Time fly by this morning as I prepped to leave town. It is THE MOST gorgeous day outside!! Cool and breezy yet still summertime warm. I wanted to take my workout outside but was a little too sore for running in the hamstrings. I ended up biking to the Y, doing 15 minutes on the elliptical, and then heading back outside for some walking laps around the track with a magazine. It was an easy, breezy workout. Once home I did the C+K 10 Minute Workout. I think I finished in 9 minutes!! I also wanted to add in response to some of the comments this morning that I do often lift heavy weights (15 lbs for biceps and shoulders). The point of the challenge is to reignite an interest in strength by starting over with time and dedicate – much like I did when I started with just 20 minutes a day of yoga back in December. So no, I am not swearing off weights for ever, as I do think they are important to incorporate and make progress, but if your goals are just to tone what you have and/or recharge your enthusiasm, an at-home workout works wonders.
Lunchtime called!! I used up the last of our fridge. There’s nothing green to be found in this house!
I made a quesadilla with a slice of Applegate ham, 2 tbsp goat cheese and English Beer mustard by Fortnum and Mason
Loved the sharp taste of this mustard! It didn’t leave me tipsy though
Plus a carrot with Chocolate Toffee Peanut Butter
LOoooove Naturally Nutty’s stuff!!
And a Honey Oikos with a chopped peach. I’m not sure I really like the honey flavor. It comes in the form of a gel on the bottom of the cup – like fruit on the bottom style – and you mix it in. I’m just a plain kinda girl!
We are hitting the road for Danville now. I’m not sure if I will have internet tonight, but I definitely will tomorrow. Hope to see y’all sooner rather than later!
Mornin’ all! I woke up today not feeling that hungry, so I decided it was a smoothie kinda day. But I was also feeling a little adventurous after last night’s culinary experiments so I decided to do another -
The secret ingredient: carrot! I pureed (as best I could) a carrot in my food processor and then moved that into the blender to make the smoothie (for some reason the FP wasn’t blending as well as the blender does..lol)
I made a mess of both appliances but it was fun
The second secret ingredient was this packet from Vega. If you look behind my thumb in very small print it says “Vanilla Chai” – that was the secret!! I’ve had this packet for a while and since I’m not a huge fan of powders, I hadn’t remembered to use it up. But when finally realized it was flavored, I thought it would go well with the carrot. I used about 60% of the packet and saved more for later (All the info on the packet + brand can be found here.)
And this was one of the most delicious smoothies I’ve ever made!! Mostly because of the intense vanilla chai flavor and extra sweetening from stevia in the packet
Ingredients:
1 carrot, pureed
1 small banana
~1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 packet vanilla chai
1/4 cup rolled old fashioned oats, dry
Handful ice
10 Minute C+K Challenge
In other excitement, Caitlin and I are teaming up to bring you a new challenge. As you may know, I hate weight lifting. I have to force myself to do it about 3x a week – just simple free weights of the major upper body and perhaps some lunges thrown in – but 10 minutes is about all I can handle. I know strength training is super important though, so I am always looking for new ways to get it in that are fun (yoga, for instance ) I’ve noticed that Caitlin will just drop and do 10 minutes when she gets up – no need to make a whole workout out of it. So when I sent her an email about how I thought that was cool, she challenged me to join in. We put our heads together and came up with the following 30-day challenge -
And I promise you this is KERF tested behind the scenes and it is for even the laziest lifters!
Guidelines:
Do this routine ANYTIME when you have 10 minutes to spare, ideally every other day
Move quickly between the exercises so you don’t have time to get bored
The exercises are grouped into 3 sets of 2 for optimal memorization and swift movement – don’t stop!
If you have knee troubles, follow Caitlin’s modifications. Knee Strength Moves can be found on Healthy Tipping Point if you kneed them, and here is a link to Caitlin’s instructional video: Caitlin’s Knee Moves (Plus an Appearance by Maggie and James)
Here We Go!
Circuit One
Push-ups (as many as you can do)
Squats (about 20) OR Knee Strength Move #1
REPEAT
Circuit Two
Bicycle Crunches (about 26!)
Reverse Crunches (about 26!)
Lunges with optional bicep curl (about 20) OR Knee Strength Move #2
REPEAT
(We forgot to photograph the lunges!) (Reverse crunch: Lie on the floor and place hands on the floor or behind the head. Bring legs up so they are 90 degrees from the floor. Make a small contraction with your abs to lift your feet straight up to the ceiling and lower. This movement is very small!)
Circuit Three
Chair Tricep Dips (about 15)
Wall Squat (hold as long as you can – about 60 seconds)
Since we’re going up to Charlottesville this weekend, our fridge is completely bare and I decided not to go to the grocery store for a one-item trip. I almost went for some fresh veggies today until I realized I had leftovers for lunch and could think of something for dinner. Here’s what was in stock:
I got an email to try these chicken patties a few weeks ago and admit that my first instinct was to turn them down. I do get a lot of free products offers, but I try to only accept them if they are foods that I might actually buy (read: real food, or as close to it as one can get). I’m really not a big breaded chicken eater, but because I love the Applegate Farms brand of deli meats, I decided to give these a try.
WOW were we ever impressed!!!!!! Both Matt and I kept saying through dinner, “Gosh, this tastes so good, doesn’t it!?” I could do without the soybean oil in the ingredient list, but at least it’s natural and everything else looks fine to me. Check ‘em out here: Applegate Farms Chicken Patties.
We baked them per the box instructions, topped with a slice of cheese, dollop of ketchup, sprig of basil and served on a piece of Dakota toast. Absolutely delicious!!
The side dish was kind of strange, but also really good. Don’t be afraid of canned or frozen greens – they are so easy to prep compared to fresh and are great when your fridge is bare.
I combined a can of collard greens, a tomato, 1/2 a cup or so of edamame and a tbsp of this new Dean + Deluca mustard (a thank you from the source!) plus a drizzle of maple
Insta-side dish
Big knife, little fork
Pickley on the side
The movie of the night was Ladies in Lavender. I really enjoyed watching it (literally) but I didn’t think it was the greatest movie. I loved their little English cottage though! Made me want to go to England ASAP. Anyone have any other historical or British movies? I loved Atonement, Other Boleyn Girl, The Queen.
Once I put Matt to bed (hee hee – he’s got a 2:50 wake-up call tomorrow!) I came down for some KILLLLLLER dessert!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I present 100% natural banana ice cream – topped with some chocolate ganache!
I froze 2 ripe bananas earlier this week and was waiting for the right night to make this.
I followed her instructions to a T, timing exactly 5 minutes. First I thought the processor was going to break, then the bananas turned into a huge ball of dough hunkin’ around in there, then the magic happened.
I actually think I could have ended sooner than 5 minutes because in my 80* kitchen this stuff was melting fast. If you like slightly melted soft serve, this recipe is for you.
I had a nice bowl and put the rest in the freezer to see if it comes back out OK another day
Upon opening the freezer, our ganache (from my birthday) fell out and cracked, so I took that as a sign to add some while I transferred containers.
This would be equally as delicious with a little peanut butter on top!
I had a few more tastes during the transfer
Will absolutely be making both of these recipes again!
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One product I have a love/hate relationship with is my Eye-Fi card. It goes into spells when it doesn’t work at all. It was great during the month of May but all of a sudden it’s broken again. I’ve tried all kinds of troubleshooting and keep getting an error. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!
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Can I add that I’ve picked up my iPhone to “check my budgets” about 5 times tonight even though I obviously know I haven’t spent anything!? Nerd alert! I like feeling organized with gadgets
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Tomorrow: Some work in the AM, a workout, packing, departure for Danville at 2pm where we’re spending a night on the way to Charlottesville at Karen’s friend’s farmhouse. Saturday we’ll be there for the 4th (have a big blog lunch planned!) and then we’re heading home on Sunday. We decided to skip the trip to Norfolk / VA Beach, as it’s probably not our top choice and will save lots of driving and an extra hotel room.
I would like to give a shout out to Winthrop University for giving out FREE transcripts to students!! Davidson and Queens each made me pay, taking $10.25 from my personal money budget this month (See how the system is already helping me realize where money goes!)
I would also like to shout out to the iPhone app Spend, which I downloaded for $.99. I set up budgets for our vacations, home and personal allotments this month and really like how the app works! I love having Mint’s app to check all of our spending categories per our actual purchases, but Spend is great to track the unplanned stuff as it happens. You have to manually add a transaction, but since I’m only tracking unnecessary expenses in it, there shouldn’t be that many (another motivator to spend less – more transactions to enter!)
I would lastly like to express my discontent with the Invisible Shield for the iPhone. I spent twenty dollars on this screen shield when I bought my phone because it was unscratchable and highly recommended. Well last week I was demonstrating the unscratchableness and my THUMBNAIL (which is totally not sharp) left huge scratches on the shield!! It has a lifetime warranty so I decided to try to do that. They make you jump through all kinds of hoops first to register the product and it’s still $3.95 AND you have to send back the original. When I took the shield off of my phone for the first time since I bought it, I LOVED the natural screen!! So I think I’m just going to keep it natural and hope I don’t scratch it. (I do have a protection plan with Best Buy if I do encounter any damage, thankfully.) Invisible Shield does not get my KERF stamp!
Some non-food products that do: Swiffer Sweeper Vac (it’s everything I wanted!!!) and duster, Mrs. Meyers products, everything Neutrogena (sunscreens, eye make-up remover pads, mascara, and more), GMAIL!!!!, and Bare Minerals.
I worked on my RD internship (the REAL internship) this morning too, sending off some recommendations and transcript requests. Guf!!
And I finally had lunch at 2:30!! Not sure why I wasn’t that hungry all morning. I think I am just used to a later lunch and being busy mentally these days.
Luckily I had some easy leftovers to re-heat: gumbo, rice + corn.
About a cup of rice, a cup of gumbo (very liquidy) and a sprinkle of cheese -
It’s another one of those gorgeous Carolina mornings down here. These arm, sunny days are why I love the Southeast and could never leave (except maybe for Southern California).
Since I have had work today at 10:30 I worked out first thing. Zumba, yoga and yesterday’s workouts soreness caught up with me so I just did a nice massaging elliptical session with Health magazine. On my bike ride home you can imagine how surprised I was to get sprinkled!!! I biked through a series of 10 sprinklers coming onto the sidewalk and the first one caught me totally by surprise. I got an early shower!
Once I had my real shower I came down to this fresh Zucchini Raisin muffin Matt brought home from Great Harvest.
I instantly knew I wanted to sprinkle it on yogurt!
We are having a problem with a leak in our countertops. Water is getting in the crack of the spray nozzle and dripping below as it gets splashed onto the counter during the dishes. Do any of you (or your handy husbands and boyfriends) have any suggestions for this? Is there a sealant we can buy?
So the big news is that Mary is not feeling well today ( ) so our meeting and my office work has been canceled. I’m working from home yet again, which I love It’s always a shock when you’re getting ready to leave and you get the news to stay home. Good thing I hadn’t packed my lunch yet.
Karen came over tonight with fresh shrimp from the coast for a family meeting about the bakery. We are moving forward with the application process – cross your fingers! Karen and I had lots to gab about regarding or choices of cities while Matt played computer games. Seems like he should be the one that’s most excited!
Per usual, white wine was opened. I gladly accepted as I was ready for a snack (at 5:30) and wine satisfies me just as much as yogurt
I had a second pour with dinner
We turned the shrimp into a gumbo of sorts (I classify anything with okra and tomatoes as a gumbo – sorry if that is technically incorrect!)
1 lb shrimp, peeled + deveined
~5 cups of whole okra, washed and trimmed
1 can diced tomatoes
1 whole tomato, chopped
1 jalapeno, minced
~1/3 cup leftover bell peppers, chopped
3 chicken stock cubes
~1 tbsp creole seasoning
+ 1 cup dry Lundberg’s short grain brown rice, cooked per package (LOVE this short grain rice!)
Prep shrimp. Bring chicken cubes (~1/2 a cup?) to a simmer and add okra. Cook for ~5 minutes. Add tomatoes, jalapeno, peppers and seasoning. Cook 3-4 minutes. Add shrimp, cover and cook ~3-4 more minutes. Shrimp are done when they are pink. Serve over rice.
I had about 1/2 a cup rice with a cup of gumbo. It was delish!
We had some cornbread in the freezer and headed up a small slice of that to have on the side. I believe this was the Trader Joe’s mix. So sweet and delicious!
After dinner Karen brought more of her Fig Bars, although I realized they are not figs, but dates inside!!! I was actually really full and just had one bite of Matt’s. First time ever I haven’t been interested in dessert!
(Yes I read the Gmail Blog and I am a nerd ) If you use Gmail and see the little green Erlenmeyer flask up near “Settings,” click on it to find all kinds of fun features!
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I’m hoping to finish Vanity Fair tonight. The poor husband is already in bed for his 2:40AM wake-up call and it’s still light out!!
