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, 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

What I Ate Wednesday, 12/11

So last week, Ashley disclaimed our What I Ate Wednesday posts, and how some of our food choices may or may not be the healthiest choices.  This is very true.  I work weird hours, which means sometimes, I’m unfortunately buying my food out at the mall food court, quickly picking up take out from a restaurant, or microwaving a frozen meal.  Don’t judge.  You know you occasionally do it, too!

I am also the type that eats small portions, and snacks many times throughout the day.  My schedule doesn’t always allow me to snack whenever I want though, so if you see snack after snack some Wednesdays, and no snacks on others, this is why.

Ok. So today, December 11^th.  Two weeks from Christmas, if you’re counting.  What I Ate on this Coldish Wednesday:

Breakfast

Let’s just say my breakfast was cinnamon themed.

First, I had a third of my leftover Cinnabon.  I can never finish one of those.  They are very sweet, very delicious, and way too much for me to consume at once.  Also, HOLY CALORIES!  Let’s just say that if you can finish an entire Cinnabon classic on your own in one sitting, don’t question how many calories you just consumed, because you’ll just want to eat another one to cure the depression you’ve just sunk into.  But really though, it’s nice to indulge yourself every now and then.  And they are oh, so delicious!  (If you’re curious now about the calorie content, just click here.  And I only ate a third, so you can divide that by three for me!)

My other breakfast item was a Fuji apple, diced, and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.  I love apples, but I get tired of just eating them plain all the time, so my current favorite way to eat them is sliced up in little pieces, with a ½ teaspoon of cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top of them.  The cinnamon and sugar brings out the juiciness of the apple and kinda makes it taste like candy!

Last, I had a cup of coffee with extra half and half (organic).  Love me some coffee!!

Side note:  If you like my cute little plate, it’s from CB2.  Click here for more like it.

Lunch

I was home for lunch!  This happens once in a blue moon!  But really though, it happens probably once every 10 days.  Today, for lunch, I made myself a tuna salad sandwich.  I also ate some chips and guacamole.  My drink was hot tea.

My tuna salad was homemade and I placed it on honey whole wheat bread with a sliced lettuce leaf.  My homemade tuna salad recipe is below! As my side, I had a single portion of tableside chunky guacamole with tortilla chips.  My hot tea is a blend of Teavana teas.  I blended their English Breakfast black tea with their Roobios Tropica roobios tea.  I’m kind of addicted to teas.

I know everyone makes their tuna salad differently, so here is how I make mine! It’s super simple!

1 can Starkist chunk light tuna in water, drained

1 tbsp mayonnaise

¼ tsp garlic salt

1 tbsp sweet relish

Add all ingredients to a small bowl and mix well.  Bam!  Done. 

Dinner

I was at work during dinner, so I packed some quick things to eat.  My sad little dinner consisted of a short Starbucks coffee with extra cream (to get me through the rest of the night), a vanilla blueberry Kind bar, an apple blueberry pomegranate Gogo Squeez fast fruit, and a homemade chickpea salad.  This is one of my go to salads because its fresh, healthy, fills you up, and can be a stand-alone meal because of all the essential nutrients chickpeas provide.  Chickpea salads can contain many ingredients, however, this is how I make mine, which I think is so flavorful!

Lynda’s Chickpea Salad

1 can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained

1 Roma tomato, diced

¼ cup red onion, diced

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp basil

1 tsp parsley

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1tbsp balsamic vinegar

 Drain liquid from can of chickpeas.  Empty into a mixing bowl.  Dice roma tomato and red onion and add to mixing bowl.  Measure out and add all spices.  Add olive oil and balsamic vinegar; toss. 

So there you have it.  What Lynda ate on this fine Wednesday.  Feel free to leave questions or comments about any of the recipes provided!