My Favs, Ramblings

Sometimes, it’s not about the food

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Sometimes, it’s not about the food.  Sometimes it’s about life!

I am extremely lucky to have an amazing family, and an amazing mom in particular.  My mom is good at LOTS of things, but she is specifically good with words.  Whether long or short, her words always touch you.  Given that I have a lot of words on this blog 😉 I wanted to share some words from a very wise woman with you all 🙂

Hey Mare–

I had a horrible day at work on Friday–tears, panic attacks, heart palpitations, you name it. My immediate supervisor gave me a list of things to accomplish that would require a rare and amazing feat of endurance. I only got through 85% of the list by quitting time. I tried to talk to my boss about how unrealistic it was to assign so much in one day and he said that it had to be done and that we’d all better get used to it.  Even after I got home, I felt traumatized by the day and couldn’t stop crying. But this morning, it made me think of you and how stressed you get about doing things right, doing them well, and doing them timely.  HERE’S WHAT I THINK:

1. For some reason, we both feel the need to push ourselves too hard sometimes–either because others expect it of us or we expect it of ourselves.

2. We are largely the source of the suffering we experience in those situations.

3. We would suffer less if we could acknowledge that we expect too much of ourselves, that we force ourselves to rise to unreasonable demands–those placed on us and, more often, those we place on ourselves.

4. Life is too short, too precious, to get so worked up over most of the stuff we get worked up about. It’s not healthy emotionally or physically. After all, what’s the worst thing that could happen if we don’t try to do too much? Really? What could possibly be worth having a stroke or a nervous breakdown over?

Did I get fired because I didn’t finish the tasks I’d been given? NO,

Did I feel like a failure at the end of the day? YES. Why? Because I am way too hard on myself.

What actually might happen is, since my bosses KNOW what a hard worker I am, they will, when we bring this up at the next department meeting, HAVE to listen to us when we tell them they were unfair and unreasonable to put us through what they did.  If I had worked through lunch, I probably would have completed my list, but I forced myself to take at least that much time to detox as best I could; it didn’t help much, but god only knows how much worse I would have felt if I hadn’t done that.

Okay, I hope all of this makes sense and makes you think. Think about your mom having a meltdown because she expects too much from herself the next time you’re in the same kind of situation–maybe you can feel more empathy for me than for yourself, which may help you slow your ass down and give yourself a break!

I love you, girly.

Mom.

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Recipes

Turkey Meatball Sub

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The other day I made some jokes about how crazy people get about the meat sale in my hometown.  But this really is no laughing matter.  It’s a serious matter, well a matter of serious savings that is!  Check out this post from my friend Allison–make that posts.  One post was not enough for the meat sale 🙂

 

I was thinking about the meat sale last night when I pulled the frozen ground turkey out of the freezer to defrost.  I had bought it at the LAST meat sale (was that back in tax season??), and conveniently froze up individual servings of the ground turkey for future  use.  I’m so dang smart sometimes 😉

I decided to make a meatball sub for dinner.  I didn’t have a recipe in mind, I just sort of started adding things to a bowl.  Here’s what I ended up with:

  • 1/4 package of 99% lean ground turkey breast (about 5 ounces)
  • 1 egg white
  • 1/4 cup chopped white onion
  • S&P
  • 1 sprig fresh oregano (shout-out to the backyard garden 🙂 )
  • 1 sprig fresh rosemary
  • Sprinkling of marjoram
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 tbsp quick oats

Meatball mixins:

 

I mixed everything together, then used a small cookie dough scooper to scoop out 6 meatballs.  I placed the meatballs on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray, and popped them into a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes.  Then I flipped the meatballs over and cooked for an additional 5 minutes.

Meat-a-ball-ay:

Next, I cranked the oven up to 415 degrees, and prepped some brussel sprouts for roasting.  I swear I must have bought the never-ending basket of brussel sprouts last weekend.  I feel like I’ve eaten them every night, yet haven’t made a dent in the basket!  Check out this post for how I roast brussel sprouts. 

While the brussel sprouts were cooking, I stacked up the turkey meatballs on a Joseph’s Low Carb pita, topped them with 1/4 cup Classico Fire Roasted Tomato & Garlic sauce, and sprinkled with S&P and Red Pepper Flakes. 

Then I wrapped it all up in some foil, and tossed into the ovenfor the last 5 minutes or so of the brussel sprouts cooking time.  Anytime I’m trying to make a healthified sub, I make sure to do this step.  It gives all the flavors a chance to marry and the pita gets nice and warm and soft.

Brussel sprouts make a comeback:

Altogether now:

Delish!  I love when I can make a healthier version of a food that’s typically on the do-not-eat list!

Stats on dinner:  369 calories, 36g carbs, 6g fat, 51g protein, 14g fiber

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What I ate

Good things come to those who blog

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First thing first, check out this video of Caitlin on The Today Show for her project Operation Beautiful.  I cannot wait to meet Caitlin at the Healthy Living Summit next week!   Super excited 😀

Last Friday, I made a confession on my blog.  I indeed hoard the Smucker’s blackberry preserves when there are leftovers from breakfasts at work.  For some reason, the catering company we go through hasn’t been bringing blackberry preserves the past few months!  😥  We have an abundance of strawberry and grape jelly in the break room–but no blackberry preserves.  I’m not a big fan of jelly….  I love the seeds and tartness of the preserves.  Jelly just tastes cheap to me.  I guess I just have a high-class palate 😉 

To make this situation worse, I was down to my last blackberry preserve packet, which I have been hoarding for quite some time.

The other day, I got this photo via text from my friend Jaci, who happens to work for the jelly company in question:

Are you kidding????????  Tim (jaci’s BF) dropped the preserves off to me today, and I now have a total of 54 single-serve blackberry preserves in my possession!  AMAZING :mrgreen:

Breakfast #1

Day #4 of eggins & broccoli (with reduced sugar Heinz Ketchup):

This is what happens when I get super busy… Same foods day in, day out.  Good thing they were tasty!

Breakfast #2

You guessed it – overnight oats 😀

Every time I eat overnight oats I am momentarily awe-struck by how amazing they are.  I just love LOOOOVEEEEEE them!  So creamy and the absolute perfect complement to any berry!

Lunch

I got home pretty late last night, and was having trouble finding something to pack for lunch.  I did some freezer diving, and found some taco meat I had cooked up and frozen a while back.  HELLOOOOOO Taco Salad!

This salad consisted of 1/2 a bag of lettuce, 1/4 lb 92% taco seasoned ground beef, 1/2 a roma tomato, 1/4 chopped red onion, banana pepper rings, and 2 tbsp breakstone’s fat-free sour cream in a ridiculously large bowl:

I don’t usually put carrots in my taco salad, but this was the lettuce mix on sale at acme this week so I just embraced it:

Ready to chow!

TASTTTTTY.

Stats on lunch:  285 calories, 25g carbs, 8g fat, 27g protein, 12g fiber

 

Inspirational quote of the day:  There are no unreasonable goals, only unreasonable timelines.

 

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Recipes

Spinach Caprese Quesadilla

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While at work yesterday, my mind kept drifting to dinner–but nothing was sounding good to me.  Since I have an abundance of tomatoes and basil (thank you backyard garden for your fruitfulness 🙂 ) I decided to do something caprese inspired. 

Caprese is one of my all-time favorite Italian dishes, and it typically consists of tomato, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil.

Before diving into to the caprese, I got to work on some brussel sprouts.  I halved 10 brussel sprouts, trimmed down any rough ends of the stem, and then made a small slit down the core of each sprout half.  I read that making this little slit on the rougher part of the sprout helps to ensure even cooking.  I put the sprouts on a cookie sheet that was liberally sprayed with cooking spray, then seasoned them with S&P, and gave them a good toss before throwing them into a 415 degree oven for 17 minutes.

Brussel sprouts!

Now onto the caprese!  First, I sliced up 1 roma tomato and 1 Sargento light mozzarella string cheese and put them into a bowl:

Then, I drizzled the tomato and mozzarella with 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar and a 1/2 tsp olive oil and sprinkled with some salt and pepper.  Next I added 3 sliced up fresh basil leaves and tossed everything to coat.

Meanwhile, I topped a Mama Lupe’s Low Carb tortilla with some fresh spinach and topped with the tomato mozzarella mixture:

I topped this off with a second Mama Lupe’s low carb tortilla, then I popped this baby onto the George foreman grill for about 5 minutes (until the tortilla was crisp and the cheese was melty):

None of these pictures do the quesadilla justice!  If you like caprese, you will love this:

I’m hoping I get some tips on taking pictures of food indoors at the Healthy Living Summit!  I can never seem to get indoor pictures quite right!

By the way, if you love caprese too check out the recipe I tried for hot caprese! I also added a “rating” scale to my recipe page :mrgreen:

Stats on dinner:  325 calories, 43g carbs, 12g fat, 20g protein, 14g fiber

 

A few hours after dinner, it was time for my night time snack.  I was craving a green monster smoothie, so I put the following into the blender:

  • 1/4 cup Stonyfield Farms Fat Free Yogurt
  • 1/2 cup Almond Breeze unsweetened vanilla almond milk
  • 2 cups spinach
  • 1/2 cup fresh frozen strawberries
  • 1/2 cup fresh frozen blueberries
  • 1 packet Truvia
  • 1 ice cube

Green Monster:

This guy was so much GREENER in person than in these photos… my camera was being stubborn last night!

Stats on the green monster:  119 calories, 24g carbs, 2g fat, 8g protein, 6g fiber

 

Question:  what’s your favorite “healthified” Italian dish?

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Fitness, Restaurants

5 steps forward, 5 steps back

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Over the past 4 months I’ve had on-again off-again knee problems.  🙁

I’ve played soccer since I was in elementary school, and never had any issues.  This past spring, I decided to take up running.  I was AMAZED by how much I enjoyed it!  About a month into my newly found passion, I had a sharp pain in my right knee during my morning run.  I didn’t twist the knee, or land funny, or make any other type of movement to cause the pain.  It just sort of happened.  I attributed the pain to weakness (i.e., “push yourself harder, Mary“) and ran about 1 more mile to my house.  That genius move resulted in me limping around for about a week or so.  I tried several times to pick up where I had left off, with no success.  I even went to see an orthopedic doctor who told me “some knees just aren’t made for running.”

Unacceptable.

Then a couple months ago I developed a plan of attack in the form of my interval training plan.  Basically, the plan was to start off with walking/running intervals and slowly increase the running time over a period of weeks until I was running the entire time.

Things were going super smooth, and I was up to 7 minutes running and 3 minutes walking…. that is until I hurt my knee again on vacation a couple weeks ago.  I think this time it was due to overuse–we did a TON of walking and I was still doing my regular intervals on top of it.

It’s been 2 weeks since vacation, and I’ve tried several times to get my run on.  This was not going well at all — I could only do 1/2 of my regular intervals before feeling the pain start.  At least I have learned my lesson and now stop running at the first sign of knee pain!

So this morning I decided to start the interval all over again… yup… all the way back at 4 minutes walking, 2 minutes running.  Slowly but surely, I am determined to get to running a 5K with no knee issues!

Breakfast #1

Leftovers from yesterday’s eggins–with one new addition:

Heinz reduced sugar ketchup.  After my ketchup post last week, I started thinking about how much ketchup I actually consume in any given week.  As much as I love ketchup, it’s really just a bunch of empty calories.  So I decided to give this reduced sugar version a shot:

The ketchup was pretty good — though it oddly tasted sweeter than regular Heinz ketchup.  I’m going to try and use the reduced sugar ketchup in place of the regular stuff as much as possible.

Stats on B#1:  161 calories, 9g carbs, 5g fat, 21g protein, 2g fiber

Breakfast #2

Overnight oats 🙂

Last night, I put the following into a bowl:

  • 1/2 cup uncooked quick oats
  • 1/2 cup almond breeze unsweetened vanilla almond milk
  • 1 tsp brown sugar
  • sprinkling of cinnamon

I mixed everything up and left them in the fridge overnight.  This morning I added about 6 sliced strawberries (thank you to my mom for hooking me up with these DELICIOUS strawberries) and a 1/3 cup fresh blueberries:

All mixed up:

These overnight oats never get old 🙂

Stats on B#2:  236 calories, 45g carbs, 5g fat, 6g protein, 7g fiber

Lunch

My all-time favorite hummus comes from Nate’s Deli in Cleveland.  A close second would be Trader Joe’s hummus.  Unfortunately, neither of my long distance relationships with Nate nor Trader Joe are able to satisfy my frequent  hummus cravings, so I’ve been on the hunt for a tasty hummus that I can find locally.

I picked this up at the grocery store last night:

I especially liked the simple list of ingredients (chick peas, tahini, fresh spinach, lemon juice, garlic, and salt) and it is only 33 calories for a 2tbsp serving!  The flavor was a little on the bland side, however.

For lunch, I made up a sandwich with a 3.5 ounce grilled chicken breast, 1 tbsp Amir Hummus, 1/2 a roma tomato, sliced red onion, and 1 cup spinach sandwiched between a Pepperidge Farm 7 grain Deli flat:

Notice that I used my tupperware lid as a plate instead of using a paper plate.  “Kelsy” would be proud 😉

Now that’s what I’m talkin bout:

I could eat this every day:

I also had some cucumber salad on the side.  This cucumber was straight from the BF’s mom’s garden!

Stats on lunch:  323 calories, 37g carbs, 3g fat, 40g protein, 10g fiber

 

Question:  Have you ever had an injury that prevented you from doing an activity you really enjoy?

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