Alternative Thursday February 26, 2009

For some reason this post didn’t get published last week… 

Sorry I’ve been MIA for a three days; I’ve had a crazy schedule and been a bit sleep deprived.  You’ll get a nice long post today though!  Oh, and I don’t know if many of you saw my post from Valentine’s Day, since I posted twice in one day and it may have slipped by.  Please check it out–Best Dinner Ever!

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Yo, what’s up in blogland?  I’m watching Millionaire Matchmaker right now…muy interesante.

Today was pretty good, rather fast, and tomorrow is Friday!!!  The day started off with a nice bowl of oats, standard Kersten-style:  steel cut oats, almond milk, water, Maranatha almond butter, raisins, and cinnamon.  (Reminds me I need to prep my oats for tomorrow!)

Worky worky, then lunchy lunchy eventually.  Today was a ww bread butt with 1/2 a wedge LCL, 1 slice of peppered turkey, carrot and celery sticks, and 1/2 an apple.

After a meeting and more work I had a snack of 1/2 cup lowfat cottage cheese.  In case you wondered, I haven’t been eating as much so I only buy the lowfat kind, rather than the fat-free kind.  Chris doesn’t like fat-free, either, so I might as well buy what he likes too.

We left to go pick up our food order from New Seasons for our workshop, and I ate the other half of my apple in the car.  No pic…

The food was gorgeous!  And not much more compared to me creating it myself.  I forgot to take a pic of the third platter before it was attacked…it was a Mezze platter with hummus, spicy feta, dolmas, spanakopita, olives, and pita bread on the side.  The other two platters are pretty self explanatory, and were yummy!

One of our workshop topics was alternative energy, and I really liked the presentation from our Calvert Investments wholesaler.  He is really passionate about the topic in his personal life, too, and even has solar panels on his house.  Great topic considering I’m getting the green bug and we’re in the Pacific Northwest where green abounds in many ways. 

I know, I know, my platters weren’t quite so green…I forgot to ask the New Seasons deli if I could bring in my own ceramic platters for them to use.  Maybe I can return them for re-use?

Sheesh, it is almost 11 and I have to get up at a normal hour again.  What did you all do today?  OMG, Real Housewives of New York is on.  I may have to watch it some…crazy divas and drama are sucking me in!

Nighty night, y’all!

Figgy puddin’ February 24, 2009

I can’t remember if I’m stealing post title here…Forgive me if so!

Fred Meyer was out of bulk raisins yesterday (how is that even possible!?), so I opted for an alternative:  dried figs!  I haven’t had them in awhile so I figured I’d enjoy the change of pace as well.  I cut up one dried fig in my steel cut oats, almond milk, water, cinnamon, and Maranatha.  I can’t remember if I used chocolate almond milk…

I know, the plastic abounds…supposedly I’m poisoning myself with pthalates and BPA by nuking my oats in plastic, and eating hot food with the plastic spoon isn’t good either.  The office doesn’t have a kitchen, everyone uses plastic, and I hate seeing it used only once when it is quite durable.  I wash it in the dishwasher and take it back to the office for reuse, but I can’t say that everyone is on that reuse train. 

Worky worky, and eventually lunchy lunchy.  I’ve been enjoying having more fruits and veggies with lunch over the last week   Today I had one slice ww bread with 1/2 wedge LCL, once slice turkey, and overflowing green leaf lettuce.  I also ate celery & carrot sticks, some grapes, and half a Fuji.  Yay!

I can’t believe how long paperwork can take sometimes.  Totally not a productive use of time to spend two hours preparing applications and getting them in the mail. Can’t wait til I have an assistant!

Today is Chris’ dad’s birthday, and I knew we were heading to the Old Spaghetti Factory, so I did a little sleuthing on their menu and nutritional content.  Oy vey!  It really is amazing how many calories are in the average portion of pasta served with typical meat sauce, and when you get into specialties like vegetarian lasagna, mizithra & browned butter pasta….watch out!  Details of what I chose to eat below…

Eventually I ate the other half of the apple and the rest of the grapes. 

We left for Hillsboro around 5, stopped at Target for a birthday card, and met the parents at OSG.  I figured out I could have the Minestrone Soup (60 cals for the cup), most of the Pasta Marinara (560 for the whole serving), and a piece of bread (~80 cals/slice), without wrecking my day’s intake.  The soup was good…probably the highlight of my meal actually.  My pasta was just meh; could’ve used more herbs and a fresher taste, but I still ate about 2/3 of it. 

Dinner went pretty well, Kurt seemed to be jovial, and I didn’t let him get away with sneaking under the birthday radar.  When the waitress asked him what kind of ice cream he wanted, I made sure to tell her it was his birthday.  I just thought they’d throw a candle in it, but they had our whole dining room sing to him!  Oops, way to embarass the in-laws!!  (Note, Chris and I aren’t married, but we pretty much refer to e/o’s families as the in-laws, and they pretty much consider us married.)

Once home I played with the LB and got suited up to go to the gym.  I thought I’d do cardio first, but all the good stair mills were taken so I headed upstairs to do legs.  Leg press, calf raise, dead lift, kick-squats, kayak-abs, inner & outer thigh and I was done.  Those kick-squats are from fitnessmagazine.com and really get my heart rate going!

Downstairs to cardio and all the machines were free   Yay.  I like the newer stair mills b/c I can customize the intervals for a perfect workout.  And, whew, I was a fountain o’ sweat tonight.  It was great!

I tried to talk myself out of eating anything when I got home, but hunger nudged me to eat a little.  I cut a dried fig in half and spread 1/2 tbsp of Maranatha between the two.  Mmmmmmm…..

Speaking of Maranatha, I just bought a new jar and noticed a little contest mentioned on the tag:  a yoga giveaway!  Go to www.maranathafoods.com to enter for one of 37 chances to win a great prize!

Holy shit, I just had to visit The Olive Garden online to see if they have nutritional content on there, and yes they do.  I say, holy shit again.  When I would eat one breadstick, one serving of salad, and a lunch sized fettucine alfredo I was consuming like 1300 calories, almost 80 grams of fat, and over 3,000 mg of sodium!  :shocked:  Crap, sometimes knowledge is a curse, no?  Now I don’t know if I can fathom eating fettucine alfredo ever again knowing that.  I guess it will be once I’m at my goal weight and have a few calories to spare in the budget, and I eat only part of a lunch serving.  I can’t believe the salad alone has like 350 calories and 27 grams of fat per serving!  And they have two low-fat options available, FYI.

With that glorious over-load of information I leave you.  I hope you all had a great Monday and are ready for a kickin’ Tuesday   Ciao!

Three-peat February 22, 2009

The weekend is already over   Sure felt like it flew by and that I didn’t really get to relax much.

I’m going to be quick so I can get to bed:

Woke up early for a Sunday, made coffee, played with the LB, and nuked my oats:  steel cut oats, 1/2 a ripe nana, cinnamon, chocolate almond milk, almond butter.  Tasty!  I detected the chocolate more in this batch and liked it

After this I was off to yoga, and The Driz did join the class today!  She did great, too!  Girl, you played like youz  novice, and you looked like a pro   I hit up an upper body workout afterward, and was ruing not hitting the weights for the last 1 1/2 weeks as I did the other workouts.  They are definitely good for the legs, but seem to be lacking for the back and biceps especially.

Once home lunch was a new, delicious creation:  a scramble!  It was one egg + one white, some sliced green bell pepper, left over roasted potato, kalamata olives, feta cheese, and Nature’s Seasons.  I had it served over a piece of whole wheat toast, with some grapes on the side.  Num-num-nummy!

I did a bunch of housework, and was itching to return to the gym to do cardio.  Chris said yesterday that he wanted to go today, so I held off doing it this morning.  I told him to be ready after I got back from the store, but he was still kickin’ it watching TV!  Ahhh!  I was getting a little hungry so I had a snack of lowfat cottage cheese and a handful of Kashi TLC Fire Roasted Vegetable. 

He finally got in the shower and I cleaned the fruits and veggies.  Do you use a fruit wash?  I finally started using one a month ago and can totally tell the difference on my grapes and apples, but not so much on other things. 

Once at the gym I jumped on the elliptical and told Chris I needed at least 30 minutes of cardio.  He was done around 35 minutes; at least I got a good sweat on. 

Here’s where my blog title comes in… not exactly a surprise that we went out to Fajitas for the third night in a row.  I had a small part of a Casuela, a few chips and salsa, and split Carnitas de Pollo with Chris.  Very tasty; I had two tortillas of it.

The restaurant was really busy this weekend, and tonight Noe was all alone serving us.  He brought us a larger than usual La Casa b/c he felt bad the service wasn’t as fast, I think.  I had about half of it.  To. Die. For.

No more food today…that dinner was a little too much and has held me over quite well.  I’m off to bed, and hope to get some good rest.  I didn’t sleep so well last night, although I was in bed and sleeping off and on for about 8 hours.  I love bed, and sometimes miss the days where I would stay in it all day long reading, watching TV, doing crosswords, whatevs.  Do you ever do that?

Adios!