lifestyle blog

Daily Diet:

Breakfast…

• water, coffee, 2 egg omelette with cheese, tomato and Italian herb bread with butter.

I had a 1/4 of a tomato leftover in the fridge from the other night and decided to add that to my breakfast last minute.  Had I seen it before, it would have chopped up and inside the omelette! 

Lunch…

• chef salad (lettuce, carrots, ham, turkey, bacon, etc.) and water

In Between PM…

• coffee and 5 Greek olives before dinner

Dinner…

• Pommes des Vendangeurs (cheese and bacon potato cake), salad, glass of red wine, slice of Blaine’s Italian herb bread with butter (made fresh), plain yogurt with pineapple chunks and raw sugar sprinkled on top, coffee with cream and water before bed – recipe for the potato cake to follow.

Goals:

At home…

• Keeping things in order
• Schooling for the children

At work…

• A slight shuffle today but nothing major.  I spent most of the day at the Front Desk with some time to get a few other things accomplished – overdue calls/postcards/letters. 

I had a guy point his finger at me and call me girly because I would not let him check out dvds in another person’s name.  I had people looking at me and then him and then back at me to see what I would do or say.  I simply ignored the bad behavior.  I won’t go into all he said but glad to know we have cameras all around the library now. 

Personal…

• Posture, posture, posture!  Have you ever noticed your posture?  When you sit down do you slump over your desk?  When you are in photographs, are your shoulders back or hunched forward?  This week, I will be focusing on sitting up straight, lifting my chin up a bit, standing/walking correctly, etc.  What got me on this kick is when I started back to my floor routines in exercising.  It is easy to forget about your form when you start to get fatigued and the old aerobics instructor in me kept reminding myself to keep everything lined up.

Today’s Outfit:

Black cami (Target)

Multi-colored blouse (thrift)

Belt (thrift)

Plum (lined) skirt (thrift)

Black shoes

Turquoise/silver drop earrings, silver necklace, silver charm bracelet, silver/gold watch and a spritz of perfume!

Conclusion:

I went to the grocery store today. 

It is getting harder and harder to find quality foods anymore at the grocery store.  Most of it has been altered or modified.  I went to pick up yogurt and all of it has either aspartame or nutra sweet in it.  Bleck!  I finally chose one that was a plain yogurt (no problem – I can add my own fruit thank you very much) but it was low fat.  There was the Danon vanilla yogurt but it had sugar snuck in there.  Sheesh!  I will have to go back to making my own again.  I try try try not to pick foods that are low fat – no flavor, not satisfying and won’t keep me from getting hungry an hour or so later.  Very key in my diet and, as with everything, in moderation.

I also tried to pick up some frozen fish fillets.  Since when did they start adding HFCS to fish?!  You have got to be kidding me?!!

Uggh!

What did I pick up at the grocery store that was good?

• Wheat bread (w/o the c-r-a-p additives)
• Greek olives in red wine vinegar, olives & sea salt – imagine that!
• Tuna fish in water
• Corn chips
• Tomato sauce with no sugar or additives
• Plum tomatoes, carrots, celery broccoli & lettuce
• almonds, peanuts, etc. to snack on at work
• apples, oranges, bananas, pineapples
• chicken thighs
• brown rice
• bacon (locally grown)
• cottage cheese & plain yogurt
• turkey slices (no additives – supposedly)

Now, to take the above (along with what I have in the pantry) and make some healthy meals this week.

xo Cat

[Via http://catherinestaat.wordpress.com]

I was told by an athletic, workout guru friend that if you start getting sick, do a moderate workout and see how you feel.  If you feel better, then great, you shouldn’t feel bad anymore.  If you feel worse, then you probably shouldn’t work out anymore until you get over it.

So that’s the advice I followed.  The day we enjoyed our “reward”, my nose started feeling a little runny and itchy.  I knew the weather was getting warmer and pollen reeks havoc on my sinuses.  So, I started taking Claritin to knock out the allergies.  So, the next Monday, I continued with my workout schedule and did Core Synergistics (the closest to moderate as you’re going to get in P90X).  Wednesday morning, at 3:33 am, I woke up choking on the stuff that was draining out of my sinuses.  Had to go to CPR/BLS/AED training (a moderate workout) and felt horrible when I got home.

Since then, I’ve had a low grade fever and chasing mucus from my throat to my nose (it can’t decide where it wants to stop).

To get relief I have to medicate, if I medicate, I can’t go out in public – thus, I stay unmedicated so I can go to work.

So, if you’ve missed me, it’s because I’ve missed you and P90X.  But, I’m not going to try again until I fully recover and the fever is gone.  The good news is, following the P90X diet plan has kept me nourished and energized while I’ve felt bad (with a little help from Easter Reese Pieces Eggs – don’t hate!)

[Via http://cyndicated.wordpress.com]

As this blog’s readers know, I recently did a 3-week vegetarian cleanse – no meat, dairy or gluten – and it was a great experience that made a huge difference in how I feel physically and in my relationship with food.  I found out I’m sensitive to gluten, for one thing, and that when I don’t eat it, I feel tons better.  More, it showed me how satisfying vegetarian cuisine can be, and caused me to re-examine how and what I eat.  I’d already given up mammal as a matter of principle, but since doing the cleanse and reading GardenBurger creator Paul Wenner’s Garden Cuisine and some of Jonathan Safran Foer’s startling new book, Eating Animals, I have come to the conclusion that I can not, in good conscience, eat poultry or seafood, either.  Not if I care about the environment, anyway.  And frankly, while I don’t think chicken or fish process emotions the way mammals do, the thought of a fish slowly suffocating to death under a pile of thousands of other fish who are also slowly suffocating to death just so that days later I might enjoy a piece of sea bass just does not appeal to me.  I’d still eat a fish I caught myself, that was put to a quick and merciful end, but commercial fishing doesn’t work that way.  (Nor do commercial poultry farmers gently pick up a chicken and soothe its fears before blindsiding it with a chopper, but I digress.)

In addition to fish slowly suffocating, commercial fishing is killing the world’s oceans with overfishing, not to mention all the other, non-fish marine life that also gets caught in nets or on lines and dies because of it.  I really like Flipper, and whales & other sea mammals, as well as turtles, and while I don’t like sharks on accounta they scare the bejeezus outta me, I still recognize them as an integral part of the ocean’s well-being, and damn it, I don’t want any of them killed just because I felt like having a tuna sandwich.  So much as it pains me to say goodbye to chicken and fish, say goodbye I must.  That’s just the way of things.  I love my planet, and I love the life forms on it – more than I like people, really – so that means going vegetarian…which poses a whole new set of issues.  Namely, how to eat food which is satisfying despite it’s lack of meaty goodness.

So while I will continue to post recipes which employ meat to this blog, I will from now on be exploring the vegetarian side of eating and food products more.  And vegetarian recipes will eventually take over, but since most of the people who will find their way here eat tons more meat than is good for them (who here only eats 6 oz. of meat in a meal – I know I didn’t), maybe my meat-lover vegetarian recipes will help introduce them to options they didn’t know existed.  Maybe they’ll experiment one or two nights a week, and that alone would go MILES toward not only improving their heart health, but in  helping the environment.  Imagine – if you ate meat one or two days a week less, you’d have the same effect on the environment as if you traded in your gas-loving sedan for a hybrid Prius (among other benefits to the environment).  So if you wish you could switch to a hybrid to reduce your carbon footprint, but you can’t afford to?  Just switch your diet up a little so that 2 days out of the week you don’t eat meat.  And pat yourself on the back for doing a good thing and contributing to stopping global warming.  Think of it: 2 days out of 7, you’d eat something super-filling, tasty, satisfying and warm that helped save the environment just because it didn’t have something you wouldn’t miss because of how tasty the food is even without it.  How hard can that possibly be?

That said, I’m not here to preach.  It’s important to me not to eat meat, but I realize that you may be as I once was, and figure there’s nothing wrong with eating meat.  It’s not my way to guilt you into eating otherwise.  I’m about posting the yummy recipes.  And that’s what I’m a-gonna do.  Just more of the veggie kind.

[Via http://simplestove.wordpress.com]