Blogging the Menu: Lurong Day 4

Yeah.  I slept through my alarm this morning.  So no workout.  I did walk over 13000 steps today, so there's that.  I have my gear packed to get 30-45 minutes of running in on the trail by the hospital after my shift tomorrow.  Saturday I'll go to the box with a buddy and make up the 2 WODs we missed and get our measurements/weight done.  Yay and stuff.

I hate getting weighed fully dressed.  I want to shout that THAT NUMBER IS NOT MY NUMBER!!  Goddamn it, these are DANSKOS!  It's so stupid, because it's not like 3 pounds of clothes makes a big difference in determining my health, but it does put me in a different decade of numbers and it makes me stabby.

So breakfast was pretty delayed today and it was also pretty basic.  Eggs, bacon, and coffee with almond milk.  I really dig vanilla almond milk (unsweetened, of course) in my coffee.  It's really tasty, and I'm normally a black coffee girl.

This Maplewood bacon is the shit. The. Best. Bacon.

Snack was pretty basic, too.

Look familiar?

My plan was to nap today since I work tonight, but that didn't happen for a variety of reasons.  I did however "skip" lunch (ie I ate what amounted to a heavy snack) because if I daysleep and still eat all the meals I end up eating six meals in a 24 hour period and that's just too much damn food.  I'm trying to get smaller here, people.

So, lunch.

I also had a few cashews later on as I was getting pretty hungry as the dinner hour approached.  Also a venison stick, which I didn't photograph.

Thanks, Costco!

Squash was on sale at Festy the other day so I loaded up on the butternut and we had Beef and Bacon Cottage Pie for supper.  Holy shit I love this recipe.  Simple, simple, simple and SO FUCKING GOOD.  Also, the kids won't eat squash so more for me, motherfuckers. It's from the 21 Day Sugar Detox Cookbook.  How do you not have this book yet?

Get in my belly.

I finished the day with a few prunes, packed up my lunch, watched The Biggest Loser (without eating a sleeve of Oreos) and got changed for work.  Day one in the salt mine.  Only 6 shifts this week as I took Wednesday off for Ragnar Adirondacks.  Huzzah!  Off to the land of foliage and Zestar apples!

Day 4 done.  Hope my resolve stands up overnight.  I am armed with much food, good coffee, and mint tea. 

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!  Or close the wall up with our English dead!

If you get that reference we are still friends.

Blogging the Menu: Lurong Day 3

Lalalalalaaaaa Day 3 down.  Tomorrow night I go back on at work, but not before hitting the gym and getting some other things in order.  Today I did a fair amount of cooking, which means I'll have lots of good leftovers for the next couple of days at work.  I have plenty of grapes and apples, and tomorrow I'll hard cook a bunch of eggs to bring along as well.  So far so good.  I rested the last couple of days (though I did do a fair amount of walking) and I feel pretty good.  We have an HRA for the husband's employer in the morning.  Always interesting to get a peek at the bloodwork every year.  Last year my numbers were so good the employee health nurse summed it up with "I don't know what you're doing, but whatever it is keep it up!" and that was before Lurong.  I kind of wish I would've gone in for a follow up set.  One of these days.

One of my boys was up six times during the night with a cough.  If you're keeping score that means I was up six times as well.  Little children would be much easier if they would listen to reason.  If you have a cough, great hiccuping sobs only make it worse, right?  Right.  Try explaining that to a four year old.  Goes over like a lead balloon.  So tonight he's doped up on dextro, rubbed down with mentholatum, and the humidifier is running on high.  Fingers crossed.

This morning I made apple carrot sausage hash.  This is good shit.  Love this recipe.  It's our "already made and ready to go" breakfast recipe of the week.  I'm going to have one of these per week in order to avoid eggs-and-bacon burnout.

Add a runny egg and an almond milk latte and you're set.

Snack was pretty simple.  Big wad o' grapes.

Crunchy and delicious.

Had a fair amount of Tandoori chicken left over, but didn't feel like eating it Plain Jane again, so instead I whipped up a little curry rice with the pre-made cauli rice.  Almonds, raisins, pineapple, onion, curry, salt, and pepper came together pretty well with the leftover chicken.  Damn.  My lunches are far more interesting when I'm at home.  I did make 2 portions of this, though, so I have a container full for work.

So fucking awesome.

This afternoon I went for a SweeTango while I took a little break from my busy hands project.  It's the collar and shoulder increases for a cable detailed cardigan.  So far it's coming along nicely.  It'll be seamless since it's top down, and if I keep at it I should have it finished by the end of the challenge.

I love fall.  Apples and sweaters.  Love it.

I made eggplant lasagna for the first time this afternoon.  Eggplant, spinach, mushrooms, and homemade meat sauce.  It was really quite tasty.  Of course the kids were having none of it except the meat.  Fortunately we didn't waste much on them.  Boxed up some leftovers for lunches later in the week.  I also had my 6oz pour of Cab, which made me positively silly.  I'm officially a cheap date again.

Eat. Your. Veg.

Had a couple of prunes to kill a sweet craving this evening.  Love these things.  I buy them in bulk at Costco.

Sweetness without the work of de-pitting.

Tomorrow morning will be interesting as we're supposed to go to the HRA fasted.  I'll have to eat something before CrossFit, but I can't skip tomorrow since it's Lurong WOD #2 and I already have one to make up this weekend sometime.  The hardest bit will be not eating after the WOD untill I'm done being poked and prodded at 8:30.  Going to be the longest 2 hours of my life.  

Now it's time for bed.  I'm spent.  On to tomorrow!

Blogging the Menu: Lurong Days 1&2

It's Lurong time!

Ah....Lurong.  When the box requires you to put your money where your mouth is and actually walk the full-on Paleo walk for 8ish weeks.  Last year it ended up being a big success for me.  I lost 11 pounds and a bunch of inches.  I felt great, slept great, and looked pretty fucking great at the end of it.  So with my goals achieved I rode off into the Paleo sunset, right?

Silly rabbits, I have an unhealthy relationship with food!  Of course I went straight back to eating garbage and feeling like shit.  It's what I do.  My middle name is self-sabotage.

In my defense, I do eat relatively cleanly most of the time.  I just eat a lot.  A lot. And if I have a weak moment and indulge in something like...I don't know...a room full of motherfucking cake (thanks, co-workers) I have a tendency to eat myself to the point of illness.  Then starts the sneaky hate spiral.  I hate my body, so I want to punish it.  Punishing it with exercise would be productive so instead I punish it with more shitty food until my head aches and I can't sleep and I'm massively grumpy.  Makes tons of sense, right?

I've discovered embedded memes.  You're welcome.

Anyhoo...the Lurong showing up again gives me the chance to recommit to a healthier lifestyle and I'm jumping on it.  What's not to love.  Tons of support and commiseration, forced CF workouts so I can't slack because I'm a lazy whore, and the possibility of prizes.  I set a personal goal of zero cheats for the entire challenge period.  Zero tolerance, people.  Zero.

So the challenge began on Monday, while we were still in Portland.  Hooray for travelling with dietary restrictions.  I should mention that we went to Portland to run back to back half marathons.  Which we did successfully.  We also rewarded ourselves with fried food, beer, and VooDoo doughnuts.  OMG VooDoo doughnuts.  By the time Monday dawned I was basically in a food and alcohol induced coma.

View from the aerial tram.  Pretty cool ride.

We had breakfast at the hotel, which was a real breakfast.  Those are not powdered eggs, and that is fresh pico.  They even had infused water.  Not bad for included-with-the-room fare.

Pico with jalapeno is nomtastic.

After we took the aerial tram and poked around the city a bit, we headed back to the airport to return our itty bitty car (Kia Soul-actually a nice car for the weekend) and get through security as we had no idea what that was going to look like.  Return, check-in, and security went pretty smoothly.  Lots of hipsters in Portland, and it appears many of them work for the TSA.  We walked down the terminal until we saw a place with an acceptable menu.  This is a grilled chicken breast with bacon and guac with a side salad and balsamic.  It was quite good.

This was a sandwich that I ordered without bun or cheese.  

Almost anything can be modified.

Our flight was at 2 and we landed in Chicago at 7:45pm, so we sort of skipped over the dinner hour.  Instead I had an apple, a Larabar, and some jerky.  It worked.

Sweet and satisfying.

It was nice to be home.  Less nice was waking up to a flock of whiny children who were less excited to see me and more interested in bitching about having eggs as they wanted cereal, then having to dress my 7 year old because 30 minutes to brush teeth, pee, dress, and comb one's hair is simply not enough time. 

Shoulder bacon from our pig via Maplewood.  Drool.

I had a lot of crap going on this morning and into the afternoon.  Girl child to school, grocery store with boys, then pick up the dog at the kennel, home to make lunch, walk boys to school, walk dog around, then come home and flop down into a chair with dog in lap.  So I had 2 hard boiled eggs, a venison stick,  and an apple for lunch.  Which I forgot to photograph.  Sue me.

Dinner was a new recipe from the 21 Day Sugar Detox cookbook.  Tandoori chicken skewers.  I riced a shitload of cauliflower this afternoon to have for the week and I had some of that with my chicken.  It was pretty damn good if I do say so myself.  My house smells a bit like a fire, since I grilled the skewers on a cast iron grill pan instead of outside.  Totally worth it.

I feel like I should have some veg...oh wait.

So this evening I'm fairly full.  Didn't get to walk the dog her usual 1-2 miles as one child decided he had to pee when we were about 400m from the house.  Then when we restarted we got to about that same point and a different child suddenly had an insurmountable belly ache (I should mention none of them would eat the chicken) and we headed back.  Come to think of it, I guess we did get a mile in a roundabout way.  Regardless, I didn't burn off my dinner in a meaningful way.  I'm craving sweet now, so here's my solution.  

6oz red wine, per Lurong rules.

Prunes.  Sweet like candy, soothes my soul.

I sent the spawn to bed early because they were being little asshats in spite of practically falling asleep on the couch before dinner.  I had a conversation with the boys' 4K teacher while we waited for the older kids this afternoon.  She remarked that they were very independent, sitting at different tables and making individual friends.  She also said that they were very polite and excellent listeners.

As she was telling me this I had to pull Charlie off of my leg and inform him that Mommy is not a jungle gym.  Polite.  Excellent listeners.  She's a nice lady, but is clearly high.

Two days in.  Feeling strong.  I'm sure this will be all sunshine and rainbows.

Blogging the Menu: Questionable Choices

Last night was a good one, in that I wasn't tired and had enough of this and that to do to move time along nicely.  I don't mind low volume nights as it usually means everyone is mending and not crashing, but sometimes it makes keeping busy a challenge.  There's always something to do, but it's not always the most exciting thing!

The menu was pretty standard fare.

Leftovers.  Meh.

Time got away from me and I didn't end up eating my main meal until 1am.  This ended up being fine as I pretty much segued right into my snack.

Look familiar?

Around 4am I was hard core jonesing for an apple, so I fed the craving.

L'honeycrisp

Breakfast was a smoothie at around 6:30am.  I have my little single serve blender on the counter at work to make this easier.  This morning it was cherries, banana, almond milk, and protein powder.  Pretty tasty.

Weird color, though.

I slept like the dead once again, and when I woke up at 2:15pm I was feeling peckish, so I chomped down a jalapeno cheddar beef stick from Maplewood Meats.  I have a pound of these that I'm slowly metering out.  Need to finish them up this week, though, as they are NOT Lurong legal (cheese, you know).

It was much larger than this when I started.

I was kind of fixated on SweeTangos this afternoon, so I called the Apple Store to see if they were harvesting in Door County and heard the magic words "Oh, SweeTangos are all we have right now!  We're open until 5!" so of course I darted out the door like a heroin addict in need of a fix.  The Apple Store lady said they'll be harvesting these delicious little devils for another month or more and the Honeycrisp will be in at the end of the month.  WINNING.  I might make the hike to DC for more, as the firsts they sell in the Wood Orchard Market are the size of a baby's head and are picture perfect.  I walked out with 9 pounds of apple-y crack.  

Best $20 I ever spent.  Cheaper than the grocery store (if you can even find them, sucka)

I might have broken the bag open and just started jamming apples in my face right there in the parking lot.  I don't need your judgement, Judgy McJudgerson.

ERMAHGERD APPLE!

Headed home with a belly full of apple and sticky fingers and decided to keep up the Door County of it all by pouring myself a glass of cherry wine.  All you wine snobs can suck it.  Cherry wine is fucking delightful.

This totally counts as red wine.  Fuck you.

So dinner was cheeseburgers and chips.  I totally ate a bun.  OMG A BUN.  IS THAT EVEN PALEO, BRO?  No.  No it's not.  But I wasn't in the mood to knife and fork it, mkay?  It is weird that I had chips twice in two days.  I'm really not that into chips.

It was good.  Buns are overrated.

Tomorrow I need to get the menu together for our first month of Lurong.  Time to haul out my paleo cookbooks and recall my favorites.  I'm going to need to lock down portion sizes this time around.  Last year just cleaning up my diet let me drop a few pounds.  This year I'm going to have to watch the portions to achieve my goals.  

My meals are about to get much more interesting and I'm looking forward to changing things up a bit again.  I had a month of Boring Ass Shit and it worked for stage one of achieving my goals, I'm closer than I was, but the week of "eat whatevs" was a warning that I can't keep that up for too long without losing my shit, so it's time to branch out again.

Yay cooking!

Blogging the Menu: Accountability, Bitches.

So apparently I can't control what I eat unless I'm showing it to the world, so here we go again.

I had a ripping good August.  Seriously, I lost like 7 pounds and was feeling pretty good about my little "lose 20 pounds" project.  I was eating really well, did a little spontaneous half marry with the hubs on 8/16 (Madison Mini-great race.  I had a shit finishing time, but the race was boffo.) and made it to my birthday feeling like a million bucks.

I'm 37.  This officially puts me in my late 30s. It's fine. Truth be told I feel better now than I did in my early 20s thanks to all this goddamn clean living.

I miss cigarettes.  Anyone else?

Then I had about a 5 day period where I just ate anything that wasn't nailed down.  Because that's what I do.  I sabotage myself.

I do not, however, sabotage other people.  I signed up for the Lurong Living Paleo Challenge again this year because it was really fun last year.  Seriously, 8 weeks of perfect Paleo eating and horrible workouts and it was fun.  I think because of the team nature of it-if we all do well as a group there are some pretty substantial prizes to be won for the gym, and that's a great motivator to not fuck up.  You aren't just screwing yourself, you're potentially screwing up everyone else's hard work, and in my book that is not okay.  We also get to suffer as a group (no beer at Packer games, no shitty Starbucks lattes), and I learned a lot about what a group can accomplish together when everyone is on the same page.  The support was great.

This year the hubs has signed on to join me (not officially as he's not a member at the box), but he says he'll walk the walk with me for the whole time frame except for his birthday and I guess I can't really fault him there.

So what did I eat yesterday?  I was such a good girl for the most part.  Voila.

I'm on this week, so my day starts at midnight from a food perspective.  I generally eat a meal at midnight, a snack at 3am, and a meal at 6am.  This seems about right for controlling the midnight munchies.  Last night it was leftovers.

I gotta finish up this rice/quinoa before Lurong.  Neither one is allowed.

I had been bringing what amounted to a dinner split into two portions for midnight/3am but that didn't work for me.  I crave sweets overnight, so I answer that craving with a sweet snack like these grapes.  I add in the eggs for more staying power.

Snacky snack.  You'll be happy to know the eggs peeled beautifully.

It's getting on to Honeycrisp season in these parts and I am ecstatic. I am obsessed with these apples and their prettier, sluttier sisters the SweeTangos.  I will be driving my ass to Door County and/or the Apple Store twice a week for these tangy little hussies.  

So the black polish and thumbie sleeve make this shot very "I'll get you my pretty."

I love black nail polish.  

I have been using my snazzy new egg cooker courtesy of some of my box buddies. Seriously, I got an egg cooker from friends because I bitch a lot about eggs.  Squeaky wheel, people, squeaky wheel.  It also makes poached eggs, which is pretty boss because poaching eggs the regular way?  Blows ass.  Julia Child can suck an oeuf with her perfect little ovals of fabulousness.  I always end up with one beautiful poached egg and the intrauterine contents of one alien.  BUT.  Now my egg cooker can poach them for me and I can just enjoy.  Not quite as awesome when you have to nuke your breakfast, but still pretty awesome.

Apple carrot sausage hash with an oeuf.

Then I went home, turned on the tranquilizing fan of DEATH and slept like a corpse for 7 hours.  It was glorious. I should note that Sunday was an "awake" day as the light of my life was working so I was a bag of shit when I got home from work.

After my death nap, I went to the girl child's Brownie meeting.  They had monster blueberry muffins for snack.  I resisted in favor of another one of these tasty bitches.

GAWD, I love these things.

Since we are in dire need of a trip to the grocery store, we had no plan for dinner.  We went to Mackinaw's and I had coconut shrimp.  They ran out of sweet potato fries (BASTARDS) so I had the home made potato chips.  There's actually a lot more veg than chips there, which is hard to see.  I should've had double veg and skipped the potato completely...but I am WEAK.

The shrimps were tasty.

The man around whom I've built my life and I both registered for the Beat the Blerch virtual half marathon courtesy of The Oatmeal.  If you haven't read his comics you must go to www.theoatmeal.com right this second and read everything.  I'll wait.  

Ok?  Ok.  We got our swag today, which included a frosting flavored lip balm and an eensy bag of Gummi Bears.  I ate them.  I'm not sorry.

So teeny and cute!

The Blerchandise is pretty rad.  I'm not sure when I'm going to do the run...likely at the end of September or beginning of October.  The non-virtual is 9/21, but I'm working that weekend and no.  Just...no.  I'll pick a perfect weather day and run down the FRT.  There is a nifty medal, a nice shirt, some awesome stickers, and best of all?  A BLERCH STRESS BALL.  A squeezy Blerch!  I'm going to keep him at work.  Maybe he'll keep me from eating all the things.

How awesome is this?

This weekend the most handsome man in the world and I are going to Portland, OR to run back to back half marathons at the Oregon Half and the Boring Half.  The Boring is an inaugural and will be super tiny.  I am way past stoked about getting a Boring t-shirt and Boring medal.  The Oregon half starts and ends at Oktoberfest, so I will be all about beer and sausages (when am I not all about sausages) on Saturday.  Sunday post Boring I will be smashing VooDoo Donuts into my face as Lurong starts Monday and it will be all good girl all the time for 2 months.  It's a good thing I can have sausages on Lurong.  No beer though.

I've never been to Portland, and I'm pretty excited about the trip.  I'm going to get to hang out with some friends of my beloved as well as meet the man behind www.teamneonrunning.wordpress.com 

This year I'll have 2 "busy hands" projects for Lurong.  A pair of socks that I auctioned (if the freaking yarn ever shows up!!) and a pretty involved cardigan sweater.  The goal will be to finish both before the challenge is over.  Why busy hands?  Because knitting hands aren't shoving shitty food into one's pie hole.  No food near the knitting when I knit with the good stuff!

Four shifts down, three to go!

Blogging the Menu: Boring Ass Shit

Lalalalalalalaaaa  I got a new lunchbox which I am filling with all sorts of boring ass shit.  Here are some pictures of what I've been force feeding myself for the last few days.

Shoulda had more veg and less rice.

So. Fucking. Boring.

Soul sucking.

Changing it up with steak!  Woo!  Party!

Scallops!  Getting wild up in here!  Smaller portion of rice. More beans.

Hubs made smashed chicken.  Most exciting meal of the week.

I should note that I don't eat quinoa/rice every meal.  Depends on what's left over in the fridge.  Notice a pattern?  4oz meat, small portion potato or rice, veg, repeat.  Breakfast has been alternating oats with nut butter and blueberries and strawberry/banana protein smoothie.  Sometimes with spinach, though my little single serve blender at work doesn't handle the spinach well.

Christ I'm bored with this food.

Friday the hubs and I are headed down to Madison for the Madison Mini.  I'm really hoping for nice weather, but since my definition of "nice" running weather is 40 degrees my hopes aren't too high.  As long as it's not 100 degrees.  I want to do this race, but I don't have a death wish.

I'm trying my first Barre class on Thursday morning.  I have no idea what to expect.  I imagine it will be really fucking embarrassing as I have no game in the grace department.

Friday is "weigh myself and hope for the best day".  Come on something less than 169!

Time to heat up some boring ass shit to eat.

Progenex and (Coconut) Juice

So I'm going to lose 20 pounds.  I've decided.  It's going to happen.  So I have a lunch box packed full of boring-ass shit to eat.  Eating boring ass shit works for weight loss, because you don't care about eating.  Why?  Because all you have is boring ass shit to eat.  Once I float closer to my goal I'll add back in the food that makes life interesting (at smaller portions), but for now I'll stick to boring ass shit.

How do I know boring ass shit works?  It's how I lost 65lbs my last year of college.  Boring. Ass. Shit.  So as I was running for 150 minutes yesterday, I was listening to Snoop (because what 36 year old middle class white woman DOESN'T listen to Snoop) and rewrote the lyrics to the track to fit my current situation.

I'm aware that is an abomination.

Progenex and (Coconut) Juice 

With so much drama in the WGB
It's kinda hard to be Amy P-h-a-r-m D
But I, somehow, some way
Keep cookin' up boring-ass shit like every single day
May I, cook a little breakfast for the kids (yeah)
And make a few pancakes as (yeah) I breeze through
Two in the mornin' and the ER's still jumping
'Cause your seatbelt wasn't on
I got surgeons in the OR still gettin' it on
And I ain't leavin' 'til eight in the mornin'
So what you wanna do, shit
I got a cooler full of diet food and my homies have muffins
So turn on the lights and crank the radio
But (but what) I don't eat that no more, yeah
So I'm gon' drink 8oz of coco h2o
Yams up, donuts down, while you motherfuckers bounce to this

Spinnin' in my chair, eating broccoli, sippin' on Progenex and (Coconut) Juice
Laid back (with my mind on my menu and my menu on my mind)

Now that I got me some almond milk
Everybody got they cups, but they ain't chipped in
Now this type of shit happens all the time
You got to get yours, but fool this shit is mine
Everything is fine when you listening to the Pharm-D
I got the high level medicine that be captivating he
Who listens to the words that I speak (or reads my blog)
As I take my dinner to the microwave
And get to snackin' on this dry ass protein (protein?)
It used to be a roasted chicken (oh, that thing)
Muffins on the counter, bitch please
Get out of this room because you gets none of these (at ease)
As I stuff in the chicken and greens, feel the breeze
Beyotch I'm just

Spinnin' in my chair, eating broccoli, sippin' on Progenex and (Coconut) Juice
Laid back (with my mind on my menu and my menu on my mind)

Later on that shift
My tech came through with bottle of coffee creamer
And a fat ass scone of some blueberry kind that made me choke
Shit, this ain't no joke
I had to back up off it and sit my coffee down
Scones, creamer, and muffins, yeah I'm fucked up now
But it ain't stoppin', I'm still poppin'
Fruit in a blender from the .com of Amazon
To serve me; not with a cherry on top
But with bananas and strawberries and a scoop of Isopure
Don't get upset girl, that's just how it goes
I don't eat that shit anymore, I'm out the door

Bitch.
(with my mind on my menu and my menu on my mind)

See?  Boring ass shit.

Tomorrow is some fast intervals followed by some hurry-up sleeping.  I'm going to sleep the everliving fuck out of Saturday.  I hope it rains.

All right.  Time to heat up some boring ass shit to eat.