Gobble All The Way

Well. Thanksgiving was quite the time.

After a whole lot of food [three turkey dinners in two days!], we headed back to Nova Scotia on Monday morning, not quite ready to get back into work mode. We stopped in Moncton again on the way back, and had lunch with a few friends there at Pizza Hut. I ordered a small Mediterranean Veggie pizza, loaded up with the vegetables! It was really tasty, although Pizza Hut is always so greasy!

The two-and-a-half hour drive from Moncton the rest of the way to Antigonish was very long — the longest it has seemed since probably first year. I have a hard time sleeping in cars to begin with, and all I could think about was the Greek oral midterm that I had the next day, and my books for said midterm, which were waiting for me when we finally arrived. I got to work after a brisk walk downtown with two of my roommates, and studied until almost 1am, when I finally gave up and went to bed.

I guess it must have been enough though, because when I got to our meeting and my professor asked me if I could recite the Lord’s Prayer, I did it perfectly! Greek’s got nothing on me! I was very pleased with how well it went, even though I sucked at the little vocabulary quiz after the midterm was over.

Tuesdays are always so long, with classes all afternoon and then night class from 7-9:30, and of course I’m not ready to go to bed right after class, so I stay up far too late and then sleep in on Wednesday mornings.

No exception to that rule today; I set my alarm for 8:30 this morning, and although I woke up, I rolled right back over and hit the snooze button every five minutes until almost 10. No joke. I got up then and printed out an article that has to be read for tomorrow’s abnormal psychology class, and puttered around doing menial things. I didn’t even shower until after 2pm! I don’t know what exactly I’ve been doing all day.

I ate some mashed potatoes with a bit of gravy around 10:30, and then polished off the leftover Annie’s Mac & Cheese. Of course, since I ate lunch so early, I got hungry again at 3:30, and held off eating until 4, when I had a bowl of chicken & sausage gumbo soup [with extra added hot sauce!].

Our friend Kelley, who graduated from StFX last year and is now working as a nurse in southern NS, is coming tonight to stay until Saturday, and I’m not exactly sure what’s in the cards for tonight. Our friends generally love getting together and going out to eat, especially for a special occasion, and Kelley coming to visit is certainly the kind of special occasion we would normally use as an excuse to go out. But I haven’t really heard much about it, so I don’t know if anything is happening after all.

I need to get out of this chair and get to work before I eat twenty pounds of chocolate!

Chipotle Chicken

I’m home for Thanksgiving! We left yesterday afternoon, after a partial lunch in class [I was nice and split my sandwich -- hummus, chicken, laughing cow & hot sauce -- and granola bar with Jonathan], and made our way to Moncton. My parents and brother were at the movie theatre, and since we were too late getting to Moncton to get to the movie in time, we went and had a nice supper at Montana’s. Joey and Leah each got hamburgers, and I ordered the buffalo chicken sandwich with a side of sweet potato fries.

My brother texted me when their movie ended, and we met them at Dairy Queen for ice cream. I ordered a pumpkin pie blizzard, but only got through half of it before I was too stuffed [not to mention freezing cold] to finish it.

The rest of the drive home was uneventful, and once we got home, we stayed up until after 1am talking with my family.

This morning we planned on getting. up to work, but we ended up staying in bed until almost ten o’clock, and even now, three hours later, we’re still just sitting in the tv room watching Friends.

Dinner tonight is Joey’s grandmother’s turkey dinner, and tomorrow we’ve got two more [Joey's other grandmother and my family]. It’s going to be tough, especially by the end of tomorrow, to put anything into my mouth, but it’s always all so delicious, hopefully I won’t have much trouble.

Back in the Green

I’ve been slacking. I actually have photos from yesterday [not today though!], but I didn’t have a minute to post them last night before I fell asleep.

Yesterday I ate the last of the turkey sausages, but only had one bun between them, so I ate them “open-faced”, if you will, with mustard and hot sauce [of course].

With a diet pepsi:

And for dessert: a GREEN MONSTER!

It’s been so long since I’ve had one, and it was SO GOOD. Along with my spinach and skim milk, I threw in some frozen fruit, since that’s all I had. A handful of little mango chunks, pineapple, and strawberry. I mixed it all together in the magic bullet, and decided it wasn’t quite green enough, so I threw in some more spinach, and went at it again. It turned out wonderfully!

For dinner, we went to Pizza Delight to celebrate Rochelle’s birthday, where I overindulged in garlic fingers and pizza. It tasted so good, but I was definitely regretting it afterwards. At least Pizza Delight pizza isn’t greasy, otherwise I would have felt twice as bad.

Today’s eats were fairly minimal, including half a bagel with a laughing cow wedge for lunch, along with a chocolate carnation breakfast shake. I tried to eat some shrimp for protein in the afternoon, but it tasted kind of funky, so I only got through a few little shrimpies before I called it quits. Dinner was Spaghetti Thursday! I had a fairly large plate of noodles & tomato sauce, as well as a “two bite brownie” for dessert. So good.

I got home around 7:30 and went to work on an online quiz for one of my Psych classes. I finished in less than half an hour, just in time for the girls to come back in a mad rush to get ready for the gym, and so I tagged along with them. I had planned on running on the indoor track around one of our ice rinks, but there was hockey practice going on, and a few guys were playing on the track as well, and I was the only runner there so I felt a bit awkward. Instead I went outside, planning on just walking home, since it was raining fairly hard. I walked for a few minutes and decided that maybe running outside wouldn’t be such a bad idea, so I went for it.

I started the Couch to 5K running plan this past week, and although I feel like I’m going super slowly, I’m trying to stick with the schedule and work my way up slowly instead of doing what I want and hurting myself. I did a week one run tonight, and got back home soaking wet but feeling good. I was talking to my roommate, Tiffany, about the program and she sounded interested, and asked if I would go out for a second time tonight. Tiffany is not a runner — she has never run in her entire life, and because of her weight, she is intimidated by the thought of it. So there was no way I was going to turn her down tonight! We went out together, and she did so well! She is proof that this plan will work for anyone, because she was running every time we were supposed to, and didn’t stop before the allotted time was up! I’m so proud of her! Hopefully she will keep it up, and if she needs me to go at it with her, hopefully I’ll have the time to do my runs plus the additional runs with her, because I really want to see her do this.

I got home and was starving — I’m sure I was mostly craving protein after a day with very little — and I made myself some soup: chicken and sausage gumbo [again!]. It was an extremely welcome snack/meal while watching The Office. [YAY PAM AND JIM!]

I’ve been ready for bed for an hour now, since I got off the “Pam & Jim are married!” high, and am just now really winding down and feeling pooped. Sarai wants to go for a run in the morning, although with two runs tonight, I’m not sure whether or not I’ll be up for that. We’ll see how I’m feeling …

It’s All Greek To Me

Yesterday’s post had to wait until now to be written up, because of my super hectic day yesterday and today. Mondays and Tuesdays are my busiest days of the week, and this week was absolutely no exception … probably even worse, since I was scheduled to work all weekend too. I got no break whatsoever this week, which makes it very hard to keep plugging away.

I didn’t really have time for breakfast yesterday, between trying to get ready for class and getting a start on homework. So I dug through my bookbag in my first class to find half of a chocolate almond fudge Clif bar, which I gobbled down.

Halfway through my next class [about an hour later] I started feeling hungry again, so I rummaged through my bag to find yet another half-eaten bar, this time a cashew cookie Larabar.

After class, I came home and had lunch: a bowl of chicken & sausage gumbo. With extra added hot sauce, of course.

I have honestly never eaten a canned soup that tastes as good as this gumbo. I had real gumbo for the first time this summer, in Maine, and it was fantastic, much better than the soup version, but I must admit that the soup is better than the gumbo prepared by a group of people from Louisiana who were visiting my church back home. It didn’t have much flavour to it at all! Although I’m sure that had to do with the fact that they were cooking for a bunch of wimpy Canadians …

I ate again before going to work, around 4pm. I figured I should probably get something into me, knowing I wouldn’t be eating again until 9:30. The boyfriend had left two sausages behind when he was here the other night, so I cooked those up and ate them in buns with mustard and hot sauce. So tasty!

I worked with Sheila last night, a middle-aged lady who is very into her job. Which meant that I didn’t get a chance to study at all for my test, and instead helped with re-tagging a ton of pieces all over our store. Fun fun. It actually made the night go by really quickly though, and got my mind off of the fact that I wasn’t getting any homework done, so for that I was thankful.

When I got home after work, Jonathan was here and ready to do an online quiz together for one of our classes. We got that out of the way, and I started studying for Greek. I was up until well past 2am, just trying to memorize grammar rules, case endings, and vocabulary. Not so much a time. But oh well.

This morning I got up, studied a bit more, packed some food for the day, and left for class, where I studied some more, had half an hour in between classes to heat up some soup for lunch [while studying still, of course], and then I had my Greek test. Which actually went alright. I was completely shocked and ecstatic with how well it went, and the whole time I couldn’t help but think to myself, “oh! I know this! … and I know this! … and this!” It was fantastic. I was giving some serious thanks and praise the whole time.

I floated through the next class, happy as a clam, and then came home for some protein. I cooked some ham [random, yes, I know], and ate a bowl of fruit loops with skim milk. Not the most nutritious or well-rounded meal, but it satisfied. I also drank half a big mug of coffee, which got cold fairly quickly. But I kind of want more. I might end up making another cup before class tonight …

Blizzard-Free Day

Well, I did it! No Blizzards for me today! Although those freaking pumpkin pie boys are so tasty!

I got up this morning totally not wanting to go through yet another day at work when I have so much schoolwork that desperately needs to get done. Of course I went anyway, because I’m sure it would not be good to miss work when there’s only one other girl there, and she’s only been there a few weeks longer than I have.

On Sundays, since there are only two of us there, and the shift is just shy of six hours long, we don’t get a break. And I find it hard to eat lunch before noon. Which means that I was starving until two, when Ashley told me to go down the hall to the drug store and pick up something to eat. I was so grateful. [This is why I like working with the young girls more than the other ladies that work at our jewelry store!] Once at Lawtons, I found some tomato soup that could be heated in the little microwave in our office, along with some Crispy Minis tortilla-style rice crisps, in the salsa & sour cream flavour. They were pretty good, and the soup was so welcome in my grumbling tummy. I also picked up a small chocolate bar, to satisfy my sweet tooth.

I got back to our store and devoured all of it. Well, not all of the chips, I only had a few of those, but the soup was gone as soon as it was hot enough, and the chocolate didn’t even stand a chance.

When I got home, my roommates were trying to decide on a movie for the evening, and I joined in the debate, although I knew that I couldn’t spend any time watching a movie. We ended up putting in Ever After, but leaving to go to Subway only a few minutes in. I tried their flatbread sandwich with chicken, cheese, tomato, pickles, black olives, and hot sauce. It was pretty freaking good. I have trouble with burgers and sandwiches when the bread is too overpowering. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some bread, but when it’s around something else, I don’t want the main taste to be the bread. I usually end up removing one half of the bun, or ripping off most of the bread to even it out. But the flatbread certainly does not overpower the innards of the sandwich. It was great. Although, I’m pretty sure that that flatbread is not the best thing for you. It will certainly only be an occasional thing for me, and since I don’t go to Subway all that often anyway, I’m sure it will be alright.

After finishing my sub, I grabbed the spearmint leaves and leftover macaroons from yesterday’s candy run. I finished off the macaroons and ate a few of the wonderful gummies. Then a few people started showing up at my house to have a spontaneous viewing of Forrest Gump, and I went upstairs to get some work done.

I started in on studying Greek, and was at it for quite awhile when I received a little surprise visit from the boyfriend. Joey stopped by to pick up his roommate [who was here watching the movie with the girls], and figured he would come upstairs to see me while waiting for the movie to finish. We had a nice little devotional time, prayed together, and then he tucked me into bed. I can’t wait to be married to this boy! [Only 320 days!! -- holy crap!]

Nip It. Nip It Good.

Today was the longest day ever.

Last night we had everyone over to our place after the LIFE service on campus, and it turned into a big game of sardine all throughout our house. As in, there were people hiding on top of our fridge and everything. I went to bed early because I had to work in the morning, but I even got scared by a hider when I tried to brush my teeth in the bathroom! She was underneath the counter. I had thought to look in the shower, but not under there …

After it was all said and done, I didn’t get to bed until after 1am, and then had to get up by 7 this morning to take one of my roommates to campus where she was meeting a ride to Halifax, get home and ready for work at 8:30. Since I was so freaking tired, I may have gotten back into bed until 8:00 … and didn’t exactly have time for breakfast. So by the time I got my lunch break, at 2pm [!!!] I was starving. The store was pretty busy today with a jewelry designer in from out-of-province for today only, taking appointments, and answering questions about custom engagement rings from me in between appointments. It was fun. But I was dead. Saturday shifts are the worst: 10 hours, on your feet, with only one little break.

I did think ahead enough to pack a lunch for work though: a turkey sandwich on multigrain bread from a local bakery with Sabra red pepper hummus [my huge jar is getting really low!], laughing cow cheese, tomato, and hot sauce.

After eating, I really wanted something sweet [when do I not want something sweet?!] and so I went down the hall to find something little. I ended up buying a box of macaroons and a little tub of gummy spearmint leaves. Which I’ve been snacking on all freaking day. So addictive, and so good.

When I finally got home, the boyfriend was here with one of his roommates and his cousin, who is visiting for the weekend.

Surprise number one: he was cooking. This isn’t super odd; he often cooks supper for me, but it’s usually planned. Coming home to my house to find him cooking doesn’t happen often. If ever.

Surprise number two: he was making sausages. I had no idea Joey even liked sausages?! He’s always said that the only sausages he likes are the little breakfast ones [barf!] and sticks to the regular, disgusting hotdogs if I ever eat sausages.

Surprise number three: they were turkey sausages. One thing that Joey rarely [if ever] does is think about what’s in the food that he’s eating. He doesn’t usually give any thought to things like this; just buys normal sausages and away he goes. But he actually consciously grabbed turkey sausages tonight, while the other guys got honey garlic and regular italian pork sausages. I couldn’t believe it.

So I ate two. Naturally. They were darn good. With some mustard and hot sauce. Nothing fancy. But I love my protein. I don’t get near enough of it.

Then came the badness. Last night, we went to Dairy Queen, and I tried a pumpkin pie Blizzard for the first time. Well it didn’t go over well. I loved it so much that I ate the entire small Blizzard within just a few minutes. I normally can’t even come near to finishing a whole Blizzard! Tonight I took it one step further and got a medium sized one! Everyone else wanted dessert, and we figured that ice cream was the easiest [and tastiest!] choice. I wasn’t complaining, because I’m definitely in love with the pumpkin pie flavor.

I ate the whole thing.

Medium size Blizzard. Probably within ten minutes. Huge pig sitting right here. I almost couldn’t believe it myself. It was just so good!

I promise, no more Blizzards for me tomorrow! I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m definitely getting back into the needing something sweet after a meal phase, and it’s starting to worry me. Got to nip this one in the bud!

All Mushed Up [But Back at Last!]

I know, I know. You don’t have to tell me.

It’s been a long time. A really long time.

Let’s see … the last time I posted [way back at the first of July -- holy cow!], I had finally made my first green monster, and had recently attending my first two spinning classes. While the first green monster was certainly not my last of the summer, those two spinning classes were the only ones I got to before my gym membership expired. [And with my poor attendance, there was no way I was shelling out another few hundred dollars to sign another contract!]

Now I could try and recap my entire summer for you, or instead I could just move on, forget that I even went on an unplanned blogging hiatus, and pick right back up where I left off. I’m pretty sure that if I tried to recap, not only would you say “geez Courtney, stop writing so much” and click the little “x” in the corner, but I would probably not be back again for awhile, unsure of exactly what I should write.

So instead I will just go merrily on my way, get with the present time instead of trying to sort through the past few months, and tell you about my breakfast.

I’m not exactly a breakfast person; all during high school I would get ready to leave in the morning and barely be downstairs for a minute before I was out the door. Eating in the morning seemed like a waste of time for me, for some reason. Unfortunately, that sentiment persists. There aren’t many mornings when I am ready long enough before class [or wherever I need to go] to prepare and eat something. I know that I should be coming downstairs sooner, putting the books on hold and eating something before class, but it just never really happens.

Until this morning.

I don’t have class until noon on Fridays, but for some reason, I was wide awake at 7am today. I figured it would be a really good chance to get some work done, and so I cracked open a book and started reading. Not too long after that, I heard voices in the hallway and downstairs, and I contemplated going down to socialize, but knew that I wouldn’t get any work done for the rest of the morning if I did that, and so I stayed in my room until I heard them all leaving for class, and then went downstairs to get something to eat.

Minutes later I’m putting away the dishes in our drying rack, whipping out pots and wooden spoons, and grabbing something that I haven’t made in what feels like forever: oatmeal.

I decided to make pumpkin oats this morning, as I have a container of it in the fridge that has to be eaten up.

• 1/3 cup water, skim milk, oats
• 1/2 cup pure pumpkin
• sprinkle ground flax & brown sugar
• chocolate chips!

Unlike the Queen of Oatmeal [but like her husband!], I love mushing my oats and toppings all up, and mixing the flavors all together. So naturally, that was my next step:

with coffee [& a bit of fat free hazelnut flavoured half & half]:

Breakfast = success!

Now that I’ve done two things this morning that are no longer in my routine [breakfast & blogging!], I’m going to get back to work.

Class at 12, hopefully lunch at some point, and of course more work to do. Got to love the life of a student!

See you later for lunch & supper!

Finally: Spinning & Green Monsters

At last! Today, for the first time, I got to make a green monster! I’ve been wanting to for awhile now, and even went so far as to buy spinach for it one time before, but ended up using it for salads and forgetting about the drink form.

No longer must I go monster-less. I have been converted.

This little baby was made from a few chunks of fresh banana and cantaloupe, a handful plus a few scragglers of spinach, about a cup of unsweetened vanilla almond milk, and a scoop of french vanilla protein powder. Blend it up real nice and here you go.

IT. WAS. SO. GOOD.

Seriously.

I didn’t want it to end.

I’m SO happy that I [finally] tried it, and I’m pretty sure another one is in the works for tomorrow!

Thank you to Angela and Green Monster Movement for the ideas, and for spreading the word about these wonderful creatures!

In other news, I went on a little shopping trip this afternoon with my beautiful roommate, Tiffany, and bought a whole bunch of goodies:

From the top:

• Whole wheat, yolk-free egg noodles [= THE BOMB]
• Baby spinach
• Mushrooms
• Source fat-free peach yogurt [50% off!]
• Nectarines
• Turnip [aka rutabaga]
• Red bell pepper
• LOTS of “cocktail” tomatoes
• Cantaloupe! [which I diced asap]

I also bought bananas and frozen mango chunks, but somehow they escaped the photo.

After my wonderful, green snack, I sat down for a minute, planning on getting a bit of writing out of the way, when I realized that somehow 5pm had crept up on me, and I was supposed to go to the gym! I ran upstairs and got changed and was out the door in minutes. I walked to Nubodys and got there just in time to sign up for and get to the 5:30 spin class. I spent 40 minutes on the bike, and it felt so great! I went for my first class last Thursday, and really enjoyed it, although at only 20 minutes it seemed rather short. I figured I would be able to handle a 40 minute class, and although it was more intense [obviously!] it was a lot of fun! I’m even considering getting up for the class at 6:30 tomorrow morning! [Am I crazy?!]

Unfortunately I ruined my healthy green monster and fantastic spin class this evening at the boyfriend’s house when I ate not only a big ol’ sub from Subway, but also a slice of the pizza someone brought to share, and one of the brown sugar cookies Joey’s grandmother sent down this past weekend! I guzzled down two big glasses of water when I got home [because somehow that is supposed to negate all that I ate tonight?] and I’m about to go to bed. We’ll see if the 6:30am class actually happens …

Green Monster Movement

These little guys have been popping up EVERYWHERE lately, and I’m going crazy just thinking about them. I’ve been meaning to get to the store for some spinach for days now, but I haven’t had the time [or the money!] to go, what with work, weekend visitors, and my newest love and obsession: spin class. But more about that later.

Angela from Oh She Glows is holding a fantastic contest as a part of her Summer Glow Boot Camp this month. Fortunately for me [but not so fortunately for so many other bloggers/readers] this contest is open to Canadian participants only, as the prizes are from Canadian companies that obviously aren’t able to ship to the US or something. I’m not sure, but this contest is definitely worth checking out!

Tomorrow is my day off, and I already have lots of plans. Hopefully at least a few of them will be accomplished! I must get to the store for some spinach with which to try a green monster. Angela, along with many other bloggers, has so many fantastic looking recipes up for the smoothies, and there’s a blender downstairs in my kitchen just aching to be filled with green.

Since I don’t have a schedule to work with tomorrow, I’m thinking about going to a spin class at my gym. I went to my first one last Thursday, as I finally mustered up the nerve to go by myself, and for once wasn’t working at the same time as the classes! I’m now finding myself looking at my work schedule and wondering when exactly it will be possible to squeeze in a class, and I’m so pumped to be excited about exercising again! I haven’t been practicing much yoga lately as I just get into a routine of not doing it, which sucks. And then of course when I think about doing it, or would like to, it’s at a time or place where I’m not really able to.

Working shifts makes it so much harder to get into a groove with cooking, eating, and working out. It’s especially hard for someone who is relatively new to the whole business, and is used to being lazy …

A Chicken + Bread Kind Of Day

I got over to Joey’s place and realized that I had forgotten my only real contribution to the lunch at my place — tomatoes for the sandwiches. Silly me. We had to go to the grocery store anyway to pick up some bread and pesto, so we decided to swing by my place and get the tomatoes while we were out.

Instead of just swinging by, we ended up cooking at my place instead. These weren’t just your regular, run-of-the-mill sandwiches, these were incredible. Probably one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever eaten.

We started off with a fresh ciabatta loaf from the grocery store’s bakery, and toasted it with a bit of fresh mozzarella until it was melted. Joey pan-seared two chicken breasts, and then cut them lengthwise to get nice long strips, putting them back in the pan to finish cooking. We decided to add turkey bacon to our sandwiches, which really added the extra oomph to the sandwich, I think. Fresh bread and cheese makes all the difference, but there’s usually one ingredient that, while expendable, has a profound effect on the dish. He grilled the turkey bacon on my George Foreman grill, until it was a still minute away from crispy, the way both of us like our bacon. I mixed together some pesto and mayonnaise, and somewhere along the line a tomato was sliced. Put it all together and WOW:

I had a nice big sandwich, and there is still a hunk left in my fridge, I suppose, and I’m hoping to eat that for lunch tomorrow before Joey reads this and realizes that I kept the leftovers for myself.

I made myself a light dinner at work, because by the time I had a minute in which to eat, it was nearly eight o’clock. I didn’t snack on anything all night, for which I was very proud of myself, so I made a chicken wrap for supper with a bit of ranch dressing, lettuce, tomato, and chicken in a whole wheat wrap. I did eat a few fries, but only because Harlan [the nice little sixteen year old that reminds me so much of my brother] put a few on a plate for me.

I didn’t even eat ice cream tonight! I did, however, scoop some frozen yogurt into a dish and stashed it in my freezer. I think I’m going to start a little collection in there …