Pantry Staples

Above is an interactive magnet on my fridge at work. Today I wanted to try a slightly different breakfast since I’ve been having problems eating breakfast lately. I had an apple and cottage cheese, although I didn’t eat much cottage cheese.

For lunch I had more tacos. I can’t help it. I should let you know that I work in an office and do harbor a lot of staples like peanut butter, salsa, mustard, and tea in my cupboards. Salsa is one of those things that make any meal better. Well, maybe not crepes.

Take black beans and rice, add salsa

 

Plus cheese

and spinach AND taco shells

It equals a very good taco. Or three.

*I know noone needs a tutorial on tacos, but I was running out of material. Afternoon snacks consisted of almonds, and peanut butter in a banana. What a delicious treat.

I tried a new (to me) peanut butter: 365 Organic peanut butter, crunchy with salt. Very good and inexpensive. It does require stirring, but after being refrigerated it should stiffen up.

For dinner I had a pita pizza. The toppings were simply cheese, black olives, and broccoli.

Broccoli pizza is the best. I wish I had goat cheese to add though.

‘Til next time!

Spinach Days

Well I skipped Monday’s post because we had a night of studying, and there was not much energy left at the end of the night. And today I forgot my camera at home so I didn’t photograph most of my meals. Hi, welcome to the “Irresponsible Blogger.”

Let me recap Monday:

I had steel cut oatmeal, dates, walnuts, and flax.

For a mid-morning snack I had a banana.

After working out, I had lunch. I usually eat a beans and rice bowl for lunch once a week. They’re tasty and inexpensive. Today I had black beans, white rice (half a cup of each), a serving of sharp cheddar, and salsa. I decided to add the mixture to a few tacos and top with spinach.

The taco shells I use are these small, fragile things, but they’re really tasty and don’t taste stale. Also, they don’t need to be heated to taste good. I am a convert.

You would think that would hold me over, but no. I had almonds and a homemade oatmeal chocolate chip energy bar later in the day.  I don’t know why I kept this in the package to take the picture. It looks unappealing, sorry.

For dinner we had GREEK FEAST as it’s come to be known. Lessee, mujuddarah, hummus, pita, feta cheese, and garlicky broccoli.

So that was Monday.

Today (Tuesday), I had almost the same thing, with Greek leftovers for lunch, similar snacks, and a Green Monster after our run.

For dinner tonight I had a ham, cheese, and spinach wrap.

Sunday Baking

Today was a blissfully lazy day. Sure, there were plenty of things I could be doing, but nothing pressing. Regular readers of the blog might remember that I go to my parents’ house every Sunday for lunch. Today my mother is sick, so I didn’t go over. Poor mom.

For breakfast we had pancakes made from scratch. They were tasty, although the batter was a little thin.

I had three of these beauties, with half of a pear and walnuts. While pancakes were being made I had several handfuls of dry roasted peanuts too. I’ve been a fiend lately for almonds and peanuts.

The boyfriend made two loaves of bread. The house smelled wonderful!

I had two slices fresh out of the oven. Mmmm! The bread was crusty, chewy, and airy. He followed the Beginner's Bread recipe from this site.

For lunch I had half of a ham sandwich and a shared veggie plate.

We went for a run about an hour later. It was not my best run, mostly because I started to feel sick. It was a nice day outside though, and in our area you really have to cherish those days.

After the run I had a Green Monster with added frozen mixed berries.

I also made some energy bars that were a little disappointing. They were mostly oatmeal, peanut butter, and chocolate chips. Too bad they were crumbly and dry.

Still, after sampling a bar, I didn’t have room for dinner.

Hard Boiled Wonderland

Sorry I went MIA for so long. School got really busy. Fortunately, I am now done with my accelerated class, and ready to move forward (it was a beast). Yesterday for breakfast I had toast with peanut butter and raisins with coffee.

After school in the afternoon I had half of an unpictured Clif bar (I was driving). We went grocery shopping and came home to a nice lunch. I had a hard boiled egg, carrots, and a wrap. The wrap was ham, sharp white cheddar, spinach, and stone ground mustard.  

We had coffee at Highland.

And then jambalaya for dinner, accompanied by Sauvignon Blanc.

Sorry for the short post, we’re making bread and homemade energy bars. We’ll see how they turn out.

The Sun Also Rises even if you have no Breakfast

The sky was so beautiful this morning! I have officially turned into the most boring person in the room, I know. Always talking about sunsets. It was purple and pink with spots of fire red and orange! I wish I could have taken an unobstructed picture.

Breakfast: I accidentally skipped breakfast. I made oatmeal with dates, flax, and walnuts, and completely forgot to eat. By the time I looked at the clock it was 10:30 and almost lunch. I went ahead with lunch at this point. My salad was romaine lettuce, tomatoes, mushrooms, bell pepper, and croutons. In this package are mostly the Pepperidge Farm whole wheat ones which I like ‘cause they're sweet. I topped my salad with a little spicy ranch, which was a bit much for my palate today.

I moved on to split pea soup, which I added water to. Before it had the consistency of mashed potatoes (like yesterday). It was super tasty. I know we always make the same soups. I'm working on that. I want to make cuban black bean soup. You know if it has beans in it, I'm there! Split pea soup is my boyfriend's favorite non cream based soup (that I know of), so we make it a lot. His favorite is something called southwest chicken chowder, which I've never had. I would love to make a low fat version, if anyone has any ideas. I've made a chowder once, and he wasn't super impressed. My favorite soup is probably gumbo.

For a snack I had a Pay Day, I mean a Big Nut bar. I like them, but it's not worth 250 calories. Also, it wasn't as filling as a Clif.

I also had multiple cups of hot tea. Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride to be exact.

Around 4:00 I wanted something to snack on, and decided on a 100 calorie popcorn bag. Well, I burned it in the microwave. After some mental debate, I went to the snack machine to see if there were any full sized bags of popcorn there. Nope. I did score a bag of Cheezits which were more than twice the calories of my original goal. Sigh. I did enjoy them though.

When I got home from work I went straight to weight lifting. Today I did bench press, front squats, situps, and rows. I’ve been mixing up my squats instead of always doing squats with weights on my back. I hate overhead squats, but front squats aren’t too bad.

Pre-run I had part of a carrot and a tablespoon of peanut butter.

We started week 3 of couch to 5k. It was not bad. My ankle and back hurt a little bit.

When I got home I fixed some chicken salad into a rather disappointing wrap.

The wrap consisted of chicken salad, tomatoes, romaine, and sprouts. The chicken was mixed with mayo, coarse ground mustard, celery, and walnuts.

The chicken salad was good, but the tomatoes were off, and the sprouts were weird with the rest of this. I cannot tell a lie, I mostly ate the chicken.

I retired with a heating pad and a very full glass of shiraz. In fact when my boyfriend saw my glass he started laughing.  I told him I was being realistic. I knew I would have two glasses of wine, and I didn’t want to get up from my heating pad and lounging.

Should I be embarrassed to post that? I don’t think so.

Breakfast Burritos & extra exercise

I was off on Monday and did not have to go into the office for Overtime -wahoo! We split a large breakfast burrito for breakfast. It consisted of 3 eggs, an ounce of sharp cheddar, mushrooms, bell pepper, and onions. Divide that in half and you get what I ate for breakfast. Divide a shamwow in half and you get two of 'em!

*Ahem*

There was lots of studying from inside warm blankets. The cat likes to help with this. She also likes yoga. I know a lot of cats do. She bonks your head at very inappropriate times though.

At lunch we had split pea soup and a half turkey sprout pita sandwich. Yes, that is soup below. I added some water to thin it out. Mmm mmm, tasty! That’s not trademarked, right? I always count the whole pita loaf as one sandwich, although I know some people don't.So in my book this would be half a sandwich.

Around 2:00 we went for a jog, even though it was an off day from Couch to 5k. We both felt like exercising. Also, I usually work out at my gym every day that I’m not running at home, but today I was off from work as well. Does that make sense?

I was proud of us for running in the cold drizzle. We ran in a park we don't usually run in, because it's too hard to see at night. There are lakes and nice trees, and if you're lucky some Louisiana wildlife. [source]

Also, if you're not so lucky, some Louisiana wildlife. [source]

For dinner I had Duang Tawan leftovers, and the boyfriend had Vindaloo. I also had a bite out of curiosity. And another bite for quality assurance.I also had most of a store brand Granola bar. If you’re curious the store was Winn Dixie. As my old high school friend would say, “Get over it, the south lost the Civil War.”   There was also a cranberry mocktail.

I went to my night class which was luckily short, and brought my coffee with me. We’ve been cutting back on the more expensive coffee, but have realized that we can scrape pennies elsewhere. Coffee is too important.

After class I came home and had a couple of glasses of shiraz and watched reruns of The Office to unwind.