Monday 23 August 2010

Talk of the Table

Lori noted that I use almond milk in my coffee quite a lot, and asked, "Do you drink milk?"

I love milk! But I find that I don't drink it very often, because 8 oz. has 15 grams of carb (1 carb exchange), and I'm rarely satisfied with only 1 cup of milk. And in the morning, when I was starting out, I was super sensitive to carbs, so I used half-and-half in my coffee. But that's kind of calorie dense, so I tried cutting it with unsweetened vanilla almond milk, which has way less carbs per serving than milk. Plus I like how it tastes in coffee.

Foodie McBody asked if I'd share my secret for creating captions on my pictures. The short answer is that I have a screen capture tool called "SnagIt" (inexpensive and excellent!). In its editor mode, one of the tools is a Callouts tool. It has several options, like thought bubbles and speech bubbles. That's how I add captions to photos. It isn't the greatest for hard-core photo editing; for example, it doesn't have one of those lasso tools that you can use for selecting odd shapes (the Paint program that comes with MS Word does, however). If your graphics tool doesn't have captions, you could always create an oval and a triangle and connect the two, then make a text box with a clear border and add text to it. If anyone is interested, I could post a little tutorial with the steps.

Breakfast:  I did my workout on the exercise bike this morning, and I got really hungry!  So it was the usual spackle, plus Kona Joe coffee (not decaf!) with almond milk and half-and-half.

...And a donut hole.  (10 seconds in the microwave made it a little too hot to handle!)

Mid-morning: Chia powder in green tea!

Lunch:  I have no idea how this got so overexposed!  This was a couple of leftover polish dogs, half a package of frozen Tuscan veggie mix, and about 2 Tbsp of lite Italian dressing.

Frozen veggie mixes + leftover meat = easiest packed lunch ever!

I also had an apple and some walnuts.

Late afternoon: About 2 Tbsp peanut butter, 2 Tbsp wheat germ, and 1 square of Valrhona dark chocolate.

Mid-evening:  Mr. Handsome-and-Handy said it was "fend for yourself" dinner tonight, and I was working late, and I knew I'd need to help with gearing the kids back into an earlier bedtime...in other words, not a lot of time for dallying over dinner.  So a "Jayb" (1/2 of a Jaybar) before I went home.

Really late dinner:  I wasn't hungry when I got home, so I went straight to bedtime duty.  I read the end of one of the "Pet Fairies" books to Thing 2, then a whole other one.  They're about 60 pages of easy chapter reading, with pictures on each page, but it's still a lot of reading out loud.  After a little over an hour of reading, the vocal cords were kaput!  So Mr. H&H took over, and I had a little bedtime snack:  3 sticks of cheddar cheese, a handful of cherry tomatoes, and (...yes, Lori, I DO drink milk!) a little glass of milk.  And then I had some almonds.  Thing 2 was asleep, but I was well-fueled to help Thing 1 get to sleep.  We talked a little, and then I read him the meditation in the appendixes of Savor to help him relax.  Does anyone know of any kid resources about learning to meditate?  It seems like most of the stuff I've read is geared toward adults, and it seems like it would be a really useful life skill for kids.

Friday 20 through Sunday 22 August 2010

I'm playing weekend catch-up today...

Friday 20 August

Pre-run 1/4 banana snack

Spackle (usual ingredients) + 2 mugs of the usual coffee.

Lunch: About 2.5 oz. leftover taco meat (from the freezer) and 1/2 package of Tuscan frozen veggie mix.  Handful of those smoked paprika pecans.

A few more of those pecans...

About 1.5 square of Valrhona dark chocolate (yum!) and a handful of walnuts.

Regarding dark chocolate, I love it!  I used to prefer milk chocolate, but dark chocolate is much friendlier carb-wise and more satisfying taste-wise.  Favorite brands for me are Green & Black's 70%, Valrhona (usually a good deal at Trader Joes), Trader Joes' 3-pack, and Guittard semisweet chocolate chips.  I also like the Sharffenberger cocoa nibby bars, but I was mad when they sold out to Hershey's and haven't bought them lately.  Anyhow, I like just about anything 60-75% dark, but these tend to be the ones I buy.

Mojito, tri-tip steak, and grilled veggies!  Yum!

Same mojito, with mac nuts...

...a little more mac nuts, and 1/2 of one of those 7-layer cookie bars from the picnic.

A few smoked almonds...

And some strawberries from our garden.  Darn snails like these and the tomatoes. :-P  Anyone have advice for keeping the snails off my plants? We do use the snail pellets, but who would eat that and not the fresh produce?  Apparently not the snails.  Mr. Handsome-and-Handy is thinking we should perhaps think about eating the snails.

I also had another mojito and some peanuts with our movie night.  We geeked out and watched Tron.

Saturday 21 August

Well, this day was easy to document! I loved being able to send all of my photos in one email!

Here's brunch!  Those are protein pancakes, made from the recipe in the Blood Sugar 101 book plus a scoop of flax seed meal.  One batch made 4 pancakes; I ate another one and saved the 4th for Sunday.  The yellow and red item is a scramble with tomatoes, eggs, and cheese.  I also had a couple more pieces of bacon than those shown, and another mug of the usual coffee.  Except it was full caff today; Mr. Handsome-and-Handy bought me some Kona Joe coffee; love it!  Turns out it was a good thing, because we ended up going to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, and I drove!

Here's a sketch of the eats; mostly after the Boardwalk excursion, and I was hangry by then.  I hadn't had a Taco Bell chalupa in 2 years; they used to be my favorite.  Tasty, but it didn't make me want more.

The Boardwalk was so much fun!  A little overwhelming for us country mice, but Thing 2 loved the rides.  She rode her first roller coaster, the Sea Monster.  (It's small but fast, more of a curvy one than one with big hills.)  She was really anxious about it, and so was I.  I hadn't been on a roller coaster in...I think 14 or 15 years.  For many years, I avoided them because I was afraid I wouldn't fit in the seat with the restraint down, and I didn't like the idea of having to get off the ride if it didn't...or worse, have the ride take off with me not securely in it!  But I figured it was worth a try, and to my delight, we could both fit!  (It was a little scrunchy for long legs, though.)  Thing 1 was timid about trying the rides, but we finally found a Nascar-themed one, and he enjoyed it quite a lot.  He and I loved the bumper car speedway, too.  We all played a round of mini golf and enjoyed the arcade, too.  Nice cap to the summer!

Sunday 22 August

Whew!  Rocky night for everyone.  I think maybe the Boardwalk overstimulated everybody.  I bought a cup of caff'd coffee at the donut shop.  I had 2 donut holes: this one, and the one below.

I had one of my protein pancakes with peanut butter and sugar-free syrup, and an omlette with bacon, cheese, and tomato.  And a couple more cups of the usual decaf coffee.  Not shown: 3.5 strawberries from the garden.

Lunch was chili (this bowl + another half) and a couple of polish dogs.

Later, I had half of a piece of the 7-layer cookie bars.

And some boardwalk taffy: 3 regular, 4 sugar-free.  (They had sugar-free, and it was tasty!  Some different flavors than the regular.)

And a couple of these:

I wasn't too hungry for dinner.  Forgot to get a picture, though, so here's a sketch:

Later on, we had dessert.  I had a taste of the kids' mint chip.

And a little dish of Clemmy's sugar-free chocolate.  This stuff is really chocolatey, and very little sugar!  (It's very high fat, though, so a little bit goes a long way.)

Toasting with Thing 2!  (She even liked the Clemmy's, and she generally does not like sugar-free stuff.)

And a little dish of peanuts.

Cramming for School?

When I eat like I've been eating lately--cramming in stuff when I'm not hungry, that is--it seems to be a sign that something is eating me.  In this case, I know what's eating me:  back to school! (Cue horror movie music.)  Nowadays, kids have so much more homework in elementary school than we did back in the day, and the school they attend is known for being academically rigorous.  Which in many ways is a good thing, but it means ever-so-much more involvement from we parental units.  So in addition to the hectic get-out-the-door routine, none of us are looking forward to the homework/project stuff.  It's pretty much non-stop, even over holidays and weekends.  It's hard for us to get genuinely excited about it, and I'm sure that rubs off on The Things.  Ugh.  And I also will have a much less flexible schedule for fitting in the soon-to-be-seriously-ramping-up training for the half marathon.  Double-ugh.

So no answers, but I guess I need to just remain open and flexible and trust that we'll figure it out as we make the transition.  Maybe this year will go more smoothly, since we're not new to the school anymore, and Thing 1 even has the same teachers.  We'll see!  Maybe just writing all this out will help a bit.

Thursday 19 August 2010

Breakfast: I was rather in a hurry this morning. Breakfast was 1 slice of flax toast with almond butter and sugar-free apricot jam, 1 mug of decaf with almond milk and half-and-half, and green tea.

A.M. Snacks: The above cappuccino from my favorite coffee place, which is right near my stylist's salon. (I got a haircut this morning...similar style, but everyone can tell when I've just had it done vs. styled myself...oh well.)

Below is green tea and chia powder. I prefer the whole seeds' texture, but the powder goes on such good sales, I feel like I have to buy it rather than the seeds.

Lunch: The following are my lunch pictures. (Sometimes it's hard to tell when to put the caption before or after the pictures.) First, a cookie from the weekly office cookie tray...I grabbed a bite before I got back to my desk.

Here's the main dish: Salad with leftover chicken, broccoli, walnuts, lite Italian dressing and rice wine vinegar.

And then I had a little teriyaki turkey jerky. I had half a portion, then the rest of the portion. I felt really hungry today!

Afternoon Snack 1: I felt hungry after my lunchtime walk. So I had an apple and some walnuts and a cup of tea. (I tried to find the Thai Coconut Celestial Seasons that Foodie had mentioned, but this was the best I could do at Whole Foods. It's pretty tasty, but I prefer my Good Earth Original.)

Afternoon Snack 2:  Clouds parted! Angels sang!  I ate Siggi's Orange & Ginger skyr with blueberries!  I never tried this combo before, but wow-o-wow!  The Siggi's is face-contortingly tart, but paired with blueberries...well, it's just divine. (There's a little piece of watermelon that was okay, and a sprinkle of wheat germ on the yogurt - I like the slight crunch.)

And dinner?  Sorry, no photos of the actual food, but this seemed like a pretty good representation...

Dinner:  Okay, so the photo is a bit of an exaggeration.  We went to the picnic hosted by the 1st grade families for incoming Kindergarten families at our school.  I had a cheeseburger and 3 hot dogs, all without the bun; some veggies (onion, tomato, pickle, snap pea pods); a dab of broccoli salad; and about 1/4 cup of baked beans.  I also had part of a 7-layer cookie bar (and remembered why we don't make them - whoo!  Tasty, but sweet!  Thank goodness they were cut up into little squares) and a brownie.  It was pretty normal, actually, other than having 3 hot dogs.  And I'm not feeling remorseful, but curious:  why did I feel like eating that many hot dogs?  Was it social anxiety?  BBQ in a forest and everything smelling so good?  I have no idea.  And then I actually felt hungry later on at home and had some macadamia nuts.

Wednesday 18 August 2010

Breakfast: 1/2 cup cottage cheese, 1 slice flax toast with butter and sugar-free apricot jam, and 2 mugs of Kona coffee with half-and-half.

AM Snack:  Coffee from home, coffee from work with almond milk + half-and-half + 1.5 Tbsp chia seeds, and the rest of my Cosmic Kale Crunchies.  I'd buy a dehydrator in a hot minute if I could make kale stuff like this!

Pre-workout snack:  You know, I'm not sure if I needed this, but I felt better knowing I'd had a little something before CardioSculpt class.  I had half of a JayBar.  Love these things!  They are chewy and fudgey.  Nutritional info:  1 whole bar is 220 calories, with 10g fat (1g sat), 23 g carbs (6g fiber, 10g sugar, and 5g sugar alcohol-xylitol) and 14 g protein.

Lunch: 1/2 cup leftover refried beans with about 2 ounces al pastor pork (wolfed before clicking!), and an antipasto salad with salami, cheese, grilled peppers & onions, and a combo of lite Italian dressing and vinegar.

Late afternoon snack: Handful of walnuts and about 1-1/4 square of Valrhona dark chocolate.

Dinner: Broccoli, 4 oz. chicken, 1 "raw crust" with cream cheese.

Dessert: Oh, Lordy, the mac nuts were open today.  I had 2 of these little dishes.