Much needed rest

Sorry for being MIA yesterday. After another super exhausting day at work, all I wanted to do is get in my pjs, order some pizza and drink some wine. So that's exactly what we did! :D It was the perfect night to just wind down and relax. I feel 100% better, especially after 8+ hours of sleep! I just love the weekends!!

Here are a few eats from yesterday. Ordering pizza (well, a calzone) last night wasn't the healthiest choice but it was in the "sane" category. I just needed it.

Breakfast: 1/2 banana, nonfat yogurt, pomegranate seeds, 1T pb, some pb puffins and chocolate granola. I was kind of too excited to eat this and mixed it all in before I took a pretty picture. This does not look appetizing but it one of the best yogurt mixtures I've ever made!



Snacks throughout the day included another white chocolate cranberry bar, TJ's 100 calorie dark chocolate bar (not pictured), this little guy:



+ 1/2 banana & Barney butter wrap:



For lunch I got a little sushi box: tuna/avocado maki + 2 tuna sushimi and 2 salmon sushimi. It was from our local supermarket but it was super fresh. It really hit the spot for my sushi craving!



And here are a few pics of my dinner calzone: wild mushrooms + ricotta. I <3 ricotta! I also had some wine -- about 1/2 bottle :)





And let's move on to today, which is going to be another lazy day :D I am in the mood to lounge around the house, do a little blogging and blog reading, hit the gym and just relax. We do have plans to go to a bar for a birthday party so I will get out of the house, but for now, I'm just enjoying our warm apartment and not working :)

Breakfast today was another awesome yogurt parfait. I just threw a bunch of stuff we had and it was super delicious. So many flavors and textures, the only thing that was missing was banana... we're all out!



So yeah, in this beautiful bowl there is about 3/4 c nonfat yogurt, 1/2 juicy pear, some pomegranate seeds, pb puffins, Erin's double chocolate granola and crunchy peanut butter. I didn't measure things out this morning. No counting calories today. I'm not in the mood.

And very soon after that I dug into the pan with the white chocolate cranberry bars. These things are dangerous. I need to give them away immediately before I polish them off! Here is a little piece with some coffee. Yum!



I'll be back later today with a lunch post and probably tomorrow with the recap of dinner and the party. Hope you're all enjoying your Saturday!

Still working :(

It's past 10pm and I'm still working :( I'm going to make this post quick. There was no workout today (obviously!) and my night ended with a little too many chocolate covered edamames (damn stress!). Hopefully I can get my work wrapped up quickly though and get to bed. Tomorrow is Friday so that's always good! :D

BREAKFAST

I purchased some peanut butter puffins yesterday and could not wait to incorporate them into my breakfast! This breakfast looks very bland (and orange!) but it was actually very delicious. I think I've become a little nut butter addict :D In the container you see 3/4 c yogurt, 1/4 c pumpkin, 1 T pumpkin butter, 1 T crunchy peanut butter + about 1/2 c pb puffins.



LUNCH

I kept lunch simple today - there is very little cooking this week in my kitchen, if you haven't noticed already. I made a quick sandwich with 1/4 avocado, 1 slice of turkey (last one), 1 thin slice of Land O' Lakes white American cheese and enjoyed it with 1/2 cup of Pacific Natural Foods cashew carrot ginger soup (I think that's the name!). The soup was quite intense. The 1/2 cup was plenty! It was a very nice combo with the sandwich though.





Oh, this is the turkey we buy:



SNACKS

Another chocolate craving satisfied with my new love (picture reused):



And later on... the best baked good I've ever made! :D It is so.freaking.good!



And this guys jumped into my mouth at some point...



DINNER

I got home pretty late and knew there was a big chance I would have to do some work again. So to give myself a little time to relax, I grabbed dinner at UFood. I just love having this place across the street! I got one of my favorites: chicken chop cobb salad which consists of mixed greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, turkey bacon, low fat cheddar cheese, lite sour cream and "fried" (baked) chicken. I dressed it with 1 tablespoon of Newman's Own reduced fat honey mustard dressing. Yum!



LATE NIGHT SNACKING

And then my boss called and I had to get back to work and I grabbed some "work buddies". A serving of my favorite trail mix (I missed it!):



Some more puffins:



And as mentioned before, a bunch of chocolate covered edamames that are not pictured here.

Total calories: 2520 :( Can the weekend begin yet?

Hope your week is less stressful! It's almost Friday... and then the weekend!!! Yay!

Snacky

Where did the day go? I feel like I was running full speed today and there is still just so much to do! I'm happy to report that despite the craziness I've been able to eat healthy. I was bored a few times and looking for chocolate but there was none in my desk drawer so I stayed away :) Let's start with breakfast...

BREAKFAST

Wow, I actually forgot what I had for breakfast until I looked in my camera. Is that why bloggers take pictures of their food? Haha, jk. We all know that pictures are what make these posts fun :) Anyways, so for breakfast I had a yogurt "parfait": ~3/4 c TJ's nonfat yogurt (all we had left), 1/2 banana, some raisins and Back to Nature granola to go. I received this little sample a while back when I went to Whole Foods and last night I thought it was a good idea to finally give it a go (since I'm out of my favorite trail mix... so sad!). Here is the little packet of the granola:



And here is my yogurt after mixing in this goodness:



This was quite delicious but actually almost too sweet. There was some honey and maybe cane sugar (I forget now) in the granola, that combined with the raisins was a lot of sugar (I know, that's coming from the girl who's obsessed with chocolate, but yes, too sweet even for me!). It did have a very nice almond-y flavor and there were even a few whole almonds in there. Not bad! I wouldn't buy this stuff but I did enjoy it today :D I also had a cup of my usual coffee (with 1 half & half pod & 1 tsp of agave nectar).

About 4 hours later I couldn't decide whether I wanted to eat or work-out. I chose to eat so that I could continue working. Which brings me to...

LUNCH

I had a few slices of the Baker bread left and this inspired my lunch today. Simple but so so good. I am absolutely in love with this bread. When I opened the ziplock bag today with the bread, it just put a smile on my face. I could smell the nuttiness of the bread and I could not wait to assemble today's combo: 2 slices of The Baker bread (you can find the picture of the package here), 2 slices of turkey, 1 light laughing cow wedge + a simple salad of mixed greens, grape tomatoes and 1 tablespoon of Annie's low fat cucumber dressing. I cut the sandwich into bite sized pieces because they were fun to eat last time :)



Mmm, nutty turkey/cheese bites...



I also took a picture of the turkey package we use, but I can't find it... and now it's all gone :( I'm going to have to take another picture next time we buy it. Also, I do not like Annie's low fat cucumber dressing. I used some today because I hate wasting food and cannot throw it away, but actually that's the reason why I started using full fat dressings. They are much better and you can use half as much and be twice as much satisfied for the same amount of calories.

SNACKS - LOTS OF SNACKS

I was kind of in a snacky mood today. I wasn't hungry. Actually both my breakfast and lunch were very satisfying, but I just felt like snacking and since I knew I was still within my calorie range, I let myself indulge in a few extras today. They were all healthy, so we're still good :)

Snack #1: Ellie Krieger's energy bar



Snack #2: a very juicy pear - yum!



Snack #3: 1/2 clif nectar bar. Today I actually liked it - it tastes like a bunch of dried fruit compressed into a bar. I probably wouldn't buy it again though... I'll just eat a bunch of dried fruit, uncompressed next time :D



Immediately after snack #3, came snack #4 because I was looking for a pen in my desk drawer and found these...



That package is so cute! I actually love candy corn and I figured the extra sugar was a great pre-workout snack. Right?

WORKOUT

About 15 minutes after consumption of snacks 3 and 4, I took the Jump & Burn class at my gym. This class is taught by the same instructor I won the personal training session from, the super tough one! I absolutely love her classes and today I liked it especially. Maybe I should eat candy corn every day before a workout?! I had so much energy and felt really strong. The class is basically jump rope interval training. It started by jumping for 3 minutes and then we alternated between 1 minute jumping and 1 minute "off the jump rope" (different lifting moves, pushups, squats, jumping jacks, etc.). The finale of the class is another 3 minutes of jump rope straight. It was awesome! 60 minutes well spent, but I needed a little something extra so I did another 10 minutes or so of abs by myself. Great workout!

DINNER

Dinner was very quick and easy today, no recipe, just a bunch of stuff we had on had thrown together. I made some ww pasta, sauteed some mushrooms, rehydrated sundried tomatoes and grilled some chicken sausage on the George Forman. All that was tossed with organic tomato sauce (I actually was going to use some white wine sauce I made and froze but it looked funky so I tossed it) and dinner was made. It very filling and delicious. The picture of the pasta before I mixed the sauce in looked better, so here it is:



By the way, the chicken sausage I used today was the Whole Foods organic garlic and parmesan chicken sausage. I used 1/2 of it, but I was kind of jelous of my husband who got a whole link :) It was super juicy and delicious! I can't wait to make a sandwich out of one!

And for dessert, I had some Hershey's snacksters...



This is the package:



If you can see on the top of the box it says 0 trans fat, but in the ingredients list it has less than 2% of partially hydrogenated palm oil (i.e. trans fat) so this just shows you how important it is to read labels. It also had some high fructose corn syrup. We bought this stuff a while ago before I cared about any of this natural/whole food business and today I decided to have some as a little treat. These guys are actually super yummy but I will definitely not be buying them again (we still have a bunch which I'll eventually eat, since as mentioned previously I cannot throw away food!).

Today's calorie total: 1637

Oh, I also baked something super yummy (I hope!). I've been dying to make these since I stumbled upon the recipe and that day has finally come. They are cooling so you and I will have to be patient. I'll reveal the treats tomorrow! :D

One more thing (man I talk/write a lot!) I was awarded the Scribbler Badge award by Lara. Thanks Lara, I'm so touched (and a little shocked since really, I'm no writer)! I'll award a few of my favorites tomorrow. It's time to do some work around the house..

Sweat it out!

OMG, can I just say how much I love the gym?!!!! I started the morning with the same stomach ache, trying to stay optimistic but the same symptoms of the last few days made me feel a little hopeless. I was just going through the motions, ate my breakfast, a snack and contemplated skipping the gym. Well, I'm so happy that I actually went, because I totally sweated out whatever bluh feeling I've had all week! I felt strong, I felt energized, I was totally back to my normal self. It felt SO GOOD! Anyways, let's go back to that breakfast and snacks...

BREAKFAST

I put this concoction together last night: pumpkin pie yogurt :D



This bowl had about 3/4 c of TJ's nonfat yogurt, 1/3 c pumpkin, 1/2 banana, 1 tablespoon of pumpkin butter and some Erin Baker's peanut butter granola. Oh, and a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice :) Not bad! I missed the chocolate and nuts in my breakfast but I wanted to start the morning on a fresher note.

After finishing this bowl I wanted to continue munching, so I grabbed 1/2 serving of reduced fat wheat thins (actually it's a different organic brand but it tastes the same and I forget the name of the brand) with 1/2 packet of Barney Butter. I forgot to take a picture right away, so here is a shot mid-way through eating :)



SNACK

As always I got the urge for chocolate, so I immediately grabbed the closest thing I could find: a zbar. Carrot sticks and cottage cheese (my originally planned snack) just wouldn't do it today.



This is the honey graham kind... it was my first time trying it. I liked it! I can't quite make-up my mind about zbars. The first time I tried one (the fudge brownie flavor) I thought it was the best thing ever and ordered 2 huge boxes of them on Amazon.com. Many months later I'm still working on my second box, because I never really crave these things (and I keep buying other bars to try out). I like them when I eat them, but for some reason the idea of one never appeals to me. I think the brownie kind is still my favorite, but this definitely was a good one.

WORKOUT

As mentioned at the beginning of the post, my workout kicked butt! I was just so happy the entire time; I could not believe what a difference it was making.

I originally was going to skip it altogether, then I thought about just going to the gym to take a shower and straighten my hair to make myself feel more refreshed. Finally I decided since I was already there, there is no reason not to jump on a treadmill and just do my 3 mile run. Fastforward to the end: I ran for 40 minutes (~ 4.5 miles) and did 20 minutes on the elliptical. I was feeling amazing! I could have kept going, but unfortunately I had to go back to work :(

LUNCH

As mentioned before, we're leaving for NY tomorrow so lunch was a few leftover items... it was very satisfying and perfectly refreshing after my refreshing workout!

The star of my lunch was a smoked salmon/laughing cow and cucumber sandwich on a ww British muffin... and the side dish was simple but super delicious: mixed greens, grape tomatoes, cucumbers + 1 tablespoon of Annie's goddess dressing. Perfect! Here is the sandwich:



And lunch altogether (dressing was mixed after the photo was taken - a dressed salad isn't very photogenic :D )


This lunch was kind of late (around 3:30) but it kept me full for hours. I met up with a new friend after work at Starbucks where I got a vanilla coconut tea (sorry I forgot to take a picture in all the excitement). I sipped on that while we were chatting away about food and boys and I never got hungry until it was time for dinner.

DINNER

They are opening a Chipotle in our building and today was the grand-opening day, where they were giving out free burritos. My husband warned me that we were going weeks ago, so I was mentally prepared (and excited!) about dinner at Chipotle. Well, there was a slight change of plans because this is what was outside of Chipotle today:



Yeah, a HUGE line! This goes waaay back and it was dark and raining. No thank you, I can have it tomorrow, or next week. Man, people really love free food!

We quickly re-evaluated the situation. With me having no second snack and an overall relatively calorie-light day, I agreed to go out for some sushi. Sushi is quite healthy, you just have to watch how much of it you eat, because it definitely adds up. I knew I had some wiggle room and I haven't had sushi in forever (actually we were planning on having it tomorrow in NY, but we'll figure something else out). We tried a new place (new for us), Fin's Sushi in Kenmore Square.

This place was great!!! We have a really nice sushi restaurant across the street from our building and hardly ever venture out to other ones, but I'm so glad we did today. It was small, but very modern and the sushi was super fresh. It is also BYOB, which we didn't know today but will be cool for future visits. I could have eaten 3 times as much, but I was still in a really great healthy mentality so I kept my portions reasonable.

I started with some seaweed salad:



This is the whole dish... I probably ate 3/4 of it. I kind of picked at it throughout dinner.

And this is the sushi we ordered for the 2 of us:



Mine is the alaskan roll (salmon/cucumber/avocado), 1 tuna nigiri, 1 unagi nigiri and 2 yellowtail nigiri. I tried one of my husband's spicy tuna maki for exchange of 1 alaskan maki and then my husband didn't eat his salmon nigiri, so I had to help him out with it :) It was soooo delicious. I missed sushi!!

When we got home I wanted dessert so I had another raspberry brownie. I'm sure you guys are sick of seeing these but I'm still not sick of eating them :) Don't worry, there are only 2 left and I think my husband will take care of them :D



And I finished off my day of eats with some hazelnuts:



There was another handful after these, but I put them away now and I'm very satisfied. What a great day!

Btw, I probably won't be able to blog until Sunday night, but I'll try to take lots of food pics when I'm in NY. There should definitely be some good eats there!

Thank you all again for your nice comments. You guys are the best!

Feeling lazy

Whoa, that last post took too long. Finding people that haven't been tagged before was quite the challenge! I'm going to make this post short and sweet because I need to relax. I'll let the pictures speak mostly for themselves. As you can see, I didn't cook today. I just didn't feel like it so I caved and bought things I was craving. I was trying to make some healthy choices although a few sweets snuck their way onto my plate too. I think I gained about 10 pounds this week. *Sign* I'll do better after this weekend. This week is lost on me. I think a pre-Thanksgiving challenge is in order starting next Monday. "Rules" to be revealed later in the week.

BREAKFAST

This guy was gone waaay too fast. I just love yogurt combos! Today's bowl included TJ's nonfat European style yogurt, 1/2 banana, some double chocolate granola, kashi golean cereal and pomegranate seeds.



SNACK 1

I forgot about this until I saw this picture. These were office treats and I was feeling weak. You can find on this very classy paper plate a slice of banana bread and some kind of pie. I don't know what it was. Neither one was very good but I ate it to be polite. I hate that! (and no, they are not from Pizzeria Regina, just the plates were :D)



SNACK 2

Leftover tart from Saturday.



This was supposed to be part of my lunch but after eating it I realized I really didn't want salad. I wanted chocolate! So this brought me to my next meal...

LUNCH

I wanted chocolate so I left the office in search for some goodies, but I didn't know what I wanted. I decided that I wanted cookies so instead of buying a bunch of cookies I figured that maybe I was just hungry. I bought a southwestern chicken sandwich from Paradise Bakery - no mayo. This was HUGE but I ate the whole thing. Between the giganto slices of bread (the guy said it was supposed to be whole wheat, but this was definitely white bread... eek!) were grilled chicken, tomato slices, tiny bit of avocado and cheese. It also came with a cookie, which I thought I took a picture of but it's missing... I did eat it though.



The sandwich + cookie combo kept me full for many hours. I also went to a sports yoga class that helped my mood :D

DINNER

After less than stellar eating I was hoping to keep dinner on the light side. Instead, I hit up UFood Grill and got a chicken parm wrap with some unfries (the "fries" are baked, not fried). This is healthy, kind of. I don't recommend combining it with my previous eats if you're trying to lose weight. Otherwise this dinner was delicious and nutritious (although after taking the first bite I realized it tasted a lot like my dinner from yesterday since I made eggplant parm... sans the fries).







And then I remembered that we have nutella at home (almost gone now!) so I had a TJ's blueberry frozen waffle with a healthy shmear of it + hazelnuts for you know, some healthy fat. Yeah, let's pretend like this day never happened. I won't tell anyone :D



And now I'm seriously stuffed and really am done eating. I can't promise about tomorrow's healthy habits. Seriously, DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! Good night! :D

Mexican food + more baking

Another excellent day today. I wish every day was a weekend day. Oh well, back to the grind tomorrow. Today was super relaxing, but somehow I still got a lot accomplished.

After breakfast, I did a lot of blog reading. It was really nice to catch up on all random features the bloggers have... it was very relaxing and informative. I did this while finishing up my cup of coffee. Not a bad way to start the day. After a few hours of this, my husband woke up and we decided to relax on the coach and watch some tv. He tried one of my bagels, by the way, and loved them! Yay! He was also originally a bit disappointed by their size (they are small) but they are quite dense and by the time he finished it, he said he was very satisfied. I believe he didn't have anything until lunch which was almost 4 hours later. Not bad!

So we decided to catch up on some "Phantom Gourmet" episodes. And the new episode was all on desserts. After drooling over everything for almost an hour, I grabbed one of my brownies.



It did the trick! :D

And then a few hours later we met my parents for lunch at La Verdad, an authentic mexican restaurant a few minutes from our place. La Verdad is one my absolute favorite mexican restaurants. Their tacos are amazing and rival any tacos in California (I've only been to California once and tried their awesome tacos, but a few people from CA confirmed this too)! I keep forgetting which taco is my favorite, so I always get a mix of 3 different ones. Today I ordered Pollo Pibil (Achiote and sour orange BBQ chicken), Carnitas (Confit pork, cilantro, onions, salsa verde, chicharrone) and Benny Lengua (Braised tongue, Salsa Arbol, ciantro and onion):



I said no onions on anything (I hate onions with a passion!!!!) but the tongue one had some cooked onions in it, so I only had a taste and didn't finish it. Today the chicken taco was the best one. I also had a bite of of the wings appetizer we got for the table and a bite of my mom's chicken mushroom quesadilla. So good! I think I did quite well for eating out!

A few hours later I munched on a small apple (not pictured) and had an Adora calcium chocolate:



These little chocolate disks are great! They taste like the real thing and provide 50% of daily calcium and 25% of Vitamin D. Awesome stuff!

And then for dinner I was craving a yogurt parfait. I think I missed it since I haven't had it in a few days. I went to TJ's yesterday and they were out of the TJ's greek yogurt I always get, so I got the European style yogurt. OMG, this stuff is so good. It tasted exactly like the yogurt I ate for breakfast every morning on my honeymoon in Italy. The first bite brought me right back! It's also twise as cheap as the greek yogurt and almost 4 times cheaper than fage. So yeah, I'm a covert :) I had the usual combo: yogurt, 1/2 banana, a serving of TJ's nutty american trailmix and some kashi golean cereal. Yum!



And one for close-up...



Ooey, gooey yumminess! And then I prepped a bunch of stuff for tomorrow....

I cooked up some turkey burgers for dinner tomorrow (I'm coming home late so I wanted it to be prepared already), made my lunch, and then yup, I baked some more cookies. I had some pumpkin left in the fridge and I didn't want it to go bad. So I baked. Apparently I just can't stop baking this weekend. I used this recipe from Cookie Madness, except I used a little less oil and substituted half of the sugar with splenda (I'm trying to use up the last of the box... I won't be purchasing it again). Here are the crops of the day cooling on a cooling rack:



Gotta give you a close-up of these too...



And of course I couldn't go without tasting them, so I shared one with my husband. Here is my half:



They were pretty yummy but slightly dry. You really need all the oil, heh?

And now it's a little after 10:30pm and I still haven't gone to the gym. I have a lot of energy, so I may still have to swing by there for a quick one.

See you tomorrow!