Happy, happy! It’s FRIDAY!!

Happy Friday, happy weekend!

I am so happy the weekend is here.  I guess it has been a couple of days, so let’s catch up!  Thursday I went to BodyStep with all of my kids in tow.  I had an uninterrupted class where I busted it out.  Seriously busted it out. Resulting in a 623 calorie burn!  I told my instructor, my calorie burn is always indicative of how much I’ve enjoyed myself.

Jeremy also came home Thursday night, which was a blessing, as I had “the week from heck”.  I do not wish to revisit the week so if you haven’t been following, please see my previous posts.

Let’s talk about my lettuce in my Aerogarden.  It’s growing fast!  I haven’t bought another one yet, though….

Home-grown lettuce

Sophia has some sprouts of her own but they’re flowers.

I could not decide what to eat that night, either.  It was a toss up between ordering out for sashimi and sushi or making something at home.  I voted on a Gardenburger with chipotle-gouda cheese, a salad, and cottage cheese with Mrs. Dash:

That’s actually a really good picture, LOL!  The following shows the whole plate:

YUM!

I ate all of that, then my weight in natural peanut butter with graham crackers.  I could not stop eating!  Bottomless pit, that was me.   I wish I had a picture of what I ate for lunch, the girls came out to lunch with me and the kids and we had Mexican.  I had fish taco’s (no tortillas) and 2 frozen strawberry margaritas that looked like this, because I felt

totally entitled after the week I’d had.   SO, loaded with sugar, and some other excess sugar I ate (I hadn’t had any in almost 2 weeks) I woke up this morning feeling AWFUL.

Determined to start my day out the right way, I started with my old standby:

Lunch was another smoked salmon sandwich:

Complete with greek yogurt and some Mrs. Dash………..YUM!  With a side of another old standby, cottage cheese and no-sugar added fruit spread:

The end of the week always sneaks  up on me and for whatever reason, I run out of ideas for meals and I also run out of food, LOL!  So we wound up ordering out BBQ, which is a favorite of the entire family:

I stayed away from the mac-n-cheese and potato salad and made some broccoli to accompany the pulled pork and big honkin’ slice of white stripped-of-all-nutrients bread.

Tomorrow I am hitting the gym for Attack and Bodypump and then who knows what the rest of the weekend holds?

What are your plans for the weekend? Doing anything fun?

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!!

15 Things About Me

Hey Y’all!

Hope your Saturday has been absolutely fantastic.  I had a hectic morning – not sure why, because I didn’t get up until 9 (the kids are really sleeping in lately!) and didn’t step foot out of the house until after 11:30.  I am still melting here in GA, so we decided to go on the lake today with all our kids and their friends too:

Did I mention that the air temperature was 98 degrees, and the lake temperature was 117 degrees? It was like taking a bath…in a hot tub!   About 2 hours in to our adventure the storms started to roll in so we took cover in a cove until the storm passed, then headed back to the dock.

I can’t believe all of the kids fell asleep! How often does that happen, lol!

Today I wanted to share with you all a little about myself.  I tell tales about my family and friends, and share my kitchen catastrophes, but I’m not sure that I share a lot about me, at least in recent months.

So here we go…15 things about me:

1. I don’t want to have any regrets in the future. NONE! Life’s too short.

2. I NEED to eat clean. I’m terribly afraid of the chemicals that are in our foods. I try my best, but sometimes I fall off of the wagon.  I always get back on, though! Old habits are so terribly hard to break.

3. I really enjoy iCarly on Nickelodeon.  LOL! That’s one funny show!

4. I need to enjoy life more and worry less (and chill out, I’m really tense and uptight a lot of the time, except when I’m at the gym, which is probably one of many reasons that I LOVE the gym.  Actually, I LOVE my gym, not just any gym.)  Maybe someday I’ll share why.

5. I REALLY want to get in better shape, even though I know I’ve become fitter over the last year because my VO2 Max went from 42 to 50 (that is the amount of oxygen that your body uses…it’s used as a measure of fitness.)  I have before and after pictures from the past year, but I just don’t have enough confidence to post them in this public of a venue.  What I mean about “wanting to get in better shape” is building lean muscle and dropping my fat percentage.  It’s not easy, and definitely a continuous work in progress.

6. I’ve found that I can’t just “eat clean”…that I have to count calories. I ate clean for over 6 months and my weight went UP. (see 8 below, which I suspect is the reason why, among others.)

7. I am a calorie counter and scale weigh-er. I totally have to do the two of these things to stay sane, and yes, I’m just that OCD.  And you know what?  I’m ok with that.  It’s just me. And I wish I had a YAY! Scale in pink fur, LOL:

8. I can’t eat nut butters on a regular basis because they are a complete indulgence for me, (as is coconut butter)…addictive!!! JUST LIKE CHOCOLATE!!! and yes, I will over-indulge. These are the 3 things that will send me over the edge, LOL!

My Favorite Coconut Butter...Artisana! Aaaahhhhh

9.  I like to read, and read a lot.  My newest endeavor is The Complete Cancer Cleanse, by Cherie Calbom.  I’m petrified of cancer, as everyone should be.

10.  Other books that I have downloaded to my Nook but have yet to read are Shit My Dad Says by Justin Halpern and Worst Case by James Patterson.

11.  The place I’ve wanted to go since I was about 5 years old is Paris, France.  I have also added Tuscany, Italy to that list.

12.  I really want to write and publish a book.  I asked for a typewriter when I was 4 from Santa.  That’s when I wrote my first “book”.  I wish I had that book today!

13.  I am constantly reassessing my life: what I want to be doing, where I am going.  It’s not an easy process.

14.  I plan on buying a small house on the Gulf of Mexico in the next few years.

15.  I enjoy blogging, and through my blogging, have begun to enjoy cooking.  I never new I would be a food blogger, and it’s FUN!

With all that being said, everything that I have eaten this week has been totally CLEAN. Not one bad thing, and I’m proud of that.

And with all of that being said, maybe we should get on to the food part of my post?

I am a relatively new cook.  I poached my first egg ever this week! Easy as pie.

How to poach an egg:

1.  Crack 1 egg or however many eggs you want to eat into a coffee cup.

Egg. Coffee Cup.

2.  Pour the egg gently into simmering water.  Try not to break the yolk.

There's an egg in there!

and voila! A poached egg 1:45 minutes later!

Oh, step 3:  take out of simmering water with slotted spoon and drain on a paper towel.

Poached Egg

4.  Commence Eating:

Heaven!

I found some spelt muffins at my local health food store in the freezer section.  They’re yummy!

Another egg picture:

Omelet.

Mushroom and onion omelet with Earthgrains Wheat Berry and Honey bread with Polaner Peach All-fruit.

Dinner tonight was a Spicy Black Bean Gardenburger, with Mozzarella cheese on a spelt muffin.  Green beans and salad accompanied it on my new Tuscan Olive Plates which I love:

I have been a HUGE fan of Mrs. Dash lately, especially because I can’t eat a lot of sodium.  I’ve been putting it on everything!

Every night about 10:00 I am starving whether I work out or not.  So I’ve been having one last meal of protein, which is good for you before bed anyway because it helps with muscle gains and repair:

Greek yogurt, stevia, cocoa powder and 1/2 a nanner.  Totally satisfying and under 200 calories.  Total calories today: 1204.

Well, hope you enjoyed the post. See you in the am! Sweet dreams my friends!

Cooking Frenzy

Hello all!

Since I last posted, I have completely cleaned up my diet, and have been on a cooking frenzy!  It’s crazy how much I’ve cooked over the last couple of days, and I have lots of pictures too!

Has it been hot where you are? Here in GA it’s been in the high 90′s every day!  I honestly feel like I can’t get cool.  Hence the digging in my backyard as of Monday morning at 7am:

The Big Hole

We’ve been working on getting this pool for a while now.  There were all sorts of issues to begin with but they’ve been resolved, as you can see!  Can’t wait for it to be finished!  I’m an instant gratification kind of person.  When I want something, I want it right away, and usually yesterday. LOL  I’m working on my patience.

On to the cooking frenzy. I’ve obviously been on a clean eating kick.  I am also on a 1200 calorie kick, also.  I’ve been eating a ton of food for that little calories.  Let me explain what I’ve been doing.  In a nutshell I’ve:

1.  Cut out preservatives

2.  Lowered sodium and fat

3.  Increased protein

4.  Lowered carbs

5.  No refined sugar

That leaves unprocessed, whole foods.  In a nutshell!

I guess I’ll start with breakfast, since it is obviously the first meal of the day.  After we got back from NY, I didn’t have anything in the fridge.  Including eggs.  The chicken farmer down the road told my husband that his chickens weren’t laying very many eggs.  I was so disappointed, because I love my fresh eggs.  Off to the grocery store I went, though, because I cannot not have eggs in the house!  I bought 2 cartons of 18 and commenced to hard-boil an entire carton:

and there were some omelets but they all look the same, LOL! This morning I made a 5 egg white omelet that had chipotle gouda cheese in it.  YUM!

I’ve been all about hot sauce and seafood this week. I’m giving you advance warning!

We did manage to get some homegrown beefsteak tomatoes from the chicken farmer and they were so great!

These became part of a sandwich I made with snow crab (that I took the time to crack out of the shell!) a preservative free “thin bun” and hot sauce for lunch one day:

I do not recommend the snow crab.  It took forever to shell them, and the end of the process (a total process, by the way) I got 4 ounces of meat from 2 bunches of crabs.  King crab all the way!!!

I also made some chicken tortilla soup this week and it was so good. It had veggies in it, chicken broth, chicken, and a ton of chipotle chili powder along with some cumin, onion, oregano, garlic….

Soup's On!

I ate that for lunch 2 days in a row!  I did find some tortilla chips at Publix (my local grocery store) that are clean so I had half an ounce of those with it today:

Yep, they're blue!

The end result.

Since I am going to be home until at least November, I decided to grow some lettuce in my Aerogarden.   I love my Aerogarden!  Since the pool is taking up most of the backyard I’m not sure we’re going to have room for much of a garden next year.  I really want to plant some herbs too…maybe an excuse to get another Aerogarden? Hmmmm!

My Aerogarden

Those are little pods that have seeds in them.  According to the directions, I should have spouts in 1- 3 days!  I will take progress pictures to share.

The POD

Well, back to the food.

I had purchased scallops along with the crab (I don’t know where this seafood kick came from!)  I’ve never actually cooked a scallop before.  I read how to do it online (broiling them) and made a little lemon juice and paprika sauce to eat along with them.  They were good, but I think I need practice at broiling. 

With some broccoliciousness on the side!

Dinner tonight was chicken.  Jeremy’s family recipe for Fireman’s Chicken.  Marinated, grilled chicken.  I had 4 ounces of sweet potato with cinnamon on it and a really large spinach salad on the side.  Fireman’s chicken, by the way, is when the Firemen raise money by selling their marinated, BBQ chicken.  They sometimes have tables where you can go and eat outside with the family, or you can get it to go.  It’s common up in Western New York and Northern NY.  Not sure where else.

BBQ Chicken

along with the sweet potato:

and salad make for a perfect meal.

The salad had tomatoes, banana peppers, red onion, mushrooms, goat cheese and Seeds of Change Organic Dressing.  I love goat cheese!  Absolutely one of my favorite cheeses.

Let’s talk about working out for a minute.  I took class at the gym today (BodyStep) and burned 573 calories in 60 minutes.  KILLER!!! And I loved every.single.minute of it!

Question of the day:

What are you all cooking this summer?  I love trying new things!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Detoxification

Howdy!

As you can ascertain from the title of this blog post, I have finally arrived back in GA with my family.  For those of you that don’t know, we took a trip to Northern NY for the week of July 4th and then went down to Rochester, NY (just my husband and myself, we left the kids with my in-laws) to begin packing up my parents house and tie up loose ends there.

The second part of our trip was long and arduous.

This is where I like to have a blog, to show how a real person (myself, of course) deals with everyday frustrations that may or may not be common situations for others.  I would also like to share with you, that honestly, I fell off of the clean eating bandwagon.  The second week, I ate out ever meal except for breakfast.  Toward the end of the week, I gave up and ate breakfast out too.  I began to feel physically awful.  I blew up like a balloon (really – 10 pounds) which I am more then certain that it was from the sodium, fried, and preservative laden foods that I was ingesting in the restaurants.

The great thing about clean eating is that even if you stop, for any amount of time, you can start making wiser decisions at your very next meal. I came home with a plan.  It’s a detox plan, but not detox in the traditional sense (um, anyone heard of the water with lemon and cayenne cleanse??) I’ve never tried it and probably never will.  (It sounds disgusting!)

Detox clean eating style is cutting out the sugar, the unhealthy fats, and bad carbs, while drinking boat-loads of water to get rid of excess sodium, which causes bloat. I try to drink 80-100 ounces a day.

I shall get off my soap box now!   I tried to make better choices at times, and wanted to share the better (and worse choices) that I made with you.

TGIFriday’s (which was incidentally next to the hotel):

This meal was under the “Right Portion, Right Price” part of the menu.  The description:  Parmesan Crusted Chicken: “A sautéed chicken breast basted with Caesar dressing, then finished with a Parmesan-crust topping. Served with three cheese tortelloni tossed in spinach Alfredo sauce and a side of our fresh tomato Mozzarella salad.”

The other meal that I had was a salmon meal: (called Dragonfire Salmon)

The description:  “Norwegian salmon fillet fire-grilled and glazed with spicy Chinese Kung Pao sauce. Served over jasmine rice with pineapple pico de gallo, Mandarin oranges and broccoli.”

Those two meals weren’t terrible.  It was all of the rest of the yuck that I ate that put my body over the edge! Like these:

Buffalo Chicken Wings.

Let the detoxing begin:

Boars Head preservative free chicken and low sodium cottage cheese with Mrs. Dash on a whole grain preservative free thin-bun.

Tortilla Soup in the Vitamix.  So as some of you remember, I can sometimes cook and sometimes not so much and this was one of those recipes that needs some doctoring (so I guess it wasn’t my fault, lol…it’s not my recipe!).  It kind of tasted like veggie soup with taco seasoning.  Hopefully I can fix it tomorrow with the addition of more taco seasoning (organic) and boneless, skinless chicken breast!!

3 ounces of steak, boiled cauliflower and roasted sweet potato.  (Can you believe that the potato is just over 100 calories? All of that potato is only 1 cup!!)

Rotisserie chicken breast eaten sans skin with broiled broccoli with Mrs. Dash.  On the side I had leftover greek salad with Newman’s Own Lighten Up Sun Dried Tomato Vinaigrette Dressing.

I was disappointed today because the farmer down the road from my house was out of fresh eggs.  He told my husband that his chicken’s weren’t laying that many.  We’re supposing because it’s been so hot.   I only have one egg for tomorrow!  I guess I need to stop at the grocery store.  Jeremy did come home with a boat load of tomatoes, though!

So it’s been a couple of weeks of ups and downs.  I was sad when I came home, but then my girlfriends all decided to stop by the night I got back:

They made my night!

Vacation Destination: Destin, FL 2010

Hey there!  Sorry I was gone for so long. We went on our yearly family vacation to the beach! This year we went to Destin, Florida.  Destin is on the Gulf of Mexico.  Fortunately, we only had a half-day (we got to the beach late that day) where we couldn’t go into the water because of these:

tar ball

It was really bizarre.  The beach was clear, and then 15 minutes later there were tar balls as far as the eye could see.  We were staying at the Sandestin Hilton and the employees rushed to put up a fence when it happened:

But it was down the next day. It is very upsetting to actually see the devastation in person, because you know that eventually, the oil will follow….

We had a great time on vacation, though!  We also did a lot of eating and shopping. We ate at the Hilton every morning at the breakfast buffet and I tried to keep with what I eat at home instead of all of the glorious, fatty, unhealthy food that was spread throughout the restaurant.  I tried to stick with a protein (mostly eggs) and a carb.  I suspect that the eggs I was eating at the hotel aren’t as healthy as the ones I make at home.  The addition of butter (although unnoticed for several days because I wasn’t paying attention) into the frying pan before adding the egg whites (yes, I still ate the egg whites!) was a concern for me…because I tend to eat very little butter.  The following are different pictures of my breakfasts at the hotel.

Sunny Side Up

on an English Muffin……….and………..

Egg White Omelet

Egg white omelet with mushrooms, scallions, and cheddar cheese….and….

bagel.

Bagel with a clean cream cheese.  The regular cream cheese had no artificial ingredients where the fat free had several!

another egg white omelet.

With jalapenos, mushrooms, tomatoes and onions.  It was fantastic!   One day I even snuck some of this onto my plate:

Bacon.

Who can resist bacon?  I also ate orange and grapefruit slices every morning.

I also tried to eat some seafood…our first night there I ordered a “seafood bowl for 1″…

It has soooo much seafood in it, I could have fed the whole family!

amazing.

In this bowl for 1 (hahaha) there was a whole lobster, snow crab, crawfish, mussels and clams.  It was the first time I had ever had crawfish! (I had to ask the waitress what to do with it….lol!)

In between we enjoyed the beach:

The boys declared that they were "best friends" when I took this...so sweet!

and of course Sophia was all about playing in the ocean:

Of course there is the annual picture of one of the kids buried in the sand:

This year it was Sean!

There was one night where I was craving vegetables. I will never take my veggies for granted again.  Not one of our meals (besides breakfast) had vegetables offered.  All the restaurants offered were french fries and occasionally corn.  The family was having pizza one night so I decided to roam the hotel in search of healthy food:

Veggies from the little deli in the hotel, and….

My fave, sushi!  The sushi came  from the Japanese restaurant in the hotel.  YUM!

Then there was some food that wasn’t exactly healthy…it is so hard to eat healthy when you are eating every meal in a restaurant.  So I figured, everything in moderation!

There was a burger from Fudpuckers where they also have alligators at the restaurant:

Burger.

we viewed these on our way in:

Gators.

We went out one night for chicken wings:

Buffalo Wings. Not bad

and yet another night we had BBQ.  All in all the BBQ wasn’t that bad for me…

Along with the pork there was a plain baked potato that I added a smidge of butter and sour cream to, and corn.

However, as I said, everything in moderation…some lunches I had protein shakes at the beach:

BSN Syntha 6

with a side of plain yogurt:

So it all worked itself out.

Jeremy and I even got away for one night by ourselves to have a fancy dinner at the restaurant in the hotel where we had a wonderful time.  It was a steak and seafood restuarant.  I had the filet, and a bit of twice baked potato:

It was absolutely delicious!  There was some of this:

and some of this:

Foodgasms!

Followed by a run on the beach the next morning.   This was the first time that I actually ran on the beach and it was so.much.fun!!!  The only downfall to my run (3 miles) was that I did it barefoot and now have some wounds that I am nursing:

blood blister.

It was really bizarre, because I had them on the same toe on each foot.  I went for a run the day after but did it on the sidewalk because of the tar balls and it just wasn’t the same.  It wasn’t as much fun, and it was HOT!!  We roasted that day!

That’s 5:19 pm. Craziness!

I hope y’all enjoyed the vacation edition of my blog.  I still have some traveling left to do this summer, so my eats should be interesting.  I’m just a real person, blogging about eating in the real world.

I like my world to have my family, rainbows, sunshine and sand.

Sunshine and sand.

and

rainbows.

Happy!

Hey Y’all!  Today was a long day of fun and the sun for me.  I started my morning getting the boys up and fed, then Sophia.  Off we drove to camp to drop off the boys, then on to the gym where I dropped Sophia in the daycare and headed to BodyStep class.

Ooooh.  It was a fantastic class!  I love that feeling of having a great class, it really sets the tone for the rest of the day!  I wish I had my Polar watch so I could tell you how many calories I burned, because I busted it out. Unfortunately, we are on round 2 with my sending that thing back to Polar under the 2 year warranty.  The first round they replaced the strap and batteries.  Maybe they’ll replace the entire thing this round.  UGH!  (sigh of frustration) I like to at least have an idea.  If I were to guess, (based on previous numbers when I work out really hard) I would say 500-600 calories.  I hope I get it back soon!!!

I am excited because in 2 days I will be headed back to here with the family for a much needed and well deserved vacation:

THE BEACH

This picture was taken last year in Pensacola, FL.  We usually go to Sandestin, FL but last year we couldn’t get reservations at the hotel we like to stay at, and that’s how we ended up about 60 miles east.  This year we are back in Sandestin!  And I would like to mention, there is no oil there yet. Hopefully there won’t be, either.  I was chatting with some friends today (we’re all going to the beach on the Gulf at the same time…just different areas) and they were saying how the marine life has been pushed toward shore because of the oil.  Although that would be cool to see, I don’t think I’d be very happy swimming with sharks, lol!

Oh, I can’t wait!!

The other thing that I am happy about is that I got to spend some time with my girlfriends! It was maybe the second time since I’ve been home from NY.  It was a very nice, very fun and relaxing day!

My eats have been mostly clean and I’ve been trying some new things so…some new things were introduced to my diet. Such as a new protein powder:

Anything that says “chocolate peanut-butter” and I’m all over that!  I believe it’s 200 calories for one serving and I have been drinking it for recovery/lunch after the gym.  I’m hungry a couple of hours later, so generally I need a snack:

Cottage Cheese

Yes, I am still eating my Friendship Low Sodium Cottage Cheese.  I like to give it some flavor, so in the picture I added my friend Lauren’s homemade strawberry rhubarb preserves.  YUMMY!!   I want to try to make the cottage cheese into a dip in the Vitamix, because I like to dip things in it, like peppers and Mary’s Gone Crackers.  Maybe when I get back from the beach.  (The Vitamix will not be going to the beach with me, but I have a portable bullet blender that will be, as well as the protein powder).  I am working on increasing my protein and decreasing my carbs.  (Yes, still working on it…it’s not as simple as you would think!  I’m a work in progress )

cottage cheese and all fruit

There were of course, some eggs for breakfast.  I have gravitated from the egg whites (I ran out of mushrooms!) and have been eating 2 whole eggs for breakfast with a carb.  For whatever reason, I’ve found that I wasn’t eating enough before my classes and was feeling icky (yes, the technical term) and I would get ravenous during class, so I’m attempting to increase the amount I eat at breakfast resulting in the following:

eggs and enough carbs

It doesn’t work out real well when you’re trying to eat a Larabar in-between tracks of a step class, lol!  That’s how hungry I was getting!  I was also getting tired fairly easily.  I think I cut out too many carbs.  Like I said, a work in progress!

This eggs and carb picture was apparently not enough because this is what I ate before the class that I was starving in:

eggs and not enough carbs.

and these eggs:

eggs and....not enough carbs!

While I am gone here:

The Ocean!

We eat in the hotel restaurant at the Hilton, and they make eggs any way you want.  Last summer, I was into the oatmeal (can’t do oatmeal anymore in the morning, too many carbs) so I will be getting egg-white omelets with some whole wheat carb of some sort.  I’ve got it all planned out in my head, but sometimes that doesn’t always work out, so we shall see.

and yes, I can blog from the beach on my iphone

I made some broccoli salad this week that showed up on a blog on my FaceBook News Feed, and it was ok, but boy, not the same as the sugar-laden one that I ate as a kid:

The broccoli was made with non-fat yogurt, balsamic vinegar, almonds, and raisins.  It wasn’t fantastic, but edible.  There was also a breaded pork chop and potatoes with onions. (which were leftover from this meal):

This was a lean ground beef hamburger, with potatoes, onions and carrots on top baked in a foil packet in the oven.  I had some organic ketchup that I ate it with.

I did some research on sugar substitutes and while I like Truvia the best out of all of them, I decided to try something new:

Sugar Substitute

Erythritol.  Erythritol is a natural sugar alcohol.  Sugar alcohols occur naturally in plants.  Other ones that you may be familiar with are Sorbitol and Xylitol.  It also does not affect blood sugar levels and is a zero on the glycemic index.  Just some food for thought   As with any sugar substitute, the taste is a bit different then actual sugar, and takes some getting used to.  Erythritol is only 70% as sweet as sugar, FYI.

I’ve been snacking at night which I want to get away from, but it’s clean at least.  It’s usually a slice of Ezekial Bread with coconut butter or apples with nut butter:

lots of nut butter

I want to try protein shakes at night and limit the carbs and fats.  We’ll see how that goes, as well.

Hope you all have a great weekend. My next post will be from the beach!

Jessica

Good things come to those who wait…

and wait….

Remember these?

Wild Raspberries

The raspberries ripened and we got to pick some today…and they turned into these:

YUMMY!!

So this past weekend we decided that we were going to go camping at Red Top Mountain State Park, which is somewhat near our house.  Tent camping, which I have not done since I was in my early 20′s, lol!  A lot has changed since then, such as I’m a lot older, and I have 3 kids!  You really need to pack a lot more stuff when you have kids.

The Gruesome Threesome

and yes, just to prove I slept in a tent:

I have to admit, I was completely out of my element, but it was a lot of fun…and I really think that getting out of one’s element every once in a while helps you grow as a person.

At any rate, I tried to pack healthy things, but here is a sampling of what we ate while we were camping:

Bacon and Eggs

For the record, I don’t eat bacon very often because of the nitrites/nitrates, not to mention I have to watch my sodium intake…but it was really good as a treat.

Coffee!

I’m a bear without my morning coffee.  Starbucks VIA rocks!   You heat up some water, add the little packet, and voila! Coffee! And it tasted good, too!

Burger and Carrots

You simply cannot go camping without having a cheeseburger. Period!  I had mine with some cheddar cheese (unprocessed).

Snack.

Loving the Larabars.  With 5 ingredients, you can’t go wrong!  Very filling.  I’ve just purchased a box of the mini Larabars at Target today, because sometimes I don’t want to eat 200 calories and 12 grams of fat (or thereabouts).  The little bars are half that.

One night we made shish-kebobs and cooked them on the fire:

They were really good!

With a side of green beans.

There were some more eggs with whole wheat toast and Polaners All Fruit:

and some chicken breast with cottage cheese.  I was bound and determined not to eat bad.

There were also some of these

which ended up looking like this (of course!)

I’m the only person I know that gets bummed because I forgot to bring veggies (besides a bag of carrots). LOL! We went to the gas station down the road for some supplies and I bought a can of green beans.  What is wrong with me? Hahaha!

We drank a ton of water.  We went through almost 2 cases!  It was about 90 degrees out or more, at 97% humidity.  It was H.O.T.!!  I was monitoring my water intake and I was around 100 ounces during the second day and my ankles (and the rest of me) swelled from the heat anyway.  Even with all of that water! I was sweating it out as soon as I drank it, or so it felt.  We did some exercising, (a 3.5 mile hike) and swam in the lake.

Some things I learned this weekend:

1.  It’s not good to go camping when it’s 90 degrees with 97% humidity.

2.  I missed my vegetables.  I never really cared about veggies before, but now I enjoy eating them.  Especially broccoli and cauliflower.

3.  Getting to the campsite and unpacking is much more fun than taking down tents and packing everything back up. None of that is fun when it’s so hot out, though!

4.  Kids will complain about things no matter what, and embarrass you at all times. They also pitch fits wherever and whenever.

4.5  Kids like to play horseshoes…when the horseshoe is the size of my mailbox

4.75 Sophia will sing and dance anywhere.

5.  I can never be without my morning coffee.  (and thanks to SBux, I won’t have to be!)

6.  You can cook eggs anywhere.

7.  Even in the wilderness, I had a cell phone signal and Facebook.  LOL

8.  Camping is fun!

Next week is another adventure for us! Lots of pictures and stories to come!

So we got home, and I made myself a monstrous salad:

Greek Salad

right before making that fantastic salad I was sleeping on the couch.  At 6pm.  Exhausted!

I bought this dressing at my local Publizzle…preservative free and nothing bad in it:

Along with a rotisserie chicken.  Easy dinner!

Hope y’all had a fun weekend.  I sure did!

Jessica

Meltaliciousness

Hope all of you are having a good evening.  I know I am!  It has been a beautiful couple of days here in sunny, hot, GA.  It makes for good boat rides and BBQ’s. Oh, and the title? I like to make up my own words.  That is what having an MBA in Marketing is good for! LOL.

I want to warn you all now, I did some cooking.  As we all know, sometimes things turn out really good, or they completely bomb on me.  I had a little bit of both today, lol!  I guess I have some catching up to do since it’s been a couple of days.

Let’s start with my staple food for breakfast:

Eggs! I bought 3 dozen eggs from the farmer down the road today.  I needed a cup of egg whites for a recipe, and I didn’t know how many eggs that would be.  Turns out, it’s only about 5!

I made a plane old egg omelet (one whole egg with some egg whites) with cheese one morning and it was accompanied by cinnamon-raisin Ezekial Bread:

Great Value Mozzarella Cheese = no yucky preservatives. (WalMart brand).

Then one morning I had eggs sunny side up:

More eggs!

I cannot eat sunny-side up eggs without some sort of bread.  I actually ran out of bread that morning, and used a half of a hamburger bun:

Clean buns.

I’ve been trying to stick to protein shakes for lunch.  This idea seems to be working out well for me, although I find that I’m really hungry about 3-4 hours later and in need of a snack.  It’s only been a couple of days so I only have one new shake to share:

Pineapple.

Fresh pineapple, core and all…with protein powder and ice.  This was fantastic!!  Very good.

I finally decided to eat those black beans I made the other day for lunch today.  These are beans that I grew in my garden last summer.  I had cooked them up, made a sofrito, added it in and boiled them forever.

The innards! Black beans and mozzarella cheese.

This is on a preservative free tortilla I found in the depth of my refrigerator from Trader Joes.  I closed it up and topped it with my homemade salsa and Chipotle Tabasco Sauce:

The burrito exterior.

and of course, one more picture:

voila! homemade bean burrito's rock!

It’s not Taco Bell.  It was better!

There were also a couple of snacks:

Cocoa Roast Almonds.

and

Friendship Low-Sodium cottage cheese with Polaner All Fruit

in peach.  YUMMY!

I watched my crazy cat “Riches” relax on the top of Biscuits crate…for some reason she likes to do that…it doesn’t look very comfortable to me!

WHY???

And I wanted to tell everyone about Sean…he’s 8 and he took BodyAttack class with me today! And he lasted the whole class.  I was such a proud Mamma.

This was after class with our instructor/my friend Shaunna…he’s kind of shy! I think he’ll sleep very good tonight!

So today I decided to make a couple of things (I honestly don’t remember the last time I “cooked” something, but that’s ok since we all know that more often than not things turn out…strange.

I made some really healthy banana bread.  I don’t know, but I think I overcooked it.  It was dry.  It should improve with a stick of butter on top of each slice, lol.  The flavor was good, though!  It had egg whites, oat bran and bananas.  Another blogger friend came up with the recipe, but she used wheat bran.  That may have been the difference.

It looked good!

It’s edible, with a glass of water by your side, lol!

Dinner was chicken souvlaki with tzatziki sauce.  On flat bread.  Oh, it was so good.  I marinaded the chicken for a couple of days…a very basic Greek marinade of lemon juice, olive oil, oregano, garlic…

It’s covered in taztziki sauce: cucumber, garlic, lemon juice, yogurt and salt…

No problem making it smooth in the Vitamix!

We ended the day today with our new fire pit and some smores…because it’s summertime in GA, and it fits so well. Plus I love smores.

Before the meltaliciousness!

and:

mmmmmmmm.

Have a great night.

Jessica

Some of My Favorite Things

Happy Friday, y’all!

Today was a good day!   I got a lot accomplished, despite having gone out with my husband on “date night” last night. (We had a babysitter watch all the kids).

Today we found out that our boat is ready, (it needed some work after the winter) and since it’s hotter then the devil here in Georgia, we are extremely happy about this.  Tomorrow I am lake bound! Can’t wait!!  I’m the type of person who needs instant gratification, everything needs to be done yesterday. I’m fairly impatient, as you can tell at times.

Today I want to share some of my favorite foods with you.  I eat a lot of them on a regular basis, but try to switch them up by adding different spices and this and that.  Lets start with my all time fave, eggs.

Eggs are an inexpensive complete protein source.  They can be cooked a ton of different ways.  I used to only eat the egg whites, but now I throw in a whole egg to that mix, or cook two whole eggs for breakfast.

One of the ways that I like to cook eggs starts with my spraying a bit of olive oil with my Mysto sprayer in a frying pan and sauteing mushrooms.

White Mushrooms

Then I whisk together the eggs and probably a tablespoon of herbs de provence, which you can find in the spice aisle.

and then it is supposed to look something like this:

Fave Eggs!

I also added some low-fat feta. These are fantastic tasting!

Then, there are of course, the 2 whole eggs, sunny side up, on one slice of preservative free whole wheat toast…

Sunshine on my plate, lol

Another favorite of mine recently are Larabars.  They’re kind of high in calories and fat, but they only have 5 ingredients and are good and clean! I like to eat them after the gym, for some reason…and they also have ones with chocolate! Sometimes you can find them on sale 10 for $10…and they also just came out with mini bars, which are obviously less calories and fat.

Another favorite food of mine is the salad.  I’ve been alternating between romaine and spinach…the spinach has 1 more gram of protein, but more sodium then the romaine…it just depends on how I’m feeling that day!  Cover it in some kind of protein (I favor grilled chicken), veggies, and a tablespoon of a clean dressing, and you’ll be full for HOURS.

The salad pictured is actually spinach, feta, homemade salsa, purple onion, mushrooms and dressing. YUM!

I have recently been into drinking cream in my coffee.  I hated to buy it, because most half and half has HFCS in it and some sort of preservative.  After reading every label in the grocery store (does anyone else do that? I feel retarded standing there reading everything! It takes twice the time for me to get my shopping done sometimes, if I’m looking for items I don’t buy on a regular basis!)

At any rate, I found a creamer that is just that: cream. And it’s not skim milk, so it doesn’t turn my coffee gray, lol.

The way coffee is supposed to look

My cream:

CLEAN!!

Here is a pic of the ingredients:

Highly recommended if you’re a coffee drinker like myself.

Since I recently got a Vitamix,

which is essentially a very high powered blender, I have been making smoothies! It can also make natural nut butters, but I haven’t gotten that far yet…and soup that comes out HOT!  It’s a fantastic little machine and really worth the money.

I made my first green smoothie ever, and the only reason it was green was from spinach, not some weird dirt-like protein powder, lol.

Then there was a pink one, which had mango, banana, strawberry and vanilla protein powder:

Pretty in Pink Smoothie

My other favorite thing recently: plain old water.  I’ve been drinking 80-100 ounces a day (or trying my best, my absolute minimum is 60 ounces).  It is so important to get enough water in.  Guess what? For those of us that retain water, drinking water will get rid of that excess bloat from whatever.  I was never a big water drinker, but now I can’t get enough! (Along with red wine, but that’s a story for another day )

My other favorite things are my kids, as many of you know.  Some things that happened during the last 3 months:

Soccer Time!

We found out that Sophia is kind of a natural athlete, and she loves to play soccer!

Aidan and Me

Aidan graduated to 5th grade, Sean graduated to 3rd…and also climbed almost all the way to the top of a rock wall:

Sophia graduated from pre-k and is officially on her way to kindergarten:

and we took a trip to Stone Mountain, GA.

And decided to walk down the mountain which is a mile, and then another mile back to the park!

That was a super-fun trip!

There’s lots going on this summer, so I hope to bring new and exciting foods and trips to the table for you all to see.  I missed you guys while I was gone! And I missed blogging. Thank you for all of your condolences and well wishes.

Jessica