A Yummy Success!

The Eat Atlantic Challenge that is. I managed to eat only Atlantic Foods yesterday, I did have to scrounge a bit throughout the day (IE: eating Scotsburn ice cream at 10am for a snack. hehe) but am proud to say that I stuck with it.

As planned last night Jaime, Ang & I got together for a yummy local dinner. We had a good time chatting while we prepped all the eats. I’m going on record to say that no points were counted and that I’m positive if they were, I’d be over. No sweat though because I couldn’t have asked for a better evening with great friends & great food! No regrets here. :)

Our main course was a local Eden Valley Farms chicken, that Jaime butterflied and cooked on the grill. She seasoned it with Mallett’s Maple Pepper Chipolte blend. As you will see further down, it turned out fantastic!

Along with the chicken we had some roasted taters that I prepped. These were local Scotian Gold potatos. Seasoned with olive oil, fresh ground pepper, sea salt & fresh local garlic.

Ang had my least favourite chore, shucking the corn on the cob. I picked this corn up from Superstore, it was advertised as “Atlantic Grown” but the produce manager couldn’t tell me what province it actually came from.

While the food cooked we cracked open of bottle of Blomidon Estates L’Acadie Blanc and munched an appy platter that Jaime whipped up for us!

Running, Oh How I’ve Missed You!

Breaky was a yummy bowl of oatmeal! Mmm, it always tides me over so well. This morning’s combo was 1/3c organic oats, 1/2c unsweetened vanilla almond breeze, 1/2 organic banana, 1tbsp peanut butter, 5g mini chocolate chips, 5g sliced almonds & 1tsp hulled hemp seeds. Perfection!

Morning snack was the usual peanut butter oatcake. Sorry, most of my eats of late have been quite routine.

Lunch was a bowl of chicken noodle soup with a roll. My lunch pictures turned out really blurry though. The worst part though? I forgot my bowl and had to heat up the soup in the plastic container. Eck, sooooo bad of/for me. :( But I was hungry.


After work, I enjoyed a yummy mug of Heavenly Hash ice cream. Oh how I adore ice cream. It is one of my guilty pleasures and something that I will never give up.


So, Supper… as usual it’s been the best meal of the day! I know I only made the Easy Shrimp Pasta a few weeks ago but I was craving it again. This is one of my fav recipes of all time!



I did make a few additions to the recipe – some fresh diced garlic and 2 cups of organic baby spinach. Yummy creamy goodness!

New Look!

Our fridge has a decent amount of veggies already but I still stocked up on some fresh blueberries,plums, sweet tomatoes (like the ones I had at Jaime’s on Friday night!) organic garlic,chives, cantaloupe, squash and some cool looking mini squash & zucchini. :)


I couldn’t resist sampling the fresh scallops for lunch. Cooked up half a pound in a bit of becel. How delicious do these look?! Mmm mmm!


Used the sweet juicy tomatoes in a side salad as well.


I spent most of the afternoon baking and now have a freezer full of lunch stuff including peanut butter oatcakes, peanut butter granola bars & rolls. I also tried out a new recipe for oatmeal blueberry lemon muffins. Made a few modifications – used almond breeze instead of milk, 1 whole egg instead of 2 egg whites, 1tbsp of oil instead of 2 and I omitted the topping. Ended up having 2 of these yummy guys for breaky this morning.


The best part about yesterday was that I went out for a run as planned! :) I’ve definitely decided against re-doing C25K again, instead I did 10:1 intervals as Amy suggested. All went well, I wasn’t gasping for breath. So glad that I haven’t lost the ability to run, I really was afraid of that. My new plan now is to increase by one set each week, so this week I will be doing 3x10:1 for a total of 3 days. Should work out perfectly to start Half training mid-October!


So, I’m off to clean, clean, clean. Opps and I was supposed to mow the lawn. Eck! We have quite a busy week coming up, only a 3 day work week. Both of us took Friday off to help Holly & Dean with the final wedding errands and then Saturday is the big day! I’m really excited!!

Anyways, that’s all for now!

Eat Atlantic Dinner Party!

In the spirit of the Eat Atlantic Challenge – a few of the Halibloggers are planning a small dinner party on Friday night. I’m really excited to see what tasty eats we can all come up with! Should be a fantastic night full of yummy local food and lots of laughs. :) If you’re Atlantic Canadian and have yet to make your pledge, head over and sign up now!

The Eat Atlantic Challenge is a promotion aimed at encouraging Atlantic Canadians to eat only food produced in Atlantic Canada for a day, on September 4. The primary goal is to promote the economic, health and environmental benefits of eating food that is produced here in Atlantic Canada

For more info check out their official sites: http://www.eatatlantic.ca/ Follow on Twitter Join Facebook Page

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A few people have been asking for the roll recipe I used this past weekend. I uploaded it earlier today and it can now be found here.

My eats today were yummy, filling & fairly healthy. Breaky was another morning of ezekiel toast with peanut butter & sliced bananas.


Was a busy day at work. Snuck in a quick snack, a handful of Simple Pleasures Spice Snaps. I love these guys for dipping!


Lunch was a plate of leftovers from Sunday’s roast chicken dinner. I had 2oz of meat, 1/2 c mashed taters, 1/4 c stove top and 1/2 c carrots. Wasn’t too bad microwaved. I also had 1 square of organic dark chocolate that a co-worker gave me.


Another fantastic Supper! In case you hadn’t noticed, we really haven’t been eating a lot of meat lately. After seeing Food Inc., I wanted to try and buy as much local/free range/organic meat as possible. Unfortunately, that’s harder than it seems, mainly because it involves me driving all the way over to Planet Organic. Since I’m lazy, I’ve just been making more meat free meals and am slowly using up the last of the nasty toxic meat that’s in our freezer. Tonight is an example. Have to admit though, the toxic meat was pretty tasty! ;)

I present, homemade philly cheesesteaks!


I thinly sliced 6oz of beef round steak, fried (olive oil) in a skillet with sliced onions, green peppers, yellow peppers, garlic powder, pepper and small amounts of A1 sauce, Worcestershire sauce & BBQ sauce. Placed the mixture into 3 flax seed buns, sprinkled with old cheddar and then under the broiler for 5 mins.




Side of Liberte Svelte Vanilla yogurt & strawberries.


With that I’m off for another c25K session. Oh how I missed running!

Pizza Night in This House

Good evening bloggies. So, it’s only 720pm and I have already got a fire roaring, 40 mins of cardio under my belt, supper in my belly and lunches made. This whole having a second car thing seems to have made me quite productive. :)

So lets talk meal planning. Do you do it? I never really have before, expect for our week day lunches. But these past two weeks before I’ve gone grocery shopping I’ve actually sat down and wrote out our Suppers and I have to say it’s really been beneficial. I only buy the items on the list with the regular breaky and snack stuff, it’s probably saved me a few bucks over the past month and I like knowing that when I open the cupboard I have all the ingredients for several meals.

I opted out of going to the #halifaxchicks tweet-up at the Wooden Monkey tonight so that hubby and I could have a bit of QT. Seemed like a good night for pizza……

Homemade ww crust with a few shakes of ground flax for added crunch.


Rolled out on the pizza stone with a bit of cornmeal.


Spread on the tomato paste…


And a good shake of oregano, rosemary, chili flakes and parm cheese.


Topped with whatever veggies are on-hand. In this case – green peppers, red peppers, onions, tomatoes and mushrooms. Plus a good dose of 3 blend shredded cheese. Then into the oven for 15…..


Voila! Yummy, healthy pizzie :) One half of the pizza was 9 points.





Oh and I just want to take a second and brag up the lovely Lex. Hubby needed a cake made for work and I’ve been really busy so I placed an order for a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. (Sorry for the lopsided pic, the cake sort of slide of the plate thing on the drive home.)


Doesn’t it look yummy though?! I was really pleased. :)


I may have requested that he bring me home a small sliver….which I devoured for dessert. OMG, the cream cheese icing was A.MAZ.ING!!! Yup, for anyone in the Halifax area who needs a cake made, Lex is definitely your girl!

http://sweettoothblog.wordpress.com/


I’m taking off for the night. Thinking we’ll catch up on several shows that have been on the DVR forever. :)

Various Ramblings

This post is going to be all over the place because I’ve got a lot to say.

Yesterday, we lost another family member to cancer. I hate cancer, why can’t we find a cure? It makes me sick to know that there’s nothing you can really do except sit around and wait to hear who’s next. This particular member’s battle was long and really exhausting for everyone involved. My Mom has been going non-stop for the past 7 weeks or so, her strength amazes me. I took today off and am going to spend it with her.

When I said there’s nothing we can do except sit around, that’s not really true. I need to get my act together and register for this year’s Relay For Life. Fundraising needs to start soon. Last year’s Relay was the first one I ever participated in and it was such an emotional but amazing experience. Sadly, I will have another luminary to light at the ceremony.

Now, in lighter news:

• Thanks for all your lovely comments there other day in regards to me questioning myself. You all are such a great support system and provided thoughtful, honest advice. I will appreciate that. I’m still trying to figure myself out but am going to be examining my calorie intake and develop an appropriate amount for days when I’m training vs off days. I’ve been doing a bit of reading for runners diet plans, ratios of carbs/proteins/fats, looking at my BMR etc. I think I can come up with an adequate solution.
  
  
• If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, ya’ll know that I have a slight girl crush on Jillian Michaels. :) I subscribe to her newsletter and wanted to share this latest piece of news:
  Jillian introduces a new yoga workout unlike any other. Combining hard-core yoga power poses with her dynamic training techniques, Jillian will get you real weight-loss results fast. YOGA MELTDOWN includes two complete 30-minute workouts that include a warm-up and cooldown. Begin with the Level 1 workout which focuses on quickly flowing yoga sequences to burn mega calories. Then progress to Level 2 which adds twists and balance poses for an even greater burn.
  
  Whoot! Can’t wait to get my hands on this. Her website says that it’s available for pre-order and will ship on 02/26/2010.
  
  
• FoodNetwork.ca has a pretty cool sounding Canadian Food Blogger contest going on right now. If I had the time I would enter myself.
  
  
  Here's the deal, send us a blog post about your favourite specialty food shop or a unique dining experience. This can include anything from a soup swap, dining in the dark, or meeting a Food Network Canada host to name a few. And please include photos, we LOVE photos. Submit (one) 300 word blog post to blog@foodnetwork.ca - subject line "Food Blogger Contest" and sign up to the food Community (if you're not currently a member.) The gates are open, so start submitting today. February 28th is the deadline.
  [Full Details Here]
  
  
• My favourite coffee roasters of all time, Just Us Coffee are now on Twitter! Follow them @justuscoffee, along with 2 of their locations - @justusspringgdn and @JustUsBarr. Their coffee is like heaven in a mug. Plus its organic, fair trade and they are a local company to boot. Awesome!
  
  
  
  
  Speaking of coffee, I’m in need of it. That’s all I’ve got for ya!

Healthy Monkeys

In case you didn’t pick up on it from my last post, after our OptiMYz Live adventure we went to the Wooden Monkey for a late lunch. :)

“We are focused on providing local and organic food, while offering fair trade organic coffee, locally brewed beers and wines, and providing a venue for local artists and musicians.”

It was pretty busy when we arrived but luckily we only had to wait a few minutes. We had a corner table and the beautiful, warm sunshine was streaming in on us the whole time.

Free-range chicken, onions, mushrooms, peppers, garlic, melted mozza, mayo, lettuce, tomato. Mmm mmm, I devoured every last bit of this tasty sandwich.

Plus a bowl of delicious maple squash soup.

It was the perfect amount of food, I left filling very satisfied. If you’re from the area and haven’t been to the Wooden Monkey, definitely add it to your list of restaurants to try, you won’t be disappointed.

OptiMYzing Experience

What a fun day! After a wonderful Team Myles run this morning (SLR.com updated with new post.) I met up with Ang, Jaime & Tash at Starbucks for a coffee & gab session. Was really nice to catch up with all the girls and see the Mommy-to-be! ;)

We headed over to OptiMYz Live at the WTCC to spend some time browsing various health, fitness and wellness displays.

One of the benefits of Team Myles was free admission to the show. Sweet!



We browsed around a bit and the lady at the Good Life/Nubody’s both was kind enough to snap a pic of us posing beside this gorgeous set of wheels.


We hit up the Hamachi House booth for a yummy sample of their Miso Soup. Totally hit the spot in this chilly weather.


We sipped on the soup while we waited for Lil MacPherson of the Wooden Monkey restaurant to begin her info session on eating local & organic.



Her wonderful speech told of her experiences in Copenhagen at the UN Climate Change Conference and stressed the importance of buying local to support our farmers and the quality of foods they provide. She is obviously very passionate and well educated on this subject and her speech certainly reflected that.


We also watched a short video clip from Hellman’s Eat Real Eat Local campaign. If you have a second, please take a moment to check it out. I think you’ll be shocked at the ratios of food export/import in our country.



Had a bit of fun with the Queen’s tea…. ;)


And I made sure to stop at the Blue Nose Marathon booth.


Along with a visit to the Canadian Cancer Society’s.




All tuckered out and ready for some lunch….one of the guys at the OptiMYz booth took this cute group shot:

After visiting so many booths, I ended up with quite the information package!


You’ll have to stay tuned to hear all the delicious deets of our lunch… until then I’ll leave you with this little hint -