Monthly Archives: June 2012

Sweet and Savory Burgers

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Warriors, unite. It’s time for the Warrior Dash!

I am going to be tearing up hills, climbing over walls, crawling through mud, and running through the grassy course at Afton Alps today. I cannot wait to fill you in and hopefully share some good pictures with you.

Friday Breakfast

A classic of mine: banana and PB2.

Lunch 

I was at a conference for work, and they served an impressive taco bar. I didn’t take a photo unfortunately but I can tell ya it looked and tasted great. I loaded my plate with chicken, lettuce, cilantro, tomato, corn, black beans, onions, and salsa. For dessert I ate a small serving of sweet compote with blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries.

In the afternoon we ran a few errands and I munched on sugar snap peas and almonds. I am really anxious to tell you about the “Breaking the Vicious Cycle” book I mentioned to you yesterday. Melanie is going to be cleaning her gut, in a very healthy way. More to come so soon!

Dinner

Sweet and Savory Turkey Burgers (I didn’t measure exactly)—recipe idea from this site.

  • lean ground turkey*
  • 1 small apple peeled, cored and grated
  • 1/4 cup or less onion, grated
  • celery seed
  • dried sage
  • chives
  • black pepper
*You can substitute lean ground beef or ground chicken

I crunched on some watermelon before dinner. Note my fashionista outfit I’m sporting. You can usually find me in something of these sorts while I am home. I am all about the comfies.

I assembled the burgers, and Dana cooked them to perfection on the grill.

Such a great team. I plated my burger up with a small salad with olives and honey mustard, and two slices of cheddar cheese. Look, it’s a Christmas tree!

The rest of the night was spent getting ready for the Warrior Dash, painting my toe nails, and playing with the pooch.

We have a busy day ahead of us. Can’t wait to tell you about it! Have an AWESOME Saturday. :smile:

Mashed Potato Add the Laughing Cow

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Everyone do your happy Friday dance!

First things first. Since it’s Friday that means it’s time to check in on the very last week of the June Yoga Challenge hosted by the beautiful and talented Courtney at SweetToothSweetLife.

I am happy to report that I once again have met my goal of three yoga sessions a week.  Yoga On Demand has been great–I have been able to practice yoga in the comfort of my own living room at any hour of the day.

I began the challenge one week late into June, but I can honestly say that in the three weeks that I have been partaking in the yoga, I have improved my flexibility and have learned how to incorporate breathing techniques throughout my day if I begin to feel stressed. I also feel like my arms are beginning to tone up a bit from all of the planks and downward dogs.

Although the official June Yoga Challenge is over, I will absolutely continue to practice yoga, and hopefully move from a beginner status, to a more intermediate yogi. Hopefully someday I will be able to master the crow pose! Thank you, Courtney for such a great opportunity and for inspiring me to get my yoga on.

Thursday Breakfast

A piece of spelt bread toast with cinnamon honey PB2 and banana slices.

Lunch

Lunch included a potato which I cooked in the mini crockpot on low for about 4 hours with 1-1.5 cups of water (prepared on Monday). Once it was done cooking, I peeled the potato…

And whipped the potato with a small amount of chicken broth.

I then mixed in one light swiss laughing cow wedge, and added salt and pepper to taste.

I packed it up in a nice little tupperware container and brought it with me to work, warmed it in the microwave, and had a quick and nummy lunch. There is nothing to it really. Homemade mashed potatoes are well worth the small effort. I really enjoyed adding the Laughing Cow wedge into the potatoes. It gave a very subtle creamy cheesy taste to the potato.

If you don’t want to use the crock pot method for cooking your potato, you can always bake your potato in the oven, or for an even speedier cooking method, poke holes in your clean potato, and cook in the microwave for about 5 minutes, turning halfway through (cooking time varies depending on the size of your potato).

I also had some super juicy watermelon with lunch.

Dinner

Your eyes aren’t fooling you. This is a veggie-packed salad. I am taking a different approach to my colitis and only time will tell how my body reacts. This dish is full of mixed greens (kale, spinach, and other dark greens), broccoli tops, mushrooms, avocado, olives, carrots, Morningstar’s Griller Chik’n Burger, and Newman’s Own Lite Honey Mustard.

Welcome back greenery. You are lovely and I have missed you so. This was my first time eating Morningstars Griller’s Chik’n which is a vegetarian chicken burger. Each burger is 80 calories, 3 grams of fat, 350 mg sodium, and packs 9 grams of protein. I prepared the burgers by placing them in a sauté pan on the stove top, and cooking on each side so that both sides crisp up and the burger is heated through.

The taste of this burger was great! I think they tasted like real grilled chicken. It is a nice substitute to meat every once and a while. I love Morningstar veggie products. They do a great job.

Etc.

Last night I started reading the book, “Breaking the Vicious Cycle” by Elaine Gottschall. It is all about treating intestinal problems including Ulcerative Colitis, through the diet.

The book focuses on scientific research which proves that individuals with intestinal distress can often benefit from a specific carbohydrate diet. I am only about 20 pages in but I am very curious about this diet and am anxious to read more. I’ll keep you posted on what I find and tell you more about the book later.

I took a rest day yesterday on the workout scene. I will probably take another one today. Tomorrow is the Warrior Dash! For those of you unfamiliar with the Warrior Dash, it is a 5k run combined with obstacles throughout. The very end of the race involves crawling through 2 feet of mud. It’s a beautiful site.

Photos from last year’s dash…

I’m excited to fill you all in on the details later. Happy Friday! Have a great day.

Ruby Red Jewels on My Salad

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Wednesday Yoga and Breakfast

What better way to start the day yesterday than a gentle yoga session. I turned on Gentle Yoga On Demand and completed the calming routine. I have found that I appreciate the gentle yoga versus the more intense yoga first thing in the morning. It gets me stretched out and really allows me to focus on my breathing and tackle my day. I love the more intense yoga in the afternoons though once I’m more awake.

Breakfast was an easy to digest, old favorite: the Cream of Wheat bowl. In the mix was the usual cereal, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Although it was stinking hot yesterday, this warm breakfast still tasted great.

I headed off to work for a while then came home for a super speedy lunch. I had prepped everything in the morning for a protein smoothie so that all I had to do was toss it into the blender, whip it good, and enjoy in minutes. I included tofu in this smoothie along with protein powder because I needed extra staying power to hold me through the afternoon.

I finished lunch with a couple of animal crackers and peanut butter, and two dark chocolate squares.

Lunch completely held me over until dinner. Mission accomplished.

When I got home from work ,my neighbor greeted me in between our yards. She was telling me that their raspberry bush in the corner of our two yards has completely flourished over the years and is plummeting well into our yard and into our bushes. She wanted to make sure I was aware that there were fresh raspberries up in our yard so I wasn’t missing out. I thought it was sweet of her to tell me that. I was very aware of the amazing raspberry bush in the corner of our yard, and actually thought it was our bush all along. Now technically it is partly ours since it is our yard too. Yes!

Raspberries are by far one I my favorite fruits. I went ahead and popped a few in my mouth and then decided they needed to go into dinner somehow. Since I am experimenting with adding salads back into my diet, I made plans to incorporate the ruby red jewels into a nice refreshing salad.

In the salad: Mixed greens, raspberries, watermelon, avocado, feta, and Newman’s Own Lite Raspberry and Walnut dressing. Holy cow the freshness on this salad was for sure a Melanie pleaser. This is a summer salad if I’ve ever seen one. Check out the colors. Awesome.

I also had a few mushrooms with hummus (photo from Tuesday).

And a caramel rice cake.

It was so incredibly hot here today, and I think pretty much all across the country, so I didn’t feel like being outside, but I wanted to get some light exercise in still. My favorite show, SYTYCD  was on tonight so I laced up the sneaks and headed down to the treadmill to watch my show in a cool basement.

This sounds pretty identical to last week actually with the walking and watching the show bit. I am really not one to sit down and watch an entire show because I either feel guilty sitting there sedentary for so long, or I feel like I should be doing something else productive. Walking on the treadmill while watching my show makes me feel WAY better about watching TV, not that I condone watching a ton of it. I only have two, well really three, shows that I truly enjoy watching these days: Bachelorette, SYTYCD, and always Wheel of Fortune. I would never cancel plans to watch these shows, but I usually either DVR them, or watch them when they’re on when I can. Who cares anyway;  sorry that was a pointless rant about TV.

OK! It’s Thursday which  means tomorrow is one of my favorite days of all time. I hope you have a wonderful day! Catch up with you soon.

Tropical Green Smoothie

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Morning Run

Tuesday morning started off with another enjoyable 3-mile run. Just like my run on Saturday, the weather was absolutely perfect. It was 61° and mostly cloudy, with a light breeze. I struggled a bit with the hills but that is pretty typical for me. I kept running and didn’t stop until I was home.

Breakfast

Breakfast yesterday was a refreshing and satisfying  smoothie. I finally remembered to measure and write down the ingredients in my smoothie concoction so I can finally share it with you all.

Tropical Green Smoothie

  • 1/2 medium banana
  • 1/2 cup mango (frozen)
  • 1/2 cup peaches (frozen)
  • 1/2 cup spinach
  • 2 Tbsp strawberry puree
  • 2 Tbsp protein powder (I used Hemp Protein)
  • 3/4 cup milk

Blend all ingredients until smooth and ENJOY. In case anyone is wondering, I calculated this smoothie to be around 250 calories.

After breakfast I ran a few errands, worked on a secret recipe for a big chunk of the day (more to come soon!), and took Moosey for a walk around the neighborhood.

We actually had a good walk together. Usually when I try to walk with him, he decides not to listen to me, or there happens to be a dog on the loose, or something frustrating happens that makes me turn around and head back home. But he did a really great job of walking next to me even when we passed two yellow labs. We made a big step in the right direction there, Mooser.

Lunch 

I ended up munching on my kitchen creations so I won’t be able to tell you EXACTLY what I ate for lunch and an afternoon snack yesterday. You will find out soon though! It sure is delicious. It ended up making up about 75% of my food intake for the day. Sorry for the lack of food photos.

I can tell you that I snacked on some mushrooms and hummus.

I had to make another Target run in the afternoon because I was running low on a few ingredients I needed. I swear I go to Target everyday. Here’s what’s funny. I only needed 3 things, and guess who had to make a list? Yea, I had to make a list for 3 measly items. What is happening to my mind? I don’t know if it’s a bad memory or if it’s just the fact that Target sucks me in and completely washes my brain of the reason why I’m actually there. Probably the latter. I know I’m not alone on this one. You go there for 3 things and you walk out with 10. The good news is, with my list I remembered everything I needed AND I only bought those 3 items. I pat myself on the back for that one.

Afternoon Yoga

I turned on Metal Yoga from Sportskool On Demand. I felt warm and loose as I conquered the “beginner” session. I really disagree with the beginner status on that one. The instructor has us resting in plank. Holding a plank is not considered rest in my opinion.

It was a really great work out though. Something wonderful happened during the session yesterday. I was able to touch my toes without bending my knees! That is proof that my flexibility is improving! WOO!!

That was yoga session #2 for the week so far. I still have three more days to get one more in order to reach my June Yoga Challenge weekly goal. It’s the last week of the challenge, so I am making sure to make it a good one.

Dinner

It was time to experiment with the veggies. I made myself a very small salad that included Boston Bibb lettuce, the tops of broccoli (!!), shredded chicken, avocado, shredded cheese and honey mustard dressing. I can’t tell you how good this tasted to me.

I was a little nervous to include broccoli as it tends to be a veggie that commonly upsets the digestive system, but I wanted to try it and see how I felt. Also, I removed the stem which I would imagine is slightly more difficult for the body to break down.

(FYI: After eating the broccoli, I think I feel the same as any other day. It’s hard to tell with just one experiment meal. With that, I may start to incorporate more salads into my diet again, but will probably continue to cool it on the broccoli).

I also ate a couple handfuls of Wild Harvest’s amazingly addicting animal crackers.

And dipped them into honey PB2.

I was sleeping by 10:10 pm last night; I was exhausted for some reason.Happy Wednesday! Hope you all have a great day.

Peanut Butter All Day

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Yesterday I decided to take a break from the smoothies. I don’t know if my body was reacting poorly to the weekend of fun and not eating normally, or if it was reacting because I had two smoothies on Sunday. One way or the other, it wasn’t very happy. Since I had to be at work yesterday, I thought it would be a good idea to stick with the basics.

Delicious basics. Cream of Wheat with cinnamon, banana, and stevia in an almost empty peanut butter jar. The hot cereal makes the peanut butter melt off the sides. It is so so good. I scraped this bad boy clean.

The protein, fat, and carb combo did a great job of holding me over until lunch time. At lunch I came home and made myself a PB2 banana sandwich and served it on possibly the cutest plate I have ever laid my eyes on. Target boutique really knows how to make me happy. :wink: This plate was $1.79 I think; well worth it. I have another one to show you soon too!

I also ate some pretzels and cheesy crackers with hummus and a piece of dark chocolate. Then back to work. After work I headed straight to the gym even though all I wanted to do was lay outside on the deck under the beautiful sun. I brought an issue of Fitness magazine and read it from front to back while movin’ it on the elliptical. It felt great to move yet I kept it a fairly relaxing workout. I was still sweating through it! I think I have decided that Fitness magazine is currently my favorite magazine. I love reading all of their recipe ideas, workouts, and tips on healthy living.

Anyway, I headed home to hang out with the boyeeze. On the menu for dinner: lettuce wraps with pulled chicken, apple, avocado, and Newman’s Own Lite Honey Mustard.

I loved all of the different textures and the sweetness from the apple and honey mustard with the slightly salty chicken. After the lettuce wraps I got into the peanut butter again. Yup, you read it right, peanut butter for the third time, this time with pretzels (Hales I thought of you while snacking on this one). I just couldn’t keep my paws off the peanut butter yesterday. And since I’m being totally honest, I’ll go ahead and tell you I also had a few bites of rainbow sherbet and a lemon cookie.

After dinner I still had quite a bit of energy to burn, so made my way down to the treadmill and walked my way through the Bachelorette. Well, part of it at least. I am such a huge Sean fan still. I am really hoping that Emily falls for him and they can live happily ever after.

Once again I got roped into watching this season. They always get me somehow.

I am off to tackle some To-Do’s. Catch up with all ya’ll later! Have a great day.

Do you have a guilty pleasure show? What is it?

Besides The Bachelorette, I find myself getting sucked into Keeping Up with the Kardashians every once and a while if it’s on. Those are my guilty pleasure shows, and now you all know!