Merry Monday!

Crazy morning already!  I had a shitty sleep last night, tossed and turned and itched (winter dry skin, I hate you!) and then around 3am I swear I heard a prowler in our kitchen.  Since Ray is on graveyards and my dog is the biggest chicken ever, I had to go and reassure myself that it was nothing and headed out into the kitchen alone.  Obviously, it was nothing but I couldn’t go back to sleep.  I even dragged Grace up onto the bed to snuggle with but that still didn’t help.

So this morning I got up a bit earlier (I was awake anyway) because I had to grab some cash on my way to work for an appointment after work.  Unfortunately I encountered a questionable person at the bank.  The guy walked past me in my car, staring at me the whole time, hid around the corner and kept peeking to see if I was out of my car yet….then I opened my car door and slammed it shut and he came trotting out from around the corner….a little peeved that I’d fooled him….I drove away to him yelling and waving his fist at me.  So now I have to go on my lunch break to get cash.  Anyway, also this morning I was going to ship my dad’s parcel out only to find out that A) it’s going to cost me over $80 and that B) my credit card got declined.  Fortunately, it was just a stupid misunderstanding with the bank and things will be soon resolved, but it didn’t add to my happy morning feeling.  I guess I should be glad that it got declined though….because at the moment I was actually going to spend close to $100 to ship a box.  Stupid.  So, I will hump the box back out to my car tonight and go to the Greyhound station after dinner.

This weekend was alright, we stayed home for dinner on Friday night to save ourselves the money and to use up some salmon that was in the freezer.  Easy dinner and quite delicious.  Saturday morning I got up early and took my dog for a walk.  It’s one of the things I’d been looking forward to all week and I was very happy that the weather cooperated.  It was gorgeous and frosty and cold at 7am and I loved it!  We went into the trail and then instead of coming out on the road I took Grace across a sports field to see what she’d think of frosty grass.  She’s a dope and didn’t even notice.  We went to a Harley meeting afterwards and then out for a quick breakfast with another couple.  It was an impromptu thing that turned out really well!   Ray went back to bed for a few hours when we got home (stupid Graveyards!) and I got busy with some grain free Christmas baking.  Three recipes and all of them turned out pretty well.  The only flop was the actual dipping of the shortbread into the caramel…the caramel stayed so gooey that the cookies are impossible to do anything with.  The two smashing successes were the Chocolate Almond Cranberry Biscotti (dipped in more chocolate) and the Chocolate Pecan Caramel cookies.  Both First Place Winners!

 

 

After a post-baking sit-down with some rummy Almond Nog, we had a finger food dinner and then went downstairs to have our Wrapping Party.  Drinks, festive music and lots and lots of wrapping!  FIVE HOURS LATER, we came back upstairs where I fell into bed with aching legs & an aching back from 3 hours of baking followed by 5 hours of wrapping while standing on the tile floor downstairs.  Totally a fun day though!

Sunday morning I got up before everyone (yes, the dog stayed in bed with Ray) and had a coffee and read my book in the quiet.  Just me, the Christmas tree and my coffee and book.  Totally nice way to start the day!

 

Morning coffee alone!

 

We had a quick lunch at home and then went for groceries.  Lunch was a bit of a throw together, pre-grocery shop.  But, food is food and they were all delicious things, if a somewhat odd combo!

Chicken wings, a pepperoni stick, a cheese ball, avocado & apple w/ almond butter!

And, our weekend concluded with a huge baked ham (we’ll be eating ham for days if not weeks) and a short Christmas movie before Ray had to go to work.

Merry Monday, blog world, I’m off to drink some tea!

Advertisement

Recharge

It’s Sunday night, I’m sitting on the sofa having just enjoyed a very delicious grain/bean free home made chili and I’m counting the minutes until an appropriate amount of time has passed so that I can try the Paleo Pear Tart that I made today.

I put the chili together after dinner yesterday so that all I had to do was flip the crockpot on this morning.  I made my standard chili recipe but eliminated the black beans, kidney beans and kernel corn.  Instead I doubled the meat and threw in fresh roma tomatoes, fresh zucchini, oven roasted mushrooms and oven roasted red and green peppers.  It was absolutely delicious and we didn’t miss the beans at all!

My original plan for today was to laze about in bed until I felt like getting up and then shower, throw my season of House on DVD in and laze about some more while Ray watched Daytona.  A total recharge day.  As it turned out I was awake and out of bed at 7:30, showered and in the driveway ready to head to my mom’s for coffee at 8:30…..at which time I went straight back in the house because my car wouldn’t start.  Gr!  Turned out that my day of recharge turned into a day that I would have to recharge my battery….and then fork over $110 to get a new battery.  Ah well, at least someone got recharged.  😉

Daytona was rained out and cancelled so Ray’s day didnt’ go as planned either.  When I got home from my mom’s we made and ate lunch and then headed out to Costco to buy a new battery for my dud  car.  Once we got home and sat down for a minute we realized we wanted to go and run a couple errands in North Van so hopped in the car again and off we went.  Wasn’t a very relaxing day, but it was nice to be completely spontaneous.

I’m spending the rest of the evening on the sofa in my house coat with my book (The Night Circus) and a cup of tea.  I’ll eat some tart a little later and let you know what it’s like later.

I leave you with a shot of a beautiful white cactus flower in my kitchen.

Bacon, Misguided.

You know what is never a good idea?  Deep fried bacon.  It doesn’t even taste good!  We went to a breakfast buffet to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a big group of friends.  Initially I was concerned because we’d been last year and all I remembered was the delicious breads and cakes and muffins and pastries….obviously none of which fit with my current eatstyle.  I twittered the pub earlier in the week to see what they had that was an option for me and discovered that they would have an omelette station, roast beef, green salad as well as bacon & sausage.  Since we do not cook bacon in our regular life I thought that I would probably have a bunch of green salad, a veggie omelette and some bacon.  In fact that’s exactly what I did have……..but the bacon was deep fried and about 10 minutes after finishing dessert (a small fruit bowl), I started to feel really icky in my stomach…an ominous gurgle set in and brought heartburn with it.  Not cool!  Although, if you consider that in the last month, at least, I haven’t eaten anything that even resembles deep fried anything, the gurgle and the heartburn is not surprising.  I was kicking myself yesterday because it was a stupid choice to make.  I eat the way that I do in order to feel good and clean and healthy.  And that bacon made me feel greasy and bloated and yucky.  Not to mention the amount of sodium….I am a blimp this morning….and I mustn’t forget that clean eating does not make me immune to sodium, I am very sensitive to it!  So, lesson learned……had I stuck with the greens and the veggie omelette with the fruit salad for dessert I would have been in a much better situation yesterday and today! 

 

Tomorrow is my weigh day and if my bacon-bloat doesn’t break between now and tomorrow morning I don’t think I’m going to be very pleased with my result.  Although!  Even with the bloat on my waistline is still smaller than it has been in a long time so something must be going right! 

 

As you may have figured out, I do a lot of reading and researching of things that interest me….like living grain free.  I’ve noticed a few blogs lately where the owners are lamenting how hard/impossible this is to do when your spouse isn’t on board with the plan.  My hubby isn’t on board, not at all.  What he is though, is supportive….in that he pretty much is letting me do what I choose to do because I let him do what he chooses to do.  He still drinks milk and eats bread and cookies etc.  But he doesn’t pitch a fit if we don’t have rice or pasta as a side dish and he’s willing to at least taste new things.  He also knows which side his proverbial bread is buttered on, since I do the shopping and the cooking, as long as he still gets the things that he likes to eat, he’s smart enough not to mind if they are modified slightly to allow us both to eat them.  Last night’s dinner for example.  Before I get to the dinner part though……I should point out that this is not my first foray into grain free, I tried it about 2 years ago and didn’t make it very far……but what I did do as a result of the effort was to drastically reduce the amount of grains that we were eating.  So it wasn’t unusual for us to have a meat dish and a veggie side dish for dinner before which makes the final drop into this lifestyle a little easier.  While today is my Day 14, technically the success of this day has been almost two years in the making.  Just wanted to get that out there so that I’m not making it sound like I decided 14 days ago to eliminate grains and that it’s been smooth sailing ever since….not at all the case!

 

Anyway, on to the food!  Saturday night I found a recipe for Paleo Banana Bread that turned out SO good!  I ended up slicing it into 14 slices, putting parchment between the slices, bagging the whole loaf and putting it in the freezer.  Simple to grab a slice, throw in the toaster and then slather with almond butter as an approved snack!  Next time I make it I’m going to try putting a couple of scoops of protein powder in to bump the protein content….should work in place of the sweetener also.

 

 

Last night’s dinner was my favourite meatloaf recipe, modified slightly.  Since I couldn’t use bread crumbs or rolled oats as a binder/filler I thought I would try grinding up some pinenuts and using them in place.  Turned out that was unnecessary (although it added a unique flavour to the meat) since the meat cooked up just fine.  What I did notice was that the meatloaf was super dense because there was no filler in it.  I used a combo of ground beef and ground pork and then my regular seasonings and topping (pat meat into round or square pan, spread can of tomato paste over the top, sprinkle with 2 tbsp dried oregano, a can of drained mushrooms and then ample application of cheddar cheese & parmesan cheese.) only I left half uncheesed for myself.  It tasted delicious, the texture was just a bit dense.  Not really sure how to correct that though.

 

 

Tonight I’m going to Express spinning and tomorrow I’m really hoping to go for a jog through the park.  It’s looking awfully gorgeous outside right now though so I may be tempted to toss Express and jog through the park today too!  We’ll see…..there will be sweating, I’m just not sure yet what kind!

Future Me

Morning!

Do you ever look back a month or 6 months or a year and try to remember what was going on or how you were feeling or what you were looking forward to?  I came across a very cool website yesterday; www.futureme.org  You can write yourself (or anyone) an email that is then delivered anywhere from 30 days to far, far into the future.  I wrote myself a one month letter and a one year letter.  I think it’s kind of cool.  I told Current Me what was going on, how I was feeling and what I hope that Future Me is going to have achieved by the time the email arrives.  And the strangest thing happened.  What Current Me hopes that Future Me has achieved actually motivated my workout at Body Combat.  When I wanted to ease off a little, I thought of reading the email in 30 days and again in a year and having to acknowledge to myself that I didn’t try as hard as I could or do my very best in order to achieve the Future Me goals.

I worked Body Combat as hard as I could last night, Valerie has only one more Body Combat class before she moves away, and to be honest, I really hate that class.  I am bad at it, it hurts and I look retarded.  And if the new instructor to replace Valerie isn’t fantastic, I think I’m going to have a very hard time showing up to it.  I know who they think it’s going to be…and if it is her, then great!

Last night when I got home from Combat, Ray had a roast and brocoli and steamed red potatoes all ready to go.  Very nice to come home to!  I cleaned up dinner while he went back to bed for night shift tonight.  I packed my lunch, packed this morning’s gym bag and then made 4 dozen peanut butter cookies.  While the cookies were baking, the fridge got cleaned out and a load of laundry done.  Energy definitely does breed more energy!

Last night Ray also happened to inform me that the week before Christmas he’s supposed to be on dayshift.  That won’t happen, senior guys to him will be on holidays so he’ll have to go to a different shift.  He said he is goint to choose graveyards instead of afternoons.  Unfortunately that didn’t make me very happy.  My last vacation day of the year is on that first Monday…the day after my birthday.  My original plan was to sleep in, get showered or bathed and then crawl back into bed and watch Sex & The City, Gilmore Girls and any other silly girlie show or movie that I feel like while munching on birthday cake.  A day of complete luxury.   Unfortunately now that’s ruined.  If Ray works graveyards, I’ll have to get out of bed by 6:30am and fully showered and hair done so that he can go to sleep for the day.  Obviously I don’t want him to work a shift he doesn’t want (afternoons sucks right before a lengthy shut down), but I don’t want my day of sinful laziness to be ruined either.  It’s not the same to camp on the sofa and watch movies and it’s certainly not going to be nice to get up at my regular awake time and get ready like any normal day on my last day off.  I had this all hammered out in my head and now it’s not going to work out.  I’m sadder about it than is fully reasonable.  I’m going to have to make an entirely new plan so that my last day off of the year, the day after my birthday, is not just any old day.  Gr.

Love List ~ November 22, 2011

• early morning spinning and a hot shower
• tangerine flavoured lip gloss
• juicy kiwi (eaten with the skin ON!)