Wednesday 29 September 2010

Breakfast: The lovely usual!

Post-errand:  So I stopped at Whole Foods on the way to work.  The overt reason was to buy some toiletries, but the covert reason was to verify that yes, the dark chocolate was still there.  I also got some more kale chips.  I replenished my drawer supply and this little piggy caught me in the checkout lane.  Yes, it's dark chocolate, but it tasted a little more sugary than I like.  (Which does come with the territory, being a truffle.)

Pre-workout snack:  The rest of the beef jerky and some coffee with half-and-half and chia powder.

My foot is still sore, but I went to CardioSculpt and let my instructor know what was going on.  As I mentioned over on Opposite Life, squats without weight was okay, but I steered clear of the lunges.  I loved that she had us doing stuff on the bosu.  She had us kneeling on the bosu instead of standing while doing shoulders and biceps, which helped us work on balance and core as well as take pressure off the feet.

Lunch:  Mixed green salad with balsamic vinaigrette and extra vinegar, 2 oz. leftover steak with sauce, and a thinkThin Mixed Nuts and Chocolate Crunch bar.

I hadn't tried this kind before, although I have tried other of their bars (I had to quit buying the box of the mini toffee bars).  Stats were 11 grams fat, 15 grams total carb, and 10 grams protein.  Regarding the carb count, the breakdown was 4 fiber, 2 sugar...presumably the remaining 9 were from the nuts and also from the sugar alcohols (a type of reduced calorie sweetener).  These bars use maltitol, but unlike other bars I've seen that use maltitol, the sugar alcohols are not listed separately under the carbs in the nutrition data.  Low carb followers typically deduct all fiber and sugar alcohols from the total carbs - which is why you often see a "net carb" count on the front label of bars and candy that looks very different from the total carb count in the nutrition data on the back.  ADA guidelines say to deduct half of the sugar alcohol count from the total carb count.

The bar was mildly nutty, with large chunks of peanut and almond.  The chocolate coating was not terribly noticeable.  I thought the bar was okay, but not amazing.  (For a nut-based bar, I prefer the Kind bars.  This was more similar to the peanut butter Kashi granola bars, which are sometimes stocked in the work breakroom.)

Afternoon snack:  Kale madness hit.  I served up some and ate this.

I also ate the rest of the bag.  This brand seemed to have less of the bit stemmy parts, but it's also more expensive.  I wish this stuff was as cheap as potato chips.  Although I guess if you're having a pity party about your athletic training derailed, kale chips are probably the better choice.

Dinner:  It was "fend for yourself" night at Casa del Pubsfolk, so I fended for myself very nicely.  I picked up some takeout from Happy Taco and shared with Mr. Handsome&Handy.  Here's my plate: 1/2 carne asada nachos and 1/3 al pastor burrito (beans, but no rice) from Happy Taco, y una cerveza fria.  La cena era muy saborosa!  (And there is leftover burrito for my lunch!)

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Breakfast:  The usual suspects.  (And guess I was a little hungry, y'all almost got a picture of an empty plate!)

The kids went carpool to school, so I had morning time for my workout.  That was a good and a bad thing.  

The good thing was I had time to do a long run.

That was also the bad thing, because at about mile 3, my ankle/back of lower leg started hurting again, and I still had about a mile and a half to limp home.

I did get some pictures, though!  It was mostly sunny, but there was a light mist in the air, and when the sun shone through the trees, there were these really amazing beams of light.  The photos don't do it justice, of course.

Bridge at Miramar.

All of the spider webs looked so pretty!

Cypress trees along the trail.

I'm so bummed.  I took it really easy on this run, not going too fast during the whole run, walking to warm up for about the first 3/4 mile, taking a little walking break in the middle, and then walking the last 3/4 mile (which I hadn't been planning, but oh well).  I didn't feel like I was pushing too hard.  But I think the problem was that when I first noticed this trend, I eased off, then when I went back, I picked up where I left off again.  And maybe I didn't rest it long enough after the first incident.  Bother.

Morning snack:  Well, by the time I got to work, I was ready for a snack!  I had 10 grapes, coffee + half-and-half + chia powder, and about 1 oz. of the beef jerky.  It struck me that beef jerky is like meat candy, although this package had quite the spicy afterkick.

Lunch:  I ate by the fountain (leftovers: pork, green beans, and pumpkin) and chatted with my mom on the phone.  Sadly, no walking while talking today.

I had the munchies, but it was way too soon after lunch to eat something, so I had my hot & sour broth.  That really satisfies my need for flavor vs. actual food.

Afternoon snack:  Got the call that there'd been an accident on the route home, so I knew I'd be at the office a little longer than expected.  I had 10 peanuts...

...1/2 tsp of my raw chocolate stuff (keeping fingers crossed that it's still good - no expiration date on it) with some coffee and half-and-half...

...and more kale chips!  This brand's stats are 50 calories per ounce, with 3 grams fat, 4 grams carb (1 fiber, <1 sugar), and 2 grams protein.  It does have more seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, and sesame) along with the cashews.  Looks like the extra seeds added 1 gram of fat and 1 gram of carb to the recipe.  I guess the reason why some other brands had so many more calories is that perhaps they apply more of their coating to the kale?  Mysterious.  Either way, every kind I'm trying has been great.  I love this stuff!

Dinner:  Steak with sauce, mixed green salad with facon bits and Italian dressing, and milk.

I also had some peanuts.  (Like my sushi socks?)

Dessert:  After the kiddos went to bed, some dessert:  peanuts and 15 semisweet chocolate chips.

Monday 27 September 2010

Talk of the Table

Thanks for the feedback on the weekend post!  I am finding this blog valuable for identifying patterns, Lori, although sometimes I'm a little slow in responding to them.

My whole waffling episode kind of reminds me of the discussion of "bloggers as role models," which I still see popping up.  Some of the diabetes bloggers also post a similar question, how can I be a good advocate when I'm not managing my diabetes very well?  In my case, I feel like I'm managing the diabetes pretty well and staying the same weight-wise...but would I have gotten good results by following what I do now when I was first diagnosed?  I'm not so sure.  I was much more spot-on right after diagnosis, as I learned what did/didn't work for me.  My physical conditioning was still gradually building up, too, and it's made a huge difference in how I'm managing the diabetes aspect of things.  Sometimes it's scary to think about the unknowns...I mean, I've done a lot of reading and choose to manage my numbers pretty conservatively, but will that even be "good enough" to avoid the nasty complications?  Only time will tell me that.

But to circle around, what's the purpose of this blog?  I'd say its main purpose is to be an accountability tool for myself.  And hopefully share some laughs.  (I think laughter is the main thing, for me, that helps keep vigilance from becoming drudgery.  And knowing I'm not alone in all this, too.)

P.S. I loved the squirt bottle suggestion, Debby!  "Bad kittehs!"

Breakfast:  Good heavens, am I in a rut or what???

The real deal!  This was from the coffee place near where I live, because I ran some errands in town before heading to work.  It's a mix of their flavored chocolate raspberry coffee and French roast - yum!

Pre-workout snack:  A mini-Luna bar.  I got a box of these on sale earlier this year, after the holidays; they're chocolate peppermint stick and pretty tasty.  They were in my emergency kit, but they expire on October 26, so I had to dig them out and put them in the desk drawer cache.

My workout today was a nice swim.  My ankle/back of calf was bothering me again after Friday's treadmill run, and with all the Saturday activity, I didn't rest it too well.  I skipped my long run on Sunday to rest it, and decided swimming today would be good for it.  It's really hot here this week, so I was surprised that there weren't more lap swimmers at the pool.  Loved this!  (Lap swimming reminds me of knitting:  when you're in the mood for it, it's fun; when you're not, it feels tedious.)

Lunch:  Whole Foods treasures!  For the record, I went 1 month and 10 days...although I did go to New Leaf late last week, so not sure I'd count it as a full 10 days.  Anyhow, it was great to be back!  They had coconut water on sale, so I bought a couple; I stocked up on electrolyte water; I got 2 packages of dehydrated kale snacks (they didn't have the crunchies, so I went for a couple of other brands) and an Olade and some beef jerky.  I felt a slight pull toward the dark chocolate, but I didn't buy any this time.  I figured we've still got some chocolate chips at home if I really want some later on.

So today I ate the "Cheezy Kale Earth Chips".  Very tasty, a few more stems than I like, but not too bad.  As Debby astutely observed once, "Even when you're not eating nuts, you're eating nuts."  These are made with cashews!  And nutritional yeast for the cheezy flavor.  I liked that I could recognize all of the ingredients on the package.  I also observed the nutritionals really vary among these kale products.  This one's 1-ounce serving was 35 calories:  2 grams fat, 3 grams carb, and 2 grams protein.  (I ate the whole 3-oz. package.)  Others I've tried have as many calories in one ounce as these do in the whole bag!  I think maybe they use a higher percentage of nut products in the coating.  I also think I need to seriously consider getting a dehydrator.  I've tried making kale chips in the oven, but they tasted burnt and icky, and they never quite got to light crispiness.

The Olade today was pomegranate.  I re-discovered that even a chronic label reader can have something slip past, especially on an item that's same brand that you assume is very low sugar, but with a different flavor.  This one had more fruit juice than the others; the whole bottle was 10 grams sugar from the 14% pomegranite juice; but divided across its 2 servings (riiiiiiight..), the label of course said 5 grams of sugar.  I tested later and was good; whew!  I'd been anxious about a juice spike, but I guess with the other things (and the swim), it evened out okay.

Oh, and I also had a helping of my edamame.

This was an insanely satisfying lunch!

On the way home:  I saw the funniest thing.  I tried to get some pictures, but the iPhone camera makes everything look a zillion miles away.  The gym has a class called "Boing with Kangoo,"  where they use these bouncy exercise boots.  I think my experience with it would be more like "Take Out My Tailbone with Kangoo," because they're really tall and I'm afraid I'd fall on my posterior.  So I passed a whole pack of Kangoos "joinging" around the neighborhood in these funky boot things.

Dinner: Pork chop with barbecue sauce, green beans, and grilled pumpkin!  Yes, Mr. H&H got a cooking pumpkin at Farmer John's and cooked up half of it on the grill.  It was tasty!  I had my veggies with butter/canola spread on them.

Dessert:  Aw, the last of the Clemmy's no-sugar-added ice cream.  I shared this bit with the kids, too.  Thing 1 shared a tiny nibble of his ice cream cookie sandwich with me, too.

"Frankenfood Friday" & The Busy Weekend (9/24-27/10)

"Frankenfood Friday"

Breakfast: Cheese omelet, the usual toast, the usual coffee.

At work: the fully leaded + half-and-half + chia powder

Pre-workout snack (and namesake of the post):  I blog, because it often helps me salvage the mishaps of life and turn them into something good.  Or at least mildly amusing.

So I had some cottage cheese and blueberries and walnuts in the fridge.  I was sorting through my emergency rations box, and I found some orange mango whey protein drink mix in there.  I thought, "Hmmm...this might be something fun to try!  I like orange flavor!"  So I mixed half a packet in with the cottage cheese and added my other ingredients.

Looks promising, no?

First bite:  Hmmm...interesting.  It sort of tasted like the mid-20th century classic, the orange jello and cottage cheese salad.  Except that I'd skipped a step and just dumped in a package of jello mix.  The flavor was strong and artificial.

After a couple of bites, the true extent of the nastiness was revealed.  This might have worked with yogurt (I doubt it, though) or maybe in a smoothie, but the sweet-tart taste didn't go well with the salt in the cottage cheese.  Weird, because peaches in cottage cheese are divine.  Maybe because they're just sweet and not tart?

The final verdict.

I picked out the poor blueberries and most of the walnuts.  

Let us now observe a moment of silence to honor the fallen walnuts who sacrificed their nutty goodness in my pursuit of a new recipe.  

[bows head]

Fortunately, I still had 1/2 a Jaybar in my desk....  

My hero! (*swoon*)

At the gym:  I had a really good run on the treadmill.  This long starts to get really boring, but after a sensible 1 mile warm up, I picked up the pace a bit for miles 2 & 3.  Cool-down was mostly walking.  And then I stretched and foam-rolled, and my hamstrings felt fine.  Sadly, later on, my ankle and I think my Achilles tendon were achy, which has me worried.  And here, I thought I was being sensible and not pushing things, and working back into a reasonable pace and distance.  Hmph.

Cranky middle-aged woman side note:  Honestly, why do kids these days think the stretching area is the place to make out?  I'm sure the free weights area would have a much more appreciative audience.  I can avert my eyes with the best of them, but honestly, the smooching sounds were so annoying.  Get a room, people!

I was curious about this machine, so I gave it a whirl.  I'm thinking I need to try out more of these things.

Post-workout lunch:  Leftover "especial" soup.  I added the leftover potato from breakfast the other day and some green beans.  Yum!  They worked great in this and made it more like a stew.

Dinner:  Steak with sauce, salad, cauliflower (this time with olive oil and some Thai seasoning mix I had in the cupboard), and beer.

Mr. H&H was feeling a little grumpy, and with good reason.  Remember those folding side-tables on the new grill that I was scared about melting?  Yep, he forgot to fold them out when lighting the grill.  However, they weren't grilled for too long, and they only have some slight bubbling marks.  I was envisioning total grill devastation - which I'm sure would have been my fate - the grill itself was undamaged.

Dessert:  Yeay!  Mr. Handsome-and-Handy saved the day and bought a jar of peanuts at the store.  Got my wee cuppa with chocolate chips.  I also tried a bite of no-sugar-added homemade vanilla ice cream that Mr. H&H and the kids had made earlier in the day.  It had good flavor; the consistency was fluffy rather than dense.

Garage Sale Saturday!

(Or, The One in which Pubsgal Has a Hair-brained Scheme, which Makes Lots of Work for Mr. Handsome-and-Handy)

Breakfast:  It was kind of a backwards weekend, having to get up early on Saturday.  Mr. H&H did the donut run.  He got me some coffee, too.  The photo is representative.  I had 1 hole, a tiny wedge of apple fritter, and a chunk of my daughter's twist.  (I took pictures, but why show them?  We all know what these things look like.)*  I also had a cheese stick for protein.

*Footnote:  Sometimes I worry about showing unhealthy foods, not so much about what other people will think about me, but what it might influence other people to do.  So I cut the photos.  But then, after reading a comment on another blog, I gave it some thought and decided to put them back in.  What's the point if I'm not committed to keeping this food log as real as possible.  This is my way of staying accountable to myself.  Sometimes it's kind of onerous to keep whipping out the camera and photographing everything.  Which is why there might be sketches, or text descriptions, or even a photo of an empty plate and a text description.

This is not the part I ate.  It's the part that was about the same size as the part I cut off and ate.

I'm not pleased with this trend.  Our donut shops makes good donuts, but donuts are not really my favorite thing.  (Go figure!)  It's kind of sad, because what I really love are good quality chocolate croissants - which I'd have to drive to a certain bakery to buy, which is not on my typical route - and yet here I am, impulsively picking at donuts.  Donuts!  Arrrgh.  I keep saying, "I shouldn't do that" and then going and doing it.  So I think I need to come up with a plan for days like this.  If I'm going to eat carb in the a.m., there are so many things that would taste good and be better for me.  Some ideas:

• Flax toast with cream cheese and sugar-free jam
• Apple and almond butter or peanut butter
• Bake and freeze some sort of protein bar or muffins, so as to have something sweet but healthier
• Heck, there's a Subway next door to the donut shop, I could get myself one of their egg white muffin melt breakfast sandwiches.  I could even strip off the bread for less carb (although the carb count is 1 net carb serving, which is pretty friendly).

Here's Thing 2 at the lemonade stand.  One reason we agreed to the garage sale was because the Things always want to have a lemonade stand, yet we have so little traffic on our street.  This weekend was the city-wide garage sale event, and so there would be lots of people cruising our neighborhood going to all the other sales that were also going on.

Sadly, though, this did not work out as well as expected.  The weather got warm, and about 5 minutes in, the yellow jacket wasps started to invade.  Children in full freak-out mode don't really draw customers too well.  I managed to show Thing 2 that the yellow jackets were not after us, but she still didn't want to hang out with them all day, or serve lemonade when they were crawling up the spout of the thermos.  So we scuttled the stand.

Oddly, I didn't notice this problem with the bake sale/lemonade stand down the street from us...  

Lunch:  2 tacos made from leftover steak, with homemade salsa and queso cheese.  (We're experimenting with Mexican cheeses lately, since we're on the salsa fresca kick.  I preferred the cotija cheese, it's got more of a bite to it.  Sort of analogous to mozzarella vs. Parmesan or Romano.)

The Rest of the Day [sorry, no pictures]:

Well, we spent a lot of time hanging out in the fresh air, but we didn't make much money on the garage sale.  We figured about $60.  The Things each got $10 - clearing out some of the things they don't play with anymore was another reason for the garage sale.  Some things didn't sell that we thought would be great - a fun teepee/tent thing, and these little inflatable air beds with built-in sleeping bag.  But all of the free stuff went - the junk toys, leftover stickers, and the like.  So we had still some good items left to donate to our local Senior Coastsiders' thrift shop, Goodwill, and Parca.  Not much to throw away, which made me very happy.

Thing 2 really wanted to shop, so we took a walk (scooter ride for her) around our neighborhood.  (Good distance for her, it's still about 1 mile when skipping all the little courts and things I cover on a run around the neighborhood.)  We found several books, she found a pink Webkinz pony, and we got some baked goods from the girls having a bake sale.  I also found a nice jacket for work.

When I got back, Mr. H&H and I shared a chocolate chip cookie bar, and we put the brownies away for the kids for later.  We were kept quite busy with the cleaning up and packing the leftovers for donation.

The rest of the proceeds went toward an early pizza dinner - and we splurged and went for It's Italia, which is a marvelous local pizza place.  We got the kids a cheese pizza without sauce - they loved it! - finally, one they will both eat!  We got ourselves a Montara Mountain and split a spinach salad.  Sorry, no pictures of this one.  I ate a little more crust than usual, because theirs is totally worthy.  Luckily, Thing 2 was in a bike-riding mood, so we took a little spin around the neighborhood after dinner.

I had a little of the homemade ice cream, mushed up with some Irish cream and cocoa powder.  Not quite as good as I'd hoped, but oh well.

Semi-lazy Sunday

Breakfast:  Cheesy eggs with garden-fresh tomatoes and chives (yum!  Don't know what it is about that egg/cheese/tomato combo, but it's a winner!), 1 pancake, 4 slices of bacon (3 shown), and lots of lovely coffee.

Lunch:  This is Thing 2's lunch, but I took a picture to remind me that I had a little piece of banana (about 1/4?) when she was trying peanut butter & banana, and some cashews.

Thing 2 cracks me up.  I don't know which cultural grandma she's channeling when she does this, but she loves making things in the kitchen, the more ingredients the better, and then not eating them.  Or eating two bites, then trilling "I'm full!" and dancing away.  She made Thing 1's PB&J sandwich, and made some lemonade (we'd thrown out the full-sugar stuff from the day before) but didn't drink any.

No, I did not eat all this watermelon. (As much as I wanted to.)  I cut up a plateful for us all to share.  I had about 2 wedges.

Main course for me was an apple, some cheese, and a spoonful of almond butter.

And some peanuts.

And a little more peanuts.

The Rest of the Day [no photos again]:  I took Thing 2 to a birthday party, which we enjoyed quite a lot.  I had half a cupcake (and smooshed the rest into my folded-up paper plate).  It was sort of sad, because I really wanted some of the cake instead, but oh well.  Mr. H&H and Thing 1 went over the hill to go to a local toy store's train sale and expo, but they didn't find any train stuff that they wanted.

I made dinner while they were on the way home:  hamburgers with broccoli for the kids; cheeseburgers and red Swiss chard from our new neighbors for the grown-ups.  Beer also for said hard-working grown ups.

I really wanted to do my long run, but I was scared to do much with my ankle thing on Friday, and we had a busy, on-our-feet Saturday, so I rested on Sunday.  I'm going to swim on Monday and then try running again on Tuesday.

So all-in-all, a lovely Fall weekend that was way too short.  Hope you all had a good one, too!