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!

Mostly Monday February 16, 2009

Today being a holiday helped it feel not-so-Monday-ish.  I still worked almost a full day, but work didn’t feel too burdensome or boring.  In fact I was consumed by the same case I was working on Friday, but finally got it done.  Allergies have been plaguing me…can we have a hard rain up here already or what?  It seems all of our moisture is heading south to California and causing quite a bit of nastiness all up and down the state.  Hope those of you in California are staying safe, warm, and dry!

I forgot to prep my oats last night, so I packed some cereal and almond milk for breakfast to eat at work:  1 serving Fred Meyer Shredded Wheat with 1 tbsp raisins, and about 3/4 cup of almond milk. Not too shabby!

Around noon Chris wanted to eat, so we sat down and I had a little sando of 1 pc. ww bread with 1/2 wedge LCL and 2 slices peppered turkey; most of a Fuji :); 1 serving Kashi TLC Fire Roasted Vegetable crackers.  I totally forgot greenery at the store, so the sando was lacking vegetable matter completely. Oops.

Work work work, finally finished my case, and rewarded myself with a snack of  1 cup Dannon Light’n’Fit vanilla.  Freddy’s finally had vanilla yesterday, but now I think I may prefer strawberry since its got more goin’ on than the ‘nilla.  We’ll see…’nilla is more versatile and I can mix other stuff into it.

When we got home I started preparing dinner:  sauteed pork chops with steamed broccoli & carrots, and oven fried potatoes.  Trusty favorite these days, and tasty.  It is also voluminous (Erin!)without being heavy or highly caloric. 

Random fact of the day for you here:  tradable bonds go all the way back to 1171 in Venice!  Holy shit!  For over 100 years they never missed an interest payment.  That is a long time to have bonds around, and a great track record on defaults.  Me and my financial geekery!

Around 7:30 I headed out to the gym, and did the fitnessmagazine.com Bikini Body Workout:  Compete Cardio and Sculptine Routine.  This was a bit tougher, as between sets I had to do a minute of moderate intensity cardio; I did jump rope and jogging in place.  I think I also mis-read the instructions b/c I did three sets of each move, rather than just 1 minute of it and then moving on to the next.  We’ll see if I am nice and sore from it tomorrow 🙂  I followed this up with 45 moderate minutes on the stair mill.  Oh, the sweaty glory 🙂 

Once home a shake was calling my name…”Oh Keeeerrrrstennnn….you know you want me!”  To which I replied, “yes I do!” and proceeded to make a Genisoy Chocolate Protein Shake with chocolate unsweetened almond milk and 1/2 a banana.  SO yummy, rich, and thick!  I like the choc. almond milk since it is a nice tame chocolate taste.  I’ll have to give it a whirl in my cereal or oats, too.

I decided that I hadn’t had quite enough calories, so I had the other half of my nanner and a tiny bit of a.b. as I prepped my oats.

So here we are, the end of the day…. Did you take today off?  Switch up your routine b/c it was a holiday?  Hope you had a great Monday no matter what you did!  Keep it real til next time 🙂