Family and I, GNU review

I finally took my time and called my mom earlier using Skype! Gosh I know I’m such a bad daughter not calling her for quite a while (last time she was here was around 3 months ago!!)….*sigh* Sometimes I think I am always got too caught up doing my own stuff and keep procrastinate calling her. Felt bad….in some ways. I am always amazed at some people who can call their parents and talk to them everyday. Seriously, what possibly can you talk to them on the phone if you call every single day? Sometimes I hesitate to call my mom because I feel like I have nothing to talk about. Yeah just going to work, come home have dinner, shower and sleep. So majority of the time, my mom talks more about her stuff. My Skype account balance was over, but that wasn’t an excuse for not calling her anytime soon. I’m telling myself that from now on I should AT LEAST call her once a week…or more if I can!

Ok, lets move onto the food part!
This morning, I made another bowl of oats, topped with pb, low fat plain yogurt and some strawberries!!

didn't bother to cut the strawberries in half...I was a bit rush this morning

Cut up fruits for my lunch snacks as well. I’m so glad finally I could have more varieties in there besides orange, peach and papaya.

I knew that the bowl of oatmeal won’t last me until lunch time, so I packed GNU Foods Orange Cranberry Bar as my late morning snack at work.


The first thing that I noticed when opening the package was the strong orange scent. It had a sweet smell, like those orange candy, however, the bar itself wasn’t that sweet! For non sweet tooth person like me, it was tolerable. The bar was a bit chewy but not dense. It was actually considered to be pretty light. I could even taste the wheat flakes and some raisin chunks in between. It had a slight bitter taste though, kind of the bitterness from a fresh squeezed orange juice. Overall, I love this bar, can’t wait to taste the other flavors! For more complete nutritional info, visit their site here.

So today my lunch was consisted of lots of veggies (similar to what I had from last night dinner) plus I brought my nutritional yeast as my dipping. It was super good! Just as an info, nutritional yeast has lots of vitamin B12, thus makes your urine color neon yellow – based on the information that I searched earlier. I was a bit worried when I saw that, thinking I didn’t drink enough water. Usually my urine was colorless because I could drink 8-10 12oz. of water. After I knew it was from the nutritional yeast, I eased up a bit. But I think I’ll go easy on that. Don’t want to overworked my kidney with overloaded vitamin B12 which my body won’t absorb all of it, thus ended up being wasted. That thing wasn’t cheap either!

I was quite full after lunch, even only managed finished one of my fruit snacks, didn’t eat my edamame and yogurt. So those ended up as my dinner, minus the yogurt, along with some boiled green beans and broccoli and 2 whole egg omelets.

For those who live away from their parents, how often do you talk to them? For me, I am trying at least calling once a week. My parents are all the way in Asia so time difference plays some part here. Sometimes I chat with them, mainly my dad, early morning before I go to work, or call my mom in the evening after dinner.

 

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.

 

Sunday recap and thoughts

It’s Monday evening and finally I had a time to sit down and write my post. As usual Monday is always the hardest day for me to focus at work, but in the end I always finished whatever I had in my hands. Anyway, let’s recap Sunday, shall we?

SUNDAY
So I finally got a chance to test out my Garmin 305 Forerunner Heart Rate Monitor for my beach jog. Apparently, my heart rate was only hovering around 150-160 bpm. My normal pace mainly around 150-155 bpm.

More detailed summary

Hm, I guess my endurance wasn’t as great as I thought to be. That was kind of disappointing, especially after I saw how other people could get their heart rate up to 170-180 bpm.
Speaking of which, next time I have to wear the chest strap over my thin shirt, instead directly on my skin. When I took off the chest strap, I got a red blister across my chest plate! It was hurt!

After the workout, we came home and had some breakfast. I had a little bit of raw almond milk left in the fridge so I used it to make a bowl of oatmeal.

nuked for about 4 minutes and topped with PB. It was super creamy! I should've just nuke the oats instead of cooking it on the stove. Speaking of cooking in a pinch!

Rudi's Organic Bakery Cinnamon Raisin and Honey Sweet Whole Wheat topped with PB

Uh, did I just eat all the calories that I burned this morning?

Ken had these white bread plus 3 more Rudi's Bakery Honey Sweet Whole Wheat Bread and a banana I think.

After breakfast, Ken was asking me whether we should just get the couch and the bar stools that we saw yesterday at Living Spaces and be done with it. I was still a bit hesitant because not sure if we should just get one couch with 3 seats or we should get the love seats as well. Also I was all up for the bar stools but then I want to get them together with dining set so the bar stools and the dining chairs will match. Yeah, I’m such a picky person when it comes to furniture coordination. I don’t like seeing things not match to each other. When we were still living in apartment, I could careless about it since we’d move out eventually.

Lunch was just random stuffs that we put together: boiled spinach, nuked carrots, left over Korean soup from the day before, added more tofus in, and steamed sweet potatoes and yam.

Finally I made steamed eggs! A bit watery prolly cuz I added a bit too much water. Still good though!

nuked carrots

Korean pork bone soup with added tofu

steamed yams and 1 korean vermicelli dumpling

Tomatoes and egg

We didn’t go to Ken’s parents place yesterday so that means we would go today. After finished with our lunch, Ken and I started our weekend chores: House cleaning, laundry etc. This time my brother actually helped, though I had to kind of nudge him as a reminder. Anyway, at least he was willing to help. Cleaning is not my hobby, I could tell you that. But I also dislike to see things get dirty and messy. But I always keep telling myself that the longer I procrastinate, the harder I will have to clean it. So might as well I do it more often and I can just roughly don’t have to work too hard to clean it. Ken just cleaned the vacuum cleaner’s filter (we have the bagless vacuum cleaner), so it was actually quite a workout to push that vacuum cleaner on the carpet. Talking about arm exercise there! Not to mention I have to vacuum the stairs as well! I got a good sweat from these activities so I decided to chill a bit and had some treats!

low fat yogurt with cocoa powder and 3 peanut wafers....YUM!

Mix and scoop- YUm. I was at my last wafer at this point.

fresh fruits: orange and peach - mainly these are the only fruits we have in our pantry. There's one big papaya but I didn't feel like cutting it

Of course I didn’t eat all those fruits to myself. Ken had some bites but had to set it aside for later because we were running late to go to his parents place for dinner. No pics, mainly just the typical Chinese food dishes: veggies stir fry with meat, pork bone soup, bunch other stir fry stuff and bought a peking duck. We also had stir fry noodles. I had some of it. Was good.

TODAY
Back to the usual early morning workout again! I am finally at the last phase of my second round P90X, so I gotta bring it! Did lots of push ups, mainly on my toes and some on my knees. I wore my heart rate monitor just for the fun of it. Total calorie burned was only 150 cal! My average heart rate through the whole thing was only around 110-125 bpm. Ugh…another disappointment.

I was going to have my oatmeal bowl before went to work but I was in a time pinch and just grabbed whatever in the fridge. Amazingly, I still managed to cut orange and peach for my afternoon fruit snacks. None for Ken, cause he had to leave earlier than me. So today I had my breakfast at my desk.

Rudi's Organic Bakery Cinnamon Raisin. Yup I had 3 of these!!! 1 Slice was about 100 cal. Heck I ate more than what I burned this morning!!!

A banana for my late morning snack. Was hungry before my lunch time

Had this for lunch: sweet potatoes, yams, spinach and some steamed eggs

Dinner: Fresh sliced tomatoes, boiled gbeans, toasted ww pita bread topped with moz cheese and some steamed chicken meats

Those chicken meat was unseasoned! I didn’t put any salt, soy sauce, pepper, nothing, zero, nada. I just cut them into pieces and steamed them and ate it just like that. It still tasted good, especially for sandwich or “quick pizza toppings.”

Ok, let’s talk about life a bit.
I noticed after I started writing this blog, my life and food are pretty consistent from time to time. I am not sure if that’s a good thing or not. Of course it’s good that I have this consistent routine going on all the time so it becomes part of my life. To sum it up: get up early, workout, work, come back home, eat, sleep (for weekdays), and get up early, workout, come back home, house chores, go to in-law’s place, come back home, sleep (for weekends), rinse and repeat. When you look at it, it’s pretty much the same thing over and over again, without much change.

Yesterday on our way back from Ken’s parents place, we had a little talk about this in the car. Ken pretty much content with whatever we have right now because we have this consistent pace that we know what we’re getting ourselves into it. And he also added he knew that I don’t quite like it. It’s not that I don’t like it but I am worried if I’ll get tired of this routine then what will I do.

Before I started this P90X routine, our routine was mainly work and come home and sleep. Weekends mostly slept in and house chores, visiting in-laws, and sometimes went out. I used to play online games a lot, just sat in front of my computer, playing the whole weekend. Very unproductive, yes and that’s why I decided to do P90X routine. I know I wasn’t thinking of losing weight or getting rip or anything like that. I just want to move my body more, make me feel that I ACTUALLY do something, not just sit in front of computer all the time, even during weekends!

But after nearly 6 months in P90X routine, I wanted to get better in my performance. Before I had this heart rate monitor, I only based off on how I perform everytime I do the workout. I started the beach run last month and slowly developed my cardiovascular. Heck, I always thought I did running, in fact I only did jogging. After I got the heart rate monitor, I realized my endurance wasn’t as good as I thought. It was a bit disappointing in some ways, especially after all these times I thought I pushed myself hard enough which in fact I wasn’t.

Also, now I know how much calories I burned during my workout, I wonder what’s the point of these if I just eat it all back again? I burned 600 something calorie with 1 hour jogging but then I just ate it back with breakfast and lunch. This morning, I only burned about 150 calories and my breakfast alone already more than that. Calories in should be equal to calories out right if I want to maintain whatever I am now? I wonder if I started to have some kind of ED thought. *shudder* Hope not!

Sorry for my rant. I just want to write down whatever in my mind right now. Sometimes it does make me feel a bit better. Just a bit.

Again, hopefully I can win this $40 gift card giveaway.

 

Jogging, furniture window shopping and relaxing

My morning beach jog/run was fantastic! I even did a mini interval run/jog in between, synchronizing with my music. I thought today I couldn’t do much run because my left knee acting up, but that wasn’t the case. Also as usual Saturday morning is our grocery shopping time so we stopped by at Superking Market on our way back. Ever since I found out about them, I usually go there to shop produce stuff. They don’t label themselves carrying organic produce, but I could careless about buying organics. I chose convenience and budget friendly rather than organic. Besides, the stuff look fresh and decent price.
Surprisingly I wasn’t hungry at all after that run/jog interval, though I only did it for 2-3 songs. Usually I had to snack on some energy bar but not today. I still had it in my bag, but I wasn’t feeling hungry so it stayed in tact.

Ok my eyes are starting to closing up and have to shower and go to bed soon. Nite!
Finally, after I came home, I was so excited to taste Rudi’s Organic Bakery Bread for my breakfast!!

Cinnamon Raisin Bread and Spelt Ancient Grain Bread

I toasted both of these goodies in the oven for a bit to warm them up and also to get one side a bit crispy. Yesterday after I received them, immediately I put them in the fridge so they won’t get spoiled. These are organics, can’t stay outside too long, especially with this getting warmer So Cal weather.

fluffy cinnamon bread

I haven’t bought any bread from store for a while but I could remember how it tasted like. It was soft but empty at the same time. Also store bought wheat bread (any kind) always left some bitter after taste in my mouth. But not with Rudi’s Organic Bakery Bread! The cinnamon raisin bread had that typical cinnamon smell and the sweetness came from the raisins and tasted pretty solid. I am not a big fan of cinnamon, but I am not a hater as well. It’s just something I could live without but I won’t refuse it if it’s around either. Overall this cinnamon raisin bread is a must for all cinnamon lover. 🙂

Next is the Spelt Ancient Grain Bread, toasted and topped with Natural Directions® Organic Crunchy Peanut Butter.

Rudi's Organic Bakery Spelt Ancient Grain Bread - toasted and topped with chunky PB

close up view

I’d say this is my absolute favorite! Tasted pretty light, pretty unusual for whole wheat bread. Even the one that I usually make, I have to mix 50/50 with regular flour, otherwise it’ll be a bit dense. I read on a lot of baking sites, most whole wheat bread recipes that use only whole wheat flour tend to be a bit dense compare to white bread. That’s because whole wheat flour doesn’t have as much gluten as regular flour.
Ken, my husband (I think it’s time I should just refer him with his name instead of keep saying “my husband” all the time 😀 ) toasted Rudi’s Organic Bakery White Bread.

first round, a bit too toasted on the other slice

second round, much better! Not too burned!

He had total 4 slices of those, plus another 3 slices of my homemade whole wheat bread. He ate all of those plain, no PB, butter, nothing, zero, nada. Just plain toasted bread slices! I took a little bite of the white bread. I couldn’t remember when was the last time I had white bread! It tasted a bit sweeter than the wheat ones I had earlier (sweetness from the raisins doesn’t count), and much fluffier as well.

warm homemade almond milk

Delicious breakfast on Saturday morning!

I was feeling like to have my usual jasmine green tea

Ken was nice enough to brew some Ti Kuan Yin Loose Leaf tea. I had 2 cups of this

While we were having breakfast we decided to go to Living Spaces to shop for our living room furniture. Seriously we’ve been planning on getting furniture ever since we moved, but always got delayed. At least I want to get rid of this ghetto looking futon from my living room:

After we finished breakfast, showered, we went straight to the store, which wasn’t too far from our house. Walked around the store, saw some dining table sets,bar stools and our eyes went on this sofa:

Source: Living Spaces Website

Looks pretty nice and we actually wanted to get it, along with some bar stools that we saw. In the end did we get it?
Sadly, NO. Ken said he wanted to wait a bit for the sofa but next week we might want to get the bar stools. Why next week? It’s a long weekend and we have this wishful thinking that the store might have some big sale going on. We’ll see.

After that we headed out to have ramen for our lunch. We haven’t been to this place for a while so had to circle around a little bit because the “human GPS” which was me kinda forgot the cross street thus making a big circle to finally get to here:

Kinda funny the store uses "Gomen" as its name. Gomen in Japanese means "Sorry"

It was a small restaurant, and pack as usual during lunch time. Thus the meaning "Gomen" because the customer had to wait a bit for the table? haha.

Good thing it didn’t take us long to get a table. I was pretty starving so after skimmed the menu, I decided to get Combination Any Ramen with Gyoza Combo. I chose Chasu Ramen, can’t go wrong with that. Ken chose Yasai (Mixed Vegetables) Ramen.

Gyoza aka potstickers came first

Finally after 10 minutes wait, our order came at the same time!

Chasu Ramen in soy sauce base soup

Ken's Yasai Ramen. Looks pretty light and healthy! I think today I wasn't in the mood of healthy stuff haha

Various toppings to add to your ramen: Chili pepper powder, soy sauce, vinegar and white pepper

How to eat ramen the Japanese way? Use chopsticks to pick the noodles, put it on the spoon with some soup and enjoy! Itadakimasu!! (way of Japanese saying grace before eating)

Usually I couldn't finish that whole bowl of noodles, but today I was starving! All gone!

Despite not in mood of healthy stuff, I still set aside the fatty pork parts.

We were planning to go to another furniture store but Ken was pretty tired so we decided to head home. Guess what I got? My Garmin package has arrived!! Woot!

gotta charge it first and put it on test drive for my beach run/jog tomorrow!

can't neglect fruit serving of the day: mango, orange and peach..all yellow colored fruits today

So it was a lazy afternoon for us. Ken took a long nap and I was browsing the internet, read random blogs, watched anime until it was dinner time. Btw, I had this little bad boy again today:

Had to drink lots of water after this

Dinner was just whatever. Left over from yesterday, boiled some spinach and steamed sweet potatoes. I didn’t have much veggies in the afternoon so I maxed them up for the dinner:

I had another half of sweet potato after this pic and added more tofus as well. Love tofu so much!

 

Can I be the lucky winner again and sore from Kenpo X

Happy Friday!! What plans do you have for this coming weekend? As for me, nothing yet. I might want to go for furniture shopping again and hopefully this time we can get at least the bar stools for our kitchen island. Or perhaps a real dining table, instead using the folding table and chair set that we’ve been having since our apartment day.

Anyway, today’s highlights are:
Samples from Rudi’s Organic Bakery (Thanks Janet)!

Samples from Rudi's Organic Bakery

Yay, I can finally “take a little break” from baking. For the past 2 days, I’ve been baking my vegan friendly whole wheat bread because it ran out so fast. My husband could bring half of the loaf for his breakfast and I usually bring 2 slices. Not to mention my brother sometimes makes sandwich for his breakfast as well. One loaf of 9″ x5 ” pan surely is not enough to feed 3 people..haha.

And I also got another package and it’s from Quaker! Last week I participated in their Twitter giveaway and I won these Quaker True Delights Cafe Squares Dark Chocolate mocha hazelnut, Quaker True Delights Cafe Squares Raspberry Mocha, and Quaker True Delights Instant Oatmeal Blueberry Muffin flavor!

I don’t usually lucky enough to win this kind of trivia thing so I am happy enough that I got these :D. Speaking of which, I am hoping this time I could win Averie’s Newman’s Own Organic Chocolate Bars! I know I don’t have sweet tooth but I do like dark chocolate and once in a while I do have that kind of craving. Besides these 6 Newman’s Own Organic Chocolate Bars are organic! I’m eying on the Super Dark Chocolate 70% cocoa. Yum!!!

After I had my dinner and while blogging, I tried the Dark Chocolate Mocha Hazelnut flavor.

There are six individually packed in one box.


It was pretty chewy but not stuck-to-your-teeth type of chewy granola bar type. I could actually taste the oats and chunks of dark chocolates, but not much of mocha and the hazelnuts though. It was a bit sweet but not as sweet as I expected. Each bar is about 110 calories.

long ingredient list - sorry just realized I didn

Tonight’s dinner was super simple boiled broccoli and a take out from Korean restaurant. My brother bought it for his lunch and now became our dinner.

Nothing beat the simple boiled broccoli

Korean Pork Neck Bone Soup

Don’t be fooled with its bright red color. The soup itself taste pretty light and not spicy at all, or maybe because I do eat spicy food, though not too much because I’ll get upset stomach. I wish there were more veggies in the soup instead of chunks of pork neck bones with little meat attached to it and some potato chunks.
As usual Korean food comes with its kimchee. We got regular kimchee and radish daikon kimchee.

This kimchi is pretty spicy!

Daikon radish kimchee. It tasted a bit weird, probably not that fresh. I would get rid of it.

Can't eat those Korean stuff without rice! Good thing I still had this brown rice in the fridge.

I’ve been pretty sore for the whole day, especially on my core and my back. My core is actually hurt if I laugh!! Who could guess P90X Kenpo, which most people claim as the easiest workout could get me this sore as if I was doing a total body workout? I guess it can be an intense workout if you really drive your hips and body while throwing the punches around! Good thing today was my rest day and tomorrow I’ll be going to the beach at 5 am for the jog/run!

 

Why time running out so fast?

It’s almost Friday, can’t believe it! This week has gone fast and before we know it, June is almost over! We’re already halfway in the year 2010. Time flies so fast! I feel I just celebrated Christmas and New Year not too long ago! Does anyone else feel this way or am I just a weirdo?

Anyway, I had a pretty good sweaty workout with P90X Kenpo X. I almost wanted to skip today’s workout and called it a rest day. But I prefer to have my rest day tomorrow so I’ll be fully charged for my weekend beach run/jog. Btw, remember I was going to do overnight oats? Well it didn’t turn out as I expected. I think I added a bit too much almond milk in there so it was quite watery.

before

After. I added some strawberries, a generous amount of yogurt and a dollop of peanut butter ( can't see it but it's there!)

I am not giving up. I’ll try it again later! For sure I won’t add too much liquid.

Speaking of which, I just found out that my little point and shoot digital camera has a lot more functions in it! All this time I only use the automatic setting. Some of the setting choices are: night shot, digital macro, kids & pets, portrait and even manual. I can also adjust the white balance settings, color settings, resolution settings. Within the main settings, there are some sub functions as well. For example, for kids & pets, there are choices of indoor shot, fireworks, outdoor etc. For color settings, there are black/white, sepia tone, color swap, and spot color. I could even have control of what type of lights that I am going to take the pictures. Wow, can’t believe my little Canon point and shoot camera compacts these many functions! Gosh, such a noob!

So after my little “discovery”, I started to experimented more on my food picture taking. After fiddle around with it for a bit, I decided to use the manual setting.

Shrimp stir fry

I do notice the colors are more vivid and the focus is better as well than using automatic settings. Of course, taking the advantage of natural light is the key of taking a nice and sharp picture. Btw, this is the super easy shrimp stir fry. Just  some tomatoes, celery, stir fried with the shrimps, added some salt and a bit of black pepper and ketchup, you’re DONE! Simplest dish ever. The only catch is use frozen cleaned shrimps instead of the fresh one. Ha!

some mango salsa from last time

One can never have enough yogurt with fruits as after dinner dessert!

Too bad my little camera ran out of battery so had to recharge and can’t fiddle around with it more. I never really consider myself as “technologically impaired”, but I guess that’s not quite true. Oh well, at least now I don’t have to keep looking at Amazon for the nice digital SLR camera which costs at least $1,000 something!

 

Slow blogger

I have to admit that I’m the slowest blogger extremely slow writing my blog. Part of it I always think what to write or how should I write, and another part of it I mostly always get distracted with something else. It could be checking my emails, reading random blogs, talk to my husband, reading some online manga (Japanese comic book) or just browsing mindlessly, until I realized it’s almost time to shower and go to bed and I haven’t wrote anything!!

Just take yesterday’s post as an example. Before I sat down in front of my computer, I already planned what I’d write. I was going to post pictures of when I cooked the fish dish and also post the recipe. Nothing too complicated, but I just want to share some of my “semi-quick cooking” stuff. But that didn’t happen. Instead I just posted the finished dish and called it a night. *sigh* I’ll edit that post later when I get a chance and will add it to my recipe page as well.

Anyway, this morning I had a good nice sweaty P90X Yoga for a full 90 minutes. Not to mention my core is a bit sore from yesterday’s workout. I made a bowl of super thick oatmeal cooked with homemade almond milk, topped with lots of strawberries and some peaches and non fat yogurt. YUM!

I think I wanna try to do overnight oats for tomorrow. Been seeing a lot other bloggers doing it and as the weather getting warmer, it might not be a bad idea to try.

And for some reason that oatmeal bowl wasn’t enough for me so I had a second breakfast at work, 2 slices of toasted homemade whole wheat bread, and topped with organic peanut butter.

Now those hold my hunger perfectly even beyond lunch time! Despite that, I still had my lunch at usual time. Heck I even finished my cucumbers, dipped into hummus.

Dinner wasn’t much interesting stuff,  slightly overcooked boiled broccoli, 4 egg whites omelet, brown rice and some fish fillet from yesterday.

This is my second.

I was still hungry so I couldn't resist to have 1 whole egg omelet and 2 Korean vermicelli dumplings..

I whipped another egg omelet (2 egg yolks, 4 egg whites) for my lunch tomorrow.

I felt a bit bad already for making my brother and my husband ate the 4 egg yolks omelet earlier so in order not to raise their cholesterol, I took 2 egg yolks in. Besides, I’ll just burn them off tomorrow with my workout 😀 I don’t eat egg that often so once in a while should be ok.

As a dessert, I had a cup of non fat plain yogurt with 3 slices of canned pineapple. I wanted to have it with mango, but didn’t feel like peeling it and that canned pineapple been sitting in the fridge for quite a while. Might as well finish that one first.

Good news! I checked my Amazon order and they already shipped my Garmin heart rate Monitor, though the other 2 items are still pending. Heck, I want my Garmin here first, the other 2 can wait!! 😀

So excited finally I will be able to track how much calories I burn from my workouts and how’s my fitness endurance. Hopefully I won’t be too discourage after I found out whatever I am doing so far is nowhere to be intense yet.

And I finished writing this post in less than 30 minutes. Can you believe I took almost an hour writing yesterday’s post?

 

Workaholic Wannabe

I finished my workout on time this morning, though I was stuck washing dirty dishes that been sitting in the sink overnight and putting away clean dishes back to the cabinet. I hate leaving dirty dishes in the sink overnight but last night the drying dish rack was full and the dishes weren’t dry enough to be put away. Anyway still had time to wash, cut and peel fruits for my usual afternoon snacks. I even managed to pack some for my hubby too. Most of the time I didn’t do it but he’s cool with that. He usually just bring oranges, which we have plenty in the fridge!

his and hers. they're exactly the same so I just took one pic..haha

hers only..yeah I'm greedy when it comes to fruits!

And finally I ordered a heart rate monitor from Amazon!

Source: Amazon

Along some other stuffs:

Source: Amazon

Source: Amazon

Despite those hectic things I had to finish, I still managed to get to work at 8 am sharp. The thing is work time is from 8:30 am- 5:30pm. Why so early? Because I am a workaholic rather have a relaxing commute than have to deal with traffic and bad drivers.

Or got stuck because of the train like this:

Today was a bit busier than yesterday, given my other 2 colleagues were not in. But that didn’t stop me having my whole wheat toast with PB for my breakfast:

And my late morning snack

non fat plain yogurt with Kashi cereal. Trust me, I added more after ate some of the yogurt. Love Kashi cereal!

Lunch as usual at around 1pm, whatever left over from last night dinner, with cherries as my dessert.

Back to work an hour later, had to rush some stuff out because it was supposed to be done today. The project requester was freaking out when she found out my colleague, who was handling it wasn’t in today. So I had to finish it up in a jiff. I made it in time and she was happy. In some ways today’s work pace wasn’t that bad. Even though it was busy, it wasn’t that crazy busy that I had to pull my hair out or stayed late. It was very rare that I had to stay later than the usual work time. Once in a while it can get pretty hectic, but once in a while it can get really dead. Talking about balance, eh?

DINNER
Fish fillet in Curry Sauce

nothing beats fresh cucumbers and hummus dipping!

Sorry gotta cut it short. It’s getting late and I’m going to bed.

 

Is it weekend yet?

Monday is always the toughest day for me to focus at work. My mind was still in the weekend mode. Good thing was, today wasn’t that *cough cough* bizaaay. So I used my “spare time” to read up some blogs thru Google Reader (FYI, I just started using this despite heard about it so many times before). Usually I just memorized the blog URLs that I usually read and go from there. Heck, how many URLs I can cram up in my little brain eh?

There are some interesting recipes that I’d love to try this coming weekend (thus the post title)

Kristen’s Cheezy Hemp Nacho Sauce – from Averie’s Blog. I might substitute the hemp seeds with raw cashews, per Averie’s suggestion. I’ve never had hemp seeds before but according to people’s comments, those are pricey stuff.

Another Averie’s recipe: Gluten Free Sweet Seed Crackers
I always love crackers and always wish to know how to make them from scratch. Store bought are nice, but it’ll be much nicer if I can make those from scratch. Besides, I can always control what I want for my homemade crackers.

My eats weren’t that special for today. Breakfast was oats cooked in homemade almond milk I made yesterday, topped with fresh strawberries and non fat plain yogurt.

I had another serving of plain non fat yogurt with Kashi GoLean Cereal at work. Guess what? For some reason, even though today was the least intense workout (Fountain of Youth Yoga -One on One with Tony Horton), I was still hungry!

Good thing I still had 2 bars in my stash drawer.
Prana Bar Coconut Acai came for my rescue!

As with the other Prana Bars, this bar was dense and sweet as well. However, with bits of coconut flakes, it kind of mellowed the sweetness of the bar. Heck, it went well with my unsweetened jasmine green tea and it hold my hunger quite okay. I got hungry again around 12 noon, a bit too early before my usual 12:45-12:50pm lunch time. Ugh. I had hard time concentrating if my stomach was growling.

Fruits as my after lunch and late afternoon snacks as usual. Today’s combo were peach, strawberries and cherries. No pic, you get the idea. Also my co-worker who just returned from her vacation in Taiwan gave little goodies: a cookie and a toffee candy.

Believe me I had the cookie after I had my late afternoon fruit snack. Dunno why, I was feeling a bit hungry so I decided to have this cookie as my little treat. I don’t usually eat cookies or treat but hey once in a while shouldn’t hurt.

very buttery and nutty

This cookie was super crunchy. It was one of those cookies that just melt in you mouth. Had a light buttery taste and a slight hint of mocha/coffee taste with bits of nuts and pumpkin seeds I believe.

Dinner was full of veggies and salmon dish that I made yesterday. Pack those for my tomorrow’s lunch and I’m off to bed!

 

More recipes!

House chores done for the day, even though not completely. I was a little overwhelmed trying to finish lots of stuff in little time. Anyway, after my semi-negative post this morning, I decided to make Tofu Burger one more time! Unlike last time, I didn’t put all the ingredients in the blender, rather I just mashed them with potato masher.
Tofu Burger
Ingredients:
About 8.5 oz firm tofu, drained (I used House Tofu)
1 canned black beans, drained and rinse
2 Tbsp flaxseed meal mixed with 6 Tbsp water (or you can use 2 egg whites)
2 Tbsp dark soy sauce
3 Tbsp whole wheat flour
3 tsp vital wheat gluten flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill)
1/4 white onion, chopped – you can use more if you love onions
1 tsp garlic powder
Some organic ketchup (it wasn’t really necessary, just put a little bit)
Some salt – I think I used 1/2 tsp
1 tsp brown sugar
A dash of black pepper

Directions:
1. Mashed tofu and drained black beans with potato masher.

2. Mix in the flaxseed mixture, whole wheat flour, soy sauce, salt, pepper, vital heat gluten flour, onions, brown sugar and garlic powder until even.

3. Mix in the ketchup. 🙂

4. Taste the mixture to get the desired taste. Since there’s no raw meat in this mixture, no need to worry about tasting it, right? 🙂

Ready to be cooked!

5. Preheat the cooking pan with 1 Tbsp cooking oil in high heat. Shape the tofu burger mixture with hand to form “burger patty shape”. Reduce the heat to medium. The goal here is to make the tofu patty as dry as possible so it won’t crumble when you flip them over.

Don't they look like beef patties? My hubby said they looked like chocolate chip cookies..LOL

6. After about 5 minutes, flip them over. Cook for another 5-7 minutes.

As you can see I over crowded the pan with the patties so I had hard time flipping them over.

7. Remove from pan and serve! Have this with ketchup, surely look a lot like the real hamburger 😀

What did I do for the rest of the tofu? I made this tofu veggie medley! I cut the tofu into cubes, grilled them on the pan (with almost no oil, just to brown the sides).

Chopped celeries, cucumber (seeded), tomatoes, 1 potato, and carrots. A dash of salt, black pepper, and dried parsley and it’s done!

We had these for lunch along with other veggie dishes. I think our lunch today was almost vegan, with the exception of McDonald’s Chicken nuggets my brother bought the night before. My hubby and I didn’t even touch those. I hate McD, they’re just full of gross stuff! I couldn’t even remember when was the last time I had them.

My hubby loves the tofu burger that I made. He had at least 2 or 3 pieces! I packed 3 pieces for my lunch tomorrow, along with the green beans and veggies. I have to remind myself to bring the ketchup as well.

After lunch, we had to shop some stuff at Costco. Pretty much basic stuff like shampoo and toothpaste. I also bought a big bag of baking soda for cleaning. I love using baking soda mixture to clean my kitchen. Mix it with a bit of vinegar, it’s a total deodorizer and the best part of it, it’s NON TOXIC! I hate using those kitchen cleaners that claimed to be “anti bacterial”. I hate the smell of ammonia and I don’t want any toxic chemical on my kitchen counter. Hot vinegar, baking soda and dish washing liquid soap are my only cleaner ingredients for cleaning my kitchen counter top.
In addition to those, I saw this 4lb package of strawberries for $4.99! Heck I grabbed that! I’ve been craving for strawberries for a while and this time I won’t let it slip from my hands again. Besides for this price, I got these nice and ripe strawberries.

Whipped them into my non fat plain yogurt and some canned pineapple slices, it made my wonderful afternoon snack.

That yogurt hold my hunger way too perfectly that I didn’t even have dinner until 7:30 pm. The good thing was, I didn’t have to rush preparing dinner, because even my hubby said he wasn’t hungry either. So I took my time and pan grilled 3 salmon steak pieces I got yesterday. I separated the salmon pieces into 2 plates.

One topped with mango salsa.

The other ones topped with sweet and sour sauce.
Sauce ingredients:
lemon juice, soy sauce, dried basil, brown sugar, a dash of salt, chopped celery, chopped 1 carrot, some garlic, ginger, garlic powder, salt and pepper to taste.

Serve those with boiled broccoli and nuked potatoes. Did I mention I wasn’t hungry? Well after I took a bite of mango salsa salmon piece, before I realized it, I had at least half of the salmon along with boiled broccoli.

What do you usually use to clean your kitchen counter top?