Italian Food Overload

Monday is over! Thank goodness!  I have a lot to look forward to so it’s making this week drag.  I’m just ready for it to be over already!  Starting Thursday at 5 I’m on vacation for 10 days!  Unfortunately it’s a mandatory furlough where I won’t be getting paid for the 4 working days but hopefully I’ll be able to claim unemployment.  As luck would have it Andrew has all those days off except 2 with me.  He’s on vacation from school for 2 weeks and the summer program starts next Wednesday so he’ll work Wednesday and Thursday and then have off for one of my favorite holidays, the 4th of July.  Let’s just hope it feels like summer!  This weekend I also have a very exciting camping trip planned with my 2 girlfriends and their boyfriends.  It should be a great time!

This weekend flew by, and I had a lot of family things to do for Father’s Day, plus looking at more wedding locations.  I think we found one that we both absolutely love and we’re taking our moms there on Friday for their opinion.  I have a feeling they are going to love it, once we make our final decision I’ll be sure to share it with you.

So if you’ve been reading my blog for a while you’ll know I’m not a fan of sweets, you’ll hardly see chocolate or cake, but I’m a big fan of Italian food.  It’s my weakness, a nice big dish of pasta, or a slice of pizza are my weaknesses.  And in today’s post your going to see a lot of Italian food.

First off let me start with last night’s fabulous Father’s Day dinner that my dad selected and my mother cooked.  She was a little upset I hadn’t posted it last night so here you go Mom.  Happy now?

My mother makes THE best chicken parm.  It was so tender you didn’t even need a knife and it was overall perfect. 

With Andrew’s favorite pasta on the side.

Wagon Wheels!

This was absolutely perfect, thank God it’s not Father’s Day everyday though because I would seriously gain all the weight I’ve lost this year plus some, if this was an everyday option.

Now on to today.  My breakfast of choice lately has been pb on a sandwich thin.  I have no idea why, I’ve just been craving that peanut butter a lot lately.  It seems to be the only thing I want in the morning.  Unfortunately I didn’t take have my camera today, but here’s the same picture from last week. 

For lunch today I leftovers from the weekend.  I had gotten an eggplant, fresh mozzarella, and roasted red pepper sandwich.  I had a 1/4 left and brought that in for lunch today.  These pictures are from the first time I ate it over the weekend.

So delicious.  A perfect combination of flavors.

Later on I snacked on an orange.

So juicy!

Dinner tonight carried on my theme of Italian food.  I had made a very lean meat sauce over the weekend and had some leftovers for dinner.  I’ll be posting the recipe for the sauce this weekend, so stay tuned, it’s really very good and actually super simple.

I actually had dessert tonight as well.  I had a container of Fro Yo in the freezer that was about to expire.  Never one to waste food I happily ate  a small serving with some chocolate syrup.

It’s hard to tell the size but that’s just a small ramekin. 

Well I’m off to get ready for bed.  Good night everyone, hope you are having a great night!

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T.G.I.F

I am so incredibly thankful that this week is over.  It’s been a tough one, it went by fast but I’m a little stressed out over something.  Unfortunately I can’t go into detail until next week.   So please excuse me, but this post is going to be a quickie.

For breakfast today I had a peach Chobani with my peak protein granola.

By the end of the week my desk is covered in those little post-it notes. 

My lunch today came from Andrew’s boss at the pharmacy.  They ordered sandwiches and they were gigantic so she wrapped up 1/2 and sent it home with Andrew for me.  It was eggplant parm!  Didn’t I just have that like Monday?  Well I am not one to turn down free food so I brought it into today to lunch.  This is actually only a quarter of it I did my good deed for the day and passed the other 1/2 on to one of the guys at work who forgot to bring something for lunch.  Pay it Forward.

Because I got this a few days ago the roll was a little soggy so I removed that and just ate the eggplant, it was good, and much thicker then the ones I got for dinner on my birthday.  Also less breading.  But the sauce was just okay.

For dinner I had every intention of having a veggie burger.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I wanted a veggie burger because I wanted pickles, and what goes better with pickles then a burger.  Since I kindly gave away my last pickle on Saturday I stopped at the store to grab another jar but none of them were as bright green as I like so I sulked and grabbed a pizza crust instead.  I decided to make a “meatball” and pineapple pizza, again.

I used 2 “meatballs” crumbled up, and a handful of pineapples, and mozzarella cheese, on a whole wheat crust, just I needed after such a bad day.

After digesting and watching TV, Andrew and I headed out to the gym.  We were riding along talking when all of a sudden the street and traffic lights went out, we saw sparks flying, and the car in front of me slammed on their breaks. A telephone pole had fallen on a car just 2 cars in front of us.  Andrew immediately called 911 but apparently others had already done the same because they already knew about the accident we were stuck there on the highway with live wires dangling just above our car.   I was trying to look into the car to see if anyone was moving, it didn’t appear like there was.   I was freaking out, if that had happened a second later that would have been us. It was a terrifying thought, and although I’ve said today was a bad day it put it all into perspective.  We saw the driver on a stretcher leaving the scene in an ambulance but they were completely covered by a blanket,  I just hope whoever that person was is okay.  What a horrible thing to happen.

We wound up getting to the gym around 9:30 and that’s just too late for me, I worked out for a quick 40 minutes,  and my stats were:

• Calories burned: 358 (40% Fat)
• Max Heart Rate: 170
• Avg Heart Rate 146

Not too shabby for a quick workout (mostly strength training).  I’ll definitely be working out a lot harder tomorrow.

So my plans tomorrow are to go to the chiropractor, go take a tour of an assisted living facility with my mom (for my grandparents), which may or may not include a free lunch, and then later on go out with some friends that weren’t able to come out last Saturday when I celebrated my birthday.  Should be another fun filled weekend!  Hope you all had a great  Friday night.

Restocked

I have another day of boring eats for you guys, but I was able to get to the store tonight to restock so tomorrow will be back to normal.

Unfortunately I needed to have another Clif bar for breakfast, thank god I got to the store today these keep me satisfied until lunch but they are so boring to eat.

I’m pretty sure this is my first time having the Blueberry crisp and I thought it was really good.

For lunch I had my leftovers from dinner last night. 

Not pretty in the least but soooo good, I removed all the cheese off because there were no plates available at work and with the container I couldn’t put it in the microwave and the cheese just looked gross cold, the rest was fine though.

Around 3 I snacked on an orange.

See my sweet safety glasses in the background?  Yeah I have to wear those whenever I go out to the factory at my work.  I hate those things.

After work I hit up Whole  Foods, I didn’t take a picture of all my purchases I completely forgot.  I pulled a Meghann and as soon as I got home I put everything away, got changed and put on the Burn Fat and Boost Metabolism Jillian Michael’s DVD, so I wouldn’t have time to make up excuses.  Since I just got my HRM I was dying to try it.  I only made it 35 minutes in and kinda skipped the cool down, before I quit, I was too hungry to keep going by this time it was 7:30 and needed something to eat.  But in those 35 minutes I wound up burning 350 calories I did modify some things and added weights just to make it a little more difficult.  I really enjoyed the DVD though and it’s something I will definitely do on days I don’t usually go to the gym.

For dinner I wanted something fast and did not feel like cooking anything.  I decided to have a massive smoothie.

This smoothie contained:

• 1/2 a cup of oats
• 1/2 a cup skim milk
• 1 scoop soy protein powder
• A gigantic handful of spinach
• 4 ounces POM juice
• pineapple
• and blueberries

This was super filling.  This was my first time adding spinach to a smoothie, and although everyone swears you can’t taste it, I never believed them.  Well it’s true!  I put a crazy amount of spinach in there and did not taste it at all.  I’ve never had a smoothie for dinner before but I assume it’s okay to substitute that meal with a smoothie, since there was so much going on in there I feel just as satisfied with that as I would a huge meal.

Well I’m off to pack/prepare my lunch for tomorrow, enjoy the rest of your Monday night!

Quick Post

I’m so tired so I’m just going to post my eats for today and then go to bed.  I need to get some more sleep tonight because I’ve felt really tired. 

For breakfast today I had Overnight oats.  They were good, a little soupier then I usually like but good none the less.

This contained 1/2 a cup of oats, 1/2 a cup of skim milk, a 1/2 a banana, and some pb.

For lunch I brought a Dr. Praeger’s veggie burger and ate it on the last of my whole wheat onion rolls from Whole Foods, with some ketchup on it.

For dinner I ate the same exact thing as yesterday a wrap with a piece of eggplant, cheese, marinara sauce ,and a side salad with romaine and mini sweet peppers.

So sorry for the lack of stellar posting. Good night!

No Appetite = Boring Eats

Yup until this evening I still had no appetite.  But it’s back now and I was happy to eat a full and satisfying dinner.   I had so much trouble getting out of bed this morning, I slept horribly and woke up quite a few times and had trouble getting back to sleep.  When my alarm went off this morning I barely stirred.  I was seriously contemplating going in late, but just dragged my butt out of bed with enough time to get ready and get there on time.  The day went by pretty quickly which is always a good thing. 

For breakfast I ate about 3/4 of a 0% Fage with peak protein granola mixed in.

I just never got hungry again and by lunch time I decided to just have a clif bar instead of eating something else.  I’m so surprised my hunger didn’t come back because I had a great hard workout both yesterday and Saturday, so strange how it all but disappeared.   I had the pear and apple strudel clif bar.

Still my favorite flavor.

On my way home from work I started to feel hungry.  FINALLY!  I was so excited to get home and make dinner.  I still had eggplant left over so I grabbed some of that and made a wrap with 1 big piece of eggplant, and then had a smaller piece on the side.  I also had a gigantic salad with almost a whole romaine heart, some onion, and 4 mini sweet peppers with a little bit too much light Caesar dressing, the bottle kinda got away from me when I was pouring it on. 

Well we made it through the hardest day of the week!  It should be smooth sailing from here on out. 

If you haven’t already go check out at Ashley at Foods that Fit, she’s organizing a Blogger Cookbook!  I still haven’t submitted my recipes but plan to tomorrow evening!

23 Hours…

Good Morning!  Hope you’re enjoying your weekend.  Today is an hour shorter then every other day of this year so make sure to make the most of it!  I love springing ahead because it will be lighter longer now but it looks like it’s going to be cloudy today and for the next couple days, we may not even get to enjoy the extra light.  It has been so warm this weekend, all 14 inches of the snow are gone, in less the 6 days since the big snow fall it disappeared!  It was close to 70 yesterday and I thoroughly enjoyed the weather.

Friday night was a ton of fun we went out to a bar down the street, I have such a great group of friends!  I had a mozzarella stick but no picture of it, the rest of the night I enjoyed water and the company of my friends.  So different from a few months ago where everytime we’d go out I’d spend 40 bucks on drinks, and feel sick Saturday morning.  I’d really rather no have a drink at all or just enjoy one drink, just another change I made this year that I’m happy about.  We came home kinda early and went to bed since Andrew had work Saturday morning.  BUT I had a great conversation with my 2 best girlfriends and we have decided to run the Fear The Pier 5k in May!  I’m so excited! It’ll be my first 5k and I couldn’t be happier about running it with them. Time to start training!

Yesterday morning I had personal training so I had a protein packed breakfast of a 0% plain Chobani with a piece of the banana bread mixed in.  I hate it outside on our deck in the sunshine!

My trainer kicked my ass yesterday! I was so tired after training I didn’t wind up doing any cardio at the gym.  I am so sore today and plan on doing some yoga to loosen up before I hit up the gym.

After personal training yesterday I went to my parents house to hang out with my sister while my parents went to buy new couches, after Andrew got out of work he stopped by Tropical Smoothie Cafe and grabbed me the same Veggie Veggie wrap as last time, and I went a little crazy and had a serving sized bag of baked lays with it.

After lunch Andrew and I took turns using my parents elliptical, I had to get my cardio in somewhere and it was slightly raining so I was a baby and didn’t want to go outside..

After that we came back to the apartment to clean and eat dinner.  I had an eggplant I had to use up so I made my version of eggplant parm.  Just sliced the eggplant, roasted it in the oven with a small amount of EVOO brushed onto the eggplant with garlic powder sprinkled on top and popped it in the oven for 20 minutes flipping once half way through.  I then put it in a casserole dish covered it with sauce and a small amount of cheese.  After the cheese is melted it’s done!  Oh my gosh this is sooo good.

Once dinner was over,  MsInformed and her fiancé came over to celebrate her birthday!!!!  We had pomegranate and vodka drinks with the POM Wonderful juice.  She also agreed it was really good.  This is a photo from last time because I didn’t get a chance to take a picture last night.

Well I’m going to have some coffee and find something to eat before I run to the gym.  Have a great Sunday!  I’ll be back after dinner tonight!

Fat Tuesday & an Interview

Another day flew right by!  I can’t believe tomorrow is the middle of the week already!  I hope you all had a quick moving Tuesday as well.  I’m exhausted after such a busy day so I’m going to get right into my eats.  I also did an interview that Brandi of Bran Appetit sent me!  She had some great questions!

Breakfast today was an old favorite combo.  Plain Chobani with a crumbled deep chocolate vitamuffin crumbled on top.  Such a great mix!

I should have brought a bowl to mix it all in, it was quite overflowing, after I took this picture I really crushed it up in there, my department vp thought I was eating cookie’s and cream ice cream for breakfast.  It was almost as good!

Lunch was a big salad with romaine lettuce, a mini sweet pepper, and black beans, with caesar dressing, also yummy but a little boring.  Sometimes I hate having to pack lunches ahead of time because I never know what I’m going to be in the mood for.

 

For snack a little later I had a braeburn apple.

As I said yesterday I had dinner plans with my friend Michelle.  We decided to go out to dinner but didn’t know where to go.  She had a coupon for Bertucci’s so we decided to go there.  Great Choice! 

There rolls are delicious!  I had 1 and 1/2.

We ordered the exact same thing right down to the salad. We each got a house salad with balsamic vinaigrette, I forgot to say dressing on the side, I ate about 1/2 of it but the rest was drowning in dressing.

I also gave Michelle my olive’s.

For dinner we both ordered off the lunch menu and got the eggplant panini. It was Fire-roasted eggplant, Pomodoro sauce, fresh basil, mozzarella and provolone cheese.  Minus the provolone cheese for me.  I like it sometimes but I’m not a fan of it melted.

I have one piece left of the 3 so expect to see that for lunch tomorrow.  It was a great dinner, we had a lot to catch up on since we haven’t hung out it a while.  Lots of laughs.

So as I said Brandi sent me an interview to fill out.  She asked some great questions and it was fun to answer them.  I’ve seen this on a ton of blogs so I’m sure most of you have already been interviewed, but if you haven’t and you’d like me to interview you leave me a comment and I’ll happily do so! 

Here’s the rules to play along:

1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."  If a few people want

interviews, I will randomly pick 2.

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the

questions).

 

Here are the Questions Brandi sent me

1. What is your all time favorite breakfast?

When I was little we always had a big breakfast on Sundays.  Usually bacon or sausage and eggs with hard rolls or bagels.  It was my favorite meal of the week, I would wake up early and go to the bakery with my dad, then we would go to 7-11 to get coffee for him and hot chocolate for me.  We’d then go to the beach or to the marina to look at the boats.  Once we returned home we would have scrambled eggs and bacon sandwiches.  Now I switch it up with turkey bacon to make it a little healthier, and it’s not every Sunday, but it’s still an ultimate comfort food for me on the weekends.

2. What do you think is the perfect food combination?

Chocolate and Peanut butter, I’m not sure you can get better then that!  Or pineapple on pizza, another ultimate favorite.

3. What do like best about blogging?

Oh my gosh there are so many things!  I love that it’s introduced me to a super supportive community.  When my sister was in the hospital last month I got some of the sweetest comments.  Every blogger I’ve gotten a comment from has been so positive, I feel like I have a whole bunch of friends all over the country and world!  I also love the time it makes me take on my food.  Before I would mindlessly eat right at the kitchen counter or stand at the pantry and just snack.  Taking the time to put my food on a plate and take pictures of it slows the whole meal process down.

4. How/why did you start blogging?

Early fall I stumbled across either Jenna or Kath’s food blogs, I forget who I ran across first, I instantly started clicking through the links and comments and found a whole community of girls who were eating healthy and living active lives.  I’ve been unhappy with my weight for about 2 years now and I would try to make changes but they never stuck.  I would go to the gym for a few months, and eat decently and then would just stop.  The idea that the blog would hold me accountable made it a pretty easy decision to start my own.  I’m so happy I did, I see the changes in my body and the changes in my attitude towards food and I’m so grateful that the blog, and other bloggers have changed my outlook.

5. If you could spend the day with anyone (dead or alive), who would it be and why?

My paternal grandfather.  I never met him, he died a couple years before I was born.  I’ve heard a lot of stories about him but it would be great to get to meet him.  Knowing my dad and my aunt and uncles he must have been a great person since he raised them. I’m lucky to still have my maternal grandparents, and was able to get to know my paternal grandmother before she passed away when I was younger.  But I’ve always been curious as to what my grandfather was like and I’d love to spend a whole day just talking to him and finding out things about him.

Fat Sandwiches

Hey everyone!  I’m feeling better again, still not 100% but so much closer, I’m excited to go to the gym tomorrow.  I took another night off and I know I needed it, but I’ll be so happy when I’m able to workout at full capacity again.  I’m sure tomorrow is going to be hard but it’s going to be so nice to get back in there.

Today I was in a really good when I got to work.  The sun was shining it was in the 50’s, I was feeling better, and then I got to work, everyone seemed to be in a bad mood today.  The clouds quickly rolled in with drizzles here and there, and the temperature dropped down to 35*.  But it’s Thursday so I was trying not to let everyone else’s moods affect my attitude for the day.  It’s hard trying to be positive when everyone else was so negative, but I know that tomorrow everyone will be happy it’s Friday, as will I.  I mean you get to wear jeans to work tomorrow.  Things don’t get much better then that right? Ha.

So I started out the morning with a blueberry Chobani.  I still think this isn’t the best flavor, I’ll stick to plain, vanilla, and peach from now on, but I’m glad I was able to find this in the store and try it.  I also had 2 clementines on the side.

All I wanted today for lunch was pb on a bagel, I settled for 1/2 a bagel with lots of fruit on the side.  I had grapes, blueberries, and 2 prunes to go along with my peanut buttery bagel.

Yum!

I still don’t have my full appetite back so there was no snacking in between meals, but my mom texted me this afternoon to ask if Andrew and I wanted to go to one of the local diners for dinner.  If you’ve been to or are from NJ you know that diners are every 1/2 mile on the highways.  If you’re from Jersey I’d bet you spent many countless hours at a table in a diner, just drinking coffee or eating pork roll, egg, and cheese on a hard roll (ewww not me though, I’ve always loathed pork roll).  I’d even go so far as to guess you’ve gone to a diner after at least one homecoming or school dance all dressed up with a big group of friends.  Yeah, we really love diners in Jersey.  At a diner you can get anything, Italian food, Greek gyros, Mexican food, and of course breakfast 24 hours a day.  Or if you go to my local diner you can get a “Fat Sandwich.”  Intrigued?  Here’s the selection of Fat Sandwiches at the diner tonight.

All those ingredients are on one Sub roll.  So if you order a Fat Flo you’d get a sub roll with chicken fingers, mozzarella sticks, french fries and marinara sauce all stuffed on there. Or perhaps you’re very hungry and that’s not enough.  May I suggest a Fat Manny, which is  cheese steak, eggs, pork roll, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and ketchup all on a long roll.

I ordered a Fat Nancy.

I’m kidding of course.  My order was not on the “Fat Cat” portion of the menu.  I got a veggie wrap which included grilled eggplant and zucchini, spinach, tomatoes, romaine lettuce, carrots, red onions, and mozzarella cheese, with balsamic dressing on the side.

 

It came with french fries, but Andrew’s meal came with home fries so I gave him all my fries for 1/2 of his home fries.   Delicious.  I ate one 1/2 the wrap and then picked the eggplant off the other half and just ate that, and I also ate almost all of the home fries.

Oh and my dad got a greek salad with his entree so I gladly ate some of that as well.

Here’s the whole salad.

I ate less then a 1/4 of his salad, mostly just picked out all his onions and ate those.

So there you have it, a typical night at a Jersey Diner, hope you enjoyed yourselves!

 

Hope you all have a great night, and hope your Friday flies by so you can start enjoying your weekends!

Friday Night Slacker

Happy Saturday!  Hope you are all enjoying your weekend so far.  After getting home from work last night I had to eat dinner quickly because we were going to go visit one of Andrew’s friends from college with a couple of our other friends.  We wound up not getting home until after midnight and I was fast asleep within 10 minutes of getting home.

Let’s get into yesterday’s eats.

Breakfast was a peach Chobani with granola and cranberries.

Once again this did a great job of holding me over until lunch.

Lunch yesterday was a toasted Thomas WW bagel with pb.  I’ve worked at this office for almost 3 years now and never once used the toaster, this is definitely something I’ll be using more often now.

I also had a side of grapes.

Around 4 I got hungry so I snacked on an Archer Farms Orange Citrus Fruit Bar.

This was really good!  It tasted really excellent, I have the Tropical flavor as well and it’s just as good.  I bought them when they were on clearance one day and it’s definitely something I’ll be buying again.

Once I got home I made Eggplant Stuffed Green Peppers.

I mixed up the rest of the brown rice, a 1/2 a tbsp of ricotta, 2 pieces of eggplant diced, tomato basil sauce, the top of the green pepper diced.  I put this mixture inside the green pepper and then baked in the oven at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, I then put 1/2 an ounce of part skim mozz on top.

It was a delicious combination!  I love stuffed peppers, and if I had more time I would have added even more veggies to it.

A close up of the inside.  I can’t wait to continue stuffing peppers in new ways, it’s such an easy meal and it can be really healthy.  Typically I would put ground beef in but I didn’t miss it at all with the eggplant in there.

While we were out last night we went to a microbrewery.  I ordered some sweet potato fries but they were super greasy and obviously deep fried I ate a few and then put them aside.  I also had a bite of Andrew’s burger and a waffle fry of his.  It was a lot of fun but I’m glad we ate before we went because I was not happy with many of the food choices.

I woke up this morning and had another WW bagel toasted but with Light Butter on it.

Yum.  After breakfast I took a nice long bubble bath.  I can’t believe how sore I am today.  Much more sore then yesterday.  Although after my bath I’m feeling really relaxed and less sore.  I’m getting ready to the head to the gym and then come back here for some cleaning.

Tonight we’re going to a friends birthday party up in Staten Island NY.  Should be a good time.  I’ll be posting before then. 

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday, see you later!

A PSA regarding PB

Just a reminder that Clif Bar, Luna Bars, and Larabars (which include the Jamfrakas) are doing a voluntary recall on some of the products that contain peanuts and peanut butter, due to the traces of Salmonella found in peanut butter over the past few weeks.   Please check the list on each site to make sure none of your bars are included in this.  Better to be safe then sorry, and I wouldn’t want any of you getting sick.

I just bought a whole bought a whole box of the pb z bars that fell into the category of products being recalled (they are doing so by expiration date) luckily I only ate one of them.  But I won’t be eating anymore.

Hey Everybody!  Well I went back to work today, and I remembered how much I hate calling out for a day.  I felt completely bombarded when I got in the office this morning.  I much rather pick a day and request it off.  But, oh well, the day’s over and it felt like a Monday all day to me, so I’m so excited tomorrow is already Wednesday!

My breakfast was the usual.  Vanilla Chobani, Peak Protein Granola, with extra dried cranberries.

Around 11 I snacked on an orange.

This was the juiciest orange I’ve had in a while, made me miss my clementines even more.

Lunch was a left over eggplant sandwich.  To keep the eggplant from drying out in the fridge I put a small amount of sauce over each piece and stacked them in a Tupperware container.  I love how almost any leftover with sauce just keeps getting better, and this sandwich was no exception.  I had a big and small piece of eggplant on an Arnold Sandwich Thin.

I know it doesn’t look that appetizing but it was amazing!  If you always bread or flour your eggplant in some way give this a try it really makes the flavor of the eggplant stand out.  And I still have quite a few days worth of leftovers, I see a lot of yummy meals involving eggplant in my future.  Maybe for the sake of the blog I’ll freeze a few pieces for sometime in the future so as not to bore you all.

With my lunch I had another honeycrisp apple.

 

The weird angle of my thumb is really grossing me out.

Around 3:30 I was hungry!  So I had a lot of grapes and a little less then 1/2 of an Oatmeal Raisin Walnut Clif bar.

After yet another chiropractic appointment it was time to come home and make dinner.  I decided to make a huge batch of brown rice for Andrew and I to share over the week, along with that, I made another piece of grilled chicken, and some steamed broccoli.

I know that chicken looks breaded but it’s not.  I put the raw chicken breast if a plastic bag and put in some chili powder, Mrs. Dash and a few dashes of Franks Red Hot sauce, and then shook it all up Shake and Bake style, this was the most tender, juicy, flavorful, piece of grilled chicken I have ever had at home.  And I ate almost all of it!

I realized today I never really take pictures of my drinks, usually my water bottle can be seen in the background of my eats from work, but I never mention what I’m drinking.  I drink water 99% of the time.  Occasionally when I go out I do get a diet soda, but that’s rare.  I used to drink all sorts of diet soda a couple years ago, pretty much a couple cans daily.  I wish I could say I cut it out because it was unhealthy, but the truth is, I live in a 3rd floor walk up, and last year when I lived here without Andrew, (but with a terrible horrible roommate), I just didn’t want to carry soda up here. It kind of stuck with me and now soda is a rare occurrence.  I definitely get my 8 glasses of water a day.  I use water as my excuse to get up at work and get away from my desk, to refill my water bottle.  And at home we have a Brita filter pitcher that we fill up a few times a day.

Also during the week I have a cup coffee every morning.   I use skim milk (or fat free 1/2 and 1/2) in it and Splenda.  Please don’t warn me about the artificial sweeteners, I’ve already heard plenty but the unhealthy me of last year bought a box of 5 gajillion Splenda packets from Costco and that’s what I’ve got.  Next time I won’t be buying Splenda, and I will hopefully wean myself off of sweeteners, all together, but baby steps people.  A month ago I was eating fast food, I think I’ve already come a long way from where I started, and thanks again for all the support and sweet comments along the way.  This is seriously an awesome community and I feel blessed to be a part of it.