What I Ate Wednesday/WOD's #14

Hello! Welcome back to another edition of....

Over the last week or so I have really wanted to start focusing on nutrition again. When I lived in Santa Monica it just sort of came easy for me. Not quite sure why, maybe it was because I was constantly surrounded by fitness, it was warm all the time, and we had a lot of "fast food" places that served good, whole foods. Plus I had an objective in mind to be super healthy. Once we moved to the land of the rain I just sort of fell off the healthy eating bandwagon and wanted to know how many dark chocolate hot cocoa's I could drink in a day ;) They sure were good, but my thighs don't agree! But, I've taken my time to plan and prep this week. I've also really slowed down when it comes to meals and have been enjoying cooking really healthy foods again. I forgot how much I love to prepare and gently cook all those yummy fruits and veggies! So, anyway...here is the deliciousness I've consumed this week....

Beet Lemonade: Two small beets, one lemon, one apple put through the juicer. Very tasty! Plus, who can resist this guy's hot pink fabulousness?!

Last Thursday hubby & I had an impromptu date night and this bad boy was Flambéd right at our table. Totally worth the splurge!

Shrimp I had right along with the cheese. So yummy!

So, this was dinner the other night. Vegan pate, homemade vegan spaghetti o's , watermelon, grapes, and zucchini. The kiddo loved the spaghtetti o's! She's had several more servings since! haha

This is from an all local food truck. It was basically a salad in a pita (I just at the middle lol). It was super tasty, had 3 different types of fish in there!

This was my entree from our New Restaurant Day. It's a salad with some sort of maple dressing, and a veggie burger with all the fixin's. Very, very tasty, especially with that fried pickle! ;) Almost felt like I was back home....

Appetizer from our new restaurant Friday (which was really Saturday lol). Pretzel with mustard dip, the other was a bacon peanut butter dip, it was ok....

And one of my favorite things from the last week....Skinny Strawberry Margarita!

Those were my food choices. Some great, some eh, but getting to the better choices as the week goes on. ;)

My workouts have been going much better! Thank goodness I didn't injure myself too badly a few weeks ago when I fell during a workout  so I've been able to resume my workouts 100% with no issues and I've been going at them well! Here's what it's looked like for me:

Wednesday: T25 Cardio, Nooner Yoga at Canada Place, plus morning and afternoon stretching

Thursday: T25 Total Body Circuit, a little foam rolling (just learning, played with it a bit)

Friday: T25 Ab intervals and Speed 1.0 (by far my favorite workout from the series!)

Saturday: Lower Focus, lots of walking with the hubby and the kiddo around town

Sunday: Total Body Circuit, lots of walking around town with the kiddo stretching in the am & pm

Monday: Was supposed to be a rest day but I did a squat challenge in one of my fitness groups, 20 deadlifts on each leg from this silly exercise "game" where you share an exercise on your page & have to do 5 of the exercise for every like, then I found a new app called 7 that gives you a 7 minute workout everyday, then I did my T25 Stretching. It wound up being quite the "rest" day....Tuesday was super sore!

Tuesday: Super sore, but knew I had to get moving. We did a 3 mile walk to the aquarium, then I did my 7 minute app, then did T25 stretching. 

 Starting today I am in Week 5 of the Alpha Cycle of T25. I have a write up coming of what I think of the program thus far...a part of my honest account that got side tracked while on vacation. I'll start the week off with total body. This is my least favorite & I have it 3 times this week...as Shaun T says I'll have to dig deep ;)
I am also sad because this is the last week for Nooner Yoga at Canada Place. I am not sure it will happen because the weather is supposed to be fairly icky. But, I am glad for the bit of time I did get to join in. There is still yoga in the evenings at the same place on Tuesday & Thursday until Sept 12th, but it was canceled yesterday due to weather, I am not sure if it will resume :-/ I guess we'll see what Mother Nature has in store for us!

Fitness Goals for the week: Stick to my T25 schedule, work on my splits each day, and only put good, whole foods in my body!!! What are your goals for the week?

Menu Plan Monday #20

Here we are, 'round at Monday, again!

We had a great weekend. Our new restaurant Friday didn't go quite as planned. We were quite tired and just wanted to relax, so we just got some take out and enjoyed just doing nothing. Then, Saturday the kiddo came home from camp so we did New Restaurant Saturday. We tried a place called the Tap and Barrel, it's just a 10 minute walk along the water from our house and it's new so we had to try it! They didn't have the crispy chickpeas I wanted, but the kiddo and I split a fantastic pretzel and then I moved on to a veggie burger with a side salad. It was quite delicious!

Isn't that tee tiny little mushroom adorable?!

 Hubby had the complete opposite of me, he made up for my missing bad fat content (as any good husband does ;))! It was all quite delicious and we had the most amazing view during our meal.

My picture doesn't do it justice, but it was a gorgeous day despite the clouds!

Also, here is a sampling of what I got at the farmer's market this week....

Now the beginning of the week is a bit off as the husband is off on business so the teen and I are doing it easy....

Menu Plan Monday Link Party

Breakfast
Monday: Peach cobbler oatmeal bake
Tuesday: Eggs with fruit and avocado
Wednesday: Leftover peach cobbler oatmeal bake
Thursday: Veggie egg scramble with oatmeal
Friday: Whatever is leftover or egg sandwiches
Saturday: Breaka (our fave coffee shop) or pick something up at the farmer's market
Sunday: Eggs, bacon/sausage, paleo pancakes

Lunch
Monday: Quiche with tomato soup
Tuesday: Homemade veggie subs with soup and salad
Wednesday: Leftovers from Monday
Thursday: Homemade vegan spaghetti o's
Friday: Leftovers
Saturday: Leftovers/light easy things
Sunday: fruit/popcorn/nuts just easy stuff

Dinner
Monday: Stuffed squash
Tuesday: BBQ Chicken sandwiches with salad and veggies
Wednesday: Leftovers (this is our D&D comedy night)
Thursday: Breakfast for dinner
Friday: Try Korean BBQ again (hopefully we will find a true BBQ place this time!)
Saturday: We are supposed to be having family in town, may go out with them, if not we will just do surf and turf (one big steak, then shrimp and lobster)
Sunday: Again, with family in town we will be going out either Saturday or Sunday so we're playing that by ear.

This is my prep:
Sunday make and bake the peach cobbler oatmeal, and the quiche.
My fruits for the week are soaked in diluted vinegar and cut up and stored in individual containers for the week.
Four salads are prepped and set aside, along with two relishes for my husband (diced cucumber and tomato).
I premade a honey mustard dressing for each salad.

Snacks:
Cacao nib granola bars
Fruit kebabs and paleo mini-blueberry muffins

Prep for these: I made about 10 fruit kebabs and just stored them  in quart size ziploc bags (2 kebabs per bag) so they are grab and go. At the same time as I was baking the cobbler oatmeal and quiche I whipped up the muffins, once cool stored in snack size ziplocs so they are grab and go. Same with the granola bars only I wrapped those in parchment.

This way there is no way I can deviate from my menu this week. We are back to school next week so I will be diligent about sticking to our eating schedule!

Well, I hope everyone has a great week!!!

Menu Plan Monday #19

Happy Monday!!! Ready to start the week off, right? I am! I am kid-free this week so I am going to be working on projects and getting the freezer and pantry stocked with homemade snacks and stuff for back to school! So....let's get to the Monday duty....

Org Junkie

Breakfast

Monday: Raw Buckwheat Porridge with fresh beet juice

Tuesday: Bon Chaz (tasty new coffee shop I've been wanting to try)

Wednesday: Raw Buckwheat Porridge with fresh beet juice

Thursday: Big Ass Pancake with Nut Butter

Friday: Cereal with Banana's

Saturday: Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Croissants with fruit salad

Sunday: Cereal with banana's and sausage

Lunch

Monday: Strawberry Chicken Salad with Simple Honey Dressing (this salad uses up leftover chicken from our dinner Sunday night and in the dressing I'll sub Champagne Vinegar for the white wine vinegar)
Tuesday: Same as Monday
Wednesday: Trying out a new food truck that only serves fresh, local ingredients in their food.
Thursday: Tuna Melts on Zucchini "buns" with the "meat" of the zucchini on the sides
Friday: Ham Sandwich kebabs with side salad (I'll probably make a few and go see the hubby for lunch)
Saturday: We'll just to a light spread of snacks: popcorn, ham, fruit, nuts
Sunday: Grilled Cheese, chips, fruit/veggies/salad, sort of whatever is leftover

Dinner

Monday: Flying Pig in Yaletown with friends.
Tuesday: Skirt Steak Fajita's with tequila marinade, peppers, and corn
Wednesday: Twice bakes potatoes with Green Beans and Corn (yes, my Mr. Loves corn lol)
Thursday: Paleo chicken fingers with home fries and squash
Friday: New Restaurant Friday
Saturday: Spagheti with Salad and Garlic bread
Sunday: Whole chicken with corn, squash, salad, and garlic bread

Snacks

• Fruit/cheese, fresh juice, nut butter & chia seed jam on pecans, no bake oatmeal bites, hard boiled eggs and squash/avocado, popcorn(scroll down for the recipe)

Dessert

• Chocolate Chip Cookies (My fave recipe is from the Betty Crocker cookbook) 
• Cosmic Brownies

Goodies to fix and freeze for back to school:

• Granola Cereal
• Granola Clusters
• Instant Oatmeal & toppers
• Popsicles
• Zucchini-Banana Muffins
• Sweet Cinnamon Cereal
• Cocoa Puffs

So, that's it for my week. Should be a busy one and full of delicious food. I am so looking forward to the Flying Pig, they have a delicious garlic bread...that may be my entire meal (don't judge :P) and the tequila marinated fajitas. What are you most looking forward to eating?

Homemade Coconut Oil Moisturizer

Good Morning, Friends! It is a wonderful Thursday! We are now down to exactly two weeks until school is out for us! At least after this week all the big projects are done so I won't have a stressed out hormonal teenager running around, we'll just be back to the regular hormonal teenager!

Anyway, I am writing a post today to give you a "recipe" for a homemade coconut oil moisturizer. I have suffered with terrible acne as an adult. It's been really terrible...in fact, the way I feel someday's is summed up in this humorous video...



Wrinkles & pimples..that sums me up some days!

Moving on...I combine this with my homemade face wash (which I will share next week) and I have been pretty much pimple-free for three months now. I did have two pop up, but I was super stressed and had been touching that area of my face (bad, bad I know, I know).

So, here's the recipe

Coconut Oil Face Moisturizer
1/2 Cup Coconut Oil
5 drops good quality lavender essential oil (like this)

Mix the two together and store in a pretty jar!

Directions for use: rub a bit all over face, neck & chest. Apply to any other rough spots like elbow and/or knees. Coconut oil and lavender are also great healing agents so I've been applying this to some old scars & they are actually beginning to look a bit better as well!

Just one more note on this, it lasts a very long time! It's ultra concentrated so you don't need much unlike with typical moisturizers. When you buy coconut oil it's best to buy the unrefined, cold pressed organic oil. You are putting this on your skin, so the investment in a slightly more expensive organic, unrefined oil is well worth it. That oil can also be used for several other things especially cooking!

Have a great day!!!