WIAW: 20 mile run Edition

Welcome to Wednesday!  I was half convinced all day yesterday, that it was Wednesday already but no such luck.  I have been doing this to myself a lot lately and I am not too fond of it  It’s one thing to think it’s only Wednesday and then realized op, nope, THURSDAY but NOT the other way around… that is just depressing.  But anyways, since it IS Wednesday, it means it’s time for another edition of What I Ate Wednesday hosted by Peas and Crayons!

This week I took pictures of my eats from the day I did my first ever 20 mile training run for my upcoming marathon!  So be warned, it may look like a lot of food because, well it was  I also had some random other bites that I didn’t photograph and have now forgotten… I do that a lot – forget things.  Oops!

I had been having almost uncontrollable hunger for a few weeks awhile back so I decided to try having an actual breakfast before these long training runs and then just waiting a bit to leave.  So far, it’s been working awesomely and I have been able to not feel that weird ravenous hunger that I had been feeling.  So before today’s run, I had a very delicious bowl of oatmeal and a frozen blueberry waffle!  My oats were topped with a banana, a little cashew butter, a little almond butter and some blueberry jam!  I could eat these oats every single day!

Then I ran for hours and hours and hours… and came home and immediately was starved!  This is very strange for me though.  Normally my appetite is gone on long run days and I have to force myself to eat but not today!  Stomach was growling when I walked  in the doors!  To get me through an ice bath and lots and lots of stretching, I had a smoothie and mostsome of this bag of trail mix.

But I won't lie. This bag did not survive very long...

This is my current favorite smoothie combo – coconut milk, banana, frozen pineapple and vanilla protein powder.  Tropical and refreshing!  I think it tastes a little like a pina colada  You know, without the delicious flavor of rum anyways

Lunch was served not too long after showering and getting ready for the day.  I had two chicken salad sandwiches, two pickles, some delicious Hawaiian style kettle chips from Trader Joe’s and a Chocolate Coconut water for dessert.  Yum!

A few hours later, I was starving again!  Shocker  So I had a snack of two over easy fried eggs, two toaster waffles with almond butter and honey.  I loved this snack and I wish I could bring this to work with me on the weekdays!  I want this now

Then my Sister and I drove up north to our parents house to celebrate my Dad’s birthday.  We planned a grill out – in March!  Crazy!  But it turned out delicious!

All that driving and stuff made me hungry again so we snacked on a little fancy appetizer platter before dinner!  Only the best Old Wisconsin Pepp bits and Dill Pickle Lay’s potato chips.  Meat + salty pickle flavor = delicious and totally not nutritious!  Healthy, ok, maybe not but that’s not the point

Dinner was really, really good but the picture turned out kind of blah… for my Dad’s birthday dinner, we grilled ribs, shrimp, carrots and sweet potatoes.  These ribs turned out SO good on the grill however my mom made them.  I know they cooked in the crock pot for hours and hours so that probably helped too but oh my tasty were they good!

We didn’t make a cake because we were trying to be all “avoiding desserty” but after dinner I could not stop thinking about ice cream… I ALWAYS crave ice cream the night of a long run… Of course by me talking about it, everyone was quickly on board with some DQ!    I honestly cannot remember the last time I had Dairy Queen or even ice cream in general… and it tasted beyond delicious!  Plus my mom had coupons!

I see three servings of fruit plus calcium plus protein. Health food!

Little known fact, I worked at a Dairy Queen for 6ish months when I was 16 and I can still make a mad bowl of soft serve ice cream complete with the dollops and swirls!  I used to love making the banana splits because they were actually fun to assemble.  Blizzards on the other hand were my nemesis.  So I was kind to this DQ employee and ordered a banana split – for the potassium of course

Oh man, looking back I had some really delicious food again this week.  I think I say that every week though so maybe I am just in love with food in general  But that’s not really a bad thing, right?  It’s kind of hard to run 20 miles so I think it’s important to fuel back up after the fact.  I could have been completely healthy but where is the fun in that so instead I shot for some healthy and some not so healthy to balance out all those nutrients

Hope everyone is having a good Wednesday!

Question: What do you crave after a long run/work out?  

WIAW: 3/28

Happy Wednesday!  I am so glad we are two days closer to the weekend  Now it’s just downhill from here til Friday!  What better way to celebrate than by joining the What I Ate Wednesday party hosted by Jenn at Peas and Crayons?  I am a little sad it’s the last green edition but I feel like I have done a relatively good job of eating a little green at more meals this month because of it

I photographed my eats from last Sunday and they were pretty darn tasty!!

Breakfast was fantastic!!! Sister came up with the idea to make orange french toast so I mixed some egg whites, coconut milk, orange juice and orange zest.  I topped this with coconut butter and shredded coconut and had a real, whole egg on the side for a protein boost.  This meal was delicious!  And will be made again.

Even though breakfast was delicious, it didn’t fill me up totally so I had another little something before doing a workout for the day.  I forgot to take a picture but it was a banana and cashew butter!  Filled me up so I could go Insane!  I also drank this delicious coconut water after working out.

So good! The chocolate version is delicious also!

Once Sister was back from her bootcamp class, we walked a certain little dog around the block because the weather was SO nice and then made a little lunch.

Another A+ meal!  I poached some chicken using the method I saw Badger Girl reference the other day from Martha Stewart.  It turned out perfectly!  Then I mixed in a little mustard aioli sauce from Trader Joes and some green grapes and put that on a bed of spinach and  a 5 minute flat bread from Edible Perspective.  I also had some chili lime cashews from Trader Joe’s on the side.  These are super tasty!  Love all our recent finds from TJ’s!

A few hours later I had a snack before heading to see HUNGER GAMES!!  I was glad I had this snack because it is a LONG movie and we didn’t get home until around 7pm

This was a bowl of goodness!  Puffed rice cereal, granola, almonds, chocolate chips and shredded coconut with almond milk!  yum!

After the awesomeness that was the Hunger Games, it was time for dinner!  Lol!

Cobb Salad with baked potato on the side.  This meal needs to be made every week it was THAT good!  Romaine lettuce, Applegate Farms Turkey and Ham, hard boiled egg, avocado with cayenne pepper and olive oil.  I also put just a little butter on my tater!  Yum… I am hungry just looking at this salad…

Pretty colorful day actually with a fair amount of green!  Can’t wait to see what next month’s theme is if there is one!  I’ve liked the challenge of adding in the green

WIAW: 3/21

Wow, can you believe March is drawing to a close?  That means this is the second to the last Green What I Ate Wednesday hosted by Jenn of Peas and Crayons :(

I once again was not very good with the green eats but I had a little something at all meals:)  Plus, this was my food from St. Patrick’s Day so there was even more reason to Green things up!  Here is what I ate last Saturday!

I planned to go to a 10k race for St. Patrick’s Day so my eats were a little shuffled up. *Shamrock Shuffle, get it?  Sorry, anyways… The race was not until 10am and I knew there was no way I could last that long on only a few pieces of toast so I decided to attempt eating a basic but more filling bowl of oats before driving and then running.  I made by bowl with plain oats, cinnamon, a banana and a little coconut butter.  I also sprinkled a little green sugar on top, you know, for the holiday and all

After the race that will not be discussed, I was feeling really miserable and not hungry at all… I drank some water because I felt really dehydrated even though I had not run at all but then wanted nothing to do with more food for quite some time.  Once I finally decided I needed to eat something, I unpacked my picnic car ride lunch!  Our race was about 1.5 hours away so we were smart and packed lunch!  Bagels with peanut butter and apricot jam, GREEN grapes and a protein latte thing that was OK, but way too sugary…

I actually gave this one to sister. One taste of the jam and I was gagging this day...

After we’d been home a few hours, I was still feeling really off so decided to have a snack to try and feel a little more energetic.  This actually helped quite a bit and finally brought me back to the land of the living.  Chobani Blood Orange yogurt, freeze dried fruit and Love Grown Foods cranberry pecan granola.  Best meal of the day so far!

After a trip to spend my entire paycheck at Trader Joe’s we came back with a nice dinner to cook as well as an appetizer to tide us over while everything cooked.  Falafel chips, Lentil Marsala dip and baby carrots.  This dip is fantastic!  If you like Indian food, you need to try this dip.  I could literally eat it with a spoon but I was good and only ate a serving or two

Another awesome find at TJ’s was Zico coconut waters.  I got a Mango one that was super tasty and refreshing but Sister got a chocolate one that was TO DIE FOR!  Like drinking chocolaty cereal milk!  So, so good and dairy free!

Dinner was really tasty!  We are having ridiculous weather here right now… 80 degrees in Winter!  That is unheard of for us.  Normally, we are getting snow right now.  So needless to say, I took the opportunity to get out the grill for dinner cooking!  This meal tasted SO good!  Grass fed steaks from our local Co-op, grilled baby bok choy from TJs, roasted brussel sprouts and some grilled portobello steaksmushrooms.  YUM!  And Green!

And of course, what night is complete without a bedtime snack… if I even try to avoid it, I wake up in the night hungry so what the heck, I’ll just have that snack, thankyou!

Cooked millet, almond milk, cinnamon, microwaved for about a minute with banana chips on top.  Sounds weird but it’s one of my new favorite bedtime snacks!

So on that note, hope you are have a good Wednesday!  Now I am off to find one of those chocolate coconut waters…..

WIAW: “Carbo-Loading” Edition

Guess what day it is?  That’s right, it’s Wednesday again!  Thanks to Jenn at Peas and Crayons for hosting this event again!  I once again did awful on the green goods front and I am pretty sure green oats and I are no longer speaking… oops

But anyways here are the foods I ate the day before my long run last weekend.  I don’t really try to go overboard with carbs the day before a long run because I have found that to be totally worthless but still eat protein, fats, etc. with more emphasis on carbs than a typical day – aka no steak for dinner

Breakfast was steel cut GREEN oats with flax, egg whites, cinnamon and cashew butter.  To be honest, these were disgusting and I maybe finished 1/2 of them?  The texture had me gagging and the flavor of the spinach was super noticeable today.  Pretty sure this will be the last bowl of green oats for me.  Yuck.

I wasn’t hungry all morning (shockingly) so no morning snack but by lunch, I was more than ready for this!

Two smallish sweet potatoes with coconut butter, almond butter and cinnamon with one hard boiled egg white and one hard boiled whole egg on the side.  After lunch, I was totally craving a candy bar so I walked to the grocery store and picked up a Jocolat Larabar.  It was really tasty and totally satisfied my craving for sweet.  This was the first time I had a Jocolat version of a lara and to be honest, could not tell what was different than the chocolate versions of regular laras?  Maybe that the chocolate is organic?  Either way, it sure tasted delish!

For my afternoon snack, I packed a a little grain salad that was a mix of black rice, millet, apple cider vinegar, honey, olive oil, craisins and walnuts.  For a quick little something I threw together, this was really quite delicious!

Before leaving work to go grocery shopping I also grabbed a little fruit leather to hold me over during my shopping trip…

Once I got home from shopping, I was sort of hungry for dinner so I got started on making my pre run dinner of choice – pancakes/waffles!  This tradition started back over the summer when I first cut out gluten and still wanted to have something carb-y before my second official half marathon.  I could have gone with gf pasta but I get horrendous heartburn from tomato sauce and that’s not really the best feeling on a long run so it was pancakes for the WIN every time!

I made waffles tonight because I was feeling fancy!  I used Edible Perspective‘s Buckwheat Bake recipe again but added extra egg white and a full banana.  (For some reason I can never find the recipe combo that I use… I do 30g flour, 1T chia, 1T groats, 1/4t baking powder, 1 banana, 2 egg whites, cinnamon, vanilla and it turns out perfect every time!  You can bake them in the oven or microwave them but I love the pancake/waffle option the most!!)  I also topped these waffles with some fresh coconut butter and Love Grown Granola!

For a Friday night dessert/special surprise for Sister, I also made a batch of STUFT Mama’s Doughtzel balls!  These were super delicious but would have been better if I had not burnt them and also if I had not used soy free earth balance… My sense of smell is 1,000,000% and I could literally SMELL the pea protein in this stuff before I even read the label… oops – guess the rest of the carton if going in the garbage :S  Of course, the licking of the bowl was my favorite part despite the horrendous pea odor… (btw the smell dissipated by day two)

What?!  There is no eggs, it’s even more OK to eat the dough than normal cookie dough

I think this also may have ended up being too much sugar for me before bedtime because I had the WEIRDEST dreams this night… Is it just me or does sugar cause weird dreams?  That and Mexican or Chinese food.  Every.single.time.  HA!

Well, anyways, Happy Wednesday, Everyone!!  Two more days till FRIDAY!

WIAW: It’s not easy being Green…

Oh, look!  It’s Wednesday again!  How did that happen?  Not that I am complaining because Monday and Tuesday are my worst favorite days of the week… But Wednesday also means it’s time to join the What I Ate Wednesday party hosted by Jenn! so that makes it just a little bit more exciting!  This month’s theme is green food and to be honest, I did HORRIBLE eating green food today… I am sort of discovering that my stomach + vegetables = So I had to kind of make do and stretch things a little.  Sorry?!  Another thing I totally failed at this week was taking pictures of everything I ate.  I got the major meals but there was SO much extra snacking today that I didn’t even bother to try to photograph all the handfuls, etc.  I blame my Unplanned Planned Rest Day yesterday for this snacky-ness.  Why does that always happen?  Rest Day = Starved Day?  Anyways, enough tangent talk… here is my food from yesterday!

Breakfast was so good this morning!  One of my favorite recipes is Edible Perspective’s Buckwheat bakes that I make with a whole banana and egg whites but then instead of baking it in a dish or the microwave, I like them as pancakes!  They are really dense and filling and keep me full as long as anything (read, not super long…) I topped today’s cakes with blueberry jam and Sugar Cookie Nut Butter with GREEN sprinkles!  Ha – my green part of this meal

My morning snack today was two slices of homemade banana bread with almond butter.  Again, very tasty but not green at all.  I guess I should have at least put it in a green container or something?

Lunch was good but not as filling as I initially thought… But it did have some green!

Potatoes, chicken and green peas with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  I was going to have this ginger in water after lunch but ended up having some ginger candies instead.  I am trying to cure my after lunch stomach aches that I get every.single.day at work so ginger is one of my experiments.  So far we are 1/1 for pain free days this week…

Oh look!  A little more green!  This was snack #1 after lunch and was some cooked millet, lettuce, hard boiled eggs, lemon juice and dill.  It was surprisingly delicious but I could have easily eaten 3x this much… so instead I had some rice cakes and a Justin’s packet about an hour later.  All things that I was going to try to avoid for two weeks but oh well.  I was hungry and it was all I had!

Once I finally got home from work, I couldn’t make it until dinner so I had a few little things while dinner was cooking.  I was initially planning fish, spaghetti squash and veg but coconut flour pancakes ended up winning out… fish just sounded HORRIBLE tonight…

Dinner turned out pretty though!  And just a wee bit green!  Coconut flour waffles with coconut and agave on top with green egg omelet on the side!

Since this day was supposed to be a rest day to relax, I had all kinds of ideas of how to spend my time and shows to watch on TV, etc. and yet it’s almost 8pm and I have not done any of that yet… oh well!  Maybe next rest day?

Happy WIAW!

Would you eat green eggs like in the picture above?  They tasted slightly spinach-y but not horrible, considering!

WIAW: Monday, Monday

Like most of the world, I hate Mondays.  They are equal parts depressing and overwhelming!  But this past Monday, I decided to shake up my foods for the day to help make something for me to look forward to!  Sad, but oh so true!  So for my final installment of Love your Veggies What I Ate Wednesday, hosted by Jenn at Peas and Crayons, here is what I ate Monday that helped me make it through the worst day of the whole entire week…

 

My mornings always start with coffee and a little snack, like a handful of dry cereal or something similar.  I realized I never take a picture of this but I think you can picture it?  Hopefully

Once I am showered and closer to ready to leave for work, it’s time for some breakfast!  I am sure I have said this before but breakfast has always and will always be my FAVORITE meal of the day.  Today’s was fantastic and I want it ever single day…

I used a recipe from Edible Perspective for the wrap portion of this breakfast to which I added some cinnamon and then filled each wrap with blueberry jam and topped the whole thing with a serving of cottage cheese, some nut butter and cinnamon.  Trust me when I say this breakfast is a keeper and also made the house smell heavenly! Yum!

Despite the fact that this breakfast was delicious, it was a little on the light side for me so by the time I got to work, I also needed to snack on a banana.

A few hours later, my stomach was growling again so I drank up on some water but then had two apple cinnamon rice cakes with PB2 on top.  This combo was delicious!  I did not eat that whole packet of rice cakes

A few hours later, it was FINALLY time for lunch.  For some reason, the 15 minutes before noon are always the most painful minutes of my day because I am SO hungry!  I often have to grab a handful of something because my hunger does not understand “Just a few more minutes”… so I had an unpictured handful of raisins.

Lunch was worth the wait though!  I had a ham sandwich on the best ever GF free bread by Udi’s with a little mustard and half an avocado.  On the side of that, I had a cup of tomato soup with quinoa and broccoli added in to bulk it up a bit.  My sandwich was pretty much gone by the time my soup was hot because there was a long line at the microwave because too many people had their frozen meal lunches… 7 minutes is so long to wait

My about 3pm I was hungry AGAIN!  (seriously never ending…) so it was time for snack 1,267 for the day – a yogurt and granola.  This snack is always very satisfying with a little crunch and a little creamy!  I kind of like this new granola I tried by Kind but I am not 100% sold on it yet.  I’ll try it one more time because the bag I have has an off “plastic” taste but maybe this is from an old batch or something?  I don’t know.  I like it, minus this weird aftertaste I sometimes get… and I also love the Blood Orange Chobani.  Yum!

By the time I got home from work, I was STARVING (shocker) so I had to have a little snack to tide me over for dinner because it was going to be awhile and I had 1,000 things to do in the meantime so I had a mug of puffed millet with a few cinnamon chex topped with a little keifer and more cinnamon.  After the picture I mixed this all up and it was good! I first had Keifer on my way to Hawaii back in November and had not bought it since but I’ve been needing some new snack ideas so I picked up a jug and it is a nice change on cereal, for sure!

While dinner was cooking, Sister and I attacked out to-do list that spilled over from the weekend: bake sweet potatoes, make coconut butter (x2), dishwasher, garbage, cut up lettuce for salads, boil eggs, make overnight oats for Tuesday, set up coffee maker for Tuesday and grind up oat flour.  Exciting stuff, no?  By the time all of this was checked off the list, we were more than ready for dinner!  And it turned out to be a really good one!

We cut up potatoes, carrots and some broccoli, placed that in foil and topped with 1/2 T coconut butter and a fish fillet.  Wrapped it up and baked it at 450 for about 45 minutes.  Once it was baked, we topped it with Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and ketchup, the essentials lately!  We kept this dinner a little on the light side because after dinner, some Insanity was on the menu!

Someone else enjoyed his dinner before Insanity took place and left his required 3 pieces of blueberry behind… I don’t think he likes fruit?  But it’s in his dog food so that is just weird to me!

I no like bloobs...

After doing the Max Recovery DVD we were both very stretched out with burning quads… and I knew if I didn’t have a snack, I would wake up in the middle of the night starving so I had a half size mug of oatmeal with freeze dried blueberries mixed in, Cake Batter Cashew butter on top and a little splash of coconut milk!  I then proceeded to attempt to watch Castle and fall asleep after 15 minutes…. #winning

Whenever I type all of these up, it really seems like I never stop eating all day long! But yet I am pretty sure I went to bed just a littlebit hungry… LOL!  The joys of marathon training I suppose… See ya next week!

WIAW: On a Wednesday!

What the heck.  It is Wednesday AGAIN!  Yikes, this year is going fast… or is it just me?  Many thanks to Jenn for hosting this blog party.  I look forward to it each and every week!

Hey look, I actually took pictures of my food on A Wednesday  Just because it wasn’t THIS Wednesday… it’s still progress, right?  Looking back at this day makes me hungry!  But I had a stomachache most of this day so I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as I could have… Guess I will just have to recreate this day when I am having a better week!  So without further ado, my eats!

I started this morning with a 5 mile tempo run.  After running in the morning, I am pretty much sure to be very hungry for breakfast and also in need of a snack a few hours later… but then again, that is really the story of my life lately…

I tried to take preemptive measures and eat Oatmeal Minus the Oats for breakfast to keep me full longer and it did actually work!  Also, notice I added spinach to this breakfast as well!  Green eggs, literally?!  This is really my new favorite breakfast!  I was scared to try it at first because the concept just sounds disgusting but it ends up being tastier and heartier than any bowl of regular oats I can make!  Topped with a serving of Skippy Natural Super Chunk of course!

Morning snack was a Protein Kind bar and some grapes.  I always forget how much I love Kind bars!  The Blueberry ones are my favorite but this is what I have in my drawer at work.  I also need to work on eating up my bar stash… #hoarder

Lunch was leftover beef stew/pot roast and to spare you the gross picture I could have taken, imagine something like this but with carrots and butternut squash…

Followed my a Banana Millet Chocolate Chunk Muffin!  PS, next time you want a healthier treat, microwave your muffin about 20 seconds and stick a chunk of chocolate right in the middle!  It gets all melty and gooey and delicious!  I have such bad ideas…

Afternoon snack followed at about 4pm today which was actually very good for me…

1 avocado smashed up and topped on brown rice cakes with salt on top!  This was my first time having this and I am a fan!

Once I got home from work, I whipped up dinner.  A Trader Joe’s turkey burger on lettuce, topped with pickles and ketchup of course!  Served with sweet potato fries and zucchini fries on the side.

After cleaning up around the house, walking the pup and doing an Insanity DVD, it was time for my bedtime snack.  I have been waking up in the middle of the night hungry despite the fact I eat all day long… so I have to be sure to have a snack after Insanity…

Tonight it was puffed millet topped with a little granola and PB2 with milk.  Sorry about the very lovely background.  That would be my stove :S  Eeps.

Geez, after typing that all up, it sure seems like I was eating all day long… and I guess I kind of was!  But did you notice all those veggies in there!  Not bad for a days workeats!

WIAW: Veggie Edition

Last week I failed miserably in the adding veggies to my meal theme that Jenn at Peas and Crayons suggested for the month of February.  So today, I made up for that fact and veggie-fied almost EVERY meal this week!  Here are my eats from this past Sunday:

It’s not every day I end up eating veggies for breakfast.  In fact, I cannot recall the last time I had veggies for breakfast but I remember seeing Kristin add spinach to her oatmeal breakfast concoctions so I decided to be healthy today and add some spinach to my oats! Yes, adding spinach to oats does sound disgusting if you just picture spinach leaves in oats but it’s more sneaky than that!  I added the spinach to the egg whites and blended it all up!  Could not even taste the green!!

1/2c oats, 1c water, 1 banana, 2 egg whites blended with handful of spinach, topped with ground flax, a banana chocolate chip muffin and crunchy Skippy Natural peanut butter!  This is seriously the BEST peanut butter!  This bowl was really as huge as it looks.  I am not sure what made this fill the bowl this full but I will take it!!

After cleaning up and starting some laundry, I did my workout for the day.  On Sunday’s Sister goes to a yoga body bootcamp but I choose to stay home and get some quality Insanity time in!!  I did the Cardio Power & Resistance DVD, followed by Jillian Michael’s yoga for my back and some free weight work.  This combo was a really good workout for a Sunday and one done in my basement

After working out, I wanted to have a little snack to get some protein in within 30 minutes which would give me time to shower before lunch!

Today I choose 2 string cheeses and an Emergen-C, tropical flavor, for my post workout snack!

Lunch followed not too long after snack #1 of the day and let me tell ya, this lunch was SO GOOD!

Open faced BLTs with a side of homemade guacamole and some tortilla chips!  This lunch was terribly delicious… Two pieces of Udi’s Ancient Grains Millet and Chia Bread (best gluten free bread ever!), topped with a little spread of Trader Joe’s Aioli Mustard spread, two large leaves of lettuce, 1/2 tomato and 2 slices of BACON!  The quac was just a mashed up avocado mixed with some Wholly Salsa (so good!!!).

After lunch, we took the pup on a walk and then headed to Whole Foods to get some ingredients for my afternoon baking experiment.  $60 of non-essential items later, we came home to make my baking experiment and afternoon snack of Homemade Chocolate Brownie Clif Bars!  Here is the recipe!

We also snacked on some popcorn while these were setting up!

This may or may not be a file photo because we eat this all the time on the weekends... oops!

Dinner was a good one!  And also a repeat of our dinner from last Sunday night.  It’s really hard to not crave treat type foods on the weekend so we have come up with a few healthy swaps that still taste good but are much better for you.  This crust recipe was put up by Carrots ‘n Cake awhile back and we have made it a couple of times since!  We topped tonight’s pie with chicken sausage, black olives and shredded cheese.

I think this tasted even better this time than last time!  Served with a side of veggie topped with olive oil and balsamic.

And what Sunday is complete without a little ice cream?  Not this one, that is for sure!

Small dish of chocolate ice cream with shredded coconut on top. Yum!!

So sad that another good day of eats is over but there’s always next week!  And let the veggie consumption continue!!

Happy Wednesday!

WIAW: Back In Action

For this week’s What I Ate Wednesday party, hosted by Jen I ended up taking pictures of my eats from Saturday, which was incidentally my first day completing a run in about 10 days!!  For some reason I ended up being REALLY hungry this day and I am not sure if that had to do with the running or just the fact that it was Saturday and I was munchy?  Either way, everything I ate was delicious and I would eat it all again if I had the chance!

Edited to add: I do realize it is love your veggies month but I really don’t  See those five carrots… that’s the amount of love I had to offer today… next week I will be better? (maybe?)

I also decided that Saturday happened to be the day I actually used recipe ideas from blogs for most of my meals!  I always SAY I am going to use ideas I see but rarely take the time to make something that requires a recipe but apparently, Saturday was my day for that as well.

I was REALLY hungry when I woke up so I decided to have a rice cake with a little peanut butter before trying to go on my first run in awhile.  I love this combo for a pre-run snack!

Breakfast was tasty but not overly filling for some reason… I had a Udi’s bagel with an egg and a string cheese on it with a IVside of coffee.

Since breakfast really did not fill me up, I snacked on this Orange Vanilla Chobani Champions yogurt with coconut and chia seeds on top when Sister, Pup and I got back from a walk.

After snack, Sister and I went on a grocery shopping marathon.  We ended up at two stores and managed to round up everything we needed for the week.  We also both managed to round up an appetite for lunch… and ASAP!

Lunch was inspired by a lunch post I saw Kath make the other day.  The version I made included tuna, cottage cheese, celery, brown mustard and salt.  Served with grapes, lettuce, carrots, half an avocado with salt and cumin and a few corn tortilla chips.  We also finished lunch with WAY too much cookie dough.  Check out Sister’s blog in the next few days for this need to make now recipe for cookies.

We were both finally full for about 6 hours after this lunch so dinner ended up being a later one…

Dinner was another blog inspired recipe from Edible Perspective, the pizza bakes she posted the other day!  They actually did not turn out how we imagined they would so we might have done something wrong.  We’ll have to play around with it a little… Our bakes were topped with canadian bacon, green olives, pineapple and a diced string cheese.  They were tasty although not very filing!  Hence the need to follow dinner with a rather good sized dish of Talenti gelato with more of our cookie crumbles on top.  Oh.So.Good!  Talenti makes the best grocery store ice cream ever!  It’s not cheap but for as often as we eat ice cream here, it’s totally worth it!

And if all that did not look like enough food, I also snacked on some Honey Nut Chex, pickles, popcorn and … probably something else I am forgetting throughout the day!  I must move around way too much on the weekends because all day Saturday and Sunday, I seem to be starving all the time!!  Need to get back to my long runs to limit that a little on one of the days  Ha!

What was the best thing you ate this past weekend?

WIAW: Out of Commission Edition

It’s Wednesday again!  Wednesday is one of those days I love for being close to Friday but still loathe because there are still three days until the weekend… I don’t really remember when life became a continuing count down to the weekend?  I used to like the week a little more at least?!?  But anyways, since it is Wednesday, it means it is once again time for a food fest link party hosted by Ms. Peas and Crayons, herself, Jen!

So last week I hurt my back and stayed home from work for a few days until I could stand up straight again (stupid back is STILL hurting though…) and not walk like Quasimodo so to kill some of the many hours I was incapacitated, I took pictures of my eats!  Too bad I can't get paid for that… so anyways, here is what I ate, with a backache!

Breakfast is by far my favorite meal of the day and this is one of my top breakfasts.  Steel cut oats, cooked overnight with water, with 1T flax and 1/3 egg white mixed in, in the morning.  Then topped of course with some sweetness (raisins today) and healthy fat (peanut butter today!)

Mid-morning pick me up (didn’t really work) was iced coffee with a splash of chocolate milk!  Cheap Mocha!

I had lunch a little early today to prepare for a doctor appointment so I re-heated some delicious homemade chicken noodle soup.  I could eat this every day for lunch!!

Someone helped me clean the bowl...

< Insert Doctor Appointment Here>

The doctor prescribed me some muscle relaxing meds for my back and since it will potentially make me lightheaded, I decided it was time for a snack!  Today was a banana and White Chocolate Wonderful peanut butter.  (This stuff should be outlawed it’s so good!)  This is something I should NOT have impulse purchased at the grocery store last week…

While dinner was cooking, I got instantly STARVING and had to have a small handful of almonds and raisins to tide me over.  It worked for sure although I would have liked about 5 of these handfuls!

Dinner was a good one as well!  Thursday’s around here are traditionally Pizza Thursday’s and this was no exception!  Tonight’s feature was pepperoni and string cheese tortilla pizza with a side salad topped with balsamic vinegar, cottage cheese and a few almonds for crunch!  I wanted refills for sure!

And because I struggle having a day with no chocolate in it, a small handful of peanut butter m&ms and a dark chocolate dove.

I see I celebrated National Peanut Butter day again today buy having it at almost every meal – lol!!  But there is no such thing as too much peanut butter, right?

Because my back was hurt, I had to skip my long run this past Saturday and I think the thing I missed the most about that was the huge glob of peanut butter I get when I am done with those!!  Haha!!  New Motto: Will Run for Peanut Butter and Chocolate Clif Shots!

Hope everyone is having a Pain-Free Wednesday – I wish I was