A New Friend

It's Friday! ....with Thursday photos. It was a good day yesterday. I bought blueberries at Aldi. So my morning smoothie was not the usual Banana Pudding smoothie. It also wasn't a Chocolate Monkey smoothie and there wasn't any peanut butter involved. There was however a banana in there. Yes, it was my Blueberry Banana Smoothie and it was delicious. 

 

All purple, speckled, cold and creamy. Yummy!

 

This is our new friend. He has slowly adopted us. At first staying in our crawl space and sometimes in Dales shop when the door was left open. He seem to want to be friendly, but would never get close, that is until we started giving him scraps. He would get closer and closer each time. Now waits at the front door and meows/hisses if you don't stop and pet or give him food. I'm not sure why he hisses. It's like his is fussing at you. The whole time walking beside our feet, then stopping to look up every couple of steps. He now knows, "Here kitty, kitty".

He was very hard to get a picture of. Every time I would squat down he would try to get on my lap.

Yesterday was the last day for leftovers. I use to have a three day rule, but since I despise wasting food, I have stretched it to four. There are some leftovers that don't get stretched. It just depends on how they look. 

 I had leftover potatoes for lunch and a nice fresh salad on the side. The potatoes were just plain with a little butter, salt and pepper.

 

The salad was iceberg lettuce, spinach, yellow pepper, white cucumber, and a tiny little Roma from the garden.

 

There was also a last minute addition of shredded Mexican blend cheese & imitation bacon bits, then drizzled with light ranch dressing.

 

A little while later, I had the last piece of birthday cake with vanilla ice cream and dry roasted peanuts. The cake and ice cream still just seemed to need something. I wasn't sure what, but decided to add a few nuts. It was so much better with the nuts, just what it needed.

 

 

Thursday was Zumba day. We had another great workout, dancing with weights. The first 2 songs we did without weighs, I guess as a warm up. I was worried on Tuesday that having used 3lb. weights, that I might regret it by morning, but I wasn't the least bit sore, so I used the 3lb. weights again yesterday. We finished up without using weights for the last couple of songs, a nice cool down and stretch. I did sweat more yesterday than on Tuesday, my hair was soaked and I had to keep wiping the sweat out of my eyes. It was great. No soreness this morning either, but I do think I will stick with 3's, that is quite enough for now.

For dinner I had a chili cheese dog made with a veggie patch veggie dog, a slice of American cheese, mustard, & vegetarian chili with beans. The mustard doesn't seem to go too well with this chili. I normally use mustard with homemade chili, which goes well with it, but I'm thinking I should lose the mustard when using canned. 

I also had onion rings, baked in the oven, the ones with the whole onion, which I prefer. Lucas still like the minced version better. He has just recently started eating onion and hasn't graduated to the whole version yet. Onion rings are one of the few things I eat ketchup with. I am normally not a fan of ketchup, but I started out eating onion rings with ketchup and mostly that's how I eat them.

BTW, I registered for an account with WordPress and I'm seriously thinking of switching to WordPress. Right now I am just playing around with it, to see if I like it. I will keep you updated and possible post a link to it soon, just so you can check it out and possibly tell me what you think. I suppose that's it for today. Happy Friday everyone! Enjoy your day. Comments are encouraged.

Smoothies, Salads, And A New Routine

Yesterday's smoothie was Strawberry Banana, more strawberry than banana. The strawberry were looking sort of puny and I figured I would use them up before they went to waste. My new routine went fairly smoothly yesterday. I hoping it is going to workout. I still didn't get to bed until 12:30, but that was still way earlier than usual.

 

 I had an outing planned yesterday, a day out with Mom & Lynda. We went to Panera Bread and picked up some bagels. I got the last four everything bagels and a free Mango Smoothie. You have to be there pretty early to get those everything bagels. They go pretty quickly. There was quite a line and we thought all the good stuff might be gone before we ordered. Fortunately we got what we wanted.

 

The Mango Smoothie was great. I love Mangoes. It was pretty thick, but came with a huge straw.  Mom & Lynda got something next door at Starbucks.

 

 

We checked out Habit's Restore, Kohl's, Michael's, Goodwill & Target, but not necessarily in that order. I got a tee shirt from Kohl's and some more Gardein Chick'n Scallopini & Lemon Chobani from Target. 

 We also went to Salsarita's for lunch and we all had vegetarian taco salads. We got shredded lettuce, black beans, rice, roasted veggies, tomatoes, red onion, fresh salsa, shredded cheese, spice sour cream. I also got black olives and jalapeños. I got a pack of light ranch, but didn't need it so, I saved it for later. I got a drink instead of water, a mixture of Sprite, Light Lemonade and Hi-C Punch. It was pretty good. The salad was good too, except the shell wasn't to fresh. It was crispy, but not fresh crispy. I just ate half of it.

 

I made the mistake of wearing sandals yesterday. My feet and legs were killing me by the end of the day. I will remember my tennis shoes next time. 

When I got home I still have to make a run to Walmart. I was sort of hungry so I grabbed half a bagel, toasted it, spread some cream cheese on top & out the door we went. I still had my sandals on, but had to take them off on the way home.

 

When I got home I had another salad. I still had corn & black beans to use up, but I didn't make this one like a taco salad, since I'd already had one. I used onion & tomato, Mozzarella cheese, the packet of ranch from Salsarita's and black pepper. 

 

 It was sort of late, by the time I got my salad. I uploaded the photos for the day and called it a night. I even got my yoga in before 12:30am, not bad for the first day of my new routine. I going to wrap this up. Hopefully it will make it to my email subscribers. See ya tomorrow!

Changing My Routine

 *Updated 6-8-11

I think I am going to have to change my routine. I don't know how well this will work for me or how quick, I'll be able to accomplish it, but I am thinking of doing my blog posts for the day, the following morning. I think I will be less tired and I'll be able to provide a less hurried post, which will hopefully mean a little better content, but I'm not expecting a miracle.

I would however, like to get more sleep, which may help with my carb craving. I am posting today photos and I'll fill in the rest in the morning. Sorry to leave you hangin'. I am hoping to start getting up early. I'll just have to see how it goes before I decide to make it a permanent thing, bear with me please.

Alright y'all, I'm fresh as a daisy this morning. Up early, not as early as I'd have liked, but early. I had set an alarm, but I was apparently too tired to do that right so, it didn't go off. I think I forgot to change the am/pm thing to am.

Now I will tell you about my day.......I got up early yesterday, I couldn't sleep, didn't sleep well all night. Despite my lack of sleep, I did have a good day. It started off with a Strawberry Apple Smoothie. Ya, can't get much better than that.

 

I had good energy, at least the first part of the day. I worked out a little with my weights. I'm switching that to mornings also. I'm still doing my yoga before though. I cleaned house some too and got a good bit done. I'm still behind on my major/spring type cleaning. I'm hoping to get some of it out of the way with my new routine. I am aiming for better sleep quality, so that I am not so drained mentally and physically. 

Today was not the best food day nutritionally speaking. I just had some pasta salad for lunch and that's it.

 

 

I was still a little hungry after lunch so I had some Ritz crackers with peanut butter. Off brands are alright and I buy those most of the time, but the Ritz are a little fluffier and lighter, so every now and then it pays to get those, just so you appreciate them, lol.

This should have been carrots or broccoli.

 

No this is not a misplaced breakfast photo. I had another smoothie as my pre-Zumba workout snack, complete with fruit, yogurt, oatmeal, flax, & milk. This one has banana in it as well as strawberries and apple, thanks to a quick run to the grocery store. I also picked up a Smart Water for Zumba class and I also found a new electrolyte infused water called Function Water. I got it at Food Lion, but I'm going to check around a see if I can find it anywhere else. I looked online for it. It must be pretty new, because it was pretty hard to find online. I did find it though and from what I can tell only Food Lion carries it at the moment, but I'm not sure it's exclusive.

 

Zumba class was great. We did our workout to some summer oldies. I don't know if I was just tired or what, but it seemed like we got a better workout than usual. It was definitely hotter and I was definitely sweatier. It was our last class at that church until Fall. We will be starting our Tuesday classes at the other church were we have our Thursday class.

After I got home I had a big salad in a bowl. There a lot going on here and it looks like a mess, but it was pretty good.

 

What's In This Mess

Spinach

Iceberg Lettuce

Corn

Black Beans

Tomato

Onion

3 Hushpuppies

Salsa

Light Ranch Dressing

Not much to look at, but very tasty.

 

I also had half of a frozen cookie n cream donut from Krispy Kreme. It wasn't bad. I do like Oreos. It also wasn't great for a donut. I think an Oreo Blizzard would be better, lol.

Well that was my day and I hope this one will be as good. Remember, I won't be posting tonight. I'm going to start doing my posts in the mornings. I will try and get the email subscriptions set up to come later so that nobody misses their email, so let me know if it doesn't work. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do. I welcome new subscribers and you can also follow me on Twitter, where I try to update frequently, definitely, if somethings up with the blog, so you'll be the first to know. Have a great day!

 

Gardein Chicken Scallopini

This was one of those days were I felt like laying around, just being lazy and that's pretty much how it worked out. It was cloudy and rainy when I got up. The dogs are always quite when it rains, afraid they'll have to go out in it. I put a new curtain rod in my bedroom and the curtains I had were too small for the rod, so I had to use a darker pair until I can get some others. This made waking up difficult. I need that light coming in to tell me it's time to get up. I manage to get up anyway, knowing I had work to do, pictures to post and a blog to write, but first I had to have breakfast. I like to eat as soon as my eyes open.

There was a banana in the kitchen, calling my name and I got some vanilla yogurt while I was out with Mom & Lynda, woohoo! It may not be exciting for you, but I've been missing my smoothies and you know I had to have a Banana Pudding Smoothie. Have you tried one yet? It's an awesome smoothie.

 

After getting yesterday's post done, lots of email checking, web surfing, and........ Darn, I just remembered I forgot to start the washer, I loaded. I'll do that right quick and then I'll tell you about lunch. 

Now, that I've gotten that out of the way, I will tell you about my salad. I had it in a bowl, since I tend to make my salads too large, on a plate. It still looks pretty big, but I wasn't stuffed after eating it, so I know it's smaller.

What's in the bowl

Spring Mix Lettuce

Green Pepper

Carrot

Cucumber

Tomato

Chickpeas/Garbanzo Beans

Italian Dressing

 

I was just making a simple salad. It turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would be. 

My dessert/snack, I had a little later. It was a piece of the Apple Cake that Lynda made. It was moist, gooey, buttery, and apple-y good.

Tonight I tried out a new meatless product I'd heard about online. It was Gardein (not garden, it stands for garden protein) Chick'n Scallopini. They come frozen separately in a resealable plastic bag. I just tried it plain this time to see how it is alone. It was pretty good. It sort of has a slight Bacos flavor, but just barely. It's not exactly the texture of chicken, which is fine me, but sort of like a firmer scrambled egg. I think that the Morning Star Farms Chicken Griller is more like chicken, if that's what you're going for, but these are good and I would get them again. The price is about the same as the MSF patties and I like the way they look. I cooked this one in a skillet sprayed with Pam. It browned up nicely. I would like to find some recipes that I can use these in. Any suggestions?

 Lucas fixed Four Cheese Rice-A-Roni and I had some it with my Chick'n Scallopini and the last of my broccoli florets sprinkled with some Italian dressing. 

 I had a good day despite the fact that I was lazy and didn't get a lot done. It was nice just doing mostly nothing. How did you spend your Saturday?

Unexpected Mini Vacation

Well, I'm back. I'm so confused now, I'm not even sure how behind I am. This is Thursday's post which I normally do Thursday night. Unfortunately Blogger was down yesterday. I'm not sure how long. I just barely got Wednesday posted and Blogger went down for maintenance. I was cleaning all day Thursday and didn't even get on to check the blog until I was ready to do Thursday's post and realized they'd either gone down again or were still down, anyway, no post. I had planned to get everything posted this morning. Blogger was still down and at 1pm they were still down. Mom and my Aunt Lynda called and invited me to go shopping with them. Since there was nothing I could do with on the blog, I went. I've been gone all day and didn't get home until late, so here I sit at a quarter after 12am, trying to get caught up. I've got Thursday's pictures ready so, I'll do them now and get Friday's up tomorrow, if everything goes well. Sorry about the delay.

This was breakfast. A sort of milky yogurt fruit & cereal bowl.

 

What's in the bowl

Fresh Strawberries

Maybe a tablespoon of vanilla yogurt that I had left in the container.

About a quarter cup of milk mix into the yogurt.

Multigrain flakes cereal

Cheerios

A dab of Kellogg's Fiber Plus Berry Yogurt Crunch which is really sweet and the flakes are hard, not my favorite.

Chopped Walnuts

 

I was really missing my yogurt and this was the best I could do, but it wasn't too bad.

 

I got started cleaning immediately after breakfast and found myself doing a thorough cleaning in my living room. I'd decide to mop the living room and kept finding things I needed do first. Before you know it, I had the whole room torn apart and wasn't sure I could get it back together before time to go to Zumba. 

I had some dry roasted Edamame, while I was cleaning. I got sidetracked and never finished them.

I fixed a quick lunch, so that I could try to put everything back together. I had thawed some Salmon patties out, I'd had in the freezer. I meant to eat one Wednesday and forgot. I cut up some carrot, cucumber and broccoli to go with it and a little of the Fiesta Ranch dip on the side.

I've really been craving cucumbers lately. I picked up some really nice ones at Patterson's Market. 

After, vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, washing and furniture moving. I nearly had everything back in place, so it was safe to take a break with a piece of 5 flavor pound cake, covered with the last of my Delmonte Very Cherry fruit cocktail. It was pretty good.

We went to Zumba and from there Friday the 13th started to kick in, lol. I had taken my yoga mat because, I'd found out we'd be doing some ab exercises afterwards if we wanted and I'd planned to take advantage of it. Right after we got started, we had technical difficulties (the ipod messed up). Fortunately the instructor offer to do some exercises using weights and resistance band instead. Someone else had an ipod, so we were able to listen to music, just not Zumba music. We got a great workout anyway and I've really got to get me a resistance band. It was great and fun to work with.

When I got home, I had my other salmon patty. I also had an egg roll and some stir fried veggies with garlic, ginger, lite soy sauce and sesame oil, very yummy.

It wasn't until after I'd gotten home and had had dinner, that things really went wrong. I was all prepared to load my photos and go to bloggin', but then I realized Blogger still had everything shut down. Uugghh!!! I was very frustrated. I waited a while and it looked as though it was going to be a while. I thought about going to be early, but decide to play a short online game, which I rarely get to do. The next thing I knew, it was way passed my bedtime. Oops! Well, I'd had my mini vacation and used it playing an online game and I suppose that's how things went. I'm still confused writing yesterday's post today, tonight, whatever. I'm also not going to spell check or anything tonight. I hopefully straighten things out tomorrow. My main goal was getting one post done tonight. That's all for now. If you're not already you can follow me on Twitter for updates on the blog. I usually try to let everyone know via Twitter if they'll be a delay, etc. I also tweet new posts, so if it doesn't make it to your inbox or rss feed for some reason, you'll know there's a new post. Night y'all! Happy Saturday!!

Banana Pudding In A Glass

This morning when I got up, I felt so much better than yesterday. I had a much better attitude and lots more energy. I guess I just didn't get enough restful sleep the other night. I did have breakfast planned before daylight. I guess when I wake up during the night, I have food on the brain and the only way I can get back to sleep is to solve the mystery of what I'll be having for breakfast. I don't understand it myself, anyway, I've come up with a different version of the banana smoothie. My first banana smoothie was the Banana Nut Smoothie with chopped walnuts, brown sugar and cinnamon. The one I made this morning, I'm calling the Banana Pudding Smoothie. It's a creamy combo of vanilla and banana with a couple of vanilla wafers thrown it. It was delicious and I think I like it better than the banana nut smoothie.

What's in the glass

Sliced Fresh Banana

Vanilla Yogurt

Milk

Old Fashioned Oats

Ground Flax

Vanilla Extract

Vanillla Wafers

Ice Cubes

It's super yummy!!!

I got a bunch done today, but only with the help of the A/C. I've been avoiding turning it on, to save money, but with temps in the upper 80's, it's very difficult to get motivated to move, especially when you break a sweat sitting still. After I did some mopping and dog bathing, I fixed some lunch. I made a sort of open faced fish taco with the my leftover Tilapia. My tortilla was a bit too big, so I folded it a little and then just put everything on top. It was pretty messy to eat, but it was very good.

What's on the plate

Leftover Tilapia

Shredded Cabbage

Shredded Carrot

Shredded Bell Pepper

Diced Tomato

Flour Tortilla

After the photos, I topped it all with a little taco sauce.

I went outside and walked around the yard after lunch. I was looking at some of the flowers that have finally bloomed. I decided to take a few photos of them. These are my iris'.  I have a lot more than I did last year. There are lots of buds on the backside that haven't even bloomed yet.

This is my tiny little Azalea bush that's only 2 years old. I thought the drought last summer had killed it. Every leaf on it fell off last year. I plan to keep it watered this year if it gets dry. It's even bigger this year. It's a lot slower growing than I realized.

I love the big pink flowers.

This is my variegated sedum. As you can see, parts of it aren't variegated. I have no idea why, but every year it grows like this. I also have another tiny one that volunteered to come on the other side of the tree where this one is planted in a spot that I had these sitting in a pot, a while before I finally planted them. I didn't get a shot of the little one.

 

Today was Zumba day. I had a Gala apple spread with peanut butter for my pre-Zumba snack. I was really craving peanut butter. I could have stuck my head in the jar and inhaled it. It smelled so good. I'm not sure why I wanted it so bad, but this was the perfect snack today. Some days, I just eat and eat and I'm never quite satisfied, but today wasn't one of those days, thankfully. BTW, I changed my camera settings, when I took pictures of the flowers, then I forgot to change the settings back, so the rest of the photos are sort of wierd. The peanut butter and apple, not so much, but the ones after that look awful.

When I got home from Zumba, I was ready for food. I really needed to eat the rest of my leftover black beans and Spicy Sweet Potatoes. I didn't have anymore pineapple and since I needed to hurry up and finish them off, so instead of using them in a salad, I just had them plain, on a plate. They were still very good, especially the potatoes.

I've done this post entirely with Scribefire. I still have to get use to it, but it was better than blogger I think. Unlike Windows Live Writer, it doesn't have smiley's, but that's not a necessity. It does have more font options than blogger. I put a border around this next photo. Do you think it looks better this way or without? 

The bad thing about Scribefire is the workspace limitations. It would be nice if you had the option to expand it to full screen. I do like being able to see the window behind it though, while working. I usually have my photo page up and can select photos to insert without switching from one page to another and back repeatedly. 

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