What I Ate Wednesday, 9/24/14

What a dreary and chilly second day of fall here in Raleigh! I’m totally fine with the cooler temperatures, but the rain really puts a damper on my mood. 😛 (unintentional pun). It also makes me want to take naps and be a lazy pants. No good. Luckily, I think it is clearing out and tomorrow will be nicer. Yay for sunshine! Anyway, I’m sure you didn’t come here for a weather forecast, so here’s the delicious food I put in my belly today…

Breakfast

I ate my usual oatmeal this morning made with unsweetened almond milk, a tablespoon of local honey, cinnamon, chopped walnuts, and banana slices. I had coffee with organic half and half in my adorable Frankenstein coffee mug that I bought from Carolina Pottery a few weeks ago. This seems like a good opportunity to let you all know that I LOVE Halloween! It’s definitely my favorite holiday (yes, even over Christmas). In fact, I’m seriously considering putting up a Halloween tree this year and just leaving it up through Christmas. I also love pumpkins and pretty much anything else having to do with fall, so be prepared for some fall/Halloween themed posts from me (and Lynda goose too)! Okay, moving on…I also had some water.

Lunch

I did not eat any snacks between breakfast and lunch which is pretty unusual. I normally eat lunch well after noon and am always starving if I don’t have a snack. Today was no different, but I just didn’t remember to bring a snack with me to work. I couldn’t take this picture fast enough….I was so hungry. Oh wait, I did eat some crackers while I was waiting for the sweet potato to cook. So this random lunch consists of: a sweet potato with coconut butter and cinnamon on top, a spring mix salad with cucumbers and some Bolthouse Farms Ranch dressing, some grapes, and some mandarin orange slices. Oh, how I love sweet potatoes!

Dinner

My dinner was baked Salmon, peas, and french fries. To drink I had a lightly sweetened iced tea with lemon. So random, but it was good.  I topped the salmon with 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter, minced garlic, and fresh lemon juice. The fries are by the brand Alexia. I guess you could consider these a little healthier than the average french fries. Definitely better than fast food fries that are made in a fryer, but still a french fry nonetheless. The peas were just frozen peas that I steamed in the microwave and added a tiny bit of salt. I love peas! “Give peas a chance!” If you know where that’s from, you are awesome and had a good childhood and watched lots of Nickelodeon.

Well, that’s everything. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week. Thanks for reading!

Bows and Arrows,

Ashley

What I Ate Wednesday, 7/30/14

Is anyone else wondering how in the world it is already almost August!? Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like this year is flying by. Anyway, today was a pretty good day for me. I went to work, walked my dog, and even managed to workout and cook dinner when I really didn’t feel like it. Go me for not being a lazy pants! So, this is what I ate today…

Breakfast

I drank coffee while I put on my makeup this morning. Don’t mind the messy background. This coffee is SO delicious. It’s from a local coffee roaster called Larry’s Beans. The specific blend is called Woodstock.

I didn’t have time to cook my typical oatmeal, so I settled for 2 scrambled eggs and a slice of 9 sprouted grains toast with grape jelly.

Snack

 Not really a snack, but I had a tall Americano from Starbucks while at work. I also drank tons of water all day. I swear I pee pretty much every hour. Yay for hydration!

Lunch

My lunch was inspired by Lynda’s most recent post of her simple summer salad. My salad is made with spinach and baby spring mix, blueberries, chopped granny smith apple, sunflower seeds, feta cheese, shredded chicken (that I made in the slow cooker yesterday), and balsamic vinaigrette dressing. So yummy!

Snacks

I ate a banana! Then after my workout I drank a protein shake. It’s just one scoop of Optimum Nutrition 100% natural whey protein in the flavor vanilla mixed with 8 ounces of unsweetened almond milk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner

For dinner I made Zuppa Toscana soup which I’m sure I have mentioned before on a WIAW. It’s probably my boyfriend’s favorite thing that I cook, so obviously I make it for him pretty frequently to make up for all the not-so-great things I cook for him. 😛 I drank some simply apple juice with my dinner and now I’m drinking more water.

I’m going to get ready for bed now because I’m an old lady. Hope you guys have a fabulous rest of the week. Thanks for reading!

Bows and Arrows,

Ashley

 

 

 

What I Ate Wednesday, 6/18/14

It seems like it’s been so long since my last post, but I guess it hasn’t really. I ate some things today AND I also had the pleasure of finally seeing Lynda Lou after what seems like forever. We are busy ladies lately. I think we keep up with each other now mostly through the blog, which is a little sad considering we live only a couple miles away from each other. Our schedules just haven’t been matching up lately, but today they finally did! yay!

This is what I ate on this extremely HOT Wednesday…

Breakfast

Man, my picture taking skills really suck. I apologize. And yes, this is another awkward window sill picture aka my attempt at getting some natural light. My breakfast is pretty much the usual: gluten free oatmeal made with unsweetened vanilla almond milk, blueberries, banana, cinnamon, raw chopped walnuts, and a little bit of honey. I also had coffee (this kind from Caribou Coffee) with organic half and half. As you can see I am drinking coffee again, thank God! I have also added dairy back, but I think I am going to continue to limit my dairy intake for various reasons that I will talk about (if/when I ever post about my Elimination diet experience).

Lunch

For lunch I picked up the least healthy salad Chick fil A has, the Cobb salad. 😛 Oh yeah, I also had it with Ranch dressing. I know it’s bad (I hate referring to food as good/bad), but I obsessed over my food for a good 25 days, so you know what, I deserve this stupid “unhealthy” salad! I also ate a granny smith apple in between breakfast and lunch, but I did not get a picture of that. oops!

Snack

This is some delicious Turtle Cheesecake ice cream from Ben and Jerry’s! I told Lynda that when I finished with the Elimination diet and started to add dairy back, we HAD to go to Ben and Jerry’s. It was really her idea, because she was so shocked by the fact that I had never been before. So, today was my first ever trip to Ben and Jerry’s and it was very yummy. I swear I don’t live under a rock, although that might be kind of nice. 🙂

Dinner

Again, please excuse the terrible picture quality and poor lighting. This dinner was not really planned out ahead of time. Meal planning for this week has been kind of a fail. Anyway, this is baked Salmon (my go-to last minute dinner idea). I was craving something pasta-y so a quick google search lead me to this broccoli pasta side dish to go with the salmon. I thought it turned out really good. I used brown rice pasta instead of regular pasta, which by the way tastes exactly like whole wheat pasta to me. Not bad for a spur of the moment dinner.

As I’m typing this I am having a glass of lightly sweetened black iced tea. I usually crave something sweet after dinner, but I think maybe the ice cream from earlier has satisfied my sweet tooth for today at least. Or perhaps the tiny bit of sugar in my tea is enough? Who knows!

Thank you for reading! Hope you have a fantastic rest of your week!

Bows and Arrows,

Ashley

What I Ate Wednesday, 4/9/14 (with special guest Rose)

Hey people! It’s Thursday morning and I am not quite awake yet, but I have my coffee so bear with me as my eyes slowly start to open. We have a special guest this Wednesday- my miniature schnauzer, Rose (aka Porky). 😀 Food is very important to the porky dog, so she is excited to share with you. So, here is what we ate this Wednesday…

Breakfast

Yes, I know! So boring. What can I say, I love my oatmeal. It’s made the same old way (organic 2% milk, tiny bit of organic honey, cinnamon, banana slices, and walnuts). My coffee is a breakfast blend from Caribou Coffee with some organic half and half.

Rose always starts her morning off with a milk bone. As soon as she comes in from her morning potty time she runs towards the pantry where the treats are kept. I usually already have the milk bone out waiting for her though. I mean, everyone should be rewarded for going potty. It’s super important. Rose says sorry about her bed hair. When Rose is done begging for my food and realizes I am not sharing, she accepts defeat and goes to eat her own food. She only eats dry food (shhh, don’t tell her how delicious wet food is). I get her food from Petsmart usually. It’s called Nutro Ultra for small breed dogs. She seems to love it and it doesn’t give her gas like the cheaper varieties we’ve tried. Rose says that was TMI. 😛

Snack

I didn’t have time for a snack before work, but Rose did! Right before leaving for work I gave her a Pork Chomp which is a pork skin stick thingy that is an alternative to rawhide. It takes her a while to eat these treats, so it keeps her occupied for a while when she’s home alone.

 

Lunch

My lunch was pretty pathetic because as usual I was rushing around trying not to be late and didn’t leave enough time to make an actual lunch. I did a pretty good workout in the morning before work, so I threw together a protein smoothie to drink on my way there. The drink contains an unmeasured amount of frozen blueberries, 1 scoop of whey protein powder, half of a banana, and about 1 cup of 2% organic milk. I just threw all of the ingredients in a blender and blended until smooth. Not much of a lunch, but better than nothing.

Snack

I brought some snacks with me because I knew that I was not going to make it all day with just the smoothie. I ate these almonds which are pumpkin flavored. I bought these around Thanksgiving last year and can’t seem to finish the container (the container they came in, not this little thing). They are pretty good though! I also brought a yummy organic granny smith apple to eat, but I forgot to get a picture of it.

 

Dinner

I didn’t get home until close to 8 o’clock so I was verrry hungry. I decided to make myself a Caesar salad to eat while the rest of the food was cooking. The salad consists of chopped organic romaine lettuce, croutons, shredded parmesan cheese, and Bolthouse Farms Caesar salad dressing.

For dinner I made spaghetti. But, not your typical spaghetti. Well, it’s typical for me, but you guys will probably find it weird. So, the recipe comes from my boyfriend’s mom. It is very simple and it doesn’t sound that great, but it actually really is. Okay, now don’t judge, but it is basically ground meat (beef or turkey or whatever), ketchup, chili powder and a little ground cayenne pepper if you like a little spice. Not the healthiest recipe or the most glamorous, but it’s fast and satisfying. I used half whole wheat spaghetti and half regular and I also always buy the ketchup without HFCS, so that’s something, right! 😛 I made mine with ground beef because Preston wouldn’t have eaten it any other way. Rose’s dinner consisted of a few pieces of romaine lettuce I dropped on the floor and another serving of her dog food.

Dessert/Snack

I didn’t have anything else after dinner, but Rose was apparently in the mood for ONE more treat. This time she had a Dentastix. She was pretty fed up with me at this point because I took too long taking the picture. She was doing all of the tricks she knows trying to get me to hurry it up. It was pretty hilarious to see her try to roll over on the stairs. Side note…she really needs a hair cut! She does have eyes, I swear.

Well, that about wraps it up! Hope you enjoyed seeing what Rose and I ate this Wednesday. Sorry this is going up so late. Have a great weekend! ❤

 

Bows and Arrows,

Ashley

 

What I Ate Wednesday, 3/26/14

Hey guys! Long time no see blog? I’m sorry I have been so absent from the blog lately, a lot has been happening! Luckily, Lynda Lou was blogging away about her fun adventures in Florida, so hopefully my absence wasn’t too noticeable. My Wednesday was a bit different than usual because I am still getting used to my new work schedule. I got a job! Well, I already had a job at the coffee shop, of course, but now I am working a second job 3 or 4 days a week. The exciting part is that this new job is a step towards getting into a career in holistic health and wellness that will utilize my degree in nutrition. For now, I am doing front desk work, but there are so many opportunities to learn and grow, so I’m pretty stoked. Hey, you’ve gotta start somewhere, right! Anyway, my point in telling you all of that is to explain why my WIAW this week is pretty lame. It’s because this is my first full week of working my new job and I have been getting home around 7:30 and I guess I was not prepared for how tired sitting at a desk all day could make a person! Okay, I’m done rambling….here’s my food!

Breakfast

I started my morning around 7:30 with a large cup of Vanilla Bean coffee from World Market with some organic half and half. About an hour later I made my usual oatmeal because I haven’t gone grocery shopping and there wasn’t really any other options…not that I would have chosen another option anyway. I made it slightly different this time by using a little brown sugar, but still used cinnamon, banana slices, and walnuts. I also drank water out of my little kids Hello Kitty cup that I love so much. I swear Lynda and I are adults, we just like kid things, okay!

Lunch

Lunch was boring, again because I have no food in the house right now. I do, however, always seem to have cans of tuna and oatmeal, and luckily I still had some apples left from my last grocery store trip. I made myself tuna salad with Sundried Tomato Wheat Thins. I also sliced up a granny smith apple and drank more water. To see how I make my tuna salad check out my WIAW post from a while back.

After eating this I headed to work. On Wednesdays I work at my new job from 1-7pm. This was my first Wednesday working there, so I didn’t think about the fact that I would have to go around 6 hours without food. Next week I will definitely bring a snack because I was ravenous by the time I got off!

Dinner

Because I was starving to death and there is a Chipotle very close to where I work, that seemed like the best idea for dinner. I ordered a burrito bowl with chicken, brown rice, black beans, the hot sauce (whatever that is), pico de gallo, and lettuce. I drove home and somehow managed to snap a picture of this deliciousness before I completely devoured it. I then laid on the couch in a food coma and watched a couple episodes of Bates Motel with Preston.

Dessert

Even though I really wasn’t hungry after all the food I ate for dinner, I ate some ice cream anyway. This is why you shouldn’t starve yourself throughout the day! Because you will just eat and eat like a little piggy, like me. 🙂 This is not just any ice cream though, guys! This is girl scout cookie ice cream in the Samoas flavor, which happens to be my favorite girl scout cookie! YUM!! I promise I didn’t eat the whole container, but I just didn’t get a picture of the ice cream in my bowl. It will be a bittersweet moment when this ice cream is finally gone.

Well, that is everything I ate this Wednesday. I don’t think my food choices were too bad considering my lack of groceries in the house and my late work day.  I really try to limit eating out during the week, so I failed in that regard, but at least it wasn’t Bojangles and it also contained at least two vegetables! Great success! hehe I’ll be sure to plan my meals out for next week and I’ll be heading to the grocery store soon.

Have a good rest of the week!

Bows and Arrows,

Ashley

What I Ate Wednesday, 3/12/14

I opened at the coffee shop today so my day got off to an earlier start than usual this Wednesday. As Lynda may have mentioned in one of her WIAW’s, I tend to eat a little bit more on days that I open. This is probably just because I am awake for more hours or it could be because of all of the delicious pastries we have at work that are a constantly tempting me! Overall, I enjoyed all of my food today and I am especially proud of the dinner I made tonight, but we’ll get to that in a bit. 🙂

Breakfast

At around 6:30am I made myself an Americano with one raw sugar and some half and half. I brought some Kashi Go Lean Cereal (Cinnamon Crumble flavor) and a banana for my breakfast. I sliced up the banana and ate it in my cereal. I think this is my new favorite cereal and with 10 grams of protein it is actually somewhat satisfying unlike other cereals.

Snacks

 

A few hours later I ate a mandarin orange that I brought from home. Around 10am I bought myself a bran muffin from work to eat. These muffins are soooo delicious. We order these from a local bakery and some of our customers are just crazy about these things and I totally understand why! They have carrots and raisins in them. They are not overly sweet like most of the other muffins we have…they’re just perfection.

Lunch

I knew I wanted to eat the rest of the leftover pork tenderloin I had made the night before for dinner for my lunch today. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I just microwaved it and made a sandwich with it. It was actually better than I expected it to be. The sandwich has a little bit of mustard and a slice of muenster cheese. I decided to slice up about half of a cucumber to make a quick little cucumber salad to go with it. I kind of just made something up for this. I sliced my cucumber and let it soak in a mixture of white vinegar, water, salt, pepper, and a little bit of sugar. It was tasty! I also had some water with my lunch.

Snack

Around 4pm I wanted something sweet so I made myself an iced chai tea latte. I made this with the Tazo chai tea concentrate and organic 1% milk. I’ve talked about this stuff before. Yum yum!

Dinner

Now on to the dinner that I am sorta, kinda, very proud of! 😛 I made steak…and it was actually GOOD! Yay! Don’t ask me what kind of steak. I don’t even remember and the package is in the trash and I don’t want to dig it out. It was nothing expensive, not a sirloin. I don’t know?

I pulled out my McCormick Montreal steak seasoning and saw a recipe on the bottle for a marinade, so I followed that recipe. It was really simple. It was some olive oil, a little soy sauce, and the Montreal seasoning. I let the steaks sit at room temperature in the marinade for around 30-45 minutes. I then heated a skillet on high with a little vegetable oil in it. I put my steaks in and cooked them until almost done and then added about 1/2 tablespoon of unsalted butter to the pan. I cooked this for myself and my boyfriend and I got his steak perfect…those were his words, not mine!! It was cooked just the way he likes it. Mine was a thinner cut and it cooked a little faster and was therefore a little more done than anticipated, but the flavor was excellent. I am only this excited because this was essentially my first (maybe second) time cooking steaks on the stove and it turned out really well. That doesn’t happen all that often with me.

In addition to the steak, that I won’t shut up about, I had green peas (the kind in the steam fresh microwave bag) and a sweet potato with some cinnamon and butter on top. My boyfriend isn’t a big fan of sweet potatoes (which I find difficult to accept at times haha) so I made him some organic yukon select frozen french fries from the brand Alexia. I tried a couple also just to see how they were. I have tried the sweet potato fries from this brand, but never the regular fries and I think both kinds are really good. I like that these are organic also! Lastly, I had water with my dinner.

That is all of my delicious food for today. I am just sitting here drinking water and thinking about eating one of my little mini Hershey’s dark chocolate with almonds bars. Seems like a good idea!  Hope you guys have a good rest of the week.

Bows and Arrows,

Ashley

What I Ate Wednesday, 2/12/14

I guess it is just going to snow on every one of my What I Ate Wednesday’s! I am just now posting this because a snowpocalypse has hit North Carolina and it knocked out my power for a good 10 hours. Everything would be fine if I would have taken the weather seriously and actually stocked up on food and toilet paper. Yeah, we’re getting dangerously low on toilet paper and I’m not brave enough to venture out. I have already heard enough honking and BOOMING from accidents happening to keep me inside until all of this ice and snow is completely gone! I do, however, have coffee so everything is okay! 😛

This is what I ate on Wednesday leading up to the crazy snow storm.

Breakfast

I decided to eat something different for breakfast! I made myself a turkey sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich. The cheese is muenster and the bread is whole grain. It was pretty tasty! I also had a banana and some delicious coffee with organic half and half. That cute little baby on my coffee mug is my nephew, Dylan. 🙂

Lunch

For lunch I made tuna salad and I ate it with Sundried Tomato and Basil Wheat Thins. I used to only eat tuna plain with just a little light mayonnaise, but Lynda got me hooked on adding sweet pickle relish to it. I just used one can of chunk light tuna in water (drained), some salt and pepper, about a tablespoon or less of light mayo (I never measure it), and maybe a teaspoon of relish. I am not a big fan of mayo. I never have been, but I don’t mind it in tuna for some reason. I have tried using other things in my tuna before though. A “healthier” alternative I have tried before is hummus.  It is a little different, but it’s actually really good. I always eat my tuna with crackers of some sort. I am hooked on these Sundried Tomato and Basil Wheat Thins. They are seriously SO good. If you like wheat thins you should give these a try.

Snack

I wanted a snack so I ate one of these Yoplait greek yogurts with some KIND granola. I did not eat the cat, but he insisted on being in the picture so I just went with it. So meet our cat, Jack! Also, don’t worry I don’t eat off of this table. The yogurt is vanilla flavored. Nutritionally I don’t think these are that bad. They do contain some artificial sweetener (sucralose) which I generally try to stay away from, but the ingredients list is not very long, so that’s a plus. I only eat these occasionally so I’m not really concerned about the artificial sweetener in them. I used to buy Chobani Greek yogurt pretty often, but most of them contain so much sugar, albeit natural sugar, but still sugar nonetheless. Greek yogurt is a good source of protein and provides a decent amount of calcium, but for me personally I prefer other options most of the time. Here are the Nutrition Facts for the Yoplait yogurt if you’re interested. I have to confess that I don’t know if I ever even looked at the nutrition facts on the KIND granola, so I can’t tell you much about it. I just know I love KIND bars, so when I saw KIND granola I snatched it up and put it in my belly. This is the Cinnamon Oat clusters with flax seeds kind. I sometimes sprinkle this on my oatmeal too. Yum!

Dinner

Dinner was some sort of chicken and rice that I cooked in the crock pot.  Because I did not take the impending snow storm seriously I didn’t bother going to the store to stock up on groceries. Everyone always makes fun of us Southerners for overreacting and running to the grocery store at the first sight of snow only for us to get like 2 inches and it’s gone by the next day. Well, I really wish I would have overreacted this time, or reacted period. By the time I realized going to store might be a good idea it was too late. Traffic was at a standstill all over Raleigh. Poor Lynda was trying to get home in it and it took her 3.5 hours to drive 8 miles! Anyway, the point is I found a recipe online for slow cooker chicken and rice because that is pretty much all I had on hand. I failed to take a picture of it, but it wasn’t pretty anyway, so you aren’t missing anything. It was good though and very easy. Here is the recipe I somewhat followed.

Later on I ate one cookie dough Oreo cookie. I only ate one because we only had one left in the entire package, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how you look at it. I also had water with all of my meals, but I did not photograph that for some reason.

That is everything I ate yesterday. Hopefully this snow will clear out of here soon. I certainly hope it’s sunny and warmer for my next WIAW. Thanks for reading!

Bows and Arrows,

Ashley