Good(ish) News

No surgery — woo hoo!!! The surgeon said this type of fracture usually takes 3 months to heal, but I need to start using my arm to regain mobility. I will be going to occupational therapy three times a week until I see him again on December 7, and have exercises to do 4-6 times a day to stretch my elbow. I can’t bend or straighten it all the way, but I’ve seen a little improvement already. I am not supposed to lift more than a pound, which is a bit of a challenge, but I’m sure that will change quickly. He said I can start exercising again (though no upper body weight training), but to take it easy for a while. Whew.

Sore, Discouraged, but Feeling Warm and Fuzzy

After 5 weeks, my elbow hasn’t healed at all. I’m going to see the orthopedic surgeon next week (the same one who repaired my leg!). I’m not excited about having surgery, but I’m so frustrated at using only one arm that I’m willing to do just about anything! My elbow is sore, but the constant ache in my shoulder and upper back (from the weight of the sling I’m guessing) is almost worse. I woke up at 3:30am this morning because my shoulder hurt so badly, and I didn’t go back to sleep for a long time.

Not being able to exercise is frustrating too, but I’ve been walking the dog 3-4 miles every day, so at least not every muscle in my body is turning to mush. My arm already looks like an old lady arm — no muscle at all, flabby tricep, and loose, wrinkly skin. I wonder how many months (or years?) of weight training it will take to get back to where I was six weeks ago. Ugh.

However, in spite of the pouring rain today, a spot of sunshine appeared when a dear friend of mine emailed me that her daughter was sending me a quilt! A quilt — I’m so touched — and I think I’ve only met her once in the 8 years I’ve known her mom. Wow. It really made my day — no, my month. You can see it here: http://vingtcentimes.blogspot.com/2009/10/favorite-jeans-denim-quilt.html

Turkey Biscuit Pot Pie

Turkey Biscuit Pot Pie

This is hearty, healthy, and delicious. Each serving has 301 calories, 8 g fat, 37 g carbohydrate, 3 g fiber, and 19 g protein

SERVES 6

• 1 large onion,  chopped
• 1 garlic clove,  minced
• 1 1/2 cups cubed peeled potatoes
• 1 1/2 cups sliced carrots
• 1 cup cut green beans, thawed if using frozen
• 1 cup reduced sodium chicken chicken broth
• 4 1/2 teaspoons all-purpose flour, plus a bit extra
• 1 cup all-purpose flour, divided
• 1 (10 3/4 ounce) can of reduced-fat cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
• 2 cups cubed cooked turkey
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
• 1/2 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
• 2 tablespoons cold butter
• 7 tablespoons 1% low-fat milk

1. In a large saucepan coated with nonstick cooking spray, cook onion and garlic over medium heat until tender.
2. Add the potatoes, carrots, beans, and broth; bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat; cover and simmer 15-20 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
4. Remove from heat.
5. Combine 4 1/2 teaspoons of flour with soup and stir into vegetable mixture.
6. Add the turkey, parsley, basil, thyme and pepper and transfer to a 2-qt baking dish coated with nonstick spray.
7. In a bowl, combine 1 cup flour, baking powder, and oregano.
8. Cut in butter until evenly distributed.
9. Stir in milk.
10. Drop batter in six mounds onto hot turkey mixture.
11. Bake, uncovered, at 400 degrees for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the biscuits comes out clean and biscuits are golden brown.

Visit Kitchen Stewardship for more recipes with broth or stock as part of the October Fest Carnival of Super Foods. Next week’s theme:  Super Foods Recipes.

Coping

I am getting used to temporary life with only one arm/hand, though I think I may have to get up at 4am to make it to work on time. Everything seems to take twice as long. My elbow and forearm are at turns sore and achy, and oddly, my upper shoulders hurt most of the time – maybe due to the weight of my arm in the sling?

My husband and children have been very helpful, though my daughters think it’s funny to tie my shoes and zip my jacket. I’m just grateful it’s not January – I can’t get long sleeves or my winter coat on over my cast. I get another x-ray tomorrow and see the dr on Thursday. I think I’ll be back at work on Friday, which should prove challenging, sine I use a computer for 8 hours a day.

I miss hard exercise a lot, but have been walking the dog 4-5 miles a day, which she loves. Unfortunately, mother nature has parked a permanent rain cloud over Michigan for ten days now and it’s been raining daily, with no end in sight. It’s quite difficult to juggle a dog leash and an umbrella in the same hand, while trying to protect the cast from water!

Easy Peasy Chili

Another super easy bean recipe for Katie’s carnival:

Vegetarian Chili – serves 4-6

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 2 cups refried beans (or a 15oz can — I use fat free)
• 2 cans Ro-tel or 3-4 cups salsa  (I like hot, but the kids prefer medium)
• 1 1/2 T chili powder
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 cup frozen corn
• 2 cups of cooked beans (or 15oz can, drained and rinsed) – I’ve used black, kidney. and pinto in the past — all good
• optional — plain yogurt or sour cream, cheese, onions to garnish with

Bring water to a boil – add onions and cook until tender. Reduce heat to low and stir in remaining ingredients. Stir until smooth and heat until warm enough to eat, adding more water if desired. We usually eat it with tortilla chips.

Visit Kitchen Stewardship for more frugal, healthy bean recipes as part of the October Fest Carnival of Super Foods. Next week’s theme:  Broth/Stock Recipes.

Peanut Butter Hummus

For Katie’s Carnival of Beans:

Peanut Butter Hummus – yields about 2 cups

• 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas or 1 15-oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 3 T lemon juice
• 1 large clove garlic, chopped
• 1/2 tsp salt

Puree the chickpeas in a food processor. Add the peanut butter, lemon juice, garlic, and salt. Process until smooth and blended. Add some water if you like it thinner.

Transfer to a tightly covered container and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Per 2 T serving: 55 calories, 2g protein, 6g carbohydrates, 3g fat (0 sat), 0mg cholesterol, 2g fiber, 83mg sodium.

A (Physical) Setback

Saturday, at Rhinnon’s birthday part, I happily roller skated for an hour. Then I fell. Several hours later I learned that I’d broken my elbow. No exercise for six weeks. I want to cry.

Oh, My Aching Muscles!

After the second day of weight training, I’m almost glad it isn’t going to run. My legs were so incredibly sore after Thursdays session, I had trouble going up and down the stairs. We did a lot of one-legged stuff and I found that the leg I broke was more sore than the other one. Doing the work on that leg was more difficult too. I suppose that tells me that I really need to do one-legged training, so that maybe someday the weaker one will catch up. I haven’t been back to the Y since then because our life is crazy for various reasons. I have still been doing cardio in the mornings though. Hopefully I’ll be able to work out on Thursday while the girls are in swimming.

This coming weekend will be wild — we have Retrouvaille registration on Friday night, Rhiannon’s 12th birthday party on Saturday afternoon at a roller skating rink (fun! I’m a bit nervous about skating though), my MIL’s birthday party at a restaurant on Saturday evening, Rhiannon’s family birthday party on Sunday morning (she wanted brunch food), and the circus on Sunday afternoon. I’m going to be spending a lot of time in the kitchen this weekend, so I’m going to have to make sure that I take a little time to relax and do something for myself. Otherwise, I’ll find myself alone with the leftovers in a cranky mental state. I only bought two tickets to the circus because they’re so ridiculously expensive. I know it may be a spendthrift attitude, but if I’m going to something like the circus or a concert, I’m going to buy the best seat possible. I think the front row tickets were something like $60 apiece. Rhiannon has gone several times, but Corinna has only been once,  so I got a ticket for Corinna and a parent. R said she didn’t mind. I hope that’s true. Anyway, I think I’ll pack Tim and Corinna off and stay home and veg on the couch. I’ll deserve it, and I’ll need to rest up. Monday is Rhiannon’s actual birthday, so I’ll have to make something special for dessert on that day too — and we started the tradition of breakfast in bed for birthdays, so I may have to get up at 4am on Monday to get everything done!

Apparently, My Core is Made of Marshmallows

My twice-weekly weight training class started last night. Unfortunately, I was the only person who registered for it, so unless four others rush to sign up by tomorrow night, it will be cancelled. He’ll hold class with me tomorrow, so at least I got two sessions out of it. We worked on back, shoulders, and chest. It wasn’t too difficult since I’ve been lifting weights more or less regularly since last December. Then we worked on the core and abdominal muscles. OH. MY. WORD. I was DRENCHED with sweat when we finished and today my entire ribcage and abdominal area is really sore. There were a few many exercises I literally could NOT do. He showed me ways to cheat to sort of do it and I had to resort to that. I felt like such a wimp. Of course, he’s about 23 and did everything effortlessly. He was very encouraging though, and assures me that if I do these exercises once a week, I’ll be flying through them in no time. Uh huh.

I swear I have been newly inspired to eat healthy food after reading Kath’s old blog. She had such a great attitude (not that she doesn’t now) when she was learning to maintain her weight loss. She talks about how great you feel when you put great food in your body, and I think she has something there. I’ve been trying harder than ever to eat only real food, and avoid artificial ingredients, especially HFCS and partially hydrogenated oils. I made a dessert a couple of weeks ago for a potluck that had Cool Whip in it. Everyone loved it, but I thought it tasted so fake and chemically. I’ve been eating less food and feeling much more satisfied, maybe because I’m not eating any snack type foods or things with really empty calories. I’m not saying I’ll never eat another potato chip or Oreo, but for now, I feel really healthy and strong and those foods aren’t holding any appeal for me. Odd. I never thought I’d say that!

We spent FIVE HOURS cleaning our toy room a couple of weekends ago. What a horrible job. Tim kept saying, “I had no idea. No idea.” He had no idea that we had 5000 tiny Polly Pockets, My Little Ponies, Fairytopia, and Barbie “things”. It looks fabulous now, but if it ever gets like that again he swears that he will chuck it all into the rubbish bin. I think I believe him.

I’m so dreading Tim’s 90-day stint of working nights.  Please, God, let him hate it. I’ve been thoroughly spoiled by having a cop husband who works days and has every weekend and holiday off for several years now, and I’m not looking forward to attending every family function by myself again, as well as having the girls without husbandly backup for half the week. Ugh. I’m trying to be supportive and look on the bright side. I’ll have the bed to myself, I won’t get annoyed because he’s reading and I can’t sleep, he’ll be home in the mornings to help get the girls off to school, and we girls can do girly things on the weekends without feeling guilty about leaving him behind. Sigh. It’s only 90 days, but he is scheduled to work on thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. Boo.

Blog Slacker Here…

Yikes, I didn’t realize so much time had passed since I had written. Just life getting in the way, I guess. All is well in our household, though I’m not looking forward to Tim starting a 90-day stint of working 6pm to 6am. He volunteered to do it because he used to LOVE working nights and wants to find out if he still does. I wish it were happening at a different time of year since he is scheduled to work on our anniversary and thanksgiving. Personally, I’m hoping he finds that he dislikes it now that we have two kids and a happy marriage.

I spent a large chunk of time over the past week or so reading old posts from Katheats. I am a fairly new reader of her blog, and she seems to have a handle on eating and exercising sensibly, so I’ve enjoyed reading it. She recently posted about the anniversary of the blog and included a link to her previous blog. I went to investigate it and then got caught up in reading every single post. She really had a great journey from being a woman who counted every single calorie and talked about being “bad” if she ate something not strictly healthy, to being someone who eats intuitively and just shrugs and gets on with life if she eats too much dessert on a particular day. That is the woman I hope to be one day.

Here is a recent pic:

me and my girls

More Moderate Exercise?

I biked to work yesterday. It’s so nice to do some functional exercise instead of bouncing up and down on the elliptical going nowhere. I went to the Y twice this week for some weight training. I’d been slacking a bit on that and wow, could I tell! I was quite sore yesterday. The girls are taking twice weekly swimming lessons for the next couple of weeks, so that will kind of force me to keep up with it. I signed up for a weight training class in September and October on Tues and Thurs nights. I want to be pushed out of my comfort zone and into some new exercises. I tend to stick with the same old things.

The new Time magazine has an article in it suggesting that exercise does not help people lose weight. Apparently most people make up the calorie deficit by eating more — and eating more in calories than they burned. Even kids in a study ate 100 more calories than they burned off while running around. Wow, that’s depressing. The other night I made Cashew Chicken and was very pleased that I stopped at just the right fullness level – about a 5, I’d say. After I got home from the Y though, I was really hungry, and ate some oatmeal and a chocolate chip cookie. That probably was twice the calories I’d just burned off. Would I have even been hungry had I not gone to the gym?

The author posits the idea that exercise like walking, gardening, etc is a better idea because when people work out in a gym, they tend to spend more time sitting around the rest of the day. Huh. I kind of admit that when I work out for an hour in the morning before work, I don’t worry about taking a walk at lunch and I don’t get too upset when my pedometer only shows 7000 or 8000 steps on it at the end of the day. Maybe I should stick to 30 minute morning workouts and try to get in my 10000 steps. I won’t give up weight training though, because I don’t want to be the old lady who needs help getting out of a chair.

Here is the Cashew Chicken recipe I made. Even my girls liked it, though Rhiannon left most of the vegetables behind. I thought it would be too bland, but it was pretty tasty. It originally called for 2 cups of cashews, but I only put in one. It also said it was four servings, but my family of four ate about half of it. I had enough left over to make up three bowls of lunches for me. We ate it over jasmine rice (them) and brown rice (me). I think next time I’d double the amount of celery and carrots, and use fresh mushrooms if I had them.

Cashew Chicken

Cashew Chicken

• 2 cups chicken broth, divided
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 3 T soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 lb chicken breast, cut into small pieces
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 c diced carrots
• 1/2 c diced celery
• 1 (4oz) can mushrooms
• 1 (8oz) can water chestnuts
• 1 cup snow peas (I used frozen)
• 1 cup cashews

In a skillet, cook chicken in 3 T of broth. Meanwhile, combine cornstarch, soy sauce, ginger, and remaining broth until smooth. Set aside.  When chicken is cooked through, remove to a plate. Add garlic, carrots, celery to skillet and stir fry until crisp-tender. Add the broth mixture, chicken, mushrooms, peas, and water chestnuts and cook and stir for 2 more minutes. Stir in the cashews.

French Toast for Breakfast

I usually have long food jags when I want to eat the same thing over and over and over again for breakfast. I don’t know why it only happens for that meal, but lately I’ve been longing for french toast every single morning. The good thing is that it is tasty with the hemp bread from French Meadows Bakery that I didn’t really care for as toast. I hate to waste food — especially food that expensive — so I’m glad to have found a use for it. I just dip the slices into some egg beaters mixed with vanilla or banana extract and a splash of fat free half and half (if I happen to have some), then cook them in a frying pan with some cooking spray. I spread some peanut butter on the top and then either slice on some bananas or nuke some frozen berries to pour over the top. I experimented with a bit of honey, agave, or syrup and I really like the syrup best. I think one of these pictures shows some high fiber bread (Great Harvest brand) I got from the farmer’s market and one shows the hemp bread. Either way — delish!

raspberry french toast with white chocolate raspberry peanut butter

banana french toast with banana peanut butter

The Difference Four Years Makes

The first week of my recovery

Forgive me for reliving the past a bit, but I can’t believe it’s already been four years since these pictures were taken. It seems like that much time can’t have passed, yet it also seems like it happened another lifetime ago. Almost exactly four years ago I shattered three of the bones in my leg in a bicycling accident and was bedridden for ten weeks. The first picture above is me with a large rod screwed into my shin and thigh bones. There was too much swelling at first for them to do surgery, so I was sent home after a few days in the hospital with the stabilizer bar. After about five days, they did 8.5 hours of surgery to put rods, pins, plates, and screws in my leg to help heal it. They sent me home to a hospital bed in my living room after five days in the hospital and three days in a rehab center.

I had my leg in a brace from thigh to toe that had to be worn 24 hours a day. I was only allowed out of bed to use the bathroom (with a walker!) or to go to the doctor. My leg was strapped into a motion machine for as many hours a day as I could stand in order to keep some range of motion in my knee. It was pretty painful since the tendons and ligaments were so tight, but I knew I’d never be able to bend my leg again if I didn’t keep pushing myself. The doctor said I’d never be able to bend my leg enough to sit cross-legged on the floor ever again, but I have worked at it a lot and I can actually bend my left leg almost as much as my right these days.

The bottom picture shows how little muscle was left in my leg after almost three months of no weight bearing. It’s also pretty swollen. My calf, ankle, and foot swelled hugely every day for weeks, and some parts of my leg still swelled up nine months later if I overdid the walking.

It’s almost a blur now. I barely remember the pain and boredom, thank heavens. It’s kind of like childbirth — I remember that it hurt A LOT, but I can’t remember too many of the specific details. I’m sure some of that is due to the Vicodin and Valium I was on, though I weaned myself completely off both by the time I could get out of bed.

These days my knee hurts all the time, but the pain isn’t so unbearable that I can’t bike or walk. I haven’t tried to run since the accident — not that I was ever a runner, but the doctor forbade me from running, jumping, step aerobics, hopping, skipping, and the like. He said it was too hard on my knee now that the muscles around it aren’t as strong and probably never will be again. It’s true that when I look at my legs, it is still obvious which one was broken. There is still absolutely no noticeable thigh muscle on that side. I feel grateful that I recovered so well, but I still have “poor me” thoughts on bad days. Sometimes at night I have dreams in which I’m running effortlessly down the street. In reality, I joke to my dh that if  knife-welding maniac ever decides to chase me, my bloody corpse will be found at the side of the road — since I can only walk semi-quickly to escape!

week three of my recovery

the first day in 10 weeks I was allowed to put weight on my leg

The Definition of Insanity

A small group of women and I post on a private bulletin board site called Conscious Eating and Living that grew out of a Weight W@tchers bulletin board about non-dieting. We are all more or less committed to eating and exercising sanely rather than starving our bodies into shapes they weren’t meant to be. However, I’ve noticed that most of us who are at all overweight seem to circle around to some form of dieting again and again and again, expecting a different outcome because we’re so much more enlightened than we were the last time we dieted. I’m not sure any of us have really had any lasting success with it because it seems as though it starts out well, we become somewhat obsessed, and we end up throwing in the towel and declaring that we should have realized diets don’t work.

I have noticed that lately I’m starting to have the itch to do it again — count calories, track what I eat, go back on South Beach…anything that will help me lose some weight. I’m pretty sure I’ve gained at least five pounds since our vacation and I’m starting to have that panicky feeling that if it keeps up my clothing won’t fit (since it’s already a wee bit tight) and I’ll be right back where I started last summer, 25 pounds heavier. I think it’s just that calorie counting or counting points or sticking to a prescribed eating plan seems so much more effortless on the surface than trying to eat mindfully. I don’t have to pay attention to my food — I just have to eat my allotted amount and go on with my day. I can read while I eat, bolt it down in five minutes, and have a reason for turning down ice cream. My experience, however, is that while it seems effortless on the surface, it is taking a toll mentally — which is why it just doesn’t last forever.

Trying to be truly mindful of what I eat is a lot of WORK! I have to eat slowly, make choices about what to eat from everything on the menu instead of just the low calorie offerings, and pay a lot of attention to my satiety level. I have to find a reason to turn down dessert that doesn’t involve trying to lose weight. I have to look at WHY I want dessert (as I said in my previous post) when I’m still full from dinner. It’s HARD! I’ve become lazy lately about wanting to do the work. Last night I knew I was getting full during dinner, but I kept eating and ended up feeling uncomfortable. I think my thoughts took this course: I took such small helpings — it wasn’t fair! How could I be done after 1/3 chicken breast, 1/4 cup of rice, a small slice of cantaloupe, and 1/4 cup of peas? That’s just not normal!

So I ended up too full — not like thanksgiving or anything, but nonetheless feeling guilty about eating more than I really needed for no good reason other than contrary-ness. My “not eating dessert after dinner” plan for the past few days has been a dismal …well, if not failure, not successful either. I have been successful only in waiting two hours after dinner to eat the dish of ice cream and cookie. At least last night I only had one small dish instead of two like I did the night before. Oy.  Sometimes I despair that I will ever be a truly mindful eater. I am not going to give in to the insanity of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results though — not this time. As I was tempted to log my food into Sparkpeople this morning when I logged my exercise, I not only didn’t do it, but deleted my entire account. There’s no reason to log my exercise OR my food!

Bagels…Yum! Dessert….Irresistable!

I had my first hemp bagel from French Meadows Bakery this morning for breakfast and I’m happy to say that I really liked it. It was hearty, dense and chewy, covered with delicious seeds, and tasted great. No one in my family will touch these but me, so I think I’ll end up freezing them in a day or two. I spread my bagel with some Barney Butter and some Cream-Nut Peanut Butter, and added a bit of apple butter. It was so filling that I kept my banana back for a mid-morning snack. I didn’t take a photo — a bagel is pretty much a bagel and Tina has a pretty one on her blog if you really want to see what it looks like. I ate it at 6am after walking the dog, and it kept me satisfied for about 4 1/2 hours, even after ellipticising for 50 minutes and going to work. I was finally REALLY hungry around 11:30 and ate my banana with a bit of peanut butter on it. That lasted about five minutes and I was very hungry again by the time 12:30 rolled around and I ate lunch.

I don’t track my food intake much anymore, but I still track my exercise on Sparkpeople. I’m not sure why since I don’t actually DO anything with the information, but I can’t quite seem to quit recording it. Actually, it was kind of helpful this morning, as I saw that I exercised all seven days last week (oops!) for an average of 95 minutes a day. That’s a bit much. It’s partly due to the fact that I biked to work four days out of five for the past couple of weeks, in addition to my other exercise. I don’t want exercise to take over my life to such an extent that I feel horribly guilty for missing a day, and force myself to go beyond “normal”. Tomorrow is a day off (except for walking the canine, of course)!

As I sit here blogging instead of doing my work, and eating Lindt chocolates we got from the outlet store in Maine, I am ruminating about the difficulty I’m still having in regulating my eating and exercise. I’m still guilty of waiting too long to eat and then feeling so hungry that I end up eating too fast, eating too much and/or having a terrible time deciding what to eat because my body is saying, “Just EAT some CRAPPY CARBS! I’m DYING here!” Lunch isn’t usually as much of a problem since I bring my lunch to work and when it’s gone, that’s it. I always want more because I ate it too quickly, but once 20 minutes or so has gone by, I realize that I’m full after all.  Dinner, however, is a meal when I usually end up feeling a bit too full. I really need to eat a more substantial snack in the afternoon, but I’m having trouble fitting it into my schedule (since I’m at a public desk in the afternoons, as I’ve mentioned before). On many days I have a few crackers and hummus or some yogurt and an apple as I’m fixing dinner. Then I can only eat a very small dinner before ending up feeling overfull. Sigh. I have whinged about this before many times on my previous blog, but haven’t ever found an answer or solution.

Then there’s the DESSERT conundrum. As Beadie was doing a few days ago, I’ve been again considering why I feel such a compulsion to eat dessert every day. Most days I eat a few M&Ms or a truffle at lunch AND have a cookie or two after dinner, so I really eat it TWICE a day. If I try not to eat it, it’s all I can think about. Yet if I eat it every day, my weight usually goes up, even with all the exercise I do.  I don’t know if it’s a habit, a compulsion due to some deep-seated emotional issue, or something else. I wrote in Christie’s comments that I didn’t think it was a habit, but while on our vacation, I didn’t eat dessert every day. We got ice cream a couple of times and had some chocolates, but I didn’t feel particularly deprived on the days we DIDN’T have anything. I’m going to try and change my after-dinner pattern and see if the obsessive desire for sweets in the evening goes away after a week or two. I don’t want to end up in a binge though, so will not force myself to avoid dessert on days like tomorrow (when we’re hosting an ice cream social at our house for 30 relatives).

Bagels!

French Meadow Bakery goodies

After reading about hemp bagels on Tina’s blog, I wanted to try some. I love bagels, but they just don’t keep me satisfied for very long. I finally got around to ordering some from French Meadow Bakery, and got the package in the mail yesterday. I had biked to work, so I had to leave it there overnight and haven’t tried any of the products yet except the bread. I toasted a piece to have with my salad for lunch and spread it with some peanut butter after trying it plain. I am sorry to report that I really didn’t like it very much. The piece was tiny and had an odd taste. I hope I like the bagels better.

Another Odd Summer Day

We had record lows last night — it was only in the 50s when I went to the Y this morning! It has made nice weather for biking to work though. I’ve biked 6 out of the last 7 work days and plan to bike today also. My knees have been hurting, especially on the leg I broke. At first I thought it was because I was exercising too much or because biking on roads is more difficult than biking on the trail. I’d been doing my usual walking, as well as using the elliptical machine for an hour before work. I cut my exercise a bit with no improvement, so I took a couple of days off this past weekend. Yesterday and the day before I also downshifted on hills, rather than standing up on my bike and powering up. I think it causes less stress on my knees.

I made these brownies for work and my coworkers gobbled them up, as did my older daughter. They were quite moist, and fairly low in saturated fat. My six-year-old wanted to help me, so the chocolate didn’t get swirled in very well and was more like topping, but they were still quite yummy. I should add that the photo shows a double recipe.

Fantasy Brownies

Fantasy Brownies – serves 16

• 1 large ripe banana
• 1/3 cup peanut butter
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 4 oz semisweet chocolate, melted
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup nonhydrogenated margarine
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

Blend the banana, peanut butter, and vanilla – puree until smooth. In a separate bowl, combine the sugar and margarine and beat until well blended. Beat in the reserved banana mixture and blend well. Add the flour and baking powder and beat until combined. Spoon the batter into a greased 8-inch baking pan (greased on the bottom only). Spread the melted chocolate over the top and swirl it into the batter to make a marbled effect. Bake at 350 degrees until the top springs back when touched, 25-30 minutes. Cool in the pan before cutting.

Mmmm…Peanut Butter!

Before I started reading other people’s blogs, I had no idea such a wide variety of peanut butter existed. I had tried almond butter and cashew butter, but didn’t especially care for natural peanut butter and just stuck with Jif. Then I found a locally made peanut butter:

Koeze's Cream-Nut Butter

It is delicious! It’s natural peanut butter, but has salt added. I think that’s what I found lacking in other natural peanut butters. It also doesn’t separate as badly as others I’ve tried. So, then I started reading blogs. I ordered some Justin’s Nut Butter. It was really expensive in those little packets, but I loved it.

Justin's Nut Butter

Then I tried Barney Butter.

Barney Butter

Yummy! It is rich, delicious, and just runny enough to drizzle over oatmeal!

I found this at Walmart — Naturally More. Not only is it really inexpensive (less than $3 for the jar!) but it is really tasty.

Naturally More Peanut Butter

Naturally Nutty Peanut Butter

I ordered a BUNCH of jars of Naturally Nutty next. I didn’t fall in love with any of the flavors except the vanilla peanut butter. It is FABULOUS mixed into greek yogurt with some granola sprinkled in. I also tried three or four flavors of Peanut Butter and Company Peanut Butter. I liked it, but wouldn’t go out of my way to buy it. That figures, since they sell it at my local grocery store! My latest package arrived the other day:

P.B. Loco

Hmmm..you can’ t read the type very well, but I got Dark Chocolate Duo, Jungle Banana, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Asian Curry, Caramel Apple. White Raspberry Chocolate, and Coco Banana. So far I’ve tried:

Jungle Banana: had a “fake” banana smell not unlike banana taffy candy, but tastes very good. It doesn’t have a strong banana taste, but is really good in oatmeal (and spread on shortbread girl scout cookies )

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough: this peanut butter is dessert on a spoon! It would be great to make cookies with, as long as you cut out some of the sugar in the recipe. Like all three of the flavors I tried, it is very sweet. It’s also good in oatmeal.

Caramel Apple: I spread this on some apple slices and my six-year-old and I both really liked it.

I haven’t tried any of these on bread yet — I’m not sure how good they’d be because they’re sooo sweet. I’ll just have to find out.

To end, a peanut butter recipe I made for dinner tonight:

Peanut Butter Chicken

It was rich and delicious and we all liked it — even the kids. Miracles have been wrought. I got this from a local paper last year, but changed it slightly. I would have liked it much spicier, but didn’t want to listen to whingeing from my children. I wonder if it would be good made with P.B. Loco’s Asian Curry peanut butter? We ate it over rice.

Peanut Butter Chicken – serves four

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• nonstick spray
• 14.5 oz can stewed tomatoes, chopped
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 3 T peanut butter

In large skillet sprayed with nonstick spray, brown chicken for four minutes on each side or until no longer pink inside. Remove from skillet and set aside. Add tomatoes and spices and cook for two minutes. Stir in peanut butter. Return chicken to skillet and heat through. Enjoy!

Independence Day

Susan and Corinna

Tim

Rhiannon, Declan, and Corinna

Our family -- Corinna, Rhiannon, Susan, Tim

Our Independence Day here in Michigan is cloudy and very cool, as you can see by the jacket my younger dd is wearing. I think it will struggle to get to 70 degrees today. It was actually great weather for parade viewing, except for the hordes of mosquitoes. Many  years have been so beastly hot that we melted while waiting.

It’s always fun to see Tim in a parade. The deputies usually lead and end the parade, and he loves to drive along giving high-fives to all of the kids.

We’re going to a pool party this afternoon. Brrrrr. I don’t think I’ll be swimming.

It’s a potluck, so I will try to be mindful of my eating. Tonight we’ll go see the fireworks with Tim’s brother and family. Poor Corinna has never seen 4th of July fireworks! Since Tim and I usually have to work on July 5, we’re usually in bed before the fireworks even begin. Have a happy fourth everyone — I’ll blog tomorrow about the delicious package I got from UPS on Thursday. Mmmmmmm…………

Dinner is Served

mmmmm....pizza

I really enjoy cooking and baking. It helps that my family and coworkers really appreciate everything I make (well, almost everything — they are never too wild about the healthier things I make!), ooo-ing and ahhh-ing over my cakes, cookies, and other baked goods at potlucks dinners, and over my main dishes when they come over to eat.

However, I get home from work at about 5:15pm — 5:30pm if I bike, and I arrive home RAVENOUS! I haven’t yet figured out a way not to arrive home so hungry that I’m ready to put catsup on cardboard and eat it. I think it’s just because I get up so early and exercise in the morning. Ideally, I’d eat lunch at about 10am and dinner at about 4pm. I’ve tried that on days off and it’s perfect. Too bad my boss will not re-arrange my schedule to work around my appetite.

Anyway, I end up cooking my family many super-fast dinners on weeknights. Not only because of my hunger level, but also because of sport practices, visits to the Y, and our early, early bedtime (usually 8:30pm). I often pick up ready made pizza crusts and make pizza for dinner. I looked at the ingredient list of every single crust in the store and the only one I could find without any hydrogenated oil of any kind was the store brand organic white crust (Meijer brand, for those of you in the midwest)! It was the only one with all natural ingredients, and a short list of them to boot. Go figure. I’d prefer the Boboli Whole Wheat, but it had much less healthy ingredients. My family is totally happy with white. At least I can make my part healthier. On the one in the picture, I put roasted vegetables that I’d made the day before — eggplant, peppers, zucchini, green onions, and sweet potato. There’s also some leftover chicken breast on there, and a sprinkle of cheese. The kids’ portion had cheese. That’s it. Just a bunch of cheese. How boring. Tim’s at least had chicken on it. Anyway, this pizza was wonderful! I’d eat this over pepperoni pizza any day of the week!

Bars

bars as snacks

I’ve been eating various protein and granola type  bars as afternoon snacks for the past month or two. I’d rather eat real food, but since I’m on a public service desk in the afternoon, eating yogurt and fruit or hummus and carrots is simply not an option. I tend to be very picky about bars and I’ve tried lots of ‘em! I didn’t like any flavor of Think Thin, and I don’t really care for Larabars. I ordered at least one of each flavor of Zoe’s granola bars because they had a sort of package deal and I got one of each kind of granola with an assortment of bars. The only one I liked was the Chocolate Delight. The Apple bar was odd tasting, and I threw the Chocolate Peanut Butter Bliss bar away after one bite. I hate wasting food, but it was nasty. I didn’t like the plain peanut butter bar either. I LOVED the first Chocolate Delight bar I had, but didn’t like the second one as well. Not well enough to buy it again anyway. The granola isn’t the best I’ve ever had, but it’s not overly sweet, which is nice.

Anyway, the bars in the picture are those I really liked so far. Clif bars are a bit high in calories for a snack, but half of one isn’t enough (for me) so I eat the whole thing. The four I liked didn’t have that fake nasty “protein bar” taste that a lot of bars have. The white chocolate macadamia nut bar tasted like a candy bar. I don’t usually like fruit flavored bars, but the blueberry crisp bar was tasty and not too sweet. The oatmeal raisin walnut bar was like a cookie, and the carrot cake was like eating carrot bread. I would definitely buy any of these bars again!

I tried a Jamfrakas bar while we were on vacation — icko! I had the Peanut Butter flavor. I suppose that I should have known I wouldn’t like them since they’re made by Larabar. I still have a chocolate chip one to try. I had found a Whole Foods store near the motel we stayed at in Massachusetts and HAD to go shopping. We don’t have a decent health food store on my entire side of the state of Michigan. Anyway, I bought a bunch of new bars I’d never seen around here, Jamfrakas being one of them.

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Beer Burgers and Gym Time

We eat ground beef about once every three weeks or so. I usually try to substitute beans, Smart Ground, or ground turkey breast in most of my recipes that call for it. Once in a while though, a hamburger sounds really good. I tried this recipe last night and we all liked it. I had some dinner rolls left over from Saturday’s family reunion, so we ate them on those. I rarely eat bread like that, and I must say it’s like dessert — very sweet and melts in your mouth! No wonder my kids like it and shun whole wheat. I still prefer a nice grainy bread that gives you something to chew on. I didn’t take a picture of the finished product, but trust me — they look like any other burger you’ve ever had — but smaller.

Beer Burgers

1/4 cup beer
1 T minced onion
1/2 T catsup
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 T crushed pretzels
1 lb ground beef (I used 96% lean)
small buns, like dinner rolls

Combine beef, onion, catsup, salt, and crushed pretzels in a bowl until moistened. Mix in beef and shape into 8-9 miniature hamburger patties. Grill 6 minutes on each side or until cooked. Serve on buns with toppings of your choice.

I’ve had a difficult time getting back into weight training since we got back from vacation. I think I’ve only been once since our return. I’ve been riding my bike quite a bit, but that’s not quite the same thing. I got home early from work today, so I’m heading there in a little bit. I don’t want to give up my hard-earned muscle gains out of sheer laziness.

Back to Reality

Susan and English nephew Gabriel

Susan and other cute nephew Aidan

cute cupcakes at the wedding in NH

top of the wedding cake

Corinna and Susan

Susan and Tim after the NH wedding

Vacation is over and I’ve been back at work for a couple of days. Why does it seem as though I never left?

It was a very nice vacation overall, though I confess at the end of it I lost my mindful eating vibe and overate at several meals. After we got home, it was worse and I stuffed myself a couple of times. I just wasn’t dealing well with the “back to reality” part of vacation. I feel okay now though.

We had a family reunion today and I have a “girls night out tonight”, as well as a birthday party for a 2-year-old nephew tomorrow. Busy weekend. The family reunion was very stressful, but I dealt with the stress without using food. Family parties are almost always very difficult for me and I usually end up overeating, if not downright stuffing myself, so this is a small victory for me.

More Vacation Fun

lunchtime

along the Cliff Walk, Newport RI

Newport RI

Cliff Walk in RI

Scenes from a Vacation

putting on the third raincoat of the day at Niagara Falls, Ontario

Niagara Falls

White Bean Salad at Johnny B's Diner in Glenmont NY

Rhiannon's reaction on Maid of the Mist

more Niagara Falls

Rhiannon and Tim wearing their vacation faces

Rhiannon outside the Pirate Museum in Salem, MA

We are on vacation! We left home on Thursday at noon and drove to Niagara Falls, Ontario. After spending the night, we spent Friday exploring the Falls. It was really gorgeous and not at all crowded. It was a really long day — we walked about nine miles according to my pedometer!

Yesterday we drove across New York and into Massachusetts. We’re staying near Boston and spent today in Salem. We visited the Witch Dungeon Musem, the New England Pirate Museum, and the Witch History Museum. We also met up with an online friend for coffee,  bought too much candy at a local candy company, and shopped for souvenirs.

Back at the motel now, we’re ready to collapse. Tomorrow we go into Boston!

So far, I’ve been eating very mindfully for the most part. Last night I overate at dinner because I was tired and stressed. I paid for it with a tummy ache and bad feelings. The rest of the time has been fine though, and I feel really good about it. It’s so much more enjoyable for me to eat consciously and mindfully.

Corinna and me at the Beer Works in Salem

cup of chicken vegetable soup and half a chicken parmesan sandwich at Beer Works

Wow — I haven’t been on a computer since sometime Friday….sleepover with a bunch of girls Friday night, eight million activities with Corinna on Saturday because she felt left out of the sleepover, baking for work, trying to get ready for vacation….I haven’t had a minute to sit down until now!

I baked these bars today and they were quite good. I think next time I’d experiment with a little less sugar and maybe sub half the butter with peanut butter to see how it tastes. I threw in a handful of mini semisweet chocolate chips but I don’t really think it added much to the flavor.

Date Squares

Soft ‘n’ Chewy Date Squares

makes 24 squares: each has 5g whole grains, 122 calories, 6g fat, 2 g protein, 9g complex carbohydrates, 9g sugar, 1g fiber.

In a bowl, beat:

• 4 T unsalted butter
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 t vanilla
• 1/8 t baking soda

Beat in:

• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 cup chopped pitted dates
• 1 cup chopped pecans (or walnuts – I used pecans)

Scoop the batter into a 9×13-inch greased pan. It will make a very thin layer. Bake at 350 degrees 22 minutes, or until golden brown around the edges and lighter brown in the middle. Remove from oven and cool.

Taco Bake

Visit Kitchen Stewardship for more frugal, healthy bean recipes as part of the October Fest Carnival of Super Foods.

Taco Bake:

Taco Bake

Serves 4-6

1 can refried beans (I used vegetarian fat free) spread on the bottom of a casserole dish. Warm it in the oven at 350 for a few minutes while you get the rest ready.

1 lb ground turkey breast (I’ve used Smart Ground also), browned with:

• large onion, chopped
• 2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
• large red bell pepper, chopped
• 8 oz mushrooms, chopped

I usually have to cook it a while for the mushroom liquid to evaporate.

Stir in:

• small can of chopped green chilis, drained
• 2-3 T chili powder
• 1 T cumin
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 2-3 T tomato paste

Sprinkle 1/2 cup of cheese on top and warm in oven for 10 min or so, til cheese melts. My family eats it as taco filling, adding lettuce, tomatoes, sour cream, onion, salsa, guacamole, olives, etc. I usually make it into a big salad by putting it on top of the lettuce, etc. It’s very filling and we all like it a lot.

I also made some roasted asparagus that no one ate but me (sigh). I tossed it with 1/2 T of

olive oil and 1/2 T of maple syrup, then sprinkled it with kosher salt. I had to run out and buy supplies for Rhiannon’s sleepover, and while I was out I bought a Blow Pop for dessert. I don’t usually like hard candy, but there’s something about Blow Pops I just love.

My overnight oats were just as yummy and satisfying this morning — I may try for another round tomorrow! I had a very hard time falling asleep last night and finally shut my alarm off when I woke up at 3:30am. So I slept til six and didn’t exercise except for walking the dog two miles. That’s okay really — I’d been overexercising a bit lately anyway.

It was another super duper busy day at work, but I got out early and zipped over to the Y after a toast-and-Barney Butter/half a banana snack. I usually go after dinner, but I’m glad I got it out of the way. For dinner we had Taco Bake (above)

overnight oats

I had some really delicious overnight oats this morning. I liked it so much that I already put a bowl together for tomorrow morning. Last night I put half a serving (half a cup? I don’t know — I measured it in grams and it was 113g) of Chobani 0% plain Greek yogurt in the bowl and stirred it with 1/2 cup of vanilla soy milk. I wasn’t sure if steel cut oats would soften enough, so I put in only 1 T of them, 1/3 cup old fashioned oats, and 1 T of cooked wheat berries.

This morning I added 1 T of ground flaxseed, 1 T of wheat germ, and a bunch of blueberries and strawberries. It was really yummy and kept me going for a long while. I ate around 6:30 and started to get hungry around 11, but I was so busy at work that I didn’t get lunch until 2pm! I grabbed a Kashi bar on my way to a meeting so I didn’t keel over.

I had some leftover ground turkey breast, rice, cheese, corn casserole for lunch, along with a tomato and some celery. I was too lazy to make a salad this morning. I missed getting my nut butter fix this morning so when I got home from work, I had a piece of Rudi’s Organic Wheat and Oat Bread with some Barney Butter on it.

Rudi's delicious bread

Sadly, my kids complain about whole wheat bread, whereas I love it really grainy, with lots of bits of stuff in it. They will eat this bread, however, and since I like it, it’s all good.

I heated up some leftover chili and we had that for dinner with fruit and crackers. I skipped the crackers since I’d already had the piece of bread. I had half a cookie from my batch yesterday for dessert. My pants seem a bit snug lately, so I think I will cut back on the desserts and be extra mindful of my fullness level.

savory oat bran

Wow, where did my weekend go? I got up at 5:45am to walk the dog 2 1/2 miles. I was REALLY hungry when I got back and decided on a savory breakfast this morning. I had oat bran topped with an egg and a Morningstar Farms “sausage” patty — and some hot sauce, of course. It was good, but I really like sweet hot cereal better. I zipped out to do the weekly grocery shopping and was really hungry again by 10am! It may seem odd, but I was craving a salad. I had a biggish salad and headed out for a bike ride with Rhiannon.

It was a most unsatisfactory ride. Rhiannon was tired…then she was thirsty…then her ear hurt. After four miles she asked to turn around and go home. So we only went 8.75 miles total. Oh well.

We enjoyed lunch out on the deck

Rhiannon enjoys a classic pb&j

and then did some yard work. I tried out the new clip-on mosquito repellent from OFF in our backyard, which is mosquito heaven. As you can see from the photo, our yard is extremely shady, so the mosquitoes have lots of damp places to breed. I didn’t get a single bite that I noticed, so maybe it actually works! We don’t often sit on the deck in the summer because we get eaten alive, so if it really does work, I’ll be reeeeallly happy.

I baked some of Tina’s cookies, though I used dark chocolate covered raisins instead of chocolate chips. They were more like round little pieces of banana bread than cookies, but somehow I managed to eat at least three…or four. They were quite tasty. In fact, I’m feeling rather overfull right now — I hate that feeling.

I spent the evening paying bills, so I’m ready for the work week. Sigh.

yummy Saturday oats

I had the BEST oats this morning! Last night I finally remembered to pre-cook my steel cut oats. I put 3 T of dry oats in 3/4 cup water, threw in a handful of frozen blackberries, and added one chopped medjool date. I brought it to a boil, then covered it and stuck it in the fridge.

This morning I added 1/2 cup vanilla soy milk, brought it to a boil, and cooked it for 10 minutes. Voila! Steel cut oats that don’t take half an hour in the morning. I added 2 T of cooked wheat berries near the end of the 10 min. I had an empty peanut butter jar that had some pb still clinging to it, so I mashed half a small banana in it, put in one scoop of protein powder, and poured the oats in. After stirring it, I put in three pecans and a few walnut crumbles. As a final touch, I put in a spoonful of Naturally More Peanut Butter (plain). Deelish! It was quite sweet — maybe because of the date? I figured it had about 600 calories, which is a bit more than I usually eat for breakfast, but it kept me pretty satisfied until noon. Of course, I didn’t exercise this morning except for walking the dog 1 1/2 miles, and didn’t eat breakfast until 7a.m. That’s pretty late for me.

I had to work today and wanted to ride my bike, but it started raining just as I was leaving. Boo. After dinner I went for a very leisurely bike ride. I rode 10 miles, but it took me 75 minutes. I was just sort of riding along lazily, enjoying the evening. When I got home, I made the family Peanut Butter Chocolate Malts:

Makes 2

Put in a blender in the order listed: 1 cup ice, 1 cup vanilla ice cream (I used slow churned), 3/4 cup skim milk, 6 T chocolate syrup, 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter, and 1/4 cup malted milk powder. Blend.

They loved it! It wasn’t as thick as I think of a malt as being, but it sure was rich and yummy.

Here are some pictures from today’s bike ride on the trail near my house.

White Pine Trail

White Pine Trail

Hmmm… from here, they look kind of identical. I didn’t get to the really picturesque part due to time limits. I only had 75 minutes to ride. I ended up riding home at the very brisk (for me) pace of 16 m.p.h. because I suddenly realized that I was 8 miles from home and had less than half an hour to meet the kindergarten bus. The wind was against me (natch), so I arrived home sweaty and red-faced. At least I got a good workout!

I went to the Y after walking Princess to do 45 minutes of weight training. I got there about 5:30a.m., having gulped down a Kashi Roll Bar on the way. The gym was pretty empty, which surprised me. After leaving Corinna at school, I grabbed my bike at 9am and went out to breakfast with friends. Unfortunately, the R & R Coffeehouse & Cafe was a disappointment. The veggie skillet was okay, but the eggs weren’t really scrambled – I could see separate yolk and white pieces among the vegetables. The sourdough toast was definitely not homemade and wasn’t hot.  I hate it when I have  a disappointing meal.

After breakfast, I set out on my trail ride, making it home in time to walk the dog again and meet the bus. Corinna and I hopped in the car and set off for a local park for a picnic lunch.

Corinna at the park

Corinna was critical of my planning because “mom, a picnic is on a blanket!”, but she had fun racing around the park playing with the other kids. Me? I read a book. I wasn’t really hungry for anything yet. I grabbed a Lean Cuisine sandwich at 3pm before picking Rhiannon up and going to see the movie “UP”. What a great movie!

While at the park, I finished The End of Overeating by David Kessler. It was a pretty interesting book – I’m not sure I’ll ever look at a chain restaurant meal in quite the same way again. He talked about how chain restaurants like Logan’s, Chili’s, Applebees, etc. are really just places that assemble food, rather than actually cooking it. Restaurants have become assembly plants rather than places where real experimentation and artistry happen. My dh and his family roll their eyes at me whenever we go out to eat because I always say, “Can we please not go to a chain?” I now realize one of the reasons that independent restaurants hold much more appeal to me than chains! Also very unappealing — he talks about how over-processed the food is and describes it as “baby food for adults”. Ick.

Another thing I found interesting was the concept of “priming” – one taste of a palatable food only makes you want more. It makes adaptive sense for an animal to get hungrier once it finds a little bit of food. Priming also triggers memories of past pleasure associated with whatever food you taste. I wonder if it also triggers memories of what happened the last time you ate it? That might explain why people say “I can’t ever eat _____ because I just eat the whole box”. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts? I think priming works for me even with healthy food. At work I get hungry around 3:30 or 4pm. Most of the time I’ll have a snack, but feel even hungrier 30 minutes later! By 5pm I feel ravenous most of the time.

He also described how stimulus will act on you more strongly when you’re in an agitated state or in a period of transition. If you’re sitting at a meeting with a plate of cookies in front of you, you suddenly reach for one when the meeting turns tense. I once sat in a two-hour meeting with a bakery box of huge, delicious-looking sugar cookies and chocolate chip cookies in front of me and didn’t eat one. However, when the meeting came to an end, I felt an irresistible urge to grab two. Transition has always been a difficult time for me to resist appealing food if it’s readily available.

He says that intervention begins with the knowledge that we have a moment of choice to recognize what is about to happen and do something else instead. It is in that moment of recognition that you can make the choice to do something different. If you allow yourself to dwell on “should I or shouldn’t I”, it is ten times harder to turn away and do something else. It took me a very long time to really understand that I DO have a choice about whether to let food control me or not. Bingers feel that the urge is out of their control and they MUST follow through on it, but acting on the urge truly is a choice made. I have a little paper in my bedside table that I read many nights before bed to remind myself of this. It says “I have the freedom to live life on purpose. With each conscious choice, a greater sanity enters my life.”

Yeterday’s cookout was fun. I did fine with the food — mainly because there wasn’t much there that was irresistable. Box-mix brownies and store-bought birthday cake aren’t too tempting. I did eat two of the brownies I brought, but didn’t really overdo the portions otherwise.

I was eager to plant some more flowers in my front yard, so drove to buy some peony bushes, alyssum, petunias, and marigolds this morning while Tim went golfing with a buddy. I spent 2 1/2 hours pulling out grass and planting. Somehow gardening always turns out to be much more labor intensive than I imagine it will be. I’ll take some pictures once everything starts blooming and post the results of all of my hard work.

wheat berries

I wanted to try wheat berries after reading about someone putting them in her oatmeal and salads, but hadn’t been able to find any. On the way to the cemetaries we stopped at a health food store and there they were! It took an hour to cook them, but they added a nice crunch to my oats this morning.

this morning's oatmeal

I cooked my oatmeal with a teaspoonful of cocoa powder, but didn’t really like the taste too much, so I don’t think I ‘ll be repeating that experiment. I also cut up my banana instead of mashing it, but didn’t like that as well as having it fully incorporated — not as sweet. At the end I added a couple of tablespoonfuls of wheat berries, a few dark chocolate covered raisins, a few pecans, and a spoonful of Naturally Nutty Chocolate Cherry Peanut Butter.  I don’t really care for this flavor of their peanut butter, so I’m going to have to use it up making cookies or something.

Well, I’m off to the inlaws for a cookout — taking two birthday cakes for my dad and SIL. I tried two new recipes: strawberry upside-down cake and Mississippi Mud Cake. Hopefully they are as good as they smell!

Yesterday was a really busy day. After walking the dog, I drove to the YMCA to lift weights. I’m pretty happy with the amount I’ve been able to increase my weights over the course of the past six months.  I have upped the weight on the sled to 150 and on the leg curl to 70. When I first started trying to strengthen my leg in December (I shattered it in a bicycling accident four years ago), I couldn’t do a single curl even with no weight at all. It felt as though someone was stabbing me in the knee with a knife.

We took the kids to see Night in the Museum 2, which they loved. Tim thought it was dumb — I thought it was cute, but never saw the first one. I confess that I fell asleep briefly. I swear I’m turning into an old lady. We visited two different cell phone stores seeking new phones, but ended up having to order them. Our 11-year-old, Rhiannon, was crushed that she has to wait until next week to get a phone.

My dad had invited Tim and me to dinner to spend a gift certificate he’d won, so we went out to Mangiamo. They served us some warm rosemary scented bread to start, with olive oil and parmesan for dipping. I ordered chicken canelloni, which I’d never had before. I ended up eating half of one of the pieces of bread and half of my entree. Both were quite tasty, though the chicken was definitely heavy on the oil. Dad and I split some chocolate amaretto cheesecake for dessert, and I left feeling pleasantly full. We had eaten quite early (5pm) and I was kind of hungry again by 10pm. I was more tired than hungry though, and zonked out after reading only a few pages.

Mangiamo!

chicken canelloni

This morning I hopped on my bike after walking the dog and headed out for a 22-mile bike ride. It took me 104 minutes. I think it would have taken me less time, but there was quite a strong crosswind. We’re going to a cookout at a friend’s house in a bit, so I’m off to finish getting ready. Cookouts used to panic me — all that food! — but I’m feeling okay today. My plan is to survey all, be choosy, and stop when satisfied. I used to think I had to try everything, but after realizing that I can eat mediocre store-bought pasta salad anytime I want….well, I became a lot more choosy.

TGIF!

I started a four-day weekend today by sleeping in until 5:45 — thank you Princess.

Princess

She rarely lets me sleep past 5am, so anything later than that is a gift. After giving her a extra-long walk as a reward, I had one of my favorite breakfasts of an oatmeal pancake. I had some Naturally Nutty peanut butter spread on it, with leftover two-berry sauce on top of that. Deeelish! After dropping Corinna off at school, I got out my bike and cycled on the bike trail near our house. I tend to take it easy when I bike on the trail because it’s so even, but I tried to push myself this morning. I ended up biking 19 miles in 93 minutes, which is definitely quicker than my usual pace.

Is it odd to eat salad at 10:15am? I was quite hungry when I got back home and had a salad with spinach, leftover roasted asparagus, cottage cheese, and an apple. It really didn’t stay with me long, as I was really hungry by noon. My dad and I picked Corinna up at school and grabbed sandwiches from a local deli before heading to the cemetaries, 90 minutes away. I had ordered a half sandwich, but was glad they gave me a whole one, because I ate the whole thing and wasn’t overfull.  I got the Hair of the (Mrs.) Dog , which is smoked ham, dill havarti, lettuce, tomato, & Mrs. Dog’s mustard on grilled sourdough. It sounded much yummier than it was, though it was still a tasty sandwich.

We visited all three family plots to scrub gravestones and plant flowers. By the time we finished, it was 5pm. I was really quite hungry again, but dad wasn’t. So Corinna and I split a Cinnamon Roll flavored Kashi Crunch bar and all three of us had ice cream. I ordered a small flurry with Oreos, but after half of it, realized that I was tired of it. I gave the rest to Corinna, who chowed down. It was a realllly long day and I’m totally past being ready for bed. I just wanted to post something on my new blog because I was kind of excited about it.