Feeling refreshed!

I will admit, I did not get any pictures this past weekend. However, the weekend was great and I am feeling very refreshed for a Monday! Yay!

First, I will start where I left off Friday. Once, home, the fiance and I got ready so that we could take the boys to the fall festivals. We hit the one in our neighborhood first. They had a few bounce arounds basically which the kids enjoyed. I guess I could have taken a picture of my hot dog since I had my camera. haha I am still not comfortable with people thinking I'm a weirdo taking pictures of my food. Hopefully, I'll get more comfortable with it. Anyhoo, I had a hot dog with chili and cheese at that festival.

Then, it was on to the next festival! The boys (all of them including the fiance!) had a blast! There was a rock climbing wall there - my youngest was really good at it! He just shot right up there; I think he looks like a monkey or something. They boys also did laser tag, some pitching thing that measured the speed of your pitch, basketball, a funhouse and several bounce arounds. They also had free corn dogs with 100 calories sodas and chips, snowcones and free ice cream. I had one corn with some mustard, half a bag of lays potato chips and a 100 cal coca-cola..

Adrian and Gio at the first fall fest:

Me and the boys:

Me and the fiance:

After we left the festival we decided to go home and watch a Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D. I had bought that for the boys as a little Halloween surprise. Of course, having 3 growing boys is dangerous because despite the fact that we at a little something at each festival, they all decided they were hungry! So we stopped at Wendy's and I grabbed a 5 piece chicken nuggets. Good thing we did some walking around!

Saturday, I got up and went to the Farmer's Market. I tried to talk the fiance into going and then we could pick up some breakfast tacos or something but instead he convinced me to go alone and then come back fro him and the kids and let them choose what they wanted for breakfast. He knows I am a sucker for giving the kids choices. So off to the farmer's market I was. I didn't get a whole lot, but I still managed to spend $17! I honestly don't feel like I got bang for my buck this time though. I got:


local honey
a poblano pepper
jalapeno peppers
1 onion
4 ears of corn
2 potatoes
2 apples
1 cucumber
1 zuch
1 yellow squash
1 small eggplant


I think that was it!


The boys decided they wanted IHOP for breakfast. My kids love breakfast. They would eat eggs, pancakes, bacon and hashbrown morning noon and night if I let them. At IHOP they had pumpkin pancakes and they were delicious! I got the BIG breakfast with two eggs, hasbrowns, two slices bacon and two pancakes. To my amazement, I ate almost all of it. I usually can't finish two pancakes for some reason. The doughy breadiness is too much for me I guess. I ate about half the pankcakes, but all the rest. Afterward, we took the kiddos over to Game Stop to spend their gift cards their grandmother gave them for Halloween. We went home and let them play while the fiance and I took a nice little nap. The funniest thing is that the day before, the fiance was playing with our male dog and he accidentally ripped into our down comforter! We forgot to fix it so as we tossed and turned feathers would float around. It was doing a number on my nose though!

After our nap, we did some lounging. The boys played outside, the fiance did some online gaming and I used the peace and quiet to read! We had dinner at a new burger place that we were NOT impressed with. It was worth a try though.


Sunday we enjoyed being lazy. I can't remember what we ate to be honest. haha


Monday morning I woke up and went to work out and it felt great. I did a little stat bike and about 20 mins of weights. I forgot how good it feels to do weights!

Feeling Snacky

I am blaming today on PMS. I know it doesn't excuse, but had a horrible lunch and now I am feeling snacky! So, I ate the rest of my Pear Apple Strudel CLIF bar from yesterday. It seems a little too sweet for me. I think that is what it is with the fruity type bars.

My co-worker is finally gone. hehe My boss is gone too and it is so hard to stay here at work and act like I'm working. Oh well, Only another hour and a half to go - I'm leaving a little before 5 pm which is fine with my boss anyway. Hope everyone is having a Happy Halloween!

Breaking bad habits are so hard

Breakfast

My co-worker was in the office this morning so I had to be a little sneaky about taking a picture of my breakfast. haha He drinks coffee ALL DAY LONG so I knew it would be a matter of time before he had to make a trip to the bathroom. Breakfast today was pumpkin yogurt again. this time I added 8 organic chocolate chips, drizzle of maple syrup, sliced almonds and pumpkin butter. Yum yum! I caught a little blur trying to hurry. Chamomile green tea with stevia and lemon next to it.




This morning my co-worker asks, "What's for breakfast?" and I replied, "Pumpkin yogurt!" and he said, "WHAT?!?!" haha What is funnier is that was the same response from our boss when he saw me preparing it yesterday. I assured him he'd want no part and he asked how I'd guess that. I told him because neither do my fiance or either son. I already know the reactions I am going to get for certain food! Although the fiance saw a recipe for pumpkin muffins I had saved and asked why I hadn't made them. That made me wonder....

Lunch

I didn't picture lunch because no doubt my co-worker would have laughed at me if I was taking pictures of my food. hahaha I laugh at myself, so he definitely would have! I went to Wal-Mart to get some Halloween treats and went ahead and bought my kids Journey to the Center of the Earth. They will be so excited! As I was heading out, I could not resist the smell coming from McDonald's (bad Becky). I ended up grabbing a double cheeseburger and small fry with an A& W Rootbeer once I got back to work. When will I ever learn?! Breaking bad habits are so much harder than making good ones!

I am excited about tonight! the kids have opted not to trick or treat this year and we are hitting up the fall festivals around our area. I love fall festivals! I love festivals period! One of them is at a church and the fiance wanted to know if it was all "churchy". I asked him hadn't he ever been to a Church festival and he said no! What? I assured him it was pretty much a normal fest but the proceeds go to the church - no one would be making him pray or preeching to him. We are not without religion, but we are not practicing Catholics so to say. However, I do like the ambiance and I like going to church festivals because it is for a good cause. So, anyway, stoked about that! Also, my mom gave the boys gift cards to Game Stop for Halloween so we're going to take them this weekend, probably tomorrow, to go spend them. Other than that - I really don't think we have much planned! Yay! I'm excited to be able to be a bum if I want. haha

Can't seem to catch up

Don't you hate it when work is so busy it doesn't allow internet time? hehe

Here is yesterday's breakfast. It is kind of boring I know, but it was good. I decided to try pumpkin yogurt. I just mixed my yogurt container with 1/2 cup pumpkin, some pumpkin pie spice, more cinnamon and a little stevia. Not sure if this is Kath's recipe or not, I just tried to do it from memory. I added some almonds for a little fun.

I had that a little late so I wasn't really that hungry for lunch. As usual, my eyes were bigger my appetite when I go to HEB. I had planned on just getting soup, but for some reason all the various chicken salads and pasta salads looked so yummy! So I got a spoonful of a few of them. The mustar potato salad was not that good. I also got about 4 oz. of baked potato soup. It's not the most healthful soup, but its was I was craving. I really only ate about 1/2 - 2/3 of the salad and saved the boiled egg for later.

For snack, I ate the boiled egg and about half of this bar. It was pretty good.

Then, I ended up getting dinner started a little late. I made stuffed golden acorn squash for me and a stuffed bell pepper for the fiance. The kids had the meat/rice mixture on the side of a baked potato.

My plate:

The fiance's - it was a little messy because the bell pepper didn't sit upright:

I didn't picture the kids because they gobbled it up. haha

The rest of the night was a little bit of tv and some reading. I rather enjoy those nights though. I think it is a good way to end the day, you know?

A day late...

I didn't have a chance to get on the computer last night so I couldn't post yesterday's lunch and dinner.

Lunch

I had leftovers for lunch. It was the rest of the spaghetti squash with half the leftover meat sauce with some parmesan cheese.

Yesterday was the last day of physical inventory in the building where my department works. We are the only ones that have nothing to do with what they do. haha We are quality and they are all distribution, but it is helpful because we do sort of work hand in hand. Anyway, they've been catering food for breakfast and lunch for it and yesterday was fried catfish. OMG, it smelled delicious! Then, I got the call that there was a lot leftover - I could not resist! I got a little even though they encouraged me to get more. I had to explain I had actually already eaten. Here's my little plate. The piece of catfish was actually smaller than it looks I think. This was on one of those really small styrofoam plates.

Dinner

Tonight was shuffleboard night so we had "fend for yourself" night. The boys opted for mac and cheese so I made some enchiladas out of leftover chili. I could not decide if I wanted queso cotija or colby cheese, so I sprinkled both and make it very tasty! I also made some kale chips on the side. Amazingly I made 3 enchiladas and ate them ALL! Probably should have only had 2...

As I waiting for the fiance to get home from shuffleboard, I decided to make some homemade vanilla cupcakes:

I'm not sure why the picture came out so dark. I was going to make a lemon icing to go on top, but I decided they tasted delicious just like that!

Hooray for Pumpkin!

Sorry in advance, these are taken with my phone.

This morning before going to gym I was hungry so I toasted a slice of fiberwise bread (I think that's what it is called) spread with some pumpkin butter. Mmm-mmm! I ended up leaving later than intended talking to the fiance, so I only did 45 mins of elliptical today. I had intended on adding 15 mins of weights to it, but I had to stop at the store. I stopped at Randall's after the gym to pick up a few things and got a nice hot cup of pumpkin spice coffee from the Starbucks inside the store. I forgot to get it skinny though! Wah!

Once I got to work, breakfast was made up of Oikos honey greek yogurt, pumpkin butter, 2 tbsp. omega-3 trail mix from WF and a little broken up granola plank.

Here's the yogurt. This is one of my only choices for greek yogurt around here and the best one that I like. I have found Fage, but #1 it is expensive and #2 its usually when I already have yogurt so I don't want to buy more and risk any of it going bad.

I put my pumpkin butter in this little container from....Chinese takeout! Who knew? The place we order from used these very sturdy bowls for their soups - ingenious! I hate it when a place delivers soup in a styrofoam cup with foil all over it and soup spilling out of it anyway!

Lastly, here is my finished product:

I had chamomile green tea and an orange with this, but I was too full to eat the orange. Usually I put some kind of fruit in my yogurt, but we're all out of bananas and apples and a peach just didn't appeal this morning. I thought about picking up some raspberries or blueberries while at the store but they are all from CA right now, so I thought better of it. I'm sure I'll cave eventually, but I was being locally conscious this morning. hehe

I will tell you what - that pumpkin butter is a great companion to yogurt! I really enjoyed it. It made it even sweeter than the honey. I think that can be a regular addition until the jar is gone.

Pleasant surprises

Snack

Today was a day for experimenting and the experiments going pleasantly well. First, I found a snack size cup of Sabra Roasted Red Pepper hummus with pretzel chips. I was a little hesitant to try this because I am not the biggest fan of chickpeas. However, I really liked it! It tasted sort of like bean dip!

There was actually a lot of hummus for the portion of pretzels. At least I thought so. Luckily, the two cups fit together tightly so I could save it. I have some snap peas that I might take tomorrow. Exciting! I wanted something I could eat with some veggies!

Dinner

The second experiment was spaghetti squash! I considered it a success since everyone ate it, including the kids. Of course, I did bribe them with ice cream. hehe

The fiance and I decided to have a beer before dinner as I was cooking and he relaxed playing a video game. Here was my Jack's Pumpkin Spice Ale:

Here is the "spaghetti" in a casserole bowl. I personally thought the spaghetti squash was really good and a delicious change from pasta. I could have stopped eating about 2/3 of the way through my bowl, but it was so good I managed to finish it. Here is my bowl with spaghetti squash, meat sauce and shredded parmesan cheese with bread "crackers" as Kath says:

I didn't drink the beer with my dinner, btw. It just happened to be next to it. I threw the rest out and drank a La Croix lime sparkling water with dinner.

Spaghetti Squash "Spaghetti"

1 spaghetti squash

1 lb. ground beef

1 jar prepared pasta sauce

1 can roasted diced tomatoes

1. Cook the spaghetti squash in the oven. I think I cut mine the wrong way. I cut it length wise but the spaghetti was short and not long like I've seen in other pictures and demonstrations. It was still good. I put it cut side down in a baking pan with about 1/2 inch water. I baked at 400* for 30 minutes, then dumped the water turned over the two halves andbaked for another 15 minutes. It seemed to work out well. Let it cool and then use a fork to scrape the spaghetti strings out of the squash.

2. Season ground beef to taste, cook and drain. Return to pan and add pasta sauce and simmer adding fresh or dried herbs. I used fresh basil and oregano. Add the can of diced tomatoes.

3. Once everything is ready, portion some "spaghetti" in a bowl and a couple of spoonfuls of the meat/tomato sauce. Top with parmesan cheese.

Simple as 1-2-3!