I promised pictures from a Halloween party last night, but my camera ended up and remained in a bedroom… But Thursday night we went to Alex's family's house to carve pumpkins! I'm being rude to my guests so I'll just leave you with a photo montage.
See Cat Run
Adventures in running and budget eating
I can't totally blame it all on Rose… part of the lack of posts is due to just plain laziness on my part. I know Gina understands! (Hope Bella is feeling better!)
Last night I tried to install Flickr manager and it doesn't work, so I backed up the blog and upgraded Wordpress. Still no dice. So I'll stick with regular uploading. But I had to wait for the backup last night. And the night before… well… I think there was a struggle to get dinner cooked, get me showered, spend time with Hubster, and get to bed at least slightly early. Sorry! I'm back! I promise!
I'm back to pumpkin oats for breakfast. Same basic mix of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, canned pumpkin, brown sugar, vanilla extract and oats (cooked per the instructions on the canister) plus granola on top.
Granola is the key ingredient, I swear. And I bought two bags during a little foray to Trader Joe's Sunday night 
The concert was right across the street from my high school… which just happens to be right across the street from Trader Joes. How could I not pass through? Amazingly I forgot pumpkin butter though. Oh well, I'll be back in Atlanta next Friday 
A coworker brought in Krispy Kreme donuts this morning and I succumbed when no one else seemed to be eating them. Didn't want her to feel unappreciated or anything. Plus she brought in pumpkin spice donuts! We all know my pumpkin obsession around here. It actually was't all that flavorful, but definitely left me nice and full.
For lunch I took more leftover soup which looked like a mashup of these two soups (roasted vegetable lentil on the left, butternut squash with chicken sausage on the right):
I made the second soup last night because a) I had half a butternut squash to use, b) I had half a box of veggie stock to use and c) Hubs didn't like the lentils in the first soup, so I decided to try something we could both eat. He liked the butternut squash/sausage soup better but I didn't. Next time I'll make the squash/sweet potato soup again and just put lentils in half and maybe sausage in the other half. The sweet potato lends it a little hint of sweetness and I think creamy soups with no texture kind of weird me out in general. Also the sausage I picked has fennel seeds in it, which I didn't realize and don't care for.
But I combined the two for leftovers which worked out well today. I actually ate half during lunch and half after. Soups fill me up quickly but don't hold me for long. I was rather surprised to find myself full so quickly but happy that I listened to my body. I'm trying to work on that. I also took a salad to eat and didn't need it so its in the office fridge for tomorrow.
Dinner was eaten in two parts… I had an unpictured hardboiled egg (made some for Rose this morning and had a weird craving for one), a very small spinach salad with balsamic, parmesan, and almond slices.
And two slices of thin crust pizza with sauce, onion, and a scattering of spinach. Hubby added cheese and chili peppers to his half.
I received a coupon for a free 3 lb bag of honeycrisp apples from Earthfare when I next make a purchase. I currently have 5 on the counter and the coupon expires Sunday so I think y'all can expect to see some baked apples or maybe something inspired by this apple recipe soon. We're having a Halloween get together (not a party, a football game watching session) so I might make a twist on a crumble inspired by Tina's stuffed apples for dessert.
Forgive my negligence, I feel like the last few days have been a bit crazy… but I finally got my clean bathroom I've been waiting for!
I just wanted to post briefly and say that the roasted veggie and lentil soup Jenna wrote about here is awesome. I didn't know how to find a parsnip and neither did the Kroger guy stocking produce, but I followed everything else in the recipe (though I also subbed a cookie sheet for my lack of roasting pan). Try it out!
Good evening! Yesterday was a long day. As in a 23 hour day. I'm sure you're understanding enough to forgive me
Since Hubs and I stayed up watching Rome Thursday night and then Gypsy woke me up to be taken out at 4 am, I only had time for cereal and soy milk for Friday's breakfast.
More cereal and roasted almonds for a snack. I forgot about my tangerine so never got around to eating it. In face, it's still in my purse… I think it can (and otherwise would) stay there till Monday.
Since Hubs was spending the morning at a coffee shop I didn't feel bad walking downtown to get some coffee for myself. Cell phone picture! My excitement over a decent camera will fade eventually.
Lunch was the last of my Dominos pizza. Yum!
After work I took the dogs to the vet and on the way Gypsy threw up in my car. Luckily I had the back seats folded down so it isn't in an area that people will sit and I made Hubs clean it up when I got home… the dogs have a slight bacterial problem and were dehydrated so were given fluids by IV. We've been fixing them scrambled eggs instead of actual dog food and they've seemed okay this weekend.
I had Hubby have a gin and tonic ready for me when I returned. It already felt like a long day.
Unfortunately once our friends arrived (in town for a concert) whisky shots were served. After a run to the liquor store we dropped Amber and Will at the concert and I talked Hubby into going to Your Pie for dinner. You get personal pizzas to your preference. I got a whole wheat crust, classic sauce, no cheese, red onions, broccoli, spinach, and black olives.
I ate half and brought the other half home.
After the concert we met our friends downtown and went to the Grill for second dinner. I got the veggie omelete with homefries and wheat toast. It was good! So cheesy.
Then back across the street to Walker's Pub. I've had friends speak highly of their hot apple pie drink and now that it's not summer I finally got around to trying it. It is hot apple cider, vanilla vodka and vanilla liquor with a cinnamon stick. I actually didn't finish it, I was expecting something sweeter.
Amber and Will had to leave early this morning because Will had a law school seminar to go to. Hubs and I didn't bother getting up since we didn't go to bed until 4:30 am.
I remembered to pull the apple bread out of the freezer yesterday.
And finally used it to make french toast! I sliced the whole loaf but put half of it back in the freezer.
It was so. good. Nice and crsipy for the most part, but nice and soft and gooey where the apples were. I ate it with fake syrup and more cinnamon.
Breakfast was eaten at 12:30 or so and I slept all afternoon, so the next meal of the day was dinner. We were waiting on Alex and Dan to get back to our place, so I had an oatmeal cookie to help hold me over.
Dinner was the last of the chili from Hubby's coworker, greens we bought at last weekend's farmer's market sauteed with garlic, olive oil, and some syrup, and half of a sweet potato with butter and brown sugar. And chips for chili transport. It was such a good dinner. And dessert was more chips.
Even though I'm in the middle of reading two other books, I started reading Outlander a day or two after Jenna mentioned how much she loves the series. I might be a little hooked so I'm going to go feed the addiction… As much as I'm loving Michael Pollan's books, I think I need a break from nonfiction. I'm completely gobbling this up! There's nothing like a book that manages to suck you in and make you forget the world for a bit.
Hello! Sorry for the late post, after spending an hour and a half at Radio Shack and then having to go to another location afterward to pick up a second phone, running out to buy more paper towels, and cleaning up various places where the dogs have gotten sick, all Hubs and I really wanted to do was put our feet up with a hot beverage and watch an episode of Rome. (Yes, there is a vet visit scheduled for this evening)
Because I got bed late Wednesday night I saved my shower for yesterday morning, not leaving myself time for oatmeal. So I had some Cascadian Farms cereal and soy milk. Quite tasty and it actually held me over better than I expected.
I think this picture is sideways, but my trail mix morning snack was roasted almonds with more cereal. Yum yum
Most Mondays and Wednesday I meet my friend Sarah for lunch. Twice a month she has lunchtime seminars to go to and being a very picky eater she evidently doesn't eat the box lunch they provide her so she offered it to me! Since I'd already had pizza I saved it for yesterday's lunch. Turkey sandwich on whole grain bread with dabs of mustard and mayo. Sadly didn't get to eat the tomatoes, they're moldy! I was so looking forward to them too.
A little bit later I had the pasta salad that came in the box. It had lot of peas! I haven't had peas in awhile. I like peas.
The box lunch also came with Ms. Vicky's chips which I'm saving for an emergency snack some other day.
Hubs and I started our evening at the AT&T store but they had no free phones! Much less any cool cheap phones. When we were at Radio Shack a couple of weeks ago we noticed cool cheap phones so we headed down the shopping center and gave them our business instead. It took ages, but I ended up with an LG Xenon
It's pretty and blue and has a touch screen and a full qwerty keyboard. We splurged and went ahead and got data plans and I have GPS. I went ahead and got a case and the protective layer for the touch screen. I'm so excited. And it has a camera and bluetooth so I can transfer pictures to my computer (also bluetooth enabled) when I forget my camera. This little feature just happened to be tested on dinner…
Since we had to go to the mall to pick up Hubby's phone of choice and it was already nearly 7:00 we went to chickfila for dinner. A meal completely saturated in corn. Chicken raised on corn, HFCS based dipping sauce, HFCS ketchup… yum yum. One meal a week won't hurt a girl. I got a kid's meal so only 6 nuggets, a tiny fry (which is good), and tiny lemonade, which of course required a refill.
After dinner we stopped by Bath and Body Works to buy gifts for Alex and her mom and stopped by to see and Alex and Dan at her apartment which is essentially across the street from the mall. And then returned home to clean up after the dogs.
Over all it was a good night though! Have a good day!
Hello! How are you this evening/morning/afternoon? I'm about to start watching Devil Wears Prada and am therefore fabulous. I adore Anne Hathaway, in case I haven't mentioned that yet. But you're probably not here to find out what movie I'm watching tonight…
Another day, another bowl of pumpkin oats… I definitely think the key to liking them is having something of a different texture on top. Sadly I'm running out of my granola!
For snacks I had the same mix of cereal, almonds and cashews as yesterday. I had half in the morning with the tangerine and ate the other half while walking to my car after work.
Five pieces of delicious thin crust mushroom pizza for lunch. So so so tasty. Pizza is my weakness, it is so hard to hold off on the rest.
Dinner was supposed to finally be a girl's dinner out but Alex got some bad news about her mom and canceled. Jenny and I still made the effort though, not that it takes much convincing to get a person to Depalmas.
We started with stuffed mushroom caps, we each had three filled with pesto and three filled with meatball and mozzarella. Plus bread and butter .
For my entree I ordered the balsamic grilled salmon salad a 4 oz. filet over field greens with red onions, sweet red peppers, capers & hard boiled egg.
The salmon was overcooked but otherwise it was good!
I came home to find Package from London! I wonder who it could be from…
Foodbuzz teamed up with moo to offer featured publishers a free set of business cards! I'm so excited, now I just need to meet new people to give them to!
I'm so used to having something sweet after dinner that I used the other half of yesterday's apple, microwaved for a minute with cinnamon and a few oats to create a healthy dessert.
A million times healthier than those cupcakes with 3+ sticks of butter and it completely satisfied my craving! Perfect
Another exciting thing that happened today was being offered a "pantry makeover" by Earthfare. With a certain coupon you can take your HFCS loaded peanut butters, jelly, soda, cereal, and salad dressings to the store and no matter how full can trade it in for a healthier version. Did I mention salad dressings? Like that one I opened yesterday? I think so
Well its 8:00 and from the way Gypsy is staring, I'm guessing they haven't been fed. I supposed I could remedy that… Off to enjoy the movie too! Goodnight!
Hello! Does anyone else have gorgeous weather to enjoy? Because we certainly do
Here's a better picture of my pumpkin oatmeal flavorings, starting at the left we have cinnamon, nutmeg (a new addition), ginger (too much, the oatmeal had a little too much of a bite for me), cloves, pumpkin pie mix, and brown sugar in the center.
I realized sometime yesterday that my autumn harvest granola would make perfect pumpkin oat topping. So I added some this morning. I'd just just a tablespoon or two.
I got smart last night and put together another little batch of trail mix to take to work. This had Cascadian farms cereal, cashews, and roasted almonds. It was really good! Definitely a mix you'll see repeated.
I hardboiled an egg last night for the first time! And look, no green ring around the yolk! It was a little weird to eat at first (I've never really eaten hard boiled eggs) but I think I like it. I'd say you can expect more soon. I decided my salad needed some protein and didn't feel like cooking lentils or opening a can of beans. My coworker eats hard boiled eggs at work a couple of days a week so I decided to try it myself.
This is the dressing I'll be using for the next month or so. I bought this before labor day and didn't get around to opening it before we brought home and already opened bottle from dinner in Atlanta. I finally used that up on Monday so this finally gets to be used up. It has all sorts of extracts and syrups that I wanted to try to avoid but it's quite tasty and I feel like I should use it up first.
I was hungry by the time I got off work, even though I ate extra food today. I guess I really have been depriving myself… :/ So I got home and walked straight to the kitchen to eat half an apple with peanut butter and cinnamon with an oatmeal cookie. Yum! Jif's natural style peanut butter is really good on apples. Husband has made himself sick of apples so I have a couple to eat up. Expect to see more of this tasty little snack!
I had planned on going to the gym for a pilates class today but the weather convinced me that I should be outside and I changed my mind to a run instead. It was tough, I won't lie. My legs weren't as ready as I'd thought and I felt very slow. I told myself that since I didn't feel up to running the tempo run I had planned on, I could just run 25 minutes out and 25 back and still make a new PDR. But just as I was getting to the turn around point the rubbing started. I tried to keep running and did make it through about 35 minutes but ended up limping the remaining two miles home with blisters towards the front of both arches. I know I've worn those socks with my old pair of running shoes but I guess I hadn't worn them with the newer pair. Well I won't be making that mistake again, will I? I'll probably be sore in all sorts of weird places from hobbling home on the outsides of my feet. My right glute is already rather painful. I hate feeling lopsided I'll be going upstairs to stretch out with some yoga momentarily and all will be good, assuming I can survive on bandaids and don't need moleskin Wish me luck.
I'd read in several places that chocolate milk can be the perfect poor-man's recovery drink after exercise and felt rather bummed about the little lactose intolerance problem I have. Finally sometime last week I read that soy milk with a bit of protein powder can have the same affect for those of us who are anti-dairy. I had planned on trying it tonight and even though I was quite chilled by the time I got home in a tank top and shorts with the sun setting and the weather probably back in the 60s, I was still up for trying it.
I used about half a scoop of powder in however much soy milk this would be considered, both vanilla flavored. It was quite tasty but sat a little funny in my stomach. Not upset, but not quite right either. I debated just having toast for dinner but Husband's ex-coworker brought him chili last night, not realizing he can't eat it, and I'd been thinking about it all day. I had maybe a cup and a half portion using tortilla chips as scoops. It was really good! Definitely flavored with taco seasoning, but still good. I'd guess beef with kidney and black beans at least, and onion. I asked Husband to get the recipe and I'll share when I get it (and make some myself )
My stomach is now pleasantly satisfied and not too full. I'm glad I decided to only eat half the chili in the tupperware container. More for tomorrow and I don't feel like a uncomfortable! Unfortunately the pain seems to be trying to make a move up my back, so I'm going to get to my yoga mat ASAP! Goodnight!
More pumpkin oats! I warned you Here are my mix-ins (sorry, should have zoomed in further): brown sugar, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and pumpkin pie mix.
All mixed together. It may take me awhile to learn to eat oatmeal without a ton of brown sugar. I ended up about doubling the amount in the picture above and still would have liked more. I won't feel too bad about it though, since its the only sugar I add to my diet. I'l teach myself to really love oatmeal and then wean myself off
Lunch was a salad of baby spinach and some of the lettuce I got at the farmer's market. It was nice and light and fresh. I also had some fire roasted vegetables Kashi crackers. The flavor wasn't as good as Ritz crackers of the same flavor, but they weren't horrible. Still probably won't buy them again.
Since I basically had lettuce and crackers for lunch (poor planning!) I was quit hungry by the time I got home and had a mix of cashews and the Cascadian Farms cereal I bought as a snack.
And a stale oatmeal cookie. I definitely recommend freezing these cookies instead of leaving them out in tupperware! So much better!
Instead of going out for dinner we ordered pizza. I figured that ordering myself a thin crust mushroom, light on the cheese (supposedly) wouldn't be too painful. The edges were a bit over done but otherwise I'm very happy. I ultimately ate 5 pieces. And finished off my Rieces Pieces. Which removes that temptation from my life at least…
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I've been trying to make my way through all the Shape magazines I've been neglecting since January because I don't want to tear up my friend's copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma carrying it back and forth from work every day. As inspirational as the book has been when it comes to changing my diet, the magazine has been making me feel kind of down on myself. My self-confidence has been really low these past few days. I should have run Friday, but the gang was hanging out. I was going to clean the apartment Sunday instead of running, but the gang was back so I don't even have a clean apartment to show for my laziness. I was going to run today, even with a hurt heel I wanted to try to go, but I let plans change again, using the excuse of my heel. I know I'm being silly and I should cherish the time with friends while they are here but I keep telling myself that I'm going to exercise and then don't do so and I'm getting rather frustrated with myself. I just wanted to get that off my chest. Typing it all out helps me feel a little bit better. Thanks for "listening"!
I finally bought some old fashioned oats at the store yesterday. I had half a can of pumpkin leftover from the waffles so I had planned breakfast before I even went to bed. I followed the directions on the back of the oatmeal subbing soy milk for half the water. I added maybe a quarter cup of pumpkin pie mix, cinnamon, ground ginger, cloves, and maybe two table spoons of brown sugar. It was good! The consistency of the oatmeal will take some getting used to, but it was better than that of quick cook oats. I'm predicting a repeat tomorrow morning
I had half a cupcake this morning. I was hoping to get a good picture of the ganache in the middle, but it looks like I didn't pick a very good one. Still tasty, even without the sugar in the cakes!
Lunch (at 3:00) was a leftover turkey-spinach burger and a few bites of the last twice baked potato. I also had the other half of the cupcake I started earlier in the day.
I had to make room in the fridge when we got home from the store this evening so I finished off a jar of unsweetened applesauce
And dinner has been small because I'm still pretty full from lunch. I found this cereal in a discount cart at Kroger and might go back to buy more because its pretty good. Gets soggy very quickly though. I'd never buy it at the full price of $5, there are only 4 servings in a box!
I had the cereal in soy milk. I like that this is organic, but it is very vanilla-y. It was cheaper than Silk.
Hubs and I both wanted to buy popcorn at the store. I couldn't find a natural option of mini bags and he wanted to buy his own, so we just bought kernals so that we could each modify our own. We of course had to test it out:
I may have another cupcake and then I'm heading to bed. Goodnight!
I woke up this morning completely geared up to make pumpkin waffles! I got the dry ingredients sifted (subbed wheat flour for all-pupose because it was all I had) and the eggs separated just to find the buttermilk expired. It was disappointing to put things on hold, but I got hubby to go to the farmer's market with me so no real complaints! It was cold and rainy but he really enjoyed it once we got there and was actually disappointed I hadn't gotten more money at the ATM (I was too when I realized immediately after spending the last $4 I saw kale, next weekend!)
We got greens, mixed lettuce, a radish (there were samples to taste that convinced the husband), two sweet potatoes, a butternut squash, and okra. I'm excited!
We stopped by Kroger on the way home to get buttermilk and Hubs grabbed some brown sugar sausage links so I finally got my pumpkin waffles! I was nice and let the boys have some too
"Breakfast" wasn't until about noon so the cook out was rescheduled for dinner. To hold me over I had some okra
I spent my afternoon baking Irish car bomb cupcakes for Hubby's birthday. The cake part has Guinness in it, there's a ganache in the middle of the cake with Irish whisky, and the buttercream icing has Bailey's in it. I made these Superbowl Sunday and they were a big hit. Unfortunately I completely missed the sugar that was supposed to go in the cake but I think it will still be okay. The ganache is sweeter than called for (semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of bittersweet, which I couldn't find) and the icing is definitely sweet!
While making the icing I started on a pumpkin beer and nursed it for over an hour
For dinner Dan grilled burgers while I made spinach-turkey burgers for myself, based off the recipe in this article. I think my proportions were off but they weren't bad. Very mushy so I ended up cooking them on the stove instead of on the grill.
Since they were half spinach I let myself have another patty with more ketchup and onions.
I'm now working on one of my Smuttynose Hanami ales. I plan on making it last again.
Hubby made twice baked potatoes. I had one Lactaid pill left so I dug right in. He used this recipe. Man did I feel like a pig eating this but it was so good!
I'm waiting for everyone to digest before I pull the cupcakes out of the fridge and light some candles to sing happy birthday. I know I'm stuffed! It's making me very sleepy. I might take a doze with the dogs while I wait
Contact me at caroline.catruns@gmail.com
