Rockin' and Rollin'on

Finished my math comp, finally! I've had the 10 pages written since Sunday, but had major burnout while trying edit/revise it until today.

Only two more to go!

Since my legs are KILLING me from my Elle workout, I decided to go on a walk instead of the gym, so I stayed home.

Killer breakfast sandwich:

2 eggs, 2 chopped campari tomatoes, cholula, 1/8 cup reduced fat mexican cheese on a 100 calorie Arnold's sandwich thin.

Naturally (since it was scrambled) it fell apart, and I had to eat the eggs with a fork. I did not like the sweet taste of the whole-wheat bread with my savory eggs, so I ditched the bread and had another 8oz of OJ (8 0z = 100 calories... watch out!).

After I finished my paper I went on a 2 mile walk, and did 5 minutes of upper body weights.

Post workout snack:

Lunch:

2.5 oz whole wheat pasta + steamed 2/3 container baby mushrooms and handful of large spinach. Plus a sprinkle of parm.

Soooo good. If you are thinking this didn't have flavor, clearly you have never had steamed spinach with uber flavorful steamed mushrooms. This was great, and low cal without a sauce on it :-)

This morning I also began working on dinner.... carnitas sweet potato burritos! Recipe to come with the dinner post.

Keep it real, I'm gonna do some more work before date night tonight!

Happy March!

Today felt good because I was on a schedule... and let me tell you, that is really hard to do considering I only have 2 night classes a week, and one of them is even cancelled this week!

Today I had a lovely Luna pre-workout:

Seriously guys, this are like oreos. And I love me some oreos. I had about 2/3 of this before I ran out the door.

At the gym I stepped up my workout a bit; I am still coughing a bit, all the gunk in my chest is really loose so I can tell it is almost over! Yesssss!

• 20 minutes elliptical, level 9
• 30 minutes stationary bike, level 10

I love the stationary bike because it is allowing me a bonus 30 minutes to read for class a day; I love multi-tasking.

After the gym I walked another mile or so around campus dropping things off, and was miffed I didn't pack a post-workout snack.

Then I had to hit Target for a few things, and FOUND MY BLUEBERRY BLISS LUNAS! I grabbed the last four they had in complete and utter glee; I must have looked completely insane to any bystanders.

When I got home I was famished! On the menu was a selection of leftovers:

1. chili, but that was for dinner tonight
2. veggie medley from last night
3. crockpot chicken curry

I went with the curry, because it was good but was on it's last legs. I added some Basmati Lime rice:

... and ate a baby bel while it heated up in the microwave.

The curry was really good... still very fresh tasting, and a perfect match for the basmati lime!

At about 3pm in the midst of studying/writing/laundry I got hungry again, and had a not-so-bloody blood orange:

I did work for a pretty solid 4.5 hour block today, so I was relieved when Ky got home and it was time for dinner at 6. It is REALLY hard working from home since you make your own schedule and deadlines.

Dinner tonight was chili salad! When we went to Hard Time's last week Kyle's dad got a chili salad, and it just LOOKED amazing! So, we decided to healthy-up our own chili (recipe coming up next!) by piling up some fresh greens.

• a mix of spinach and spring mix
• 1 serving of multigrain tostitos

• black olives (I passed!)
• chopped onion
• chopped cherry tomatoes
• 1/4 cup of mexican cheese blend (we split that)
• container of plain Greek yogurt to replace sour cream
• chili (duh :-))

This was SO great! The chili set in perfectly over night; it had a lot of heat, but not so much that you didn't get the flavor of the individual spices, meats, and veggies. Also, greek yogurt is a PERFECT substitute for sour cream, I didn't notice a taste difference at all.

Now I am completely stuffed, hanging out on the couch watching video games. I am taking it easy tonight because tomorrow is my long 10-12 total hours on campus day of the week... Yikes!

Blah blah blah

Feeling much better today! I still can't talk, but I am much less congested. I think it is all because of my cold fighting secret for dinner last night...

This is sooo simple, it's just a 4 cup box of low sodium organic chicken stock, with 2/3 bag of chopped baby carrots in it. I only added a bit of salt, some dried/crushed rosemary, and a TON of black pepper so I could taste it.

This is one of my favorite comfort foods because it is warm, mushy, and has good nutrients from the carrots for when you are not taking in a lot of calories. Yum! I ate all the carrots, and about 1.5 cups of the broth (1.5 servings).

This morning I got up at 8:30, and could breathe well so I decided to try out the gym. My morning fuel:

The blueberry bliss might be my new favorite, it tasted so good! Not too sweet but very blueberry flavored.

At the gym:

• 20 minutes on a new elliptical trainer; level 8, random setting
• 25 minutes on treadmill; 3.5 mph pace, 4.0 incline

I broke a great sweat even though I slowed my pace down since I felt so cruddy yesterday. And learned to avoid this Life Fitness elliptical:

I felt too tall for it, like I was about to jam my knees. Also, I know that calorie counters can be way off on commercial gym machines, but this one said I only went 1.2 miles in 20 minutes and that I burned 280 calories. I mean, I get over 2 miles on the other trainer, and usually burn about 200 calories as well. Definitely not using this model again if I can help it!

When I got home I was starved from my workout and low calorie intake from yesterday. So, I made a feast:

• With the extra 2.5 cups of stock from last night, I mixed in some brown rice and the remains of my chipotle corn from last week. I had 1 cup of that mix, topped with 1 TJ's chicken patty and chopped tomatoes
• steamed carrots, mushrooms, and spinach

So good, and so filling. I didn't even need a snack this afternoon! I also found that steaming the spinach tasted just as good as sautéing it, but less calories because you don't use any oil :-)

Even though I didn't need a snack, I was hungry for an early dinner by 5:30. Kyle and I forgot to set up our dinner in the crockpot this morning, so we went for something quick and dirty since I have class tonight.

We had buffalo burgers with sweet potato fries:

The burgers are from TJ's, and the fries were unexpected find at Giant. We heated up the burgers on the forman, and baked the fries in the oven. Voila!

I had one burger with a piece of fresh sliced gouda cheese, 1 serving of fries, steamed mushrooms (no seasoning), and a side of Texas Pete spiked ketchup.

This was really a great combo; the seasoning on the fries wasn't too spicy, which I missed. However, you could easily add your own spice blend to these or to your own fresh cut sweet potatoes before baking them. And, as always, the burger was amazing... the gouda was a perfect match!

Well, I'm off to my first night class in two weeks... it feels like the first day all over again!

Lots of food!

Alright, I'll try to make this quick and snappy!

For dinner Saturday night, Kyle and I wanted something quick and less-mess, so we had a frozen pizza:

For 1/3 a pizza there is 32% sodium, 370 calories, and 16 grams of fat. For a frozen pizza, that's not so bad! Usually the stats are that bad for a piece or two, but I felt satisfied with my 1/3. I added a bunch of chopped tomatoes before popping it in the oven.

It was really good, I've never had goat cheese pizza, but I am a fan of warm goat cheese now :-). I also used some cholula to kick up my crusts!

The party was pretty crazy... it was for President's Day, so you were supposed to dress up as a president or an authority figure of some kind. Kyle dressed up as Peter Griffen from the Petoria Episode of Family Guy:

Don't worry, that's padding, not an actual gut. I was...me! As in the secretary of Phi Sigma Pi, Gamma Iota Chapter at CofC:

Not very creative, but when you are battling a tight budget and a winter storm x2, you make due!

There were many more interesting outfits, for sure,

Martin van Buren:

Joe, who runs South Jersey:

There were also people who think Hawaii has a president, CIA agents, and even a president of Enron. It was a good time!

In terms of beverages, there was everything from a keg to vodka to rum to jungle juice; you name it, Chris had it. I had a bit of everything, and probably way too much calorie wise. But, it was a party at my own house, and I had a great time!

Definitely detoxing this week, for sure!

The next morning, I woke up feeling fine but had NO VOICE. On Valentine's Day, my favorite day of the year, and I couldn't even make a peep!

I persevered, and as I set up Kyle's valentine's surprise, I had a huevos rancheros wrap from Starbucks:

It was really really good, I was quite surprised! When Kyle got up, he had this waiting for him:

It was a spread of candies, valentines, a home-made card, and a coffee and muffin from Starbucks. It wasn't much, but we hadn't been able to leave the house at all to shop, and we also hadn't been apart for over a week, so it was impossible to do much given the circumstances.

Then, we went out to Gaithersburg for lunch and a movie. We figured that would be cheaper and less crowded than going out at night. We went to Pasha, a Moroccan restaurant we had noticed and wanted to try for a while. They had a Valentine's Day 4 Course Special we both got.

It was so. Much. Food. Omigosh.

1st Course, Moroccan Salad:

It was okay, just tomatoes and cucumbers in a light dressing. The dressing was very vinegar tasting, but I'm glad I got this instead of the house salad which was iceberg lettuce drenched in ranch dressing. I ate about 2/3s of it to get some good veggie intake.

2nd Course: Black Lentil Soup with Bread and Olives:

The soup was good, but nothing special. I felt like I could easily make it myself. The olives were tasty, and so was the bread which was very similar to foccacia. I ate about 1/2 the soup, two pieces of bread, and some olives.

3rd Course, Hummus and Pitas:

The hummus had a LOT of tahini in it, so if you don't like that taste you wouldn't like this hummus. Can you believe they brought EACH of us one of these plates? It was killer amounts of food! I had about half... the entire meal took over 2 hours for everything to be served, and we had over 30 minutes with these plates before our entrees came.

4th Course, Chicken and Vegetables:

This was pretty good, the chicken was so tender it fell of the bone. And the seasoning was great! I ate about 1/2 the chicken, all the veggies, and 1/2 the rice. Kyle had an amazing pastry dish, but I lost the photo :-(

All in all, the place wasn't amazing, and Kyle agreed. However, you can't beat a 4 course meal for $20.

After lunch, we could barely move we were so stuffed. If it weren't so cold, we would have walked around the shops for a while, but it was horribly cold and we had a movie to get to.

We went to see Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridge's new movie. I absoltely love Jeff Bridges, and he was amazing in this role. The plot was really interesting, as well as the cinematography of the south west. The movie was even better because I was too full to even contemplate getting a snack from the concession stand ;-)

After the movie we headed home and hung out for a few hours before ordering Thai for dinner from Chef Secret. It was CRAZY busy, probably because its the only "date" place in College Park. We had to wait over an hour for our food (unheard of there!), but it was still good.

We started with the Autumn rolls, which are filled with salmon:

So good! Then I had mixed veggies in a brown sauce with shrimp... only 3 shrimp :-(

Love this meal, though. It is full of good veggies, lots of cabbage, brocoli, mushrooms... yum! And it is all steamed. Delish! I ate all the veggies, and gave all my rice to Kyle.

For dessert Ky let me have one of his chocolates:

We watched Donnie Darko (hadn't seen it in year, forgot how cool it is!), and crashed by 10pm.

This morning I woke up feeling HORRIBLE. Despite getting almost 9 hours of sleep, I still couldn't speak and I felt incredibly stuffy and congested. Therefore, no gym today. Exercise when you are sick is incredibly debilitating to your body, and is never a good idea.

Once Ky left I dozed off and on until 11am, and I finally got up and head some vitamin-C:

I heart these. So good and good for you. Sadly, I couldn't really taste this one, but I was hopping by drinking the whole thing and getting 500% of my daily value of vitamin C would clear me up.

No such luck. But I was able to do a few hours of work. I also sipped on a big mug of tea:

Sadly, I also could not taste this :-(

A little later I thought I should try and get some food on my stomach, so I made some Annie's mac and cheese. The box says there are 3 serving sizes per box, so when it was prepared I separated it three ways to avoid over-eating. Another thing you can do if you feel like you migh go over board on food, only make that item when someone else is around to split it with. Trust me, splitting it up or sharing are GREAT ways to unknowingly cut carbs.

This did not sit well, and came up later :-(. Luckily, Ky is picking up some stuff for me to make soup for dinner that I love having when I feel like this.

I'm off to nap and do some more work; hope everyone is nice and healthy and safe and warm!

Saturday!

Woke up early today, and had my favorite, easy breakfast:

An Amy's Organic breakfast burrito! I absolute love these, but they are really pricey ($2.75-3+ a piece). It, along with a glass of OJ, was the perfect fuel for day #2 at the gym.

The gym was nice... especially because today it was almost empty.

• 30 minutes on the treadmill, 3.6 mph pace on a 4.0 incline
• 30 minutes on bike, level 8 weight loss interval setting

It was not as intense as yesterday, but it felt good. On the treadmill I kept wanting to go faster, but I like walking on an incline (feel the burn!), and I don't want to either be walking/inclining so much that I feel the need to hold on to the bar in front of me. I wish I could try running, but I feel like I would slow down or speed up randomly and be flung off ;-) Running attempts will be left for solid ground.

After my workout, I headed home to get Kyle and we headed out to lunch... sushi!

I love this place in Laurel, MD Asahi Sushi. It has a pretty decent lunch buffet of sushi and hot items. It's not high-grade sushi, but for $12 all you can eat it's pretty tasty, and better than a lot of places outside of DC.

I had 2 plates of sushi, along with 2 scoops of kimchi, my favorite asian salad.

Rules for success at sushi restaurants:

1. Limit your soy sauce intake. The serving size is one tbsp, ONE TABLESPOON. I guestimated that as I poured into my dish, and did not replenish it
2. Same with ginger; what do you think is in the pickling juice? (sodium)
3. Avoid tempura (fried) filled or covered rolls
4. Avoid rolls covered in sauces (they are Americanized and mayo based in most cases)
5. Try to get ones with lots of veggies
6. DO NOT drink a lot of water; sushi is not super filling to begin with, but if you stomach is full of water and/or expanded rice, you will leave feeling full, but begging for food in a hour

Two plates my seem like a lot, but

• I didn't use all my soy sauce
• I only got 2 rolls with sauce
• I think there were only 3 rolls with little bits of cream cheese in them

It was delish, but my favorite sushi place is actually Yoyogi Sushi in Gaithersburg. It has the highest grade sushi for the lowest price I have ever found!

After lunch we ran some errands, and I sipped a tall soy awake tea latte:

Then around 4 I had a snack of Annie's Cheddar Bunnies:

My roommate is having a President's Day party tonight, so I'm not sure I'll be blogging again today. Actually, I may not be able to blog until Monday. Valentine's Day (my favorite holiday!) is tomorrow, and we have a full day planned :-)

Happy (almost) President's and Valentine's Day!

Wednesday 2/10/10

This snow business is making me waaay too lazy. I sleep in every morning now because I have nothing to wake up for as I can't leave the house, and there is nothing to do around the house!

It snowed until late Wednesday night, with loud, rattling winds throughout the storm. We are so lucky that we didn't lose power; there was potential for major damage from the winds, but we fared okay here in CP. But look at these crazy huge icicles outsides our window:

Since we woke up so late, we decided to make lunch instead of breakfast. And lucky me, Kyle cooked :-)

Asiago cheese, gouda cheese, provolone cheese, banana peppers, hot sauce, TJ's bruschetta, sour dough bread and my chipotle corn and tomato soup from yesterday for fancy grilled cheeses :-)

First, Kyle melted butter in the microwave and brushed it on the sour dough with a pastry brush:

So fancy! Then he heated up the banana peppers in the skillet before mixing it with the bruschetta.

As he lay down the bread, he layered the asiago, provolone, and gouda cheeses... then topped it with the banana pepper/bruschetta mix:

Then he placed the final piece of bread on top, and flipped it a few times. Then, voila!

So good, you guys! Sour dough is great for grilled cheeses because it doesn't get soggy or burn very easily. Yes, it is nowhere near as nutritional for you as whole wheat/whole grain bread, but I think it is an okay sacrifice every once in a while. I ate every last bite, and almost half of the extra sandwich Ky made.

After our late lunch, Kyle and I separated for the afternoon. Wednesday night was date night, so I thought we should chill on our own and then hang out at night. It might sound stupid, but we have hung out with roommates every night since last Thursday, and that paired with being trapped in the house makes for minimal romance. So I took matters into my own hands!

So, at 5:30 my wonderful boyfriend picked me up with some wine and flowers (fake) in hand, lol. What a guy!

For dinner, we had a delicious pesto chicken pasta dish. I used TJ's pre-packaged pesto chicken:

I cut the breasts into chunks to sautee them. Once they were cooked through I added 1/3 cup of heavy cream to make a light sauce out of the remaining pesto:

I had cooked and drained 1/2 lb. of cavatappi while this cooked, and put in my casserole dish to mix with the chicken and pesto sauce:

Mmm, steamy! Mixed with the pesto:

Then topped with 3 slices provalone and a few sliced tomatoes and baked at 350 for about 20 minutes:

It was really good! Since there was not much sauce to coat the pasta, I poured a bit of chicken stock in the bottom of the casserole dish to keep the pasta from drying out. It was perfect, not too liquidity or dried out. It had a lot of great flavor, and no need for added salt or pepper.

I had just under 1/4 of this, and tried to avoid a lot of cheese. We also topped it with steamed mushrooms:

Perfect date night dinner :-)

We watched a movie, then moved onto NCAA basketball, complete with popcorn and every poor person's favorite wine, Carlo Rossi!

Uhg. So gross. It only tastes good after you've suffered through a glass or two.

We caught the end of the UConn vs. Syracuse game, and I donned the appropriate apparel:

Didn't work, though. The huskies fell apart in the end. On to game #2, DUKE vs. UNC.

Another tough one, but the Devils pulled it off!

We then caught up on The Office, and called it a night. It was a pretty great snowed in date night :-)