Tuesday

Hey All -

Tuesday was a long day, I got to work at 8AM and did not get home from work until 8:45 in the evening!! But it was a great day, at the same time so that is all that matters!

I started off the day with breakfast in the office (this is getting SO OLD!) which was another bowl of cold cereal. Honey Nut Cheerios with Light Vanilla Soy milk. Yum! I wish I had time to make oatmeal in the morning, but it is just not happening this week Oh – not pictured in breakfast photo is half a banana which I also enjoyed in the cereal!

For lunch, I enjoyed another bowl of my homemade veggie lentil soup. Yum!

For my afternoon snack, I had a big handful of red grapes – my favorite!

And an Adora disk!

At 5 o’clock I met my sister and we went to an awesome forum on Haiti with Dr. Paul Farmer as one of the featured speakers. If you have not read it yet – please read Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World. You can get the book on Amazon.com for just 11 dollars or so.

The forum was amazing, and it really inspired my sister and I to get involved to help the people of Haiti. Our dad did a lot of work in Haiti when we were younger, and he always told me what a horrible thing it was to have such poverty so close to the United States.  I will be doing more research to find organizations to support and hopefully volunteer at – and once I find information, I will pass it along via the blog.  But for now, go to Partners In Health, Paul Farmer’s non-profit and read about what they do, and how you can help them!

Before the forum, my sister and I split a Larabar – which is one of our favorite things to split!  We shared the Lemon Bar – and it is by FAR one of my favorite Larabars!!

I have to say one of the most amazing things about splitting a Larabar with my sister is that I was not hungry anymore after just half of a bar!  And I am always hungry. 

After the forum, I took my sister to the grocery store (she lives in Beacon Hill, and does not have a car – so it’s a treat for her to get to the grocery store with a car!) where she stocked up on some healthy snacks! After the store, I drove her back home, and then eventually got home myself.

Thankfully when I walked in the door, Ben had already started dinner. We had pasta, turkey meat balls, tomato sauce and a little bit of mozzarella cheese melted on top. I was so hungry when I finally ate at 9pm that I did not take a picture! Sorry guys!

Thursday – a recap for a few days…

Wow! It has been a long while since my last post, I apologize to the avid readers. (All two of you!) I had a long weekend, and got out of the habit of posting every day… lots of stuff going on, and just did not have a free moment really.

But during the last few days, I have kept a photo journal of the types of food I was enjoying, for the most part.

I went home to my mom’s house on Monday – after being snowed in all Sunday. My mom and I had some great food – lots of fresh fruit, especially!  On Monday, we had lots of errands to run and we ended up walking around getting our stuff taken care of for over three hours! One thing on my agenda was to get a new pair of Uggs since my pair has a hole on the left boot   But I cannot complain, since they are six years old – they were great while they lasted!  Of course right now is a super busy time for Ugg purchases, I think.  Nordstrom was OUT of Uggs! I had to place an order – and I hope they arrive soon! Since the hole is above the ankle, I can still wear mine – but I’m excited for my new ones!

After getting our errands done, mom and I were too tired to think about dinner really. So we went to Whole Foods where I got salad, and we both enjoyed their tripple squash soup. I liked this soup A LOT – especially because it was low in sodium (for soup).  I think a serving (one cup) was about 8% of your RDA of sodium.
Here is the salad:
I had mixed greens, grape tomatoes, chickpeas, cous-cous, tofu, cucumber, and carrots.
Here is the soup:
Yum!

Tuesday was Inauguration Day!! What an exciting day. I spent the early morning hours at the doctor’s office for an appointment which was a long and drawn out process. But Mom and I got home in time to see the festivites!! Thank goodness – I was really worried we were going to miss some stuff, but we got home just in time!

Because I spent the morning at the doctor’s, I had a late breakfast – but it was a great one! I had a packet of TJ’s heart healthy oatmeal (isn’t all oatmeal heart healthy?) and I added half a mashed up banana and a handful of wonderful blueberries… The banana added some bulk to the oats, and the blueberries made it even more wonderful!

For Inauguration Day my mom made a special lunch to celebrate and I made brownies for dessert. The lunch was a Mexican chicken casserole (I’ll have to get the recipe and post it some time soon!) and it was great. It was a mixture of chicken, low fat & low sodium cream of chicken soup, diced onion, celery, cheddar cheese (reduced fat) and eight small tortillas torn into bite sized pieces all mixed together in a bowl. We poured the mixture into a baking pan (9″ x 11″ x 1 1/2″ I think) and topped the mixture with one cup of organic salsa and then topped the salsa layer with a little bit more shredded cheese. We baked it at 350 for 30 minutes. that is just the recipe from my head  – so I don’t know if I would recommend going right off to make it just yet

Anyhow – the casserole was amazingly great – especially for a freezing cold day. My mom and our friend Annie enjoyed brownies after lunch – but I had to wait until after my gym workout. I certainly enjoyed a brownie after dinner on Tuesday night. Yum.

Wednesday started off just the same as Tuesday. I had a bowl of the same oatmeal (TJ’s oats, 1/2 a banana mashed in, and a handful of blueberries… I even ate it out of the same bowl!)

Come to think of it – a dash or two of cinnamon would have been perfect with this mixture!

After breakfast I had another round of Doctor appointments Yuck!! I got to work around 12:30 and immediately had lunch. I had packed a Dannon all natural Lemon yogurt and a baggie of awesome red grapes (ya’ll know how much I love grapes!!).

That held me over for a while – and later I had two graham crackers as an afternoon snack.

I thought dinner on Wednesday would be a bit problematic, but all turned out for the best. Ben and I were btoh getting home for the first time in a couple of days, and coming home to a house empty of food for the most part. Thankfully I was able to put together a meager dinner of pasta, tomato sauce and TJ’s turkey meatballs for us. It was not much – but it did the trick! (and I forgot to take a picture of this!?)

This morning I had a great lemon blueberry scone from Euince at Bread and Chocolate. Yum. I was torn between the apple sauce muffin (my favorite!) and the scone.  But the great thing about Bread & Chocolate is that you cannot make a bad decision

Lunch today was perfect. A wrap of spinach and plain tuna:

I sort of dig the Chicken of the Sea individual size containers! I just grabbed one, put it in my lunch bag and was all set for lunch – so easy! The protein really helped me get through the rest of the afternoon!

Around 3:30 I had to take a break for my afternoon snack. Chobani vanilla with blueberries and granola. That kept me going until I finally got home from my long day at 7:30 tonight!

Ok – well, as you might be able to tell, it’s been a long few days. I’m ready to hit the hay – but I’m so glad to get this post out to you all!

See you soon, I hope!

Saturday’s Re-cap

I sort of fell off the blogging world over the weekend… but had some good stuff to report on – so here it is:

On Saturday morning I had a great bowl of oatmeal.

1/3 cup of oats, 1/3 cup of milk, 1/3 cup of water

a couple of slivered almonds

ground flax

pumpkin spice

spoon of barney butter

We were out of raisins but it was still a fantastic bowl of oats! I did not have lunch until 3pm!

When I did have lunch it was a bunch of grapes, and a chicken salad wrap with hummus, 1/4 cup brown rice and greens. It was wonderful!

If memory serves me correctly, Ben opened an awesome bag of French Onion Sunchips (my guilty pleasure!) and I had  a few of those as well.

As for our dinner adventure – I will have to write more about that later.

When we woke up on Sunday, we woke up to snow. A few inches of it! I honestly feel like it has been snowing every other day this winter… making it almost impossible to run outside.  In all honesty, I do believe we have had snow once a week since before Christmas. It is beautiful… and very wintery!

Ben and I braved the snow to travel the few hundred feet to Bread & Chocolate for breakfast. It was great to see Eunice and Steve – it had been a full week since I had seen either of them! I had a wonderful chocolate chip and ginger scone for breakfast. My favorite scone is the Lemon Blueberry. But this one is a close second, I love the pieces of ginger that are mixed in – what a great flavor!

More soon. If anyone has the Boston Globe – check out the magazine section. Bread & Chocolate was written up for their awesome hot chocolate!! Trust me – it is the best!

Friday

I had a great breakfast on Friday! I remembered that we had some packets of instant oatmeal (no sugar added even!) and I grabbed one to take with me to work along with a banana, and a to-go packet of Barney Butter. Great combo!

I warmed up the banana in the microwave for 15 seconds, then I mashed it in the oatmeal bowl while I waited for my water to heat up. Then I combined all of the ingredients together and came up with my breakfast bowl of oats! It was sooo satisfying and kept me going all morning long!

For lunch I had a chicken salad wrap, I made the chicken salad from canned chicken which I found in our pantry…. when I opened it up this morning, I thought I was making tuna salad… I was surprised!

I mixed the chicken together with a teaspoon of Miracle Whip and then added red pepper flakes, garlic, and ground pepper to the mix. That really gave it some nice flavor!  At lunch time I made the wrap. I piled on some mixed greens onto a small tortilla wrap, and then added the chicken salad. It was sooo good – I could have had two! But instead, I snacked on some grapes. Here’s what the wrap looked like before I rolled it up:

Now that I’m looking at the wrap, I’m reminded that I added some mustard to it – because I left the hummus at home by accident. Oops!
Here is what the rest of the lunch looked like:

But I never ended up having the pudding. I brought it back home with me.

I was very glad the weekend had arrived after work on Friday! I did not do much last night, but I relaxed after a long week – the first five day work week in a while! I’m so happy for the weekend

Hope you are all enjoying your weekends so far!  Here in Boston we are preparing for yet MORE SNOW – they are calling for 8 – 10 inches in our area tonight!  It seems like it will never end!  Well, I guess that is winter in New England for you!

New Year’s Eve

I cannot believe it is nearly 2009!  I have been enjoying another snowy day, today. We have a few inches on the ground and there is no sign of the snow letting up any time soon!

I had planned to go running at the gym today – but the roads were pretty bad this morning when I was thinking about going, so instead Ben and I took a walk around our neighborhood. I just love our neighborhood when it is snowing (actually, I love it all of the time).

Due to my late start this morning (I woke up at 10:30!) breakfast was at the lunch hour – at around 12:30 this afternoon.  I toasted a piece of the Honey Whole Wheat bread from Great Harvest with a little bit of Teddy Peanut Butter, along with a handful of red grapes which were wonderful!

Grapes are great foods, because they keep you pretty full due to the water content. I love adding them to meals because they are a treat and red grapes have a good deal of anti-oxidants in them as well.

Red Grapes are particularly healthy.  For more information you can click here to read about the nutritional benefits of grapes – you might be surprised! Here are a few highlights:

• Grapes contain Flavonoids (click for more information!)
• Grapes protect against heart disease
• Studies have shown that the polyphenols found in red grapes can lower a woman’s risk of coronary heart disease
• Grapes can lower your cholesterol
• For all of these benefits – one cup of red grapes only has 61 calories!

Here is what breakfast / lunch (this would definitely NOT qualify as a brunch  -  so I’m not even going there!) looked like – not very interesting, but still!


I am sure that later today I will snack on one of Marilyn’s amazing oatmeal cookies. I love the traditional oatmeal and raisin cookie – they are one of my favorites!

Last night Ben, Marilyn and I ordered take out at Blue Ribbon BBQ in West Newton. In all of the years I have been living in Newton, I had never eaten at Blue Ribbon.  My former roommate Rachel used to eat there often, and I always thought her food looked amazing – so I do not know why it took me six years to finally eat there!

Last night I ordered a chicken burritto and it was gigantic! I spared you all from a photo – because it was the most unattracitve thing after I started eating it But it was wodnerful. The cilantro really made it taste extra fresh. I will definitely be going back one day soon!

Tonight Ben and I are heading downtown to celebrate the New Year. We will be eating at BonFire which I am excited about (I am especially excited for some of their non-steak items). I will be back in 2009 with a full report on what we had and how it was.

Happy (almost) New Year, everyone!