Oatmeal and Crack

Halloo my pretties! I'm currently just a'munchin on an apple after my workout, and chillin wit da roomie and kittay! I have been lazy lazy lazy busy busy busy lately and keep meaning to post. 

This morning I made baked oatmeal for the 3rd time this week...this stuff is like crack! I mean, you eat it and all you want is more! ...like crack, right? Speaking of addictions I have (I'm addicted to OATMEAL, not CRACK, in case I confused anybody...), I also felt terrible this week on the days I couldn't workout because of the snow. It makes you feel so much better! And congrats to ANNA who ran 6 miles!!!! I AM SO PROUD! I didn't mean for that to be in caps, but it happened and I'm not changing it because it is THAT EXCITING! I liked your pic of you crossing the "finish line" (weren't you on a treadmill??), but this is more how I imagined it:

More accurate pic of Anna crossing the finish line! I call it ANNECHORN

My photoshop skillz need some work but I will be as good as Anna soon enough. We finally got our internet fixed today, so we don't have to steal borrow our neighbors' anymore, which means, hopefully, that I will be blogging a bit more since I don't have to stay in certain places in our house to get internet (thankfully, the one place I got it was in my bed!)! 

Unfortunately, however, that time to get a long blog in is not right now. I need to get my stanky self to the shower and prepare for the night. BUT, tomorrow I will be back on track and will make time to give you all a food/life rundown! Have a good night er'ybody and TGIF!!-Claire

Leprecorn

Actual picture.

I. Am. A. Beast.

No seriously. I'm really a beast. I did it.


I RAN 6 MILES.  

 ...not that it's a big deal or anything, just wanted to let you know.


Alright, who am I kidding? (by the way, to keep with Claire and my recent trend of revealing our mispellings, I'll have you know that I just wrote, "Alright, ho am I kidding?" I seriously considered keeping it because that would totally make me sound like a pimp daddy) 


I'm SO proud of myself! That's the longest I've ever run consecutively except for maybe that time I was being chased by the cops! Not only did I run each and every one of those suckers, I did it in the best average mile time I think I've ever recorded for myself - 47 minutes flat!! :D In fact, I ran the whole thing like this:

An action shot of me crossing the finish line

WHEW, I can finally cross that one off the list for my half-marathon training schedule (I missed it last weekend due to a hectic schedule).  7 miles is on the plate for this Sunday! Hopefully it'll go just as well...


Something else I accomplished yesterday: not biting my nails! Quitting the habit one of my New Years' Resolutions this year, but unfortunately (like the thousand other times I've tried to stop) that one flew out the window after the first two weeks.  So I've made a new effort to make this the REAL time I stop for good! I think I'll try to update you and make sure to let you know that I didn't bite to help me stay accountable...help me out! :)


Anyways, something I did bite yesterday was foooooooooood! (that wasn't a lame segue or anything...by the way, why is segue spelled like that?!) Here's b-fast:

Baked pumpkin and raisin oatmeal

I hadn't made baked pumpkin oatmeal in quite a while, and it was SO good. But I ran out of pumpkin on the last scoop! Hopefully I have an extra can sittin' in the back of the cubby, though....tea was pumpkin oatmeal's friend, too:

PG Tips black tea

BFFAEAE

So I've recently gotten pretty into black tea - my friend Ted has this tea at his house and I got hooked on our snowed-in weekend. Whereas he taught me to make it with some honey and milk, I got some for myself and decided that I would try getting some almond milk!

Since it says it's PURE almond it makes me imagine men sitting in a factory squeezing almonds really hard to get a drop of milk out...sounds plausible. Will someone fact-check that for me?

I am totally an almond milk convert now. This vanilla flavor is supah sweet and delicious! Puurrrrfect for my tea - it almost makes it taste like hot chocolate! I will be using this a lot more the future.

Since I am really runnin' low on the grub right now (gonna have to make a grocery triparoo this weekend) lunch was pretty boring, but still good, because it was one of mah fav on-the-go mealios:

Pee Beej (we're on a nickname basis)

Lunch also included a rotten pleasantly browned banana sliced up into vanilla greek yogurt and some carrot chips and roasted garlic hummus:

This wasn't actually very good...at all

I like eating carrot "chips" and hummus because it makes me feel like I'm eating REAL chips and dip!

After helping Joseph with his dreaded Spanish homework for this week (he initially addressed the assignment he had to email to his teacher to "el teachero"...) I was ready for a mid-afternoon snik-snak of one of my favvvvvorite snacks!

Cheez + crackz

Cheez and crackz make me hap!

A couple hours of procrastinating homework later, I had worked (or not worked, rather) up an appetite for some tuna helper with peas that Joe was making:

Last fud of the dai

Yum! I finished off the meal with half of a mini Hershey's almond chocolate dipped in some PB, but I don't have a picture because it jumped into my mouth before I could snap one. Those pesky chocolates!

(Insert highly impressive 6 mile run + some heavy duty weight lifting here)

I'm awesome! You're awesome!

Have a grrrreat Thursdai! Weekend's almost here! :D -Anna

Good Tuesday? Check!

Lots to do today again? Check! Where did this week go?? It's already Hump Day?! (which, by the way, I think is one of the strangest and most awkward phrases the English language contains...couldn't we call it "hill" day? Or "bump" day?) A hilarious Wednesday cartoon (sorry for the bad quality - I've written what the texts says below):

"Guess what girls? It's Hump Day! All down hill from here.

...Oh crap."

Anyways, yesterday I did GREAT with my renewed goal of getting back on the healthy-eating train! Plus I did a pretty good job taking a picture of everything I ate, which I'm proud of.  Brekky was a baked batch o' oatmeal and a cup 'o tea:

Craisins, raisins, and oats, OH MY!

I think I am seriously getting to point of being obsessed with oatmeal. It feels kind of like an addiction...any time I'm hungry, I just want to eat oatmeal! There's so much you can do with it AND it's super quick! And the texture is soooo yummy. So expect to continue seeing many of these breakfasts :)

Because I was busy supah busy yesterday and don't really have a good lunch break on Tuesdays and Thursdays, lunch was kind of grazing from 11:30am-2:30pm. It included a greek yogurt fruit medley that I threw together before leaving the house:

Craisins, raisins, and a sliced up bananie

I also chomped on a sweet juicy apple:

That's me, I swear!

...alright, so that's not me. I didn't get a picture of the apple. But I ate one!

I also got one of these bad boyz from the campus convenience store because I was quite hungry and hadn't brought enough food in my bag. It was actually really good!

Whole wheat pita bread, red pepper hummus, cheddar cheese, and carrot sticks

A salty-ish and creamy afternoon assortment

The only strange thing about this box, if you'll notice on the label, is that it offers "style/exercise/nutrition tips" inside.  While I appreciate the little health hints (especially because it's a pretty healthy snik-snak), here's a tip coming from a fashion major: don't take style tips from a snack box.  That's just weird.

Moving onto dinner...

Mashed potatoes, sauteed onions and mushrooms (I'm really trying to make myself like them...) and mini turkey sausage links

An artistic-angle attempt

Joe threw this batch of goodies together at his house before we had to head to Chapel Hill (our hometown 30 minutes away) for jump rope practice - which happened to be a good way to fit in my activity for the day since I was too busy earlier to fit in a gym run! 

So today I'm gonna be just as good about keeping up with mah food pics and am definitely making it to the gym to try to finally run my 6 mile run that I need to accomplish as part of my half-marathon training.

Have a great HILL DAY folks! -Anna

uniHORN

Just so you know: here is why it's called a uniCORN and not a uniHORN :D
oh, and while I'm posting cool links, PLEASE watch this and tell me if you think it's as funny as I do: Raptor eats cheerleader!

Trek and Brekky!

Hola! Today I walked in the coldest conditions I have ever experienced, but now that I'm back in my cozy, warm apartment with my cuddly, warm kitkat I'm feeling much better. The wind chill here was -4 degrees when I walked to class with wind of just over 30 mph...yeah, crazy. They cancelled 8am classes but forgot about us 9:30's who had to make a terrible trek, too! Anywho, I'm home now and I just enjoyed a HUGE, fabulous breakfast that has brought me back to life! A mexican, mostly eggwhite omelette with hashies! I was craving something salty, and I had leftover mexican veggies that I threw in with salsa and cheez!

Salty, cheesy goodness

I also discovered something that could potentially be lethal. Since my electric wok was sitting out (because we used it to make stir-fry...more on that later!) I decided to throw my hashbrowns in there. It's amazing! Because the wok gets screaming hot super quickly, it browned the potatoes ppuurrrfectly! They were crunchy and taste-a-licious! I plopped it all onto my finest china and washed it down with hazelnut coffee in my favorite coffee mug!

Ready to be scarfed

My mug I purchased in Hawaii over Christmas break! This tiki man means "luck"

Hopefully, this little tiki man is going to bring me the luck I need in about 1.5 hours, when I get to my Historical Geology exam. I have another exam tomorrow and 2 papers due then, too, so I'm gonna need as much as I can get! Maybe if I eat an Irish-inspired brekky (...breakfast...) tomorrow it will bring me even MORE! And if I find a leprechaun and stuff it in my backpack I'll be green golden. Anna and I have both been humorously misspelling things lately, so I would just like to let you know I wrote "leprecorn" at first-- as in, a mix between unicorn and leprechaun!! Wouldn't that be the most epic, luck-giving character on the planet?! That's what I want in my backpack! (Why are they called unicorns, by the way? shouldn't it at least be unihorn?) 

Well, I must get back to start studying and stop pondering the origins of mythical characters that can't actually help me on my exam at all. Ta ta for now! Wish me leprecorns luck! Oh, and Anna, good luck to you, too! Maybe you can do an artist's rendition of a lerprecorn using your sick nasty photoshop skillzzz? -Claire

Breakfast = The Bomb

So lately I haven't really been interested in eating as healthily as usual.

Why is this?? Hormones? Am I bored with what I'm eating lately? Not working out hard enough? Brownies and chocolate being EVER PRESENT in my kitchen?? (Kenzie and Kate are always making fresh, gooey brownie batches which they FORCE ME to eat...I never bake sweet goodies, yet somehow it always happens that I eat them as if I had contributed to the preparation process...)

They only LOOK sweet and innocent! (well, they are sweet if we're talking about brownies...)

I really can't figure out why I'm super motivated for a few weeks and then hit a rough week where I just can't seem to lay off the bad foodz.

But I'm determined to stop this madness!! Here's truly enlightening passage that I came across in one of my new favorite blog's recent posts (thanks, http://msbitchcakes.blogspot.com/!! By the way, you should definitely read through some of her posts. I discovered her blog a few days ago and LOVE her stuff - so inspirational!)

"You can probably think of a few circumstances off the top of your head that trigger you to eat - certain emotions (happiness? anger? sadness? stress? boredom?) or situations (certain people/places/events) that cause you to self medicate with comfort foods. But as you think about all those times you've turned to food to comfort you, I want you to ask yourself: Did the food help? If you're honest with yourself, you'll acknowledge that no, the food did not help.

The food did NOT cheer you up.

The food did NOT solve a problem at work.

The food did NOT bring back a lost love.

The food did NOT make your kids behave any better.

If anything, the food introduced a whole new problem. And it surely did nothing to solve the original problem.

Turning to food in situations and for reasons other than hunger are merely habits we've picked up over the course of our lives. They are only habits. We have control over habits. We have the power to change them. We just need to be aware of them and be willing to make an effort to do so."

This is SO true for me.  Now that I think about it, I probably eat things for reasons other than being just hungry like...60% of the time.  So I'm gonna come up with some sort of strategy for stepping back before I eat something and determining why I'm eating it. Any ideas??


Aaaanywho, hopefully you'll see posts a little more frequently in the near future of my meals to help me stay accountable. Blogging once a day this week (even if it's short) is one of my goals!


Breakfast was the trend for yesterday's meal plan! My actual breakfast-time breakfast: baked LOVE oatmeal! :D

I devour hearts baked oatmeal

In the mix:

• 2 packets of Maple and Brown Sugar Low Sugar instant oaties
• Handful raisins
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 egg (tried to make it an egg white, but that yolk just JUMPED out of the shell! Rats...)
• Cinnamon
• Better'n Peanut Buttah heart of lovvveee

YUM! Sooo filling.

Lunch was a quick and easy breakfast meal, too...I was really craving some cheezalicious saltiness and didn't have a lot of time, so I employed a trick from my childhood:

Behold...the MICROWAVED EGG! 

Hey!! Get outta there...

Eggsactly what I was craving

Microwaving an egg is SO easy! I'll admit, it doesn't come out with the same texture I like from the pan (usually it's a little rubber-ier because I want to make sure it's all the way cooked), but if you don't wanna dirty any dishes and have like, 3 minutes, to come up with a meal, here's your trick. The after pic:

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmicrowave.

I also threw some Guy's Seasoning on there to spice it up and try something new...it was interesting, alright, but I think I just like mah salt 'n peppah on there.

The finished product:

Mah 'wich

Toasted whole wheat bagel thin with one egg and a slice of lite provolone cheese. 

Oh hello there, Mr. 'Wich!

Dinner was not, however, breakfast - leftover crabcakes and hushpups! (though I suppose some people may have seafood for breakfast...) No pictures of that meal since I wolfed it down too quick. Ooopsiessssss.

Speaking of wolfing down stuff, here are some pictures of Fonz wolfing down Kenzie's lovely bouquet from a few days ago that I've been meaning to share with you:

The initial contact

The sniff-before-I-take-a-bite phase

The taste

Chewing...and possibly decision that eating flowers isn't the best idea. But who knows? Fonz may have a sophisticated palatte.

Well I'm out! I'm going to try to take a picture of every meal I eat today and track my workout stats to share with you!

Have a turrrrrrific Toozday! -Anna

Love Day Scavenger Hunt!

Happy Monday friends! A food-relevant comic to start your week:

I hope everyone had a lovable Valentine's Day! Thanks for the luuuv back, Claire! So yesterday I told you that I had been planning a special homemade V-Day treat for Joe - a Valentine's Day Scavenger Hunt! Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures during the actually running around, but I have the clues and pictures to describe to you how it was all set up.

The idea was to take him to the most common places we go and enjoy together around the area, and then give him a small goody appropriate for that location. The places and goodies for each were:

• Target (a bag of Almond Hershey mini chocolates)
• Our gym (a bottle of his favorite red wine...you have to read the clue to understand it! We don't usually drink at the gym...)
• The local dollar theater (a coupon book for the theater)
• Lake Johnson park (an assortment of his favorite snik-snaks...kippered herring mmmm fishyyy)
• North Carolina Seafood Restaurant (our favorite meals packed and ready to be taken home to eat!)
• Home! (a final poem and fire in their fire pit waiting in their backyard thanks to Ted for getting it going before we got there!!)

For the actual clues, I printed out each short poem and pasted it on the back of some of my favorite pickies of us. Here are a few of the pictures with the corresponding clues:

Clue #1:

Clue #2

Clue #5:

So there's a little taste of what we did yesterday evening! It was perfect ending with a casual dinnah in at home with just the two of us and our favorite food (crab cakes for me, YUM!). Hangin' out, drinking wine, and sitting 'round a fire are some of the things we most enjoy doing together, so why not treat ourselves to that on V-Day? :D

Joseph's gift for me was a really sweet Marni journal that he got because he decided we should have an "imagination book." The idea is for it to be a little journal that we trade back and forth after each of us enters anything we want into it (doodles, notes, ideas, etc.) that we can look back on a long time from now and enjoy.  

I LOVE his idea and can't wait to see what pops up (there have already been some creative entries on my part today in class while I was daydreaming taking a mental break from the lecture...)

What did YOU do for V-Day? 

More to come later after I hit the gym on what I actually ate the past couple of days! (aside from chocolate...dipped in peanut butter...washed down with wine...)

-Anna

Day of Lovin'!

Today is indeed Valentines day! I'm no V-day hater, but I have only been awake for 2.5 hours and I'm not really feelin' the love from the world. My car died, and now that it's alive the stereo died and the "code" I was given to use to fix it is wrong. Our laundry door broke off, the kitchen sink got clogged and I can't seem to fix it, I have three exams this week, snow is messing everybody's schedules up, and not to mention our place is a dump. I definitely haven't earned the cake Anna promised! Okay, okay I'm done. I did have a good weekend, but sometimes things just seem to build up and happen all at once, am I right or am I right? Thankfully, Linds and I made a trip to da grocery and I found the remedy for ALL my problems:

Oh yeah, baby!

I have had this before, and if you need to be reassured- this stuff is AMAZING! It's so good. I love putting it in oatmeal and on bananas/apples. It's a bit pricy ($5 for a  smallish jar) , but c'mon I shouldn't put a price on happiness, yeah? Lindsey also bought some ingredients with the intention of "being the chef this week," so hopefully you will be seeing (and I will be eating) some delish foods made by her!

I don't have big Valentines day plans other than making myself feel good by being productive and relaxing tonight. Not to mention spending the day with the love of my life!

Jezzy!

I'm not ashamed that I'm a crazy cat lady in the making. I llurrhhvv my kitty! My perfect Valentines day would look similar to this:

But with about twenty ten more kitties

It IS a good day to take a look at everything you love and make an effort to let them know, though. So, everybody listen up: I love you! From my fabulous family to my hilarious, crazy cat friends, I am so thankful for everyone!  And Naners (Anna), the sentiments are mutual because you are the best sissie eva and I'm glad to have you in my life. 

So, here are some things I hope to get done today:

• hit the gym and get a good, hard workout
• do more laundry
• clean my landfill room
• get rid of some clothes (I can't even FIT all mine in my room anymore!)
• STUDY 
• fix the sink, if possible
• eat cinnamon PB on a banana
• go to bed early!! Or at least get in bed early
• read the new cosmo :D

Okay, that's it. Not so bad, right? I can do it. If I get those first 5 done I will feel so much better! Anywho, my friend just came in with some exciting food for our dindin tonight (coconut milk - can't wait to use it!), and I got to get to the gym soon. Have a fabulous Valentines day! -Claire

Happy Luuurrrv Day!

Today is the day to celebrate chocolate LOVE!

It doesn't have to be with a significant other - it can be with anyone in your life you care about! In fact, you can even just love and pamper yourself for the day :) I'm going to do both!

For me, I'm going to make sure I get to the gym today (on my half-marathon training schedule, I'm supposed to be running a 5-K race, but I'm going to run 6 miles at the gym instead since I'm not signed up for a race...also, I'll have you know that when I just wrote "half-marathon" I first wrote it as "half-maraTHONG" ha! Love slip-ups like that!)

"Marathong" according to Google images. Wowzahs!

I'm also going to really try to make good choices about what I put in my body, hydrating and eating healthily, because in the past week or so (with being super busy), it's kind of taken a place on the back burner (really more in the microwave, if we're being literal).

I'm definitely going to show my appreciation for otha loves in my life, too! There will be hugs a-plenty and love notes a-many. If you're in desperate need of some love, tell me! I have plenty to spare! :)

For the love in my life, though, I've put together something homemade and special for him that I hope he's going to really enjoy...but I can't tell you what it is yet! Hopefully tomorrow if all goes well I'll be able to share it with you...

I always got your back, boo (even if it's sometimes more like an unexpected pounce)

Finally, happy V-Day to my favorite partner-in-blogging and best sissy ever Claire!! I love you so much and am so happy to have you in my life! I appreciate your humor (most of the time) and how full of love you are all the time (except maybe when you're hangry, but we're getting better at that...)

SiSsIeS 4 LyFe!

Well I've got a lot to do today, including catching up quite a bit on some bloggin'! We've received another yum-tastic looking recipe from a devoted reader that we'll share, and have some  LOVE we're going to share with our readers, too!...

Have a great lurrrrv day, everyone! :)