Long day=Quick Post

I've had a super long day.  I guess that's expected after a 4 day weekend:) Anyways, let's back track: 

Morning Snack: 

My morning snack was the usual... 3 dried apricots.  I contemplated getting animal crackers from the vending machine, but then I got so busy all of a sudden it was time for lunch!

Lunch: 

I think this is the last time you'll see this Tuscan White Bean and Garlic Soup.  It's really good, but I don't know if I can do it another day (it's been 3 days in a row!) .  There's only a little left, we'll see.   Anyways, with my soup I had a piece of a whole wheat baguette (couldn't finish that piece, but got pretty close), and a delicious, juicy, crunchy honeycrisp apple.  Every time I've had a honeycrisp this year I think it's the best one I've had!  

Of course I had a little Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Kiss. 

Afternoon/Pre-workout Snack:

Remember the flattened banana roll-ups?  Well I made one using Dark Chocolate Dreams PB by PB & Company.  Sooo delicious.  I sprinkled some granola in there, too. 

Workout: 

Spinning class!  And it was gooood!  I had a new instructor today and I loved her.  Everyone was dripping (as usual), but to the extent that all the mirrors were fogged up!   It felt really nice to start the week off with a sweaty workout like that. 

Dinner: 

Dinner was fantastic.  I made a side salad with spinach, feta, tomato and greek dressing.  Then the main course was a Boca Burger with tomato and avocado (I used it all up tonight) on an Arnold Thin.  I also had blueberry pomegranate POM with sparkling water on the side.  

Here's a close up of the very tasty burger: 

After dinner, I curled up with some Vanilla Rooibos tea (with skim milk and a drizzle of agave nectar) and took a look at my budget.  

My personal goal for December:  get my food spending in control!  I have a lot of random things in my cabinet, like pasta, polenta, risotto, etc that I have to use up.  I'm going to try to make these all into meals this month, which should limit my food purchases to mainly produce, dairy, and some protein, like beans and eggs.  I'm also going to stop my weeknight dining out! At least for this month anyways:) 

Good night!

Upgrade!

My egg sandwich got an upgrade this morning since I bought an avocado yesterday.  In my opinion, avocado makes everything a little bit better!  My egg sandwich included an arnold thin, 3 egg whites, avocado, and a little colby jack.  I also had the other half of my orange from yesterday, as well as the coffee I've been sipping on all morning.

Last night I finished my organization project! (Well one of the many organization projects that I should complete).  The finished product: 

I know this looks non-impressive, but this was an all-day long event to get to this point!  The first bin is stuff moved from an overstuffed (and broken) expandable file folder that I've been using for several years now to keep my "important stuff", i.e. banking documents, student loans files, tax stuff, etc.  The second bin (the one on the right) was definitely a much bigger task! I had this box, that was semi-organized but still out of control, filled with material from grad school and my Dietetic Internship that I want to hang on to.  There is a lot of "good stuff" that I've collected over the years from class, rotations, presentations, etc.  But I needed a better way of storing it!  This bin is stuffed and the next step is to get another one and divide this stuff up even more.  That way I'll have to room to file all the material I collect now-a-days, as well!This was definitely a major upgrade!  

Is tomorrow Monday already??

I took a break from organizing for a short workout at the gym: 

• 15 min stairclimber
• 15 min elliptical
• 10 min walking on treadmill

I had been thinking about a salad all day so I had to have one for dinner.  

• Spinach
• 1/2 an avocado
• some craisins
• Some onion and poppy sesame sticks (random purchase from Whole Foods bulk bins)
• feta
• Greek dressing 

I'm so happy I randomly bought those sesame sticks.  They were a great addition to the salad.  Good flavor, plus some crunch!   To drink I had 1/4 cup of Blueberry Pomegranate POM with ice and sparkling water.  

Second course: 

I wasn't fully satisfied after the salad so when Collin offered to make me a grilled cheese, along with his and Emily's, I couldn't resist!  What is it about a simple grilled cheese that is just so perfectly delicious?!   Good work Collin! 

Off to finish my organizing project!  I'm so sad this long weekend is over :(

Getting Organized!

Well I sucked it up and dragged my butt over to The Container Store.  It was raining and cold, but I did it!  I got back and immediately made a hot drink.  I made a Pumpkin Vanilla Chai Latte.  

Using Bigelow's vanilla chai, I added about 1/3 cup of pumpkin soy milk and sprinkled with some pumpkin spice.  YUMMY!  This was a great drink! Perfect for a cold, fall day. 

After about an hour of going through old papers/documents, I took a break for lunch.  I had leftover Tuscan White Bean and Garlic Soup.  I also took an Arnold's Thin (if you haven't tried these, you must go to the store now and try them!) and made some garlic bread by drizzling some olive oil and sprinkling garlic powder, salt, and pepper, then popping in the oven at 400 for 5 min. I cut mine into little triangles for dipping. 

Arnold's Thins are great!  1 "thin" is 100 calories, 5 g of fiber.  I use them a lot for sandwiches, including my "healthified egg mcmuffin"( egg whites on an arnold thin, usually some reduced fat cheese and/or tomato slices).

Rainy Sunday

Today's breakfast was a half of a monster-sized orange and 3 egg whites on a whole wheat baguette with some colby jack.  I also had a glass of skim milk.  I'm glad I decided to hollow out the inside of the baguette, it would've been like a mouthful of bread and I like to taste the eggs with the cheese! 

I'm not sure what I'll do today.  My trip to The Container Store may be put on hold since it's cold and rainy here... lugging big bags on the train and in the rain doesn't sound very fun right now!  

My first homemade soup!

I just got back into Chicago from the holiday with the fam.  Sorry I skipped a couple meals but I only had ~24 hours with my boyfriend and I won't be seeing him for 3 weeks because he has finals! So I put the blogging on hold for a little to spend as much time as possible with him! 

Tonight I made my first soup! I made Tuscan White Bean and Garlic Soup.  It was a Giada recipe, from her Everyday Pasta cookbook. Since it is her recipe I won't post the whole thing, but I will tell you my minor modifications and what I thought! 

There were basically 3 modifications: 

1. Whole Foods was out of fresh sage! Apparently it was a popular ingredient in many people's Thanksgiving meal.   So instead of using one fresh sage leaf, I used 1 tsp of dried sage.  TIP:  For spices/herbs that you may not use very often, some store (like Whole Foods) has there spices/herbs in bulk, so you can buy just however much you need instead of buying a whole container of it.  I find this very convenient and it's a good money saver. 
   
2. Instead of reduced-sodium chicken broth, I used reduced-sodium vegetable broth.  One of my bosses, Vivian, turned me on to this product that I just bought. It's called Better Than Bouillon.  It was about $5 and it makes 38 cups of broth.  You add 1 teaspoon of this product to 1 cup boiling water to make your own broth (So for this soup, I brought 4 cups of water to a boil, then added 4 tsp of "Better Than Bouillon").  I've now had two soups using this product and I think it has a really nice flavor. Here's a picture in case you want to look for it:
3. Instead of using 1/2 c of heavy cream, I used 1/2 cup of half and half. I know it is only 1/2 cup of heavy cream in a soup that yields about 5-6 cups (once it's cooked down), but I couldn't help but go for an option that is a little lower in calories and fat.  (Heavy cream has about 36-40% fat and 10-18% fat). 

Here's the final product:

 I topped it with a little freshly grated parmesan.  I also toasted up some of a whole wheat baguette with olive oil, salt & pepper, and a sprinkle of parmesan.  To drink I had Blueberry Pomegranate POM (~1/2 cup) with sparkling water and ice.  I loved the soup!  It was thinner than I thought it would be (it goes in the blender for a little), but the cannellini beans gave almost a nutty flavor, that was great with the garlic and cream. 

I have a night of movies and magazines ahead of me, yay!  Good night!

Lunch at my Aunt's!

My family headed out to South Bend to have lunch my family there.  We had quite the variety!

 

Here's my plate: 

Starting from the top and going clockwise, I had pita, salad with this pomegranate raspberry dressing (that was really good!), roasted butternut squash with brown sugar, broccoli cheese casserole, orzo, a vegetarian grape leaf, and baked mozzarella with tomato sauce.  I love eating like this, little tastes of a lot of things!  It was all really delicious, the highlight was the vegetarian grape leaf since I never get to have those!   

I also ended up with 3 different drinks with my lunch... diet coke with lime, some white wine, and then this interested chocolate red wine (not pictured.  It tasted great, it reminded me of chocolate-covered cherries for some reason!  

And dessert: 

I had a small sliver of apple pie, some chocolate mousse mixed with cool whip and some raspberries, and this dessert that I can't remember the name of (sorry Auntie Kay!).  It had a sweet crust, a cheese filling (we think ricotta), and the orange that you see is actually shredded wheat dyed orange.  I really enjoyed it, whatever it was!

Chocolate for Breakfast!

After an indulgent day (i.e. Thanksgiving!), I love to start my day off with a high fiber breakfast.  I decided on  Chocolate Frosted Shredded Mini-Wheats topped with a banana. Yummy!  I love this cereal! And banana and chocolate always go great together:) 

Back Track to Thanksgiving!

I know I'm a little behind, but I wanted to share a little bit of my Thanksgiving. As always, my mom had Thanksgiving at her house.  I didn't take many pics of the dinner itself.  I thought I'd concentrate on my contribution.  But here are a few from the dinner! 

Here's the appetizer table, minus a couple last minute addition (including mine, which I'll tell you about below): 

Getting ready to eat: 

After dinner Wii American Idol (My sisters singing and some back-up dancers):

Onto my appetizer! There was about 2 1/2 cups left of the famous butternut squash ravioli filling that has now been used in two dishes this week (Ravioli itself and the Harvest Grains), so I decided to use it up in an appetizer.  I have to give credit to my co-worker Irene with coming up with the idea to use an already-made dough, like pie crust or for rolls.  I decided to make little Butternut Squash Pastry Purses (I think these would be called purses, what do you think?  Sandra Lee would be proud of this semi-homemade appetizer.  

I started out with reduced-fat crescent roll dough (I used Pillsbury, but whatever brand you can find would work). 

1. Take the two triangles and roll them up with a rolling pin to make a thin square (not too thin that it would tear easily). 

2.  Then I put a spoonful of filling into the center of the four corners and cut into four squares. 

3.  Then I gathered the dough edges together and twisted them to close off the top.

4.  Once they were all on the baking sheet, I sprinkled them with brown sugar. 

5.  Then I put them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 12 min, and ta-da!

They turned out really great!  I was also so excited to use the filling in one more dish.  I can't believe I forget to take pictures of my desserts, those were for sure the highlight of the meal for me!  Hello pumpkin cake!    Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend!

A Typical Breakfast at Mom's

Good morning and Happy Thanksgiving! Today's breakfast was an everything bagel with cream cheese and 1 egg and 1 egg white scrambled. I also had a glass of skim milk. Whenever I have something really starchy like a bagel, I need to have something with protein on the side.

Bagels are a staple at my mom's when she knows the kids will be around. Everything is my fave!

Well I hear its supposed to snow tonight so I'm going to suck it up and go on a run now while its not too bad. I know if there is snow on the ground tomorrow morning I won't be doing any running- and I have no gym to go to out here. I'm too much of a baby when it comes to snow!

My family will be here in a few hours and I know there is going to be a lot going on so I probably won't be posting till later tonight! Have a good thanksgiving!!

Dessert for Dinner?

OK, today felt like just a really weird eating day. I was all over the place and therefore, so were my food choices. When my sister suggested we get ice cream for dinner, I decided, what the heck! Let's do it! We had been talking about pumpkin ice cream so I had developed a strong craving at that point!

We went to Coldstone Creamery and I got pumpkin ice cream with graham cracker crust and caramel mixed in. I got the Like It size, which is their small, and could not finish it all. Anyone know if they have a kiddie size? I feel like I would've noticed, but now that I'm thinking about it they only put the 3 sizes (Like It, Love It, Gotta Have It) on display on the counter.

This for sure satisfied my pumpkin ice cream craving and I LOVE graham cracker crust so much that I could probably eat it plain, so that was a nice feature, too.

Mid-Afternoon Mini Meal

Around 3, I was just a little hungry, but my sister was "really hungry!" so we all went to get some Panera. I just stuck with the Garden Vegetable Soup and a whole wheat baguette on the side. It was pretty good, nothing to write home about though:)

Eating on the run!

Both my breakfast and lunch were on the run today. I hate doing that! However, I guess I was just really slow moving this morning while I was getting ready and did not realize how late I was running. My sad breakfast was a Luna Bar and a string cheese.

Definitely was a lackluster breakfast, but it did the trick. Lunch was also on the go. I left work early because I had to go to a service at home, but I warmed up some of my leftovers from last night and had them in the car.

I ended up eating about half of the container, so I think ~1 cup. I still have some left. Hopefully, I'll get to them but I know I have a lot of food in my future since I'm home!

Harvest Grains

Remember when Katie made the butternut squash ravioli the other night? Well there is a lot of filling left!  Since I don't have much food left since I'm going away for the holiday weekend, one thing lead to another and I found a use for, at least some, of the filling! For almost two months, I've had Trader Joe's Harvest Grains Blend in my cabinet so it made its debut tonight with some butternut squash ravioli filling mixed in. 

The Harvest Grains Blend includes Israeli couscous, orzo, baby garbanzo beans, and red quinoa. 

I followed the instructions on the back of the package to prepare the grains blend.  It only took about 15 min to make, which is always nice.  Here's a picture before I added the butternut squash: 

This was about 3 cups prepared.  I then stirred in about 1 cup of the butternut squash filling, let it get heated and marinate together on the stove for a couple min, and served it up!  I topped it with some grated parmesan. 

 I also filled a 2-cup container with the leftovers and topped that one off as well, with some cheese.  I like doing that right away to aid with portion control. 

It ended up great.  Of course, how could it go wrong with these ingredients? Now, the filling had a roasted butternut (roasted with butter and brown sugar), cooked scallions, and marscapone cheese (and maybe another ingredient but I can't recall right now- sorry!).  So if you didn't happen to Katie's leftover butternut squash ravioli filling sitting around, you could try just heating up some frozen butternut squash and mix with either the ingredients of the filling or however you like to flavor your butternut squash.  

P.S.  My day was kinda hectic and I completely forget to snap lunch.  But it was the last of the leftover mac and cheese with broccoli and an apple.  Nothing that hasn't been posted already! 

A Cinnamon-y Start

Good morning!   I've been having so much pumpkin lately I decided to go completely pumpkin-free for breakfast.  Let's get right to breakfast.   

• 1 cup Cinnamon Harvest Kashi Shredded wheat
• 1 T dried cranberries
• ~1/8 cup of PB&A (Peanuts, berries, and almonds) from Trader Joe's
• Vanilla soy milk

I love the PB & A.   Here's the description from the bag: 

Peanuts & Almonds are coated in a slightly sweet blend of strawberries, raspberries, & vanilla which invoke thoughts of that sandwich...

That was definitely the star ingredient of the mix this morning. I'm also really loving the Cinnamon Harvest Shredded Wheat by Kashi.  I've had the Vanilla variety and it was good, but I prefer their cinnamon.  It's more flavorful!

Have a good day!

Leftovers!

Tonight I had a bowl of my Mac and Cheese with Broccoli from Sat night. I love leftovers!  Once again, I topped the white cheddar mac with some black pepper and parmesan.  I have one more small serving of this dish, so it'll appear again :)

Snacks!

I had a small morning snack of 3 dried apricots.  I was getting hungry and nervous that I wasn't going to be eating lunch on time because I was busy with clients, so I pulled a couple out of the drawer to hold me over until lunch. 

Morning snack: 

I always keep dried apricots in my desk.  The taste great, they have good shelf life, they are inexpensive (when you get them at Trader Joe's or on sale!), I only need a couple to be satisfied, I love them! 

Afternoon/Pre-workout snack: 

This is a Trader Joe's Flattened Banana with PB and pumpkin granola, all rolled up, and a chocolate Silk soymilk.  Below is the making of the roll-up. 

I love these flattened bananas!  They are also pretty cheap.  If you haven't noticed, I'm always looking for a good deal!  This snack was enough to get me through my workout. 

Today's Workout: 

• 50 min on treadmill (5 min walk, 20 min run, 10 min walk, 10 min run, 5 min walk)
• 75 lb lat pull down X 2
• 35 lb dual axis row X 2
• 55 lb chest press (machine) x2
• 12 lb bicep curl X 2
• 12 lb shoulder press x 2

 I definitely rushed through my upper body workout, kind of slacked :/ But my treadmill workout was great since I haven't run on a regular basis lately.  I'm easing myself in!

A Back-Up Plan Lunch

On Friday, we had made lunch at my work for one of my co-worker's lunch.  It was quesadillas and a lentil soup (a Giada recipe).  Kinda strange combo, but both delicious.  I had planned to post that lunch, but none of the pics turned out for some reason.  There were plenty of leftovers on Friday so I had planned on having those for lunch today. Unfortunately, half of the food I was planning on eating was missing from the fridge :(  So the back up plan was to go across the street to the Dominick's (grocery store) and get something from there prepared food section.  

This is what I ended up with: 

The wrap they used was one of those "Flat Out" wraps.  I saw they used the light version.  Inside I got avocado, artichoke, tomato, green pepper, lettuce, and muenster cheese.  It was OK.  The whole time I was eating it I was thinking that I could have made one better.  I actually brought the apple.  It was an Organic Honeycrisp.  The apple was the highlight of the meal!  The flavor and crunch were perfect! I love honeycrisp apples!

And dessert:

I know its kind of a bad habit to have chocolate every day after my lunch, BUT... I consider my daily, after-lunch hershey kiss or other small piece of chocolate kind of like "risk reduction." In my experience, I can do a lot more damage, calorically-speaking, if my routine chocolate craving hits me and I am not prepared with a little chocolate like a hershey kiss. I work across the street from a Starbucks full of pastries and baked goods and a grocery store with endless chocolate possibilities, so it is easy for me to get something with a lot more calories than necessary.  Therefore, I stick a small piece of chocolate in my lunch bag every day and it is just what I need to satisfy my chocolate-tooth.  

Pumpkin X 4

I had some pumpkin I wanted to use up so I decided to go with, yet another, pumpkin oatmeal creation this morning. This oatmeal contained 4 elements of pumpkin!  I'm loving the Pumpkin Spice Trail Mix by Archer farms as a topper to my oatmeal.  It's sweet so I don't have to add anything else to the mix to sweeten it up to my liking. 

I also had some coffee with my pumpkin spice soy milk that I didn't snap a photo of, but is really complimenting my breakfast well. 

• 1/3 cup oats, water, pumpkin spice soy milk (Silk)
• ~1/3 cup canned pumpkin
• sprinkle of pumpkin spice
• 1/4 c Pumpkin Spice Trail Mix (Archer Farms)
• 1/4 c Cinnamon Shredded Wheat (Kashi)
• Spoonful of Creamy Peanut Butter (365)

The cinnamon cereal was perfect in here to compliment all that pumpkin.  I'm glad I chose that cereal over the pumpkin granola, which would have made this pumpkin X 5!