change a little (mostly because I think they look funny; Joey said they look like porcupines, ha) I chalk this one up as a success! Or at least a success in the making!

Oh, and you know I hate wasting food, and I had crumble left over so I just put it in a cake tin (or a cookie sheet would work) and heated for 15 minutes. Now I have some homemade sweet granola to add to my yogurt or soy ice cream!

Joey made some pistachio/cranberry biscotti (I bet my family wishes he was coming over!) It looks incredibly good! He is such a better cook than I am, grrrr!

Tonight we went to the mall to do a little shopping for Joey and then I made the feta & date pizza for dinner! (Courtesy of Carrots and Cake). I must say this was a HUGE success. Joey absolutely LOVED it! :-)

Yum! We also “celebrated” with some sparkling white grape juice! Haha. Don’t you just love that stuff?!

Well that’s it from me! Hope everyone has a wonderful evening and I’ll be off to bed early since I’m taking Joey to the airport at 445! Eek!

Butternut Squash Is Wonderful!

2009-11-23T19:53:00.000-08:00

Good evening everyone! Quite post tonight with LOTS of info and food goodness!

Lunch today was a grilled portabella, mozzarella, and vegan boca sandwich!

I simply threw the mushroom and boca on a skillet and cooked until browned.

Then I put them both on 2 slices of sprouted grain bread, and shredded some vegan mozzarella on them (OMG the mozzarella is SOOO good! Even before it is heated/melted). I’m feeling the Panini’s lately, so I popped it in my George Foreman for around 3-4 minutes (this one took longer) and made a wonderful little hot sandwich!

For sides I had a carrot and banana.

Snacks today were blueberry greek yogurt mixed with a little fiber one and a granny smith apple.

Dinner was a new recipe that I got off of HealthyTippingPoint (this girl is so amazing!). She got it off another site that linked to a video, but slightly changed the recipe, so mine follows her changes.

Cooking Ingredients:

Medium sized butternut squash

1 tbsp agave nectar

1/4 cup maple syrup

1 cup water

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tbsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla extract

Cooking Instructions:

1) Cut the squash in half to make it easier to handle

2) Peel the squash

3) Seed the squash

4) Slice the into 1/4 inch pieces and half those

5) Put squash pieces into a large pot with all the other ingredients

6) Bring to a boil then cover and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally

7) Transfer squash (using a slotted spoon so you don’t bring the liquid) to another dish

8) Boil the remaining liquid until it thickens and pour over the squash (*I didn’t do this step, I simply saved the liquid to use at a later date. HealthyTippingPoint says its good with pasta.)

9) Let cool (it’s hard because it smells so good!) and enjoy!

This recipe was sooooo good! The squash was tender and full of flavor. I had the remainder of my chickpea/brocolli/brown rice/goddess dressing mix for a side. YUM!

For a snack tonight I tried my new organic popcorn and topped with cinnamon (of course!) and vegan chocolate chips (I don’t know how I ever lived without these things!) Soooo yummy! I swear this popcorn is so much better than the 100-calorie butter popcorn I was using. I think I’m making the popcorn switch.

Oh, and gym today was 40 minutes of hill walking, yoga class, and Whittle My Waist! I will have picture updates of the halfway point on WMW on Wednesday!

Well I’m off to Joey’s for some tv and relaxing time. Hope everyone has a wonderful evening and stays warm! (At least if you’re in the Midwest!)

My Bread and Almond Butter

2009-11-23T06:52:00.000-08:00

Morning to all! Hope everyone is having a great Monday morning! Mine is going surprisingly well so far, considering it is Monday. I am soooo excited for this coming week because 1) NO SCHOOL! 2) My first race on Thursday 3) I get to go home on Thursday for Thanksgiving! Don’t get me wrong; I have LOTS to do in between to get ready. In fact, I just wrote up my to-do list for the week. I cant live without to-do lists, they are like my bread and butter. Actually, I don’t really like butter on bread, so they are like my bread and ALMOND butter :-) I’m a nerd.

Since trying to figure out my new healthier eating lifestyle, I am trying to consolidate my grocery lists. This is hard to do at first because you are inevitably all over the place in cooking. I think I am getting the hang of it now, and I plan on setting up a budget for groceries after I get back from Thanksgiving.

Until then, I hit up Mama Jeans last night and picked up a few goodies!

Fresh ground almond butter. Like you turn on the machine and watch it grind at the store. It’s amazingly good and actually cheaper than other brands ($7.99/pound) as opposed to the jars which are around 10-15 a pound (I don’t really understand that!). I will let you know if I have any trouble with the fresh kind.

Agave nector. I have been looking for this for awhile now, and finally stumbled across it, so I picked it up! I tasted it and its like a less thick honey, very yummy and sweet! (Also pictured, more organic pumpkin, this has become my favorite new ingredient to add to everything)

Organic, air-popped popcorn. This was on sale for $1.40 so I thought I would give it a try with my vegan chocolate chips and cinnamon, although I will have to heat it up in the microwave to get the same delicious melting of chocolate effect.

Vegan mozzarella. I really like the vegan cheddar for cooking, NOT eating right off the block, so I thought I could do some fun things with the mozzarella.

Portabella mushroom slices. These are from Walmart, but they will be an integral part of my lunch today :-) I LOVE portabellas!

Last but not least, when I went to Joeys last night he surprised me with this set of Tupperware that I wanted!! Might sound a little silly to some, but it was incredibly sweet! I love my boyfriend, and it’s always the little things that mean the most.

As for my cracked wheat/honey tofu I made for dinner last night, no bueno.

I actually think that I am going to try it again, because I didn’t know that you shouldn’t really keep tofu in the fridge out of the packaging for more than a few days and mine was in there about a week, so it tasted a little funny. But the cracked wheat and honey part was super yummy. I bet it would be great as a crust on chicken breast also! As a side I missed chickpeas, broccoli, and brown rice and tossed it in about 1 tbsp of goddess dressing; best part of the meal.

I woke up this morning and had a pumpkin/cinnamon/stevia/almond milk/almond butter/chocolate protein/oats breakfast cookie, a red delicious apple, and sugar cookie coffee. Simply delish.

Well time for more homework for me. Hope everyone has a wonderful Monday and are getting excited for the upcoming family holiday!!

Change Up At The Gym

2009-11-22T14:57:00.001-08:00

Good afternoon all! Let me just start by saying I know I am getting old because the picture above made me so happy today! Yes, an empty laundry basket, ha! Did 2 huge loads of laundry this morning; I have been putting that off for entirely too long.

Hit the gym hard this morning and honestly had a kick ass workout! I plan on doing weights today and Tuesday this week since my race is Wednesday, I don’t want to be sore at all for that! (*Also today I had off of Whittle My Middle) So today I started with a 30-minute cardio session on the elliptical, interval of course. After that I wanted to change up my routine a little bit so I did a 5-exercise circuit:

1) Bench press. 15 reps.

2) Lunges with bicep curls. For this I just got in a lunge position and did 15 bicep curls while down in the lunge. I switched legs every circuit, and on the last 15 I just did 7 on one side and 8 on the other to try to even it out. 15 reps.

3) Inclined bench press. 15 reps. (I do the bench press/inclined bench all the time because I think they are really a really great arm and chest workout)

4) Squat and overhead press. 15 reps. (These pictures have the weights positioned with palms facing in, but I do them with palms out, facing forward)

5) Overhead tricep dips with weight. Hold a weight with both hands over your head, but behind so you don’t hit yourself in the back of the head, and bend your elbows to dip it down. 15 reps.

After my mini-circuit is when the new fun part came into my workout. I decided to do a 5-minute (in sets of 30 seconds) calisthenics circuit. I went in my gyms large exercise room, set myself up by the clock so I could watch the seconds hand, and then did each of these exercises for 30 seconds each, no breaks until I was the whole way through. I really wanted to test my endurance.

1) Jumping jacks

2) Pushups (I did girl pushups)

3) Mountain climbers (an old classic from gym class)

4) Running in place with high knees

5) Squat thrusts (no bosu this time!)

6) Faux jumping rope (I didn’t have a rope)

7) Jump straight up as high as you can

8) Jump back and forth over a imaginary middle line

9) Walking lunges

10) Plank

I did this circuit 3 times through with 2 minute breaks in between. By the last last circuit my heart was beating fast and I could really tell I was working; which I kind of thrive off of! Of course this circuit can be modified to fit you, but I think overall this type of workout is a great change of pace and can really improve your endurance if you put it periodically in your workout routine! Make sure to listen to your body, but don't be afraid to push yourself, that's when you get the payoff!

After my workout I came home for a lunch of my last bean burger. I wanted to change it up a little again, so I popped it in my George Forman for about 1 minute 30 seconds and made a little Panini! Yum!

Snacks throughout the day:

Oikos Blueberry Greek Yogurt. Major yum!!

Mix of raisins and walnuts

For dinner I’m working on a honey coated tofu rolled in cracked wheat. I will let you know how it turns out later! I’m off to Mama Jeans to get more almond butter, that stuff goes fast in this house! Also watching the season finale of The Next Iron Chef tonight with my man Joey. Hope everyone has a wonderful evening!

Turnip Au Gratin

2009-11-22T07:20:00.000-08:00

Morning! Wanted to send out a quick blog about my wonderful dinner last night. Joey whipped up 2 phenomenal and easy dishes for us!

First was grilled romaine hearts. All you do is cut a romaine heart in half,

paint with olive oil, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese,

and pop on a medium heat saucepan/skillet for about 30 seconds.

Before making you should put a thin layer of red wine vinegar in a dish in the freezer till it freezes (this shouldn’t take very long because it is a very thin layer).

After you grill the romaine, use a fork to break the vinegar into pieces and sprinkle over the grilled hearts.

These things are simple and seriously delicious! (Joey wanted to interject that this is a Alton Brown recipe; his favorite Food Network guy!)

For our main dish we had turnips au gratin. This was another easy dish, just like potatoes au gratin. In a casserole dish start by putting a layer of white bread,

we used French (I would be interested in trying it with a wheat bread in the future) and then continue with layers of onions,

Gruyere cheese,

and sliced turnip rounds (alternate until you reach the top of the dish).

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and cook the dish for 30 minutes. It turned out sooo good!

And although not incredibly healthy, it was still delicious, and hey, it’s the weekend!

After dinner we watched Christmas Vacation, Joey had never seen it!, and I had another soy sundae while Joey ate some Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food. Overall, it was a wonderful evening!

Now it’s Sunday, and I have lots of working out, homework, and errands to run, too much to do! Eek! Hope everyone has a wonderful Sunday, and try to find time to enjoy it before the week starts; I’m trying to convince myself :-)

On a side note, I’m loving this Archer Farm mix Joey found. It has dried blueberries, walnuts, almonds, and pecans, so delish!

Saturday Success! Go Tigers!

2009-11-21T14:35:00.001-08:00

Happy Saturday! First of all lets get an great big M-I-Z Z-O-U out there!! I went to University of Missouri at Columbia for undergrad if I haven’t mentioned that before, and my Tigers just beat Iowa State! Yippee! It's kind of fun because Joey went to LSU so we both have our own Tigers. *This is a picture of Noodle in her Halloween costume from last year, she clearly loves it!

Had a wonderful relaxing evening last night with Joey watching Elf and drinking a little vino. Woke up early this morning, not because I had to, but because my internal clock hates me! So it was a Saturday morning filled with Food Network and pumpkin oats (same recipe as yesterday), a red delicious apple, and some coffee; lovely.

I hit up the gym around 11, and by then I knew I would get hungry/low energy during the workout, so I had a little KIND bar as a snack.

Good choice I must say, because I was fully energized through the cardio sesh (see below) and Whittling My Middle. My plan for next week is to kick it up a little on the ab workout, lengthening my hold times for planks (by maybe 10 seconds) and adding a few reps to the roll outs and such. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about be sure to visit OhSheGlows Ab Page and check it out!

Cardio Workout:

Cardio Machine	Workout Type	Time
Treadmill	Running, 7.0 pace	10 min
Stairmaster	Interval	20 min
Elliptical	Interval	30 min

After the gym I came home, and caught up on the Real Housewives of Orange County, one of my guilty pleasures, while having lunch. I was on call for work today and wanted some hours, but called in and sadly then didn’t need me.

Lunch consisted of one of my burgers from last night cut up into taco form.

I used an Ezekiel tortilla, added some spinach, and fresh salsa. For sides I cut up a banana and heated up a steamer bag of broccoli (I ate half the bag). I also had a Zevia to drink.

Right now I am at Joey and I’s favorite coffee shop,

Mudhouse working on some homework. Boo, I am so over school its not even funny! To perk up a study session I got some peppermint tea and an AMAZING vegan cookie.

I could seriously eat these things all the time. Dessert is definitely my weakness and I have been VERY pleasantly surprised to be finding such great and healthy alternatives so I can keep dessert in my life ALWAYS :-)

Speaking of dessert, last night was my first try with Soy ice cream, I got a creamy vanilla flavor, and I LOVED it! I can’t eat just plain ice cream so I heated up some frozen strawberries (pre-packaged frozen fruit is an essential in my house, make sure to get the no sugar added kind, because it stays forever and then you can always have fruit on hand) and added some vegan chocolate chips, super yum!

Tonight Joey is making a turnip au gratin dish for dinner and grilled romaine hearts, I’m sure it will be wonderful as always.

Welp, that's it from Missouri! Hope everyone has a fantastic evening!

Leftovers Recipe

2009-11-20T16:53:00.000-08:00

Hello all! Happy Friday night! Hope everyone had a great day and are getting ready to have a great night whatever your plans are. I personally am having the boy over, drinking some wine and watching Christmas movies!! YESSSS!

Today was one of those days where I really didn’t feel like doing anything! Ha. And I couldn’t stop eating ;-) For breakfast I made pumpkin oats like the other day, but instead of boiling the oats with water, I used almond milk

and I think they turned out a lot better. I added mix-ins of almond butter, raisins, and pumpkin.

I did hit up the gym this morning and did 40 minutes of hills on the treadmill, Whittled My Middle, and then did a really great yoga class. It was one of those days that yoga felt incredible, I had to thank the teacher for the experience after class and I never do that! Before my yoga class I had a goraw bar

and it was really good. These bars have a very odd, almost taffy like texture, but I enjoy it (that being said, I’m not sure everyone would).

Lunch was my @rhodeygirltests recipe from the other night. And it was delicious as always. I finally finished off those leftovers today (I made so much!). But I will definitely be making the recipe again soon because it’s so delicious and filling.

For snacks throughout the day I had some chickpeas mixed with salsa

and a flaxseed waffle with PB & Co Cinnamon Raisin Swirl peanut butter.

For dinner I wanted to throw something together with all the beans I had leftover from last night so I decided to just wing it. I came up with a Bean and Meatless Ground Meat burger. It was incredibly tasty, and I was really impressed with myself for coming up with it!

Cooking Ingredients:

1/2 can pinto beans

1/2 can black beans

1/4 tube of meatless ground meat (If you use real meat I would go for a lean ground turkey)

1 clove of garlic

1/4 cup red onion

2 splashes lime juice

Salt and pepper to taste

Cooking Instructions:

1) Mince garlic and finely chop onion

2) Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl (I used my hands, it’s just easier that way, but it is a little messy!!)

3) Form into 3-4 patties and place on a plate, cover with tinfoil and place in the fridge for about an hour (this just helps the flavors mix and get the patties a little more cohesive, but it’s not absolutely necessary)

4) Spray a saucepan with Pam and heat at medium

5) Put patties on saucepan and heat on each side for 3 minutes each. I did this so they can char on the outside a little like real burgers

6) Preheat oven for 350 degrees

7) Place patties in a cooking pan and cook for 10 minutes (Noodle was very interested in the burgers)

8) Put cheese on the burgers if you want and then cook for an additional 5 minutes

* If you do not put cheese on make sure to cook them for 15 minutes overall

9) Take them out, prepare how you like and enjoy!

I toasted 2 pieces of sprouted grain bread,

added some spinach, and used fresh salsa as my condiment!

This burger was seriously delish and easy to change up a little to make it more your taste (i.e. using different beans, types of cheese, etc.)

I also had some more Food Should Taste Good jalapeno chips for a side! Yum!

Well I’m off to the store to pick up some fresh fruit before Joey comes over (I have to have fruit in the morning!). Hope you have a wonderful night!

I HATE Diets!

2009-11-20T08:37:00.000-08:00

I HATE the word diet. To me the word works entirely against what I would want people do be striving for in their wellness lives. Some things I hate about it:

It implies something with an end. For instance, “I am going on a diet so I can lose five pounds.” So, when you lose five pounds, it is over. (Well usually it morphs into another goal, but it is typically thought of as a means to an end.) What we need people to concentrate on is a healthy lifestyle. Eating, exercising, etc to give them an increased quality of life.
It implies restriction. Being on an atkins, low carb, low fat, diets means that you have to cut entire food groups out of your life. This is highly detrimental because it causes people to fear certain foods, and that is the last thing we should want! Now I am not saying that taking certain foods out of your eating repertoire is a bad thing, I am saying that convincing yourself that you absolutely cannot eat something is a slippery slope. When you cut things out, not because you dislike them, but because you think they will “make you fat” is basically setting yourself up for failure. We are humans, and we make mistakes, but when you have cut something out you will probably overindulge when you do decide to “go for it.” An example, being on a low carb diet and having a day you allow yourself to eat bread, and then eating 7 pieces of bread that day; a little excessive, and not good for your health, be it physical, digestive, and mental
Diets can lead to obsessive behaviors. I am not saying that all people develop eating disorders, but they play a key roll in people who do have eating disorders. As for the rest of the population, diets are something that you have to monitor every second of your life. Which can make you go a little crazy, and when you aren’t “performing up to your standards” it can make you feel really bad about yourself. Learning about food and exercise and incorporating these into a healthy lifestyle will encourage you to make choices that are best suited for yourself and your body. This way you can be living a healthy lifestyle, but you are stepping away from the excessive worrying behaviors.

Overall, I just want people to be happy and I don’t think diets make people happy! Life is too short to consume yourself with trying to lose weight in an unnatural way (as most diets are). By taking control of what you eat and the amount of active behavior you participate in is a step in the right direction in making your mind and body a healthy place.

Viva La Mexico!

2009-11-19T18:37:00.001-08:00

Good evening to all! It’s Thursday night, which means 2 things; 1) the office and project runway are on and 2) it’s my night to cook dinner for Joey! I decided to go for a Mexican themed evening since it is one of my favorite cuisines! After thinking long and hard I decided to throw together a recipe myself and hope for the best. The recipe morphed into a rice and bean burrito, yum!

Cooking Ingredients:

1 can organic pinto beans

1 can organic black beans

1 tbsp olive oil

1/2 an onion (I used red)

1 clove garlic

1 green chili

1-cup brown rice (I used 10 minute success brown rice)

2 tsp chili powder

1/4 tsp cumin

2 squirts lime juice

1/4-cup veggie broth

Vegan cheese (I used 2% Kraft 4 cheese Mexican for Joeys)

4 tortillas (I used my Ezekiel sprouted grain tortillas)

Cooking Instructions:

1) Drain beans

2) Chop the onion, chili and mince garlic (I thought this chili was really pretty)

3) Pour olive oil into a large saucepan and put heat on medium

4) Sauté onion and garlic in saucepan until the onions and soft and browned

5) Cook 10-minute rice

6) Add beans, limejuice, chicken broth, chili, and spices into the saucepan

7) Cook until everything is well mixed and smelling delish

8) Add in 1 cup of rice when it is done cooking

9) Preheat oven to 350 degrees

10) Put the sauté mixture evenly into each of the 4 tortillas and roll

11) Put tortillas into a cooking dish and shred cheese/put shredded cheese on top

12) Place in oven and cook for 15 minutes

13) Take out, let cool and enjoy!

My plate!

Joeys’ plate!

I also got some Food Should Taste Good Jalapeño chips as a side to dip in organic salsa! They were sooooo good and all natural! How wonderful!

Hit up the gym today and had a hell of a workout. I wanted to do a test run for speed for my 5K (roughly 3.1 miles), so I ran on the treadmill at a 8.0 speed (7:30 pace) and finished in 23:23! Hopefully I can finish that turkey trot around that time or faster! I am getting really excited to push myself in a race situation because I have never done it before. I also hit the weights today, and did a 10 exercise circuit since I have cut my weight days down to 2 a week. Here was my circuit:

1) Bench press. 15 reps.

2) Inclined bench. 15 reps.

3) Front lateral raises. 15 reps.

4) Tricep overhead dips. 15 reps.

5) Lunge, bicep, and overhead. 15 reps.

6) Bosu side squats. 15 reps on both legs.

7) One leg squats. 15 reps on both legs.

8) Squat and pulse. 30 seconds.

9) Bosu pushups. 15 reps.

10) Wallsit. 1 minute.

After this I Whittled My Middle and then died because it was a very hard workout! Ha. I felt great afterwards though. It’s kind of incredible how something so hard can make you feel so great afterwards! I can’t wait for a more low-key workout with hills and yoga tomorrow though!

I also made the plunge today and purged my fridge and pantry. After about 2 weeks I have come to realize this is a lifestyle that I can really handle, so I am donating some food to the local food pantry (never throw away good food!). I encourage all my readers to take baby steps, maybe get rid of something you know if bad for you, but you can’t resist it when it’s in the house. It really is “out of sight, out of mind.” Once you realize you would have to drive all the way to the store to get the no-no item, you will probably realize you don’t need it! Well that’s my tip for the day. I hope everyone had a great day!

Oh and I tried a new LaraBar today, Coconut Chocolate Chew, major yum! Tasted like a brownie.

Random Questions From Readers

2009-11-19T05:32:00.000-08:00

Good morning! Just enjoying a breakfast cookie and coffee here while I watch an episode of Saved By The Bell with Noodle. Up and about this morning so I can get some things done before I work from 10-2. Hitting up the gym after that for a cardio/weight training workout. I didn’t work out yesterday and I must say, it was nice to have a day off. I do usually take days off from the gym every once in awhile, but I typically feel guilty, but yesterday, I didn’t even feel bad! And I didn’t change my eating so that the calories would “balance out.” I stuck on track and it felt great! I am not trying to imply that I still am dealing with an eating disorder (I have been free of that for a few years now) but it really still messes with your mind. I had all of these engrained ideas about how you are supposed to eat (how many calories, how much exercise, etc) and it is so very freeing to not have those types of ideas running your life. I must admit, I still weigh myself every time I go to the gym (a habit I am trying to break) but how I use it is changing. Instead of using my weight as a gauge for how successful/unsuccessful I am for the day, I having been using it just to see where I fall. I do hope in the future to break that habit.

On another note, I have an older sister who had a baby a little less than a year ago and has avidly been working on getting back into shape. I am working on an interview/segment with her to track her progress, ask her questions, and get the “mommy” side of weight loss.

Random questions that have come about from this blog:

What is a good substitute for agave nectar?

I researched this and found that agave nectar is just a healthier alternative for sugar. This being said, if you cannot find agave at your local grocer honey is a good alternative.

Are you a vegetarian now?

I do not really consider myself vegetarian/vegan/etc. Although I haven’t eaten meat for a while now, I still enjoy it. I have just found that my body really likes all the vegetable/soy/grain I have been eating lately. I have also cut down on artificial sweeteners. Since I have always been an active participate in trying to be as healthy as I can, tweaking my food intake was just the next logical step. I am not trying to get everyone to decrease their meat intake, but I hope that my readers can take a few tips and tricks from my blog and help move their lifestyles in a more healthy direction.

What is your goal for this blog?

I want to share my love for life and health with everyone I can. It also really helps me (not to be too selfish), because it shows me how much I have to appreciate in life. I have been getting such positive feedback from my readers and it makes me smile on a daily basis. I hope everyone is getting as much out of it as I am!

*Please feel free to email me at anytime with questions/comments/concerns! Quarterlifewellness@gmail.com

Well time to get to work on the day. I am preparing Mexican for Joey and myself for dinner and I am so excited! I think I am going to do a half and half meal, meaning slightly different variations for both of us. Joey does not really go for the vegan cheese/meat substitues that I like, so I will be showing 2 healthy versions of one great meal! Can’t wait! Hope everyone has a great day, and send some customers my way to Banana so I can get my sales up!!

More Tofu

2009-11-18T19:42:00.001-08:00

Good evening! Just wanted to write a quick blog about my dinner tonight. First of all, it was sooooo slow at work tonight, but good news! I sold another card! Yippee!!

When I got home I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and then popped in my tofu that I marinated overnight (honey and brown sugar mix) and baked for 20 minutes. While that was cooking I whipped up a quick salad: spinach, cherry tomatoes, walnuts, a few onions, and chickpeas

(I am OBSESSED with these, they are so much better cooked than from a can. And I have a million left over from yesterday because I didn’t take into consideration that the measurements for before and after cooking are not the same, ha). I used Goddess Dressing on the salad, SO GOOD!

*Quick tip, I always put my salad in a Tupperware, dress it, put the lid on and then shake it up! This is the best way to make sure that the dressing reaching all the pieces, which is quite important to me :-)

As for the tofu, it was fabulous, although I admit these pictures do not do it justice. But it kind of tasted like dessert!

That’s about it for me here! Hanging out with the boy tonight, about to have some dessert, I’m thinking popcorn with cinnamon and vegan chocolate chips! YUM!

Also, good news! I get to go home for Thanksgiving!! I didn’t think I was going to get to so that makes my heart warm. I love my family! (Me and my nephew James!)

Friends are AMAZING!

2009-11-18T13:04:00.001-08:00

Good afternoon all! OMG what an amazing day! It has been pretty busy so far, in fact, I have to be at work in an hour and I just walked in the door from classes and meetings. But when I came home I found a little UPS slip on my door saying I had a package in the office. One of my very best friends, Emmy, had given me a heads up that she was sending me something and I was very excited, but I assumed it was a card. I mean I seriously LOVE cards, so that is not saying anything bad. When I saw the slip, I rushed with Noodle to the front office to see a big box with my name on it! When I got back to the apartment I ripped it open like a little kid on Christmas to find she saw on my blog that I only had 1 wine glass left, since I broke one, so she sent me a set of 6 beautiful stem less wine glasses!!!

I almost cried. It was honestly one of the most thoughtful things someone has done for me in awhile. Friends are such an amazing thing, and I am definitely blessed in that category! So THANK YOU SO MUCH EMMY! I can’t wait to use them, I’m already practicing!

Back to my day now. This morning I decided to switch up the breakfast a little and had some pumpkin oats, and they were quite delicious. I am really loving the flavor of canned pumpkin, again, not pumpkin pie mix! It adds great flavor to breakfast.

Cooking Ingredients:

1/2 cup oatmeal (cooked on stovetop)

1/2 banana

Cinnamon to taste

1/2 pack of stevia

1 tbsp almond butter

Cooking Instructions:

1) Cook the oats (make sure to use skim if you use milk)

2) Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix together

3) Enjoy!

*Clearly I enjoyed mine!

*Another side note, with all things oats, make sure to rinse your dishes right away or it really sticks to your plates and often doesn’t even come off in the dishwasher.

After breakfast I did some schoolwork and then had a meeting with one of my professors. Because of this I just brought some leftovers from last night to campus and had a Zevia on the side.

Before class I grabbed a Masala Chai Tea from Khaldis (man was it good, I am really turning into a tea lover!)

After class I had ANOTHER meeting with another professor and found out I got an A on my midterm paper! Yippee!! (They took her forever and a day to grade!)

I work tonight from 4-8 so I have to have a filling snack before. I am thinking a flaxseed waffle with almond butter and slices of banana on top, yum!

I will blog later about my dinner. Hope everyone has a wonderful evening. And remember how blessed you are when you have great friends! (Old school pic!!)

I Did It!

2009-11-17T18:45:00.000-08:00

OMG I did it!! Tonight dinner is not going to be ready till late so I needed a snack, and I did it! I made a bowl of cereal and didn’t measure how much I put it, not even the milk! This may seem silly to some, but this is probably the first time in over 5 years, maybe more, that I have done that. I didn’t set out to start this blog thinking that I would become vegetarian or eat a lot of natural foods, actually I didn’t know where it would take me, but after a little over a week of eating in a new way I was able to do something I could not bring myself to do for years!! It is unbelievably freeing!!! (Sorry for all the exclamations). I get to not only be creative with new food, but I am having a wider variety of things, eating large portions (so I’m always full) and feeling happier than ever! It’s just unbelievable to me and I’m loving it :-) OK, im done yelling now, ha!

Lets start over; good evening! Sorry for the delayed blogging today! It has been quite a busy one, and I again have been dragging a bit because it is yucky and rainy. This morning I had a TON of reading to do for school, and did some online shopping for Christmas **Side note, I just stopped typing to watch the Justin Bieber ‘one less lonely girl’ video, I am too old to be doing that! Ha.

For breakfast this morning I had my new mix of breakfast cookie: oats, pumpkin, cinnamon, stevia, almond milk, and raisins. OMG it was amazing!!! I could eat these things everyday. I didn’t think that anything could replace my love of cereal, but I think the breakfast cookie is moving in!

I also whipped up a fun lunch for TACO (pizza) TUESDAY!

Cooking Ingredients:

2 Ezekiel tortillas

Salsa

Vegan cheese

Lettuce (I used spinach bagged lettuce)

Meatless ground beef

Cooking Instructions:

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

2) Place the tortillas on a cookie sheet (I used tin foil for no clean up)

3) Spread salsa on like pizza sauce (I have 2 types of salsa in the house; fresh market from walmart and an organic mango peach from target, so I used one on each tortilla)

4) Cook meatless beef in a saucepan on the stovetop

5) Place spinach leaves over salsa

6) Distribute the meatless beef evenly over both tortillas

7) Grate some vegan cheese over top (I was skeptical too, but interested to try. Do not try to like cut a block off and eat it, its not good, but cooking with it worked great! And I thought it added really nice flavor)

8) Pop in oven for 10 minutes

9) Enjoy!!

The tortillas crisped the perfect amount so I folded these in half and ate them like tacos. They were right in between hard and soft shell. I REALLY enjoyed them! I love stuffing tacos full of fresh ingredients and then stuffing my face :-) And of course, I had a few dates for dessert!

I had decided to do a RhodeyGirl vegetarian recipe tonight that involved cracked wheat and garbanzo beans (both of which I got fresh from the natural foods market) so I had to soak these in water before I could use them.

The cracked wheat had to be soaked for one hour and then I drained the water and stored it in the fridge. The beans had to be soaked around 3 hours (from what I gather, the longer the better, but I only had 3 hours).

I also drained those and then had to cook them on the stove. I put them in a large pot and covered them with water, about 2-3 inches of water above the beans.

Brought them to a boil, and then simmered them for about an hour and a half. Be sure to skim off any excess foam that builds up on the top of the water. *You can use canned garbanzo beans, I just wanted to try the dry ones I got. The rest of the recipe is extremely simple:

Cooking Ingredients:

2 cups cracked wheat or bulgur

1 package frozen broccoli (talk about GREAT VALUE; $1.00!)

1 16 oz can garbanzo beans, drained

10 pitted and chopped kalamata olives (I don’t care for olives, so I left this piece out)

1-2 cups tomato sauce (mom's is GREAT!)

Cooking Instructions:

1) Steam the broccoli until soft, about 5-7 minutes. Add that as well as the garbanzo beans, kalamata olives, and 1 cup of sauce and mix well together. If the mixture is still a little dry add more sauce until it reaches the consistency you want. For me, this time, that meant about 1.5 cups of sauce. The amount of sauce needed depends on how long you soak your wheat and how much water it absorbs.

2) Put the whole mixture in a pot over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring every now and then. Alternately, heat up the whole bowl in the microwave until hot.

Enjoy! HOW GORGEOUS IS THIS MEAL?! Thanks RhodeyGirl!

Gym tonight was a fun change. I did a 45-minute hill walk on the treadmill and then hit up a yoga class. I am trying to change up my workout regime, so I think I will be doing 2 days hard cardio (60 minutes), 2 days cardio/weights (30 cardio/30-40 weights), and 2 days hill walking/yoga, and 1 day off! I just started incorporating the hill walking and it really seems to be working my legs! Gotta get that booty in shape!

Well its time to head over to the boyfriends house! I hate the beginning of the week because we are both so busy we only get to see each other in class. He helps keep me sane though, and that’s another reason I love him :-)

Oh, and I just popped some honey and brown sugar mix (splenda brown sugar) into the fridge to marinate overnight. I’m thinking a sweet salad mix for lunch tomorrow, its gonna be a SUPER busy day so I need to plan ahead!

For the Love of Jill J :-)

2009-11-16T21:11:00.001-08:00

Good evening my fair followers! Just got home from work and wanted to get a quick blog out before I passed out! Good news first! I sold my first Banana Card today!! YAY!!! Besides that, today I was really dragging, it was raining, and you know, it was just one of those days. I had a case of the Mondays, haha.

On a better note, the gym today was a great workout! I did 30 minutes on the elliptical, level 12, interval to get my cardio start. I did not run at all because my calves were a little sore today.

My 8-exercise circuit went as follows: (I will only explain/picture the new exercises I add to the ongoing list!):

1) Inclined bench. 15 reps (*I thought I had a bum arm at the beginning of my workout, turns out someone put the weights back in the wrong order, so I was lifting with one 20, and one 25. Eek!)

2) Bench press. 15 reps

3) Tricep dips off bench with feet on bosu. Sit on the workout bench and put the bosu far enough away so you can place your feet on it. Lift butt off the bench and move away so you can dip your butt down next to the bench. 15 reps. (*I couldn’t find a picture of this, so this is a basic tricep dip on bench, just put the bosu under your feet, flat side on the ground)

4) Wallsit. 1 minute

5) Pushups on bosu. 15 reps

6) Pushups on bosu with one arm on/one arm off, switching. Start with the bosu flat side down and one arm on the bosu, one on the ground, do 1 pushup, then bring arms together onto the ball and then take the arm that was on the ball before and move it to the ground, do another pushup. Move back and forth to continue, 15 reps. *This is a hard one, a lower level would be just to do pushups, one arm on one off without switching arms.

7) Jump ups. This requires a step bench. Place the bench perpendicular to your body with one leg on each side. Squat down and jump up and bring feet together onto the bench. 15 reps.. (*The bench I use is much lower than this massive one!!)

8) Side squats on bosu. 15 reps.

After this, it was back to the Whittle My Middle ab workout. I can seriously already see a difference in my abs and it’s motivating me even more!

Then, I had an amazing lunch! I marinated that tofu overnight in Annie’s Goddess Dressing and boy was that a good idea!

All I had to do for lunch was preheat the oven to 350 degrees and popped it in their for 20 minutes (again, I put the dish in the freezer first before putting the tofu on it to cook. I really have no idea if this does anything, I just read it on a few websites, haha). Then for my salad I had spinach, feta, cherry tomatoes, shitake mushrooms, and an avacodo. Ok, here’s the deal, apparently I have no idea how to pick out an avocado.

I have bought at least 4 in the last year, and NONE of them have been good. I youtube’d how to cut it and so I’m doing all that stuff right and then it’s just hard inside, and I tried to eat some anyways, and literally had to spit it out. Any advice on this front would be much appreciated!

Regardless, the salad turned out great! Because I had marinated the tofu in 2 tbsp of dressing I didn’t dress my salad, I just let the excess dressing rub off and it worked really nicely. Oh, and I also added walnuts to my salad.

For a snack today I had that goraw banana bread bar,

and it literally tasted just like banana bread; INCREDIBLE. The only problem was that it didn’t keep me full that long, so I had 2 carrots a little later and some greek yogurt (mind you the bar was only 120 calories so I wasn’t going too crazy). Actually the nice thing that I have found about my new lifestyle is that I can eat as much as I want of the good stuff and I do not gain any weight, and I am not having to worry about counting calories. I cannot stress how freeing this is for me. Counting my calories is something I have done/worried about for years and years, and after awhile you can’t imagine your life without it, but it is so amazing to not worry about it! Its like a huge weight lifted from you shoulders.

I had a pretty boring dinner tonight since I worked from 530-10, so I just heated up two flaxseed waffles and covered one with grape jelly and one with almond butter. Quite yummy though!

When I got home I duplicated my desert from last night except I minused the honey and added some vegan chocolate chips. MAJOR YUM!! Who knew healthy could taste so good.

Well its time for me to make some tea and watch a trashy VH1 show and head to bed! Those shows are my weakness!! Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow, or at least I have an improved mood! My blog always makes me happy though, so thanks for reading!

Amazing Sunday Dinner

2009-11-16T05:34:00.001-08:00

Morning! It is a horrible and dreary day here in Springfield, blah! I hate starting the week out with rain. Oh well! Before I hit the gym this morning I wanted to fill you all in on the INCREDIBLE dinner my amazing boyfriend made us last night. Check out this beautiful acorn squash filled with couscous. OMG, it was to die for!!

We both agreed that it was one of the best meals he had ever made, and that’s says a lot because as I mentioned before, he is a phenomenal cook (gives my recipes really hard standards to live up to!).

After dinner we enjoyed some green tea with honey, although I could barely drink any my belly was so full from dinner!

And on a side note, check out these huge/awesome radishes Joey picked up from Mama Jeans!

In exchange for dinner :-) I made him a breakfast cookie for the morning! This time I added 1/4 cup of pumpkin puree (not to be confused with pumpkin pie puree, which I did at first). I had mine already this morning and it was absolutely delicious, as expected with these wonderful little things! I also tried out my pumpkin spice coffee with it and give it two thumbs way up!

Last night when I came home I was ready for a little desert so I heated up an Ezekiel tortilla

mashed up half a banana and added a little honey and spread the goodness on the tortilla.

The tortilla definitely has a different taste from your typical tortilla, but I really enjoyed them.

The only thing that would have made this desert better would be to add in a few vegan chocolate chips!

Well as I said, it’s off to the gym for me. Cardio & weight day (I actually will lift today!) Then a busy day of class, meetings, and work! Phew! I will be blogging again later in the day when I get a chance! Back to the whittling of the middle at the gym again. The good news is my abs feel much better after a day of rest; remember to honor your body!! Hope everyone has a great Monday!

Sunday, Rainy Sunday!

2009-11-15T14:09:00.000-08:00

Hello to all! Good afternoon. I cant believe it’s Sunday already, big bummer for that! Sunday’s are always busy for me because I try to get my grocery shopping done and plan my meals for the week. This week I am going to test out a few recipes of my own and I can’t wait to share them with you. It is funny how quickly when you start cooking that you want to venture out on your own and try your own thing! Don’t get me wrong, I will still be basing some of my recipes off others, and I will share those too.

Work last night when ok, it was pretty slow at the store, but that’s how it goes sometimes. I worked from 6-10 so before hand I heated up some flaxseed waffles and spread on with 1 tbsp of almond butter and the other with some organic grape jelly.

They were of course delicious. That almond butter is seriously addicting and such a good source of protein. After work it was treat time! I picked up some Andys frozen custard on the way home (hey, I was good all week!). I got the Straw-Anna which is vanilla custard topped with banana slices and strawberries, it was awesome!

This morning I didn’t have any fresh fruit in the house, sad, so I had a bowl of fiber one with raisins, greek yogurt with honey, and defrosted a muffin from last Sunday (the muffin looks really tiny because I ate half of it before I took the picture! Ha).

Then it was off to Joey and I’s favorite coffee shop in Springfield, Mudhouse.

They have great freshly brewed coffee and food. We hung out for a while and just chatted, that’s what I love about our relationship, and then had some lunch. I had this incredible strawberry poppy seed salad. It was chalk full of leafy greens, strawberries, walnuts, feta, and oranges. Out of this world for sure. I highly recommend it!

After lunch we decided to hit up a Natural Market we just read about, Mama Jeans. And OMG this place is like my mecca, I want to live there. Now all you people with Central Markets, Trader Joes, or Whole Foods around would laugh if you went here, but when you live in Springfield, you have to take what you can get! Joey kept saying how funny it was to see me so excited to be at a grocery store. I got some great things too! I got real garbonzo beans, chickpeas (not the canned kind), and cracked wheat,

also some different types of snack bars (I can’t wait to try the banana bread flax seed),

vegan cheese, Ezekiel sprouted grain tortillas, more meat free ground beef,

and Annie’s Goddess dressing

that I have heard so much about. I can’t wait for the week to start so I can get cooking.

Joey is making dinner tonight and I think it is something with cous cous(sp). He’s a great cook though so I’m excited to see what it is!

After the store I made a quick trip to Walmart to pick up some produce (including a butternut squash which I will be utilizing on Wednesday!). Then I SCARFED a vegan cookie that I got from Mudhouse. It was one of the best cookies I have ever eaten; full of cranberries, raisins, and walnuts.

I also just cut up some tofu and de-watered it (haha, I made up that word) using my own technique again.

Then I added 2 tbsp of goddess dressing and popped it in the fridge to marinate overnight. For lunch tomorrow I am planning on a great big salad!

Heading to the gym here shortly before dinner. Yesterday was supposed to be a cardio/weight day, but I was just not motivated to weight lift and I had already done it twice in the week so I decided to stick with a running day. (I actually did 5 miles in 41:21, my quickest time ever!! Yay me! I attribute my extra energy to this AWESOME seasonal Iced Gingerbread Cliff Bar!)

What’s nice about my “new” lifestyle is that I find myself worrying less about following my exact schedule. It’s nice to be able to relax if you don’t fit in all your workouts without feeling mad at yourself. I did that for entirely too long. Today I think I am going to do a little elliptical and hill walking. It’s also my first day off of whittle my waist, and my abs definitely need a break! I think it is working out great though and I can’t wait to see the results! Even though I always push myself in the gym it is important to take care of yourself and put your body first! Love yourself and it will love you back!!

Hope everyone has a great night and here is a great picture of Noodle stuck in Joey’s shirt. Hahaha. Puppies just have a way of making you smile :-)

My Name is Jill and I'm a Date Addict

2009-11-14T11:57:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon to all! Hope everyone is having a fabulous Saturday like I am! Yesterday was an EXCEPTIONALLY good Friday also. I really feel like since I have been putting an increased effort toward healthy eating my mood has greatly increased. I haven’t been getting annoyed with my mama when I talk to her after a long day, sorry mama, and it honestly feels like nothing can get me down. It’s early to know whether to fully attribute it to my eating habits, but that’s currently the only thing I can think of that has changed this past 2 weeks.

At work last night I totally kicked ass!! I sold a suit, very expensive sale, and helped a woman spend close to $700! Wowie, wouldn’t that be nice! We do not get paid on commission, but they do try to keep track of our sales to determine the amount of hours they are going to give us, etc. I think it helps because I am slightly competitive so it’s fun to be at the top of the gang.

I worked from 1-5 and then stopped by Starbucks for a little treat. The most amazing drink ever; Skinny Cinnamon Dolce Latte. OMG this is the best invention since sliced bread. I HIGHLY recommend choosing this drink if you have the starbucks urge, because clearly Starbucks is not the healthiest of drink stops. I also picked up 2 new nail polishes

(which is kind of funny because I LOVE nail polish, yet I have the tiniest little finger nails), and when I got home I was pleasantly surprised to find my newest issue of Women’s Health had come! What a day!

It was my turn to make dinner for Joey! We are in graduate school so obviously not rolling in money, so we try to make dinner for each other once a week (meaning he cooks once and I cook once). This saves on the budget and it’s a fun activity that we enjoy. Since I didn’t make it home till almost 7 (after starbucks, the grocery store, sephora) I wanted to make a quick but delicious meal. I decided to grab some Buitoni 100% Whole Wheat 3 cheese tortellini and make my own sauce.

I have never bought Buitoni before and it was quite delicious, I particularly liked the whole-wheat taste, although with Joey being Italian I think he prefers the “real” pasta. I used a recipe for a mushroom sauce from Carrots N’ Cake’s website (seriously check her out, she’s great!). It’s incredibly simple and just has a few ingredients. I have never made a sauce before so I was worried, but it was seriously simple!

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic, minced (her recipe called for 3-4 but I used 3 and I think my sauce turned out too garlicy, that was my only complaint)

6-7 ounces of sliced mushrooms (I got the pre-cut portabellas, I like those or shiitake instead of the typical button mushrooms; all can be found at walmart produce section)

1/2 cup chicken stock (I used the low sodium) or you could use vegetable stock

1/2 cup white wine (representing Mizzou here with our local winery’s white wine)

2 tbsp butter (I used light butter)

2 tbsp all-purpose flour

1/4 cup fresh parsley

salt and pepper (to taste)

Cooking Instructions:

1) Add butter to a large saucepan and melt on medium heat

2) Add mushrooms to the butter and sauté for 3-5 minutes or until the mushrooms are soft

3) Reduce heat to low and add in chicken stock, garlic and white wine

4) Add in 1 tbsp of flour at a time and stir sauce while doing that (I used a whisk. This can be a little tricky; two people would make it easier)

5) Add parsley in the sauce and mix until it is distributed throughout the sauce

6) Serve over the pasta and enjoy!

Like I said, I really enjoyed the flavor and simplicity of this sauce, just be careful with garlic amount and mince it quite small. I also whipped up a quick salad with cherry tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, cucumbers, spring mix lettuce, and Newman's Balsamic Vinegrette. Here is a picture of the ingredients minus lettuce.

For dessert Joey had a cookie that I took from our Employee Appreciation Kit at work

(they are trying to fatten us up for the holidays apparently!) and I had the chocolate/cinnamon popcorn! Amazing again! We watched a few episodes of Arrested Development, my favorite show ever, and had a few glasses of wine. Overall it was a wonderful Friday. Yes, I only have 1 wine glass, so sad, my other fleur de lis one broke :-(

This morning I had a breakfast cookie, fuji apple, and coffee. I am seriously addicted to these breakfast cookies and have been talking about them to anyone who will listen. I even had Joey try one and he is hooked too! (It is really so rewarding to open someone’s mind to new/healthy food alternatives!)

After breakfast we headed to Target, aka the best place in the world! I could probably live there if possible. I picked up some great organic products including a mango peach salsa, flaxseed waffles, grape jelly, some Amy’s products (Amy’s is a fabulous organic food line that makes a ton of great frozen products that are quick and easy and good for you!) and Quaker oats.

I also got some great new coffees that I can’t wait to try!

When I got home it was lunchtime, but I wasn’t in the mood to cook, so I decided to have a healthy pre-prepared meal.

I had a bowl of Amy’s black bean soup (delish and very fresh tasting) and the spinach feta in a pocket sandwich I had just purchased (this thing was incredibly good).

Although I do like to try to cook things up, I realize that will not always be feasible so I think this turned out great. I also added a few dates for dessert, because I am fully a date addict now; they are my crack.

Well I’m off to the gym in a little bit for a half cardio/half strength-training workout. I haven’t yet decided what I will do, so I will be sure to update you later on that! I also decided that I am going to participate in a Turkey Trot 5K this year! I am hoping to eventually work my way up to a half marathon. All my fellow bloggers, especially Healthy Tipping Point, have been inspiring me!

I also got penguin gladware!! I love christmas time!

This is a little bracelet they gave us at Banana and I thought it was such a great message I wanted to share it with all of you.

Friday the 13th

2009-11-13T05:57:00.000-08:00

Happy Friday the 13^th to all! Did everyone have a good Thursday? I did! My only complaint is that I had to work from 7-10 so I had to miss the office. Bummer! I will have to catch up on in this weekend. Besides that the day went smoothly. I needed a change of scenery so I swapped around some furniture in my apartment; now my desk is in the living/tv room (ok my apartment is small, so saying it’s not longer in my bedroom basically sums it up! J) I also cleaned up the place, which took awhile, but I’m slightly OCD about cleaning, so “dirty” for me means something different than a lot of people. One major accomplishment of the day was that I applied for a student internship to a Health Promotion Conference. I won’t find out until January if I get it but please keep your fingers crossed for me! I’m dying to go!

For lunch I had my leftover BBQ tofu. I find that since I live alone it’s easier to just have my leftovers for lunch the next day (unless I don’t like the meal of course). This way I’m not wasting food; which is ALWAYS a problem when living alone; it’s hard to cook good food for one person because you feel like a lot of it is a waste. Lunch was delish again though! I had a few carrots with (they kinda look like chopsticks in this picture)

and a few dates for “dessert.” I encourage everyone to try dates, they are SERIOUSLY good. I even got Joey to try one last night and he was a fan! SUCCESS!

Dinnertime consisted of a new taco/pizza creation of mine. Since the flatbread I got from the bakery came in packs of two, I wanted to be sure to use it before it went stale (again, don’t want to waste that hard earned money!) Here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

Tandoori Naan flatbread

1/2 tbsp olive oil

Salsa (I bought some Fresh Market Medium, I like spicy, from Walmart)

Meat (I used the “meatless” ground, but chicken or beef would work too)

Cheese (I used Kraft pepper jack slices, but again, be creative, just don’t go overboard or else it’s not as healthy)

*Add anything else you want! I think it would be great with onions, lettuce, etc, the more taco-like the better

Cooking Instructions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees

2) Put flatbread on cookie sheet (I put tin foil on the sheet for easy clean up)

3) Drizzle olive oil over the flatbread

4) Spread salsa on flatbread like you would pizza sauce

5) Tear the cheese in pieces and cover the flatbread

6) Cook the meat you have decided to use on the stovetop in the saucepan

7) Distribute meat over the top of the cheese

8) Pop in oven for 12 minutes or until edges of flatbread are browned

9) Take out and TRY to let it cool before you chow down!

*I also had steamed broccoli as my side for dinner; Birdseye steamers, seriously those things are incredible

As for my snacks throughout the day I had a couple! After all my cleaning and essay writing I needed a snack so I had half an English muffin with almond butter (this stuff is legit!) and even Noodle wanted in on the action.

I also tried that Zevia natural cola made with Stevia and it was surprisingly good!

A great part about it is that there is a lot of flavor so although it really does taste like “normal” coke, you don’t get the urge to drink it as fast as you would a coke. I found this soda at the natural food store, and I know you can also order it online or go to http://www.zevia.com/get_zevia.html and locate a store nearby where they sell it.

My after dinner/after work snack was cereal.

Although I have been trying to have different types of breakfasts, I cannot live without my cereal, so it’s great to have it as a snack. I had 3/4 cup of Fiber One, sprinkled on some raisins, and used 1/3 cup almond milk. Now, I bought the almond milk for my breakfast cookie recipe, but I thought I would try it with my cereal and I really enjoyed it. I typically use Silk, so switching to the almond milk was not a big difference, and it has half the calories of even Silk. Typically, if I wanted a glass of milk/”milk” I would not drink Silk or Almond Milk, then I would go for the real deal of skim. This is because the other “milks” are much sweeter to me and just not a good taste for a whole glass, unless you are doing chocolate Silk, because that stuff is awesome. I also tried a Fuze drink.

I have never tried one of these before and I tried to Pomegranate Acai Berry, and I did not like it. It was way to sugary tasting, almost like a Fruit by the Foot or something (remember those?!). Like sugar fruit, it was weird. Regardless, at least 10 cents from that purchase will go towards the Susan G. Komen Foundation!

Also, before bed every night I have been having my Sweet Cinnamon Spice Tazo tea, and it has been relaxing me and helping me fall asleep with ease! (I OFTEN have problems sleeping, its been happening my whole life).

Well that’s all I have for today. Just had an english muffin covered with 2 tbsp of my favorite PB & Co peanut Butter, Cinnamon Raisin Swirl (It's to die for!) and a fuji apple!

Heading to the gym in a little bit for 45 minutes of cardio (20 run at 7.0/25 elliptical, interval, level 12) and my Whittle My Waist workout. Is anyone else sore?! Because I sure am! Then work today from 1-5 and making dinner for Joey! Hope everyone has a great day! And peep this new Banana dress, it stares at me while I am working and screams “buy me!"