Study, Study, Study.  That’s what I’m telling myself right now, on Halloween night, after just watching the Steelers lose to the Saints. 

My day was filled with these:

Which, just so you know, I eat frozen – not normal or toasted.  I like them frozen!!

There was also a lot of this.

And finally, I have been using this nonstop… my new toy…

I finally got a vitamix!!!!  And let me tell you, it is worth every single penny.  I don’t know how I lived without this thing for the first 27 years of my life.

Right now I am trying to prepare to take the PMI PMP exam to get my project management certification.  And, unfortunately, it’s not working very well at this moment in time.  Last week I was in a boot camp to learn some of the information.  It was long and a huge information overload.  There is so much material to learn and memorize for this exam, my head is swimming with it.  And I don’t even know when exactly I am going to take the exam yet.

This, of course, at the same time as my crazy project at work AND trying to plan the wedding.  Oh yeah, remember that little detail?

I’ve lived in my house for two and a half years, and this is the first time that I have been home on Halloween.  Last year, S and I were on a plane coming home from Switzerland.  The year before, I went to a party at a friend’s house. 

I had been told by other people living in our townhouse complex that we don’t usually get many trick-or-treaters for Halloween, but S and I bought candy anyways, just in case. 

It is now 9pm and we have had ONE (?!?!?!) trick-or-treater.  Oh well.  Looks like there will be lots of leftover candy to fuel my studying…

Every day, S laughs at me when I pack and leave for work because of all of the stuff that I take with me.  I take two huge bags to work – the first bag is my gym bag.  This is big and bulky because it has to have my gym clothes and shoes, as well as shower stuff (flip flops, soap, makeup, deodorant, etc.)  The other bag is my “other” bag which contains my food, my papers/notebook, my cell phone, my extraneous items I think I might need for the day. 

I leave pretty early in the morning to try to go to the gym before work, and I usually leave work at around 5:30.  So that’s a  long time out of the house.  And I’m one of those over-packers… better safe than sorry, right?

Here’s an example of what I bring to work, food-wise.

You see on the left my breakfast, a cottage cheese protein bake.  Right below that?  Mid-morning snack of banana bread (which I ate with the apple, which came from my work fridge).  In the middle is my lunch.. a salad (with the cheese in a little container above it, the edamame and egg and cauliflower in a little container below it.  I mix it all in.

Upper right and bottom left?  Afternoon snacks of barbequed Chinese pork, a KIND bar, and some more cauliflower (which I drench in hot sauce.)

So you see, quite a lot of food for the day.  But I eat it all, and it’s this type of packing and planning that keeps me from eating all of the candy and crap that is always in the work kitchen.  Or at least helps me to eat less of it.    This is just a random day… I don’t eat Chinese pork every day, for example.  But this is at least representative of the quantity!

I got the recipe for this protein banana bread from April’s blog, but I made a few little tweaks.  I only used 1 cup wheat bran, and used a scoop of protein powder.  I also added about 1/2 cup of yogurt, which made it really moist.

Mid-morning snackage:

Now what I didn’t show you is what I already have in my desk drawers at work!

The top drawer:

Aaaand the bottom drawer, which is the chips drawer:

Yeah.  So those days when I bike to work and can’t bring my huge food bag?  I’m covered.

Oops, I did it again.

I made breakfast for dinner.

Protein pancakes from this recipe, one of my faves.

They always turn out.

And I will soon have a new weapon in my arsenal to help me with these and many, many other fantastic recipes.  I’m not going to give it away yet… you will have to wait and see!

Since S isn’t as big on breakfast for dinner as I am, I made him a BBQ chicken pasta bake.  I had seen this recipe a while ago and bookmarked it, and decided tonight was the night. I did a little tweaking, of course.  I used breaded chicken tenders (S’s request) instead of chicken breasts, and topped it with provolone.

Pre-baking:

And post.  Cheesy, bbq-y goodness.

I wasn’t sure how this recipe was going to go over with S because he tends to like his pasta really plain.  I remember one time I put peas in it and he was NOT a happy camper, ha.  But it was a total hit.  He absolutely loved it!  I am definitely putting this recipe on the list to make again.

Next post I will share with you my new purchase.  I can’t wait!!!

I got me a bicycle!  I got a nice little Cannondale Quick 4.  Although I originally was looking for a used one, I ended up getting it brand new.  And the 2011 model was the same price as the 2010 but looked a lot nicer and had some additional pros.  So I went for it. 

I am definitely a cheapskate, but I can almost always justify buying something that is for my health – like a bike! Unfortunately, the bike itself was not the only cost…  I also had to buy a heavy duty lock and still have to get a good helmet.  But once again, I plan to use this bike for a long time and make it well worth the cost!

I have ridden my bike to work twice already and I love it.  It’s just a little over 7 miles each way, and about 4 miles of it is on the Los Gatos creek trail.  The remaining 3 miles is on the street, but even most of the street riding is on back streets in the suburbs so it is a totally calm and relaxing ride.  I’m starting to realize that I didn’t buy a bike at the best time, though.  It’s already getting dark so early that if I ride my bike to work I have to leave earlier than I usually do in order to get home while it is still light.  And we will be turning the clocks back soon, too…  Oh well.  I’ll have to sit down and figure that out.

In race news, I registered for the first of two US Half Marathons in San Francisco.  This one is on November 7th.  The second one is on April 10th, 2011… exactly one week before our wedding!  I hope to do both, but we’ll have to see.  I’m also just going to do this one for fun and to relax… I’m not going to try to beat my 1:52 in the San Jose Rock n Roll half marathon a few weeks ago.  My legs have been feeling really tired lately, and S is encouraging me to do more races just for the fun of them – not always being so competitive or getting so worked up about being fast.  This is supposed to be a really nice race, and it goes over the Golden Gate Bridge!  Plus I got my friend to sign up with me so we will be running it together.  I can’t wait!

On the food front… I made my first strata!

We had our neighbors over for dinner and we did fondue.  We had a ton of left over bread cubes that I didn’t know what to do with, so I decided to make a strata.  I pretty much followed this recipe, but I substituted some summer sausage for the pancetta because that’s what I had on hand.  It turned out pretty well, and was definitely easy to make. 

Ok, off to bed.  G’night, ya’ll!

I can polish off a Subway footlong with the best of them, but even I was impressed with the sandwich S picked up for dinner from Safeway tonight.

That’s a manwich right there!

He only managed to eat half of it, though.  Fail.

His eyes are definitely bigger than his stomach! 

As for me, I had a Siggi’s (my last one)

I am actually sad this is my last one.  I didn’t like them at first, but now that my taste buds are changing without all the sugar in my diet, I like them much more and I can taste the slight sweetness from the fruit and agave.  Unfortunately, I went back to Whole Foods and they are no longer on sale.  $2.99 is just too steep for one single-serve yogurt. 

I also had chicken sausage and broccoli.

And finished off the night with a treat – hot frothed milk!  I just bought a milk frother.  Just a cheap one, as I wasn’t sure how much I would use it and how much I would like it so didn’t want to invest in an expensive one yet.  Funny fact about me… I hate milk.  Cold milk, on its own.  But I love warm, frothed milk with a little something sweet in it… just slightly sweet.  Since I’m not eating sweetener, I put in about a half a scoop of vanilla protein powder and it was perfect!

This frother is definitely going to help me get more milk and calcium in my diet.  Yay!

I mentioned a little while ago that I was making some changes in my eating habits.  I have not been feeling good lately, and I believe this is because of several contributing factors.  And I believe first and foremost of those factors are:

1. What I have been eating
2. My physical activity (or lack thereof)

What?!?! you say?  Didn’t you just run a half marathon?  Yes, I did – in a pretty decent time for myself, I might add.  However, did I feel great doing it?  Not particularly.  And did I really train for it properly?  Negative.

Since I started my new job over 3 months ago (geez, can you believe it has already been a quarter of a year?!?!) my activity level has significantly decreased.  I am much more tired, and also have much less time.  There is a gym in the office but I do not go to it daily like I used to.  In addition, when I do go, I don’t work out as hard as I used to.  Part of this is because I’m more tired, part is because I’m just more lazy, and part is because i do feel slightly uncomfortable being a Sweaty Betty at work. 

With that being said, I am doing some things well.  I am regularly weight training one or two days a week, which is a huge accomplishment for me.  I don’t get extremely sweaty when I just do weights, so it is more convenient and more comfortable for me to do them in the work gym.  The work gym also has an assisted pull-up machine, which is my new best friend

I even bought a pair of weight lifting gloves!!!

No excuses that my poor little hands hurt. 

With all that said, here is my plan as far as exercise is concerned:

1. Set a goal.  This will likely be a race goal – I would like to choose what will be my next marathon and start training.
2. Continue my consistent weight training
3. Buy a bike and start commuting to work by bike at least one or two days a week.  This is about 7 miles one way and would be a great way for me to fit in some alone, outdoors time as well as some exercise time.  Plus save money on gas!  Which I will need in order to buy the new bike
4. Do not go crazy.  I have a habit of falling into black and white, all-or-nothing thinking.  Right now I have “fallen out of” exercise.  I don’t want to “fall back into” it and feel like I can never take a day off.  I just want that happy, healthy medium.  Pushing myself while not overdoing it. 
5. Do all of these in combination with bettering my eating habits! 

Ok, so now on to my eating.  This isn’t too difficult.  I eat too much sugar and too many processed foods.  My action plan?

1. Less sugar.  As little added sugar as possible. 
2. NO MORE ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS!  I admit it, I am an artificial sweetener junkie.  I have it in everything… from my coffee to my cottage cheese.  My yogurt, my protein shakes, everything I bake… etc.  No more powdery little packets of joy.  The only exception will be a little bit of sugar-free maple syrup if I have pancakes or something, or possibly a little stevia here and there.  But it’s AMAZING how much different things taste without sweetener!  It has been about a week since I stopped eating it and already my taste buds have changed drastically.
3. No more pop.  I only drank diet, so I guess this goes along with #2.  I will still be drinking plain sparkling water with no sweetener whatsoever.  But no soda pop!
4. More protein.  I used to eat a TON of protein but lately I have just been carbing out all over the place.  I am NOT, I repeat, NOT, going low carb.  But I do want to up my intake of quality, lean protein.  I feel better that way, plus it will help my muscle building from my strength training!  Mark my words… I am going to be doing pull-ups on my own!
5. Natural.  The more natural, the better.  Less processed, more whole.  If I can’t understand all the ingredients, put it back.  Will I be able to do this all the time?  No.  But I will do it as much as possible.

So that’s pretty much that.  Nothing too crazy, right?  Just common sense, eating healthy and treating my body right.  Easier said than done.

No more of this (except on special occasions, and by special I actually mean special… not, for example, the occasion that it happens to be Tuesday.)

This, my friends, is a beautiful German Chocolate cake that somebody brought in to work for a birthday.  Which I had three pieces of.

It sure is a beauty, though… no?

Less of this, or at least healthier versions of it:

This is a pizza.  An awesome, ham, summer sausage, red pepper, olive, zucchini, tomato, artichoke, cheesy pizza.  It was yet another free and unrequested gift from the office kitchen.  And it was oh so good.

I can easily make a healthier version of this, no?  Homemade whole wheat crust, lighter on the cheese, (ok, maybe not lighter on the cheese…) lean meats, heavy on the veggies.

And it would probably taste even better!  At least, I know I would feel better after eating it.

Onwards and upwards.  That’s my plan and I’m sticking to it.

Now…. Monday night football!

I have always tried to keep a good amount of fruit in the house.  However, since I started my new job I seem to always have a plethora of apples everywhere I go.  I don’t really consciously hoard the apples… but it is somehow happening.  I walk into work in the morning, I grab an apple.  I go to the gym during lunch, I grab an apple.  Throughout the day, when I go into the kitchen at work for a drink, I see these cold, delicious-looking apples in the fridge and somehow my in-the-moment apple-seeing brain forgets that I already have several apples sitting on my desk in my office.  So I grab one or two more.

By the end of each week, I usually have several apples sitting in my office that I haven’t eaten yet.  So of course I take them home.  I wouldn’t want a good apple to go bad over the weekend, after all!

Except after a couple of weeks, particularly if I have bought other fruit from the grocery store (like the plethora I picked up last weekend) sometimes I still have those apples sitting at my house waiting to be eaten.  What to do with all those apples?  Last time it was apple pie.  This time I went twofold:  apple strudel muffins and applesauce.

Apple Strudel Muffins (makes 6 muffins, or 4 large heart-shaped muffins)

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups chopped apples
• 1/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon butter

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.  Grease your muffin pan.  In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.  In a large bowl, beat together butter, sugar and eggs until smooth. Mix in vanilla.

Stir in apples.

Gradually blend in the flour mixture.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared muffin pan.

In a small bowl, mix brown sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture is like coarse crumbs.

Sprinkle over tops of mixture in muffin pan.

Bake 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a muffin comes out clean.

Enjoy!  These tasted delicious warm.

Next up?  Applesauce!  This was actually  much easier than I expected.

Easy Homemade Applesauce

Ingredients

• 4 apples – peeled, cored and chopped
• 3/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

In a saucepan, combine apples, water, sugar, and cinnamon. Cover, and cook over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, or until apples are soft. Allow to cool, then mash with a fork or potato masher.

Ta-dah!

Looking up apple recipes is actually pretty fun.  Not good, as it is probably feeding my apple-hoarding problem…

This morning was the San Jose Rock ‘n Roll half marathon – my first half marathon since the Pittsburgh half marathon last May.

S and I are lucky – the company that we work at is located in downtown San Jose just a few yards from the starting line.  So we are able to park in the work parking garage for free, and have a guaranteed parking space (since it is employee badge-in only) while the other thousands of people are running around trying to find a parking space and to get to the starting line.  So we got into the lobby of our office with over a half hour before the start of the race and just relaxed for a few minutes.

Actually, S relaxed.  I was pretty psyched up and nervous… definitely in race mode.

At about 7:50 (the race started at we headed to the starting line.  I was in corral #6 (based on my estimated finish time.)

It was cold, but I was so happy.  Last week three days were above 100 degrees, and I was scared that race day was going to be super hot.  I will take cold at the start over hot during the race ANY DAY!

Don’t you get hot on me, Mr. Weather!  Grrr…..

See my hair?  That is my signature running pouf.  My friends always laugh and say they can always recognize me at races with my pouf.  I always loop it like that… I never understood how women with long hair could just wear it in a ponytail.  When I sweat it hangs down and starts sticking to my neck and my back, YUCK!  I need it tucked underneath in my pouf!

At about 3 minutes to go, I gave my jacket to S and made sure my Garmin was ready to go.

And then… we were off!  Can you see me in this picture?

While I was running, S went into the office and worked on some homework.  He took a picture of the part of the race course he could see from he 6th floor of our office.  The first, and most important of course, was one of the line of porta-potties.  Why was I not surprised to see this picture on my camera when S gave it back to me after the race?!?!

The finish line (nice and empty…)

Mile 13!  At the moment this picture was taken, as you can see, we were 23 minutes into the race.  So needless to say… I was nowhere near mile 13!

Overall, it was a great race for me.  It actually rained for a couple of minutes (our first rain of the season) but the rest of it was cool and perfect running weather.  It started to get sunny the last couple of miles, but by then I was pretty exhausted already so was just chugging along waiting for the finish line.

My grand totals:

Time:  01:52:28
Distance:  13.24 mi
Avg Pace:  08:29 min/mi

See the map and my stats here!

After the race:

I was starving and couldn’t wait to EAT!!!  I had a protein bar and a plum before the race, and two Gu’s during the race (one at mile 8, one at mil 10.5).  That was perfect to get me through.  But afterwards the hunger monster was raging.

I am pretty proud of myself for this race because I did it alone, without my mp3 player, and beat my last half marathon time by more than 6 minutes!  Yay!  This course was relatively flat, though, and there was no rain like there was in Pittsburgh.  But still.  Next goal…. 1:50??

I couldn’t wait to get home, because the Steeler’s game was already in progress.  Unfortunately, we lost   Oh well.  Next week is bye, and then the following week we will have Big Ben back.  3-1 ain’t bad, especially when our starting quarterback is out!

While we watched the game, S let Mendy take a field trip adventure out onto the patio.

JB watched from the safe zone inside.

He eventually ventured out for a few minutes, before mean, overprotective Mommy rounded her children up and made them go back inside!

Today, I finally tried Siggi’s yogurt.  I have seen it on other blogs but have never tried it due to it’s obscene price at Whole Foods.  But it was on sale last week, and I had a coupon, so I snagged a few of them at a pretty reasonable price.

Overall…  it was ok.  I liked the thickness and the texture, but it wasn’t sweet enough for me.  However, as I mentioned on a post a couple of days ago, I am making some changes in my everyday eating habits.  I eat WAY too much artificial sweetener.  So as of a couple of days ago, I started cutting it all out.  That means coffee in the morning with no sweetener, yogurt with no sweetener, cottage cheese with no sweetener.  And, right now…. it all tastes like crap.  And truth be told, I have been a pretty crabby person in the mornings, because I am only drinking a few mouthfuls of coffee (because it tastes so bad without any sweetener.)  I am not a fun person to be around in the morning when I don’t have my coffee.  I am also eating plain yogurt (and the few Siggi’s I bought) without adding anything.

Yes, it tastes like crap.  Yes, it makes me grumpy.  But I know that this is just something I have to do and that soon my taste buds will adjust.  I never realized how much of a tolerance I had built up to sweetener and sweet tastes.  I want to “reset” my taste buds so that I can enjoy things without a ton of added sweetness.  I can tell that it is already happening a little bit, but I still have quite a ways to go.

For dinner, I was craving waffles.  Plus, I needed something easy as I was exhausted and it was getting late.  So I went for some waffles!

Three Kashi GoLean blueberry waffles smothered in cottage cheese/greek yogurt mixture (no sweetener!) and drizzled in maple syrup.

Post mixing:

Perfect rock and roll celebration dinner.  Now I’m off to find some dessert!  Goodnight, ya’ll!

Have you heard of Groupon?  I’m sure you have by now, it seems that everybody has.  Well, I’m relatively new to the whole Groupon phenomenon, but I recently bought $20 worth of produce from a local place called The Produce Spot for $10 from Groupon.  I had never been there – in fact I had never heard of it – but it looked like a great little place.  And what better incentive is there to try out a new local organic produce stand than getting $20 worth of produce for $10?

So I went to use my coupon yesterday.  This was an adorable little place about a 20 minute drive north of where we live.  They had local goodies that looked delicious, such as local honey, breads and croissants, fruits and veggies.  The prices were very good.  Check out all the produce I got for a grand total of $10:

• 4 locally made croissants
• 10 roma tomatoes
• 1 eggplant
• 3 broccoli crowns
• 1 bag of carrots
• 1 bag of bean sprouts
• 1lb of figs
• 2 lbs of sweet potatoes
• 2 avocados
• 5 plums
• 5 pluots

I would have been happy paying $20 for all of that stuff, but $10??  That’s AWESOME!! 

I know that sweet potatoes aren’t really something that is a staple in my diet, but I hope to change that.  I am not a big potato fan, but I do like sweet potatoes and I know that they are really good for me.  So look for some sweet potatoes in my future!  Any good recipes are welcome.

Also today S and I bought a new hanging lamp for our dining room.  The one we had was really old and had some bad connections for some of the light bulbs.  Plus, it wasn’t nearly bright enough.  I like LOTS of LIGHT!!!  

We picked out a much more modern one that we both liked.

It has three 100 watt bulbs and is super bright!  We love it!  Tomorrow we will work on fixing the dimmer, because it has been broken for a while.

Tomorrow is the San Jose Rock n Roll half marathon!  Tonight for dinner I had some fresh scallops on sale at Whole Foods, with some of my new Produce Spot veggies.

Alongside, I did a little carbo loading with some mushroom provolone pizza:

And dessert was some banana soft serve topped with a little chocolate ice cream. 

Off to bed, to dream of tomorrow’s run!

I love it when they give out tech tees for races!  Wish me luck!!!