2009 December | See Cat Run

New Year's Eve.

Okay, I guess I need to back up a bit again. Today is thursday (Happy New Years Eve by the way!) so Tuesday night was when this pizza was eaten. The boys bought premade crusts and we had a meat lovers (with leftover taco meat and shrimp) and veggie lovers. Terry (the semi-resident vegetarian) put together this lovely veggie pizza, of which I had just over 1/3. He diced red and green peppers, onions, tore up some spinach and mushrooms, and topped it with a variety of cheeses, we've got a ton in the fridge. I'm guessing Mexican, mozzarella and parmesian? Who knows, but it was delish and I told him so.

Dan then made a dessert he's been wanting us to try for a big. Banana sauteed in butter schnappes. The boys had a chocolate crackles ice cream while I had some more of this Breyer's lactose free vanilla ice cream. It's not as creamy as most ice cream, but Breyer's I usually have issues with so this was definitely worth a try. Hubs spotted it at Wally-world the other day.

It was another evening of reading on the couch while the boys played video games. No complaints here! I finished The Omnivore's Dilemma. Pollan convinces me. I'm still going to stick with trying to only eat sustainable raised meat. The section about his experience hunting and gathering was really interesting, but not a tactic I'm going to try. He's caught me, hook, line and sinker.

I asked Hubs to make breakfast yesterday morning and he made a spinach/onion scramble with garlic and herb seasoning. It was tasty!

We ran some errands around lunch time (depositing Christmas money and paying rent). We had a coupon that was basically buy one Arby's combo get on free and happened to pass by such a restaurant while out, so we indulged. Terry was playing with my camera and caught us in the act

Forgive my unwashed bedhead and lack of makeup.

I later ran a quick two miles, charged on by The Distillers and the occasional sprinkling rain. After a trip back to Wally-world to buy a second, smaller, more portable dog crate we put in Inglourious Basterds and, neither one of us being hungry, put dinner off till about midway through the movie. We had all the makings for the asparagus salad Hubs made awhile ago and asparagus that needed to be eaten, so we did. He sauteed red bell pepper, shallot, and the asparagus, and served over spinach with goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette.

The rest of the cooked veggies were eaten on the side of some tilapia filets that we bought frozen at Walmart. I vaguely followed this recipe but didn't actually measure anything out. I added more parmesan when it came out of the oven.

The movie wasn't bad. Throughout Brad Pitt sounded like George Clooney in O Brother, Where art Thou? which is one of my favorite movies. I guess both characters were supposed to be from backwoods Tennessee but still.

We're having lunch out and dinner in Atlanta so I won't be blogging tonight (New Year's Eve and all). But I had oatmeal for breakfast this morning! I cooked it on slightly lower heat and it came out much better. The peanut butter tasted better too. Go figure. I used 1/3 cup oats, 1/2 a large banana, some vanilla extract, a lot of cinnamon, and three berry Trader Joe's granola and Krema natural peanut butter. No added salt and cheap. Perfect.

I get to go back to Trader Joe's today! And now I'm going to go use the gift certificate my brother gave me for Christmas at Victoria's Secret's semi-annual sale! I'm so excited .

Salad monster

Saturday night Hubs and I split a DiGiorno frozen pizza, supreme with a garlic bread crust. And more Lord of the Rings.

I tried oatmeal for breakfast Sunday morning but it came out much too salty and I only ate a few bites. Awhile later I went out and ran six miles! Okay, so it wasn't continuous but I definitely ran the whole six miles (stopped my Garmin when I took a walking break). I also learned that I'm at the point where I need to start taking some form of calories with me when I run. Six miles covers a lot of ground!

I came home and ate half of this Clif bar:

After a good stretch and a shower I made myself a nice, big salad consisting of spinach, broccoli, mushrooms, goat cheese, and Ken's lite balsamic vinaigrette. I actually almost couldn't finish this and didn't eat many of the Kashi crackers I had alongside. (Like my pretty new Cali bowl? I happened to score on of Kath's free gift certificates awhile back and the two I received are the perfect size for salads-as-meals or, say, sifting dry ingredients for baking. It saw lots of use last thursday!)

After a nap I had a snack of Post shredded wheat'n'bran and roasted unsalted almonds. This helped me keep away from the cheese fries that everyone else was eating for awhile. But then everyone else had filled up on cheese fries and put off dinner, so I indulged. Over all I'm incredibly proud of how few I ate though.

The gang was mostly gathered (except Jenny, who had to work) and we had the usual burritos. It's either burritos or hamburgers when we get together and it was too cold for the grill. Dan did sauté some shrimp for a much appreciated change of pace though. I had a spinach wrap with Spanish rice, red and green peppers, sauteed onions, tomatoes, black beans, and shrimp. It was divine. I went back for some more rice, beans, shrimp, and onions but it just wasn't the same and I was full anyway so after a bite or two they were thrown out.

I managed not to overdo it on the alcohol last night, thankfully. I only had about four jello shots over the course of the evening and otherwise stuck to water (and half a can of Coke until it started tasting too sweet).

Yesterday morning I opened a new container of oats. I was using Quaker before but have switched to Kroger brand. I was hoping yesterday was a fluke but it seems not. The Kroger brand are much faster cooking which means the banana doesn't break down as much and it gelatinizes after only a few minutes. I am not a fan. I'm not really a fan of the new peanut butter I opened today either. It's not very peanut-y. I'll give it another shot tomorrow, but this may be what I get for choosing the cheapest stuff I could find.

Lunch was another big salad, the same combination as yesterday but with a few red and green peppers thrown in from last night. And I finally finished off the box of Asiago Kashis that I've been working on for ages. Not my favorite flavor, but better than the last few I tried.

I'm actually getting hungry again already. We have a bunch of apples that need to be eaten so we'll see if that will hold me over until the boys get home and I can start asking about dinner.

Christmas Eve Day

Christmas Eve started with another egg-spinach-mushroom-onion-goat cheese scramble and rolls.

After breakfast I soon got to work on Christmas presents. I made my mom wedding cookies:

Broke for lunch of a salad made by Hubs: iceberg lettuce, croutons, craisins, and all the veggies already included in breakfast.

My youngest brother got a chocolate chip cookie pie

I attempted to go out for the scheduled speedwork that afternoon, but took the first mile too fast and couldn't make it all the way through. I was pretty frustrated but what can you do.

The middle child got fudge:

And Hubs and I ended our night with Applebees and more Lord of the Rings. The other restaurant we had planned to go to was closing too early for us to make dinner so we went to Applebees for the third year in a row. I got the grilled shrimp-spinach salad without bacon and did take a picture but it came out too blurry.

Christmas morning I got up with the puppy and made my dad's banana bread. It took an hour to bake which was perfect for me to shower and get ready.

After the bread came out of the oven a Sarah Lee coffee cake went in. I've had this for Christmas breakfast as long as I can remember. I'm sure they're horrible for you but oh so tasty. Hubs and I definitely polished the whole thing off between the two of us.

Christmas dinner at my parents house was great. Roast beef (I had half that piece and gave the rest to Hubs), spinach gratin (which I loved), carrots, and mashed potatoes. And rolls and red wine of course.

Dessert was a mocha cheesecake with chocolate coffee drizzled on top. Exquisite. Hubs helped me eat this slice.

Can you tell I bought a tripod the other day? Boy what a difference it makes.

Christmas supper was with Hubs' dad, step mother and brother and a family that we've both known since we were babies, though haven't spent time together with at the same time since. We might have been playmates when we were two and not even know it! I didn't want to explain about the blog so I didn't take pictures, but I kept it healthy and stuck mostly with vegetables and fruit.

We're back!

Sorry about the hold up, Hubs second computer is down for the count so I haven't had much quality time with my Macbaby. Not to mention the fact that we've either been busy with friends in the evenings or busy ourselves shopping or working our way through the extended Lord of the Rings movies. We're currently halfway through. Elijah Wood still bugs me (he's why I refused to see the movies in theaters until I had a chance to see an old friend at one) and Legolas's lines are terrible but its still pretty fun.

I don't even know where I left off and I think I have more puppy pictures on my camera than food pictures. We'll do this logically: food pics in this post, Christmas eve/day summary in a second, and puppy pictures in a third.

Since I don't know where we left off and I haven't been very faithfully photographing my food, we'll just go by what pictures I do have.

The same night I made stirfry we also made mulled wine, but I appear to have left that picture out. Served in our water pitcher and filtered as poured.

I made this veggie scramble a couple of times in the last few days. Some eggs, spinach, mushrooms, onions and rolls on the side

I also had this breakfast a couple of times: two egg microwaved scramble on toast and a clementine. I love ketchup.

And my little boy wanted some peas!

At Walmart we found some Bird's Eye dinners on sale. This is a shrimp, chicken and Mexican rice combination that you just toss in the microwave still in the bag. It was okay. Nothing I'd seek out again.

More wine, of course.

Kroger sushi! Brown rice California rolls

Skipping over Christmas eve and day brings us to Belgian waffles from this morning, made using Krusteaz (nice name, huh?) mix.

Lunch was Panera! I haven't been to Panera in years. We had Lipton raspberry iced tea and I got 1/2 a bowl of black bean soup and half a chipotle chicken sandwich. I saved the chips for later this afternoon after a tiny amount of shopping. I got new slippers for $5 at Old Navy.

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Dinner was another tasty salad put together by the Hubs. The last of some iceberg lettuce, spinach, onion, mushrooms, goat cheese, craisins, croutons, and Ken's lite balsamic dressing.

Our entree was spaghetti with popcorn shrimp. Both good separately so not bad together. A lazy man's dinner I'd say.

We're going to see Avatar (in 3D) tonight so I may not actually finish those other two posts before we leave in 20 minutes or so.

Merry Christmas!

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I promise you guys that I'll be back with a long, drawn out post tomorrow! Sorry I've been so negligent, I still love you!

Long time no see

Sorry about the absence, my food hasn't been very exciting anyway. Even less so the past two days.

The bread is good, I was a sample I got months ago and have been keeping in the freezer for a rainy day. Very seedy like the sunflower seed bagel I like at Chickfila.

The Campbell's tomato soup was fairly disgusting. Way too sweet and fake tasting.

The stir fry was food, I honestly just sort of threw it together, no measurements, just a 'huh, that looks good' I ended up adding more soy sauce later. Sauteed garlic, ground ginger and red onion in olive oil then added frozen stir fry veggies, honey, and soy sauce. Once those defrosted I added some rice that was cooked earlier in the week and some sesame seeds. Let that all warm up, put it in bowls, added the same seasonings back into the pan and panfried the tofu I cooked earlier in the week to warm it up.

Most of my food lately has been saltines, to be honest. My tummy has not been happy with me and the stir fry was my first real meal since Friday lunch. And now I'm back to saltines.

Needless to say, I haven't run at all this week. Between lack of sleep leading up to what was supposed to be my first tempo run on Thursday and now the fact that I can't keep anything substantial in my system, I think we'll just call it a week off and figure out how I can catch up later.

By the way, meet Olivander:

Fabulous day

We'll keep the list of reasons short and go in reverse, shall we?

Last of the gumbo:

Pomegranate wine:

(like my Geek in the Pink shirt?)

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And Gypsy thinks the baby boy's bed is for her.

Name in progress!

Puppy brain

Well well well, what can I say? I've had puppies on the brain all day. I didn't think to put Hubs' name on the application so I have to be the person to pick up the pup (on the off chance we get one) which is inconvenient being that, you know, I work full time and because of the holidays our time sheets are due a week early, so today I turned in time sheet covering through next Wednesday. There's also the nice little fact that our lease doesn't explicitly say we're allowed to have pets since not all of the company's properties allow it. And I can't find the receipt for the pet deposit since I wasn't the one who paid for it. But all in all I have my hopes a bit too high for our chances but I've been keeping an eye on the website and two of the pit bulls we saw there on Sunday have been either adopted or reclaimed, which is awesome.

But for the week I'm back to oatmeal in the mornings! I used a full half cup of oats today since I didn't feel like I ate enough calories to make up for my run yesterday. I think I must have eaten them before the run though because I was fine today, never really got hungry for a morning snack (had the other half of yesterday's Clif bar anyway) and didn't want an afternoon snack till wandering around Earthfare after work. So good job, Mr oatmeal. I think soon enough I'll be able to just eat banana oats with cinnamon and peanut butter, I almost don't want the granola anymore, just feel I ought to eat it at some point. My raisins are officially gone though. They were good but I don't know how much they'll really be missed.

So half a cranberry orange nut bread Clif bar for snack. It held my over quite awhile and I didn't eat lunch until the second half of my break, after walking to the science library and back (probs a mile each way with a bitch of a hill both ways too, I checked out books on puppy training). I only ate then because I had to be at the front desk between 1 and 2 and wouldn't have been able to eat then.

Unfortunately we bought the cheap spinach at Kroger (that's what I get for shopping with Hubs) and it was fairly nasty and definitely not organic. It will be gone soon enough though. I'm out of goat cheese so I added baby portobello mushrooms intead, with craisins and Ken's Lite balsamic vinaigrette. Nice and garlicky, not quite what I'd choose to eat before dealing with patrons but oh well.

I had a coupon for a free poinsettia at Earthfare but they were out. We ended up buying a few things anyway (tea, asparagus, pomegranate wine, frozen shrimp) and came home to head straight to the kitchen to make dinner. I made more couscous (a full cup for the two of us, the last of it) while Hubs stir fried the asparagus with garlic, some read onion, and some mushrooms (while I was frantically searching for more proof that we're allowed to have pets here) and the coconut shrimp baked.

Yum yum, I actually think I would have preferred the shrimp without the sauce packet they came with, though the sauce was pretty good with the couscous mixture.

So tomorrow could be potentially busy in both a good and a bad way. Good because a new addition could come of it, bad because it will be stressful, calling the pound to see if they need clarification on the lease wording and if so having to leave work even earlier to stop by the leasing office beforehand. Not to mention whether to make up time and that Hubs and I are working the rest of the week (he's off next week and I'm taking the afternoons off) so poor pups will be alone in his crate (with his mess). But there is puppy potential!

Ooh, that clicking means my laundry is done, goodnight!

Wee little spheres

Forgive me, I'm lacking the photo department again today. I didn't really eat anything new until this evening though, so really if you feel like browsing around I'm sure you can figure things out.

Breakfast was two eggs microwaved with nutritional yeast and ketchup. I can't help it, I grew up in a household where we had special breakfasts on weekends (waffles, pancakes, blueberry muffins, cinnamon rolls, etc) so I keep up the tradition now, even if it is so unimaginative as to be repeated every weekend morning

But after breakfast we went to the pound and visited the dogs. The place is unfortunately full which isn't good news for many of the sweeties there. Interestingly there were three dogs up who were not up for adoption because they were being held as evidence… I know I'm curious. We played with the puppies and even let Gypsy meet a few (she actually seemed scared of them, she thought she was being mobbed). They were all so cute, but they all have at least 5 applications for them so we'll see. Our first chance to get one comes up Tuesday, if no one else has picked up those dogs yet. Of course the dogs I'd prefer to have are the ones most applied for. I'm trying to decide whether to settle for one of the others or wait until more puppies come available.

We grabbed lunch at Arby's on the way home, I just had the regular roast beef with Arby's sauce, curly fries and a Dr Pepper. Not the healthiest choice I've ever made, but we have a buy 4 combos, get one free card so now we're nearly there.

After waiting for lunch to settle and the rain to stop, I went out and got a new PR! Five miles of dodging puddles, I started to tire at about 3.5 miles but pushed on and I honestly doubt I'd have been able to go much farther. I did take one walking break for about a minute in the middle of a huge hill, but other than a pause .2 mi from the end, waiting on traffic to pass the run was continuous. Now I get to look forward to 6 miles next weekend! Oye, and another 5 on Thursday. Joy. But I know I can do it!

After about 15 minutes of yoga stretching and a nice hot shower to thaw I had about half of my last untried flavor of Clif bar

The cranberry orange nut bread was okay, not quite what I expected and I could only take about half before it started to taste pretty gross. Maybe had I been eating it with a glass of water or something to keep the flavor from building up in my mouth. I'll eat the other half tomorrow I'm sure.

After the grocery store I came home and had my real dinner:

Israeli couscous (new to me), peas, and baked tofu (first time I tried on my own). The couscous was plain and I liked the texture fine (it is pasta after all). I wish I had cut the tofu up smaller but I was rather annoyed at the time and didn't think about surface area. The marinade was just thrown together, approximately equal parts honey, soy sauce, and evoo with ground ginger and sesame seeds. Pretty good, even if I totally over poured the ginger. Still tasty. And I have leftovers.

Well with five miles under my belt I feel like a real runner, but those five miles have left me rather drained so other than starting the dishwasher and putting the leftover tofu away (and maybe eating a clementine for dessert) I think I'll be spending the rest of the evening on the couch with my book. Or in bed. We shall see. Goodnight!

Christmas is all around…

Want a glimpse of our apartment? Here you go! Our coffee table is, unfortunately, always a mess, just ignore it, though you can see my cool speakers now The painting of Paris was a gift from my in-laws two Christmases ago and Alex and Dan just happened to find the painting of Venice at a mall and got it home to find that it's by the same artist. Pretty cool, no?

Well in case you can't tell by the greenery in the bottom left corner, we bought our Christmas tree yesterday and decorated it last night. Lowe's has good prices on trees and was selling them for 25% off! (And I definitely wore that scarf to decorate last year's tree, pure coincidence!)

This year we had help! I think decorating the tree with my family was my favorite day of the year. I miss it but it was nice to be a little untraditional this year.

(The giant tv isn't ours!)

I don't really know why we all needed to be in the box at the same time…

Star!

Dinner was lovely, a store bought whole wheat pizza crust with Ragu sauce, mushroom, spinach, and goat cheese! Sadly the goat cheese is now gone

During dinner we watched Love, Actually by the glow of the tree lights and then went downtown and saw a couple of friends in a couple of places. The thought is still making me queasy and I'm swearing off liquor for awhile. I can't stand to let food go to waste so when the bartender offered me another red bull and vodka with the other half of the can he'd already opened for me, I regrettably said 'okay.' I did have a good five glasses of water, but evidently to no avail.

Let's just say this morning started with bread and midafternoon my favorite hangover food was consumed (Kraft mac'n'cheese with the full amount of butter suggested and hot dog cut up and mixed in). I really didn't feel too bad today, but I obviously still haven't learned that my tolerance has fallen.

But now I'm looking forward to Christmas even more. We have mostly asked for money and have already been told of an overly generous gift we'll be receiving. Life will feel much easier soon. And Hubs told me today that my Christmas present from him is permission to get a puppy! There's a litter of Jack Russell's at the pound, all of whom have been applied for but we're going to go fill out an application tomorrow anyway and play with some puppies. I was looking at the pet listings on craigslist today and was really depressed to find that ever third listing in Atlanta is a pit bull. They are such loving dogs it sucks that people like Michael Vick have given such a bad reputation. I really want a smaller dog that I can cuddle on a couch with (instead of one or the other of us feeling like they're going to fall off the side) and there are so many pits out there and I know we can't save them all. They're such cute dogs and really do love people (if they haven't been taught to fear them).

Well even though I took a four hour nap today, I'm still quite tired. I just thought I'd check in with all of you lovely friends! Goodnight!

See Cat Run

Adventures in running and budget eating