More samples came, vegan wannabe

First of all thanks for those who encouraged me about my fitness level, really appreciate it. It’s good to have other’s point of view.
Anyway, this morning was Yoga X and though I wasn’t at my best, I still sweat A LOT, especially for the first 46 minutes.
After showered, refueled with this super thick oatmeal with homemade almond milk, topped with yogurt, pb and a banana.

pb and yogurt are somewhere in there...

Cut up fruits for my afternoon snacks

orange, peach and papaya. The papaya wasn't that ripe..ugh...not sweet at all..but I still finished them

I brought 2 slices of Rudi’s Organic Bakery Honey Sweet Whole Wheat Bread, and a cup of low fat plain yogurt for my second breakfast at work, but didn’t happen. Instead, I ate 1 slice for my late morning without any spread and it was good! Sometimes I enjoy eating a toast without any jam, butter or pb without toasting it. A good bread will taste good even by itself.

On the way home, I had to stop by Costco to get “girls needs” (hint for monthly stuff) and also picked up some other stuff: frozen edamame and strawberries. I start to get tired of only having orange and peach with unripe papaya. I need some more colorful fruits in my plate!

Got home and I got another surprise!

GNU foods flavor and fiber samples!

GNU foods is generous enough to let me sample their seven flavors (Thanks Robyn!) And to top it off, they sent me 2 bars of each flavor! I took a look at their nutritional info and these bars have 12 g fiber serving and only 130-140 calories! That’s so good and we all know we always need a lot of fibers in our diet, right? I can’t wait to sample these and review them!

Also I got a sample from Clif’s newest bar, Clif Crunch Granola Bar. This is one of the 4 flavors, Chocolate Chip. The other three flavors are: Honey Oat, White Chocolate Macadamia Nut, and Peanut Butter.

I wish I can sample the other three but at least I can sample one of them right? Better than nothing.

Dinner was almost raw and vegan style, if I didn’t have 2 bowls of this veggie in chicken broth soup..haha.

Sorry to disappoint vegans/vegetarians, but I have no intention to limit my food choices. I feel I am fortunate enough that I don’t have any food allergies/intolerant like some people. However, that doesn’t mean I will indulge all kinds of meats here and there. I am still conscious enough to make healthy food choices.

So here’s my vegan food part:

nuked edamame with raw tomatoes and carrots

Dipped with hummus-nutritional yeast mixture. Yummy!

With Carrs Water Crackers..delish!

Tomorrow is already Wednesday and this weekend will be a long weekend. Got plans for it? We have NO plans, except we might get that couch or the bar stools that we saw last time. Also I might want to try making Averie’s “Spicy Doritos” Cheezy Dip this coming weekend now that I got my nutritional yeast.

 

Mad of fibers!

I felt a bit weird for not waking up in the morning for workout. But sometimes I missed to sleep in a bit during weekday.
Anyway, since I didn’t workout this morning, I kept my breakfast a bit light.

plain soymilk, no sugar added.

banana is getting riper

I decided to pack 8 oz of edamame for my lunch. I need more protein

I also packed another stuff for my second breakfast in the office. Plain yogurt with a bit of dried cranberries and Kashi® GoLean Crunch Cereal. Uh, I didn’t finish that whole bag. In fact I only had 1/2 of it!

Little I knew, one of my colleague bought me and my other co worker a breakfast. Doh! I was already kinda full from my yogurt cereal breakfast. He bought us the breakfast as a token of appreciation for helping him launching the project on time. Anyway, the breakfast was Chinese style omelet. It’s an omelet wrapped inside egg roll wrap. I had 1-2 bites just to try it. It was good but kinda greasy for me. I brought the rest home so my husband can have the rest.

took this after I got home. It was good but greasy

So, what’s dinner? Another round of fiber madness!!

I didn’t cook much except boiling the veggies and baked the remaining carrots. The rest of the food were left overs from yesterday and day before.

So is my tomorrow’s lunch

veggies, carrots, chicken, brown rice

Ok I better go down and marinate the chicken in the fridge so tomorrow we can have a new dish for dinner.

 

Delayed post

Ok, finally I got a time to sit down and update this post (one day later).
So, I did my workout this morning and felt great! So after that I need to refuel my energy, right? Especially after working out early morning in empty stomach, that was quite a challenge.

soymilk w/ protein powder & banana, my post workout meal. Same pic as yesterday

I got 3 huge ripe Granny Smith apples from my mother in law last week and after finishing almost my other fuji apples, I knew it was time to dig in those too. At glance, I thought these apples would be mushy and soft because they looked kind of beat up.

huge granny smith apple on left, compare to the tiny fuji apple. Very ripe organic papaya

But I was wrong. The granny smith apple was so crunchy and juicy! It has a little tangy taste but not much. The only complain I have is the skin was a bit too thick. I could even peel it off while eating it. Regardless, I just swallowed the whole thing.
My aunt gave me a papaya from her own backyard. It looked very ripe and sweet so I decided to cut it up and include it into my fruit pack.

yummy fruits!

After I got home, I had to prepare dinner quickly because, tonight was the new LOST on abc! Good thing my brother got some Chinese food take out so at least the boys would get their meat dish. As for me, I just boiled bok choy and gai lan, sauteed celery and remaining green beans topped with Natural Directions® Organic Ketchup and microwaved costco’s edamame.

yummy fibers!

Oh, I also baked 2 huge carrots. I think I baked them a bit too long. They were a little dry and a bit caramelized. But still good!

garlic chicken and beef broccoli. I feel bad for the guys to have these

After I was stuffed, I decided to cut the fruits tonight because tomorrow is my workout day off, so I want to get extra snooze.
Same stuff as this morning, but only granny smith apple and the remaining papaya.

Also I whipped up egg white omelet for my lunch! I used 6 egg whites and reserved the yolks for other stuff. I hate to throw them away, such a waste and I hate wasting food. Eggs are NOT CHEAP! The omelet turned out so fluffy and huge. I had to complement myself to be able flip this huge omelet without breaking!! Woot!

huge egg white omelet! Lots of protein and fat free!

mixed in some frozen veggies in there. yum!

Here’s my lunch for tomorrow!

egg white omelet and mixed veggies underneath. fiber and protein!

Egg white omelet is best eaten with ketchup! And it’s better when it’s ORGANIC, like this Natural Directions® 100% Organic Ketchup!



I love this ketchup! It tastes lighter compare to regular ones and for sure there’s NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP unlike other ketchup brands! For price wise I’d say it’s a bit more expensive than regular ones, but hey, you’re paying for what you get. You pay a bit more, but at least you know that you’re not putting a bunch of chemical junks into your body. Health comes first, right? I highly recommend this ketchup to anyone that wants to make a switch. It’s not easy to find a good organic ketchup with comprehensive ingredients.

 

What’s going into the belly?

Today was a little windy and chilly in Southern California, despite the bright sunlight during the day. Anyway, it was a nice weather to take a nap and off from work..haha. But no, I still went to work. Gotta keep the paycheck coming in right?

Ok now onto my food for today.

MORNING & AFTERNOON
As usual, I got up around 4:45 am to do my Day 89 P90X Lean Recovery week. Gosh, I can’t believe I almost done with my P90X!

- 1 cup of plain soymilk mixed with 1 scoop of Designer’s Whey Chocolate Protein Powder
- 1 medium banana (not pictured, I was too hungry to devour it after my P90X Cardio X workout this morning)
- 1 cup of Kashi Go Lean Crunch Cereal – I love this thing and I can eat it as my snack. But my body is pretty sensitive to any crackers or dry cereals. If I have a little too much, I’ll develop a canker sore in my mouth, even though I drink lots of water afterward.

After finished my post workout meal, I cut up some fruits for me and my hubby for lunch. Pretty much my day to day lunch is a left over from the night before dinner plus cut out fruits. Pretty simple yet healthy

simple yet healthy

From top left clockwise: pickled cucumber and jicama in lemon juice, sliced 2 small fuji apples, 1 slice of homemade whole wheat flaxseed bread (this is for my breakfast at work, along with my cup of green tea), grapes & orange (for after lunch dessert), and the lunch (brown rice, yu-choy sum veggies, some minced beef and my mom’s homemade chili paste)

And I also didn’t forget to bring my Larabar® Peanut Butter and Jelly, which I got as sample from them. I got total 4 bars to sample, but unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to take pictures of the other 2 Yeah, I only have 1 left after I had this for my mid morning snack.

The flavor I had today is Peanut Butter and Jelly. I am not a sweet tooth person and majority of other protein bars I tried were either very sweet or very sticky. This one, however, is DELISH! It has a nice sweetness of the dates and the a hint of tangy from the cherries. I could even taste the cherry pieces in there as well! One thing that I am a little not too fond of it is the density of the bar and also after having it, I feel like my throat feels a little dry and I had to drink 1 1/2 12 oz of water to wash it off. But overall, this bar is pretty good. One thing that I like the most is the simplicity of the ingredients. It only has: dates, peanuts, unsweetened cherries and salt. HOW SIMPLE IS THAT! NO gibberish chemical names, NO unpronounced ingredients, NO evil sugar, NO high fructose corn syrup just to name a few. The sweetness comes naturally from the cherries and the dates! Love it! I’d say this is one of my favorite!

DINNER
I realized I didn’t have much stuff in my fridge so I decided to have a High Fiber Dinner. Yup, the name said it all. I’ll cook a bunch of vegetables and very minor meat. So here it is:

Clockwise from top left: left over minced beef, boiled broccoli and bok choy, edamame, pickled cucumber and jicama, baked carrots, grape tomatoes.

Man those are SOOOOOOO GOOD! I was stuffed and there were still left over too! So I packed them to become my tomorrow’s lunch

colorful lunch!

Hungry yet?

Don’t worry, my hubby also has the same thing. I made quite a lot so even after we packed the food for our lunch, there was still 1 bowl of boiled bok choy and broccoli left.

I remembered I only had 3 slices left of my whole wheat flaxseed bread and my hubby took all of them for his breakfast this morning.

Argh, only 3 left and they were gone after I came back. Hubby took them for breakfast.

So I decided to make an egg white whole wheat pancake! I got the idea from Jessica. It looks so good so might as well I tried it. I didn’t really follow the recipe to the t, but the basic ingredients are the same (egg white (I used 3 eggs because the ones I have are pretty small, wheat flour and milk (I used plain soymilk). I also added a bit of dried cranberries. It made 9 mini pancakes. They were really fluffy and light! I can eat just like that. No need syrup, honey, butter or anything.

Yummy!