Sprouts, Shopping, and a Cleaning Frenzy! Oooooh MY!!

Hey Cutie Patooties!  How has your Monday been?  Mine has been extraordinarily frustrating and productive at the same time.  One week until school starts! It’s so hard dragging all 3 kids around everywhere. First they got dragged to the gym, where I took BodyPump.  Then we came home, and then took a field trip to Whole Foods which is about half an hour away.  Then, when we got back, Biscuit decided to chew on a blue crayola non-toxic washable marker.

OMG. Her paws were blue!  As was my carpet.   What commenced was a cleaning frenzy that lasted almost 3 hours.  It rolled into the kids, because I’m tired of their rooms being a mess, and I desperately want my house back.  My one son’s room still isn’t clean!!  Wait ’till they get back to school.  <insert evil laugh here, LOL>

I wanted to show you all this:

Salad Sprouts!

All it took was 2 days.  They were even bigger today!  I really think I’m going to invest in another Aerogarden.  They are worth their weight in gold!  Pretty soon, I’ll have lettuce plants that I can harvest for up to 4 months!

So, as I mentioned above, we took a trip to Whole Foods today, which always makes me happy.  Please let me point out that I do not shop there on a regular basis….I shop there for specific specialty items that I need.  Otherwise, I’d spend a ton of $$.  I did splurge and buy my lunch there today:

I ate it in the car in the parking lot!

Seared Tuna.  It was fantastic. I am still totally on my seafood kick!  My other purchases included:

Whole wheat pastry flour.  I hear it’s awesome.  RAW nuts to make nut butter with, Annie’s Bunnies Mac and Cheese, and Seeds of Change (the same company that makes the salad dressing that I loooove) Cuban kit.

Amy’s Chili (I’ve been looking for this forever, I hear it’s good, we shall see!)  Pine nuts to make homemade pesto, Pumpkin to make protein pumpkin muffins  (I have a small story about the pumpkin),  organic red beans, hydroponic basil and Braggs Aminos.

About the Pumpkin:  I went to my local grocery store (Publix) and asked them where their pumpkin was, and they told me it was a “seasonal item”.  I was dumbfounded that a grocery store wouldn’t carry at least a couple throughout the year!  Silly.

A HUGE package of blueberries – only $4.99!!! Avocado, and parsley.

Then, a BIG SURPRISE, A kabocha squash!  I’ve been looking for this type of squash forever.  Bloggers talk about it all of the time and I’ve never been able to find it.  Can’t wait to try it!

See?  Everything I bought there was for a reason.  There was no frivolous buying whatsoever.  I also bought one other thing and we ate it for dinner (well, Aidan and I did, the other kids aren’t big on seafood)…..

There were two of these HUGE clusters.  They were the bulk of the $$ I spent at Whole Paycheck!  The above picture doesn’t really do them justice, but hopefully the one below will:

CRAAAAAAB!

Hahahaha!  That was about 10 ounces of meat!  I ate 6 ounces for dinner!!   It was so fantastic, and was totally different from the snow crab I got from my local grocery store!

Of course I have been eating my normal eats as well:

Spinach salad with goat cheese,

hardboiled eggs with Ezekial bread and Strawberry All Fruit,

BSN Syntha-6 Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein Shake,

and a fave of mine: oven roasted zucchini chips.  I used whole wheat bread crumbs, parmesan, garlic powder, salt, pepper and paprika.

Well, after the completely exhausting day that I have had, I think it’s time to hit the hay!  I did get a BodyPump class in this morning at the gym (no Insanity yet, sorry!)  I think Wednesday will be a GREAT day to start the Insanity program, as I don’t go to the gym that day.

Hope you all have a fantastic evening! See y’all tomorrow!!

sugarless day 2!

Hello all.  Today was my second day of sugar detox and it went phenomenally.  I only had 1 dark chocolate truffle.  (Not much sugar for 1, it was about 4.5 grams).  The guy at Trader Joe’s was following me and a friend of mine around and wanted us to try all the food…true story!! LOL!  We also tried some dehydrated green beans that had oil and sea salt on them…they were sooo good, but I didn’t buy them.  I didn’t buy the chocolates, either!

My cart held 3 bottles of “2 buck Chuck” (Trader Joe’s wine), their brand of sprouted grain bread, some soft whole grain flour tortillas that are preservative free, preservative free chicken and garlic sausage, low fat havarti cheese, and alphabet cookies (preservative free) for the kids.

This morning I made some eggs for breakfast, and as much as I was trying to take a great picture, they look strange:

There are actually 2 over-easy eggs in there, and herbs de provence sprinkled on top and cooked in.  Biscuit actually ate my first piece of toast (Ezekial Bread).  She also ate some other things today, that weren’t so good for her, but I don’t think I’m going to get into that. It involved phone calls to the vet. She’s ok, though, it wasn’t anything real serious.

I didn’t eat until quite a bit later, but it worked out as a late lunch/really early dinner before I went to the gym for 5:30pm.

My knew soft tortilla, leftover pork chop, Williamson Bros. BBQ Sauce (clean with the exception of the little bit of sugar in it), tomato and havarti cheese:

It tasted fantastic.  I was still hungry after so I enjoyed a treat that I hadn’t had in a while:

Greek Yogurt

Oikos yogurt with blueberries.  No fat, low in calories, naturally sweet.  I’ve tried their greek yogurt with honey, but in that case I like the Fage yogurt better.  The honey tastes different.

So tonight was BodyCombat, and it ROCKED, as usual.  I wish I could tell you how many calories I burned, but I still haven’t gotten my HRM back yet. Hopefully soon!  I did find that my hamstrings are super tight.  I suspect it was from BodyAttack yesterday…lots of kicking and jumping was involved.  Then there was more kicking tonight, so…that all = really tight hamstrings!

I got home and was staaarving.  Jeremy took care of the kids so I could make myself dinner.  I kind of went with some more leftovers with a spin on it:

Nachos.

Baked Scoops are preservative free, FYI.  There was around 3 ounces of grilled chicken, some black beans, preservative free salsa, Tabasco Chipotle hot sauce, and goat cheese.  (My new mantra…everything’s better with cheese!) LOL!  I wanted cheddar, but both the shredded cheddar and mozzarella had a preservative in it.  These are the upper-class nachos. Goat Cheese Nachos! My new invention!

Goat Cheese Nachos

Mmmmm! YUMMY!

My side dish was plain roasted broccoli:

which I put some Braggs Amino’s on.  I love Braggs! Tastes like soy sauce (but better), lower in sodium then low sodium soy sauce, and has lots of protein per half teaspoon.

I guess today was the day of trying new things:  I thought I would try Bakers Unsweetened Chocolate today in lieu of my usual 85% dark chocolate that I normally eat.  Ugh.  Tasted like cardboard! I guess if you’re going to melt it and mix it with some sort of sweetener that it would be good.  Otherwise, not so much.

What it would be good with is melted and frozen on a banana.  I think I will try that!  I’ll let you know how it turns out, of course!

I also had a well deserved glass of Merlot.

Hope you all had a great day!

Jessica xoxo

Energizing for the Day

Hello all!  I knew I was going to need energy this morning for my fave class, BodyAttack.  This is a very demanding, very hard, but really fun class that I take 1-3 times per week.  (Gonna get back into it, for sure, now that my Wednesdays are freed up from the “long runs”).  If you want to increase your fitness, take that class.

Knowing that I was going to need to fuel before class, I started my day with this:

Oats!

chocolate covered raisins protein oatmeal.  Did you get all of that? LOL.  In this bowl:  1 serving of oats, 1 scoop of Sun Warrior Chocolate Protein Powder, 1Tb. Hershey’s unsweetened chocolate powder, stevia, and raisins.  Guess what? It carried me through Attack!  The perfect breakfast for a high intensity cardio class!  I would also like to mention that I burned 484 calories @ 24% fat.  It’s not as high as I normally do (around 500-550) but I’ll take it!

I actually had some running around to do today and didn’t get home until noon.  I really wanted to be home an hour earlier than that.  I had to go to the marina, and to Publix…to get the cottage cheese that I wanted yesterday, along with some extras (uh, beer , a yellow pepper, chick peas to make homemade hummus with, yellow rice, and baby bella mushrooms).  HAHA!!!

I was mainly happy about the cottage cheese.  Let me tell you why.  I fell in love with the Friendship low-fat, low sodium cottage cheese.  I like to watch my sodium, and it only has 50 mg.  The regular has 450-500!  WOW!

My fave

I came home and made a quick and yummy lunch:

Marinaded salmon in Wegmans Santa Fe Marinade.  (I sent it home from NY!)  Cottage cheese (of course!) and half a yellow pepper.  I actually put some of Annie’s Goddess Dressing on the cottage cheese and mixed the peppers in, and that really hit the spot.

Side note: I plan on making some homemade hummus tomorrow.  I also plan on making some peanut sauce to eat with stuff.

I got really hungry again about 3pm.  I also craved salt. To stop my craving, I had a plate of broccoli with Braggs Amino’s and real parmesan:

Broccoli. Braggs. Cheese. Foodgasm!

That is honestly a rockin’ snack!

So I worked some and blogged some and facebooked some haha.  Jeremy grilled up some chicken and I roasted about 2 pounds of carrots, resulting in my dinner looking like this:

The rice is Rice-A-Roni, but it is the Nature’s Way, and doesn’t have any yucky stuff in it (and actually tastes really good…my kids love it!)

Jeremy and the kids actually had a pasta version (a la Pasta Roni):

and of course a close-up of the chicken…nothing beats marinaded grilled chicken (subsequently marinated in the same marinade as the salmon, )

Hope y’all have a great hump day!  I know I am!  Things to do today: gym (duh, LOL!) and meeting a friend for coffee.  Oh, and we’re cooking a 22 pound turkey!  Jeremy agreed to put it in if I made homemade mashed potatoes.  I think I’m going to need to get some canning jars, because I plan on lots of soup…and turkey tetrazzini, turkey pot pie, turkey stock, turkey gravy, turkey legs, turkey breast (sliced for sandwiches)….

Question of the day:  Any suggestions for what we can do with the turkey leftovers?  They have to be clean recipes!

Clean Food With Flavor

If you all recall, I had a bunch of things to do yesterday.  I actually got most of them done!  Here was the list as it was, and I crossed out all of the things that I did:

1. Call eye doctor to make appointment
2. Make reservations for vacation with the family to the beach
3. Put gas in the car (nothing like having one square left).
4. Go to WalMart (ugh, need I say more??)
5. Study for the ACE Exam
6. Schedule the ACE Exam (I’m thinking 2 months out from now).
7. Go to the bank
8. Figure out what to make for dinner.  (This one is especially hard).
9. Go to the gym for 6:30pm cardio core class.  (This may be the one thing not done, because I may be really tired…I hate that the class is so late in the day).

Whoo-hoo! I’ve promised myself that after the gym this morning I am going to not stay and socialize and I am going to come home and study.  Gotta get my studyin’ on! You understand.

Today’s eats were fantastic.  I ate lunch before I went to WalMart, because my being hungry in WalMart while grocery shopping is never a good thing.  I have to say, I was disappointed that they didn’t have the cottage cheese I was looking for.  Now I have to stop at the grocery tomorrow for 1 thing.  That’s irritating. Oh well, I guess I’ll get over it!

Before I left I had a gardenburger, cottage cheese, and broccoli with Braggs (my new fave condiment):

I have to apologize for some of these pictures. The battery in my camera is dying and apparently makes things look funny (yes, that’s what I’m going to keep telling myself, LOL)

The burger doesn’t look like anything wonderful but has a ton of flavor.  Really good!!!

Then not 3 hours later, right on schedule, so I had a snack and then a cheese stick that there is not a picture of:

Blueberry Luna Bar!

It is strange, how each picture is blurry, though!  Ugh, sorry!  As I was inhaling the Luna Bar (I love Luna) I actually looked at it when there was this much left, and decided it warranted a picture!

Looks kinda cool

Yummy.  Then I went to the gym, where I took Cardio Core with Gloria who is a cardio phenomenon…and burned 300 calories.  I came home and made the most fantastic dinner I’ve had in a while.

Get a look at this:

French Bread. Roast Chicken.

I started with Jeremy’s homemade French Bread and leftover roasted chicken.  I added about an ounce of goat cheese:

the addition of goat cheese.

I put that in my convection oven for about 7 minutes.  In the meantime, I grabbed one of these:

tomato!!

I actually bought tomatoes at WalMart. Impressive!  I cut up the tomato and added some fresh basil.  I then proceeded to put it all together with some EVOO and balsamic vinegar.  OH MY GOODNESS.  I just made something that I would eat at a restaurant.  Maybe there’s hope for me after all!

I ate it with broccoli, tomatoes and balsamic vinegar.

While I’m on the subject, I wish restaurants didn’t put so much junk in their food.  I would gladly pay a little more to eat clean, fresh food instead of all of the processed junk that I know they’re getting frozen and reheating.  I’m not saying all restaurants, but I don’t have access to a lot of good restaurants near my house (I think there’s 2 that come to mind right this instant).  Just good, clean, fresh food.  How hard is that concept?

It kills me that when you ask for your vegetables without anything on them, the waitresses start stuttering and then tell me that they’re not sure that they can do that in the kitchen.  Ugh.

I also ate an orange and a square of dark chocolate (Lindt 85%) YUMMY.  I didn’t eat them together, in case you were wondering.  But the pictures would have been boring compared to my “Balsamic Basil Chicken Stack”.

Clean food with flavor.

I hope you all have a productive Tuesday!  Mine will be less busy as I have 2 things to accomplish today:

1. Study for the ACE exam
2. Buy cottage cheese

Jessica xoxo

Back on schedule and fun run!

Good Morning!   Today in the ATL it is soooo dreary. Last night we had thunderstorms and lightening all night long.  I think I got a total of 4 hours of sleep!  All of my kids went back to school today (February break = OVER, LOL).  So if I get tired, I can always take a nap.

I want to begin by talking about my run yesterday – which I actually enjoyed now that there is no pressure.  I did a 3 mile run, just under 10 minute miles, and burned about 350 calories.  Sundays are good run days, for sure!  Since it was 70 degrees out, that was an added bonus – no bundling up!

Today I have a plan, there’s some things that I need to knock off of my list (there is always a list).  The following should keep me busy until the kids get home from school (and when my day ultimately begins)

1. Call eye doctor to make appointment
2. Make reservations for vacation with the family to the beach
3. Put gas in the car (nothing like having one square left).
4. Go to WalMart (ugh, need I say more??)
5. Study for the ACE Exam
6. Schedule the ACE Exam (I’m thinking 2 months out from now).
7. Go to the bank
8. Figure out what to make for dinner.  (This one is especially hard).
9. Go to the gym for 6:30pm cardio core class.  (This may be the one thing not done, because I may be really tired…I hate that the class is so late in the day).

Yep, that’s my day to a tee.  Did I mention I may need a nap?

Well, enough about my schedule today!  This morning I had a great breakfast that was very filling:

Eggs!

What you see above is an Ezekial muffin, 1 whole egg, 3 egg whites with herbs de Provence and real, freshly grated parmesan cheese.  Really filling!

Yesterday before my run I had some lunch, and as always, I hate to waste food.  This resulted in a lunch of leftovers:

Leftovers.

Wow, that picture is terrible!  What is in it is my homemade butternut squash with craisins and basil, leftover roasted chicken, and the spicy salsa that I’ve been all about lately.

Salsa.

After my run I was hungry again (about 3 hours had gone by) so I had a snack:

Broccoli with Braggs and low sodium cottage cheese.  Dinner always throws me for a loop when Jeremy is home, it’s always so hard to decide what to eat!  Tonight we decided on easy taco’s…and for the record, they were *almost* clean…Ortega mix has maltodextrin in it, but none of the other yucky colors or additives.  I had mine with some more salsa and leftover green beans on the side:

The seasoning was actually kind of bland.  Not sure why!

It was perfect for Sophia, though, who had her taco in the form of a burrito:

and lots of carrots.  Sophia’s fave foods include canned carrots and spaghetti.

After watching the US win at hockey and then a show on TLC about one of The Biggest Loser contestants who won and then gained it all back I decided I needed another snack:

Homemade french bread with Polaner All Fruit Blueberry Jam.  YUMMY!

Well, I’m off.  I have a ton to do today!  Wherever you are, here’s to hoping you have a fantastic Monday!

Jessica xoxo

And then it snowed…

Good evening! Rochester is getting hit with a HUGE snow storm.  The schools here are all canceled tomorrow, so you know that it’s bad.  Of course I was out in it when it began, I had to go to the grocery store (the one that gives me anxiety attacks because it is so busy, LOL) and get a few things for the family.  Tomorrow I have more running around, and I may invest in some trail shoes for running outside in the snow. I don’t think my sneakers are going to cut it.  We shall see!

Today Mom was at the doctor for the majority of the day so it was more of a snacky-snacky kind of day.  Breakfast is my new favorite thanks to my Dad:

Mushroom omelet with herbs de Provence. They really add such fantastic flavor!  That is one whole egg, and one egg white, plus half of a blueberry bagel. (Not the pre-packaged kind, so clean).

And of course, my staple morning beverage:

Cooffeeeee! In an Atlanta coffee mug, where it’s been 63 degrees today, not 16. I’m just sayin’.

I was at the doctor with Mom, and we compeltely missed the lunch that they serve.  I came prepared, just in case, though!  It’s all about being prepared.  I had another Luna Lemon Zest bar:

I really like these bars. I really don’t like the amount of sugar (13 grams).  I have some others I am going to try that I can’t get at home, so if I love them, I’m shipping them home!

I also ate some of the clean beef jerky that Jeremy made me with Braggs Aminos:

That’s all that was left!

This is what it was to begin with..I ate one slice.  Braggs is lower in sodium then traditional soy sauce, so I don’t feel bad about eating it.

I guess that was “lunch”.  I needed to go to the store, and then all of the sudden, it hit me and I was starving so I grabbed some organic chocolate covered almonds, (and almost ate the whole thing!)

I kind of “tore into it”, LOL!

I finally got home in the snowstorm and had dinner with the parents…Italian style goulash with carrots and mushrooms as my veggie, because I didn’t have time to make anything else:

The right side is the veggies, the left is the goulash.  No I did not mix them together! Hit. The. Spot.

I was hungry again soon after, probably because my caloric intake was so low.  I took out some of these:

COCO POPS!!

Oh my goodness, these are fantastic.  They make them right in front of you, no preservatives, and 16 calories.  Lighter than a rice cake.  However, you need to put something on it…(tastes a little like pop corn).

Coco Pops nutrition

I started with SunButter:

I ate an entire one covered in SunButter, which I am normally not a fan of, but paired perfectly with the Coco Pop.

I was still hungry, so I grabbed my cinnamon vanilla pecan nut “butter” (remember it didn’t blend out smooth?) and covered another Coco Pop:

That concludes my eats today in snow covered Rochester, NY.  Hope all of your eats are happy, too!

Jessica, xoxo

The “4 miler” Wednesday

Wish me luck   I haven’t run 4 miles in almost a year!  It’s only one more mile than 3. That makes it sound more achievable, doesn’t it? I’ll let you know how it goes!

This morning I mad my first ever oats in a jar.  It was sooo good!  Oatmeal, cashew butter, golden raisins and raw cacao nibs: (recipe will be under the recipe tab shortly)

Oats. In a jar.

With a side of coffee (notice what my mug says…:D)

Jamaica.

I did workout yesterday and had an awesome workout.  I busted it out!  First I took BodyAttack class, and then I worked my back and biceps:

Back:

• Machine lateral pullup: 60 lbs 3sets of 12
• Row rear deltoid: 40 lbs. 3 sets of 12

Biceps:

• 21′s: Set 1 12lbs, 36 reps, set 2 12 lbs. 30 reps
• Open Ups: 12.5 lbs, 3 sets of 12
• Hammer curl: 12.5 lbs, 3 sets of 8

All of the exercise resulted in a fantastic burn: 651 calories in 1:17:45!

I was famished after my workout, and went with a friend to grab some lunch at the local Mexican restaurant.  I can’t believe I forgot to take pictures, especially since we were discussing the blog (among about a million other things!)  I had the carne asada, with avocado, corn tortillas, and a couple of fork fulls of refried beans.  Accompanied by a very large glass of water . It was a great lunch, we hadn’t seen each other in for-ev-er!

I picked up The Troublemaker, (I mean Sophia) at school and headed home to start the 100 loads of laundry that came out of nowhere.  I worked some this afternoon while the boys and Sophia played, and then dinner totally snuck up on me.  I did have a snack:

Haven't had one of these in a while

Then realized I hadn’t planned dinner! After much to-do and deciding on virtually nothing, I pulled a Ming Tsai frozen fried rice kit out of the freezer that I picked up at Target for emergencies (mostly because it was on sale).

I was tired, so Jeremy cooked it up, and added some Braggs Aminos to it, in an effort to increase the nutritional content (I think). LOL. It was not clean, I think it had MSG in it under one of those other names when they don’t want it to come out and say “MSG”. I seem to remember the words “hydrolyzed” or “autolyzed” in the ingredient list.

The edamame increased its nutritional value (kind of).  Enough of that, I was snacky-snacky again, and didn’t want a real meal, so the accompaniment was:

Homemade bread (the bread that actually turned out and didn’t look like this:)

I'm blaming this on the bread machine...;)

Don’t even ask me what happened.  It tasted good, but it was a huge brick.  Yikes!  On the slice of bread that I did eat (I have no problem increasing my carbs, LOL) was my favorite nut butter:

Almost empty and ready for "oats in a jar".

Oh, and there was also a glass of wine (not pictured).  I’m sure y’all know what a glass of wine looks like

Lately my stomach has been off from stress so I have been enjoying this peach, ginger, green tea that I bought at a little local health food store around the corner from me:

This tea is great.  If you like peach tea, this is the way to go.  The peach smell permeates the room, and it really tastes like a real peach.  Highly recommended. I had 2 cups!

10:00pm is my “witching hour”…that late night hour every night where I get hungry no matter what.  Tonight I just couldn’t find anything that looked appealing to me.  I walked from pantry to fridge, back to the pantry, back to the fridge, (you get the idea).  I finally found what I wanted in the freezer:

My splurge for today

I LOVE these brands of ice cream. So healthy, so good, nothing bad in them.  I HATE that for a little container like the one pictured, it is almost $5.00.  Really? Is it made of gold ?!  Sometimes Publix (the local grocery store) has them buy one get one free.  That’s the time to stock up!

I added some of my homemade cinnamon vanilla pecan nut granules butter because I wanted to:

This hit the spot!

That was the best ice cream ever.  A truly decadent end to my night.

Have a great hump day!

Jessica xoxo