Happy Halloween!

There are a lot of shenanigans going on around here...

But I am trying to focus on studying...

Be back tomorrow with some weekend food re-caps and my Halloween crazed work pictures!

Holy Yum

Hello there! I hope everyone is having a fantastic Friday so far. I am just working away here (as evidenced by what I have actually been working on in the below picture). My job does a HUGE Halloween competition and we all dress up as a group and decorate our area. Our group has been 1st place for the last 6 years, so we have a lot of pressure to keep the streak alive.

This year, we are doing an emoticon theme. I will try to post more pictures after everything is decorated completely on Monday. It is crazy how competitive everyone here gets around this time. Everyone is whispering their ideas and suddenly, the real work just comes to a halt. Everyone just starts decorating and making their costumes. It is quite interesting. At least it makes the day go by.

Last night, as promised, I made butternut squash and black bean burritos with caramelized brussels sprouts on the side. Ahhhmazing... I got both recipes from other blogs and made a few adjustments to them based on what I had in the house.

Butternut Squash and Black Bean Burritos
adapted from Oh She Glows

1 medium butternut squash, peeled, cubed and roasted
1 cup chopped sweet onion 
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
15 oz can of black beans, drained and rinsed
3/4 cup cheese (I used Monterey Jack Shredded Cheese)
4 tortilla wraps


Preheat oven to 425 F and cube your squash. Using hands, coat with olive oil, salt and pepper and spread on to a tin foil lined baking sheet. 

 Roast until tender (roughly 45 minutes). Remove from oven and allow to cool. 

Be sure to taste the squash several times to make sure they are tender. :) 
In a medium skillet, heat some olive oil and add in the garlic and onions. Allow to saute for about 5 minutes. Now add your seasonings and stir.

Add in the roasted squash and mash up a bit to create a mixture of the black beans and squash. Heat until the squash is warm throughout. 

Sorry, horrible picture, but you get the idea.

 Load up your warmed tortilla with the filling and any toppings you may want. I added hot sauce and cheese to mine. 

 Roll up and Enjoy! 

Caramelized Brussels Sprouts
adapted from Eat Live Run 

12-14 brussels sprouts
1 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
pinch sea salt
2 tbsp brown sugar (to taste)

Slice brussels sprouts into thin ribbons. 

 Heat olive oil in a medium skillet and add in garlic. Allow to saute for a minute or 2. Add brussels sprouts and allow to soften up and become coated by the garlic and olive oil mixture. Add in sea salt and brown sugar. Note: I thought 2 tbsp of brown sugar was a little too much, so I would start with 1 and slowly add more. They were a little sweet, but still delicious. 

Overall, a fabulous dinner! Exactly what I wanted and needed!

 

I hope everyone has a fun and safe weekend. Happy Halloween!

Chocolate Dipped Breakfast

Gooood Morning! Well, I guess it is almost afternoon, but this post is about breakfast, so we will stick with morning for now. :)

Last night we went to the Jason Isbell show and I loved it! I really like his music and we had a good time with our friends. I hadn't really listened to his music until this week. My close friend has been obsessed with him and she is always trying to get me to jump on board. I finally started to listen to his pandora station and research his songs on Monday, since I wanted to be prepared for last night. I must have done a good job because almost every song he played, I had listened to several times over this week. I will certainly continue to listen to him and try to catch his shows when he is in town. Nice job recruiting me, Linds!

The only downfall about last night was that we didn't get out of the show until 12:30 AM. That is very late for someone who is usually in bed by 10 on a work night. Because of our late return home, I didn't have time to prepare my breakfast and lunch like normal. For these types of mornings, I usually have a back up plan.

Enter - Better Oats Dark Chocolate Oatmeal.

I found this oatmeal one day while browsing around Whole Foods. I usually don't buy a lot from that store since it is so expensive, but these were only $2.99 and came with 5 pouches. Also, I am not normally a fan of instant oatmeal. I feel like I can taste the artificial sweeteners and they just taste so fake to me. I gave this a chance since it was all natural and the ingredient list was relatively short for an instant meal.

Let me just tell you, I love this stuff. It is actually carried by most major grocery stores and I always have some at home and some at work. It is the perfect blend of semi-sweet, dark chocolate and nutty oats. It does contain sugar though, so I wouldn't do this on a regular basis, but on those mornings (or nights) where you just don't have the time or energy to make breakfast, this is a really great choice. Jaime - you will love this!

I tried to take a picture of the ingredient list, but they just came out blurry. So what is inside of these compact pouches? Whole grain rolled oats, sugar, chocolate chips, cocoa, flaxseed, salt, natural flavor, and guar gum. Really not bad at all. Each pouch has 160 calories, 220 mg of Sodium and 4 g of protein.

Chocolatey Goodness

For lunch I am having a peanut butter sandwich, apple, and greek yogurt. Luckily natural peanut butter on whole wheat bread is a pretty healthy option since I eat it almost every day. I am getting a little sick of it though, which is why tonight I am making dinner.

Tonight's dinner will include butternut squash and black bean burritos and caramelized brussels sprouts. I can not wait. I am in need of some vegetables and a home cooked, non-microwaved, meal. I'll post recipes and adjustments tomorrow!

Have a great Thursday! The weekend is almost here!
 

Addicted.

I may have a TEAnsy weansy obsession with iced tea. I am not a soda drinker and I do not drink coffee. I have water in a bottle on my desk all day and that is primarily what I drink. But, when it comes to iced tea, I am addicted. When I am the thirstiest, when I go out for a meal, when I want something refreshing, or when I am just plain sick of water, I want tea. I know that it is mostly water, but there is something so satisfying about a glass of ice cold, unsweetened, black tea.

I know the caffeine probably isn't good for me, but the caffeine in tea really doesn't affect me the way that caffeine in other products do. If I have 1/2 a shot of espresso (because I have never been able to tolerate a full shot) or a few sips of coffee, I have a reaction like no other. I get shaky and my stomach is unsettled. I feel like I have a million butterflies in my stomach and I start talking a mile a minute. Then, I crash. Like, I can barely keep my eyes open, crash. And I am rarely that tired at work. It is not the norm for me and I hate the way it makes me feel. But tea? Not a single side effect. I love it.

When I make tea at home, I usually make decaffeinated because sometimes I notice that it keeps me up at night. Plus, I am not the type of person that really needs a pick me up through out the day so I don't really see the point in making it caffeinated.

Just a little tid bit about myself that I thought you might enjoy. :)

Today I was in a bit of a rush to get out the door. I worked at the hospital last night so I only had the energy to put my leftovers in a container for lunch. I made a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast and downed it with a glass of skim milk.

For lunch, I had leftovers of my pasta. I have portioned the leftovers out quite nicely to provide a meal here and there all week.  It tasted even better re-heated, but boy was it greasy. I had to pour a little of the sauce off the noodles so that I didn't feel too bad about eating them.

I am about to head home for the evening and then Mike and I are meeting some friends for the Jason Isbell concert tonight. If you haven't heard of him, you should check him out. I am currently loving his song Good.

Have a great night!

So, so bad...

I am not a huge Italian food fan. Besides pizza, Italian food is just not something I ever usually want. I like it and I will eat it, but it is very rare that I would ever actually request it or want to go to an Italian restaurant.

Last night was certainly an exception. For some reason, I wanted something with garlic. I wanted bread with garlic. Mike and I were out at Home Depot picking out paint for our foyer and bathroom and he asked me what I wanted to do for dinner. Neither of us felt like cooking and it was already 8 PM, so we figured we would just get something while we were out. When I said, "I feel like having Italian," we both just kind of stood there. Mike knows that it is not my favorite and when I said that, he didn't waste any time and drove straight to the closest Italian restaurant.

We live pretty close to a smaller suburb of Raleigh called Knightdale. We found a small, independently owned Italian restaurant called Mama Mia's. We were slightly skeptical. But when I saw they had garlic knots on the menu, I was sold.

This was definitely not a part of the healthy eating schedule, but sometimes, you have to step outside of the norm and just enjoy some homemade garlic knots, white pasta and cream sauce. Luckily, I probably only ate about 1/12 of the enormous serving they brought me. I would bet that I would have enough leftovers for at least 5 lunches and probably a dinner or 2. I am going to try not to do that though. I have been doing really well with my eating and adding this to the daily meals would not help me in any way.

It was delicious though, and certainly a place we will return to on the very slight occasion I feel like having Italian. When we left, I felt like garlic was seeping out of me. I had to brush my teeth 3 times when we got home to try to get the taste out of my mouth. It was exactly what I was hoping for. :)

On Sunday evening, I made a version of buffalo chicken enchiladas. It was super easy, and besides the sodium content, I would say it is pretty healthy and low in calories and fat.

Buffalo Chicken Enchiladas

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts - cooked and shredded
1/2 cup monterey jack shredded cheese
1 16 oz can/jar of enchilada sauce
1/2 cup hot sauce (I used Franks Red Hot Sauce)
8 whole wheat flour tortillas

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Grease the bottom of a baking dish and place a small amount of enchilada sauce in the bottom of the dish and set aside. Mix together the hot sauce and enchilada sauce in a medium sized bowl. In a separate bowl, mix together the chicken and 1/4 cup of the shredded cheese. Place about 2 tablespoons of the hot sauce and enchilada sauce mixture into the chicken mixture. Mix well. In each tortilla, place a few heaping spoonfuls of the chicken and roll up. Place seam side down into the baking dish. Pour remaining hot sauce and enchilada sauce mixture over the enchiladas and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until cheese is melted and enchiladas are hot.

There were plenty of leftovers and I have been bringing an enchilada with a side salad to work with me. So good!

Now I need to go brush my teeth again, I can still taste the garlic.

Peanut Butter Jelly Time... PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME!

Hey there! I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. We are finally at the weekend, and I couldn't be more excited.

This week I have gotten completely back on track with my healthy eating. I wish I could say the same for my work outs, but I have been trying to get over this cold. And, I don't even know where to start with how busy things have been since we got back from our vacation. I would like to say that vacation is not worth all the hassle... but it really is.

My goal for this week was to run on the days that I didn't work at the hospital and get to the gym at least twice. Well, on Sunday I found out that one of my best friends went into pre-term labor. Everyone is very concerned, nervous and trying to be supportive of my friend and her husband. This will be their first baby, and really, one of the first babies in my group of friends. These things could go many different ways, but we are all hopeful that the little guy would stay inside her for a while longer. Until he does arrive, she will remain in the hospital. This has thrown a little wrench in my work out plans.

Monday night, after work, I had a training class at the hospital. Then, I worked at the hospital on Wednesday and Thursday night until 11 pm. I rarely do 2 nights at the hospital in a week, but since we have been on vacation, I needed to fill in some days. I decided on Tuesday night, I wanted to go see my friend at the hospital to try to cheer her up. She lives about an hour away so it took up my entire night. Add all this to me getting over a cold and there was just no free time to get any kind of exercise in.

To make things even more crazy, her baby shower was supposed to be tomorrow, and I am throwing it with a few other friends. After finding out this news, we decided to cancel the shower for now and plan a party for after the baby was born. We wanted to cancel because she is on strict bed rest and there was no telling whether she would even still be pregnant.  The great news is that she has not had the baby. He is still cooking away in her uterus and we are hopeful he will stay there, HEALTHY, for a few weeks. But, this also means that I am trying to throw together a shower for her at the hospital.

We had planned a party at a restaurant where the food, plates, utensils, napkins, etc. would all be taken care of. Now, we are kind of scrambling to throw together everything we need. Plus, when we found out about all of this, we stopped getting ready for a shower, we didn't go shopping like we had planned to on Sunday, and we didn't make any crafts that we had planned. So, we are doing all of that tonight.

This week has been a crazy one, but it is almost over, the shower is tomorrow, and I know my friend is going to be very happy to have all the people who love her so much in one place. This has been a very difficult week for her and I know she is looking forward to tomorrow.

Even though I haven't gotten to run or work out this week, I am down 5 lbs on the scale. I think just simply getting back to my regular eating and calorie counting has made my body happy. This ice cream that I am enjoying right now may not have helped, but oh well! At least I portion controlled.

Here are some recent eats:

Breakfast - Egg whites with cheese on a tortilla or english muffin, overnight oats
Lunch - Peanut Butter and Banana or just Peanut Butter on whole grain bread or a salad
Snacks - Greek yogurt, apple, banana, celery with peanut butter.
Dinner - Chinese food (my pregnant friend requested this, so I get a freebie on that :)), Peanut Butter on whole wheat bread

I have eaten a lot of PB and bread because A. we need groceries and B. it is the easiest thing to eat on my way to the hospital. We have not cooked this entire week since I wasn't home for 4 of the 5 nights. :( I am looking forward to getting back on track with that this week!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! 

Yesterday's Stats:
Calories - (+) 381 (!!)
Sodium (+) 232 (!!)
Protein (+) 11

Chili Festival Fun

I graduated from high school in a small military town in eastern North Carolina called Havelock. The kids in that town call it Have-NOT because there is nothing to do there. It is a town with only 1 main road, every fast food restaurant you can think of, and a Roses. The only thing that makes this place somewhat manageable is that it is less than 20 minutes to the beach. And, the Chili Festival.

Every year, Havelock hosts the North Carolina Chili Festival in October. I don't think it was always considered "North Carolina's" but it appears that it is now being referred to as that, so I guess that is pretty cool. Mike and I had headed to the area to pick up our dogs from my mom. While we were there we thought it would be fun to check out the Chili Festival. I had been several times while I was in high school and college and have always loved it.

We missed this guy!

 Basically, you have about 25 booths of people, companies, or groups making their own version of chili. They are all judged and there are different categories of winners. Best spicy chili, best red sauce chili, best green sauce, etc, etc. You pay $1 per cup of chili at each booth. There are also tons of other food vendors there like homemade ice cream, snow cones, turkey legs, and  funnel cakes. They also have rides for the kids, booths for selling crafts, and live music.

We wanted to get there earlier, because the best chili always sells out first.  We missed some of the good ones, but we still had plenty of great chili. Plus, we got to hang out with my nephew for the day, filling him full of sugary treats and playing with him on the playground.

We had a great time with my family at the festival. I guess that town is not so bad, since it does have some of my favorite people in it. :)

Mexican Vacay - Sad Faces

Good Morning! I am going to wrap up this recap with the last few days of our trip. We had an amazing time and we were certainly not looking forward to leaving the next day.

  

We spent the entire day on Tuesday relaxing and dreading our departure the next day. We got up, had breakfast, then headed to the pool. I learned something new about myself too, I love cottage cheese! I hadn't had any since I was a kid, and I always thought I wouldn't like the texture, but Mike let me taste his and I loved it. I had a whole bowl on Tuesday morning with tons of fruit mixed in. It was delicious!

We got to the pool pretty early and found some lounge chairs to claim. We hung out, Mike read (aka - ignored me), got some drinks at the swim up bar and just relaxed. After we got some lunch, we headed down to the beach.

Throughout the weekend, we had seen tons of fish in the ocean and wanted to make our way down there to do some snorkeling. We wanted to take pictures so we went to the gift shop and bought this:

I can not remember the last time I used a disposable camera, but we were so excited to take this thing under water. It wasn't cheap, so I hope the pictures will be great. I don't have a lot of confidence they will be, but it was fun and we figured it was worth a shot. We also took my digital camera down to the beach so that we could get some pictures of us in the ocean. 

I must say, I wasn't overly impressed with the view of the ocean at our resort. They are currently trying to "go green" and have put huge sandbags in the water to try to create some coral reefs. I understand they are trying to improve the resort, but the sandbags were just huge eye sores. The water was GORGEOUS, so green/blue and very clear, but it was hard to get any good pictures because of those stupid things. We still enjoyed the ocean quite a bit and we got some pictures in a different area of the beach where there weren't sandbags, but I wish their swimming section didn't have those there. 

Tuesday evening, we headed back to the room and took naps. I was starting to get a scratchy throat and was feeling quite run down. I could feel a cold coming on and was not at all excited about it. Since it was our last night and we didn't want to waste it, we decided to head over to the Japanese restaurant for dinner. Neither of us were very hungry and we were not in the mood for alcoholic drinks in the least. 

It was delicious, but we probably only ate a few bites before heading back to the room. We took a few photos along the way and then went to bed. 

Goodbye 4304! :(

We woke up the next morning and I had a full on sore throat with horrible congestion. I was pretty miserable so we decided to just order some room service for breakfast. It was some of the best breakfast I have ever tasted!

Soon, the bell hop came and got our luggage and we said goodbye to our wonderful vacation. This was by far one of the best hotels, with the best restaurants, and in one of the best locations I have ever been to. I don't know if we will ever get the chance to go back to that resort, but I would definitely recommend it! As Mike and I do with every vacation that comes to an end, we had our sad face picture taken.

Now we are back to reality... ugh! We will miss you El Dorado Resort!

Mexican Vacay Recap - Fondue, Swings, and Candle Lights

Hey! Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. I spent my weekend with my family and we had a blast. I have a great post to share about the weekend as soon as I get through the Mexico Recap.

When we woke up the second day in Mexico, I decided I needed to punish myself for getting pretty drunk on Saturday. I woke up around 8:30 and went for a run. Mike came along with me and we used the run as a way to get familiar and navigate our surroundings on the resort. I have no idea how far we ran, we just ran around the resort, stopping only for a quick few photos, for about 30 minutes. It was beautiful.

We ran along the beach one way, and then through the back of the resort for the rest. The back of the resort is not nearly as exciting as the beach side. :) 

We were able to see the chapel and all the gazebos on the resort property. Everything was so pretty!

After our run, we decided to get smoothies from the Health Bar. Mine had strawberries, mangoes, yogurt and even almonds in it. I didn't love the texture, but overall it was pretty tasty.

After drinking a few sips of our smoothies, we headed back to the room to get ready for breakfast. I tried to keep my breakfasts as light as possible, but it was so difficult with the huge variety of amazing breakfast options. Seriously, if you could think it, they had it when it came to breakfast. I was astonished. I just tried to fill up on as many fruits as possible, so my carb and sugar intake would be less. Some days it worked great, other days, not so much...

fried plantains over a waffle... oh yes.

Mike and I spent the rest of Sunday lying by the pool, relaxing, napping and of course, drinking. I kept my sugary drinks to a minimum, but even that was way too much.

On Sunday night, we decided to go to the Fondue restaurant for dinner. Yes, you read that right... Fondue! We rarely go to places like that when we are home so this was a treat. We decided to have the 4 Cheese appetizer and the filet mignon for dinner.

Of course the best part was dessert, as it is at any fondue restaurant.

We were pretty exhausted from the long day we had of NOTHING, so we headed to bed. :)

Monday morning we woke up and decided to borrow some bikes from the athletics office. We rode our bikes all over the resort and discovered even more than we had the day before. We both realized that bikes are quite painful when you aren't used to them... our bums were sore!

We rode for about 25-30 minutes and then headed to breakfast. Again, there were just so many options! And, since I wasn't hungover, I decided to enjoy a mimosa. Every breakfast place had a bloody mary and champagne bar. It was amazing.

After breakfast, we had appointments to get a 1 hour couples massage. On our honeymoon, Mike had his first professional massage. Of course, he loved it, so this was the one thing we decided to splurge on. It was not included in our package, but because we were there for our anniversary, we got a $100 credit towards the spa. Definitely worth it. Sorry, no pictures of the spa. I decided not to bring my camera, but it was a beautiful building.

After that, we hit up our usual spot in the pool bed and lounged for a few hours. We actually played in a "Name That Tune" game and won a T-Shirt. Mike and I make a good team because I know all the new stuff and he knows all the old stuff. It was pretty fun.

On Monday night, we had reservations for a Candlelight Dinner on the Beach. When we got married, some family friends gave us a Candlelight Dinner on the beach as a wedding gift. Unfortunately, the resort we went to in Jamaica was all booked and couldn't get us a reservation before we left. We were so disappointed that we were unable to use their gift and went out for a fancy dinner in Raleigh for our 1 month anniversary. We told the couple that was the best we could do to make sure the gift they got us sort of went toward what they wanted it to. I was so excited to find out that our travel agent booked us a Candlelight Dinner while in Mexico. We had told her the story and she made sure it happened.

Dinner was awesome. I had a salad while Mike had soup for our appetizer. Mike got the salmon and I got the steak for dinner. Everything was delicious. This was one of the highlights of our trip. I highly recommend doing this if you ever go to a resort.

After dinner, the waiter brought us dessert. I thought it was odd that he didn't ask us what we wanted, but then I saw why.

The entire experience was fantastic and we didn't really want the night to end. There was always some type of nightly entertainment at the resort where you could go and enjoy live music and drinks. We had met a couple earlier in the day and decided to meet them at the show after dinner. This bar was awesome. They had SWINGS as bar chairs. It was so fun!

Such a fun day and night. Hopefully I can wrap up the re-caps tomorrow and get back to my healthy eating and working out posts. I need to get back on track!

Have a great night!