Wednesday is not Monday

What day is it? Well, somehow it turned out to be Wednesday and I’m just now sharing Monday with you.  Also somehow I have no breakfast photos for you.  And by somehow I mean because Michael fed me while I was still half asleep and my foggy brain didn’t even register consuming food let alone digging out a camera.

It’s OK though because my lunch and dinner were far prettier than our leftover French Toast with jam anyway.

Bringing back the bigass salad!  I made a trek to Root Cellar, stocked up on gorgeous fresh veggies, raided my cupboard for some black beans, and splurged on a store bought salad dressing for something fun.

In the big silver bowl: red leaf lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, red pepper (all LOCAL!!), black beans, Citrus Honey Poppy Seed dressing, and a handful of Tostitos Multigrain Scoops.

Found on sale:  Rainier cherries.  BC for the win.

Michael bought six bags of homemade kale chips from a co-worker and sent me home with one.  I now understand why so many bloggers make these…interesting, delicious in a out of the box kind of way, and super duper healthy.

For dinners this week I really wanted to focus on extra veggies, reasonable portions, lean proteins, and meals that would make leftovers.

…funky mushroom :)

When I found boneless, skinless chicken on sale a stir-fry plan was born.

I whipped up a batch of my favourite homemade go-to stir-fry sauce and added it to a pan of sautéed chicken, zucchini, mushrooms, and onions with garlic and ginger.

Sprinkled with pan-toasted sesame seeds and served over brown rice.

After dinner I settled in to watch terrible reality TV (I see having cable is certainly going to help rot my brain…I love it) and eventually made my way to the freezer for a blue Creamsicle.

If I’m going to be watching inane things like Bachelor–freaking–Pad I’d better start finding healthier dessert alternatives.  I’m going to need all of the brain food I can get.

Mama Likes a Good Deal

What’s better than a Wednesday morning walk with the pupper to get coffee?  Well, getting that coffee for free of course.  I’d been totally carrying that freebie coupon around in my wallet for months…why?  Who knows.  So I cashed it in.  Sadly I forgot to order my Venti Non-Fat Cinnamon Dolce Latte half sweet, but it was still freeeeee and delish.

Squirrelly Bread is back in the house.  Why do I ever buy anything else?  Oh ya, sales.  I’m frugal like that.

Hard to believe a statement like that when the next photo is a $4 bowl of cherries, but a girl picks her battles you know.  Cherries always win.

Besides you can easily see my el cheapo tendencies in my lunch o’ leftovers.  I’d already eaten all of the veggies out of the turkey mixture from the other night so I reheated what was left of the meat and piled it atop a fresh salad.

Red leaf lettuce, zucchini, tomatoes, carrots, EVOO, s&p, and a sprinkle of old white cheddar just for fun.

I figured out how to stomach straight up cranberry juice.  1 part juice to like 5 parts water with a squirt of lemon or lime.  Palatable now.

After work I met up with the other Jamie for a coffee and a few quick errands.  The highlight of my free morning coffee was this ‘treat receipt’ coupon for a reduced priced iced coffee. 

Back at home I whipped up a quickie Beef & Broccoli stir-fry. My attempt at creating my own marinade turned out a little bland…weird considering I used hoisin, soy, fresh garlic, fresh ginger and a few other fun things…but such is life.

A chocolate after dinner treat took the edge of my boring dinner.  :)

Here’s hoping that leftover stir-fry is more exciting on day two!

Simple Measures

A little something pink to brighten the day…

So today I decided to take charge of my eating habits…well I decided to at least take a step in the right direction…portion control.  One major component of my losing and maintaining weight was being diligent about measuring my portions….which I completely stopped doing at some point.

Big shocker…I’ve been using twice as much milk & sugar in my coffee these days. 

This is one cup of strawberries and half a cup of cereal to mix with my yogurt.

For months now I’d say I’ve been doubling the cereal and halving the fruit.  Tsk tsk.

For lunchtime I made a bigass salad…but today I actually measured my “sploosh” of olive oil.  Trust me it’s not two teaspoons when you just splash it on out of the bottle.

I even measured my sunflower seeds and the Bacon Jam I put on a toasted English muffin half with half a wedge of light Laughing Cow.  That was deeeeeeelish by the way.  Especially with some egg yolk!

In keeping with the theme of keeping things under control I opted to skip a trip out for afternoon coffee and made tea instead.  I’ve been struggling with getting enough water for weeks now, and as some lovely Twitter supporters reminded me…herbal tea is a good way to sneak in the hydration.

Come dinner time I noted all I had written on my meal plan was “stir-fry”.  Nothing like leaving myself a vague note!

My friend Lisa gave me a Peanut Sauce recipe a while ago so I decided tonight would be a good night to test it out.

Mix together:  3 tbsp Hoisin sauce, 2 tbsp natural peanut butter, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp grated ginger, 1 tbsp lemon juice and 1 clove grated garlic.  Cilantro would be nice too, but I’m out.

My peanut butter was a bit stiff so I heated everything over very low heat to get it to combine. 

For my stir-fry I made sure to measure the cooking oil, the rice noodles (by weight) and the veggies…carrots in particular actually go up in calories, etc when they are cooked.

In addition to carrots my stir fry included red pepper, red onions, and spinach wilted in near the end of cooking.

I used 1.5 tbsp of the sauce, thinned with water to coat all of the veggies and noodles.  Topped everything with shrimp sautéed with garlic & red pepper flakes.

Quite delicious!!

While everyone else was watching the first game of the NHL Playoffs (Go Canucks!!!) my lack of cable and procrastination of work on my contract job left me home sulking at my computer.  Oddly, while I don’t get a local hockey game I do  get FOX so I was able to listen to American Idol while I worked.

I picked James from the very beginning because I’m in love with the show actually having a rocker on board…but Scotty and Casey are pretty cool and individual too.

That apple made me hungrier than I was before I ate it!  Do you ever find that?  Fresh fruits and veggies (and water) trigger something in my tummy that makes me feel ravenous.  Super duper annoying!

But my goal for tonight is no toast before bed (I usually have some sort of carby snack right before bed that never gets blogged about….bad girl!) so I can’t let that damn apple get the best of me.  Bad apple!

Happily Random

Looking back at yesterday I realize my photos are a little boring and my food was quite random.  ooooops! :)  Pretty healthy for the most part though!

Looks like smoothie season is finally making a comeback!  It was quite fun to break out my favourite kitchen appliance…the fancy-ass Kitchen Aid blender.

In the KA: 1/2 banana, blueberries, baby spinach, Amazing Grass Orange Dreamsicle SuperFood, flax meal, UVAB.  Deeeelish!

Paired with what might be my favourite breakfast carb…English Muffin with Sunflower Butter.

Late morning snack: dried cherries.

Big late lunch in preparation for photography class night.  Random stirfry to use up leftover tofu.

I baked the cubed tofu with coconut oil and brown sugar…turned out pretty good.  The veggies were also sautéed with coconut oil, a pinch of brown sugar, and I added soy sauce near the end of cooking. 

Actually pretty tasty but I think I’ll have to work on other seasonings to go along with the coconut oil.  Would have loved to have added shredded coconut to the baking tofu if I’d had some on hand!  Still a good way to get a healthy oil in though. :)

For class I picked up a vanilla rooibos tea latte at Starbucks, along with an oatmeal raisin cookie…and my obligatory bottle of water.

In my camera bag I packed a sliced apple and cheddar cheese cubes.

Dinner was supposed to be a salad when I got home but after all of my snacks I really wasn’t terribly hungry.  Instead I just waited and had a bedtime snack of Kashi cereal with coconut milk.  Nom.

See…random!  Told ya so. :)