Toozday

Phew! I'm finally catchin' up on my posting. Not that they were all that exciting. But I guess everything here is more exciting than YOUR life since you're reading about mine, right?? HA just joshin'. I'm sure you have an awesome life. Anyways, here's what happened on Toozday:

Breakfast was a bomb-diggity bowl of pumpkin oats with roasted slivered almonds. I def think a new favorite! The almonds really add a sweet texture to it:

Pumpkin-mania

Details, details...

Then lunch included a trusty PBJ (though there is no evidence because it had to be wolfed on the run! ...after eating this next item...) and a mediocre attempt at flavoring my own plain greek yogurt:

Cherry pie filling mixed in...not bad, but really not as great as I was expecting

Looks like soft serve with cherry topping mixed in! But didn't taste as good :(

Tuesday was busy, but I made time for the gym for my 4.5 mile scheduled run for my half marathon trainin' and some awesome lifting that I hadn't done before! Lat pull-downs are definitely going to be added into my new strength routine.

Pretty sure my back doesn't look like this though (yet!)

BEFORE my run and iron-pumping, I had my personal training class (have I told you I'm taking a class to become a certified personal trainer? Cool, eh??) and we participated in a hard-core yoga class taught by one of the other already-certified trainers. PHEW! This was waaay tougher than I thought it would be...I've done some yoga before, and it always amazes me how different of a workout it is than what I'm used to. Definitely felt warm and stretched and kind of tired afterwards, but not in the high-intensity kind of was I usually like. Sometimes it's interesting to mix it up!

Dinner, unfortunately, was not documented. But it was yumalicious!! I met up with one of my best friends Laurie, her boyfriend Billy, and another friend Sara, at a local Mexican restaraunt, Cueva de Lobos for dollar taco night! My meal included a beef soft taco and a hard chicken taco. And a junkkkk load of chips and queso dip. That stuff is so dang addicting!!

Sloooooowly catchin' up on my posting. Hopefully today I'll be able to squeeze in another post for yesterday's happenings!

It's almost the weekend! Just think about that all day :) -Anna

Sunday Runday

Happy Humpity Hump Day!

This is a ridiculous picture, but it had to be shared

An accomplishment that I've somehow forgot to mention in my post on Monday - on Sunday I ran 7 miles! My longest run evah! MAN I'm good. Somehow I continue to be able to finish the long runs of my half marathon training without stopping hardly at all (seriously...I don't know how I haven't had to be carried home by somebody yet).

And though last week's 6 mile run was completed in a speedy gonzalez 47 minutes, this week's change of scenery (I ran outside at Lake Johnson park close by - very hilly and tons of people in mah way!) really impacted my time.  1:10 is a little bit longer than I'd hoped for! But I'm still proud of my endurance :D

Also, I have consumed some food and done other stuff in the past few days, in case you were wondering.  Let's get to it!

Breakfast Monday was awesome actually really horrible.

Such a deceptive picture...

...this could have been awesome! I mean look how succulent those razzies look! Alas, it tasted like crap. The failure of an attempt at being creative:

• 1/3 cup steel cut oats
• 1 cup vanilla almond milk
• 1 egg white
• 1 tbs (maybe? more like 2 "shakes") baking powder
• 2 large blobs of cherry pie fillin' from the can
• Slivered roasted almonds
• Raspberries on top

I don't know exactly what happened between tasting all of the delicious ingredients separately before putting it in the microwave for 3 minutes and putting the final product in my mouth, but it was something bad enough to actually prompt me to make another breakfast of Maple and Brown Sugar instant oatmeal. WOW! Major fail.

I love cheese and cats, so actually I would consider this picture a major WIN

Monday was also a busy bee day, so after my breakfast mishap and other dilly-dally morning activities, there was no time to plan for a homemade lunch. So I had a cat for lunch.

Fonzarelli Fotoshoot

What a natural in front of the camera.

Ok...maybe this is a little awkward

Alright, so I didn't eat Fonz, but look how sweet these pics are. He's such a model. Anyways...I actually had to scope out the campus convenience store for a few goodies:

Similar to the tuna salad croissant I recently had from the same place

Mustard overload

BANGIN' croissant

This was realllllly good. The buttery, soft, and flaky croissant was amazing. I do think I like the tuna salad better, but the chicky was still tasty too. I also decided to try this baby:

 Again with the "style" tips? Why??

Pretty dang good, actually

So the granola bar was a little super hard and chewy, but everything else was actually quite good. A decent side dish for apparently very few calories in the whole thing. If one of the sections was filled with PB I think it would be better, though...

After a loooong day of sitting on my butt in front of a computer for one of my computer-intensive classes, I decided that even though it was supposed to be my "take it easy" day for half marathon training, I needed some activity. So I hopped on over to the gym for about 20 minutes of incline speed-walking and 25 minutes of ellipticizing and broke a nice little shweat!

Dinner was quick, easy, and suprisingly dee-lightful! A creative quesadilla of sorts...

The ingredients:

• Brown rice
• Plain greek yogurt
• Shredded cheese
• Butter beans
• Canned diced tomatoes (probably the FIRST time I've ever put tomatoes in anything I've cooked. In my life. Seriously! I'm really trying to make myself like some stuff I've always avoided - and they were really good in this!)
• Feta cheese
• Flour tortilla

I think I filled my tortilla with a leeeettle too much stuff because it was runnin' ALL over my arms, but it ain't good if it ain't messy, right? (Did I just make that up? Let's just pretend like people say that...)

Yum! Tuesday and today's updates to come in the morning (I've been a little behind on tha blogging, but I'm determined to catch up!)

Have a great Turrzday morning folks! -Anna

Saturday Camp Trip

YAY the weather was actually nice this past weekend!! Because of this combined with the fact that Joe and I finally had a little bit of free time for the first time in a while, we decided that Saturday was the day to go on a one-night camping trip!

After a filling and festive Mexican dinner the night before, Saturday morning started out with some basic oatmeal: Quaker Oats Quick Oats, PB, honey, and a sliced up 'naner before we headed to Joe's parents' house for a quick pre-camping visit:

I am such a good photographer. Look at that honey just drizzlin' everywhere.

After a bit of hangin' out with Bev and John (Joseph's mom and step-dad) at their krib (which was only about 10 minutes away from our future camp site), we decided to raid their fridge/cabynetts for some luncharoo. The result was homemade garlic toast with Trader Joe's Organic Tomato & Roasted Red Peppah Soup with some cheez shprinkled on the top and tortilla chips dipped in John's fan-TABulous homemade hummus for me...

No pickies available of the hummus since I scarfed that junk before anyone else saw it...

...and the rest of the bunch enjoyed some brown rice noodles with tomato sauce and garlic toast fuh dippin' (by the way, the brown rice noodles were so tasty! I forget the brand, but I think Bev mentioned picking them up at Trader Joe's...Claire, they're GF - have you tried them??)

After lunch and laying around in the back yard for a tid bit (again, the weather was pHeNoMeNaL! <--- does that kind of writing annoy anyone else as much as it does me? nEwAyZ...) we headed out to the woods behind Joe's grandma's house, where, coincidentally, our camp site was located (actually it wasn't coincidence at all...we've camped behind her house before...)!

We set up camp on some prime real estate, basked in the sun on a sheet while listening to the NC State vs. Wake Forest bball game out of Joe's car (HALLELUJAH, we won!!!), and embarked on a little hike around the woods. A few junk load of pictures from the whole afternoon:

Our campsite next to a big field and under a grape-growing structure of some sort...

The road leading to our heavenly one-night home

Checkin' out tha digs

My handsome camper

Setting up the house

Preparing our key-hole fire for cookin' din din - I'll have you know I carried ALL those rocks over AND the stumps in the next picture!! I'm awesome.

The dining room and fire fuel

Home sweet home!

Happy hiking campers :)

I found this branch that had been completely stripped of its bark and you could clearly see the beaver bite marks - so cool!

Beaver treat

Attempt at an artsy nature photo

Speaking of beavers, we found some sort of rodent jaw bonez on the ground with some chompers still attached!

Arriving back to our site after a sweet hike

The adjacent field - just imagine if those silos were all overflowing with PEANUT BUTTER...I'd wanna go swimming in them

I'm so artsy

PHEW! Get enough photos? Unfortunately I didn't document the very delishus dinner we prepared because I was too busy enjoying the good company and mulled wine that accompanied the food, but it included:

• Chopped potatoes
• Onions
• Cream of chicken soup
• Quartered brussel sprouts
• Baked beans
• Corn
• Kippers for Joseph's snik snak

These were all easy to heat/roast ova the blazin' fire and great and hearty when combined, too (we didn't combine the baked beans, but everything else was pretty much thrown in a stew of sorts).

I LOVE mulled wine!! Here's the recipe that I first learned to make it from (and now tweak to my taste whenever I throw it together).

Anyways, super long post again. Today was busy and full of food, so look out for that on the morrow. 

Have a groovy Tuesday!

Weekend Ketchup

Ketchup = catch up. Sorry I've been on a mini hiatus, friends! This weekend has been great and I couldn't possibly spare any time sitting in front of a computer away from the awesome jawsome people I got to spend time with.

So time to ketchup!

Breakfast Thursday morning was a creamy PB-y batch of Quaker Oats Quick Oats with some cinnamon, raisins, and a dollop of Daisy PB wif some UT (unidentifiable tea since I can't remember the flavah).

Delightful dish

Lunch was an interesting invention due to the fact that I was TOTALLY out of food other than PB, craisins/raisins, jelly, whole wheat bagel thins, and part of a leftover sweet potato. It was pretty gud, though:

...so I combined them! How smart am I?? 

Cinnamon + craisins + PB + jelly = cinnacraybelly sandwich.

Smiley sandwich

Kinda strange combo with tha interesting sandwich, but yummy all the same

My sweet potato-and-a-half with some cinnamon and a packet of Splenda to sweeten it (even further than it's natural sweet-potato-ness) was tossed in the campus convenient store microwave for a bit before I wolfed it down before a test I didn't study enough for. 

I headed to the gymnaziyum after my test to work off all the stress from a busy week! I've recently been inspired to regain some muscle I've lost in my behind area (I like havin' some junk in mah trunk!) due to running a lot (for my upcoming half marathon), so I decided to try 20 minutes of the stair masta! It was tough, and you can rest assured (not that you would be actively worrying, but) that I sweated my little tush off (wait, isn't that what I DIDN'T wanna do?? Hmmmmm...). 

Someone took a picture of my (in the '80s, obviously) at the gym during my workout...

After the stair masta, I ellipticized for 25 minutes and did a back and abs workout. My back is STILL sore from Thursday!

Dinner was superb! Kenzie and I enjoyed some rooommate time and delicious sushi at our favorite place Sushi Sha Nay-Nay (alright, it's not really called that...it's Sushi Tsune, but that's what we refer to it as). To document the event:

What did you get again, Kenz? The Alaskan roll and some sort of tuna roll?

...oops. Dug in before I remembered to take pics!

Crunchy spicy tuna roll and a bowl of steamed rice! Sooooo goody goody gum drops

I was really looking forward to Thursday night because I was planning on hanging out with my roommate from freshman year, Jordan, and her boyfriend, Jordan (funny, huh?)! Two of my favorite people ever! :)

Bein' goofalicious (per usual, with these two)

Me and mah boo!

After meeting them at Girl Jordan's apartment (to differentiate between the two of them, they are often referred to as "Girl Jordan" and "Boy Jordan" by their family and close friends), we headed to East Village (a local bar) to hang out with some other friends and throw back a few beers. A totally awesome night!

Saturday morning included fiber-full waffles and some scrambled eggs made by Girl Jordan and Tiger Woods' apology speech. An interesting combination...

To tell the truth or not to tell the truth...that is the question

Friday really needed to have some homework happen, buuuuuuut...I had a tuna salad sandwich for lunch instead. Let's just leave it at that.

From the campus convenience store

Tuna, green peas, "herbed" mayonnaise, mustard, delicious croissant

...all consumed in front of a computer while procrastinating on doing an assignment due Monday morning. Not the smartest homework decision, but a good lunch decision. The sandwich was actually incredible. I need to make this at home! Some cheez would probably make it that much better, too...

By the way, this post is getting entirely too long, so I'm finishing with Friday's dinner, then will give Saturday its own blurb.

So on to dinnah: a giant success!! Joseph and I decided we were too tired after working on his Spanish homework to cook dinner, but equally inspired to eat Mexican food. The result: trying out the newest local Mexican place up the street, El Cerro!

Tha feast

Assortment of meat and vegetables

OH. MAH. GAH. This was SO delicioso!!! We got a meal that was "for two" which included flour tortillas to fill with ground chorizo, shrimp, chicken, steak, rice, refried beans, guac, sour cream, lettuce, grilled vegetables, and tomato. There was waaaay too much food on the table at once (especially because we both downed a basket fair amount of chips and salsa before the meal was even brought out...), but it was incredible! The metal "podium" it was served on had a little heater in the middle to keep the fillings hot the whole time. Que chevre! :D

My own plate of fillin's

Joseph also sipped a mojito throughout the meal.  Needless to say, we left the place extremely satisfied and very full (and with three days' worth of leftovers!!)

Anyhoozy, like I said earlier, this post way too long...but I just had such an eventful weekend! So Saturday and Sunday will surely be documented - just in the next post. Soon.

Have a great night, babies! Hope your weekend was fantabulous and you have a superb Monday awakening :D -Anna