Back by popular demand… June 18, 2009

…highlights of Kersten’s world.  Well, not really…I mean no one’s banging down my email inbox asking me to come back.  I know my little blog gets readers, I just wish there were more of you, and that you would comment more actively.  Any suggestions?

Pretty lunch–salad had romaine, avocado, grape tomatoes, burrito guts, verde sauce.  That glorious fruit has been my go-to for afternoon snacking as well

Mondo dinner of steamed corn with SmartBalance Light, oven roasted butternut chips with Northwoods seasoning and garlic salt (too salty), veggie burger with sauteed mushrooms, ketchup for the burger and chips.  I ate too fast

Genisoy chocolate shake mix, almond milk, ???

Pina!!  I sliced up this baby and enjoyed the fruits of my labor.

I. love. fruity. cereal.  Kashi Go Lean Crunch with fabu blueberries, cherries, and strawberries, covered with almond milk I think.

My eyes enjoyed this more than my stomach–quesadilla with sauteed veggies, cheese, sour cream, guac, tomatoes.  Too many onions + too much sour cream + too much cheese + too much food = unhappy tummy. 

When the tum wouldn’t settle I went for 1 tablet of Alka Seltzer.  You ever use it?  At first it doesn’t seem better, but then comes the burp that cures your woes.  I know, gross details, but it works.

For some insane reason I thought I needed a treat later.  I ate one square of Cadbury milk chocolate with almonds, went “meh,” and instead had some roasted almonds and dark chocolate pieces. 

More fruity cereal, but this time with Nature’s Path GingerZing Granola.  I like the texture of this granola, but it is missing something.  Salt maybe?  It isn’t very zing-y to me.  I miss my crack–NP Pumpkin Flax Plus Granola.

A pretty lunch   Salad had romaine, pickle, avocado, grape tomatoes, cremini mushroom, balsamic, crunchy chow mein noodles, and a veggie Gardenburger.

Dinner tonight at McCormick & Schmick’s Fish House.  The menu was tough since nearly every entree had seafood or meat, but they are quite flexible with preparations.  I had them leave the fish off of the  mushroom pesto pasta, and asked for extra veggies to be added in.  It tasted really good, but I was expecting a real pesto, not a creamy white wine sauce with pesto in it.  The cream was too heavy for me, and totally weighed me down tonight.

Sometimes I think I want creamy and rich things, but when I eat them I often regret it b/c I feel super crappy.  That helps me avoid the temptation to get/make them I suppose!  I did bring home half of this, and figure I’ll eat it for lunch tomorrow with more veg added in.  I’ve run out of other things to eat for lunch, so I’ll just have to grin and bear it.

This was Chris’ dinner–filet mignon with the obvi veggies.  I thought it was pretty and deserved a pic.

My exercise this week:

Monday–legs, abs, 30 min on the mill

Tuesday–upper body, 50 min on the mill

Wednesday–off.  too stuffed and gross feeling to move!

Thursday–legs, abs, 50 min on the mill.

I suppose that’s about it!  I can’t remember all of my genius “oh I should put that on the blog” moments from the last four days

Bon nuit

Quiet on set June 12, 2009

My new office has been so quiet this week, which is a complete 180 from my last set up.  I no longer have a talkative office mate, loud laser printer, drawer-slamming staff member, busy hallway right outside my (interior) window, noisy door, or anything else that my old shared office had.  Phew! I cannot express how much of a relief it is to move on and no longer be in that suite   Yee-haw!

Today was a nice wrap up to my first week in the new space–quiet day, not many people there, got a lot done, had a good client meeting, good dinner, great workout, and now a great snack.  Only bad thing is I can’t stop reaching for the roasted almonds at my side!

Let’s recap the eats for the last few days.  How about a new style–meals side-by-side from both days?  Sounds good to me

Breakfast: Kashi Go Lean Crunch with soy milk both days.  Add ins varied from banana to strawbs, bluebs, and ground flax. 

Lunch:

Thursday’s salad (Romaine, Boston, green leaf lettuces with avocado, pickle, grape tomatoes, balsamic) withwas a little sad after having sat in the fridge for over a day, but still tasted great!  I ate some leftover veggie lasagna on the side, and munched on the carrots, cherries, and apple mostly during the afternoon.

Friday’s salad was scrumptious! I nuked a portabella Gardenburger and put it over the top of the aforementioned lettuces, avocado, grape tomatoes, pickle, and balsamic.  I think the burger has cheese in it, which I don’t really like, but it tastes good nonetheless.  Chris tried a bite (total skeptic) and said it was really good!  I snacked on my fruit and carrots over the afternoon.

Dinners: a Mexi marathon; shocking I know.  Thursday I had my leftover dinner from Wednesday, even though I knew it would be rich and overly cheesy.  This time around I didn’t get the upset tummy; I think it may have been more from the onions, so I didn’t eat most of them in the quesadilla.  Fresh avocado on top.

Friday we visited Si Senor again, but this time I had the Pollo Azado Burrito, sans pollo   Tasty goodness involving flour tortilla, rice, black beans, grilled pepp/onion/celery/zucchini/carrot, topped with verde sauce and pico de gallo.  I also added some guac and jalapenos fritos.  Wooee, those were some spicy peppers

Don’t let that picture fool you, the burrito was HUGE.  I ate half and was waaaay too full.  And don’t shit your pants, but I ate a small piece of meat tonight.  Chris was like, “Here, eat this” when he thought he found beans on his burrito, but no, it was beef.  Oh well, no biggie I suppose.

Snackins:

The first pic is actually from Wednesday night after I posted.  Chris broke into the PB and I joined in for some of that goodness.

I went to Freddy’s and Costco to stock up on fruit, including grape tomatoes, pineapple, strawberries, cherries, and a nectarine.  Lovin’ it!

Can you read “yum” on the rim of my b’nut plate?  I thought it would be cute to try to write with ketchup, but it was a tad tougher than I realized.  LOVED these “fries” and can’t wait to make more soon.

Almonds are tasting sweet to me suddenly!  I’ve never noticed that before.  Oh, and shhh, don’t tell my dentist I’m eating them whole.  I told her I love almonds and other nuts and she said to chop them up before eating them to prevent cracking my teeth.  That’s no fun! 

Workouts the last few days have been good, but for forgetting my towel Thursday.  When I realized it I was in the locker room, and thought WTF, I probably should skip cardio today.  I did a good leg workout and called it.  Friday was an upper body extravaganza, including two exercises for each back, biceps, chest, triceps, shoulders, and abs.  I followed that up with a super sweaty 50 minutes on the stair mill.  Mercy!

While doing lateral raises I noticed how my forearms have become defined and my veins are coming to the surface.  Good signs in the fight against excess body fat!  Now if I can just get the abs to cooperate…

Hope you’re keeping it real out there

So begins a crazy week! March 9, 2009

Somehow today was a happy Monday!  I thought that was an oxymoron…

‘Twas a busy few days, or so it felt, and I’m getting rather anxious and excited for the vaca.  I hope you aren’t sick of hearing about it already… I’m also excited to post some while I’m there so y’all can partake, too!

Saturday

I TOTALLY forgot to set my clock forward an hour and woke up thinking it was 8am, and that yoga was in two hours.  Not until I sat down at the laptop at 10:05 DST did I realize what had happened.  Shit, no yoga for me  

Very typical breakfast, but with a splash o’ almond milk on the oats after cooking:

We finally  left for the gym at like 11:45, and I hit up an hour of legs and abs.  Mercy!  Chris was hoopin’ it up, but there was no one to play with   I joined him for some shooting and a 1:1 game, and it was really fun!  He’s like 6′2 and I’m 5′5, he’s played for 20+ years and I have no real b-ball experience, and he pretty much schooled me, but we laughed our asses off the whole time

I was famished when we got home at like 2:30, and I shoved in a quick snacky lunch of ww bread with turkey, carrot sticks, grapes, and some plain yogurt with sf rasp jam.

After this I cleaned up and headed out to do some birthday shopping for the man, but I really didn’t have any luck   I also did some shopping for vacation supplies, and can’t believe I blew $50 so fast!  Razor refills, toothpaste, allergy pills…shit adds up quick.

It hailed and snowed yesterday afternoon bigtime!  We had a thick layer of hail on the ground and a little flurry of flakes.  Pretty, but effin’ cold, mo’ fo’s.  I’m ready for it to warm up already.

For Chris’ first birthday dinner of the week we headed to Black Angus in Vancouver.  Chris loves the prime rib there, and I kind of struggle to find decent things on the menu, but last night was really good overall.  I had a few small pieces of their yummy molasses bread with butter, about half of my salad with a really oniony vinaigrette, and about half of my teriyaki sirloin with a baked potato and steamed veggies.  I also grabbed a few of Chris’ fries

I was quite full when leaving, but eventually needed a little something to wrap up my day.  The house is really devoid of food, way more than I realized, and I broke into the box of South Beach Diet PB cereal bars I bought for the trip.  Not too bad…crispy, PB’y, and hit the spot.

I ate this while watching Breaking Bad on AMC.  Have you seen that? Or Mad Men?  Two of the best shows out there!

Monday

I couldn’t sleep much last night! It sucked to wake up and move around, not feeling quite tired or comfortable enough to just pass out like I needed to.  We got up a bit earlier to be at the office by 8, but that turned into 8:30 with us lagging and traffic sucking a bit b/c it was snowing again!  I forgot to prep my oats last night so I had a cereal mess of shredded wheat and Essential 10 with lots of almond milk.

Work was very busy I ate some around 12:30–ww bread with turkey, grapes, Fuji, carrot sticks.

My 1:00 was an energy intensive meeting, but well worth it. I was nervous about it b/c he emailed me and was like “we should meet.” Those are often foreboding words, but once we sat down it was all good.  Yay! 

So, do you remember how I said I was upgrading my computer?  It was so I could gain full access to work applications at home or on vacation, and it turns out I’m screwed.  I spent 45 minutes on the phone with a guy from the technology help desk trying to figure out a way to fix the issue that I didn’t realize I had until I called randomly about something related.  I have Vista Home Premium, which is not compatible with a few of the applications (even tho they’re okay with Vista Business), and my computer could have totally crashed, but I’m lucky and somehow the whole disk encryption application didn’t kill my computer.  Shit.  That woulda sucked!  Turns out I need to install Vista Business or XP Professional to create compatibility with the other software I need to run.  Bleh.  Maybe it isn’t worth it…moving on.

Tonight we had Chris’ second birthday dinner of the week, this time at Godfather’s Pizza with his parents.  I swear, what else could I do this week to throw off my fitness program?!  But, I must admit that the pizza tasted really and I was able to enjoy two pieces and a small beer without feeling guilty

I realize that doesn’t look so appealing now… I blotted off the extra grease and put some parm and chili flakes on it.

We have leftovers, so I think pizza may be in my near future again.  I really love pizza and admit it is one food I have missed a lot over the last four months.  I’ve had it a few times, and have really tried to savor it each time.  Nothing like a special treat now and then, right?

We got home around 9, and Chris pretty much went straight to bed!  Very odd for him.  I used the opprtunity to sneak out and birthday shop, and buy a few groceries for the week.  I had success with his birthday gift, and Lily got him something, too  

I’m pooped…it’s just after midnight and I’m going to join the man in bed.  That’s twice in the last week he’s beat me to bed–so rare!  Hope you all had a good Monday