Today was Chase and I’s 5 year anniversary and yes it was about a year ago that we took the 1.5 months off from each other as well. Since then, for me, our relationship has grown stronger and happier. I know I’m with him because he truly makes me happy.
He can make me smile even after a hard day of crying. (The night of my great aunt Aki’s memorial service.)
Today was such a big day and somehow I managed to fit everything in! Yeah I’m pretty proud. First off, it was Chase’s 24th birthday so I decided to be his driver for the day. Which meant I needed to get up at 7am to fit in my workout before getting him to work.
And, somehow, maybe since the kittens woke me a minute before my alarm, I got out of bed at 7am and hit the gym! I ended up doing a treadmill interval workout minus 5 minutes. I really needed to use the restroom so I had to cut it short…
Once showered, I ate overnight oats in a jar! Mixed in was half a banana, a scoop of sunflower seed butter (yay it’s back!), and golden raisins. Like my new jars? I have big plans for them.
I had one of those days on Wednesday where if I’d written a blog post it would just have been mean and hurtful. It was not a good day, so instead I did the responsible thing and did not write at all. For two days. Because that is how long it took for me to cool off and be able to write with a level head and a duller tongue.
Wednesday started off with us saying goodbye to Chase’s family and grabbing a really late breakfast at Starbucks. I, oddly enough, felt savory so I grabbed a spinach & feta egg white breakfast wrap along with a Grande black iced tea with one Sweet N Low. It was delicious and exactly what I’d been craving.
I expect a lot of my posts right now are going to end up a day late at least. Things just get so busy on vacation! I do want to keep blogging about it though since I finally have more to share and not the same food over and over again. 
Yesterday’s breakfast was a slice of Great Harvest Missoula’s new Powerhouse bread. It was whole wheat with nuts and dried fruit baked in and pretty freaking delicious. I toasted it and slathered some Earth Balance Crunchy PB and strawberry jam on top. And of course had a big mug of skim milk to wash it down.
How come packing takes so much energy? It am seriously spent and it is only almost 9pm. I’ve been up for barely 12 hours and yet I’m considering turning in early because I cannot keep my eyes open!
Breakfast was pretty late today, around 10am. Chase and I drove over to my dad’s house to meet him for a Costco trip, but before we left I had to eat! I quickly made a bowl of cereal with Kashi Golean Crunch, Nature’s Path PB Granola, ground flax, and half a banana. It surprisingly didn’t fill me up!
So my dad split a piece of Great Harvest Dakota toast with chunky peanut butter and strawberry jam. Yep, the nut is what I was missing! Satisfied, we went to Costco and stocked up on all the essential non-perishable items Chase an I will need at our new place in Kirkland, WA.
After more packing and errand running, I was ready to eat again!
Lunch was a salad of mixed spring greens, roasted vegetables, 1/2 a Quorn Cutlet, and some Caesar dressing. Plus some delicious sweet potato fries on the side. <3 Have I mentioned that Caesar dressing is my all time favorite creamy dressing. No ranch for me!
My lunch must not have been big enough because about an hour later I needed more food. I decided on a small bowl of Kashi with the very last of my skim milk. Then I went back to more packing.
At 4pm, I had the craving for something salty. Yeah I pretty much just wanted to eat everything today! I found this small bag of Kettle potato chips I’d saved awhile back and devoured them.
My packing eventually stopped due to running out of packing tape! >.< I got extremely bored and didn’t know what to do with myself. My amazing boyfriend, Chase, texted me the perfect idea for what I should do:
Get in my workout!
You know how sometimes you just need that extra little support to get your butt moving? That’s what I’ve been feeling like lately.
60 minutes of stationary biking later and I felt 100x better! Well..and hungry.
For dinner I was still drooling over my new found love of Caesar dressing so I opted to make a simple salad with it and a salmon burger patty plus rice on the side. The taste bud-show stealer of this meal was surprisingly the simple white rice with soy sauce! Seriously, I need to eat more rice.
A few hours later I was feeling bored again and ended up munching on dessert. >.< A baggie of trail mix and a mug of hot cocoa.
Today I was just hungry.
Anyway I don’t care that it’s not even 9pm! I am going to brush my teeth and crawl into bed. If slumber happens I’m just going to let it!
Here’s to one last work week in Montana!
I drank way too much last night. -_- I got home around 1am and decided there was no way I could write up this post. Why was I drinking? Because last night was “Ashton’s boyfriends Birthday/Ashton’s Birthday/Their Welcome Back/My Going Away Party”! Still, I should have showed more moderation but since I knew this is the last time for a long time that I’d be out with friends, I gave into the moment.
But anyway, let’s start at the beginning of the day.
I woke up bright and early not to workout but to eat an amazing smoothie in a bowl (my last Yoplait baggie) with some Nature’s Path Peanut Butter Granola sprinkled on top. I am a little sad this was my last one because I was honestly loving these!
Telling myself I can workout later, I went off to work.
At work my stomach was a little all over the place. =( It did not feel good. I chugged water to help (and help my headache go away) but eventually (because my stomach was growling) I made a cup of coffee. This was the wrong thing for my tummy of course!
At 12:30pm I grabbed Chase at Hastings and we went for a really quick lunch since he only had 30 minutes! Well what’s that quick besides fast food grossness? Burritos! I enjoyed (for the last time) a small fish burrito at Taco Del Sol! I love these. The cabbage and white sauce are what makes it for me. I also love that they don’t fill this with rice. I don’t see the point of eating a simple carb within a simple carb.
For the rest of the afternoon I got pretty melancholy about life. I’m about to start a new chapter in mine and I’m both excited and scared to see it happen. I moped around the house while I continued to pack.
Around 3pm I got a little snacky and grabbed a baggie of trail mix. After eating it and not having anything to do (ran out of packing boxes), I considered going to sleep. I realized then and there that I was being stupid! So I put my workout clothes on and jumped on my bike for a solid 60 minutes! It felt soo good to just sweat my worries and sadness away.
When it was time to stretch guess who was using my foam roller? You know so she could plant her face closer to the heater…What a baby. It wasn’t that cold even!
Around 5:30pm I was soo starving for dinner! Since I had big drinking plans tonight I knew I wanted to keep it light, nutritious, and yet filling. I made a salad of Italian lettuce, broccoli, strawberries, and an oil dressing. For the filling part I toasted a piece of Great Harvest Dakota bread. I couldn’t decided on the topping so I cut it in fourths and made each one different! 1) Jiff Chunky with strawberry jelly 2) Jiff Chunky with homemade pumpkin butter 3) Jiff Chunky with TJ’s Lemon Curd and 4) Banana Peanut Butter with strawberry jelly.
My favorite was actually the pumpkin butter!
Our party was at a bowling alley I was pretty sure didn’t serve wine. So this wino decided to bring her own cleverly concealed in her water bottle! It’s a little less than half full and it saved me money to boot! If only I’d just stuck with what I brought. >.<
Note: drinking wine from a straw makes you drink it a heck of a lot faster than when you can sip it from a glass. I got way drunk way too fast.
Drunk-me ordered not very good nachos and (turns out they do have wine!) a mini bottle of merlot. I didn’t eat too many of the nachos, in fact I totally could have not had any they were so bad, but by the end I was trying to sober up fast so nachos were consumed. Sorry these went unpictured but the lighting was terrible in there.
So how did the actual bowling go? I got over 60 on both games!!! I am a terrible bowler so I am really proud of that. ^_^ (Since I was all gamer nostalgic yesterday, we all used our gamer names. Mine is “Minthe”!)
Anyway there will be a real post tonight and I am taking a not drinking vow for at least the weekend. =P
Ahh I am gong to enjoy this whole no school thing. I woke up on my own around 8am this morning and stayed in bed to read a little bit. It was wonderful.
And then, as usual, my tummy made me get up and get some breakfast together. It was very indecisive today. I started making some oatmeal only to stop and dump two Fage 0% Blueberry Acai yogurts into a bowl, topped with 1/2 cup Kashi Golean Crunch, caramel peanut butter, ground flax, and dried cherries. Yum yum. I definitely need to get me some good ol’ plain yogurt though. I felt so wasteful using the little cups.
After hours of studying and getting final papers done, I went to Hastings to meet up with Chase for lunch. I had leftover jambalya rice with half a tofurky sausage, Fage 0% Strawberry Goji (swapped Chase with his flavor since he really wanted my Cherry Pomegranate!), Pumpkin Spice Flax Crunchy Granola Bar, and the very last pear. It was all delicious and light.
After a few more hours of studying there, I went over to my mother’s and picked up some free food! She very nicely had a bunch of raw veggies, eggs, and peanut butter filled pretzels to give to me! Very lucky girl.
When I got home I snacked on some peanut butter filled pretzels while I portioned out the rest into little baggies.
When dinner time came around, I knew I wanted to use these beauties! Farm fresh eggs from one of my mom’s patients! Aren’t they pretty?
I ended up frying two eggs with a side of Orange Cranberry toast, and a plethora of roasted beets. It was pretty tasty but I need to work on my egg frying. They weren’t runny like I wanted. =(
Then I was headed over to Chase’s for the night and while he wrapped xmas presents, I studied even more and munched on the rest of my TJ’s sweetened and dried green mango. I loved these!
Studying always makes me hungry and I ended up eating my other snack I brought as well. A battered Granny Smith! Couldn’t eat a 1/4th of it due to it being brown. Boo!
Sorry that I will probably be pretty boring both activity-wise and food-wise for the next few days. I’m pretty worried about my Cellular and Molecular Biology grade! Hope you all have a great weekend for me!
This morning I bounced right out of bed at 8am, ready for the day!
I started with a hearty breakfast of Nature’s Path Optimum Slim and PB Granola topped with ground flax, banana, dried cherries, and a sprinkle of peanuts. It was super yummy and held me over very well.
After eating and ready for a few hours however, my systems seemed to crash and I crawled back into bed in a drowsy tired state. No clue what brought this on. Ever since being stung by that dying yellow jacket I have had allergy symptoms that I usually only get in the in summer. This is what that felt like today.
I ended up sleeping for another 2 hours before I was able to pull my mind from it’s comatose state and force myself to shower to wake myself up.
I couldn’t figure out what I should have lunch so I started with what I knew I wanted. Slice of Cranberry Orange bread, smear of caramel peanut butter, and a glass of ice cold skim milk.
About an hour later I was feeling like shit and decided some more “real” food may help. I had half a can of Wolfgang Puck’s Tomato soup with Basil with some rice mixed in. Great thing about my dad’s house: there is always rice made. It was tasty and gave me enough energy to at least attempt to study some biology.
While I studied about RNA’s translation into protein though, my headache that had been slightly there since waking appeared at full force. I tried to silence it with my advent calendar chocolate from yesterday.
Listening to my body, I grabbed a baggie full of protein: Treasure Trove Trail Mix and munched on it while I read. This did the trick and my headache and weak feeling went away and hasn’t been seen since! Yay protein!
I was hoping to buy a tree and decorate it today and while I did succeed on the buying part, the tree is hanging out outside. Chase and I cannot find the tree stand anywhere!
So instead of dressing the tree we dressed the kittens! Vincent is dressed in his brand new holiday sweater and he actually really likes it! Honestly, I think he was jealous last year when Ophie got one.
Ophelia is a bit shyer than her brother, but still looks adorable in her holiday colors! I promise to get a photo of them being so damn cute together before the season is up!
Chase and I had plans to go see Friends With Benefits at the UC this evening but to save money we ended up just renting it instead! It was pretty cute and I laughed a lot.
To go along with our movie viewing we got pizza from Zimarino’s tonight! To get their cheap deal, I got just a plain pizza with roasted red peppers. It was super good! I loved their red sauce (which is rare for me) and actually enjoyed the crust! Normally I’m a thin crust person but this one was nice and doughy but not too doughy. Yes I know I’m picky! I ended up eating three slices with some leftover veggies. A bit too much, but it was so good.
And because I was really wanting some wine I had a little glass of this malbec I ninjaed from my dad. <3 wine
Well, hopefully there will be some beautiful and festive pictures of my tree tomorrow! I’ve been doing some research on traditional holiday foods since I’m trying to come up with a tradition of my own and so far all I’ve decided on is that there will be hot spiced wine!
Here’s to better eating tomorrow!
Well TGIF everyone! I for one had a great Friday and am very excited for the weekend. My plans are filled with holiday cheer! I’m getting a tree, decorating the house, wrapping and buying gifts, and perhaps tracking down my favorite holiday music that I have been refraining from the past month.
This morning it was a little hard for me to get out of bed even though I had gotten plenty of sleep since I’d gone to bed before 10pm last night! I just didn’t want to leave the warmth and comfort of my sheets! But leave them I did since I had a plan to stick to.
I got to the pool and did a solid one hour lap swim and really worked on giving my legs a workout. They are falling so behind due to my toe. =( On another note, I am having some serious problems with keeping my new short haircut in my swim cap! Ack! It’s too short to put in a pony tail so it keeps falling and sticking right out into the chlorine water! Tips?
At first I thought I wasn’t hungry for breakfast, but as soon as I started drying off and getting dressed my stomach changed it’s mind. I dinned on my premade oatmeal (base of oats, ground flax, and nutmeg) topped with lemon curd and trail mix. It held me over well until 1pm.
For lunch I splurged and got a Ruby T sandwich at my favorite Good Food Store. This sandwich is to die for. Marinated and baked smoky tempeh, Swiss cheese and tangy sauerkraut grilled on deli rye with their “not-so-secret” sauce. I ate half with the bag of chips and just had to keep reminding myself that sauerkraut counts as a vegetable. I really hate how the GFS doesn’t allow healthier sides with their sandwiches. I’d have much rather had a pickle/apple/carrots.
While running errands today I came across an advent calendar at Target. I used to love these calendars growing up because how exciting is counting down the days to one of the biggest gift-giving holidays of the year with a piece of chocolate!? I’ve been snubbing them since childhood due to the low quality chocolate they have inside. I’d love to find a high quality one which would really make the splurge worth it.
I decided to give in and give the cheap ones another go since I think it’ll help me with my junk food problem right now. I get this one square of chocolate at the end of everyday so why do I need to find other junk throughout the day? That’s my logic.
I munched on the one for December 1st since I was a day behind. ~.^ Yeah pretty much the same low quality chocolate. One of these days…
Oddly enough only about an hour after my big lunch my stomach was growling for more! I felt betrayed by the tempeh and bread! That should have held me over! 
So I reached for the one thing I knew really gets the job done on satiety and satisfaction: banana and PB!
It also gave me a chance to show off the new peanut butter I’ve been trying. Valencia Peanut Butter with Roasted Flaxseed I snagged at Trader Joe’s when I visited Whitney (my sister) in San Diego! To be honest, it’s not my favorite. The only crunch to it is the flaxseeds and they have a different texture than a crunchy peanut (duh!).
For dinner I had the other half my Ruby T with a side of cut up dill pickles! Yum yum! So much better than gross fried potato chips. I had planned on having a cup of soup with this to round out the meal more, but once I heated the soup up and it tasted really off I knew it had been sitting in the fridge for way too long.
Clearly my “meal” didn’t really fill me up and never left me feeling satisfied. So I added dessert to it! Mug of skim milk and a slice of Great Harvest Bread’s Orange Cranberry bread slathered with some caramel PB. Mmmmm! The fruit in the bread makes adding jam obsolete.
Satisfied, I laid in bed for awhile reading and then I realized exactly what my tight and sore body needed: a bath! Now we don’t have any working baths at my dad’s house but my mom’s new house is really nice. So off I went to have a nice soak while I read! Note to self: have a bath in your next apartment.
With my teeth all brushed I just realized I never ate my advent chocolate for today! >.< Oh well more for tomorrow.
P.s. Here is the new brown-eyed and glasses-wearing me!
Ophie and I had a big day today.
Mine started with a one hour lap swim. It felt really good to be in pool and plowing through the water, but for my healing broken toes sake I am considering swimming every other day. Even with the tape on it’s definitely the roughest thing the toe goes through all day.
Ophie’s day started with some snuggling up to the heater since it started snowing again outside and she remained that way all day. Her life is hard.
After my workout I had a delicious breakfast of oatmeal with banana and Treasure Trove Trail mix! I love letting the chocolate and peanut butter chips melt into it and the dried fruit gets a little gooey.
I went home for lunch after my haircut and made this yumminess that was exactly what I was craving. Broiled tortilla with string cheese topped with marinara and sautéed spinach. Super delicious but not very filling…
So this small hunk of Dakota bread slathered with peanut butter and jelly was also consumed.
Plus this baggie of more trail mix. I know I have a one portion per day rule, and I instantly regretted eating this.
My dinner turned out not as amazing as I had hoped for. I made whole wheat spaghetti pasta and tossed it with sautéed Brussels sprouts, spinach, and snap peas. Then I drizzled some olive oil on top with some garlic powder, salt, and pepper. The flavor just really wasn’t there. =/ So I enjoyed a glass of my favorite wine with it. <3
For dessert I had a hankering for dairy. The vanilla ice cream is the only dairy we have left in the house (besides string cheese..) so it was the only option! I topped it with dried cherries, sliced almonds, and….cherry balsamic vinegar! It gave the ice cream a nice zing to it!
A few hours later I also ate an unpictured banana and peanut butter =/. I’m not 100% sure I really needed it or if it was just a craving.
Now I am all ready for bed so I leave you with a better shot of my new haircut and the last picture ever of my blue eyes. I have been blue eyed since 7th grade and I am really going to miss them! But being able to see without correction is worth it, so tomorrow I don my glasses for a month to give my eyes a rest before the big surgery day.
Ophie is also ready for bed. Today was a big day.
