Tuesday – No Plastic Baggies for Lunch!

Ok – one thing I am super bad at is packing parts of my lunch in plastic bags. Ugh. I hate using plastic bags because I know they are horrible for the environment. So, Monday night I took out some of my re-usable containers and packed my lunch using them instead of plastic bags.

On to the dull side of food for Tuesday – I basically ate the same thing as Monday.  For breakfast, I had another mix of Kashi Go Lean Crunch and Trader Joe’s high fiber with skim milk. Yum.

(OK, in this pic there is a spoonful of peanut butter – this was from this weekend, not what I ate today – I did not have the peanut butter, but I had the same mix of cereal!!)

I was hungry before lunch time. I had a snack at 11:30 because I knew I would be going for a walk before having lunch.  My snack was a Quaker’s True Delight:

I ended up having lunch around 12:45 after going for a really nice half hour walk. The walk definitely got me excited for Spring! Even though it was only forty degrees this afternoon, it felt sooo warm – considering that a couple of days ago it was twenty degrees!!

Lunch looked like this:

What you see here is my turkey sandwich… and in the red container are the Baked Lay’s potato chips (just a few).  My turkey sandwich was pretty good today!

I ate lunch at my desk today…. because in the lunch room it was DESSERT DAY!  Here is what I saw when I walked into the lunch room… check it out….!

I had the smallest peanut butter bar with my lunch… It was great!  I knew that if I stayed in the lunch room, I would have more snacks, so I ate at my desk and read a little bit of Loving Frank (which is a great book –  I highly recommend it!)

I felt like I accomplished a good amount at lunch – a walk and some reading.

In the afternoon, I had a cup of hot vanilla chai tea. It really hit the spot.

I worked an extra hour at the office tonight, and then met my friend Jenn for dinner. We went to Gourmet India in Coolidge Corner for some great eats!  I had chicken tiki masala, a samosa, a piece of garlic nan and some rice. It was definitely a HUGE dinner – but I had not enjoyed Indian in months so I’m trying to feel too badly about it!

I had a great time eating dinner with Jenn and catching up. She let me take home a new book to read once I’m done with all of the books I’m reading right now. The new book is Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Jenn loved it – has anyone else read it? Let me know what you think!

Ok, it’s after 10 o’clock and I want to read more of Loving Frank so I’m signing off for tonight! Catch ya’ll tomorrow!

Snowed in Sunday?

Hey ya’ll -

Wow – it is snowing today! I was hoping to drive down to my mom’s house today but the way it has been snowing, I think I might have to go tomorrow morning!

I had a great night’s sleep – fantastic! I woke up pretty early, and started my morning by doing yoga and ab crunches. I was on the yoga mat, exercising for 35 minutes.  After I finished up with some stretches.

The first thing I enjoyed today was a great cup of hot tea and a large glass of water to get myself hydrated for the day.

In case you were wondering, Daisy also woke up very refreshed and energetic this morning! Daisy and I spent a good deal of time today playing fetch. Once she was done, she made herself at home on the semi-folded up yoga mat…

After yoga, fetch and tea, I refreshed my oats from yesterday. I added a good amount of soy milk to re-hydrate the oats and popped them in the microwave for about 45 seconds.

I added a couple of slivered almonds, raisins, a few chocolate chips, TJ’s ground flax seed, and a spoon of Barney Butter into the oats. Yum.

I am now enjoying Meet the Press with Tom Brokaw and Doris Kearns Goodwin (two of my favorites!) and I am beginning to think about the fact that I will have to go out and shovel after MTP wraps up. Yuck.

We can do it!

Hey all – Happy weekend, and hopefully it’s a long one for most of you!

I am surprised that I made it through the work week!  For actually getting up and going to work,  I decided to reward myself with breakfast yesterday   I have a new favorite scone at Bread & Chocolate – which I never thought would be possible. I now love the cranberry orange scone!  I love the savory flavor of the cranberry (and there were so many mixed into the scone – yum)! It really cuts the sweetness of the scone, making it perfect. I still love the blueberry lemon, of course!  Here is the scone:

The scone was still sweet – and I might have preferred a bagel for breakfast, but it was lovely and wonderful at the  same time!

Instead of coffee on Friday, I enjoyed a cup of Vanilla Chai tea in my Rosie the Riveter mug. We can do it!

I love this tea! I just wish it was decaf so I could drink it all day, especially while the weather is so darned cold!  I added a little bit of soy milk into the tea, and it really made it wonderful.

Lunch was officially dull and hurting! Once again this week, it was an almond butter and jam sandwich on protein bread. I have to say – the protein bread has really saved me this week! Thanks to the bread I’m getting an extra 14 grams of protein in my lunch – and thus, I am less hungry though out the rest of the afternoon.  During lunch I read a little bit of the new Real Simple that arrived on Thursday night! It’s always a great day when I have a RS in the mail – I love this magazine!

Because I had nothing for lunch, I ate my Chobani as part of lunch.  I had a great mix in for the yogurt today!  A free sample from Bare Naked granola…  it was great and really made the yogurt perfect.

Yum.

I left work a little bit early yesterday to meet up with Ben and his colleagues for a farwell get together…. this was Ben’s last week at his job at the school   But he’s moving on to a great new job that we are both excited about.

I got to Union Street in Newton Centre at 4:20 and no one else was there – even though the e-mail get together said 4pm! I was able to get the last seat at the bar, I ordered a IPA and read my book until the rest of the gang showed up.  It was a little cold for beer, that’s for sure, but it was the easiest thing to order and it was good!  Also a great way to celebrate the weekend. I cannot remember the last time I had enjoyed a beer… it had been a while. I actually did not finish it completely – there was definitely a sip left at the end of the night!

As for food, we split nachos which are so great at Union Street. There were four of us splitting a plate of nachos and another group of four splitting another order of nachos.  What a weird dinner – but it hit the spot. It was warm!

We got home around 7:15 or so. I had half a cup of Kozy Shack rice pudding with a sprinkle of cinnamon. I did not have it in me t0 make a real dinner… but I probably should have!

I am pretty sure that I feel asleep at 9:30 last night! I woke up around 4AM to say good-bye to Ben (he was leaving for DC and the inauguration!) and went back to sleep for a few hours. I finally got up around 10 this morning!  I cannot believe that I slept for so long.

I had a great bowl of oatmeal this morning. Today I made two servings, and saved the second for tomorrow morning. I like thinking ahead and preparing meals in advance when possible!

Today’s bowl of oats was wonderful.

1/2 cup oats

1/2 cup of soy milk

1/3 cup water

1 tbs of Dole Raisins (I love this brand!)

1 tbs of semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 tbs of granola

1 pinch of cinnamon

1 pinch of pumpkin spice

1 spoonful of barney butter!

What a wonderful breakfast for a cold morning!

Right now I’m wrapping up the blog and trying to figure out if it’s cold enough to skip the gym. What a horrible thing to say!

I’m pretty sure I’ll be going to the gym in a few minutes…. I am feeling the need for exercise!

Happy Saturday everyone!