Snack Pack

Well, I made my best attempt at eating dinner at 5:00, but I wasn't hungry (probably because I had another trailmix pack (THANKS MARI!)

I stopped at my parents' house to print out my paper and ran into my mom's daycare to make a snack pack. This baggie contains goldfish, animal crackers, natural fruity cereal, walnuts, and a cookie. I'm not planning on enjoying all of this...but you never know how long class goes...

Have a great night and see you tomorrow!

Mud Pie Fusion PSA

Mud Pie Fusion

After seeing all of the bloggers enjoying the Met-Rx Protein bars, I decided to give one a try. How can you go with something called Mud Pie Fusion? I love the concept of mud pie and fusion restaurants are all over the place, so how could that be bad? I LOVE fusion. Well, apparently this was a fusion of protein bar with real mud, or maybe cement? I took one bite and put the sucker away. I'm going to save it for a time when I'm really hungry and will eat anything. I just don't have the heart to throw it out. What are your favorite bars?

Here is the offender on top of my book:

On to lunch...

This lovely pile of randomness is now all gone! The flavors were amazing together. I scrounged up some soy sauce in the fridge and also found something called Banana sauce, but decided to skip it. I'm also eating a chocolate that I found in out kitchen...it's just ok.

I'm about 30 minutes into my lunch and am attempting to finish a paper for school, so that's all for now!

Three Snacks do Not Equal Dinner

This afternoon I promised I would post my snacks- well that didn't happen. I often have a hard time deciding on how much food to bring and when to eat it since I spend traditional dinner time in school twice a week. Afternoon snacks included the following:

• 4:00 p.m. - A serving of baked tofu, a serving of peanuts (I know strange combo)
• 6:30 p.m. - A Granny Smith Apple, a low glycemic cookie (from my mom), and a handful of goldfish
• 9:00 p.m. - 1/2 cup of cottage cheese with a homemade mini muffing

What I learned is that I should just bite the bullet and pack dinner for each of these days. I can either eat at 5:00 p.m. on my commute, or at 6:30 right before class. I guess I will have to see what works as we go along.


In an effort to plan, I decided to make lunch/dinner for tomorrow. We had a bunch of food that is on its last legs, so I made a super salad. Please disregard the lovely tupperware.










Here are the ingredients- again, I was cleaning the fridge/using what I cooked for Mike's dinner, so no recipe here, obviously!

• ~2 cups Broccoli slaw (it's in there)
• Roasted brussel sprouts
• 2 tbsp corn
• 1 serving of baked tofu
• 2 baby mandarins almost ready to be chucked
• 1/4 cup Cous Cous
  

I think I got everything here. I plan on adding in some celery waiting for me in my work fridge and bringing some more baked tofu to add so that I can split this into two meals. I'm not much of a dressing person, but I'll let you know what I use.

Well, I'm off to catch some sleep (watch TV till I pass out).

Dare You to Try This...

Thanks for all the comments I have been getting! I'm a novice blogger, so it's awesome to see that I'm getting hits...each one of them puts sunshine in my day. Anyways- back to food!

For my morning snack I ate this beautiful pear chopped up in a million pieces:

Lunch consisted of something I put together last night in my cooking frenzy. This is a Trader Joe's whole wheat pits filled with approximately 2 oz of TJ's fat free cheese, some baked tofu, and 1 Tbsp of TJ's Eggplant Garlic spread. It's safe to say that I went shopping at Trader Joe's last night. This lunch was flavorful and filling, but I will have to remember how salty this is next time. It's hard to see, but here it is. I microwaved this for 1.5 minutes and the cheese got all melty.

Pita with some tofu peeking out:

Next, I moved on to lunch dessert. I decided to have a plain yogurt, but I was craving chocolate. I mixed in some cocoa powder and stevia and made chocolate yogurt. I had this with pretzels...and yes, I did dip them. It was kind of like a chocolate covered pretzel gone wrong, but in a good way. I don't really recommend this, but give it a try if you dare. I bet this would work better with vanilla- I know everyone is excited at this snack.

I'm having a marathon day today- out of the house from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. since today is a school night. I'll be back with some snacks to fuel me through class!

Ciao!

Breakfast Times Two

This morning I drove to the train and stopped to grab breakfast and lunch for the day. I picked up an Optimum Energy Bar in Blueberry from Nature's Path for my long, long ride to the magical place I call work. This bar had 200 cals, 5 grams of fiber, and about 5 grams of protein. All of the ingredients were recognizable, although the list is quite long. When you open the bar, you are greeted with icing- a welcome addition to any breakfast! The bar is chewy and not at all sticky. You can taste the grains and the blueberry chunks. I would definitely recommend it. There are 20 grams of sugar and 38 carbs, but it seems like everything comes from natural sources. This baby kept me full for about 2.5 hours.

Nature's Path Bar with Shape Magazine

And frosting

When hunger struck again, I had breakfast- Part 2. This time I had a nonfat plain yogurt with trailmix on top. After I finished this, I dug into the remainder of the trailmix single serve pack. I have no self control with trailmix- the only thing that stops me is the end of the pack. Now I'm full and happy and working away until I can take my break- I am predicting a nice walk in my near future.

A Very Orange Dinner and a Red Pear

My day today was filled with work and then a workout. I came fully equipped, meaning I had no water bottle, no iPod, and no lock for my stuff. I went and changed, and marched right over to the treadmill with my briefcase. It was classic. For my workout, I started out with an 11-minute run, which was interrupted and stopped when my fiance arrived. I proceeded to do another 25 minutes of run/walk when I feel like it intervals. It was nice and sweaty. After some stretching I joined the boy for some lifting- cables, skullcrushers, (OK- tell me if there is a cooler exercise name, I dare you!) and dips. The final exercise was some chest press thing that threatened to tear my arms off so I called it a night.

When I came back from the gym and set to work making myself an orange themed dinner. I don't usually eat conventional dinners and rarely plan them ahead of time, but my growling stomach came up with a plan- pumpkin oatmeal pancakes!

Now, I must warn you- I can't follow a recipe if my life depended on it. I am always compelled to give it a twist, add some of this, omit that. If you make this, feel free to mix things up.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup oats
1/4 cup canned pumpkin
1 eggwhite (but if you are me, then the whole egg actually falls in...oops!)
1/4 scoop vanilla whey protein powder

Frosting:
1/8 cup plain yogurt
1/8 cup pumpkin
sweetener of choice

I made these beauties by first omitting the cooking spray...when they started to sear I took them off, flipped them, and ended up cooking the rest of them in the microwave for a minute to make sure that I did not give myself salmonella poising. When they came out, I sprinkled them with cinnamon and frosted them. Yum! These pancakes are not at all sweet, and look like blobs, but they were good.


Los Pancakes:



El Frosting:




Dessert was the much-anticipated Pumpkin Pie Kashi Bar. The bloggers are not kidding when they say this thing is tiny. It was very good, almost too sweet, and that is a lot coming from me. I will use this as a dessert option. After I ate it, I was still hungry and had the red pear, ruining the theme for the night. It was not worthy of a picture.

NuGo Nutrition

Still on my quest to get in more protein for satiety and less fun foods for peace of mind, I decided to try a NuGo bar in chocolate flavor today. The bars can be purchased just about anywhere, but today I snagged one from my future MIL's pantry.

Here is the website for the bars:
http://www.nugonutrition.com/

The bars taste wholesome and don't have that fake processed flavor. Here is what their website says:

"All NuGo products offer sensational taste and flavor. Our unique bakery style process ensures a light, crispy and completely delicious texture and taste in every NuGo bar. We use only real milk chocolate coatings and nuGO Organic is lightly enrobed with smooth, anti-oxidant rich real dark chocolate. Be prepared for unsurpassed snacking satisfaction."

I really enjoyed this for a light breakfast, but it was not very filling. The chocolatey taste would make for a better snack than a meal. The stats are 180 cals, 11 grams of protein, and around 5 grams of fiber. I'm not a big meal replacement kind of gal, but I would try this again with coffee and a piece of fruit.