Lost Hour

Hope everyone had a great weekend! Yesterday’s Internet-free Sunday was just as awesome as last weekend. I really feel that staying away from the computer all day brings my husband and me closer. We spend more time together, we actually get out of the house and away from the television a little bit, we even laugh more. Sundays are now my favorite day of the week. 🙂

Did Daylight Savings Time mess anyone else up? Corey took care of Callie and allowed me to sleep in. When I looked at the clock after waking up, it said 7:30. Believe me when I say I do not usually sleep that late. Talk about luxury! It wasn’t until a couple of hours later that I remembered about the time change and realized that it was actually 8:30 when I woke up. That lost hour really messed with my internal clock all day.

Corey started the day off by making me breakfast. I love that he loves to make me breakfast on the weekends. He made me Peanut Butter Waffles. Yummy!

After breakfast, we relaxed a little and then I was in the mood for a good workout. In the spirit of trying a new workout, I turned on the Jillian Michaels Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism DVD. I used to do this through Comcast On Demand all the time, but the On Demand version of the workout is only 20 minutes. The full DVD version is 45 minutes long.

I have only done this full length version once and that was quite a while ago. This workout is a killer! It is all cardio and is intense. I discovered about halfway through the workout that waffles are NOT a good pre-workout meal. They were sitting in my stomach like a rock and I was feeling quite nauseous. Unfortunately I had to stop about 20 minutes into it. My stomach just couldn’t take anymore.

After my brief workout, Corey and I both took a shower and got ready for a fun afternoon in the park! It was so incredibly beautiful yesterday. It was about 75 degrees. It felt like summer! Or maybe I should say that it felt like Spring. Summers in Georgia are about 100 degrees.

It's a beautiful day for a picnic!

Corey and I decided to take a picnic lunch to eat in the park. I think Callie was more excited than we were.

For lunch, I took a grilled bacon, lettuce, and cheese sandwich.

 For dessert, I had  a slice of Chocolate Chip Pumpkin bread (yes I actually had a few slices left after last week’s pig out) along with some strawberries.

I have missed strawberries so much and I really feel like Spring is around the corner with the arrival of fresh berries. They were on sale at Publix for only $1.67! Score. 🙂

Enjoying a strawberry

We brought some toys for Callie to play fetch with, along with some treats. However, she wasn’t interested in any of it.

She was more interested in sniffing the ground, eating grass, and chasing bugs. You know, the usual dog stuff. 😉

Callie chasing some tiny little bug

We spent a while in the park, just enjoying the sunshine and taking lots and lots of photos of Callie. We were in a few of the pictures as well.

I think she was annoyed with out impromptu photo shoots.

But isn’t she just the most photogenic dog ever??

I could be a bit biased. 😉 We need to teach her the command, “Look at me.” Most of the time she refuses to look at us if we are snapping pictures. If she does happen to glance our way, we have to snap the picture as quickly as we can before we lose the opportunity.

A family shot!

After our wonderful afternoon in the park, I was ready to finish my workout. Honestly, it would have driven me crazy for the rest of the night if I had left the workout unfinished. The second half was just as intense as the first, but my stomach felt a lot more settled. So I still got a 45 minute workout in yesterday!

Last night we had the idea to have a pizza night. We bought a package with two 8″ pizza crusts from Whole Foods. Corey and I do not agree on pizza toppings, so it was nice that we could each have our own personal pizza.

I made a great white cheese spread for my pizza. I can’t eat very much mozzarella cheese because it gives me migraines. Since I am loving goat cheese, I decided to make a spread out of that and some ricotta cheese. It was so delicious that I was eating it out of the bowl with a spoon.

Goat Cheese and Ricotta Spread for a pizza (makes enough for one small 8″ pizza)

1/3 c. Ricotta cheese
2 oz. soft goat cheese
1/2 c. fresh spinach
basil, parsley, and other spices to taste

Mix all ingredients and spread on pizza. Can use this instead of pizza sauce or spread some on top of pizza sauce (like I did!). Yummy!

On top of my pizza crust, I had pizza sauce, my cheese spread, a couple of slices of Applegate all natural pepperoni, and some green pepper slices.

Corey was a little more nervous than I was about the crust. It was gluten-free and he was afraid he would miss the gluten. Turns out, he was right. Maybe it was just the brand of crust, but it was too dry and didn’t have much flavor. Corey ended up getting something else for dinner, but I just scraped the cheese and veggies off my crust and ate that. It was still very tasty.

I hope everyone else had a great Sunday. Are you coping well with the lost hour?

Internet Free

Hope everyone had an awesome weekend! Mine was pretty nice. And by “nice,” I mean it was awesome.

On Saturday, I actually got off work semi-early for a change. Instead  of running errands and going to Whole Foods, my husband and I spent the rest of the day relaxing together and watching TV. We watched Due Date on demand. I thought that some of the comedy was a little over the top, but mostly it was really funny and a pretty decent movie.

On Saturday night, we also made some homemade peanut butter. I am in love with honey roasted peanuts, so I took about a cup and a half of honey roasted peanuts and threw them in the food processor. It only took ten minutes for it to go from this . . . .

to this!

This is probably the best honey roasted peanut butter I have ever tasted. So delicious and definitely cheaper than buying my own.

Last week I mentioned to my husband that I wanted Sunday to be Internet-free Sunday. So no blogging, no Facebooking, to tweeting, no surfing. I think we both spend way too much time on the computer. I wanted to have a day with no distractions for me and Corey . . . and Callie too, of course. 🙂

It was a wonderfully productive and yet relaxing day. The day started with Corey making me breakfast. He made me some breakfast potatoes. Then he made me a breakfast bowl that consisted of potatoes, a couple of scrambled eggs, and some chicken sausage. I also added some ketchup. Yummy!

After breakfast, Corey and I relaxed a little longer, took Callie for a little walk and set out to run some errands. It was seriously cold yesterday for the first time in weeks! My ears were freezing. I should have known our Spring-like weather was too good to be true. The errands included a trip to Whole Foods, Kohl’s for a clothing exchange, Pet Smart for some doggy goodies, and my favorite place, Sam’s Club.

At Pet Smart, we bought Callie some dog food and some new treats. They are all natural! If I am going to eat all natural foods, then my dog probably should as well. She deserves the best.

I think she loved her new treats. What’s not to love about bacon and cheese? 🙂

Does anyone else get full from shopping at Sam’s Club? I kind of love going there on weekends because of all the free samples. It’s the perfect place to eat foods that I wouldn’t normally eat and it’s also the perfect spot to exercise a little portion control. You kind of have to with their small (but tasty) portions.

When we got home from running errands, it was time for lunch. After Sam’s Club, I was not in the mood for lunch. I had filled up from bites of chicken salad and pizza. Instead I did a 40 minute Jackie Warner workout. After the workout, I was in the mood for something cool, light, and nutritious. So I made myself a Gingerbread Smoothie.

Thank goodness we had purchased skim milk. No more whole milk in my smoothies! It was so good and exactly what I needed. With the smoothie, I had half a wheat bagel (bought at the Farmer’s Market and so good) with my homemade honey roasted peanut butter.

The smoothie and bagel were perfect fuel for our next project: cleaning out our refrigerator and freezer. We had way too much in our freezer that we knew we were never going to eat. For instance . . . Lean Cuisines. I had about six of those in our freezer.

I can’t believe that this time last year, I was eating those just about every day for lunch. The only reason I stopped eating them was because I needed to remove a lot of things from my diet to prevent my migraines. Obviously, they have way too many preservatives. There was a time when I couldn’t have imagined my lunches without Lean Cuisines. But I have gotten more creative with my meals (and we make lots of leftovers for my lunch!) and I couldn’t imagine eating those meals again on a day-to-day basis. I see now that they weren’t very nutritious, nor were they very filling. It’s no wonder that I was hungry barely two hours after eating them.

The best part of the day was making homemade tortillas! I haven’t had a tortilla in forever and it’s mainly because they have too many ingredients I can’t eat. I have yet to find a tortilla that I am able to eat. If I had known how easy it was to make them, I would have done it a lot sooner. We used this recipe. The only changes we made were to use half white and half wheat flour and we used olive oil instead of shortening. Really, they were very easy to make. Just mix, knead, roll, and cook.

These tortillas were so delicious! We made some steak fajitas to go with the tortillas. My husband marinated some top round meat in a little olive oil, Cajun seasoning, and red pepper flakes. He also sauteed some peppers and onions.

The meat was the most delicious meat I have tried in a while. What a delicious marinade that my husband made!

In the tortillas that we made, I had some meat with peppers and onions, a little scoop of refried beans, and some salsa.

fajita x's two!

I also had some unpictured chips and salsa. Dare I say that this meal was better than most takeout from Mexican restaurants?

After dinner, my wonderful husband offered to clean the kitchen and do the dishes. Then we relaxed for the rest of the night. We watched another movie, On Demand. We watched Love Happens, starring Jennifer Aniston. It was a really good movie. It was sweet and moving and a little sad at times.

It was a wonderful weekend and I am so glad there we unplugged from the Internet for a day. I told Corey that I wanted to do that every Sunday. So don’t expect any blogs from me on Sundays in the future. 😉

What was the best part of your weekend?