A Day in The Life

In an effort to stay on track with my attempt to exercise daily and eat a balanced diet, I’ve decided to share a few days with you here-and-there. I don’t plan to bore you with this everyday although it will help hold me accountable. I am not even sure anyone reads this blog but I pretend someone out there gives a damn, which makes me think about my actions. Whatever works!
Today started off well with a peaceful and productive morning, always a plus in my book. Elli, our black lab, woke me at the usual 5:25 this morning to take her out. Here is what the rest of my day usually looks like…

Wednesday (Happy Hump Day!)

5:25 Woke up and took Elli out
5:40 Fed Elli and prepped dinner, cut up sweet potatoes
6:00 Bundled up and hit the pavement for a 2 mile run
6:20 Stretched and checked The Nest fitness board
6:30 Got ready for work, made coffee, sent Jeff out the door
7:20 Left for work
8:00 My workday begins….
4:30 Head home
5:30 Take Elli out and start dinner
6:00 Catch up with Jeff over dinner
7:00 Blogging & Facebook updates
8:00 Watch TV (usually recorded from previous night), read and relax
9:30 *yawn* get ready for bed

I try my best to plan meals for the week and here is what’s in store for today.

B: regular coffee with unsweetened soymilk
vanilla soy yogurt with blueberries & raspberries
S: carrots with roasted red pepper hummus
L: Amy’s organic black bean and vegetable burrito
S: apple with natural peanut butter
D: vegan Boca burgers with sweet potato fries

Usually I stick with the “plan” but depending on my mood I may switch it up a bit.

Turns out that I wasn’t hungry for a morning snack so I skipped the carrots and hummus. This was my first of Amy’s burritos and I brought taco sauce a long just incase it was dry. I didn’t need it because it taste great plain. I kept cutting my bites smaller and smaller to make it last longer. During my lunch break I caught up with my current read: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. My friend, who is also very much into nutrition, let me borrow it. I’ll let you know how it is once I’m finished. I am juggling two books right now so it may be awhile.

Breakfast


Lunch


Snack


Dinner. I had some salad to use up so I threw that in too.


This post has ended up longer than expected. Hope you have a wonderful evening!

My Angel

I am so excited to share the joy of giving! I adopted a Salvation Army “angel” child this year to provide Christmas gifts. I found out today that my child is a 3-month-old little girl and feel very fortunate to be able to help. I can’t wait to go shopping for little tiny clothes and infant toys. I have to set a limit though since I can see myself going overboard with her gifts. Once I purchase everything I will be sure to share.

I encourage everyone to help out the less fortunate this year. Time is tough these days for everyone but every little bit counts.

Update

The past several months just flew by! I was so busy with work that the entire summer seems like a blur. It’s time to dust off this blog.

If you’re wondering what I have been up to lately, here goes…

June through August I was crazy at work with our bank conversion and also training for my second half-marathon. In October I ran the race in my now-home town of Baltimore. What a lovely race, there was so much support from city residence. My darling husband was out cheering me on along the way. I was pleasantly surprised with my finish time of 2:19, better than my last half, 2:22. This course was a bit harder with some tough elevation so I was thrilled to decrease my time.


Throughout the conversion at work I was eating pretty crappy. People would bring in bagels and doughnuts, all kinds of stuff just about every day. This didn’t help me loose weight throughout my training. I just found better reasoning: I ran 7 miles today so what the heck, give me a bagel and don’t forget cream cheese. My blood sugar was constantly low as a result of junk eating and hypoglycemia. After conversion wrapped I knew that changes had to be made since I felt terrible. I did a lot of research about my hypoglycemia condition and to make a long story short, I am now living somewhat of a vegan lifestyle: no meat and extremely limited dairy. After reading several books about vegan and vegetation diets I didn’t think twice about the switch. The change in diet has even helped my husband loose weight. I’m a bit jealous considering I haven’t lost near as much but I feel so much better and that’s what counts.

More recently I have decided to make time to go back to college. I haven’t quite finished my business admin A.A. degree, with 7 more classes to go. At this point my goal is to finish my A.A. and hopefully move on for my bachelor’s degree, depending on where life takes us.

I would like to keep up my blog and hope that it will help keep me sane throughout the school year. Since I plan to start training for another half-marathon, time will be tight with work, school, and wifely duties.




Hope to post again very soon :)

Happy fall, almost winter! (Wow this year has gone fast)

Grillin' Time

The weather is beautiful so it's time to grill! We wanted to try something different for pizza night so we decided to throw it on the grill. I found a fellow blogger who shared the low-down on grilled pizza. It is really easy, something different, and taste great!

We didn't make our pizza crust since Trader Joe's sells raw crust for $.99!! They have whole wheat, italian herb, and regular crust. We usually use the whole wheat and italian herb. Rather than rolling out a full size pizza we cut our dough in half and made mini pizzas that fit on the grill much better.

It's simple...

Preheat your grill on high

Roll out your crust and brush olive oil on one side

Turn grill down to medium and place pizza crust on grates oil side down

Cook for about 4 minutes, oil other side, then flip

Top grilled side with sauce, cheese, and toppings

Close grill until cheese melts

Enjoy!

NJ shore cupcakes

I was asked to make cupcakes for my girlfriend's bachelorette party recently. There was no way I was going to show up with some Pillsbury box mix so I found this recipe for chocolate cupcakes. The recipe turned out to be so yummy and easy to make that I'll never ever buy a box mix again. These were fun to make and to add a flirty touch I piped on dyed frosting and added sprinkles.

Rachel's Last Fling Chocolate Cupcakes

2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup water
2 large eggs
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 ounces melted unsweetened baking chocolate

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pans with paper liners.

Combine all ingredients into large mixing bowl. Mix at low speed for 30 seconds, and scrape bowl. Mix at high speed for 3 minutes.

Fill lines 1/2 to 2/3 full of batter. Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Cool 10 minutes in pans then remove from pan, and place on wire racks to cool completely.

Frost when cupcakes are completely cool.

*recipe courtesy of cupcakerecipes.com

Veggie tales

Living in the city is great although you are limited when it comes to land and gardening. We are very grateful for the huge park outside our front door since we have absolutely no grass surrounding our house. I wanted to test out my thumb (not sure if it’s green) and plant some vegetables. With our limited space a container garden works best. We planted some “trial” vegetables this year, two types of lettuce and radishes. I have read that these are some of the easier to grow and we eat them the most so it sounds like a win-win.

It has been 3 weeks since we planted the seeds and so far they are looking good. The radishes are growing like crazy although the lettuce is slow coming. We are not sure how fast lettuce is supposed to grow and are wondering if the seeds were duds.

We can’t wait to try these beautiful vegetables, if they make it to our plates. Elli may get to enjoy them before we do since she has been eyeing up the radishes an awful lot lately.

Pictures above: Our container garden, Elli relaxing on the deck below our newly installed retractable close line, Elli guarding her veggies

Apple Goodness

The weather tonight is amazing- I'm sitting on our deck watching Elli (our black lab) play. She loves her rope toy but seems to prefer the radishes we're trying to grow. I keep reminding her that the veggies are for us but the girl will eat just about anything.

Since Jeff is out of town playing basketball I decided to bake some goodies tonight. Here is my dish...

I found this cooking website that is great for healthy family meals. Most of the food seems geared towards kids but since we don't need to worry about that quite yet I decided to try this apple cake (good for all ages).

Tamra Davis' Apple Cake

1 cup sugar

1/2 stick or 2 oz. butter, melted

1/2 cup applesauce

1 egg

1 1/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/2 cups chopped apples

3/4 to 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease your baking dish. Mix the sugar, butter, applesauce, and egg together with hand mixer. Whisk the dry ingredients together. Blend the wet and dry ingredients and then add apples and walnuts. Pour into baking dish and bake for 30 to 50 minutes (depending on your pan and oven temp) or until knife or toothpick comes out clean when inserted.

Note: batter will be thick

Enjoy!