The Adventures of a Ginger Grad Student

Breakfast of champions

2010-10-07T18:43:00.001-07:00

I realized something today…I need to learn to say no! I have this very bad problem of taking on waaaay to many commitments and then crashing and burning and needing to quit a ton of things!

I’m slowly working on this problem, but it’s a long process. Case in point, I promised myself that I would not work more than 8 hours on any Thursday that I would take a night off. Well that idea ended right in the garbage can! I finally rolled home at 8pm and rummaged around in the Kitchen for dinner.

On a side note, is anyone else out there a big fan of the frozen chicken fillets from M&M meat shops? It’s just another item in my ever growing list of products I love from there. I am forever addicted to their French onion soup, but alas, I try to limit myself to only shopping there once in awhile, as it can get kinda pricey! But the chicken fillets were on sale so score!

Anyway, back to the topic of the post…BREAKFAST!!!! A few years ago I rediscovered my love of breakfast, I somehow in my crazy teenage ways had thought for years that I didn’t need a real breakfast. When I lived in residence I ate it everyday but during the first few years of living in an apartment I somehow stopped eating this great meal. Well over the years my tastes for breakfast have changed. I don’t really crave fried foods anymore, although the breakfast sandwich the other day is a prime example of my love of greasy foods!

Well earlier this week I made use of a tub of yogurt, I had leftover in the fridge at work that served as my dinner one night after we had a mild oven incident that led to my supervisor and I cleaning up lots of melted plastic and me prying this lovely shelf out: So this tub of yogurt was just begging to be eaten, and I obliged one day for breakfast, I topped it with a pumpkin spice muffin and I was instantly in foodie heaven!

Seriously, I love the contrast of the muffin crumbles to the thick strawberry yougrt, excuse the fact that my drool is now on the keyboard! But seriously muffin in yogurt, TRY IT NOW!!!

Well, tomorrow is Friday and I have another crazy day of work, followed by a weekend full of turkey! I’ll be posting later in the weekend :)

Catch ya later!

Amy

This is why…

2010-10-06T18:04:00.001-07:00

you should never skip a meal, or in my case 2 in one day! You end up being so hungry at 10pm that you completely devour a plate of food while your boyfriend laughingly snaps this very unflattering photo!

In my defence, I hadn’t really planned to skip meals. It was Sunday and I woke up at 7:30pm and prepared to go running. I ate a bowl of fruit loops with not milk (we were out of it and I didn’t want toast). Then I was off to the running room at 8:30am! I ran and then went to the lab and made it home around 10:30am. I then went back to bed!

I usually try not to nap but I was pretty tired. When I rolled out of bed at 12:30 I had a quick snack of a piece of bread and peanut butter and was off. I didn’t really eat my first meal until about 5:30pm, when I ate that delightful steak I showed you yesterday. I suspect the lack off food was what caused my body to revolt with a headache. Though I must say that tea sure hit the spot, and actually reduced the pain. Now I’m not sure if it really did anything or if I just hoped it would, so it had a placebo affect. But either way I wasn’t in pain so it didn’t matter!

So after eating dinner things started to derail. It was like my hunger was in a deep sleep but once it had food it was ready to pounce! I started craving everything in sight and couldn’t stop eating. When I made this delightful, though not in the least bit healthy, snack of potatoes hotdogs and onions, I quickly devoured the whole plate! Luckily my hunger did finally go away, but I won’t be making that mistake again!

Monday was a much better day. I awoke headache free and fairly well rested. Then my lovely boyfriend in an effort to redeem himself for the photo, bought me this delightful breakfast sandwich from tims! Doesn’t it look delicious! I opted for the sandwich over my usual yogurt for breakfast because I knew it would be a long time until I ate lunch/dinner and I wanted the extra bulk of the sandwich. Though lets face it, it was totally delicious :)

I ate my usual soup for lunch, and then snack on a cereal bar later in the afternoon since I had to go running at 6:30pm and can’t eat much before I run. When I came home from the run my tummy was rumbling, but I had a coffee date with a friend planned so I munched on a cookie, and when I FINALLY rolled into the house around 9:30pm this delicious plate was there to greet me!That would be 2 slices of garlic bread with some smart pasta and spaghetti sauce that we took out of the freezer. Did I mention I love carbs :)

Well I’m off to bed, I have a early and long day planned tomorrow, BUT then it’s Friday!

Amy

Busy Beaver

2010-10-03T16:27:00.001-07:00

Ok, so over the last few weeks I’ve been wavering back and forth between what to do about this blog. I’m been in a bit of a funk and I wasn’t sure what to do. When I started this blog I wanted it to be a happy place, so I didn’t feel right about posting all my gripes on here.

However I realized something today, and that is that if I always post happy things you’ll never see the real me and there will be large chunks of my life that will simply be missing. So I’m back for good! I’m sorry for the long absence and over the coming weeks I’ll slowly fill you in.

First off, I for about the last 2 weeks have fallen off the healthy eating wagon. Well not entirely but I' had been working such long days that I was eating fast food at least once a day. I also was eating on the run, and although I’m not proud to admit this, I was also skipping meals. However I’m happy to report that I finally figured out a way to stop the fast food even with this hectic schedule! I have rediscovered cooking on the weekend, and the slow cooker. So for the next little while a lot of the meals that you will see on here will be centered on quick easy nutritious meals.

My goal is also to post about once every 1 to 2 days. I really love blogging, but right now I’m attempting to finish up my degree and life keeps throwing me tons of curve balls!

Since today is Sunday, I had a bit more time, and Matt and I decided to take advantage for the still decent weather and broke out the BBQ for some steak, corn and grilled green peppers. It’s a simple meal, but it sure was delicious!

Unfortunately after dinner things started to go a little haywire. I’ve had a lot of stiffness in my body lately, and tonight I ended up developing a pretty nasty headache. It was so bad at one point that every time I took a step my head would pound. When I got home I discovered we had no Advil, which meant it was the prefect time to try out some home remedies for headaches. I’ve always used the massage technique for headaches but I was interested to look up other techniques that could potentially help relieve the pain.

So I did a quick google search, while drinking a bottle of water, and found that lemon juice and mint leaves in hot water might help. So I made myself this lovely cup of the juice of 1/2 a lemon (plus a slice) and a handful of mint leaves, mixed with hot water. So far it seems to be helping, I can walk again, and I can actually concentrate on the computer screen! Plus I love munching on the wilted mint leaves. However I still think that this headache might be a result of lack of sleep so I plan on getting to bed a little early tonight!

Well it’s nice to be back! I’ll leave you with the following question… when you have a headache what do you do to get rid of it?

Amy

One crazy couple of weeks!

2010-09-13T05:50:00.001-07:00

What happens when you take 1 grad student, mix it up with a ton of deadlines, a couple new part-time jobs and helping with orientation? You get one tired grad student! The last few weeks have been pretty crazy! I have a ton of pictures and recipes to share, but I wanted to let all of you know that I am alive :)

I'll be back either tonight or tomorrow with a nice long post :)

Amy

The CNS stores giveaway winner!

2010-08-23T18:18:00.001-07:00

Hey all! This week is going to be my craziest yet! So I probably won’t be posting much until later in the week, so far since saturday I’ve logged about 20 hours at the lab…so it’s crazy!

Anyway I know you’ve all been waiting for the giveaway winner so here it is:

20 (Timestamp: 2010-08-24 01:10:59 UTC)

So that means the winner is koci who said:

“Koci said...

I would use a $40 gift card towards knocking the price off a kitchen blowtorch for creme brulee. I've always loved the stuff and wanted to give it a try at home.”

So koci expect an email from me sometime tomorrow (I got your address from you blog) with your prize!

Congrats!

well it’s past my bedtime…Night!!

Amy

Update!

2010-08-21T19:15:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

just a quick note to say I’ll be back tomorrow with the winner of the giveaway.

Amy

A new twist on potlucks

2010-08-18T18:30:00.001-07:00

Don’t forget my giveaway draw is tomorrow! Get your entries in!

So one of the great things that I love about doing my masters degree is all the amazing and diverse people that work in my building. There are people from all over and with a wide variety of interests. Every so often a bunch of us will get together and have a potluck, but this time my friend Jon, who usually organizes it, sent an email saying he wanted to mix it up:

“I've been feeling culinarily adventurous lately and so am extending an invitation to any and all who are interested to come over for supper tomorrow night.Don't actually cook anything! The idea is to bring something we can make supper out of…”

I was totally all over that! So a bunch of us got together and brought components, I precooked some potatoes and brought some cheese and headed over. Jon and I went for a run first, which by the way was my first run back since being sick! I’m slowly getting back into it, and it went ok.

So I ended up preping the individual scalloped potatoes that I made a while back. Other people brought dips and supplies for chicken tortillas, oh and Jon made homemade tortillas that totally rocked my world! It was great, and it was great company as well. Here is most of what I ate plus another 1/2 tortilla and a handfull of chips. Well I’m off to bed now, it’s been a very stressful week, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to ease up. Does anyone else ever feel like your trying to climb a mountain and there is no end in sight?

Night all!

Amy

Things every foodie needs- My first Giveaway!

2010-08-13T04:21:00.001-07:00

Morning everyone, I hope everyone is as excited that it is Friday as I am! In just a couple hours I will be blowing this popsicle stand and heading out on a mini camping trip/visit with Matt’s family. As such, there probably won’t be a post from me until Monday as I’m not sure what my internet access will be! However while I am away you should totally check out this great site that I have been shown that has a ton of different things including great dining room sets!

So those of you who read regularly know that the majority of the stuff that I focus on is food. But something that I am also equally passionate about, and that you can see is getting better and changing overtime is the presentation of the food. Often times the look of the food determines weather we want to eat it, a better presentation often means we’re going to eat more of it.

Now there are many aspects to presentation, it can be how you put it on the plate, the dinnerware you use, any many other aspects. Right now I’ll admit, most meals are served in a chair in my bedroom! Because I’m in university and in about a year Matt and I plan to move so it doesn’t make sense to buy good furniture. However I can’t wait for the day when I can go into a store and look at tons of kitchen tables, chairs and other things like and be able to furnish a place that I’m going to be in for a good while! Though I must say the dishes we have now are great! They were a present from my mother when I first moved into an apartment, and they’ve been great while I’ve been in school.

But how many of you read the pioneer woman? If so you know that she often talks about her collection of fiesta dinnerware and her two favourite colors, and I once we are settled in a new city plan to become a crazy dish lady with tones of fiesta dinnerware like the ones found on this site, they have my two absolute favourite colors which coincidentally happen to be the same colors the pioneer woman likes:
Peacock Blue:

and Shamrock Green:

Also unlike most sites I’ve found they ship to Canada and the shipping is fairly reasonable, though the international fees make it a bit more expensive, but still reasonable.

By now your probably all wondering what the heck the giveaway is! Well the kind people at CNS stores want to hook up one of my lucky readers with a $40 gift card that can be used towards the purchase of the dinnerware I’ve shown or anything they have on their site, you just have to pay the shipping. CNS has over 200 stores so I’m sure the winner will be able to find something great! Since they ship to the USA and Canada this contest is open to people from either of those 2 countries.

How to Enter:
First go to Dining rooms direct and look at the website, then come back and post a comment about what you would like to buy with the $40 gift card. Of course you don’t have to actually use the card for that if you win, but I want to see what everyone's tastes in dining rooms are :)

Bonus Entries:
If you ad me to twitter or follow me through Google connect or blogger, post in the comment section and each one will give you an extra entry for up to 3 more entries! If you already follow me just say so and get your extra entry!

Also if you are a fellow blogger post about this contest on your blog and leave me a comment saying you did so with the link to the post and that will get you an extra entry.

The contest will close on Thursday August 19th at 6pm Atlantic time. I will then use a random number generator to pick the winner and the winner will be announced on Friday. Please make sure when you leave a comment that you leave a valid email address.

DISCLAIMER: I was not compensated in anyway for this post, all opinions in the post are my actual feelings. I was contacted my someone at CNS and asked if I would be interested in running a giveaway so I’m passing on that opportunity to you :)

Move over oatmeal, there is a new kid in town…

2010-08-12T15:02:00.001-07:00

and he is kicking butt and taking names. Well actually he’s really just going to end up in my stomach, but I can make it sound interesting can’t I?

So how is everyone doing on this lovely random Thursday? This week has been an interesting experiment in time management and multitasking! I’m almost back to normal, but trying to get everything done has been interesting. Luckily it’s almost the weekend and that means sleep :)

Anyway back to my original point, oatmeal has been….REPLACED!! I know, I know I am an admitted oatmeal freak and in the beginnings of this blog I had oatmeal in almost every daily post. But to be honest, with summer here I haven’t had much of a craving for it, or the time to make oatmeal on the stove. So I sought out other options for breakfast, that didn’t involve a lot of prep work. I tried out quinoa one day, but to be honest I wasn’t a fan. I used left over quinoa from dinner and added milk but the texture just threw me off. I much prefer quinoa with lunch or dinner, than as a breakfast option!

So then I did what any ~~obsessive neurotic~~ keen individual would do, I headed to the bulk barn to scope out other options! Originally I had plans to use this new slice of heaven in a bowl for dinner. But I got to thinking if I was going to try quinoa from breakfast why not this! So this recipe was born. Anyone curious as to what the magic ingredient is…Couscous!

The key to using couscous for breakfast is that it needs to be creamy, or at least not dry. To achieve this I doubled the amount of liquid needed. Typically you would add equal amounts of liquid and couscous, but again I doubled this. Also I wanted to make this taste completely decadent and still be good for me, so I mixed in some cocoa powder and brown sugar, for a rich chocolately dish. You can really mix in whatever you want! I’ve also tried this with cinnamon and it was great, I’m just a diehard chocolate girl….hello my blog url:)

Chocolate breakfast couscous:

1/3 cup couscous
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup milk
1 tablespoon brown sugar (or sugar/sweetener of choice)
1/2 tablespoon cocoa powder

Heat the milk, water, brown sugar and cocoa in a pot until boiling. Remove from heat and stir in the couscous. Let sit for 5 minutes or longer until the water is absorbed. Then sit back and enjoy! I have been heating this up adding the couscous then jumping in the shower and eating when I’m done. I also topped this with a bit of peanut butter, but feel free to top with whatever you like.

This really is great, and it the prefect change I need, plus the nutritionals aren’t bad. I did a comparison of 1/3 dry oatmeal to 1/3 dry couscous, and you can see the stats below which I calculated using calorie count:

So as you can see, the couscous is almost double the amount of calories, but the amount of protein is better. When I make couscous I tend to add a lot less toppings, so that makes up for the calorie difference. This also passed the ultimate test, it kept me feeling full till lunch time:) So next time you reach for that bag of oatmeal in the morning, why not stop and try couscous instead! You’ll love it!

Well the night is young, and I am babysitting for most of it! But watch closely tomorrow because I have a special surprise that I am excited to share with you all. It’s a first for my blog and I am super pumped!!!

Until tomorrow morning :)

Amy

Cornbread…not just a side dish

2010-08-11T17:55:00.001-07:00

When I went to the states with my mother awhile back I may have gone a little crazy at the grocery store and brought back about 6 or 7 boxes of cornbread mix. At first I whipped up a couple boxes here and there and just ate corn bread with various other dishes. But then today while I’m still feeling sluggish from being sick and didn’t want to have to do much work for dinner, I thought I must be able to use it as a cassarole topping much like sheppard's pie.

So I did a quick internet search and found there were tons of recipes, only I didn’t really like any of them, so I came up with my own variation. The result is something that is easy to prepare and makes your kitchen smell delicious in the process :) Also the taste is great! You get the crunchiness of cornbread with the gooeyness of pasta sauce. This is easy to make vegetarian as well, you can sub the hamburger for beans or lentils and it would be delicious as well!

Amy’s Hamburger Cornbread Bake:

Base:

1 pound hamburger
3/4-1 Jar of Pasta Sauce (I used the Ragu Garlic Blend)
1 green pepper
1 red pepper
1/2 orange pepper
1/2 onion

Topping:

1 package Jiffy cornbread mix
1 egg
1/3 cup milk

Prepare the base by cooking the hamburger meat then add the veggies and sauté until the onions are slightly soft. Add the Pasta sauce and simmer for about 5-10 minutes. I wanted to keep this on the thick side so I added the sauce slowly and added more when it got to thick. If this is too watery the cornbread will get soggy. While the base is simmering, mix up the corn bread mix. Then pour the base into a pan (I used a 8X8 square glass pan). Pour the topping on top and place in an oven at 400 for 20-30 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the top comes out clean. Doesn’t this look delicious? Then you cut into it, and it’s all warm and yummy!

Well I’m off to bed! I promise I’ll have another post tomorrow!

Amy

Put some pants on

2010-08-09T10:32:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posting this weekend, I was totally out of it! Though I must say I feel so much better now! I finally managed to go to a clinic on Friday to be seen by a doctor. Turns out I have a throat infection, so that explains why I’ve been really tired and sluggish. I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty details, but I will say that the downside is that I’ve been banned from running/exercising for the next 5 days to give my lungs a chance to heal, while this kinda sucks in terms of training I’ll be able to catch up! Speaking of training, my friend and I officially signed up for our next race…more details to come in my next post about that one :)
Unfortunately because I can’t exercise it means I can’t participate in paint ball this weekend. But I’m sure I can find something else to do instead, like sleep :)
Before I get into the main topic of this post, I’d like to show you basically what has been my go to comfort food over the last couple of days. I’ve had practically no appetite, but each morning for the last 2-3 days I’ve been enjoying a food that I am severely obsessed about…oatmeal! Even though it is still hot outside, whenever I get sick there is nothing more comforting than a nice ooey gooey bowl of hot oatmeal. Although I love stovetop oatmeal, the fact that I love my sleep more prevents me from having time in the morning to cook it on the stove. So usually what I end up doing is throwing into a bowl the following:

1/3 cup quick rolled oats
1/3 cup milk
2/3 cup water

I heat this in the microwave for about 2 minutes, stirring after 1 min to prevent it from over flowing. Notice how the liquid content seems high? Well I love creamy oatmeal, and the extra liquid insures that it’s not to thick, but you can play around with it until you get the consistency that you like. Now for toppings anything is game, I particularly love topping it with a bit of peanut butter, chocolate sauce and some of my homemade granola for crunch :)
So for those of you who don’t know earlier this week Caitlin released her first book entitled Operation Beautiful. I absolutely love her healthy living blog and while ~~religiously stalking~~, reading the blog I noticed that she posted on an article written about this new gap ad that has been found in Manhattan. From the bit of research I was able to do on this, it doesn’t appear that this ad is in Canada, though the closest Gap to me is 2 hours away so I can’t verify that in person, and it’s only in certain Gap stores in the USA. However, the fact that it even made it into one store is kinda surprising. Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty sure they posted this ad to get the controversy and snag more publicity, but in this day and age where more young girls than ever suffer from eating disorders something needs to be done. I personally don’t shop at the Gap for one main reason, up until about 3 or 4 months ago, nothing in the store would fit me, I was just to heavy for about 90% of their clothes and when your feeling ~~overly~~ slightly insecure about your weight and have body image issues you tend to avoid stores that you know will end in disappointment.
I’m not really sure where I’m going with this, I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that a clothing chain would use a negative message to sell their clothes, I mean it is present in pretty much every magazine you read where the majority of the ads are photo shopped! I get that maybe in a magazine you want to cover up blemishes or hide dark spots and I totally agree with that type of photo shopping I had it done for my graduation pictures, however it’s when you change the physical attributes such as slimming down the legs and stomach and enhancing the chest area that I have a huge issue. The majority of those models don’t look like the photos they appear in, so why should most women want to look like that, it’s an impossible image to live up to!
As you can tell this is one topic that bothers me quite a bit, and I think it’s because I’m just now starting to accept my body and embrace what I look like. It’s still hard though, and from time to time I catch myself staring at other people and thinking “wow I wish I was skinny enough to pull that off”.
But then I realize something, just because your skinny doesn’t mean your healthy! I’ve been there, at one point in high school I was so tiny that I couldn’t stand up for long periods of time without getting dizzy. When I think about it I realize that one of the greatest things I’ve done for myself over the last 8 months or so is realize that healthy and happy come in all shapes and sizes:

Skinny ≠ healthy

Don’t get me wrong I still dream of the day when I can pull off wearing a bikini, and not feel embarrassed by the jiggling, but I’m smart enough to realize that is at least another year away, as losing weight is not easy and if I want to do it safely and properly I need to lose slowly.
Also, my fitness goals at the moment may hamper my weight loss for the next few months. When ever you increase your distance your more likely to either stay the same weight or gain some weight that you are to lose. But again I’m alright with that because I realize that running that distance is more important than fitting into societies image of beauty.
There I think I finally made the point I was trying to make which is this:
Dear Gap, just because someone is not a size 0 does not mean they can’t look good in shorts and me and my legs will continue to wear them because:
1, it is hot out and no one should be wearing pants in this heat and
2, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and this beholder is proud to show off her legs in summer.
Amy
P.S: You can check out the original post here and if you want you can drop a comment to Gap about the ad.

Happy 16th Birthday

2010-08-05T15:27:00.001-07:00

Hey all! It has been a crazy week, I ended up staying home sick today. Hopefully whatever this is will go away after a good nights sleep! So far today I’ve napped almost the whole day :)

Since I haven’t really had any energy to do anything in terms of cooking, I figured I’d recap Sarah’s birthday party from a couple weeks ago. It was a really fun time, although it was super hot and sweaty! When we ended up downtown none of us went inside the bar, we all ended up just standing on the patio.

So the theme of her birthday party, which ended up being determined by Eric, was punch and pie. So I decided that I had to bake a pie for the occasion, and Sarah made the worlds best alcoholic punch, it was delightful!

Since Sarah is also an avid reader of the pioneer woman, I decided to make the apple pie recipe from her cookbook. I loved how flakey the pie crust turned out, she is right putting it in the freezer first is definitely the secret to making a good crust. The only modification I made was to add cinnamon to the apple pie recipe, since I love cinnamon and feel it should always be in an apple pie. Don’t we look sweaty?Until a couple years ago I though baking a pie from scratch was really difficult, but as long as you have a good recipe it really takes about the same amount of time as using a store-bought crust and filling, and tastes 1000% better. Sarah’s sister and I at one point decided that it was going to be Sarah’s 16th birthday and wrote this all over the pie :) Actually it wasn’t her 16th birthday, but no one needs to know that :) Since I didn’t bring my camera you can thank Sarah for the lovely photos! Besides the cake and punch Sarah and her sister Katie made cake pops using this recipe by Bakerella. The were so good! I think I need to make these for the next potluck I go to. They were just the right about of cake and chocolate, I probably ate about 3 or 4 of these:) I think I need to get people to take photos more often, these turned out great! So I realize this is a bit late, but happy belated birthday Sarah!

On that note, I think I’m going to curl up on the couch and nap.

Amy

Breakfast of Champions

2010-08-03T17:35:00.001-07:00

So yesterday to conclude a great holiday weekend we of course slept in! When I rolled out of bed at 1:30 there was only one thing on my mind that I wanted, and the same with matt…sausage! However I’d been feeling kinda crappy all weekend so I decided that instead of eating the typical sausage, eggs and toasts, I decided to swap out the toast for oatmeal!

I have had a severe lack of oatmeal in my life for most of the summer, and I think it’s time to reintroduce it. Needless to say the bulk in the oatmeal helped me feel a little better, though I still feel slightly off my game. I think it might be because of the increased amount of drinking I did, but who knows. For this oatmeal bowl I just topped it with about a tablespoon of peanut butter. Overall it was ok but not that great as I made the oats a bit to thick, and I prefer creamier oatmeal.

Anyways I am in love with these sausages. I purchased them in the freezer section at Sobeys. You keep them frozen and then just toss them in the pan whenever you need it. Also to be a typical Canadian, they were my favourite flavour…MAPLE :) While I was making my oatmeal in the microwave matt was whipping up some scrambled eggs with onion and green and red pepper cooked right in. He also adds a little pepper to the eggs before cooking and we topped it with cheese. I love eggs this way! The combo of egg and veggies is a perfect compliment.

I have a confession to make. I really am not a super huge fan of eggs! Growing up my mom was allergic to eggs so the only time I would eat them is when my dad would take me to a restaurant every once and a while. When matt and I first started dating he was shocked that I had no idea how to cook eggs! So slowly through the years he’s been teaching me how to cook eggs scrambled, in omelette form and what not. However, although I do enjoy them from time to time, I still much prefer carb heavy breakfasts!

After louging for the rest of the day it was back to the grad student grind today! Although I must say my brain wasn’t really there. I filled out a spreadsheet then closed it without saving! UGG…luckily I was able to fill in all the info again! Then when I was making this post my computer decided to crash when I hit publish and it hadn’t saved!

So on that note I’m going to watch a movie before I take off to go watch the boys play a playoff game in their touch football league. Like any other game I get to take the stats.

But before I go, I would like to leave you with the following question….is there a food that you don’t really know how to prepare?

Amy

Crunchy, clumpy goodness

2010-08-02T09:36:00.001-07:00

So when I think of the characteristics I love in oatmeal, the main thing that comes to mind is clumps! Of course granola is going to be crunchy, but not all granola is clumpy! This recipe that I made yesterday turned out to have great clumps in it, which made me extremely happy! I think a lot of it had to do with the type of oats I used.
I didn’t have any rolled oats on hand, so I used quick oats. Every time I’ve made it with rolled oats there was next to no clump factor, but by using quick oats I had tons of clumps! I really loved the addition of quinoa to this recipe it brought the crunch to a whole new level.
So the first thing I did with this recipe was rinse the quinoa and press it onto a plate and let it dry slightly for about 5 minutes. I think the little bit of water left on the quinoa also helped to form clumps. Anyway you need to try this recipe ASAP!!! The only thing I would potentially add to it is chocolate chips, and that was a suggestion from matt. He tends to eat granola as a snack dry so he wants the extra sweetness. I tend to douse my granola in milk so I don’t want the extra sweetness.Which is why I currently have 2 containers of the granola a his and hers so that I can add mini chocolate chips to his tomorrow :)
Coconut Maple Quinoa Granola
Ingredients:

1/2 cup quinoa (rinsed and left to dry slightly for 5 min)
2 cups quick oats
3 tablespoons maple syrup
2 tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon coconut

Mix the quinoa and oats together, then add the rest of the ingredients and mix thoroughly. Press the mixture onto a cookie sheet and cook in a 400 degree oven. After 10 minutes flip the granola. continue to cook for about 30 minutes flipping/stirring ever 10-15 minutes. In total my granola took 45 minutes.
Doesn’t that look totally delicious! I kept sneaking some of the hot granola while I was waiting for it to cool so I could place it in containers. Now there are tons of ways to enjoy this granola, including the preview pic I showed you yesterday. Oh how I love granola and milk :)
The maple and cinnamon give this a lovely sweet flavour. If your not that into sweet you can decrease the amount of maple syrup by 1 tablespoon. I basically tasted it after each tablespoon and figured out that 3 tablespoons tasted good to me. The quinoa give this a really good crunch and the quick oats give it an amazing clump factor…basically this is my type of heaven in a bowl, I’m all about the clump!
There are also plenty of other ways to enjoy this in fact I can’t wait to slather this on top of Gina’s banana soft serve. Also notice how the pictures look better? I finally was able to find my battery charger so I’m back to using my good camera and not the camera on my blackberry.
Well it’s about 1:30pm on Monday here and I just rolled out of bed, oh how I love long weekends. Breakfast time!
Amy

Sunday explorations

2010-08-01T17:26:00.001-07:00

So it’s been another busy week! I never have as much time as I hope I will! But I’m back and enjoying the long weekend! Matt and I took Friday afternoon off, and used the time to catch up on some much needed sleep! I then woke up and headed out for a nice run with a friend of mine. We did around 3-4 kms and used the time to catch up. Then on Saturday we went to Fredrock to see Our Lady Peace, it was a really great night, the concert was really well done and we ended up at a friends house until 2:30am.

When I woke up this ~~morning~~ afternoon at 1:30pm we headed out to do some grocery shopping. Since it’s the long weekend I decided it was time to play in the kitchen with a new grain I picked up at the bulk barn….quinoa!

I have been wanting to make something with quinoa for the last couple of months but haven’t gotten around to it. Eric’s girlfriend Sarah makes an amazing quinoa salad that I keep meaning to get the recipe for. So since she is away, I ended up using quinoa in 2 different ways instead. The first was a twist on my recipe for stuffed peppers. This time instead of using rice as the grain I used quinoa. The first thing I did was whip up some quinoa according to the recipe card I got from the bulk barn. I rinsed the quinoa then placed1 cup with 2 cups water and added a 1/2 tsp chilli powder and boiled then simmered for 10 minutes. While this was going on I turned on the bbq and grilled up some carrots, quickly seared some peppers, and cooked a chicken breast that I had rubbed with 2 teaspoons chilli powder and 1 tablespoon lime juice.

Then matt and I stuffed the peppers, topped with cheese and placed on the grill to melt the cheese. We also grilled up some potatoes and onions with a little bit of oil and pepper and it made for a nice well rounded healthy meal.

Matt had never tried quinoa before, and I think he enjoyed it! Plus these peppers turned out great!

Also roasting the carrots was a great idea! They were excellent and not too mushy. This was a perfect summer meal done completely on the BBQ…except for the quinoa which obviously I did on the stove. As for the other recipe, well you’ll have to wait till tomorrow for that but I’ll give you this teaser…it’s my twist on a granola recipe :)

On that note, I am off to relax and enjoy a lazy night of tv watching without my computer, see you tomorrow!

Amy

Making comfort foods fit into a healthy lifestyle

2010-07-27T19:36:00.001-07:00

Since starting this blog it’s been no secret that I am a carb addict! Back before I started learning to eat healthy it wasn’t unusual for me to cook up pasta to make lasagna and then for Matt to walk into the kitchen and find me eating the left over noodles. I was that addicted to carbs.

Slowly but surely I’ve been working on reducing the amount in my diet, but there are some forms that I truly miss. One such form is scalloped potatoes. Full of cheesy and creamy goodness, I can’t really justify making a big pan of it for just Matt and I, because then I’d be tempted to eat the whole thing!

So when I was reading the pioneer woman the other day, and saw that she had posted a scalloped potato recipe that you can make in muffin tins, I knew I had to try it.

First thing though, this recipe called for A LOT of butter! After reading the comments I cut this down by more than half. Also I used less cheese, and 2% milk for the half and half. I also subbed 1 and 1/2 pieces of bacon for the ham. All in all these turned out great! Also the nutritional stats for the version I made are really quite good, and if I only eat 2 of these and pair it with a huge salad I’m able to eat the comfort food…and not feel guilty afterwards.

So here’s my take on this recipe. First I nuked one medium sized potato in the microwave for about 7 minutes until is was squishy but not fully cooked. I then but a tiny bit of butter in the bottom of each tin (I made six). I then place one slice of my potato, some green onion a bit of bacon and a bit of cheese. Then I just repeated the process for the second layer. I added 1 tablespoon of milk to each tin and then topped with a bit more butter. I then popped these in the oven for 20 minutes or so, while I made the salads. For salads tonight I used a mix of romaine hearts and spinach for the base. I then topped it with shredded carrots, red pepper, onion, celery, a bit of left over bacon, and some left over cheese. I served this with some red pepper and parmesan dressing we bought a while back, and enjoyed this large salad along with 2 of the scalloped potatoes! Now for the nutritional stats on the scalloped potatoes!Around 110 calories per scalloped potato muffin tin really isn’t that bad! I think next time I might decrease the butter a bit more because there was plenty in the tin to prevent sticking. Other than that, I’m looking foreword to trying different toppings in this recipe. Anyone have any ideas for great mix ins?

Well it’s been a really busy week, and my body is craving sleep! I’ll try to post again tomorrow, I have a really simple pasta dish to share with you all!

Night :)

Amy

♫Summertime…

2010-07-22T18:08:00.001-07:00

♫and the living is easy! ♪

I really couldn’t resist starting the day with a musical quote, especially after all the good homemade food I enjoyed at my supervisors house on Saturday night.

On Saturday my supervisor threw a going away party for our lab technician Catherine, because a she is leaving us to go to med school in September. When Denise was planning the food spread for the BBQ, Eric and Ryan,the other grad student in our lab, decided that we needed to have ice cream and toppings for a sundae bar, oh and one of the toppings had to be magic shell!

First off, we had some great dips that I totally didn’t take a picture of :( But then after a lot of talking and laughing Eric got voluntold to BBQ. We had such a great spread and the BBQ was hot! Here is all the stuff we had chicken and shrimp skewers, ribs, homemade potato salad, fruit salad and tons of other stuff! My supervisor is such a good cook! One of the people there commented that Eric and I needed to graduate so we could have another dinner at her house!

Here is my delicious plate. I had 2 of the shrimp skewers, but skipped the pita and had seconds of the 3 salads.

Then it was desert time, and well that got interesting. Eric couldn’t wait to get his own bowl so Catherine fed him some of hers, we made her go first since the party was for her.

Here is my delicious bowl, the chocolate ice cream was store bought, but my supervisor made the strawberry ice cream and it was amazing!!! I felt so spoiled by homemade ice cream.

Of course Ryan was mostly excited for the magic shell topping!

It was a great night with a lot of memories including one of Jen trying to find Catherines reflex point :)

Bye Catherine we’ll miss you!!!

Anyways I’m off to eat some fruit and head to bed!

Amy

Food Fail!

2010-07-20T19:26:00.001-07:00

I have a great post from the weekend just about ready to go, so expect that sometime tomorrow. However in the mean time let me talk about something that happens to me at least once a week…food fails!

Tonight was a prime example, I had this great idea for a meal idea in my head, take some tomatoes and mushrooms top with cheese and serve with some bread. Since Matt is away I thought it would be good to indulge in the two foods he hates mushrooms and tomatoes.

Only then I did something that I do alllll the time…I over thought the idea! I decided that since I hadn’t eaten a lot of protein today and that I’ve been trying to incorporate more fish in my diet I would add a tin of sardines to the mix. This is where the food fail began. The sardines really ruined the dish, in this case this dish would have been better left as a vegetarian, it tasted sooo good without the fish.

So the moral of the story is trust your gut and don’t over think things. I’ll give you the recipe anyway, but heed this warning….the sardines make this taste TOO FISHY!!! You’ve been warned, and I will make this again without the fish and probably with a teaspoon of chilli powder to spice it up.

All you do is take a package of mushrooms and sautee until the are golden brown. Then you add a tin of whole tomatoes that have been drained (I saved the juice to use in the morning). Now you should stop here if you know what is good for you! Just let this simmer to boil of the juice, plate and top with feta cheese.

I didn’t stop here and added the sardines….WHICH WAS A BIG FAIL, so trust me and skip the sardines your stomach will thank you.

Also I did something that my friend Danielle suggested awhile back. I tried the store bought naan and it was delicious. I used 2 pieces of the naan to suck up the juice and it was really good.

Don’t get me wrong I still ate this, and I have some frozen that I will use up at some point, probably as a base with a lot of other veggies so that it doesn’t taste so fishy, does anyone out there have any ideas?

Although dinner was a fail, this snack was a winner! I took a plum and cut it up, and topped it with some homemade chocolate sauce I whipped up. All I did was combine 1 tablespoon cocoa powder with a bit of sugar and water and a splash of milk. I microwaved it until it was smooth and then poured it over the fruit. I kept the sauce on the bitter side since I knew that the plum was very sweet. It gave it a nice contrast and is one of the benefits of making your own sauce on the fly, you can adjust the sugar content according to what your using it for :)

Well on that note, I’m off to bed, night all!

Amy

One Hilly day

2010-07-15T18:26:00.001-07:00

So as I mentioned yesterday..I survived my first attempt at hills! I was actually pretty nervous. I mean I can run 8km on flat ground, but as soon as there is an incline I get kinda of antsy. Also I’m pretty much the slowest one in my group so I worried that I might have some issues with wanting to keep up even though I should go slower.

However once we started none of that worry seemed to matter and I was able to really focus and not worry about anyone but me! In total we did 3 hills about 300-350m in length. I’ll give Fredericton one thing, there is no shortage of hills here! Today I feel only mildly sore, but I think I can still crank out a 6km run tonight so it’s all good :)

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, my stomach can be very finacky, so lately I’m really watching what I put into it, since I’m now running 5 days a week instead of the 3 I used to do. Since it’s summer and my body is starting to reject eating all things hot, I made a smoothie for breakfast…only it wasn’t that simple!

I knew we were out of milk but I figured I’d be ok on the protein front because I had some protein powder I was going to add. However we also ran out of orange juice, and the only juice I had left was some small packs of grape juice. I just don’t think the grape, chocolate and banana flavour goes well together, but since I was in a rush I threw it together anyway!I must say, it was a really weird flavour combo, but I managed to drink it all down. The grape juice made the smoothie taste a lot sweeter than when it was made with orange juice, and I still don’t think the grape and banana work together! So after my run last night, you can bet I headed straight to the grocery store to pick up some essentials so that combo doesn’t need to be used again!

Since it was my day to present at lab meeting, on my way to work I stopped at a local convince store that has a small bakery inside. The Goody Shop is one of my favourite places in Fredericton! I enjoyed my usual lunch of soup and a cookie, I totally forgot to take a photo :(

After lunch I snacked on a bagel with peanut butter and then went running! For the record hills are hard! But I was able to do 3 hills that are 300M each up and down. I only ended up needing one or two walking breaks. In total I ran 5km so it wasn’t that bad! When I was done running Matt picked me up and we picked up the essentials. Including this new Caesar salad kit they had at sobeys. I ate it with a toasted hamburger bun that we were trying to use up. It was just the right amount of carbs and veggies and was exactly what my body wanted. However a couple hours later I was still hungry so I made a mini pizza. These pizzas are available in the deli section of sobeys and are $1.99 for 2. They taste so much better than the frozen ones and are totally delicious! Plus with only 2 in one package it’s great for portion control! Well I’m pooped! I have a long day at the lab and I’m hungry :)

Night all!

Amy

Carb-o-holic

2010-07-13T19:19:00.001-07:00

First off….running hills= success! I’ll expand on that more in tomorrow’s post but I wanted to share that with you ASAP!

Now on to today’s post! I have said this many times, but oh man do I love carbs! Now that I’m running more it is the perfect excuse for me to indulge in a bit more carbs than usual. Though I must say it’s nothing like I used to, instead of sweets it’s mostly bread that I crave. Like yesterday morning, I woke up dreaming of a bagel!

We usually don’t have bagels around here, because they are pretty high-carb and I can inhale a whole package in no time flat, but I bought some for 50% off from superstore, and have actually managed to have them last more than an hour! I usually prefer whole wheat but they didn’t have any so we just got plain :( I topped this delicious puppy with about a tablespoon of cream cheese and just a small smear like a 1/2 teaspoon of strawberry jam…it was just what my body craved!

One thing that I have discovered about night time running is that the next morning I wake up super thirsty and hungry! So the first thing I do is drink a tall glass of water to see if that makes the hunger go away, then I move onto breakfast. It’s probably because I’m still adjusting to the later runs and when I run in the day I have more time to eat before bed. But I find that if I give into whatever my body craves it settles down and I’m good for the rest of the day! I haven’t really had a significant increase in the amount of food that I’m eating, more just the time of day that I’m eating.

Before I exercise, because I tend to have umm, regularity issues I can’t eat anything heavy before. So I make sure if I’m eating dairy, meat, or a large meal in general I eat it at least 2 hours before I run so that it has time to make it’s way out. About an hour before I sometimes eat a snack that’s mostly carb based with a bit of protein. This was recommended by the dietician that came to visit my running course. I don’t always do this but if I feel a bit hungry or sluggish I use it as a pick me up.

Typically I break into my supply of dates and almonds, though sometimes I’ll eat dried fruit. For those of you in Canada, bulk barn has a terrific selection of no sugar added dried fruit such as mangos, peaches, and a mix that contains apple slices, and a bunch of other fruit. It’s really great to stash in my purse for times when I feel like I want a snack but don’t have a fridge or my kitchen handy.

For lunch I had an egg sandwich that I bought because it’s hard to eat soup when you forget the can in your pantry…DOUGH!!! Plus I was feeling really groggy and sick, I ended up leaving work early, and after a quick rest I started on dinner. I’ve made this Chinese fried rice recipe before, and I kept everything pretty much the same except I doubled the amount of rice I used. I was really hungry and last time there wasn’t enough to go around :) So I really did take a picture…but it got deleted somehow from my phone…boo!

Also I ended up having to stop cooking in the middle because we were having issues getting the car home from the dealership, but it turned out just as good as the last time I made it, I paired it with 2 egg rolls and enjoyed! I was hungry later in the night so I had a couple small pieces of French bread with some medium cheddar.

On that note, I’m off to eat some more and let my body rest. Also does anyone have any suggestions for things they would like to see in the blog?

Night all!

Amy

Life in a fish bowl

2010-07-13T17:29:00.001-07:00

Have you ever felt like you live your life fully exposed to everyone? That’s how I’ve felt the last couple of weeks. I just haven’t felt up to blogging, as I like to keep this a happy and motivating place, and I’ve felt anything but in the last couple of weeks. Anyway I don’t want to bore you with all the lovely mundane details but I will say this, I drastically improved in the exercise department, and fell of the wagon in healthy eating….BIG TIME! I know being busy is no excuse, but sometimes the lure of a drive through prevails!

However over the last week I’ve slowly gotten back on track and my freezer is currently stocked with lots of frozen bananas for smoothies and gena’s amazing soft serve recipe! One tip on banana’s most grocery stores mark them down when they start to brown, so I usually buy a whole bunch at 50% off, take them out of the peels and through them in the freezer in a ziploc bag to use in different recipes, they even work for banana bread.

I must say after this brief blog vacation I feel much more grounded, Matt and I have taken charge of more areas of out life, and we recently did a huge cleaning. It was really nice to rearrange the bedroom furniture, redecorate the bathroom, and through out old text books.

One other area that I’ve been working on is increasing my millage by taking a 10km clinic from the running room. So far it’s going good, and we start hills tomorrow, so I’ll let you know how that goes. Although life is still busy I feel like I have enough time and energy to start blogging again :)

In this hectic time I though it would be fitting to do a post on one of my favourite quick and easy go to dinner meals that is healthy and takes about 5-10 minutes to prep and cook. Oh how I love tuna melts! One great thing about this recipe is you can use any kind of bread, I bought a couple of loaves from superstore on Sunday that were marked down. The recipe is also fairly general, I’ve used bbq sauce in this and it tastes great, but I spied a new container of honey mustard and decided to use that in the sauce of this recipe, but play with it as much as you like, you can even change the meat, I’ve used chicken, turkey, but tuna is by far my favorite.

Amy’s Quick and Easy Tuna Melt (makes 6 pieces)

1 can of tuna in water
2 stalks of celery chopped
1 slice of onion chopped
1/2 a small green pepper chopped
1/2 a small red onion chopped
1 tablespoon honey mustard
1 tablespoon miracle whip or mayonnaise
1 loaf of bread, or hamburger buns, or slices of bread enough for 6 pieces
grated cheese to top the melts

Take the loaf of bread and cut it into slices or how ever thick you want the bottoms to be. Coat with a little bit of butter and heat in the oven for about 5 minutes until it starts to get crispy. While crisping, combine all the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Then spoon onto the slices of bread. Top with cheese of your choice (I used medium cheddar) and switch the oven to broil. Cook until the cheese is bubbly then enjoy :)I really enjoyed the subtle flavour that the honey mustard gave to this. It was a perfect compliment to the tuna. I enjoyed 2 of these for dinner, which was perfect for me since I was planning on running later and wanted the extra carbs. Speaking of that run, I really hate running at night in the summer, not because it starts to get dark, but because the bugs come out in full force! The weather was really nice though still humid, however I ate about 20 bugs during the 6 km I did. Yuck!

Well on that note I’m off to catch up on some chores then it’s off to bed.

Catch ya tomorrow!

Amy

I’m still alive!

2010-07-07T17:46:00.001-07:00

I promise. My life has been a little topsy turvy at the moment. But I promise that I’ll have a new post up by Monday morning :)

Amy

I spy with my little eye…

2010-06-18T19:06:00.001-07:00

A little critter that just wanted to join me in relaxing on the beach today :)No that’s not my finger, that would be Eric wanting to show a scale of how large the bug was!

So as promised here’s a recap of last weekend! It all started on Saturday night, when I had my 25th birthday party! Well actually it really start on Friday night when I realized I desperately needed new jeans! I used to be about a size 16, and over the last couple of months I’ve notice that the size 14’s I bought at Christmas just didn’t stay up without a belt. So I headed out and ended up buying size 10 jeans! I haven’t been in size 10 clothes in about 4 or 5 years! Mind you the pair of jeans I bought was stretchy from the browsing I did I tend to fit into clothes in the size 10-12 range, which made me very happy. Also another realization was that my bras were not fitting correctly, they seemed loose. So also on teh weekend I invested in some new bras, and I have indeed lost weight in my chest area! I’ve gone from a 38 DD, to a 38C or there abouts depending on the style. I must say that is a great way to kick off your 25th birthday weekend :)

So now back to Saturday, I had arranged with my friend Danielle for her to come over early and help me make a recipe from pioneer woman, malted milk chocolate chip cookies. I was super excited to try it, as it looked totally delicious. Only when I made the recipe something didn’t seem right. It was almost like there wasn’t enough flour, when I put it in the oven it started bubbling, and it was a general mess! I was pretty upset, and was trying to figure out what went wrong, maybe it was the fact that I used margarine instead of butter, but I figured that wasn’t it. As you can see I was quite annoyed that it wasn’t working out! So then I decided that maybe it just needed a bit more flour, so Danielle and I added another cup of “flour”. Notice I put the flour in quotations, well it turns out it wasn’t flour. When adding it I decided to taste it, and it turns out I grabbed the icing sugar container and not the flour container, no wonder the cookies looked like blobs! So then we redid the recipe with flour, and it turned out great! So great I didn’t get to take any pictures before they were all gone. This recipe is definitely a keeper for parties, and potlucks! It’s not really healthy, but it’s delicious!

So besides the cookies Matt bought me this lovely ice cream cake from Dairy Queen, with double stuff on the inside! It was really cute, and I am totally in love with ice cream cake! It was a really great night, with a lot of alcohol involved including this lovely tequila shot: We eventually headed out to the bars and I danced the rest of the night away. It was a really great night with my awesome friends, boyfriend and roommate :).

Well that’s it for me for now! I’m off to relax, and then tomorrow we’re heading to a camp party tomorrow. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I spent the afternoon on a beach just lounging and enjoying the sunshine, it was a really nice way to end the week! Also I managed to walk away with only a little sunburn on the lower part of my shoulder thanks to my spf 50 sunscreen :)

Night all!

Amy

J-E-L-L-O

2010-06-16T16:57:00.001-07:00

So this week has quickly gotten away from me! I can’t believe it’s Wednesday! I promise to have a full update up by tomorrow but just a quick recap. On Saturday I had my 25th B-Day Party!!! We celebrated with a really good cake, and some cookies which have a funny back story to them :) Then Sunday morning I jumped in my car and drove 2 hours to visit my mom. We had a fun night, and then on Monday, my actual B-Day, I jumped in the car and drove 2 hours back home.

Because the crazy nut that I am, I started a 10km running clinic at the running room, and we had our first run, a 6km run, at 6:30! So on my Birthday I celebrated my new healthy lifestyle by running 6km! I thought it was very fitting, although I was/am getting sick, so the last km just about killed me but I did it! I’ll have the training schedule that I’ll be following updated later this week. So after the 6km run, I dashed home, showered then headed out to celebrate with Matt.

So I’m a tired girl! Running when you are sick is not the funnest thing in the world, but I whipped out a 5km run tonight with the clinic, with only an extra 3 minutes of walking, so that’s good, I just hope I feel 100% by Sunday! The only side effect is that right now my legs feel a lot like jello, but a soak in our whirl pool tub seems to help that, and I have a quick yoga session planned for the am!

So there you have my last couple of days, and like I said I’ll be expanding on the b-day festivities tomorrow, but right now I’m off to finish my hot chocolate and relax!

Amy

This is what happens…

2010-06-09T18:21:00.001-07:00

When you put a couple of grad students in charge of a bbq! You end up buying a package of bacon, and having multiple grease fires on the BBQ. Yes that foil package on the top of the grill is bacon! So all this went down on Friday afternoon! It was a really afternoon, and it was full of hotdogs, sausages, and bacon double cheese burgers! Now we weren’t perfect, there were some that got burnt, including this one which I made Eric eat, and also made him pose! I don’t think he ate the whole thing, maybe just a bite, it was solid charcoal black! Bite time! Doesn’t that look yummy!

So Eric was the grill master, and I was the slave aka, I put everything on the grill! I was a fun day all in all, and I can’t wait to repeat this all over again next month. So after this I headed home and then went to watch the boys play football. Gotta love the quiet Friday nights.

I still can’t believe it’s Wednesday already! That means my birthday party is only 4 days away. My actual birthday is Monday June 14th, but we're having a party this Saturday. After some hunting tonight, I found the ingredient I need for a recipe my friend Danielle and I are going to whip up for my party! Any guesses?

Night all!

Amy

Living Healthy…the Chinese food challenge

2010-06-08T18:06:00.001-07:00

So last week when I made dinner, I purposely made 2 extra servings of rice so that the next night I could use it in a recipe. For as long as I can remember, I have loved Chinese food, but lets face it the versions that you find around here are all carb packed and aren’t that good for you. So I decided that at home I wanted to make my spin on Chinese fried rice, but power pack it full of veggies, and lower the amount of oil to keep it on the healthy side.

After scouring the internet to figure out the basic components, I hunted through my fridge and dug out the necessary ingredients. I didn’t have any oyster sauce, but we did have fish sauce so I used that instead. Also I didn’t want have this super carb heavy, I wanted it to be fairly balanced sticking with my usual supper mantra of 1/2 the plate veggies 1/4 carbs, and 1/4 meat. So I prepared some veggies on the side. For the veggies, I roasted 1/2 a butternut squash, 10 chopped baby carrots, and an onion. A word to the wise….be very careful not to add to much pepper! These were a touch too peppery. So first I peeled the squash:Then I chopped it and the other veggies up together. I then tossed it with a bit of oil and waaaay to much pepper and popped it in the oven for about 30 minutes, stirring it once at the 15 minute mark. While these were roasting I also tossed in 2 store bought eggs rolls as well. Then I started prepping the rice!

Amy’s Chinese rice recipe

2 servings white rice cooked
1 green pepper chopped
1 yellow pepper chopped
1/2 onion
1 clove garlic
2 stalks celery chopped
1-2 chicken breasts chopped
2 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Start by heating up the wok with a bit of oil then add the chopped chicken and 1 tablespoon fish sauce and cook until the chicken is no longer pink. Then add the onions and garlic and cook until translucent then add the other veggies and 1 tablespoon soy sauce. Cook until the veggies are tender then add the rice and the rest of the fish and soy sauce. Let the mixture cook until all the liquid is absorbed, then serve!

Now as I said, the veggies had a little too much pepper, but other than that they were good and the perfect compliment to the rice. Matt hates' peas which is why I didn’t add any, but they would be a good addition to this meal. All in all, this is definitely going in the keeper pile, I love Chinese rice, and it’s nice to have a version that doesn’t make me feel guilty! Well on that note, I’m off to relax :)

Amy

Crunch ‘n Munch

2010-06-07T18:44:00.001-07:00

Ok so as a little girl I was obsessed with crunch ‘n munch! Now a days I haven’t really had it in years, but I still remember the salty and sweet taste of it. I know that I haven’t been on the blog for the last week or so, but it’s been rather hetic! I promise I’ll catch you all up. I have a few recipes, and on Friday I am set to start a new feature on this blog…any guesses as to what it is?

Anyway, the reason I was thinking of Crunch ‘n Munch, is that tonight I decided that I wanted to go for a walk. I ended up walking around town for about an hour or so and ended up at the grocery store. Sometimes I just like to wander the isles of the grocery store when I’m not pressed for time, and scope out new products, and deals. Well I came across my beloved crunch ‘n munch, and surprisingly I left it on the shelf! The old me would have bought it and eaten the whole box, the new me, wasn`t really craving it!

Instead, I bought a salty and sweet good for me cereal and headed home dreaming of pairing that cereal with yogurt. My how times have changed!

So about 20 minutes ago, I bustled into the house, whipped open my new container of asana yogurt, quickly thawed 6 strawberries in the microwave, added 2 teaspoons of strawberry jam, stirred and topped with some crunchy cereal! Instant strawberry yogurt, without all the sugar of the store bought stuff, and MORE STRAWBERRIES!!!

This was really delicious, and I must say the 2 teaspoons of jam really took the tartness away from this yogurt. At first I was worried that it was going to be too tart, but the jam covered it up nicely, though it`s no Greek yogurt, it`s a good replacement for now! Although the ingredient list is not quite what I`d like this is a very tasty yogurt, and not very pricey, plus I got it on sale, which is a bonus! One of the main reasons I wanted to try it was that I wanted to beef up my calcium intake, so this yogurt is perfect for that!

Well on that note, I`m off to relax and enjoy the rest of my evening before bed. I`ll be back tomorrow with a recipe for you all!

Night!

Amy

Technical Difficulties

2010-06-07T16:03:00.000-07:00

So...I had planned on posting on the weekend, but life and technical difficulties got in the way! So I'm clearing up the computer issues I had, and should have a post up for you later tonight/early tomorrow.

Amy

It’s back!!!!

2010-06-04T16:41:00.001-07:00

So I got the word that my laptop is back! I’ll be picking it up tomorrow! Expect a special double posting day tomorrow and maybe on Sunday as well. I’ll be back to regular blogging on Monday, and I’ve got some some interesting things planned!

I’m off to enjoy the rest of the sunshine, and a much needed relaxing night!

Later all!

Amy

Shaking off the cob webs

2010-06-02T17:35:00.001-07:00

Is anyone else out there obsessed with the sound of music? Growing up it was one of my dad’s favourite musicals so I watched it a lot growing up, and I still love all the songs from it. I often catch myself whistling or singing my favourite things when I do activities or just really at any moment.

Anyway, I know I kind of disappeared of the radar for awhile, and I’ll try to prevent that in the future. I really want my computer back; it will make things so much easier! So over the last few days I’ve kicked my healthy lifestyle up a notch. I had gone a little slack in the past few weeks and took about a week and a half off exercise, although I was still getting a lot of walking in. I now feel energized again, so it’s back to exercising. I also have an announcement to make; I will not be doing the triathlon on July 1st.

I talked it over with Matt the other day, and the knee pain I was experiencing several weeks ago really set me back, and I just don’t feel confident to be able to do a good job. So instead of pushing myself and risking injury, I’m going to focus on my next fitness goal which is to run a 10km race in August and a 13km race in September. I’m still going to be swimming once or twice a week. However, I won’t be biking very much until I can get some strength training in as I’m sure now I hurt my knee while
biking! I’m happy to report that my knee did ok this morning! I’ll be updating the training page later this week, and when I start my running clinic on June 14th I’ll be redoing the calendar.

I went for a nice slow run Monday morning, just to shake of the cob webs. I ran for about 20 minutes total, doing sets of run 5 walk 1. I mainly wanted to make sure that my knee wouldn’t give out. For the first 13 minutes, there was no pain whatsoever. But I noticed at around minute 15, that my knee was starting to hurt a bit, so I slowed down the pace a little bit more, and stopped at about 20 minutes. Either way even today my leg is doing really well! I promise that this weekend I’ll be back with a nice long post, but after having written this nice long post and accidentally deleting it, I’m going to keep this fairly short!

What I would like to mention right now is that for the next week or so I’m going to be counting calories. I know I have said in previous posts that due to my obsessive nature I can’t count calories, but I’m making an exception. I really want to make sure that I’m eating within my normal range of 1400-1600 calories a day. With the amount of physical activity I do this allows me to still lose weight, but not feel like I’m starving myself. Also as my mom pointed out the other week, I really should double check that I’m getting enough calcium and other vitamins and the handy tools at calorie count, will let me do just that.

So, I think for the next week when I do daily recaps I will include the calorie values, just so you can have an idea about what I am eating as well :)

So now onto the good part! The return of smoothies to my life! I wish I could say that this was good but it really wasn’t! The combo of coconut chunks in the yogurt, made me want to not drink it, but I drank the whole thing and decided that my coconut yogurt definitely does not belong in my smoothie! So no recipe on this one, no one should have to deal with the taste :(Though I did enjoy the fuze container that I put it in! I love reusing plastic bottles, and this has a large opening that makes it perfect for pouring things into it! As for lunch that was delicious! I had this great Knorr Orange soup and the whole box (500ml) only has around 200 calories, so it leads for a perfectly satisfying lunch! I paired this with 2 of my homemade tea biscuits, which I made at Matt’s request Sunday night. This held me over nicely until dinner, where I took advantage of the sunny weather, and bbqed some chicken! I paired this nice bbq chicken with white right, 1 serving for each of us. Along with a simple salad that consisted of lots of lettuce, 1/2 a yellow bell pepper, 1/4 a large cucumber and some carrots. I also made an extra 2 servings of rice that I used in a recipe on Tuesday evening, which I’ll share tomorrow!

I know I say that I enjoy almost every meal that I eat, but I really enjoyed this one! I’m all about the simple easy to prepare meals, and this took a total of 25 minutes from prep to dinner table! Plus it’s veggie packed and is balanced, you can’t go wrong with that!

Well this girl is really tired, probably because I just spent the last 2 hours in a Movie theatre watching Sex in the City 2, which totally rocked my world! So on that note I’m off to relax and catch up on some reading. By the way, if you have any suggestions about things you’d like to see either leave on in the comment section or drop me a line at gingereats@gmail.com. I’m thinking about starting a weekly feature column here in a couple weeks, and am open to any suggestions you might have!

Night all!

Amy

Pooped

2010-05-31T17:58:00.001-07:00

Hey all! Today was a really crazy day for me, and I just feel really run down…so this is all I”m going to post today :)

I’ll be back tomorrow with a full update, and the return of another one of my favourite things :)

Night all!!!

Amy

Reunited

2010-05-29T21:06:00.001-07:00

So I know it’s been a couple days since I’ve posted! Life has been pretty crazy around here….and my laptop had to go in for repairs!!!! It had 2 problems one the frame was breaking, and 2 I kept getting the blue screen of death. Luckily I have an extended warranty, so it should be fixed in 2-3 weeks.

In the meantime, I’ll be kidnapping Matt’s computer to write blog updates, I even configured his window’s live writer :) I’ll have a proper update up tomorrow, but for tonight I want to say that I’m finally reunited with one of my favourite foods…yogurt, well sort of.

For the last 2 weeks I’ve been looking for the kind of liberty yogurt that I usually buy (I did a post on it here). But every time I go to Sobey’s they are out, the just have the vanilla kind that is chalked full of sugar. So today I decided I needed to try something different, and that if the yogurt was going to have sugar in it, it sure wasn’t going to be just plain vanilla! Enter the liberty regular yogurt! Although, the nutritionals on this yogurt are not as good as my normal Greek, it’s a pretty good substitute.I’m a really big fan of liberty yogurt, because although this kind has sugar in it, the ingrediant list is really short, and I find they tend to have more protein and better nutritional stats than other yogurts. Though I must say I still miss my Greek version, this coconut blend is a fun summer alternative!

So I wanted to enjoy a little bit of my yogurt tonight, but I was really having a chocolate craving, so I decided to whip up some of my banana chocolate pudding. I used a chilled banana, as I like my pudding cold and this time I added 2 tablespoons of carob powder, although next time I think I’ll do half carob and half cocoa powder to bring out more of the chocolate flavour. I really like the carob as it’s sweeter than cocoa, but it doesn’t have as much of a chocolate taste as cocoa does.

I then mixed in a splash of milk and added a dollop of coconut yogurt, about 2 tablespoons:I then mixed it all together, and the final product was delicious!Although like I said I wish I had a more intense chocolate flavour. So now I’m just kicking around relaxing and enjoying my Friday night. Catch ya all tomorrow!

Amy

Cooking with a hammer

2010-05-26T11:45:00.001-07:00

So last night I ended up getting home a little early so I decided it would be a good day for me to fire up the bbq and make something that was fairly low mess. Last night we ended up eating some delicious fillet mingon, and I had wanted to carry the bacon wrapped idea into tonights meal. However once I started prepping I realized we didn’t have any bacon!

Rather than run to the store, I improvised and this became an easy and delicious stuffed chicken recipe. So the first thing I need to do was flatten the chicken. I never thought that I would get to use a hammer in dinner prep, but I grabbed our trusty hammer and went to work, since I didn’t have a mallet. I put each chicken breast in between 2 sheets of parchment paper, though wax paper would work, and banged them to about a 1/4-1/2 inch thickness.I then at this point realized I didn’t have any bacon, so I loaded each piece of chicken up with green peppers, yellow peppers, red onion, 1/2 a crumbled small breakfast sausage each, and a bit of medium cheddar cheese.

I then folded these over and used my fingers to press together the seams, making sure none of the stuffing was peaking out.

I then put these bad boys on the bbq, I cooked them over medium heat for about 15-20 minutes, I also brushed these with a bit of bbq sauce. I served it with some salad and white rice and it makes for a delicious meal with a hidden surprise inside!

cut it open and you reveal the goodies trapped inside:

So the moral of this story is even if you end up making something you totally weren’t planning on, it can still turn out amazing, and no one has to know…unless of course you write it on a blog, and well then the universe knows!

As I mentioned in the post earlier today, it’s Matt’s Birthday! So we have some plans to go out to dinner, should be a good time, at least I like the company:)

Catch ya all tomorrow!

Amy

All about the red

2010-05-26T04:40:00.001-07:00

First off, I’d like to wish a very happy birthday to Matt!

He turns the big 2-5 today! To celebrate that and the fact that he graduated we had a very event filled weekend, the main events being a night away in Saint John on Friday and then a party at our house on Saturday night.

Since no party is complete without a cake, I got my thinking cap on and came up with an idea! Since we were going to be away Friday night, and I didn’t know when we were going to be back Saturday, I whipped up the cakes Friday afternoon, let them cool, then wrapped them in saran wrap so they would keep until Saturday.

I’m always on the hunt for a good moist chocolate cake recipe, that is also easy to work with, and this time I decided to use the recipe found here. I won’t bother posting it because I followed it pretty closely, but for the unsweetened chocolate I subbed in semi-sweet, and it gave this cake an even richer taste. I also didn’t make the icing, I used a tin of store bought icing to save on time.

Now when I was coming up with an idea, I wanted something that would be fun, and not super difficult to make, so I ended up coming back to the idea of a Canadiens Jersey complete with Matt’s Name and his Age for the number. It was easy to find a Jersey to use as a template, there is one hanging in our bedroom, and Matt was even sporting it while I designed the cake :)

All in all I think it turned out pretty well considering I only really had an hour to put this together, and I’m an amateur at cake decorating! The cake is covered in this fondant recipe, and the striping and lettering is also marshmallow fondant, however the blue around the number is dyed butter cream frosting. This was my first time using actual cake icing dye, and I ended up getting a ton all over me, but it washed off after a little bit of scrubbing.

We finally cut into this cake around 11:30pm, and we had a great night playing rock band, did you know you can get Lady Gaga songs? Well on that note it’s time for me to get ready for the day, I have a recipe post coming up hopefully later today/tonight!

But in the meantime, check out my guest post on Mae’s blog that was just posted this morning, of a vegan recipe I whipped up the other day!

Later!

Amy

Here comes the…

2010-05-25T15:45:00.001-07:00

GRADUATE!!!

So on Thursday this week, Matt graduated! He now officially has his Masters Degree in Engineering. I still have about 8 months or so left before I’m done, but I had a fun time taking a million pictures at his graduation!

For the big Day, Matt’s mom and my mom came up to visit. Matt’s mom, came up the day before and at the last minute my mom was able to get the afternoon off(my mom is the one in the red shirt)! It was raining in the morning but it wasn’t overly hot which meant that I didn’t die of heat during the ceremony. Because Matt was getting his Masters we had to wait a long time to see him walk across the stage, since the hand out the undergraduate degrees first. But when he finally got to get his degree, I snapped a picture of them putting the hood on him on stage:

and one when he walked off and posed for the camera ;)

Before we headed to dinner, we snapped some more photos including some of Matt and I, then we headed to Montana's for dinner.

My Mom, Matt’s mom and I were all wanted to get a particular steak, but they were out of it, so they gave us rib eye's instead and adjusted the bill so it was the same price, score!

I ordered my steak Medium-rare and it was delish! Matt decided to be the odd ball out and got a rack of ribs…that’s his hand, he attempted to block my picture. Our food was really good, and we all left really stuffed!

After dinner, my mom headed back on the road, and the rest of us headed home to digest. I had wanted to start baking cakes for Matt’s b-day but, we blew a fuse in the kitchen so I decided to wait until the next day to bake them. Tomorrow I’ll be back with a recap of the birthday cake I made that was of one of Matt’s favourite things :)

On that note, I’m off to see Shrek with Matt tonight!

Amy

H two the O!

2010-05-18T06:43:00.000-07:00

Morning all!

Yesterday turned out to be quite a busy day for me, and with all the commotion I didn't really get any good pictures, and also I had my first bad green monster spinach combo! So this this morning I decided to rectify this and made a killer chocolaty smoothie!

The Mix:

As much spinach as would fit in the bullet
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup orange juice
1 banana
2 tablespoons whey protein isolate
1 tablespoon cocoa powder

I used 2 different blades this morning as I think one is getting dull, and it got the spinach ground up nice and fine so there were no chunks. When I got to the lab I practically inhaled this smoothie! Tonight I have a lot of random things to do to prep for Matt's up coming graduation and birthday, so I figured I would post at lunch time, about a topic I've been meaning to talk about and that my friends is my wonderful friend who I often have a love hate realationship with H2O, or water :)

Source

A while back I mentioned that I was having some issues with my water consumption. I definitely was not getting the recommended 2L of water a day. I know that the amount of fluid each person needs to consume is different and there are a variety of different ways to make sure your staying hydrated. I found this really great website which gives lots of useful information, and I had a conversation with my doctor a few years back and he also gave me tons of good information. So as you can probably guess, I’m going to talk about the ways in which I am using to make sure I drink enough water, and so far they really seem to be helping. In the 2 weeks that I have been using these techniques, I have only woken up once at night to drink a glass of water, I feel less crabby, and I don’t feel as sluggish during my runs or need to drink as much water in the early part of the run.

So on a day to day basis I try to drink at least 2L of water or fluid, now I say at least, because if I am exercising heavily I will need more water in my system. One of things that I have gotten in the habit of is first thing in the morning I fill up a mug of water and before eating breakfast, or leaving for the pool I drink the whole glass (about 500ml). This helps me distinguish between feeling hungry and feeling thirsty when I wake up. Usually I’m just thirsty so I drink the water and I’m good to go. If I’m going to the pool, I also take a 591ml water bottle along with me that is full, I am to drink this whole bottle by lunch time. Now since I love my smoothies for breakfast I usually get some fluid that way (about 250ml), but I don’t count this in the total as it’s mixed into a mix.

For lunch I fill up the bottle again, and I sip on that with lunch and try to finish it by dinner. So at this point I’ve consumed about 1.5L of water. At dinner I sometimes have a glass of sugar-free koolaid, milk or juice, so I add that in as well. I also then drink a cup of water before bed. I used to drink a lot of pop but in recent months I’ve cut that out almost entirely. My stomach is really sensitive and I find that pop causes all sorts of problems that I’d rather avoid. Although it’s funny you really don’t notice how much it bothered you until you stop drinking it for awhile!

Now some people may have noticed that in earlier posts I mentioned I am a huge coffee addict. At one point I was consuming probably a Litre of coffee a day, if not more. This is really not good for me at all! Besides the large amount of caffeine in the coffee, it is also really dehydrating, more info on that from the mayo clinic, so this is probably why I was feeling really thirsty all the time. Now I limit my intake to about 500ml a day max, and I don’t count this in my fluid total either, since it has the opposite effect and doesn’t hydrate.

Another thing that I do is I pop on the scale before a run; I mentioned this in a previous post here. I do this so I can make sure that after a run my weight is similar, if there is a significant difference I know I’m dehydrated.

So one final tip that I’ve left for the end because well, it’s a little gross, is that I monitor the color of my urine. Let’s be honest here, you really need to pay attention to the signals your body gives you and this is really a main one! If it looks like it’s a dark yellow color I know I’m dehydrated and it’s time to up the amount of water! So far I seem to be doing much better, and it’s amazing how just drinking more water throughout the day has made my workouts much more enjoyable. It also means I’m less likely to get stomach cramps during my workouts as well which is always a plus!

So I guess the moral of this very wordy post is, drink that lovely fluid and feel better, because until you actually change something you'll never realize how much better you can feel! On that note it's back to work I go, have a great rest of the day!

Amy

Surprise!!

2010-05-16T17:17:00.001-07:00

Do you like the new banner? I have been thinking about changing the style of this blog almost from day one, and I mentioned a couple of times in earlier posts. But today I actually did it. I wanted the banner to incorporate the major things in my life, so I put in my running shoes, a genetics textbook and some chocolate covered ginger :)

This weekend has been both very chaotic and relaxing. Yesterday I spent the day on some up coming projects, and attempted to make vegan cookies…lets just say they were a major fail, so I ended up going and buying some. If anyone has any good recipes send them my way!

Yesterday was also a rare night where Matt and I made separate dinners, I made something veggie and Matt went with steak. He may have stolen my camera and taken this picture just to taunt me…he apparently wanted to return to his PEI heritage of meat and potatoes.

Meanwhile Eric was going on an on about his homemade hot curry spice…which I need to steal the recipe for because it smelled delicious!

I ate dinner with a friend, and then we headed over to another friends place for a girls night. We enjoyed cupcakes, cookies and well more cupcakes…oh and delicious brie :)

I ended up heading downtown with a couple of the girls and then slept in nice and late this morning. When I woke up, matt and I made some breakfast before I needed to head to the lab. For breakfast we kept it simple with some breakfast sausage with a pancake made from a box mix, and I topped it with a banana and a bit of reduce calorie syrup.

I then spent the afternoon in and out of the lab, and shopping with Matt. After I was done Matt and I headed to do a little photo shoot to fix the banner. Seriously sometimes Matt has really great ideas that speed things up that I would totally never think of. He suggested using the park bench and it was perfect! I was expecting to take pictures forever, and it took like 5 minutes total. We then attempted to figure out supper. We originally wanted to have chicken fajitas, but ended up deciding to go with pizza.

For this pizza we made up 2 crust mixes and while Matt was mixing them together I was grilling up some chicken thighs in a pan that were seasoned with Jamaican spice. We usually only use chicken breast meat, but I buy it in bulk from our local meat market, and they didn’t have it today. I wasn’t going to pay over double the usual price for 2 breasts, so we bought thighs and it worked out really well!

We coated the pizza crust in bbq sauce, topped with a light layer of cheese, then chicken, bacon, green and red peppers, onions and pineapple, and then more cheese! I had 1 and 1/2 slices along with a large pile of steamed kale. It was really good, and totally fulfilled my craving for pizza which I shouldn’t have since I ate a slice last night.

So now I’m just relaxing and enjoying the hockey game…GO MONTREAL! I have an early morning date with the pool, at least my legs no longer feel like they are going to fall off! Also I feel more relaxed then I have felt in days! It’s crazy how much a nice day can really lift your mood! After the week I had been having I really just needed a couple hours of sunshine that I could enjoy outside. I really had a fun afternoon with Matt, we haven’t done something as simple as shopping and going for a drive in a long while. It was nice not to be in a rush and just enjoy the afternoon! Well …I can hear my PJ’s whispering my name, so night all!

Amy

Pretty Woman….

2010-05-14T18:09:00.001-07:00

Walking down the street!

So I woke up this this song in my head today. I really love that movie to bits! Actually I plain just love Julia Roberts in almost every movie she made. Guess what… today is…FRIDAY!!!! Which means the weekend is here and I don’t have to be at the lab for 8 hours a day, just like 1 or 2 :)

Friday also stands for… FUN! Tonight Matt and I enjoyed the lovely weather, picked up some food and walked to find a bench downtown to eat at. I was hoping to have some pictures, but to be honest the food wasn’t that great, and was way overpriced, so no pictures or review today :(

I also was planning on exercising today but after the run yesterday, which was my first run in awhile, my legs left really sore so I decided to take it easy and just walk down to meet Matt for dinner and call that my exercise. After dinner I really wasn’t satisfied and I ended up eating a lot more food in an attempt to feel full. I also took a nice long soak in my whirl pool tub to help my sore legs.

Tonight I’m planning some recipes to try in the coming weeks and working on some things I want to add to the blog. I am really quite excited for a quite night tonight, it’s so rare:) Tomorrow I have a ton of plans including some errands, some lab work, more errands, and girls night at a friends place :)

But for tonight it’s just me, my PJs, some criminal minds!

Later!

Amy

Reasons to love and hate my scale

2010-05-13T04:44:00.001-07:00

Good day everyone! So yesterday after the Canadians kicked some major Penguin butt, I headed to bed and slept for a good solid 7 hours. I had planned to wake up this morning and go for a run, but when I woke up the top half of my legs were killing me so I decided to wait until tonight when I get home for a run, since the boys have a guys only poker game planned.

So yesterday I talked about my struggles with weight loss, but I wanted to follow up by saying that although I feel like I’m eating more junk than my body can handle, I am still losing weight, well inches anyway. So far I’ve lost about 20-25 pounds since October, and with this triathlon training I hope to add more to that. But more importantly I want to actually keep it off for good, hence why I want to keep the levels of junk low. Now notice how a few sentences ago, I mentioned that I’m losing more inches than weight, well this is where my love and hate relationship with scales comes into play.

First off, I think the scale is great for some things. I like to weigh myself before and after hard workout sessions to make sure my weight doesn’t change to much (meaning I’m dehydrated) as I have problems with keeping myself hydrated! But for many years I was chained to the scale in terms of checking my weight every day. When I first decided I wanted to make a change and loss some weight 2 years ago. I immediately started counting my calories, upping my workouts, and weighing myself everyday. One problem with this is that I have a very obsessive personality. I started fixating on the scale number and wanting it to get lower everyday. If it wasn’t going lower I would cut more calories, some days I was eating a total of 1200 calories, but with 45 minutes of intense exercise, I was running a huge calorie deficit, and I felt really sick. Sure I was losing some weight, but it wasn’t manageable. I ended up going on a series of major binge eating sessions and pile it all back on.

So then, I would count calories more and the cycle repeated for about a year. I was at this point that I decided that fitness classes at the gym weren’t working for me, I wanted something that I could do on my own so I decided I wanted to take up running. Let me tell you I’m all for doing things on your own, but as I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I failed miserably! It was only when I started at the running room, did I start actually feeling like I could be successful with exercise. Since I was running 4-5 days a week I started to feel the weight shifting, I of course popped on the scale, and to my surprise, I had lost some inches (my pants were really loose) but my weight hadn’t change.

Being a biology-chemistry major I knew that muscle was heavier than fat, but you know what? It never figured into my mind that my weight wouldn’t change even if I was putting on muscle. It was like something clicked that day, and I stopped obsessing with my overall weight, and started focusing on losing inches not overall weight.

It sounds like a simple thing now, but I still am amazed with how I didn’t realize this! It was during this weight shifting that I started looking for oatmeal granola bar recipes on the internet. I by chance found Kath’s blog, and started reading it. Through her blog, I found several other food blogs, and I started to notice a trend. Here were these women how had lost weight, were exercising and were maintaining these weight losses for years! I got hooked pretty quickly on food blogs, and after several months I've learned to embrace the fat that I'm not perfect and my diet doesn't need to be. Now I only occasionally weigh myself, and I use the way my clothes fit as an indication of the positive changes I'm making in my life.

Don't get me wrong, I still use my scale, but I no longer let the numbers control me, and I'm eating a healthy amount again. I still have a lot to figure out in terms of the right amount, but I'm learning that if I focus on eating lots of good whole nutritious real food, my cravings for junk are gone! Like this morning, I woke up with a hankering for chocolate, so I dug out my faithful container of cocoa powder and added that, along with a bit of coffee to my morning spinach based smoothie....craving satisfied!

The Mix:

as much spinach as would fit in the magic bullet
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup orange juice
1 small banana
1/4 cup coffee
1 tablespoon cocoa powder

Blend and then put in the freezer for about 20-30min to get it nice and cold then enjoy, I drank this once I got to school. This had a nice bitter taste to it, and since I'm a fan of bitter chocolate it was great, if you want it slightly sweeter you could add a bit of sweetener or another fruit of some kind. I love how easily this satisfied my cravings.

Mind you not all cravings are that easy, and I fully believe that to be happy and to prevent binge eating, I need to attempt to satisfy my cravings, but I still want to watch what I'm eating, so if I really want ice cream, I'll cut back on the carbs at dinner or lunch and eat more voluminous foods like veggies, and eat that bowl of ice cream without feeling guilty. Hence why after dinner tonight I had a small bowl of ice cream :)

As for dinner tonight Matt said he was craving pasta, so I whipped up a delicious pasta sauce while I waited for him to get home. As much as I love spaghetti, I really don’t like spaghetti sauce with hamburger in it. I’m not really sure why, but I’ve never been a huge fan. So for dinner tonight I decided to stop at the grocery store on the way home and pick up some ingredients. The Ragu original sauce with hamburger in it was sale at Sobeys today so I bought 2 bottles of that with the intention of adding breakfast sausage (borrowed from Eric) with more veggies and spices.

When Matt walked in the door I put his taste buds to work and got him to figure out the spicing :)

Overall this was quite good. I still don’t really like whole wheat pasta so I made some smart pasta, that has a white taste with the fibre of whole wheat. I bought a loaf of garlic bread from Sobeys and topped it with some medium cheese delish! After supper I was off to tutor for a couple hours. I finished early so I was able to hit the streets for my run before the sun went down, and I was back while it was still daylight! It was a great run, and my knee didn't bother me after the first few minutes, so I think I’m good to go now.

Once I got home, since the boys are having a poker game, I ran to the store then showered and whipped up a nice recovery snack in my magic bullet blender :)

The MIx:

1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup orange juice
2 tablespoons whey protein isolate
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 teaspoon sugar (or to taste I like it bitter!)
8 ice cubes

Well on that note, it’s time to finish that smoothie, relax and enjoy some tv. On a final note to any of you have a love hate relationship with your scale?

Amy

The Highs and Lows of losing weight

2010-05-12T18:23:00.001-07:00

So my life is pretty crazy at the moment. I’m trying to start multiple projects at the lab, balancing spending time with friends and Matt, as well as other nightly commitments. In the mist of all this, I’m attempting to train for a sprint triathlon.

Lately I’ve felt a bit overwhelmed, I find myself not quite sure what to do. I want to continue to lose weight and to eat healthy, but to be honest it is really hard. There is a bakery on my way to work and the temptation is there to buy cookies, I go to Tim Hortons and the muffins call my name. Then when I go grocery shopping I constantly find myself debating what to buy. Often the easiest options are not the healthiest!

I have stated many times that I don’t consider healthy eating a diet, I consider it a life choice with that I believe that I can eat junk food in moderation, however lately I’ve been eating more than what I consider moderation, and my body has told me that. When I eat to much junk food I get crazy sugar highs and I just feel icky. I just haven’t been able to convince my brain that one cookie is ok but 3 or 4 makes me really sick! I recently decided to start tracking my food consumption loosely, more for the nutrient tracking and making sure I’m not under eating. I refuse to go back to counting calories as with my previous food issues that opens up so many doors I don’t want to enter. So for now, I’m reading nutrition books and figuring out what works for me.

Ok so that was a really long rant, now onto the good part. One great thing about living with other people is that dinner can end up being a communal thing. This morning as Matt and I got ready to leave I asked him what he wanted for dinner, he said bbq chicken and I said stuffed peppers, so we combined the two and made dinner for 3, I figured with the hockey game tonight Eric would want to be involved in dinner. I was supposed to take the chicken out before I left but after I dropped Matt off and came home to make my breakfast (the smoothie recipe from a couple days ago found here) I totally forgot!

So I just used my handy dandy microwave and defrosted the chicken when I got home. I decided at the last minute that I wanted to go for an afternoon swim. I’ve been having some issues getting into the training so I’ve decided to really listen to my body and let it decide if it is ready for this, well I think it is. I had a really great swim! I was supposed to do 400M today but I thought it was 500 and I ended up doing 625M. I just got in a groove. I’d do 50M then rest for 20 seconds then go again. It was the 4:30pm swim so it was pretty busy, but that was fine, because if I’m going to do this triathlon I’ll need to get used to swimming with traffic!

I got home around 5:30, which is pretty good considering I swam for 35 minutes, had a quick 10min shower and get dressed session, then walked home. I put on a big pot of white rice, and Matt fired up the bbq.

Matt cooked up 4 chicken breasts on the bqq and coated with some Diana’s smokehouse bbq sauce. We also used up our peppers which were starting to go bad, stuffed peppers are a great way to prevent peppers from spoiling! Matt grilled these for about 10 minutes until the edges started to char, then I took them inside for photographs :)

I filled these with white rice, topped with chicken, then covered with this pile of deliciousness (medium cheddar):

Then my camera died! I really need to keep on top of the battery situation, but my cell phone camera came to the rescue! Once topped we slipped these babies back on the bbq for about 5 minutes until the cheese melted. Since there wasn’t a lot of rice in the 2 I took (one yellow and one green), I added some extra to my plate. I really enjoyed these, but I must say the yellow pepper tasted so much better than the green one! I really have no idea why the color matters, but it really does…the red, yellow and orange always taste better to me.

Other food for the day was junk food: a whoopie pie at lab meeting and a small bowl of Oreo ice cream after dinner.

On that note, I’m off to curl up and watch the rest of criminal minds/the hockey game, then head to bed.

Night!

Amy

Bring on the peanuts!

2010-05-10T17:34:00.001-07:00

So today started off fairly well! Matt started his first day of work, which meant for the first time in a long time he was up before me! So he made me lunch :) Apparently he says I shouldn’t get used to it… but we will see about that! So I had a really great ham and cheese with lettuce sandwich on Italian bread along with an apple and a bottle of water.

Operation drink more water is still in full swing, though I’m still having difficulty making sure I get 2L a day! I really need to work at this a little more, because I really do notice a difference between when I’m hydrated and when I’m dehydrated, I am definitely more cranky when I am dehydrated! So since Matt was up early I lazed around a bit before heading to work. I enjoyed a really good smoothie which I forgot to photograph :( But I’ll share the mix with you! I did really enjoy this, but I found it a bit too sweet since it had both orange juice and a whole banana, next time I’ll cut the banana back to 1/2 instead of a full one.

The Mix:

1 banana
2 large handfuls spinach
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup orange juice.

So I wanted to try a smoothie without the oatmeal, to see if it made a difference in how long I stayed full. I didn’t really notice that much of a difference today, but that could be because I had more liquid to drink throughout the morning, so I’ll have to try that again!

Ok so after I got a bunch of work done, I headed home early so I would have time for a bike ride and to make a really nice dinner before I had to tutor tonight. This dinner really was really good, though I think next time I’ll make the chicken with rice, as having both spicy sweet potato and spicy chicken was a bit much. According to Matt I tend to have a bit of an over spicing problem! But I really enjoyed this combo!

I have had a craving for spicy peanuts for awhile now, so I decided to make breaded chicken with a spicy peanut crust! For the sweet potatoes I chopped up one large sweet potato and tossed it with oil, cyanine pepper, and crushed red pepper. Now for the chicken recipe, this makes enough for 2 chicken breasts.

Spicy Peanut Breaded Chicken:

In a blender mix:

1/2 cup peanuts
2 slices bread (older is better)

Blend until smooth, then add 1 tablespoon curry powder and 1 tablespoon cyanine, or to taste.

In a separate bowl whip together one egg and a dash of cinnamon. Take the chicken breast and coat with flour then dip in the egg mixture and coat with the peanut and bread mixture. I cooked the chicken breasts and the fries at 400 for about 40 minutes.

This coating was really good, and Matt suggested that next time we try it without the spice and add salt and pepper!

Well on that note I’m off to watch the rest of the Montreal Hockey game and enjoy and egg roll!

Night all!

Amy

In a land far far away…

2010-05-08T14:33:00.001-07:00

Ok so I’m really not that far away, I just decided to go home for Mothers day tomorrow! So I’m in Moncton, spending the weekend with my awesome Mommy :)

So for those of you who read this blog on a regular basis, you probably noticed that I haven’t been posting regularly. Well I plan to fix that starting on Monday. The last couple weeks have been very stressful, and my sleep has been very much lacking. Though now things have finally settled, Matt is officially graduating and starts his new job on Monday, so the stress of the job hunt is gone! I’m still a lab rat, but once I get my major experiment set up this week, it will be good to go for the next couple of months.

Now that the dust has settled so to speak, I feel like I have a bit more time, and so I can get back to blogging on a full time basis, and restart trying to wean myself off coffee! I’ll admit, that has been thrown by the wayside, since with only 3-4 hours of sleep some nights, I needed something to help me function.

Also, I have had a really hard time eating healthy these last few weeks, and my diet for the last week has been solid junk food. So much so that Matt actually commented that he knew I wasn’t blogging because of what I was eating, and that he looked to confirm that. I have really fallen off the healthy eating wagon, and to be honest I’m not really sure why. Eating junk food makes me really cranky! I feel much better with a good smoothie and tons of fruit and veggies throughout the day. But when I get stressed I tend to just grab the first thing in front of me and not think of the consequences!

So starting Monday regular blogging will commence, and I plan to post some more on my particular eating situation, how I used to deal with stress and the new ways that I’m learning to help prevent stress eating.

On that note, mom and I bought stuff to make smoothies to try out her new magic bullet that she bought!

Enjoy the rest of the weekend :)

Amy

Internet is down!!

2010-05-05T16:18:00.001-07:00

I just heard from home that the internet is down :( So I won’t be able to post until tomorrow. I’m still currently at the lab, but I don’t have my camera with me so I can’t get the pictures. I’ll have a post up early tomorrow instead!

Well back to work I go (only 20 minutes left of this 13 + hour day!).

Night all!

Amy

An apple a day…

2010-05-04T17:14:00.001-07:00

keeps the doctor away! Or at least is very tasty :)

So, I finally feel a little more in the swing of things, though things are really crazy at the lab right now! After being there until 2am, I dashed home got about 3 hours of sleep and dashed back. At about 2pm this afternoon I came home and crashed for about an hour.

When I woke up, I was starving, having not had lunch, and only a really light breakfast. So I decided I wanted something very filling. Bring on the whole wheat pasta! I’ll admit, I’m still on a huge fan of whole wheat pasta, maybe I’m not cooking it right, but it always takes so long to cook, and it never seems to be as chewy as normal white or the multigrain smart pasta I also buy. However today was different! I probably over cooked it, but it actually tasted really good. I really wanted something hearty and savoury for dinner, so I threw together this lovely macaroni creation:

Bacon salsa macaroni:

Cook the macaroni in a pot and in a frying pan fry up 3 strips of bacon and crumble. In the bacon grease fry up some spinach and onions until the onions are clear and the spinach is wilted. Mix the bacon, spinach onions and pasta together and add 1/2 cup hot salsa. Top with a couple cheese curds and enjoy :) On the side I also fried up some apple slices with a bit of cinnamon, until they were brown. They definitely satisfied my sweet tooth, and were crispy on the outside and gooey on the outside.

Yay for covering all the food groups in one tasty meal!

I’ve update the google spreadsheet for yesterday, and I’ll have the page updated sometime tomorrow!

On that note, I’m off to watch NCIS and get some sleep before my early morning at the lab! Oh and maybe eat my dinner leftovers :P

Amy

Drained

2010-05-03T18:54:00.001-07:00

Have you ever just felt totally mentally and physically drained? Like no matter what you did, even if you slept for 24 hours, you would still feel tired?

That is how the last several days have felt. It’s been a complete blur of lab work, social obligations, and a 6 year anniversary celebration with Matt on Sunday. Plus mashed in there has been training. Blogging has pretty much fallen off the radar, but after some much needed away time from my computer I feel ready to attack again!

Needless to say, lately I’ve felt that my entire life has revolved around my computer, so for the entire weekend, I did not unpack my laptop. Although, I still got important emails on my phone, and had to use a computer at work to check something, the majority of my weekend was completely computer free! It was exactly the break my brain needed.

Anyway starting tomorrow my camera will be back and I’ll begin posting daily recaps again. As for my training, I’ll continue to update the spreadsheet and the page, with what I’m doing. So far however, I feel very comfortable, which is nice because I had worried that I had bitten off more than I could chew. Though so far after week one, it feels manageable!

Sorry for the all text post, but I’m about to dash back to the lab for midnight, then to crawl into my bed for some sleep!

Later!

Amy

do you eat the red ones last?

2010-04-27T18:34:00.001-07:00

Me + a Bike ride= sore legs :(

I ended up not biking outside but hopping on my stationary recumbent bike, since the weather was crappy! The last couple of days I’ve felt a little down in the dumps. I’m not to sure why, but I’m hoping it’s just because I was restless. The bike ride seems to have helped my mood and I feel a little better. Plus my night time snack also brought me some joy! I made some sautéed bananas with a bit of maple almond butter and a scoop of smarties ice cream! I cut a large banana into fairly large chunks then sautéed in a frying pan till golden on both sides. I think it looks better with the toppings! I also made a mug of hot chocolate (recipe to follow), and put it in my favourite mug :) Homemade hot chocolate recipe:

Take your favourite mug and fill it half full with milk and top it up with water, pour it into a pot and add 1-2 tablespoons of dark cocoa powder and 3 tablespoons of sugar of your choice (I used cane sugar). Wait until boiling then pour into your mug and top with marshmallows and enjoy :)

Well tomorrows activity is running, I’m pretty excited to do that, since I haven’t been running in a week or so!

I really hope this sluggishness goes away or it’s going to be a long 10 weeks of training, though at least my productivity at work is going up!

On that note I think it’s bed time and time to dream about that delicious nut butter!!

Amy

Ready, Set….

2010-04-26T16:20:00.001-07:00

BLEND!!!

So I saw this recipe for Maple Almond Butter on Ashley’s blog last week and have been wanting to try it ever since! I followed the recipe almost exactly… except I made 1.5 batches instead of 1 batch. So just a little quickie math! Now for those of you who read my blog, you know that I generally try to use my blender if at all possible. Well this is one nut butter that just won’t work in the blender, I tried it in there for about 10 minutes, and it sounded like it was going to break! But as soon as I popped it into the food processor, it got super smooth and creamy and delicious! This is definitely a winner of a recipe! So far I’ve used it on bread for my soup, and mixed into my overnight oats! I suspect I’ll find more ways to use it in the days to come! So you should defiantly check the recipe out on her blog! But here is a picture of the nuts in the oven…they smelled delish :) and a pic of the finished product in a cute jar I picked up at the dollar store! So as I mentioned yesterday, today I started my triathlon training, and you can check out the newly updated training page! There is a link on there to my training schedule google document, which I suspect will keep changing as I figure out my strengths and weaknesses! Well on that note, I plan to put away the computer, put on my PJ’s and curl up with a cup of hot chocolate and some tv, which is my idea of a great relaxing night, what’s yours?

Amy

Pinball

2010-04-25T17:21:00.001-07:00

So Friday morning I woke up a little earlier and headed to the University pool. I tried the noon swim on Wednesday but the slow lane was so packed it really wasn’t worth it. I really much prefer the morning swims in terms of numbers of people, and the fact that I’m slow, but only time and practice will fix that :)

However, I forgot that there are still exams going on this week. So as I got out of the pool after doing about 500m total I noticed there was a lot of traffic in the change room. This a problem for me, because I’m very shy about how I look. Don’t get me wrong I don’t mind changing with one or two other people who are also changing, but when it’s like 15-20 different girls just passing through to use the washroom I get a little self conscious. Even at this point it still didn’t click at how busy it was going to be, until I stepped out of the change room and entered the hallway which was completely full of people waiting to go into their exams.

I felt like a human pinball, as I tried to make my way up the stairs and to the main door. It was quite the experience that’s for sure, especially for someone like me who is prone to have panic attacks in claustrophobic conditions. But I made it out alive and I breathed the fresh air on my walk to the lab. I also giggled slightly that I didn’t have to write any exams, I guess that’s one of the perks of being a Masters student.

Since I was going swimming I didn’t eat breakfast at home, but I made a quick batch of “overnight oats” minus the overnight part! The Mix:

1/2 cup quick oats
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup mocha greek yogurt

The toppings:

1 banana

This was a really good breakfast and exactly what my body needed :) The rest of the day was pretty crazy, there was Eric stretching his back on a lab bench: Followed by Eric deciding to carve something into my ice bucket:It was a very interesting day! As for the rest of the weekend it involved a lot of lab work…I know it’s such an exciting life I lead! Although I did see How to train your Dragon in 3D and hit up a friends party on Friday night.

Tomorrow expect a post with some interesting snacks and my triathlon training plan! On that note I’m off to relax and watch some TV :)

Night all!

Amy

Looking at you through the glass

2010-04-22T16:01:00.001-07:00

Hey all! Hope you all had a great Thursday. I know I sure did..so last night at about 10pm I was STARVING!!!! Plus did anyone else see the Montreal Hockey game? If so you know why I wanted something bad! But rather than going crazy I turned to old faithful… a delicious bowl of oats! Now I normally would make some from plain oats…but I still a couple packages of instant oats I’m trying to use up, so I made a package of maple and brown sugar instant oats. I topped it with a bit of my homemade cacao bliss (see the recipe page for the recipe) and some raisins. It was the perfect way to get a treat to satisfy my hunger, but was still good for me!

I then finished off some more water before bed, and I slept like a baby! Almost 9 hours :) So this morning I had the same smoothie I made yesterday but I was in such a rush to leave this morning, since Matt wanted to go to tims for coffee, that I didn’t get a picture! I only got a medium coffee with milk, and drank about 1/2 of it…the other half landed on my sweater and pants, it was really special!

Today was such a crazy day that I didn’t really eat a true lunch…I had a handful of almonds, 4 dates, a medium green apple, and 2 slices of bread with a smear of peanut butter. I had originally planned to eat some soup, but I just didn’t feel like it, so I skipped it and ate the other parts of my lunch when I had a chance! But I did get to stare at the dreary weather outside my window all day, I ended up cancelling my bike ride today :(

So I just want to say this….vegetarians beware of the dinner post below!!!

Eric was talking about poutine today, so we made poutine tonight for 3! Now I know I’ve been trying to eat healthy, but this was totally worth the extra calories…and I won’t need a snack tonight.

So to make this I cooked extra crispy McCain super fries according to the package. I fried up some hot dogs and heated up some Saint Hubert's poutine sauce in a pot. I then topped with cheese curds and enjoyed :)

So now that I’ve had my fill of poutine, I won’t be craving it for at least a couple weeks. For the rest of the night, I plan to continue researching a plan for my sprint triathlon! I know I lead such an exciting life :)

This weekend I plan to try some more kitchen experiments including an almond butter recipe, does anyone have any suggestions or recipes they think I should try for either a nut butter or really anything?

Night all!

Amy

Give me a W!

2010-04-21T17:22:00.001-07:00

give me a A

give me a T

give me a E

give me an R

Put it all together and what does it spell…WATER!!

Ok I admit that was really cheesy….but my whole day today was focused on making sure I stayed hydrated…as I mentioned in the coffee post earlier I was sick yesterday. Although I’m sure it was related to the lack of caffeine, but I think the lack of water didn’t help either! So all today I attempted to up the amount of water I consumed. When I woke up this morning before breakfast I drank about 200-300ml of water, then I ate breakfast, which was this delicious smoothie:

The mix:

2 tablespoons whey protein isolate
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 large banana
4 frozen strawberries
1/4 cup raw quick oatmeal
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup orange juice

I packed this up along with my lunch and sipped on it at work. I find that if you blend it long enough you can’t even tell there are oats in there and it makes it really thick! Also at work I sipped on a 600ml bottle of water and got through that and another half of that bottle throughout the day. At lunch I hit the pool for a quick 30minute work out! I manage in 20 minutes to do 400m…which is pretty good for me considering I’m still pretty rusty at this swimming thing. I then came back to the lab and ate this delicious soup: This is the Knorr Red Soup it’s really good, I liked the spicy kick that it had. I also ate it with 2 slices of whole wheat bread with a bit of peanut butter. I’m attempting to up my carb content throughout the day so that’s why I had two slices. The bread and soup was really great, and I chugged on some water as well. Also throughout the afternoon I had a couple of dates and a handful of almonds, which tided me over nicely once my hunger returned.

I find after I exercise I get crazy hungry later in the day, I think it might be a combo of thirst and hunger so the combo of the almonds and water worked to get rid of it. While I was at work, Matt thawed some chicken for tonight’s dinner. We decided it was time to use the crispy chicken old el paso kit. We ended up dividing half for dinner and half for lunch tomorrow :)

I loaded up 2 tortillas with lettuce, spinach, green and yellow peppers and onion, plus cheese and sauce. Sorry for the crappy pictures, I didn’t have my good camera…again I loaded up on the water. After dinner Matt and I tried a Power 90 exercise routine together….wow that’s tough! I thought it might be good to help my knee which has been bothering me for the last week, and I was right, all the kicking and stretching really helped to loosen it up enough to be able to thoroughly stretch it out later. So as a reward I decided I wanted some smarties ice cream :) So in totally today I managed to drink a about 1 and 3/4 liters of water. Which considering I usually get less than 750ml is good! I noticed a big difference today in my energy levels and my hunger level. I wasn’t dead tired or starving after exercising. I also wasn’t running to the water fountain immediately after I got out of the pool. Which is a nice change. So I think tomorrow I’m going to attempt to keep this increase in water up. Has anyone else ever had that issue of not drinking enough water?

Well on that note there is a new bones on that has my name on it. Night all!

Amy

I’m an addict….

2010-04-21T06:50:00.001-07:00

A coffee addict that is! It’s taken me a long time to realize that I drink waay to much coffee in the run of a day! If I think back long and hard to about 3-4 years ago when I was doing field work I would stop drinking coffee for months at a time in the summer then pick up again in the fall. However over the years I’ve moved from the occasional cup during exams to once a day during the week and stopping on weekends…to a full blown I must have coffee at least once a day if not twice every day or I get a headache, and that bothers me!

Since I started losing weight I’ve been trying to make healthy changes in my diet, I’ve gone from cream in my coffee to milk, and from sugar to sweetener…but it’s not enough. I’ve finally realised that the coffee habit needs to go! For one thing, it keeps me fairly dehydrated, I end up not being able to run as far and I feel very sluggish. Also although my body needs coffee it tends to set my heart racing after I drink it, so it’s not a good combo.

So over the next couple of weeks one of my goals is to decrease the amount of coffee I drink, and to actually attempt to eliminate it from my diet… although if I’m really honest with myself I know that I will still drink the occasional cup, I just can’t let it have this strong of a hold on me!

I however yesterday made a very big mistake in trying to cut coffee out of my life… I attempted to go cold turkey, NOT A GOOD IDEA! By 5pm I had a headache, so I drink some tea thinking it might make it go away, I then went babysitting, and the tea didn’t help. By 9 pm I was craving coffee so badly my body was revolting. I felt sick to my stomach, I could barely concentrate, and the headache was intense. I immediately got Matt to take me to a drive through and after about 5-6 sips, I felt slightly better, although I was still a wreck! I went to bed around 10pm last night completely miserable and I finally realized what a hold coffee has on my life.

So cold turkey won’t work for me…but I’ve devised a plan! Starting today I’m watching my caffeine intake and the goal is to make one mug of coffee every morning, and to slowly swap out some of the regular coffee for decaf. Then when it’s mostly decaf, decrease to a cup every 2 days, then every 3 and so on. It’s not going to be an easy process, but it’s something I need to do in order to feel like I’m still moving in a healthy direction.

So this morning when I woke up I put the following mix in my coffee maker:

3 tablespoons regular coffee to 4 cups water. I filled my cup to 3/4 of the way (about 3 cups) and filled the rest with milk. Although this tasted a little weak to me, I think it will do the trick for today (I used to put 4 tablespoons of coffee to 4 cups). So I will make this mix every day for the rest of the week, and then on Sunday decrease to the next level which will be 1tablespoon decaf to 2 tablespoons regular.

Wish me luck, I’m going to need it :)

Amy

Happy Birthday Eric!

2010-04-20T09:47:00.001-07:00

So over the weekend, my “lovely” roommate and lab mate Eric had his birthday. You may remember him from the whittle versus skittle challenge? So for his birthday I told him I would bake him a cake and he could have whatever he wanted on it….so of course he chose something obscene that I can’t post on the blog…but I will show you pictures of the cake mid assembly :)

So I have been really wanting to try a fondant covered cake for quite some time! So I used this as an opportunity to try out a marshmallow fondant recipe! But first lets rewind to the baking of the cake! I decided that I really wanted chocolate cake, so I found a recipe online for a Hershey’s chocolate cake. I followed the recipe pretty much exactly but, I used a dark chocolate cocoa I bought at the bulk barn instead. After baking I let it cool, here is a shot of the dry ingredients and I have a confession to make :(

Confession time!

The first cake I made fell apart! I didn’t let it cool enough so I ended up having to get up in the morning and let it completely cool while I was out shopping! Sometimes being impatient is not worth it!

So as I mentioned above I really wanted to try out marshmallow fondant so I got some marshmallows and some betty Crocker chocolate frosting to act as glue for the fondant.

I used the recipe that I found here. But basically what you do is heat the marshmallows for 45 seconds or so, then mix and add sugar to it. You then knead until smooth. Now let me tell you, at first it doesn’t look like it’s going to work, it’s just a giant crumbly mess! Here I am mid way through kneading. Yes that totally is a shirt from the running room, I went for a run earlier and didn’t really want to change completely :)Doesn’t that look delightful? But then, it slowly starts to form a ball and get really smooth. You then can roll it out with a rolling pin, flipping it over often and then put it on the cake. As you can see in the picture above I also used a bit of food coloring and dyed a portion of it blue. When the cake was cool I turned it onto a cookie sheet lined with tin foil so that the bottom of the cake (the smooth side) was facing up, then I iced it and put the fondant on top. I then had a lot of fun decorating….to bad I can’t show you the final product!

All in all the cake was well received by the all party guest and I’ll leave you with a few photos snapped that night by Sarah, Eric’s Girlfriend… oh and I guess I should wish Eric a happy birthday…

Well on that note, it’s time to get back to work! Oh I updated the recipe page for anyone who is interested…and also expect probably tomorrow night or Thursday a post on my training routine, I’ve been doing a bunch of reading and have some interesting changes planned in the near future :)

Later!

Amy

Comforting veggies

2010-04-18T17:33:00.001-07:00

So after last night, I’m feeling very tired and well generally rundown. So I decided that for dinner tonight I wanted to try something that would be good for me, but very comforting…enter my attempt at a veggie burger! I’ve never been a huge fan of store bought veggie burgers mainly because the ones I’ve had have usually been soy based, and soy and I tend to have some issues. Also alot they taste way to much like a burger to me, and if I wanted something that tasted like a hamburger I would eat a hamburger. Now I know not all veggies burgers are like that, but again, I have major issues with chick peas and soy my body doesn’t really like them so I try to limit intake, although I love hummus! So I decided that I wanted to make a burger that had it’s own unique flavour, and didn’t contain soy or chick peas. Beans tend not to hurt my stomach as much, so I used them and potato as the base for this recipe and complimented it with other things to up the nutrional value and to well make it tasty!

Easy peasy veggie burger recipe:

1/2 can kidney beans
1 large grated potato
6-8 baby carrots grated
2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
4 tablespoons whole wheat pastry flour or more
1 tablespoon steak spice

Combine the potato and carrots. In a separate bowl mash the kidney beans with a potato masher. Once mashed add to the potato and carrots and combine. Add the flax and steak spice. Then add the flour (if still really sticky add more flour). Form into pattys and place on an oiled cookie sheet in the over at 375 for 40-50minutes, or you can fry them for faster cooking, I prefer baking.

I know it' seems weird to add steak spice to a veggie burger recipe, but hear me out. IT’S DELICIOUS! Plus I checked the bottle and it is meat free, it’s just a spice mix, and I love the salty flavour of it, but you really could use anything you want here. One thing I really like about this recipe, is it’s ease and it’s simple ingredients. One thing I don’t like about store bought veggie burgers is the very long ingredient list, If you wanted you could blend this in a food processor if you don’t like seeing the chunks of different veggies or if you wanted a smoother texture. Also in terms of adding the flax seed it gives this a very earthy flavour, so if you aren’t used to the taste I would skip it or add another ingredient such as sunflower seeds or another seed or nut. I made 6 patties totally and I plan to freeze some and just take them out when I need them.

I enjoyed this with a glass of orange guava and mango juice. Totally great combo! This burger was exactly what I needed, now on that note, I’m off to complete some work I need done for tomorrow morning, eat a small slice of cake and get some sleep! I’ll try to get the b-day cake surprise up tomorrow!

Night all :)

Amy

Birthday cake surprise!

2010-04-17T15:53:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the lack of post yesterday…I got busy last night baking a cake! More details on that tomorrow after I’ve unveiled it at tonight’s Party! But on another note, on Thursday night I went out to celebrate a friends birthday, it was a really good time, even though I stayed sober. Unfortunately I don’t have any pics yet, because my friends haven’t posted them..but they will come soon!

On that note, I’m off to watch the rest of the star trek movie (the one from 1996) and get ready. Then it’s partay time!

Later all!

Amy

2 out of 3 ain’t bad

2010-04-15T21:25:00.001-07:00

So, one more recap post and then I’ll be up to date!!!!!! So Wednesday Matt handed in his thesis and we had originally planned to celebrate his graduating by bbqing some steaks. Only neither one of us felt up to it! So instead when I was rooting through our spice drawer trying to see if we had gravy mix I noticed we had a spice package for meat loaf. Of course I immediately had to make it :). The mix is really easy you just take 2 pounds of hamburger, 2 eggs, 2 slices of crumbled and the mix, then press in a pan and cook for an hour.

It was perfect for me, because I didn’t feel like being in the kitchen! So I also put a pot on with potatoes to boil, and then a 1/2 hour in put the carrots on. I love meals like this every once in a while where you just throw pots on the stove and leave. When the potatoes were ready I mashed them with a bit of butter and a lot of milk, it makes them very creamy and keeps the fat content low. I’ve never used anything in mashed potatoes before I met Matt. But when I was making potatoes for Easter dinner, he mentioned that his mom added milk, so we tried it and it turned out delicious! Who needs cream when milk works just as well if not better!

So after an hour I cut the meat loaf and it was pink, but the carrots and potatoes were, so matt of course quoted meatloaf by saying “2 out of 3 ain’t bad”. So back in the oven the meatloaf went, and Matt and I enjoyed the potatoes and carrots. When the meatloaf was ready I quickly dove in!

The great thing about making meatloaf is all the leftovers it gives! We also had left over veggies, and cold/reheated veggies are one of my favourite foods ever. So after the meatloaf, I was feeling semi creative as it’s been awhile since I’d done any kitchen experiments. So I decided it was time to make a homemade larabar recipe. I’ve seen these popping up on a few blogs recently. So I decided to give it a go. It turned out ok, but the consistency is still a bit off, so I want to tweak it a bit before I release the recipe.

However I do want to say that if you want to make larabars at home you need a food processor! I tried to make this in my blender and it just wasn’t chopping up the dates well enough, there was still big chunks! So I ended up scraping the mix out of the blender and into the food processor. I don’t like using my processor all the much because it’s really noisy, and not that fun to clean. But in this case it is totally necessary! This was totally a blender fail!

but look at those nuts and peanut butter don’t they look delish? I was trying to make a peanut butter cookie bar with a bit of chocolate chips, but like I said they need tweaking. Here is the final wrapped product in my freezer…notice the box I have them staged on, it’s the only flat thing in there :)

Well it’s late and I just got home from a friends B-day, I’ll post more on that and tonights supper tomorrow. Night all!

Amy

Easter Shenanigans

2010-04-15T14:27:00.001-07:00

So this post is waaaaay overdue! But it kinda got pushed to the side with all my prep for the conference. So lets step back in time to Easter weekend! On Monday Matt, Eric and I decided it would be a great day to have a nice big Easter dinner, since we were all stuck here doing work. Sarah came over, and well as per usual it was a very interesting time!

Since I had finished my poster up at this point I decided to do most of the cooking. We bought this ridiculous sized ham at the grocery store, and we ended up pairing it with mashed potatoes, corn, carrots…and strawberry shortcake with homemade biscuits for desert!

I’ve never really cooked a ham on my own before so I did a little research, and got some advice from my roommate Eric. We decided to glaze the ham in a thick paste of about 1/2 brown sugar and 1/2 mustard, and topped the ham with a few pineapple slices. I cooked it at 350 for about 2 hours, and glazed it every 15 minutes making sure the ham never got dry. The trick to ensuring the glaze penetrates to to poke a bunch of holes with a fork all the way around so that the glaze gets inside.

I then, while the ham was cooking, whipped up some tea biscuits!

The tea biscuit recipe:

2 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter or margarine
3/4 cup milk

mix the flour, powder, salt and butter together until really crumbly then add the milk and mix then knead about 10-12 times. Then roll the dough out until a 1/2 inch and cut with a biscuit cutter or a glass. Put the biscuits in the 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes or until golden. These were very light and fluffy! We also had potatoes and carrots!

Eric did a lovely Job of carving the turkey, while Sarah proclaimed she needed liquor to put up with Eric and I, oh so true…and Matt avoided the camera :)

We topped the night off with strawberry short cake :)

All in all it was a great Easter away from home…but I really am looking forward to my second Easter dinner with my mom when I go to visit in a couple weeks! On that note, I’m off to eat dinner, catch ya later!

Amy

Oh say can you see!!

2010-04-14T16:05:00.001-07:00

So I am now officially back in Canada with…1L of duty free alcohol :)

The conference was amazing! I met so many different people, and got a lot of feedback and suggestions for my project. It ran pretty much everyday from 8:30am until 11pm, but it was totally worth it. Since the conference ended on noon on Sunday and we didn’t fly out until Monday morning, we took the afternoon and did some touristy stuff. The first stop was the zoo, where we got to see all sorts of animals, although I must say it was super packed and with so many people the animals didn’t look that happy. Though we looked happy so I guess that’s a plus!

I also enjoyed the zoo experience with a conference friend :)

After the zoo, we were completely starving, so we stopped at a cafe and grabbed a bite to eat. My salad was amazingly delicious and the one below it was my supervisors and hers was delicious as well!

After lunch we hopped on the subway and headed to the National art gallery. Then after that we parted ways and Eric, Ryan and I headed to the Museum of National History. I took this artistic shot of the boys while we rested our tired feet :)Then I got trapped by the dinosaur!

After the museum, we set out to get a picture in front of the white house! Only when we got there, it was blocked off so we ended up having to wait for about 20minutes till it was opened again. It was totally worth it.

By the time we got back to the hotel (after eating ice cream for supper, we were ready for bed!

All in all in was a really good trip, however I really let my eating habits slide. When I got back I weighed myself and I put on about 2 pounds. It’s amazing how one week can really cause a weight gain. However I’m really not concerned, this Monday I start my triathlon training program, and because of the increase in exercise I really need to watch what I eat. I’ve found lately that every time I work out, I have been sluggish afterwards, unless I’ve been careful about what I eat.

So this weekend I am going to be researching and plotting out some new meals and snacks to avoid that post workout slump, and to keep my body in good working order. I guess I really wanted to tell you all that I had sort of fallen off the healthy eating train, but I’m back on in full force! All that bad food made my stomach hurt and really messed up my entire body. Since I’ve been back I’ve loaded up on the veggies and I feel much better, so I know that this lifestyle I’ve chosen is the one for me.

Well on that note, expect a couple more posts recapping the events leading up to the trip, including a fun Easter dinner :)

Night all!

Amy

Singing in the rain!!

2010-04-09T21:06:00.001-07:00

Hello! So it’s a been awhile, but the conference has been running from 8:30am to 11pm everyday! I’m having such a great time, and I’m learning so many different things. So, it’s pretty late here but I figure I’d post a quickie :) So the first night here we went to a great cafe and we each ordered an appetizer to share.

The plate in the front is my app, mozzarella and tomato! We had bruschetta, nachos and calamari! It was really good.

So then last night, we had a couple hours so we decided to walk around Washington a bit and see the sites. However, we ended up getting caught in a thunder and lightening storm. So we ended up getting pizza and beer, and basically running the whole way back to the bed and breakfast, and I was completely soaked from head to toe!

Do you like my wet bangs? My lab mate was super happy walking in the rain, I however wasn’t that happy only because of the lightening! At least the pizza box held together in the down pour.

Well on that note, I’m off to bed, we have another full day of conference tomorrow, then a half day on Sunday followed by some sight seeing!

Amy

Capital City!

2010-04-07T12:26:00.001-07:00

So, I totally didn’t post a weekend recap. That may have to wait! Right now I am currently in a bed and breakfast in Washington D.C.! The conference starts in a couple hours, so I’m chilling and relaxing after the day of travel.

So updates might be few and far between, but I promise I’ll take lots of pictures :)

Amy

Totally NUTS!!

2010-04-04T19:11:00.001-07:00

So as I mentioned today I had plans to go completely nuts! As in make another delicious nut butter. I actually had planned to make 2, but I forgot the stores were closed today, and we were almost out of oil and I didn’t have another glass jar. So I just stuck with one…my take on homemade nutella!

Ok, so first let me say, as a kid I enjoyed nutella until I was about 8 or 9, and then once I was diagnosed with a mild milk allergy I wasn’t able to enjoy it because the skim milk powder in it really irritated my stomach to the point it wasn’t worth trying it. I remember in University though, being super happy that other companies were coming out with versions that had modified milk ingredients and those didn’t irritate me. I know right, it’s kinda weird to be happy a fake version of something is available!

So when I decided I wanted to attempt to make nutella the first thing I needed to figure out was how to avoid the skim milk powder and still get the authentic, albeit with less sugar, taste. So I researched online for vegan substitutes and found out that there are two main ones you can use: Soy milk powder, and coconut milk powder. I then hit up my local bulk barn and was really excited to see that they sell soy milk powder right next to the skim milk powder! I would have preferred to use the coconut milk powder, but alas I couldn’t find it. The problem I find with soy is it is really processed, and in large amounts, like if I drink a litre a day which at one point I was,it upsets my lovely stomach, but in this recipe because there isn’t that much and since I no longer drink soy, my stomach is doing just fine with this baby!

Another thing against nutella is that it really is chalk full of sugar! If you look on the label it is the first ingredient, so I tried to reduce that and added more hazelnuts, but removed their skins since the skins are bitter and require you to add more sugar to counteract the taste. So here it is, my take on nutella!

Amy’s Homemade Nutella recipe

2 cups raw hazelnuts
1/3 cup soy milk powder
approx 1/4 cup sugar or sweetener of your choice
3 tablespoons maple syrup or sweetener of your choice
1/4-1/2 oil of your choice (I use canola)

So the first thing you do is spread the hazelnuts out on a baking sheet and roast at 400 for about 20-30 minutes until the skins turn black. Here are the hazelnuts mid roasting:

Once the skins are black they are really easy to remove just rub a paper towel over the nuts on the tray, or rub between your finger and they will come off. I probably removed about 75% of the skins, you don’t need to be perfect!

Then while still warm I popped them into my blender and turned it on. By roasting the nuts you intensify the flavour and make it easier to grind and get a nut butter. I had this on for about 3-5minutes before it was liquidy! To make sure everything gets blended you need to keep scraping down the sides, but turn the blender off for this, or you will loose a part of your spatula in the mixture and have to dig it out! Yup I totally did that :)

I then kept grinding until smooth, and added the cocoa and soy milk powder and blended. It was starting to get thick so I added a bit of oil to thin it out, then added the sugar. I used 1/4 cup and 3 tablespoons maple syrup, and next time I think I’ll use all maple syrup as this will help cut back the amount of oil needed. I then added a bit more oil to keep it liquid, and blended for about another 2-3 minutes. I then scooped this into a jar, and put it in the fridge!

There you have it, a nice homemade nutella recipe! the maple syrup pictured I’ll discuss in my weekend recap post tomorrow, but it’s local and I picked it up at the farmers market on the weekend.

So that’s it for me, today was a nice relaxing cleaning day, though I did some editing on my poster. Both Eric and I have been working non-stop getting ready for the conference and when he got home tonight he may have twisted my rubber arm into eating some pumpkin pie and ice cream :)

Luckily I didn’t skip my run today, plus it’s Easter. Also I’ve been really hungry today, but considering over the last few days I haven’t wanted to eat, I’ll take it I was beginning to worry that I was getting sick, but I think it was just the long hours and stress. Like I’ve said before it all evens out. I did really enjoy watching epic wash his down with a beer :)Well on that note I’m off to rustle something up in the kitchen as this was a couple hours ago and my tummy is rumbling! See you tomorrow with a long weekend recap :)

Amy

I am slowly going crazy....

2010-04-03T18:44:00.000-07:00

1,2,3,4,5,6 switch!

So this is going to be really quick, because all of my photos are on my camera at home, and it's really late and I'm at the library!

BUT I FINISHED MY POSTER!!!! I just hit the send button to my supervisor, so tomorrow I have a fun nutty recipe to try out, some shopping to do to get ready for Washington, oh and one of my all time favorite food recipes (It's one of Matt's favorite too) that I whipped up tonight for supper!

Now I'm just hanging out at the library on campus waiting for matt to finish in 10min, then it's off to relax.

Catch ya tomorrow :)

Amy

Pain in the butt

2010-04-02T19:59:00.001-07:00

So what happens when you take a girl who runs and put her on a bike for the first time in a year and a half? You get a girl with a very sore behind! But it was a totally good time, first let me back up a bit.

The last few days have been really crazy, in fact I still have about 4-6 hours of work to do before this poster will be ready for the printers! However, after a long days work, and a quickie trip to the grocery store before it was closed for the weekend I was off to our biology graduate student society Wine and Cheese. Although it was run by the grad students, we invited all the staff and faculty in the department. I must say we had a great turn out and it was a really fun night.

One of the girls on our society really knows her cheeses, so her and another person went to the farmers market and picked out a selection of delicious cheeses for all of us to try. Everyone was told to bring their favourite wine to pair with the cheeses. I snapped some pictures of the set up. Unfortunately I forgot my good camera at home, so these are from my blackberry.

The amazing cheese table:A picture of my favourite cheese….Guinness cheese! The all important wine table:

The event was really fun, and ended up going back to someone's house afterwards, so by the time I rolled into my place it was 3:30am! I must say ended up drinking a lot more than I realized and was really grateful to matt who had a delicious slice of pizza waiting for me when I got home :)

By the time I got to bed is was close to 4am and I ended up sleeping in until about noon. I then got dressed and headed to work for a couple hours. I then came home around 2pm to eat and prep for my bike ride. Today I decided to make stuffed French toast, since I was kinda hung-over and wasn’t sure how long the bike ride would be and wanted to make sure I had enough fuel in my belly. One of the great things about bike riding is that your stomach doesn’t jostle up and down as much, so I can handle milk products, and heavier things closer to when I work out. I got the recipe from Mae’s blog, so check it out there! For the stuffing I used cream cheese and peanut butter.

look at that gooey filling:

To be honest I liked this, but it was not cooked enough, the filling didn’t get warm in the middle, so next time I’ll cook it longer and also add less peanut butter it was a bit over the top for my liking.

So after eating this loveliness my friend Allan came over to do a tune up on my bike that I haven’t used in forever. I was actually pretty worried that I would have something seriously wrong with my bike, but there wasn’t! After pumping up the tires, fixing the seat to the right height (I had it down way too low), and lubricating the chain we were ready to go!

So I thought at first that we would just do a few km’s so I could get used to it, but it was such a nice day, and we got in a groove so we ended up doing 15kms total! The pace was fairly slow as I was trying to get used to it, and lets face it I wasn’t at my peak physically today. But it was good, and Allan took me on a trail I hadn’t really been on before so it was nice to see a different view of the city! Since I don’t have any way to track my mileage on my bike yet, I put the route into trails.com and figure it out that way.

When I got back, I was pretty wiped! So I chilled with a large glass of water and waited for Matt to get home. When he got home I discovered he bought one of my favourite foods…CHEESE CURDS:

I may have wanted to crawl in the bag when I took this picture :)

I snacked on these babies while we made dinner. By the time dinner was ready it was 7:30pm so these helped me keep the hunger at bay! So since it was such a nice day out, we decided to bbq! Matt picked up some ribs from our local meat market, Victory meat market. I rubbed some chipotle spice into them, and then Matt put them on the bbq under indirect heat for and hour and a half, brushing bbq sauce on them every 15min. While he was grilling I prepped a mixture of red potatoes, onions, and red and orange peppers, with a clove of garlic and lots of pepper. I also made some cornbread, using the same mix I used last time. However the batter sat around for awhile so the texture was a bit off, but it still tasted good!

So I ended up eating only 1 of those 2 pieces of ribs. It was a really good dinner, only the ribs were on the tough side as they were side ribs and not the baby backs we normally cook. I think next time we’ll cook them longer to make them more tender but I loved the rub and sauce combo!

So either tomorrow or the next day, I have a new nut butter recipe that I will be attempting so look out for that in the next post:) On that note I’m heading to bed, my butt is sore, and I feel pretty achy, plus I have a long day ahead of me. A good night’s sleep should take away the aches! On that note, night!

Amy

Coffee Fail!

2010-03-31T15:46:00.001-07:00

So today and I suspect tomorrow as well are going to be hellish for me. So I warn you in advance that there may not be a post tomorrow and tonight's will be brief, BUT stay tuned to the weekend where I have some fun relaxing recipes to try out, and I plan to do some updating on this site to make it more my style:)

So the other day while working, Matt offered to buy me a coffee on his way into his office. So since I had been working like a mad women I decided it would be a nice break to walk across campus to his office and pick it up. Well I get there and the Tim Hortons cup had a ring under it, which meant it had a leak somewhere. Not one to waste coffee, especially when I need a caffeine fix, I wrapped a piece of paper towel around it and headed back to my lab. I managed to drink I’d say a quarter of it and was going to dump it into my mug at the lab and finish it. But as soon as I set it down I noticed the leak was bigger, and when I went to pick it up the bottom fell out and the coffee dumped on the floor :( This is totally a Tim Hortons cup fail!

Needless to say I’m happy that I keep a bottle of instant coffee in my desk :) So I just spent the last 2 hours under a microscope and my eyes are tired! But I WILL GET THIS POSTER DONE TONIGHT! That way I will be able to relax at the Wine and Cheese the biology graduate student society is having. I’m the sports rep along with one other girl, which is how I ended up playing intramural ball hockey. It should be a great night and I’ll get some great cheese pictures!

On that note, my poster is saying “AMY GET BACK TO WORK ON ME!!” So I guess I should listen.

Amy

She’s so smooth

2010-03-30T17:02:00.001-07:00

So continuing the trend this week, I’ve been pulling some late nights and well the whole weekend working on my poster and lab work. But I’m happy to report it’s shaping up really well. One thing that being busy is allowing me to do is to work on a problem I usually have, and that is eating takeout nonstop. When I get busy I tend to be of the mindset, that I could spend 30 minutes cooking or I can take those 30 minutes and do something else, and I’ll just grab takeout. But as I’ve mentioned before I’m really trying to eat healthier and honestly making something really does relax me.

Also since I’ve been slowly increasing the amount that I’m exercising I’ve noticed that I really need to watch what I’m eating to make sure my body is being fuelled correctly. So one thing I’ve been doing lately is becoming a lot more SMOOTH. As in, I’ve revamping my usual smoothie and beefing up it’s contents! Since Saturday, I’ve made 3 smoothies one a day, and am experimenting with different flavour combos and nutrition combos to see which one my body likes.

So for me a smoothie is a really quick and easy breakfast or great for either pre or post workout. Depending on when I’m consuming it, will determine what I want in it. Now keep in mind I’m not an expert on this subject, though I have done some research I also rely on my body to tell me what it needs.

If I’m eating a smoothie for breakfast it really needs the following components:

source of calcium (usually milk, yogurt, or cottage cheese)
high in protein to keep me full (peanut butter, coconut butter, cottage cheese, yogurt)
Lots of veggies or Fruit to bulk it up (banana, strawberries, spinach)
Liquid, to make it drinkable or able to eat with a spoon (orange juice, grape juice, or water).

Having a high amount of protein in my breakfast really makes a difference! If I have a decent amount I find I don’t really need a morning snack, but if I’ve run out of milk or cottage cheese, I find I don’t stay full as long. So this morning for breakfast I tried out a new combo, after hearing about green monsters for awhile and the benefits of including darker veggies, I decided it was time to add some spinach back into my diet. So this mornings breakfast smoothie was my take on a green monster!

The mix:

Preblend 1/2 cup cottage cheese with 1/2 cup orange juice still smooth then add 1 and 1/2 cups spinach and blend again
8 whole frozen strawberries
1/2 + a little bit more orange juice
2 teaspoons dark cocoa powder

So what did I think of this combo? Is was actually pretty good! I couldn’t taste the spinach at all, and the orange juice and chocolate powder gave it a nice chocolate-orange taste. If I closed my eyes it was almost like I was eating a liquid terry’s chocolate orange…only a much healthier version! By preblending the cottage cheese and spinach I didn’t get any weird white or green lumps. Plus because I make this in my magic bullet and the spinach take up a lot of room, you pretty much have to mix it up first in order to fit everything in. Now I didn’t add milk to this today, because there was cottage cheese in their already, and we were running really low on milk. So I might add some next time to make it a bit creamier. But over all I was pretty satisfied.

So now that I’ve covered breakfast, what if I’m looking at using this as a pre-workout snack? Because most of my workouts are based around running, dairy products are not my friend! It ends up sloshing around in my stomach and I feel really sick, so I eliminate them, and also try to keep this more carb heavy so that it can digest faster. Now I try to leave at least an hour in between when I eat and when I exercise, but everyone is different, and some people need about 2 hours. As long as it’s nothing really dense, I am ok with an hour, but like I said everyone is different.

So if I’m designing a smoothie for preworkout I try to keep it much lighter, and more on the fruit and veggie side, and in these smoothies I often include 1/4-1/2 raw oats that I grind really fine. The key to a preworkout snack is to give me a good carb source, so I don’t need to fuel during the exercise session. So I pack it full of fruit and veggies, and lose bulky protein, however, I do sometimes add a bit of peanut butter, as my body can handle that. So Sunday night I played ball hockey at 9pm, and since I had an early dinner around 7pm I knew I would need a snack to hold me over, enter my next smoothie recipe!

The mix:

2 tablespoons peanut butter
1 and 1/2 tablespoons homemade cacao bliss
1 banana
10 whole frozen strawberries
1 cup orange juice

So one of the great things about this was it was high in carbs…. and not so full of stuff that would weigh me down. This also tasted like a peanut butter cup, it was great! Now post workout things are again different, after a workout within the first hour you want to try and consume protein so that your body has something to use to repair itself. So after a workout, like Monday Night I made the following.

The Mix:

2 tablespoons peanut butter
2 cups spinach
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
1 cup milk
1 banana
4 frozen whole strawberries

The only issue I had with this mix is that I missed my yogurt or cottage cheese! I was out of both!

Well there you have it! When the road of life gets bumpy you need to smooth it out! Ok I admit that was a terrible, but what do you expect, my brian is totally zapped! On that note it’s off to work I go for about and hour, then home to my bed, which I can hear calling my name :)

Amy

Meals recap and a trip to Relish!

2010-03-28T19:59:00.001-07:00

So as promised here is what I’ve been eating over the last couple of days. On thursday morning I didn’t feel like oatmeal, so I ended up raiding our cereal stash and going with a bowl of honey nut cheerios. There is about a serving in that bowl with a bit more milk since I like it milky! Then for lunch I ended up eating the soup I had planned for Wednesday! It was really good!

Now I had planned on making a nice supper at home, but it turned out that one of our favourite, not so healthy restaurants, was having a burger special the peaked Mat’s interest…A TRIPPLE BACON BISON BURGER, or heart attack on a bun I guess. I had originally planned to get a veggie burger, but at the last minute decided why not, I hadn’t eaten that much so I’ll get the bison burger, with their side of the day, sweet potato planks. Look at that bacon!

Now I really love the concept behind this restaurant, and you can check out my previous review here. However I wasn’t that happy with today’s meal. Don’t get me wrong the burger was delicious; but about half way through the burger I noticed it was pink! I’ve never had a bison burger before, but I assume that means it was undercooked, Matt’s burger wasn’t pink either. So that was a bummer! The picture is kinda blurry but you can make out the pinkness of the burger :(

Also they were pretty stingy on the fries. Which I guess is a blessing in disguise, I ate less calories so I guess that wasn’t to bad. We got this as take out, so I didn’t have the opportunity to ask if the burger was undercooked, but either way I ate the rest of it and it was still really good. The bison burger had a very spicy peppery taste to it, and the 3 different kinds of bacon gave it a greasy but delicious flavour. I think next time I’ll definitely be getting the veggie burger, though I’m still holding out home that they’ll bring in salads or bunless options! Because this is so calorie dense, I can’t really say I’ll be eating there that often, it’s more a special once in a while treat. I really love the atmosphere of the downtown Fredericton location, I would have to say a bit more than the Oromocto one. Because it’s mostly take out the staff is loud, and friendly and the decor is very funky! They have a couple tables and a few chairs, but it was packed so we ate at school before going to work.

Well on that note I’m off to bed, I was some pretty sweet snack and meal ideas to share with you tomorrow!

Amy

Body Signals

2010-03-27T16:22:00.001-07:00

After reading Emily’s post on her health today I decided it was time to post on something I have been trying to do the last couple of months ->listen to the signals my body tells me. One thing that I think contributed to my weight gain was the fact that I lost touch with what my body actually needed. I know I learned this the hard way when I first attempted to learn to run back in August. I pushed way to hard to fast, and ended up in a lot of pain, and not able to run again until October. This is why I am a strong believer in that when you want to start an activity the best way to get into it is with someone that knows what they are doing. Whether it’s trying yoga for the first time, or learning to run, do aerobics or whatever your exercise of choice may be. Going with someone who is experienced can help prevent injuries. The only reason I am able to run 5-7 km today is because I bit the bullet and signed up for a learn to run course at the running room. It was in this course that I learned I didn’t have a clue what I was doing! For one, my run was too fast, and my walk breaks were way to slow.

I remember after the first class saying to my instructor “wow I didn’t realize that this could be fun, I was always in pain before”. Once I learned the stretches that worked for my body and started listening to the aches and signals it was giving me things got more enjoyable. I was the heaviest person in my class, and most of the time I was one of the slowest, but through keeping with it, I’ve lost weight, and my speed has greatly improved! Where I used to be at the back of the class, now I’m more in the middle in my 5km class.

So for those of you who read my blog on a regular basis you may have noticed about 2 weeks ago I started swimming with a friend at the gym about 2 times a week. The reason for this is that this summer I’ve decided that the next thing I would like to accomplish is to complete a sprint triathlon! Now I don’t plan on being the fastest, I really just want to complete it. The only issue with this is, well I haven’t biked in over a year, and my swimming is special and not in a good way. So when faced with this, I did the only thing I know to do and that is turn to someone for help. I hit the net and found a potential training program, and talked to 2 different friends, one for advice on how to improve my swim stroke and one on my lack of bike knowledge. I’m only posting about this now, because I really wasn’t sure in the beginning if I would be able to complete this goal or not.

As it stands I know that this isn’t going to be easy. But it’s looking more and more doable. However, one thing I really need to do is to tune into my body and fuel it correctly. Hence why I’ve been increasing the amount of post workout protein, and loading up on veggies like no tomorrow.

Also I’m really trying to be careful in the injury department. Like today for example, my knee has been on the achy side for the past week. Well it’s not really my knee it’s actually the spot on the back of my leg behind the knee, it was really bothering me after swimming. So last night I took a whirlpool bath and iced it for about 10 minutes, and decided to cancel the early morning run I had planned for today.

That seems to be a good decision on my part as my leg feels better and I can now extend it almost completely. It still feels tight, but I think after one more good nights sleep and another session of icing it should be good to go tomorrow.

I still am amazed that I’m even talking about doing a triathlon, if you had told me back in September that I would be considering doing this just 6 months later I would have laughed in your face! I have a very long way to go before I reach my goal weight and my healthy living goals, but it’s nice to see the difference that even 6 short months has made, if I keep this up imagine where I’ll be at in 6 months time! I guess the point I’m trying to make is that my goal and the goal of this blog is to show that even simple steps can make a big difference in how we feel everyday. I’m not perfect, and there are still times were I lapse back into my old eating habits, but to me each day is a new day, just because I eat to much one day doesn’t mean it needs to continue.

I believe that it’s this shift in my attitude that has helped me get this far. I longer say I’m dieting, I’m more eating healthy, it’s not a diet, it’s something I choose to do because I feel healthier and have more energy doing it. Also it’s not a diet because I’m not deprived of anything. It’s quality over quantity. I’m learning I can have a cookie, or a small piece of cake, I just can’t have 12 cookies or the whole cake, and to tell you the truth I don’t want or need 12 cookies any more! By moving away from the diet mindset I’ve found something that actually works, and I feel like for once I’m setting myself up for success not failure.

So I was going to post my meals from the last 2 days…but I left my camera card at home and it has most of the pictures on it, so I’ll just show you what I had for breakfast and lunch yesterday, and post dinner and the recipe for it tomorrow. Because I went swimming in the morning I packed a lunch that I could eat at my desk and that consisted of a large navel orange and a slice of bread with peanut butter. Before going swimming I also had half a banana, and used the other half on my sandwich for lunch. I try not to eat anything super heavy before heading to the pool but I woke up hungry and wanted to have something in my stomach. I also drank 2 glasses of water before swimming, but was still thirsty when I got out, so I had a green tea and a bottle of water to go with breakfast. For lunch we have lab meetings on Friday, which means whoever presents brings treats for everyone. I try to limit myself, but to make sure I don’t overeat, I usually pack a lighter lunch, so today I went with a peanut butter and banana sandwich. I went fairly light on the pb today, and added a ton of banana which is a fun way to bump up the volume of your sandwich without adding a lot of calories, plus bananas are delicious!I also had packed a 1/2 banana that I had in my fridge but I ended up not eating it. So I’ll post dinner tomorrow, and you know what my snacks were from my post last night. On that note I’m getting back to my data analysis which is making my head want to explode! I know, I know I lead such an exciting life, I’m at the library at 8:30pm on a Saturday night, but at least Matt is here and he just brought me a coffee :) So back to work I go!

Amy

Twisted bananas!

2010-03-26T19:09:00.001-07:00

So it’s amazing to me how whenever I plan to have a nice relaxing night, it ends up getting way from me! But not this time, at least not entirely! After my morning swim (I completed 525m today, yay!) I went to work, but my muscles felt really tight and heavy. I think it is in part due to lack of sleep over the last couple of days.

But I still managed to get work done, now if only the thermostat in the lab would cooperate. In the morning it was freezing and this afternoon it went up to 29! Needless to say the heat made me feel kind of dizzy and tired, so I left around 3:30 and game home and napped for about an hour. When I woke up I still felt achy everywhere, but I dragged myself out of bed and made supper with matt, I’ll have a post up with my meals from today and yesterday tomorrow sometime, when I decide I need a break from working on my poster. I made supper on the salty side as I thought I might not be getting enough salt. I felt slightly better and decided to whip up a couple things to eat for tonight, one mainly for the boys and one for me.

The first one was a batch of pretzels that contained no butter or oil and are only 160 calories total per soft pretzel! I found this recipe for soda pretzels and altered it only slightly, instead of the honey I use corn syrup since I didn’t have honey, and I made my own buttermilk from 1 cup 2% milk mixed with 1 tablespoon lemon juice which I let sit at room temperature until it curdled. I followed the recipe the rest of the way including doing the bath in water and baking soda. I then sprinkled half with salt and the other half with cinnamon sugar.

The cinnamon ones are by far my favourite, these were good and the nutritional information wasn’t that bad! The one thing about these pretzels is that they really do taste much better once they have cooled, I didn’t like them warm at all!

So the second thing I made tonight was solely for me, and I made it after a nice soak in our whirlpool tub. It was supposed to be a version of Gina’s banana soft serve…but the banana (1 used 1 large) wasn’t frozen enough so what ended up happening was something amazing! Instead of a creamy soft serve this had a pudding like consistency so I added 1 tablespoon cocoa powder and 2 tablespoons milk and kept whipping. Yes I love my magic bullet, and yes I did make this in our bedroom the boys are playing in the living room which is next to the kitchen and I didn’t want it to be too loud for them.

This turned out amazing!!!! The consistency was almost identical to pudding, only there is no added sugar and artificial ingredients, this is just banana, chocolate and a bit of milk! I like it nice and bitter but if you like it sweeter you can add sugar or honey or some other sweetener to taste.

This is defiantly going on my list of easy healthy snacks! It is definitely a keeper and super easy!

Well on that note, I’m really tired and still achy so I think I need to get to bed, or at least curl up with an episode of criminal minds! Night :)

Amy

Interruptions

2010-03-25T19:00:00.001-07:00

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post to bring you this important announcement…

This night-time snack that I just made kicks major butt! Inspired by the fact that I still have that homemade cacao bliss that turned out amazing, I decided to try out a recipe for melty goo and a banana I saw on Ashley’s blog awhile ago.

So I melted 1 tablespoon of homemade cacao bliss and 1 tablespoon crunchy peanut butter and put it in the microwave for about 45 seconds.

Doesn’t that look so delicious?!?! I then stirred to mix and added a large banana that I had chopped into pieces. Wow this is good, and because of the peanut butter and cacao helps me sneak some more protein into my diet :)

Well tonight's post is going to me a quickie, I feel really out of it, and I have to be at the pool for 8am tomorrow! But I will have a very full post up tomorrow night as I enjoy the night alone while the boys play poker.

Off to dreamland I go!

Amy

Remember Me

2010-03-24T18:44:00.001-07:00

So over the last week, I have been pretty stressed. Between attempting to up my workouts, and prepping for a conference in a couple weeks, I’ve been running raged! But after last nights kitchen experiment success I felt great, I find cooking and creating things really helps relax me! Also it’s always a plus when things turn out to be edible. I find that when I’m in the kitchen or out pounding pavement exercising, I’m able to forget about everything and truly relax.

Because I’ve been group running lately, I haven’t had the relaxation there since I usually talk about work, but after my Monday solo run where I pumped up the tunes and let the music flow through I felt great! One thing I’ve been attempting recently is to find other ways to de-stress. Before I made a decision in October to start eating healthy and be healthy, I was a hard core binge eater! Whenever I got stressed there was a chocolate bar in one had and probably a brownie or ice cream in the other. I’m really not joking, Matt used to have to tell me to stop eating.

I would eat and eat and eat, then feel really guilty and sick, so then I’d not eat so much the next couple of days and the cycle would continue. This is one of the reasons I decided it was time to get healthy. So as a chronic binge eater I had a very tough time resisting chocolate whenever I was stressed. However I noticed that once I started running the cravings for chocolate started to decrease. Whenever I was stressed I would lace up my sneakers and go for a walk or a run. Suddenly I had a new outlet to get rid of my stress, one that didn’t add pounds to my waist. Then when I started this blog I noticed that it helped me as well. I’ve always enjoyed cooking, but there is something fun about cooking, and posing food that really helps me. Anyways this was totally off topic, but I just wanted to share with you my struggles with eating, as I know there are many other people out there who have the same problem I do.

Anyway back to last night, I made a small bowl of oats to try out my new homemade cacao bliss!

The Mix:

1/4 cup oats
1/2 milk+water
2 tablespoons cottage cheese added at the end

The toppings:

1 tablespoon peanut butter
drizzles of cacao bliss

IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!! I love how well this recipe turned out. It was very melty and delicious and the protein from the milk and cottage cheese helped keep me full.

In the morning I made the exact same bowl…only everything was doubled! So I won’t post the mix again, but I will show you a picture from this morning, though I get a sense of déjà vu!

Can you tell I really like the homemade cacao bliss! Anyway I went swimming at 8am and managed to swim about 400m all freestyle. Considering my swimming really isn’t that great I was happy with that. I have another pool date on Friday so hopefully I’ll keep improving. Since I swam this morning and left my lunch at hope I ended up buying lunch today which is ok because it was stew day!

Oh and I ate that delightful bar as well! I only ate about 3/4 of the stew, as I still was kinda full from breakfast which I ate after swimming. I then went back to work to finish off the day before meeting my friend Jenna for a movie/supper date! We were going to see remember me, which I have to say was really great! I love that type of movie where it keeps you guessing all the way to the end. For supper we hit up the food court and got some Chinese food. So this was pretty calorie rich, but I believe that everything evens out, so I eat out today and eat a bit more, then tomorrow I’ll eat a bit less and less calories so it’s all about balance! At the movie I had 4 small cream eggs, which is good for me considering a couple months ago I would have eaten the whole bag! This was only 160 calories.

So one thing the movie had me thinking about was what will people remember about me, what is their first impression when they meet me? Anyways I’m feeling much better and a lot more relaxed, it's amazing what dinner and a movie with a good friend can do! on that note I’m off to bed. I plan to get an about page up in the next couple of weeks.

Amy

Curry Cravings

2010-03-23T18:00:00.001-07:00

So after an exhausting day of lab work yesterday I was excited that today all I had planned was a bunch of computer work. Even though it was mentally challenging, I was starting to miss the long days at the computer where you actually get to ANALYSE your data! Mind you after sitting there for 3-4 days I’ll want to be back at the bench doing lab work, so it’s all relative.

So one thing that I realized I haven’t been doing recently after I exercise is making sure that I consume adequate protein after I exercise, and for that matter during the day in general. Anyways, so last night I decided that the snack had to be protein rich, and that for the next little while I’m going to attempt to eat more protein at night which has 2 main benefits: one I’ll get the recommended amount and two the protein should keep me full, and not have me waking up for food. So for snack last night I had a 1/2 cup cottage cheese with a 1/2 banana. I nuked this slightly in the microwave, but be careful when microwaving cottage cheese as if you heat it to much you’ll get major separation and it will be really liquid, which is ok if you enjoy that, which I do.

So as you can see by the soupiness I really over nuked these, but it still tasted good, so that’s a plus! A negative is that I just grabbed a quick breakfast from tims and didn’t take a picture :(. But I did snap my lunch which was this lovely carrot coriander soup. I really liked that texture and test of it, though I did find it a little gritty, but it was great pared with a left over corn muffin from last nights supper. So speaking of supper tonights supper satisfied a craving I’ve had for awhile! CURRY! So tonight for dinner I made everything curry themed.

So the first thing I did was chop up some potatoes into really small chunks and tossed them with a bit of oil and some curry to coat them. I then popped them in the oven, here they are pre-oven insertion.

While those were cooking I was whipping up the veggies for the stirfry, cooking the chicken in oil and curry, and making a quick flat bread to fry. While the bread was resting for 10 minutes, I finished chopping the veggies then after cooking the chicken and carrots for a bit tossed in the rest.

While the veggies were simmering I rolled the bread out thin and fried it until golden on both sides. The recipe was really simple, but very bland. I wanted to make a bland bread because I just wanted something to soak up the curry spice, but if I make this again it needs some spice majorly!

Flat quick bread:

1 and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 egg
1 and 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 clove garlic (or use garlic powder I didn’t have any)
about 1/2 cup water

mix everything together except the water and slowly add water until it forms a nice ball. Then cover and let rest for 10minutes. Then divide into 6 small balls roll thin and fry until golden on each side.

So all in all it was a good supper, and I agree with Matt the bread needed more flavour. But for a first try, it wasn’t bad. So after supper I went to work for about 30minutes, then headed up to the Bulk Barn to buy supplies for tonight's experiment, as well as some nuts that we needed. So after hearing many people in the blog world rave about cacao bliss and not being able to find it here (though I still have one store to check) I was excited to find out that Mae has come up with a homemade version! I followed the basic recipe but made a few modifications of my own since I didn’t have agave.

So I went to the bulk barn to buy the main ingredient…coconut. So essentially what I did was take 2 cups of shredded coconut and blend in my blended, when the volume decreased a lot I added another cup of coconut. I slowly started increasing the speed on the blender, until it was at max, then let it go scraping down the sides every few minutes. At first I was a little worried, it look about 15minutes for this to even start to look like it might work. I then blended for another 10 minutes and noticed that it was steaming when I opened it to scrape it down. But after 25 minutes I had creamy smooth coconut butter! I then added 4 tablespoons of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and blended for another 5 minutes. I then let it cool for 5 minutes and added 1 tablespoon of dark cocoa powder and 1 tablespoon sugar and a pinch of salt. I then blended for 2 minutes and poured it into a jar. You could add the cocoa powder and sugar earlier I just added it later because the color and taste was off.

Oh man does this taste delicious! I’m pretty excited to have this as a topping for my oatmeal, or for various other things, including tonight's snack! Anyways my belly is rumbling so it’s off to eat then bed, as I have to be at the pool early tomorrow.

Amy

Energizer Bunny

2010-03-22T19:21:00.001-07:00

Do you ever feel like some days your the energizer bunny and you keep on going, and going, and going? Well today was definitely one of those days! I went into school at 9am, and although I came home for supper I went back to the lab for the night shift and just got home at 10pm! I got a lot accomplished though, and I was able to multitask. While things were running at the lab, I came home and made dinner with Matt, then went back set something else up, changed and went for a 5km run. Which by the way I completed in 34 minutes! Which is 3min and 55 seconds faster then the 5km race I ran on January 1st. So I’m definitely seeing some improvement. Ok so before I get into the details of the food I ate on this crazy day, lets rewind to my snack from last night. This is positively one of my favourite things to eat ever!

I just love the contrast of the sharp cheese (we had medium cheddar and jalapeno havarti) with the crunchy celery. Matt and I split this plate.

Again I had some issues sleeping last night, but I managed to drag myself out of bed this morning, but didn’t really feel much in the mood for oatmeal. So I grabbed a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with some milk. I took the banana with me to work, but ended up not eating it. For lunch I had a nice large navel orange and a ham and cheese with lettuce sandwich. It was just the right amount of food and kept me full until just before dinner.I was actually pretty excited for my supper break tonight. It was the first night in a while that I actually got to be creative in the kitchen! Although I only really had an hour, I was able to make this dish work! For Dinner we had glazed chicken with jalapeno havarti, corn bread and a big mess of salad!

Chicken Glaze/marinade:

2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 and 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar
3 tablespoons warm water

mix the glaze to dissolve the sugar, then put 2 chicken breasts into the glaze mixture and let sit for about 5 minutes, or longer if you want.

So to cut down on prep time the first thing I did was mix up the corn bread and shove it in muffin tins into the pre-heated oven (picture below). While mixing the batter the chicken was marinating, and then I seared it in a pan on both sides for about 3-4 minutes a side. I poured a little of the the marinade into the pan as well.

I then dumped the chicken and the liquid from the pan along with the rest of the marinade into a pie dish and finished cooking in the oven. About 5 min before it was done I topped with crumbled havarti and cooked until bubbly. So by searing the chicken with the marinade I made a nice glazed coating on the chicken because of the sugar so this had a really juicy texture to it. So here you can see the chicken cooking in the pie dish in the oven along with the muffin cornbreads: As for the cornbread oh my was this mix good! At about 160 calories per muffin bread, it’s not to shabby!

I was a little worried that since this was a mix that the texture would be off! But these actually turned out really well! Also with only 15-20 minutes of cook time it was totally doable. Overall dinner took me around 25-30 minutes to prepare, and that included chopping the ingredients for the salad. So I had about 30 minutes to enjoy then I headed back to the lab. Although only one cornbread is shown on my plate, I went back for a second once since I new I would be running later that night.

So after dinner as I said I ended up back at the lab then quickly changed and went for a run. When I got back it was getting pretty late and I was hungry, luckily my friend Jen stopped by with 2 kinds of cookies, the lifestyle latte, and the friendly digestives. I had 2 of each along with a large green tea from Timmies :)Wow, I must say I am very happy to have my good camera back, you can really notice the difference between the cell phone pictures (the ones at work) and the supper pictures which were taken on my camera. Well I’m hungry and it’s almost bedtime! So I’m off for a quick snack then dreamland, before heading in for another long day tomorrow!

Amy

Fruit-tastic!

2010-03-21T18:34:00.001-07:00

So after a fun night bowling, Matt and I decided to sleep in. Only I wish I could say it was a restful night, it really wasn’t. I kept waking up and coughing and needing water. I think I was really dehydrated, because when I woke up this morning and pumped some electrolytes into me I felt much better. So for breakfast/lunch this morning I didn’t feel like anything heavy so I decided to make something I haven’t enjoyed since my childhood, Egg in the hole! Essentially it’s a piece of bread buttered on both sides with a hole cut out in which you put an egg and fry it on both sides. I wanted a lot of fruit as well so I had a whole large navel orange and a banana topped with a little bit of low calorie pancake syrup. Matt and I then had a bunch of errands to run, including some lab work for me. I also had to go to futureshop because my power cord for my laptop stopped working a couple days ago. Luckily I have an extended warranty on my laptop so they replaced the power cord right away! So I knew that I had to go back to the lab tonight, and Matt and I wanted to do a ton of laundry so I decided it was a great night to break out one of the meal kits I bought in the states. So on the menu tonight was mashed potatoes with chicken gravy and biscuits on top!I actually really liked the way this turned out, though I was a little nervous when I saw the contents of the kit: So essentially you just mix up the potatoes, put the chicken and gravy mix on top and add the biscuit mix. Then you cook for about 35 minutes. So while this was coking Matt and I were cleaning and folding laundry, so it was nice not to have to be chained to the stove.Doesn’t it look delicious! Because there wasn’t a whole lot of veggies in this, ok none except the potato, I paired this with some frozen green beans and carrots. Again following my normal half the plate should be veggies routine. The only downside of this is that it was fairly calorie dense, about 380 calories per serving, so something like that. But the whole pan was only about 4-5 servings so it wasn’t that bad. I had about 1 and 1/2 I think.

So after supper I headed to the lab, and now am currently about to head to bed watching Gene Simmons family Jewels! Night!

Amy

The dos and don’ts of a sunny Saturday

2010-03-20T19:22:00.001-07:00

Do…get up early before you have to go running at 1pm, but Don’t only eat and hour and a half before. Do make a breakfast that is carb based, such as this awesome oatmeal below, but Don’t add milk to it as running with milk in your stomach is not fun! The mix:

1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup milk (bad for my stomach!)
1/2 cup water
1/2 banana

The toppings:

1/2 banana
1/2 navel orange
2 tablespoons peanut butter

I cooked these on the stove today adding the milk and water and banana first then once boiling and after a bit of banana mashing I added the oats and cooked until done. I love layering oats an toppings it’s a great way to get the different tastes the whole way through!

After letting the oats digest I headed out for what was supposed to be a 5km run followed by laps in the pool. This brings me to my next point Do check to make sure the lap swim isn’t canceled because of a swim meet! As Do enjoy a nice 5km run on a nice sunny day but Don’t overdress or you’ll end up needed a lot of extra water and have to take more walk breaks! Also Don’t run around lunchtime because then you end up skipping a meal and wolfing down the next and forgetting to take pictures of it! Sorry about that, but it was just take out Chinese food as Matt and I were both tired this afternoon after grocery shopping. But I’m happy to report we now have food in the apartment, so I will have some great food pictures next week.

To cap off this lovely day we ended up going Cosmic bowling in support of my friends pipe band. It was really fun! Instead of just doing normal stings of bowling in the first string you had a bingo card and you had to fill out every square. The squares ranged from get a strike, to knock the 2 end pins down. The next string was called funky bowling and for each frame you had to bowl a certain way. First it was normal, then it was with your other hand, then granny style, then twirling 3 times, and then a variety of other different crazy positions several of which are shown in the following pictures: Eric and Sarah

Matt Me Jon

So it was really fun and I was glad we ended up going! Well it’s getting late and I need to get some sleep, so it’s off to read/bed I go!

Amy

The luck of the Irish!

2010-03-20T06:55:00.001-07:00

So I know that this post is about 2 days late, but it’s been a very hectic week! My roommate Eric and I leave for a conference in 2 and a half weeks, so I’ve been trying to get some work done so that I can have a killer poster to present! Now I also have some great news, my memory card has been found! So the pictures will be better quality tomorrow, however the pictures in this post are from my cell phone so sorry for the poor quality. But now it’s time to get to the great day that I had starting with this great green drink at the grad house! I paired this drink called “Get Lucky Spritzer” with a great tomato and brie sandwich from the happy baker, which is a local bakery. The grad house carries their sandwiches as they try to carry local products.I had 2 of the spritzers and this sandwich and enjoyed a great lunch break with some great friends at a sunny table outside on the deck of the grad house. After lunch I headed back to work and put in a couple more hours before we headed back to the grad house to listen to some great live music from Josh Osborne. It was Irish themed with a ton of Newfoundland songs. We stayed for about an hour until the music ended. We headed back to our apartment to do some sunny day BBQing. Matt had on his Civil Engineering Hockey Jersey he bought several years ago. I snapped a picture without his green beer: I brought the beer out, and Matt had a great time at the BBQ in the sunshine! Matt enjoyed his green coloured beer in a glass that I bought him a couple years ago- his beer boots! I bought it for him, after we saw the movie Beer Fest. They are great for parties and well drinking holidays. Although it was a sunny day, it was still on the chilly side and Eric’s Girlfriend Sarah was cold so she warmed her hands on the steamy food fresh off the BBQ Look at that great BBQed food! We grilled up some hot Italian sausages and Eric creation for a side: breakfast potatoes with onion pepper, and a clove of garlic in each pouch. It turned out really well. I also teamed this up with a side salad to beef up the veggie content. While Matt was happy about the green beer, Eric was doing a jig in the kitchen with the 151 rum I bought in the states. It was a really great supper except I think we all drank a little to much to early, so around 7pm I decided it was time to switch to coffee… although this did have a little bit of vodka and cocoa powder in it! I enjoyed the swirl pattern the food colouring made! Well that’s it for me, I feel like I’m starting to get caught up now! Well it’s time to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, for my exercise date today.

Amy

D is for…

2010-03-19T15:24:00.001-07:00

Dipped cheesecake!

D is also for Danielle

who’s birthday was yesterday

D is also for DOH! which is the word I shouted when I realized no bake cheesecake and I can’t get along.

Anyway it was my friend Danielles b-day yesterday, so I decided that I needed to bake her something sweet and chocolatey for her b-day. However, I couldn’t post it last night, as she happens to read my blog on a regular basis :) As I mentioned above I had originally planned to make this with no-bake cheesecake, but when I tried the recipe it didn’t taste or look right, so I ran out and bought a prepared cheesecake and went to work.

So here is the recipe for Chocolate Dipped cheesecake!

Ingredients:

1 frozen prepared cheesecake (I used chocolate swirl from Sobeys)
semi-sweet chocolate for dipping
toothpicks
white chocolate for writing.

So what I did was take the frozen cheesecake and remove it from it’s packing I then, cut it up into little squares as shown below.I then put the plate in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes to make sure the cheesecake was frozen solid! I then melted the chocolate chips on low heat in a pot as it started to thicken I thinned it out with a bit of vegetable oil about 1 tablespoon at a time, you can also use paraffin wax if you want a shiny glossy look I just didn’t have any. I stuck a toothpick into each of the cheesecake squares and dipped it in the chocolate and stuck it back in the freezer to solidify. I did these in batches of 5 or 6 to make sure the cheesecake stayed frozen. Once they were set I took a bunch out and melted some white chocolate chips and using a toothpick spelled out Danielle’s name.

So there you have it, a really quick super easy dessert that everyone will love! I took the extras to my lab meeting today and the plate was empty when I left.

Well it’s Friday night and my plans involve a good book and some catching up on TV shows! My friend Jen and I have a 5km run followed by a swim in the pool planned for tomorrow, so I need to rest up for that. I also suspect I might have another saint paddy’s day post up tonight as well :)

Amy

Happy Saint Paddy’s Day!

2010-03-18T05:06:00.001-07:00

First off…a message from my camera memory card:

Amy in her whirl wind couple of days some how misplaced me, and I am currently in a dark place where she can’t find me. So for the next few days she is going to be using her cell phone camera until she can find me on the weekend.

So I’m back now and I have a ton of stuff to blog! So Last night I decided that I needed a special desert to celebrate Saint Paddy’s day with, so I decided that it would be a good time to Make some Guinness Brownies with Guinness chocolate butter cream icing! I adapted the brownies from a recipe I found on about.com. One major change that I made to the recipe was to use flax eggs instead of real eggs. Growing up my mom had an egg allergy and now in the department one of the professors has an allergy but loves Guinness, so I thought it would be nice to make something that she could enjoy as well. I was kinda worried about the substitution since anyone who eats flax knows it has an earthy flavour to it. But there was so much chocolate in these that you couldn’t tell. Also one thing I didn’t take into account was how much longer they needed to cook! It ended up taking over 60 minutes to bake in the oven. But they turned out great in the end!

Eggless Guinness Brownie Recipe:

In small bowl:

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (i used 1/3 dark and 1/2 light)
1/4 teaspoon salt

In sauce pan:

6 tablespoons unsalted room temperature butter, cut into cubes
8 ounces dark bittersweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup white chocolate chips

In Large Bowl:

4 tablespoons flax meal with 12 tablespoons hot water (let thicken 2min and blend well)
1 cup superfine or granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

add at the end:

1 and 1/4 cup Guinness Beer

Preheat oven to 375. Mix the small bowl ingredients together, then take then saucepan ingredients and heat on low until all the chocolate is melted and well blended, then set aside. In the large bowl beat the flax eggs and sugar together for 2-3 minutes, it will be very tacky! Then add the saucepan ingredients and mix until well incorporated. Next add the small bowl ingredients, but be careful! Because the texture of flax eggs is different you may want to add some of the beer here to allow it to mix together. Once mixed add the rest of the beer, and mix well the batter will be runny. Next pour the batter into a 9 x 13 pan lined with parchment or tinfoil (I used parchment). Take the reserved chocolate chips and drop all over the top of the batter. Cook in oven for about 60 min or until a toothpick inserted comes out almost clean, then let cool completely before serving, if not the brownies will be kinda mushy. Mine ended up sitting overnight and turned out perfectly.

While the brownies are cooking prepare the

Guinness chocolate butter cream frosting:

1/2 cup butter softened (I used baking margarine since it’s all I had)

3 tablespoons Guinness

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/4 cup cocoa

3 tablespoons milk or cream

dash of salt (if not using salted butter)

2 cups powdered sugar

Cream butter, salt, cocoa, vanilla, milk and Guinness together until smooth, then slowly add the sugar and beat with a mixer on high until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes). This can then be put in the fridge until needed.

All in all, these brownies tasted delightful, and I’m happy to report over 2 days I only had 3 squares, my roommates, friends, and people in the department helped with that! They went over really well so this is definitely a keeper!

I’m off to get ready for school, but I promise there will be more on Saint Paddy’s day later today :)

Amy

Still Alive

2010-03-16T18:58:00.001-07:00

So it has been a rough couple of days for me, filled with long days at the lab and quick meals! So first off I want to start with where I went for dinner on Friday night. Matt and I checked out this great Restaurant called Relish. Which now has two locations one in Fredericton and one in Oromocto. Since we both wanted to try a burger called the Base Commander that was only available in Oromocto, we headed there for dinner on Friday night.

The Oromocto location is quite a bit different then the Fredericton one. In Fredericton the premise is a take out restaurant that has a few tables to sit down at. On the other hand the Oromocto location has liquor service and is a sit down Restaurant. One thing that I love about this place is that they put a new twist on your basic burger! True to form, Matt got the beef burger and I got the turkey burger. Every burger has a beet relish type sauce on the bottom, and with toppings like havarti and blue cheese available in their different combos you can’t go wrong!

Tonight I got the base commander with sweet potato fries and Matt and I split a creamy goat cheese fry dipping sauce.

Now as you can tell from the picture this is not a very healthy eating friendly meal! This is why I’ve really only tried this restaurant twice before. However, one positive thing is that since they are still in their development stages, I sent a comment asking them to look at some healthier options and gave a suggestion or two :)

I really liked this burger, and I’m excited to try their veggie burger next which looks equally as good! One thing that I loved about the burger is just all the different flavours that combine in your mouth. You can really taste all the components! Also the fries were super crispy just the way I liked them! Plus their menu is reasonably priced so it makes it a great place to grab a bite to eat. I’m still undecided which style of restaurant I prefer, the sit down or takeout, but I’m leaning more towards the takeout, since we had to wait almost an hour to get a table.

Anyways I have much more to update but it’s off to bed, expect a saint Patrick's day brownie recipe from me tomorrow :)

Tired Amy

2010-03-15T18:23:00.000-07:00

So It's about 10:30pm here and I'm still at the lab :( So blogging just isn't going to happen tonight. I'll be back tomorrow with a full post of the last couple of days! Wish me luck in getting out of here soon, I can hear my bed calling me from here!

Do not Idle

2010-03-14T15:19:00.001-07:00

So I’ll have a post up later tonight/tomorrow morning on the weekend food! But I wanted to have a separate post especially for the brewery tour I went on last night with Matt and a bunch of people from the grad house. Every year for the last couple of years the grad house has done a brewery tour at a local microbrewery Picaroons. Matt and I have been on this tour before and although I am not really a huge beer drinker I do enjoy several of their different kinds of beer. Matt, the avid beer drinker that he is, was very excited to go on this tour.

We started the night out with a pint at the grad house and then took cabs to the brewery. While we were waiting outside for everyone else to arrive, I saw this sign on the building and knew I needed to take a picture of it!

Needless to say, can you tell that it was going to be a joke filled tour? So we started out the tour by first going through the whole process of how they make their beer from grinding the grain to adding the yeast and then to bottling. One thing I never realized was how many different kinds of grain are used and how the different roasting amounts give it different flavours.

We tried some of the very dark grain, and it had a very distinct coffee flavour. One thing that I also though was really neat about this brewery is that they use the same yeast over and over again. The particular strain that they use has been alive for over 300 years! Here you can see a picture of one of the large batches of beer that is fermenting with the layer of yeast on top.

So after the tour, we got to the next part of the visit which was trying 6 different kinds of beer!

Since I have a very low alcohol tolerance, I ended up drinking about half of each one and handing the rest to Matt. Though I did finish the blonde and the maple cream on my own! I must say of all their beers one of my favourites is their seasonal maple cream, and this year it is really difficult to find it in the liquor stores as it’s selling out really quickly. But luckily they had some in stock to buy, so Matt bought a 4-pack for us to split!

Yes the 4-pack was in my purse! After the tour we went back to the grad house and indulged in a couple more pints of beer before heading to eat/home for the night. Since we were going to be heading downtown, I put the beer in my large purse.

As you can see from my face in the picture it was a really great night, and I loved every moment of the tour!

Well I’m off to do some yoga and make some sports drink, I’ll have another post up for your reading pleasure later :)

Amy

Soup for the soul

2010-03-12T16:59:00.001-08:00

So as promised this morning here is a giant update of yesterday and the rest of today! So yesterday morning, I new that it would be a long day and I would be up late so I decided to sleep in until around 9:30am. Then I rolled out of bed and quickly showered. Since I was heading in later than I normally do I decided to take my oats with me! I packed a container with dry oats, and purchased some milk and a muffin on my way in. I mixed it up and put it in the microwave at work! The lovely morning glory muffin:The mix:

1/2 cup oats
2 tablespoons flax meal
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1 small container apple sauce

I crumbled half the muffin on top and saved the other half (which you saw on my oats in this mornings post) I really liked the combo of apple and muffin.

Around noon Matt and I decided to go to lunch, and we decided to leave campus for lunch. We ended up going to quizno’s for lunch. One thing I really like about this restaurant is that they have a smaller size sandwich. Which is great for someone like me who can’t usually eat a whole sandwich, or wants soup with it! I ended up getting the turkey bacon club, and a bowl of broccoli cheese soup. I ate about half of each, so it was a good lunch! Since Matt was staying late at work I was on my own for supper! I finished up my work at the lab, and decided to head to the grocery store for an idea I had for supper! I wanted to make pumpkin coconut curry soup. I have had a curry craving for weeks, but haven’t really had a chance to buy curry powder and my favourite curry mix has been sold out at the grocery store. All in all the soup tasted great, and I ended up with leftovers to take to the lab meeting today.

Amy’s Coconut Pumpkin Curry Soup:

1 and 1/2 cup canned pumpkin
2 and 1/2 cup water
1 cup milk
1/2 cup coconut milk (I reconstituted creamed coconut for this)
Curry powder to taste (I used 1 and 1/2 tablespoons)

Mix all ingredients in a pot and whisk to combine. Bring to a boil, and stir. Then reduce heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Then serve and top with a bit of shredded coconut! Depending on your tastes you may like to add more or less liquid.

I loved the contrast of sweet and spicy that the coconut pumpkin and curry had. I didn’t find the curry very over powering, and the flavours complimented each other very well. I paired this with a whole wheat keiser bun, and the bread was great for dipping in the thick soup!

Well that’s it for me today! I’ll blog on supper in tomorrow’s post. I’m off to catch up on some NCIS with Matt, then it’s off to bed to make up for the fact that today between an 8am swim, breakfast, left over soup for lunch, and a 20 minute run, I was bone tired! I only got about 5 hours sleep last night so I have some major catching up to do.

Amy

Breakfast of Champions!

2010-03-12T05:36:00.000-08:00

So this is just going to be a quickie update, and when I get home from work this afternoon, I'll post the pictures from yesterday including a recipe for pumpkin coconut curry soup! It was very delicious!

One of the reasons that I didn't have time to post last night is that by the time I got home around 1am I need to immediately go to bed in order to wake up and meet a friend at the pool for 8am. I rolled out of bed at 7am so I got about 5-6hours of sleep, which is on the low side for me. But the swim really helped to wake me up! Before I left my apartment I made sure to eat a Clif bar, so that I at least had some energy!

I quickly showered and then went to the lab completely starving, so I made oatmeal in the microwave and ate it at my desk! I usually keep a small carton of milk around here so I just bring the oatmeal in a container and add the liquid and then the toppings here.
The Mix:
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup water

The topings:
1/2 a morning glory muffin!

I missed having apple sauce or something in the oats. I had originally planned to bring pumpkin with me, but ended up forgetting it at home. However with the muffin, this was a nice breakfast although a little low on the protein side. But since I have a run planned for tonight, this carb based breakfast should help replenish my fuel stores before the run!

Well I'm off to caffinate!

Amy

Bubbles and Jelly

2010-03-10T19:37:00.001-08:00

So Eric, Matt and I ended up hanging out in our living room last night, attempting to compile a list of songs we would like to play. We also broke into this guy, which I bought at the duty free shop in the states.We mixed this guy with some sugar-free grape Kool-Aid and it was very good! I had about one glass throughout the night. When I woke up the next morning, I knew that it would be a smoothie in a bowl day! I really love the bubbles throughout!

The mix:

1/2 cup 0% Greek Yogurt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup strawberry banana juice
1 and 1/2 teaspoon cocoa
20 frozen strawberry pieces

I put all this into my magic bullet, blended and then poured the mixture into a bowl and topped with 1/2 a cherry pie lara bar. Look at those bubbles!

Half way through and there was still lots of bubbles!

After pretty much licking the bowl clean, I made sandwiches for Matt and I for lunch. I did a repeat of yesterday and did peppercorn turkey with cheese, lettuce and a bit of mayo.

I ended up not needing any snacks today since breakfast was so filling and I new I needed to eat dinner early since I was going for a run at 6:30pm, and need about an hour and a half to digest.

So since today was quite a busy day in the lab for me, I ended up just buying supper at the Student Union Building with Matt. They were running a special this week for a grilled ruban with fries so I decided to give that a go!This was actually pretty good, the sourkraut and swiss cheese added a nice touch to the smoky meat. In Hindsight I am very glad I ate this, and a brownie, before my run, because we ended up going much faster and much farther than I had originally thought we were going to!

I got to the Running Room at 6:30pm, decked out in my new running gear ready to go. We started it out and I originally thought we were going to do 2 sets of 10 and 1 set of 5 with a 1 min walk between each. Only apparently I was wrong, so I set out fast for the first 2 10s then realized that we had just turned around and had about another 20 minutes to get back to the running room! So in total we ended up running and walking a total of 39 minutes.

It was a really great workout, and my muscles will definitely be sore in the am! I was still not feeling that hungry after the run, but I was getting a headache, so I ended up getting a half coffee/ half chocolate on my way back to the lab to finish up some work.

I still had that headache, so I ended up eating the other half of the larabar and some grape sugar-free kool-aid spiked with a bit of salt. It did the trick and by the time I went to bed the headache was gone!

Well, I'm off to work, and then a couple other things tonight so expect another post from me either late tonight or early tomorrow!

Amy

The End of Whittle versus Skittle my Middle!

2010-03-10T19:14:00.001-08:00

So Alas the 30 day challenge has come to an end! For more info on how this whole thing started see the Whittle tab and this post here.

So It’s time now to post the before an after pictures. I’ll update how many reps I ended up doing but I managed to push my plank to over 80 seconds, and one major thing I noticed is that all my pants got way to big! The pants I’m wearing in the before picture that were tight are now really loose, that I’m going to be getting rid of them soon :)

So lets do a comparison –> I did a 30 whittle my middle challenge and ended up looking like this:

Before:

After:

As you can see, I firmed up my middle very nicely, and managed to get rid of the fold on the side almost completely!

Now on to my roommate Eric who I quote “Did it for the 15 free bags of skittles I bought him”

Before:

After:

So that’s it! Having Eric do something ridiculous was a great motivator for me, and I’ll let you guys be the judge of who won. All in all, I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made in my journey to eating healthy and losing weight. Now the next question is what new crazy contest will we do! Well in answer to that we’re currently bouncing around ideas, but if you have any suggestions let me know!

Well that’s it for me, I’ll have the usual daily update tomorrow.

Amy

Back to the grad student grind

2010-03-09T18:35:00.001-08:00

So after a good night sleep I was feeling really refreshed and ready for the day! But before I get to the food pics from today, I wanted to revisit a couple points from my trip!

First off, we stayed at a really nice hotel in Kittery, Microtel. This hotel was about 10 minutes away from the outlets and was really nice! Here is my awesome mom sitting on the window seat. and a picture of my bed: The only problem with this hotel is that we order pizza from Dominos and they ended up sending the wrong pizza! By the time it got there I was so hungry I immediately dug in, and so did my mom! It really was a great trip, and I enjoyed spending time with my mom, we don’t often get an opportunity to spend much time together since I’m away at school most of the time.

Although I had a great trip, I’m really glad to be back home and unpacked! Over the next little while I’ll be showing some of the great things that I bought in the states, starting with a couple things today.

So this morning for breakfast I, surprise surprise, made oatmeal! But after reading Ashley's blog decided to give applesauce another try, but I mixed it in before cooking. It turned out really well! The mix:

1/2 cup oats
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1 single serving container unsweetened apple sauce.

The toppings:

unsweetened coconut

I cooked this in the microwave for 90 seconds, mixing half way through. Then I made lunches for Matt and I, peppercorn turkey with cheese and lettuce and a bit of mayo!

I also packed a kiwi, and this lovely bar I bought from the LIndt outlet in Kittery to share with people at work!

I really enjoyed this bar! It started out with the sweet taste of dark chocolate, then faded into a nice heat. The more I ate the spicier it got, this was definitely great and anyone that tried it enjoyed it.

After work today, I came home and Matt and I made supper for us and Eric. On the menu tonight this taco kit I bought in the states:

I really enjoyed this, but it was a little on the high side for calories, so I only had one, and then paired it with a greek yogurt I bought!

I topped this with a bit of maple nut oatmeal crisp. I really liked this, and am kinda sad that I can’t find this anywhere around here. Although there was sugar in it, it didn’t taste overly sweet, and the fruit was a nice addition.

Well I still have more to post, including the results of whittle my middle and skittle my middle, but that will have to wait till tomorrow! I’m off to bed and have a full day ahead of me tomorrow.

Amy

Hitting the ground running

2010-03-08T17:42:00.001-08:00

So I’m back in Fredericton after a 2 hour drive to Houlton Maine, a couple hours shopping and a 1 hour drive back to Fredericton. My mom and I then picked up my brother for dinner before she set out on the road to head back to her house about 2 hours away. Once she left I started to unpack and decided that I need to test out my new running tights and sports bra, so I decided to go for a run with 2 sets of 10 min and 1 min walk, plus another 5 minutes. I must say, it really makes quite a difference to run with gear that fits! My old gear was really loose, but with the proper fitting gear, I felt like I had a bit more energy, and as a bonus, my thighs weren’t rubbing!

All and all it was a great trip! I’ll get back to my regular daily blogging tomorrow night, and I have some great products to review in the coming week! One hint, I bought a new yogurt in the states!

So as I mentioned in my brief post yesterday mom and I went to a great restaurant called the ground round. We settled into our hotel around 5pm yesterday and I was really tired from driving so I set out to look on google maps for restaurants close to the Econolodge we were staying at (I’ll have the hotel reviews up tomorrow, along with some fun pics taken on the trip!). I found the ground round, and most of the reviews were positive so we decided to check it out.

We got there are everyone was really friendly, it wasn’t very busy so we were seated right away and given some popcorn to munch on. I ended up deciding that I wanted to try their gorgonzola steak, which was a 7 ounce striploin, in a marinade and topped with gorgonzola cheese and crispy onions. I also got a side of run skinned mashed potatoes and a side of corn.

I must say the steak was cooked to perfection! I used to work at a steak house through high school and developed a taste for medium rare steak, but so often it’s never cooked correctly. This time however the center was warm and it was still a deep pink/red color. I really enjoyed the combo of the juicy steak with the sharp cheese, also the mashed potatoes were great! Also you know one thing that I really enjoyed about Maine? Most restaurants have unsweetened iced tea on their menu! It’s one of my favourite drinks of all time, but next to no restaurants serve it in Canada, most serve the sugar version and I really find that it takes away from the taste of the tea! Anyways I’m sorry for the short post, but I am ready for bed! I’ll be back tomorrow with a very large update!

Amy

Chocolate fixes all :)

2010-03-07T16:07:00.000-08:00

So I figured I would check in with an update on our trip! We drove from Freeport into Kittery yesterday and spent the whole day outlet shopping! We ended up then going to Portsmouth New Hampshire to go shopping at the walmart since there is no tax there!

Mistake #1 on my part was not drinking enough water, Mistake #2 was driving around supper time in the setting sun. The whole time we were at walmart I felt kinda dizzy. When we got back to the car I down half a bottle of water and part of a lara bar that I just bought (they are so much cheaper down in the states). After that I felt good enough to drive back to our hotel in York, but I still felt kinda shaky.

We made it back to the hotel but were way to tired to go out to eat, so we ended up ordering pizza. Mistake #3 was not getting them to read back the order, so the pizza we got was wrong, but they sent us the correct one so we ended up with extra! But we capped the night off with a couple tootsie roll minis :)

Anyways I'll have pictures of the pizza and the hotels and a review of a great restaurant we ate at tonight.

Right now mom and I are relaxing with one of our favorite purchases....lindor chocolate from the Lindt outlet :) Chocolate can fix all, or at least makes me very happy!

Amy

Naked Meals

2010-03-05T17:59:00.001-08:00

So I have arrived safely in Freeport! My mom and I were so tired after the long drive that we ended up just heading straight to the hotel room and streaming some shows off my laptop. We woke up this morning totally refreshed, and grabbed some of the complimentary continental breakfast, which was great, and headed into downtown Freeport to do some outlet shopping! We’ve found some great deals, I’ll post pictures on that when I get back. We then headed into South Portland to check out the mall, we ended up detouring to find a pharmacy, I got to check out more of the town. Then we headed back to Freeport to our lovely hotel room at the econo lodge. I must say I am very impressed with this hotel, our room was very nice, and the prices are very reasonable. see that blanket on the bed next to the wall? It’s a blanket my mom made, I have a blue one on my bed at home, and it’s one of the most warm and comfy blankets I have ever owned!

So around 7pm we were getting hungry so we decided to check out a local restaurant Bucks Naked BBQ. So there are two parts to what I have to say about this place, in terms of food it was great! However, in terms of service it was terrible!

So first off the food was great! I ordered the pulled pork and brisket with braised greens and a salad with balsamic vinegar.

The brisket was perfectly cooked and you could see the smoke ring, and the pulled pork was delicious. One thing I really like about this restaurant is that they cook everything without sauce, so naked, then they have a basket with different sauces. I tried two of them a blueberry BBQ sauce, and their House BBQ which had a nice spicy kick. The meat and veggies were great. The corn bread was a little on the dry side, but overall good. Also they serve unsweetened iced tea, which made me even happier!

Although the food was great, I wasn’t very impressed with the service. We got there and were told that the wait would be 30-35minutes. That was totally fine with us since we weren’t in any real hurry, so they gave us a pager to wait. Then 2 people came in after us and they gave them a pager as well. Then about 2 minutes later they took those 2 people’s pager away and sat them at a vacant table. They got there after us and then sat them before us, I call that strike one. Then I saw a hostess carry 4 water glasses in one hand, they were full and she had her fingers in them! I’m sorry even if your hand are clean, there are still germs on them and I do not want to be drinking that, that’s strike two. Luckily there was no real strike 3, although the waitress wasn’t super friendly.

So overall, the food made the experience worth it, but the service brought it down a level.

Anyways we’re back in the hotel completely full from supper. We’re off to do some shopping in Kittery tomorrow, so that is going to be quite a busy day. I’m really enjoying this trip so far! Well off to relax before tomorrow.

Amy