Roll it up May 12, 2009

No, I’m not talking about smokin’!  Tonight I had another foam rolling sesh, and the legs are talking back.  I felt the same thing last night, but today my legs felt great. 

Chris and I only worked the latter half of today.  We lounged around this morning, and when the sun came out I attempted to eat my oats outside, but it was a tad too cold and windy.  Yummy oats, though!  I’m still diggin’ the soy protein powder in it and the texture it creates–I add way more water to my oats and like them runnier b/c of it.

Work went by so quickly, but not too quickly for me to enjoy a funky salad for lunch!  This random ass salad consisted of:

• Romaine lettuce
• guts of my leftover burritos (squash, carrots, green beans, onion, black beans, cauliflower, rice, celery, olives, ???)
• a few slices of dill pickle, diced
• edamame
• chunks of avocado
• diced red bell pepper

I really enjoyed eating this, and am now craving random salads.  Tomorrow I think I can try out Andrea’s seitan! 

The afternoon flew by as I did some work and had a meeting.  All went well, and we headed downtown for a business dinner at Andina.  I have had many culinary delights at this restaurant over the last four years, but tonight was a bit of an exception for a few reasons:  I didn’t eat the quinoa studded fried shrimp, and the vegetarian main was unimpressive 😦  Boo.  I didn’t mind skipping the shrimp, but upon seeing and tasting the main I was disappointed in how rich it was, and how lacking in vegetables it was.  This was the description:

QUINOTO DE HONGOS DE LA MONTAÑA grilled market fresh vegetables on a bed of golden beet and local mushroom “risotto” laced with truffle oil

Wouldn’t you expect like a pile of veggies on there?  What came out was a small cake of “risotto” (quinoa?) with three tiny asparagus spears and thin slices of cheese on top.  The dish also had cheese in it.  The truffle oil and cheese was just too rich, the beets seemed out of place, and the mushrooms were good I suppose (I’m still warming up to them).  My coworker also ordered this dish, and stopped to ask the waitress if he got the correct dish b/c there were hardly any veggies present.

At least dessert was good!  Lucuma is some kind of Peruvian fruit, but the mousse didn’t taste fruity.   Here’s the description:

MOUSSE DE VALLE Y SELVA
a tiered semi-freddo of velvety lucuma and espresso mousses, chocolate ganache, and crushed cocoa nib meringue, served with espresso shortbread

The cocoa nibs were fabulous, and the mousse rather rich. I wish it had more espresso and chocolate in it, so I kinda ate around the lucuma to get those 🙂

After this dinner I felt compelled to go to the gym to try to get rid of the heavy, full feeling I had, so I hit up the stair mill for 50 minutes while reading The Economist.  If you’re in to world news in a great format with lots of writing variety, this weekly newspaper magazine is awesome!  It has so much info it takes me like a whole week’s cardio to get through an issue.  And it makes cardio fly by 🙂

Next is where my foam rolling session came in.  I felt like I was cleaning the gym mat on a few of the moves, which is all the more reason to do it at home on the hair ladden carpet living room floor.  The pain on my outer thighs was excruciating, yet at the same time pleasing to roll out.  I can see how this is a bit addictive…

I know this post is mega boring because I only had two pics to share.  For entertainment you can revisit my lunch pic 🙂  I know I did! 

I forgot to mention I had a carrot with lunch, ate an apple around 3:30, and then had some strawberries just now. 

Later gators!  This chick is gonna fly the coop to go to bed 😉

It’s the pits May 11, 2009

As in, the bottomless pit that was my stomach today. 

I woke up super tired, with allergies to blame I think.  I should have known I was in for it in the hunger department because of that…

Chris, our other co-tenants, and I did a walkthrough on the new office suite for electrical, lighting, paint, and some other important details, and it took an hour and a half!  Holy shit!  I was hungry before we even left the house, and should’ve just eaten my oats on the drive in to work. 

Finally I got some satisfaction around 10am.  This is the standard mixxxx of steel cut oats, a little 7 grain (almost done!), raisins, cinnamon, almond milk, water, soy protein powder, and a new addition of honey millet granola from Whole Foods. 

When Chris wanted to eat around noon I didn’t object, in fact I was feeling a twinge of hunger already.  I had leftover pizza from last night, and a big carrot.  The pizza was whole wheat crust, steamed broccoli and corn, red bell pepp, tomato, olives, tomato sauce, a sprinkling of nutritional yeast, Italian herbs, and a little bit of each Drunken Goat cheese and smoked gouda.  I ate it cold and it was tasty!  Chris ate my strawbs, so just forget those are in the pic 😦

The apples came in handy like an hour later when my stomach grumbled.  “Sheesh, what is going on in there?” I kept thinking.  I forgot about the allergies.  Do any of you get that same, nagging symptom?

Then again around 3pm I felt that nagging feeling again and ate this yummy snack:

That hit the spot, and I wasn’t hungry again for like 3 hours.  Guess I just needed a bit of fat, fiber, and protein together for satiety.

(Fizzity fiz-uck I’m getting hungry again now. All this damn foodie thought and the pics are making me hungry!)

Surprise, surprise, dinner was a Mexi venture to Si Senor.  It seems that I will have to stick with burritos, and maybe salads, to avoid meat or a cheesy mess.  I had half a veggie burrito filled with black beans (OMG, did she say bean?!?! She doesn’t eat beans!), rice, carrot, celery, onion, and maybe something else.  It was topped with lettuce and a yummy red sauce; I stole Chris’ avocados, too 🙂  I also ate a ton of chips and salsa, and drank a huge Diet Coke.  I wasn’t even that full when I left, but I was satisfied, caffeinated, and ready for my workout with Andrea!

Around 8 we started busting out some chest, back, and biceps, then ended with a foam rolling session and some abs.  I didn’t do much for abs, but rather learned the art of moaning while rolling on a foam tube.  Felt damn painful at times, but like a good pain.  (Think strong, deep massage.) 

After groaning on the roller for 10 minutes, it was cardio time.  The gym was fiz-ull up, so our plan to do cardio together was fouled up by the lack of free machines in working order 😦  The Drizz opted out, and I went for a stair mill.  But first, she gave me this!

Homemade seitan!  It looked like a roll of sausage, and smelled like yummy onion and other savory goodness.  I hope to try it tomorrow for lunch or a snack 🙂

Once home I was in the mood for some crack, and strawberries, so I had a small bowl of honey millet granola with strawbs and almond milk.  MMMMMM!  The granola is really crunchy (like, teeth beware!), and coupled with the strawbs it was great.  The millet adds a sesame-like flavor, and lots of crunch.

But that wasn’t enough, you see, and I went back to the kitchen for the glorious fatty protein that is peanut butter, real peanut butter.  Lily wanted in on the action…she was jealous watching me lick the knife 😉

With that I move on to bed, safely separating the pit from the kitchen.  You may be saying, “if she’s hungry why doesn’t she just eat?” but this ain’t really justified hunger, it’s fueled by some crazy reaction my body has to allergens.  The last week has sucked allergy-wise, so perhaps this is the year to pursue more aggressive, targeted action (read: prescription drugs).  Do any of you take Rx allergy meds?  If so, what symptoms/allergens/meds combo are you lucky enough to have?

The Seinfeld “shrinkage” episode was just on, and now the John Voight Le Baron episode is on.  Funny stuff!  Gotta love the many sayings and -isms that came from that show!

The bitch becomes her April 28, 2009

Today was really, really fast, and not in a good productive way.  While I did get some work done, we left early for an afternoon event about 401(k) business and didn’t go back to work afterward. 

Breakfast was my fave oats, but with ripe banana instead of raisins.  I couldn’t let my nanner go to waste, so even though it is overly ripe for my taste I threw half of it in.  Turned out okay!  I think the nanner addition is growing on me…

Side note–I’m such a dork!  I usually take pics at ultra high resolution, but that means that uploads take longer and more storage space is used.  Today I forgot my memory card for my camera and ended up using the internal memory, but on like 2.1mp instead of 8.0.  I think I’ll stick with 2.1.

When Chris was ready to eat lunch I wasn’t, so I snacked on my Fuji and my carrots while we talked.  The Fuji was fabulous!!  I’ve had a month of mealy or unflavorful apples, and finally I get a tasty Fuji 🙂

I made sure to capture Chris’ cute burger bun sandwich in the background.  That’s a few slices of cheese sitting on it–he likes to eat those before he has the sando. 

Before I knew it 1:15 arrived, and I realized I needed to eat my sando before we left to go downtown.  Yummy!

The meeting went well, and afterward there was a small reception at the hotel for us.  They served beef tenderloin with a cabernet sauce and rosemary garlic butter, rolls/breads/crackers, salmon-something-or-other, and a nice cheese plate.  They also passed some mushroom tartlettes, chicken mousse crostini, and tomato mozzarella skewers.  I had some beef tenderloin, some bread, and a few of the cheeses.  It was really tasty, and considering the richness of the items I ate I was ready to call it good and not eat anything else for dinner.  Chris thought otherwise.

This is where the bitch started coming out, as I got a little annoyed by our exchange in the car afterward.  C:”We’re still going to Mexican, right?” K:”That was pretty rich food and I’m good.”  C: “You don’t want to split something on happy hour?” K: “No, if I eat anything I think it needs to be fruit or veggies.” C: “But we planned on going to Si Senor afterward.” K: “That was before we knew they’d serve us food at the meeting.” C: “I would’ve eaten more if I knew that were dinner.”  Blah!  Fine, off to Mexican we went.  He said he didn’t want me to just sit there and watch him eat for an hour, but I told him that’d pretty much be the case since I wasn’t hungry.

After he ate most of the Mexican Pizza he ordered, he said to eat one so he didn’t feel so bad.  Great excuse for me to eat, so you can feel better.  I had a tiny piece of the thing with some guac on it.  Washed it down with my huge Diet Coke.

By the time we left Chris was annoying me, but not necessarily b/c of what he said, more like how he said it and the mood I was in.  I guess the PMS bitch moved in and I hadn’t realized it until tonight. 

I couldn’t get home, change, and get to the gym fast enough 😦  Feeling funktified I didn’t really feel like doing anything but a mega sweaty session of cardio while reading, so that’s what I did.  I told myself a trip to Target afterward was in order for a little shop therapy.   But first I had to do abs and stretch.  While stretching I decided I’d get a nonfat sugar free vanilla steamer at the Starbucks in Target…mmm…hot, vanilla-y yumminess to accompany me while I wandered the store.

That didn’t happen 😦  Even tho Target is open til 10, Starbucks closes at 9, like 10 minutes before I got there. Boo.   Oh well, I still wandered a bit.  I checked out some decor, then headed to the food department to look at snacks.  I was getting hungry again and everything looked really good.  Oooh, how about some Moose Munch?  Fruit leathers?  Pop chips? Pepperidge Farm cookies? (Drooling).

I decided to get Chris a bag of pretzel sticks as a kind of peace offering, and found myself some Kashi TLC snack bars.  Of course I forgot the coupon I have for them at home… oh well. 

Since I was dreaming of like 1000 things to eat while gone, I formulated a reasonable snack while driving home and went straight for it:  pumpkin flax granola, the other half of the ripe nanner, raisins, and almond milk.  Yay, so tasty, but I was still craving food. 

Out came the Genisoy Crisps!  Mucho enjoyment for minimo calories.

I let that settle, but still wanted something, and something sweet.  I grabbed the candy tray that I never touch and sorted through, pulling out Skittles and taffy.  I only ate three pieces of the taffy and called it good since I was satisfied.

I hope the bitch in me is at bay tomorrow.  Do you get emotional and kinda crazy, too?  Fuck, I may just eat those Skittles after all. 

Ciao!