Tag: Exercise

Running low on color

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As you know, my mom’s turkey soup met its tragic end (in my stomach!) yesterday at lunchtime. For today’s and tomorrow’s lunches, I decided to bulk up my okra/rice/barley combo from Tuesday with more green beans and a little baggie of frozen cooked chicken (that I rescued from yet another work function a couple months back, believe it or not). Here’s everything together:

sauteeing in the pan

sauteeing in the pan

tupperwared

tupperwared

Yogurt is not worth picturing today because I’m all out of pretty! All I had left to mix in was more frozen banana, cinnamon, and cardamom. It’s delicious, but all it looks like is a mash of yellow and brown, and you don’t need to see that.

Here’s the lunch line-up of okra/chicken, yogurt/banana, green beans, 2 mini muffins, and the other half of this orange:

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Breakfast

This morning, another tragedy struck! After my shattered teapot and the elimination of food at my running club, I didn’t think it was possible. I got to the gym for my regular Thursday morning 6:30-7:15 spinning class to find that the schedule had changed while I was away! The new class is an hour-long spinning + core class with a different instructor. So sad! Maybe I can try it once classes start in a few weeks and I don’t have to be anywhere until 11. But today I am working, so I just hopped on the Stairmaster for a quick (but seemingly endless since I had been expecting spinning!) 30 mins.

Anyway, breakfast was grainmeal with lots of frozen banana bits, my last apple half, and a few dried cranberries out of desperation for color:

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I topped it with yogurt, cinnamon, and cardamom after the oven re-heat as usual:

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Short and sweet

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Last night’s lunch preparation with turkey soup (the last of it), yogurt/fruit, two mini muffins (just in case), carrots/green beans, and half an orange from yesterday’s office haul:

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Today’s yogurt had bits of frozen banana from Monday’s windfall, half of an apple, and three blueberries for color:

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Breakfast

I was up bright and early again this morning at 5:00 for the gym! I did my favorite routine: 5-minute jog to gym, 10 minutes of arms with free weights on an aerobics step, 30 minutes with Good Housekeeping Us Weekly on the Stairmaster, 10 minutes stretching/abs, and 5-minute jog back home, at which point I put the oatmeal in the oven at 375 for 30 minutes and flew into the shower. Running with an umbrella against the windy rain on a pitch-black January morning in New York is not the best part of my day, but if it’s going to be the worst, I’m glad it’s done already!

Breakfast was a repeat with LOTS of yellow since I’m all out of colorful fruit. Grainmeal with yellow bits of more frozen banana and half of a chopped yellow apple in a sunny yellow bowl:

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Topped with yogurt, cardamom, and cinnamon post-oven:

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I wonder what dangerous office treats await today …

Mad dash …

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… in more ways than one!

I ended up eating both of my “emergency snack” mini muffins today around 5pm (along with a Russell Stover orange cream-filled chocolate from the box that materialized in the conference room right next to my desk) because Gina, Kate, and I decided that we would, in fact, meet for our 3.5 mile run through Central Park with the NIKE Running Club. We try to go a couple times each week, mainly because NIKE provides heaps of fresh fruit, bagels, muffins, and pastries after each run. I always stuff as much fruit as I can into my mouth (and sneakily pack more into my empty lunch tupperwares) and intercept the staff as they’re throwing out the leftover bread products so I can hand them to homeless people on the subway.

But tonight, we got bad news: no more food!!!! Gina, Kate, and I looked at each other in horror because that meant we had to run 3.5 miles, not only with no promise of food waiting at the end, but also with an hour + commute on the other side before we could get home for dinner. On the subway ride, we split an orange (also courtesy of the conference room at my work), but needless to say, I was ravenous when I got home at 8:45. But before eating, I had to prep tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch and also deal with this windfall of 13 overripe bananas I scored from a work donation:

bananas BEFORE ... not appetizing, I know

bananas BEFORE ... not appetizing, I know

bananas AFTER, chopped for freezing ... still not appetizing!

bananas AFTER, chopped for freezing ... still not appetizing!

I filled two 32 oz. yogurt containers. I know they don’t look great now, but they are going to make amazing banana bread oatmeal someday … just wait!

I had to think fast for dinner, since it was nearing 10pm. Even though I don’t have to get up at 5 tomorrow since I got my workout in tonight, I still need to be sleeping by 10:30 in order to be functional tomorrow. I stuck a dark chocolate pomegranate VitaTop in the oven for 15 minutes to get the chocolate chips all gooey, and then I sauteed half an apple and half a banana (I found some slightly less mushy pieces from tonight’s haul) in a tsp of canola oil until golden brown:

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pre-work

step 1

step 1

step 2

step 2

step 3

step 3

Everyone knows that VitaTop + yogurt + fruit = brownie sundae!!

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And now it is time for the mad dash to my bed. Good night!

Grains fix everything

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The first order of business this morning was a trip to the gym! Dad picked me (and mom) up at 9:30 for our last family gym outing before I go back to Brooklyn tomorrow morning. After last night, my tum was not feeling up to the steady pounding of a run, so I did 50 minutes on the stairmaster with a People instead.

For breakfast, I turned the kitchen reins over to mom so she could get some of her mixed “grainmeal” under way. Just look at the variety in here!

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My bowl, with chopped pear and banana, cinnamon, and yogurt/cottage cheese on the side:

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Pear!

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OK, off to take inventory of the fridge to figure out what I can bring back with me tomorrow!

Winter again

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Look at what is happening outside right now!

snow

There are 6-8 inches forecasted today here in MA. I wonder if the same thing is going on in NY?

Dad picked me up this morning at 8:30 for another trip to the gym. I did a quick 20 minutes on the treadmill, a round of arms, some stretching/abs, and 10 minutes on Kath’s “squirrelliptical.” (I never noticed it before, but that machine does actually resemble a squirrel!)

Usually, I prefer to run outside, but not when it looks like the picture above! So I settled for the heated car ride to the Y and the treadmill. The treadmill is BORING. I try to break up the monotony by pressing lots of buttons. Pressing buttons is the most exciting thing that can happen to you when you’re on a treadmill (unless you fall off of it or get your towel stuck in the band and break the machine, both of which I’ve done). Since I hate messing around with the incline (and I mostly hate running uphill), I busy myself with the speed. I say things to myself like, “One more minute, and you get to go 1/10 of a mile per hour faster!” (It doesn’t take much to get me excited, clearly.) It seems small and silly, but it works. I spent the first 10 minutes increasing from 6.5 mph to 7.0 mph, the next five minutes at 7.0 mph, the last four minutes increasing from 7.0 mph to 7.4, and the last minute increasing another 1/10 every 10 seconds. I finished off with a cool-down brisk walk for a few minutes.

Given the frightful weather outside, I decided that summer food had no place on today’s menu. I set to work whipping up some Apple-Cranberry Eggnog Milletmeal! Have you ever heard of such a thing?

I started with six more little squares of leftover Hannukah party apple-cranberry pie and added a cup of light eggnog (this was to serve 3). All on the stove in a saucepan:

pie-nog 

Getting mashed up:

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It tasted delicious … but between the natural sweetness from the apples and the sugar from the eggnog, it was a little too sweet. I added about 3/4 cup of fat free plain yogurt to bring it down:

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Sidenote: I do a lot of work with yogurt (which you’ll probably get a glimpse of sometime over the next week), and something to remember when heating it is that high temperatures can kill off all the live, active cultures that make yogurt so beneficial. I turned the burner off before adding the yogurt and hoped that the “milletmeal” was no hotter than 110 degrees so that the good bacteria could stick around.

My breakfast spread (with more Nutcracker Sweet tea):

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And a close-up, with nutmeg liberally sprinkled on top:

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I know it looks slimy, but I’m telling you that the amazing flavors made up for it!

I’m about to head to my dad’s house for the rest of the day and night (more on that later). I started to worry about all the food here at mom’s that might get forgotten and lost in the fridge without my direction (yes, a little crazy), so I’m leaving her this note to remind her what needs to get eaten while I am gone:

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I’m still nervous, but I think mom will be able to manage without me :-).