Treat of a Day

Creamy and robust!  Sounds like a good way to take your coffee don’t you think?!  I didn’t want to crack into a whole pound of fresh coffee, knowing I’m leaving town in less than two weeks (!!!) so I picked this little packet of Italian goodness up to get me through.

Knowing I had a coffee meeting this morning I opted to consider eating yogurt directly from the container to be breakfast. 

Obviously I was saving room for my REAL breakfast.  What?  There is absolutely nothing wrong with chocolate for breakfast.  Especially when it’s said with a French accent…pain au chocolat s’il vous plait.  I’m practicing for my European vacation.

Totally tortured Canadian French is perfectly acceptable in Greece, non?

Hey look.  Vegetables!  Vegetables totally erase chocolate breakfast pastries.  And full fat cafe au lait.  Totally.

ART update:  I actually have bruises on my lower back/glute where she “massaged” me on Tuesday.  Today she worked on my neck/shoulders/upper back and all I could think was “oh crap, I’m going to have bruises on my neck…not awesome”.  She says I should be OK, but someone please back me up when Michael asks where those bruises came from, OK?!

She sent me home with two awesome exercises to help open my hips, back and shoulders.  Out of all of the stretches the various physiotherapists, chiropractors, and massage therapists have given me over the past couple of years I can actually tell why these ones might help.  The hard part?  I’m supposed to do these every 15 (!!!) minutes. 

Yikes.

After work I headed to mall in search of a few more items for my vacation.  Note to self:  don’t wait until September to look for cute Summer dresses.  After trying on too many pairs of ill fitting shorts I picked up Opa! for dinner.

Greek salad and chicken souvlaki just seemed appropriate given the reason I was shopping.  :)

And since any day that starts with chocolate should also end with chocolate…and since I clearly have no concern for my bank account today…I deemed a trip to Cold Stone Creamery totally necessary.

I mean really…a girl that works all day, gets “beaten” by her chiropractor, and tries on half price bikinis in a change room with bad lighting obviously deserves a treat.

And obviously deserves to forget all about that treat she already had today.  Right?  Right.   I knew you would understand.

Active Release

Lookie here!  Dog walking coffee.  Something about this cute ceramic mug is so much more appealing that a regular travel mug.  Thanks Janna!

Waffle love.  One waffle, double almond butter, double raspberries.

My produce all survived the weekend!  Survival salad!

In the big silver bowl:  red leaf lettuce, radishes, cucumber, celery, green onion, tomatoes, Honey Poppyseed Dressing, dried cranberries, pecans, and mixed seeds.

The salad was lacking protein which gave me the excuse to eat yet another Larabar this afternoon.  Half before meeting my new chiropractor and half when I got home.  What I really should have done was allowed myself a gigantor chocolate chip cookie because after the torture she put me through I deserved a real treat!

Since massage and physio didn’t really fix me I have decided to give ART a go.  Also known as physical torture.  In just ten minutes I now know what a pounded piece of meat feels like.  My ice pack is my best friend.

Dinner was a total overcooked fail.  Those green beans really have seen better days and the extra steaming they took didn’t help.

I picked up this salmon pinwheel from the grocery store.  I opted for the spinach and artichoke version over the cream cheese and shrimp, but I didn’t enjoy this at all.  Boooo.  It doesn’t help that I dried it out by cooking it way too long.

Clearly my cooking mojo felt beaten up today.

For dessert I tried to make banana soft serve but it tasted off.  Like a freezer burnt banana.  Hmmm….I wonder why!  Sadface.

So I tossed it and broke into my emergency flattened banana and smeared a piece with almond butter.  Thank goodness Jessica brought me this Trader Joe’s loveliness on her last trip to Portland.

I don’t know what I would have done without it.  A girl who has endured torture and a bad dinner cannot go to bed without her dessert!

Back in Town

Sorry for being MIA all weekend kids!  What I thought was just an ordinary quiet weekend ended up being quite eventful!

Friday started out pretty normal.  Coffee and breakfast while starting work for the day…

 

Late morning I visited my chiropractor again for what can only be described as a torture session.  Now that we know it’s my piriformis muscle that is causing me so much pain he knows where to really hurt me.  Boooooohoooooooo!

A couple of hours later I met up with my new personal trainer (group bootcamp style training starts tomorrow…details to come) for my assessment appointment.  Sadly I’m not allowed to run so I couldn’t do the cardio portion to my best ability but I did OK at the sit-ups, push-ups, dips and step-ups.  I have a lot of work ahead of me!

Back at home, a bigass salad was on the lunch menu.  I wanted a big, healthy lunch to hold me over until Friday evening patio cocktail time.

In the big silver bowl:  romaine, baby spinach, cucumber, carrots, radishes and celery…with leftover white kidney beans for protein.

Dressed with the leftover All-Purpose Dressing and tossed with a bit of Wensleydale cheese at the last minute.

This bigass salad was on the verge of being too big!  But I managed to conquer the whole thing…eventually.

After work I sunscreened up and went to meet friends for a drink and a bite on the fabulous Canoe Brewpub patio.  I opted for the fun and fruity White Sangria (x2)…

And the Halibut Soft Tacos…

Just appetizer sized but actually quite filling.  Very fresh tasting and their cumin creme fraiche with squeezed lime is deeeelish.

Tiff and I…

Jill and Tiff.  Sexy girls.

View of the sunset from our table…not a horrible way to spend a Friday evening!

After we left Canoe things went a little crazy.  :)  We ended up at our favourite Friday night spot…Darcy’s Pub…Where someone started ordering shooters and it was all downhill from there.  haha.  FYI:  If you’ve never had a Bottlecap Shooter, do it!  Nom! 

There was cider…

And giggling, and dancing, and a good time had by all. 

Me and Nicole…

I did head home at a decent hour thanks to a ride from Jill.  As I sipped my pre-bed water I realized I was actually starving (silly tiny dinner!) so I dug into the cupboard and found some Late July cheese & crackers…

And ended up finishing the night with a small bowl of Kashi Honey Almond Flax mixed with vanilla soy milk…

So much for an early night in.  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

A Day Ago

Well yes...I did promise two posts yesterday but I'm sure you all survived when it didn't happen.  :)

So here's yesterday in a nutshell...

Coffee at my new desk...

Breakfast on my now functioning dining table...

Kashi Honey Almond Flax with vanilla soy milk, blueberries and banana.

Trip to chiropractor which confirmed that it indeed my lower back/hips that are causing my pain.  He referred to my pura forma muscle?  I tried Googling that and obviously I'm spelling it incorrectly because I can't find a thing!  Something to do with how it connects with my sciatic and everything kind of wraps together in my bum and affects nerves all up and down my leg.  Yippee.  Not.

So I'll go back to him tomorrow and keep working at it.  In the meantime he told me not to spend too much time sitting.  Ha!  Ya, that's doable when I work at a desk all day...and oh, sitting is the only time I'm not in agonizing pain. Fab.

Lunch was light as I was in a hurry...

Veggies, wheat crackers, and Sabra crack hummus.

Of course I was hungry not long after that tiny meal!  So Squirrelly toast with Supercrack and the cheese I'm not so sure about...

I had intended on getting some sort of activity.  I haven't been back to the gym since Monday, haven't kept up with Lynn's Seven Days of Yoga at all, and have barely even been outside since the weekend.  But somehow I got the bright idea to go shopping instead...and ended up coming home empty handed.  Oh well.

Well, not totally empty handed...I did get the world's tastiest ice cream bar from Purdy's.  I used to hate the roasted almonds when I was a kid, but now they are the whole reason I indulge once in a while!

By the time I finished shopping my pain was at like an 8 so I ate my dinner in the comfort of my desk chair and caught up on some blogs I haven't read in a bazillion years. 

Leftover Chicken and White Bean Salad...

Probably should have done some stretching but oh well...maybe today.  :)

Loving Lemon

It’s so warm and beautiful today!!  When I opened the door to step outside this morning I was shocked by the wall of warm air I walked into.  Amazing!  Of course, I’m sitting here working indoors but it’s still nice to know that good weather has arrived!!

Sipped coffee en route to the chiropractor this morning.  A good treatment seems to have helped with the ‘pain in my ass’.  Fingers crossed I don’t need any extra sessions!

Bad girl didn’t eat breakfast before heading out so it was kinda late when I did eat.  I kept it light so as to not throw my schedule too far off.  Stonyfield organic vanilla yogurt with sliced banana, blackberries and granola…

 

For lunch…leftover Lemon Noodles!

In a large skillet I simmered some water with a big squeeze of lemon and a dash of salt.  To this I added chopped farm fresh spinach for a quick pan-steam…then added the leftover noodles and kale buds to reheat. 

Added more lemon juice, some chopped tomatoes, cracked pepper and about 1 oz of crumbled light feta.  Toss and voila!  Creamy redone leftovers.

Dare I say this was better than last night’s dinner?  :)

I was near Sobey’s this morning so I caved and bought some Sabra hummus.  I’ve been dreaming about it for a couple of days and it did not disappoint.  There’s a reason I call it crack-hummus!

With farmer’s market carrots and In Snax herby pita crisps.  Nom!!!

 

Work is calling so off I go!  But I see a walk in the sun, some sort of Booty Camp workout, and a bigass salad in my future.  yay!

Happy Birthday Coco!

Errrrr…belated birthday!  hehe.  It was yesterday…but we celebrated with dinner tonight…so this counts!  Riiiiight???  :)

Before we get to that, let’s back track to morning.  It’s been a busy day and with that lengthy post for my Silver Hills Sprouted Bakery giveaway I didn’t have time to put up another mid-day post.  (I’m sure you don’t mind that I didn’t post 3 times in one day again…LOL.)  Go enter.  I promise it’s yummy bread!

So obviously I had to have some Steady Eddie for breakfast…since I’ve been coveting the Silver Hills loot for months now.  Today I made it into a fun treat with Dark Chocolate Dreams PB and sliced banana…

With fresh cantaloupe and red grapes.

And coffeeeeeee…of course.

There was a trip to the chiropractor in there somewhere too.  Let me just say that yoga is totally helping.  It’s been three weeks since I saw him, and even though I ended up missing my usual yoga this week I still had a better adjustment than normal.  Definitely on to something here! 

Definitely need to put that on the list of priorities for my return to Victoria!!  Gym and yoga classes.

For lunch I wanted to keep it light but still filling.  I knew I had another big dinner tonight but didn’t want to be starving when I arrived.  So I used up the stirfry leftovers from the other night on top of baby spinach…and added 1 oz of shredded old cheddar.

Stirfry Salad?

Odd but quite tasty!  And filling and fiberific.

Dinner wasn’t to be until 7:30 or later, so around 4:30 I made a snack of strawberries, the remainder of yesterday’s 2% yogurt cup and some granola…

This evening’s dinner was to celebrate my friend Cosette’s birthday.  She shares her birthday with her 7 year old daughter so we wanted to make sure she got a dinner of her own!  Funny enough, she uninvited her hubby and any boys…LOL…so it was just three of us gals!

We hit up the new location of OPA! at Dartmouth Crossing.  (There are now three OPA! in Halifax area.)  Nice bright room with lots of windows and beautiful furniture.  Very substantial chairs.  haha.

Started with wine…Lindeman’s Bin 50 Shiraz…

x 2 over the evening.

We all blathered on and on but eventually ordered a couple of mezza plates to tide us through until we decided on our mains.  Tzatziki Dip and Kalamata Dip…both with the super yummiest grilled pitas ever.  Seriously.  I love their pita.

Honestly I could just order from their mezza plate menu all night.  I could give a hoot about a main meal and just order little plate after little plate.  However, that is neither cost effective nor figure friendly if everyone else orders their own meal, so I decided to just keep it simple and go for the Chicken Souvlaki.

 

With wicked awesome lemon potatoes and Greek salad…

The nice part about ordering a large meal was that I have leftovers!!  :)

Sarah ordered the Scallop Souvlaki which sounded intriguing and she said was really good.

Typical of us girlies, we kept chatting and chatting and before we knew it we’d closed the place down.  Of course, that’s not hard to do when they close at 10pm, but still!!!

Coco, me, Sarah.  (ugh, lame picture quality!!)

Definitely need to squeak in some cardio to burn off all that pita and potato tomorrow.  Someone please lend me a machine that warps the space/time continuum because I don’t know how I’m supposed to accomplish everything I need to accomplish.

Yoikes!!  Ever feel like you need an assistant to handle your personal life?