These are old but both from the Cooking Light cookbook... rosemary chicken and korean barbecue beef... SOOO GOOD! You cannot even tell they are light. The third is a HUGE chicken dinner at a concert in Alexandria. It was really good too... but a little too buttery!

For breakfast I had the waffles/cottage cheese combo again so I didn't take a picture. Same deal with lunch-- I had a pear and the turkey wrap with avocado and sour cream-- yum.



You can't tell from this picture but I made a parfait of Chobani Greek Yogurt (SOO high in protein but needs flavoring!) with honey, flax seeds and blackberries-- yum!

Tonight should be interesting. I'm planning on making chicken cheese steaks... I've done regular but never chicken so hopefully it turns out okay. Should be interesting. I thinned out some chicken breast and it's marinating in some garlic and a touch of hot sauce. I'll probably saute some peppers and onions and top the whole concoction with melted provolone. I will probably use marinara but cheesesteaks are commonly served with mayo and ketchup. Whatever your pleasure. On the side I'm making baked "fries". This is a healthier version than deep fried obviously but paired with the giant sandwich, I could probably use more veggies less starches-- oh well! Come to think of it, maybe the sandwich is enough. I'll saute some extra peppers and onions! Good thinking.



Well... it turned out DEELISH. I'll definitely make that recipe again. I did indeed indulge in my nightly ice cream scoop, and relaxed with a movie. Not a wild Friday night but I'm exhausted so it works. I think I'm kickboxing in the morning...



There are my charts... enjoy!

Dinner was Uncle Ben's whole grain rice in Santa Fe flavor. I've never had it before but it was really good with my grilled fajita chicken and sauteed peppers and onions. I couldn't resist my chocolate fix and I have more on the way after my class... Edy's!



My newest snack: cottage cheese, strawberries, flax seeds and honey-- SO GOOD!!!



Lean Cuisine margherita pizza was lunch. I added some parmesan.



I had a small snack before I taught Jump and Pump. Activia isn't that exciting but it does the trick.






Breakfast was a slim fast, a pear, and a delicious coffee from the God-sent cafeteria.

Day two of recording. So far so good with yesterday. I was right... definitely a little hungrier than usual but it wasn't unbearable at all... and I know I have a lot more food coming today. Here is what the plan is: hopefully it will go well!!

So I just started grad school yesterday at Mason. My Exercise, Fitness, and Health Promotion courses consist of a sports nutrition, sports psychology and a women's studies class on bodies and borders. Last night, my nutrition teacher went batty about a website I absolutely love. Livestrong.com, or Lance Armstrong's website has joined powers with The Daily Plate to make a mega site completely up my alley.

On this site, you can track almost anything you eat. I'm talking specifics. For example, if you eat a Big Mac from McDonalds, it's on there. If you make a recipe from the Cooking Light cook book, it's on there. And, the best part of all, if it's not on there, you can add it yourselves. Just make your own recipes consisting of the foods on the site and you've got a perfectly simple one click away tracking device that keeps you honest. I've recently (well, over the holidays and with my new strength training) gained about 10 pounds. Maybe a little less, and definitely a lot of muscle mass but still! I don't want to start the downward spiral of weight gain--especially now, when my metabolism is the highest!





So, I'm challenging myself to stick to my guns on this one, and instead of taking foods out and putting foods in, I'm going to a make/break one new habit a week. This week, I'm tracking all of my food. Yes, every morsel. If one almond, three carrots and a sip of milk go into my body, I'm tracking it. So, I've "snipped" my page for today for you to see. My calorie goal on the site is 1600. Personally, I think this is low and I'll be hungry, I'm sure, but like I said, I'm not worried about the calories--just TRACKING! The cool thing about Livestrong.com is you can make goals, and it will customize how much you should be eating depending on what those goals are. So I added that too. But, you'll see from this that if all goes to plan, I'm within the 1600 calorie goal. It seems like a lot of food, and it is, but it's healthy food, and it's going to fuel my long days.

As you can see, I had a good breakfast of whole wheat waffles, cottage cheese, strawberries and lite syrup. Lunch was a whole wheat turkey wrap with avocado and sour cream with a pear and some coffee. Throughout the day, I had pretzels with mustard, an activia light and almonds to keep me fueled until dinner. Dinner was a 5-cheese lasagna lean cuisine with parmesan, and frozen vegetables. My new jump off ice cream is Edy's Slow Churn half the fat Thin Mint Cookie!!! So good. I think that's it. It's only 2:31 but if anything is added onto the menu I'll be sure to update.

Alright, back on schedule. It's early Monday morning and I just did my only real obligation of the week!! I guess with all the complaining I do about my online courses, they are good for something. I just finished Jump & Pump, my one-hour fitness class, which I do twice a week. Today we did about 25 minutes of cardio, 25 minutes of lifting and the other ten minutes were for warm-up, cool-down and moving from station to station. We did a circuit of the stairs, the bikes, jump ropes, ladders, and out right running. Each station lasted about 2-3 minutes and then we switched, and repeated twice. After the cardio we did a "body pump" lift, which I sort-of stole from a class I took a few weeks ago.

I have a few more pictures uploaded from the weeks past.

These are two breakfasts I eat. The first, (one of my favorites!!) is two whole wheat Eggo waffles topped with 1/4 cup of 1% cottage cheese, about 8 strawberries and syrup. It's a really filling, high fiber and whole grain breakfast choice--with protein from the cottage cheese! It's also visually stimulating, which adds to the appeal. The second is just some scrambled eggs with a couple tablespoons of reduced fat cheese and ready to serve bacon from Wegman's. I also had two clementines. Nothing special.

As you can tell from the above pictures, I was on a pineapple kick. I made my own pizza one night, Hawaiian, of course, and it was so good! I used Pillsbury pizza crust and the whole process took shorter than to order my own. Plus, it was really tasty. Even my parents, the pizza snobs, loved it! I used the leftover pineapple the next day with-yes, it's true, a white bread PB & J. I don't even like white bread anymore. It left me feeling 10 years old and not in a good way. We had it leftover from a casserole recipe but I think I might just throw out the rest. It's that unappealing to me.

Dinner last night was spaghetti with spicy Italian chicken sausage. We also had broccoli, bread and a salad. I used less spaghetti and more bread to mop up the sauce. I feel like pasta can be pretty lack luster, so I'd prefer crusty bread nine times out of ten. Instead of gulping down some cookies and cake, I just had about 3/4 a cup of Edy's Loaded Peanut butter Cup Ice Cream. So, I still got my sweet fix for about 210 calories. Not bad. I'm trying to get back on track but I suspect it might take me a few weeks into the new year to do that! Tonight-- it's dinner and drinks with the girls (and boy)so I doubt that'll be great for the waistline. No matter, it's worth it. Might as well milk this metabolism for all it's got, right? Well, time for my morning cup o' joe!

Ta-ta.

I'm going to try to make a New Year's Resolution early... be more dedicated to this blog. Not that anyone cares, but it helps me stay on track, and at the offset chance you're reading this, this is for you!

December has flown by, and it's been a whirlwind of bustling around malls, cooking sweets, ham, turkey, everything in between and trying to stay on top of school, work, and having a life. Same old, same old, right?

The nice thing about being in college (among, well, being in college) is that you get these nice long breaks with no commitments other than sleeping in, going out, staying up, hanging around and winding down. No homework, obligations, or anything for almost a month. If I could be having my college winter break right now, I'd be in heaven. Instead, I'm in online class hell, struggling to stay excited about class when everyone else is talking about New Years plans, having time off of work, and enjoying the last of the holiday fun. It's not been horrible, but I'd be lying if I wasn't starting to fade out a little. I love school, really. I'm a big nerd like that, but something about a semester at Nova followed by two online courses throughout December and January only to be rewarded with a three night a week graduate school course load is daunting! I'm just excited to be done with all these prerequisites and on to the good stuff. Speaking of the good stuff, I'm sure that's why you are here.

Holidays, to me at least, more than anything, mean good food with the people you care about. Not to be hokie, but memories are stimulated and created with food, it's true. So many good times have stemmed from families in the kitchen or around the table sharing food. For my family, it's no different. Things in December were busy enough for me to not take pictures of everything, or anything really, so I apologize, but I'll give you what I have.

As you saw earlier, I spent my Thanksgiving in Pennsylvania, with my boyfriend and his family. I begged and begged my mom to do a "Thanksgiving in December" and finally she agreed. So, on a snowy December day when we were stuck inside due to a blizzard, this feast happened. It was everything traditional of an expected Thanksgiving menu. Nothing strange for our family: turkey, stuffing (or dressing, as Susie calls it), mashed taters, cranberry sauce (straight outta the jar, how festive!), green bean casserole, cauliflower and peas with a cheese sauce, tasty dinner rolls and of course, pumpkin pie with fresh whipped cream. As you can tell from my plate (#1... shh), I indulged in everything... with gravy to spare. And it was glorious! The thing about this dinner is that in most cases, you eat it once, and maybe twice as leftovers. This fear of waiting 365 more days for the taste of spicy stuffing, or thick rich gravy is more than I can bear! So, the solution? Load up and go for round two... three? Okay, maybe four. Yeah, I had a total of FOUR Thanksgiving's this year... so no excuses for me over-indulging.

But, our pseudo-Thanksgiving came and went, and very soon we shifted from turkeys to gingerbread men, pumpkin pie to peanut butter blossoms, and cranberry sauce to wintry mint chocolate bars.

These are not real sugar cookies... just leftover pie crust from Thanksgiving. Decorated by this guy... and he was proud.

These are just some delightful peanut butter blossoms I whipped up with Alex. He wasn't there to taste test, but I'm sure you can imagine they were pretty good.

This picture is the ingredients to the beautiful gingerbread house sitting in our dining room. The finished product was worth all the slave labor!

This is Christmas Eve dinner. It's been the same for as long as I can remember... with a few new tricks here and there. We had a sort-of Cobb salad, but it's really just a mish-mosh of everything tasty one could put in a salad: lettuce, tomato, cucumber, avocado, fried onion, bacon, blue cheese and--wow. Good stuff. On the menu was roasted asparagus with Parmesan cheese, these wonderful rolls from Wegmans, baked potatoes and steak fondue--with sauteed mushrooms and dipping sauces a plenty! I love this meal, and yes, it's not super healthy, but for a holiday meal... not bad! The steak is cooked in a wine broth, not much oil topped with mushrooms. Lots of veggies in this meal!

This little number is a chocolate mint brownie in which I found the recipe online. It has pros and cons. The con is that it has to be stored in the refrigerator because of the topping, which hardens the brownies. Also, there is nothing really super special about the brownie layer. Like recommended on the website, you could easily just use store bought or your favorite brownie recipe. The pros-- the topping is delicious, pretty, and rich. It is really festive, too (if you add green food coloring!)

On Christmas morning, I brewed a big pot of coffee for my family, and following a great span of ripping open gifts and taking goofy pictures, we went out to breakfast at Amphora, a really good restaurant in Vienna. I had a really hard time deciding what I wanted (big surprise, right?) but I ended up getting the "ranch omelette." This tasty tex-mex plate had an omelette stuffed with Monterrey jack cheese, onions, peppers, and maybe tomato (I forget). On the side it came with black beans and salsa in a tostado bowl, with home fries. I tried to eat as little home fries as possible but really they were too good to completely resist. I love this restaurant for breakfast, and it was much more appealing than it's rivals, Denny's and Ihop.

And now for the main event: CHRISTMAS dinner. We have a delicious combination of honey baked ham, twice baked potatoes, cauliflower and peas with cheese, green bean casserole, pineapple casserole, and good rolls. I was absolutely stuffed after this... but then had a cookie or two, or three.

The point is, I ate well over the holidays, and I continue to indulge daily. What's life with deprivation? Not one for me. Anyway, it's 8:45 and far too late for me to be awake-- pathetic and true. Hope you all had a Merry Christmas, and have a wonderful New Years.

Bejos!!