Monthly Archives: July 2011

I wish you could see the smile on my face !  It has been on there all day because of the big firsts I took today.  Every since I met with Heather I wanted to do some stuff out of my comfort zone.  Today was the day!

Number one first:  As many of you know that I am now running and have been complaining that I can’t run in the morning due to my work schedule.  I have been thinking a lot about ways that I can run in the morning.  I decided last night that I would take my running stuff with me to work and run in the morning.  I was afraid that it was going to rain and that I wouldn’t  have the opportunity to try it out.  I decided to go for it and if I got wet I got wet.  It was amazing and I think it was the first run that I can say that I truly enjoyed.  I think part of it was that I had no idea how far that I went there was no pressure on me to how far I needed to go.  It was truly amazing.  I really enjoyed running in the city and I look forward to doing it again.

Number two first:  Although I work in the city every day I had no idea there was a vegan restaurant  just a mile from my office.  I would have never know this if I hadn’t seen Heather talking about it.  So today after my run I got cleaned up and made the mile walk to Karyn’s cooked.    I was so excited not only about going but not getting lost and actually finding it.  There was so much on the many I had a hard time deciding.  But I have been really hungry for a good wrap so I decided on the tofu Jerky wrap.

It came with a two potato wedges and some coleslaw.  It was quite spicy but I loved it.

I guess I never realized how just a small step going out of your comfort zone can make such a profound affect on how I feel.  I definitely want to do more of this.

I have been doing a lot of soul-searching lately.  I don’t know if any of you watch the Extreme MakeOver Weight Loss Edition but I have been watching every episode.  My heart goes out to each every one of these people.  I went on Chris Powell’s Facebook page and I was amazed by how many people have left message to him for his help.  It made me want to help these people like he does but I don’t know how I can begin to do that.  I have been in their shoes and I know how difficult it can be.  And I get frustrated that I can’t quite figure out how to do it.  But just like doing my first today I will continue to search for away to do it.

I bought this Friday.  When I texted my husband on what he wanted for dinner when he arrived home he said pizza.  I don’t know what I do to my pizza stoned but I have had two others and each one have them has cracked.  I am hoping I have better luck with this one.  If anyone has an idea why I continue to crack my pizza stones I would love to hear it!  I made a veggie pizza for me and a Canadian Bacon and roasted red peppers for Hubby.  I am so glad to have pizza night Fridays back.  It was a wonderful reunite dinner. These arrived in the mail this week!  I bet you didn’t know that I have a love of chia seeds?  I love ordering the from ChiaseedDirect.  The fact that I can order a large amount and pay much less than I would in a store is one of the great advantages of ordering them online.  The bonus is that ChiaseedDirect provides shipping for free.  So I order 6 pounds of chia seeds.  I use chia seeds almost daily so this supply is much-needed.  If you’re a big chia seed lover like me you might want to give ChiaseedDirect a try.

Granola!  Need I say more?  I love granola and when I decided to make Blueberry Banana Pie Overnight Oats from Oh She Glows and she recommended topping it with Granola I knew what needed to be done.  I have made her granola before and it was love at first bite.  When I made my grocery list today I added the needed ingredients and when I arrived home I got to cooking.  If you haven’t tried making granola or are looking for a great recipe give Favourite Granola from Oh She Glows a try.  You won’t be disappointed but don’t say I didn’t warn you this stuff is addicting!  I look forward to making the Blueberry Banana Pie Overnight Oats for breakfast all week!

I had another meet up Saturday morning.  This wasn’t a blogger but a former client that I trained when I worked at the gym.  We have been trying to meet up for weeks and finally we found a day that worked for both of us.  We meet at a walking path near her house.  It was wonderful walk and I enjoy getting caught up.  I felt good to know that although I am not training her any more that she still looks to me for encouragement and guidance.  I look forward to helping her any way I can on her own journey to health.

Well today ends week 6 of my couch to 5K.  Upon waking this morning I wasn’t sure if the run was going to happen.  It was dark and there was talk of rain. I decided to risk it and laced up my shoes and headed out the door.  It was nice to have a chance to run in a little cool weather this morning.  I was able to finish the run before the rain came.  I was my longest run yet and I was thrilled to have completed it.  I ran 25 minutes and I mapped it out to be about 2.5 miles so I can see the 5K  very near my grasp.  I am thrilled !

I have been so excited about finally being able to have my very first blogger meet up.  When I found out Heather from Where’s the Beach was coming to Chicago for business I was hopeful that we could find a time to meet.  After the final details of where and when we would meet I got to work.  Work? I hit the kitchen and did a little baking.  Oh ok, a lot of baking.  I decided to make three different vegan cookies:  chocolate chip, peanut butter and chocolate trail mix

I just love giving gift is always makes me feel so good.  I hope Heather enjoyed them as much as I enjoy making them for her.  The only bad thing or possible good is that there was plenty of leftovers!  Yes I have been enjoying a LOT of these lately.  Oh so good!  The best part is that only one cookie contained sugar the other two were sweetned with maple syrup, agave nectar and brown rice syrup.

After the baking and the packing I was anxiously waiting for our meet up.  Although I go to work and travel to the city every day I do very little exploring.  We decided to meet at Argo Tea Cafe and to my surprise it was about two short block from where I work.  I decided on Chickpea salad and Heather picked up the Garden Lentil Salad.  The food was quite delicious but the conversation was the star of the meal.  It was wonderful to talk about food, exercise, dogs and blogging.  I felt so comfortable talking with Heather and I was sad to see the meet up-end.

I am not sure Heather quite realized the impact our meeting truly had for me.  It not only got me excited about possible giving into my fear of exploring the city but also knowing it is possible for me to meet and build new friendships.

Friendship always seem to just come naturally when I was child  but some where or some how this natural part has not become so natural.  I am not sure that comes with age or what but I have always felt like it was not possible to build new meaningful friendship or became more difficult that I imagined.  Although Heather does not live in my state  it gave me hope to know that there is nothing wrong with me and there are people out in the world that can and want to build friendship.  I haven’t quite figure out how to do it in my neck of the woods but it has given me confidence and hope that it is possible.

Thank you Heather!

On my healthier journey have struggled with finding balance.  I have yet to find the line between dedication and over doing.  I am not sure where the line lays.  The weather has been hot, hot!  I struggled all day on what the right thing to do about my running schedule.  Do I run or do I not?  I just didn’t know what the right thing to do was.  Working out has been become a part of my day and I feel lost with out it.  At one point today I had decided that it would probably be in my best interest if I didn’t run.  But around 5:00 I just could take it I needed to go and so I did.   It was not a easy run but I did finished it and I felt a sense of pride for having done it.  But I still wonder if it was the smart things to do.

What are you thought on the topic?  Where do you draw the line from doing exercise?

Hi Everyone!  Hope your week as gone well and if it is in warm in your neck of the woods are hope you are staying cool.

Well I just finished my fifth week of couch to 5K and it is going well.  Today was the long amount of time I ran yet.  Twenty minutes none stop running it may not seem a lot to most but considering just 5 short weeks ago I could barely run 90 seconds I am counting it as a HUGE victory!

As far as my other goals this week I ran 3 times this week and I biked 3 times this week with my longest ride being 15 miles.  I am continuing to love riding and am in search of longer of stretches of road to ride where I don’t feel like I am going to be killed by on coming vehicles.  I think that has been the most frustrating part for me riding.  I don’t want to have to long my bike to some trail to ride I want to get on in my neighborhood and go.  My long ride the other day was like taking my life in my hands and you begin to realize how unbike friendly world we live in.  Very sad to me!  But I will continue to look for areas that I can ride safely and being to increase my miles.

As far as eating goes  we have been enjoying the farmers market each week and the last few saturday dinners have been filled with fresh corn on the cob, zucchini and yellow squash.  It hasn’t gotten old yet.  Last Saturday I decided not to roast up all the zucchini so I had a half of zucchini left I did not want it to go to waste so I was on a mission to find away to use it up .  I found the perfect solution

Blueberry zucchini muffins  I saw this recipe over at Finding Joy in my Kitchen.  She is not a Vegan so I had to making some changes to more suitable to the way I am eating.  The changes I made:  I used maple syrup instead of honey, apple sauce instead of oil, a flaxseed meal egg instead of a regular egg and soy milk instead of regular milk.  Perfect.  I froze them and have been enjoying them as a snack or for a breakfast.

Next on my new list was seitan.  Have you heard of Seitan?  I remember reading about it a while back when I was working with a client that was a vegetarian and I was searching for other protein sources for her.  Seitan is make from wheat gluten and is a great substitute for meat.  Since it was very unlikely that I was going to get my husband to get on the seitan wagon I haven’t done a lot with it but when I saw a recipe for bbq seitan it was calling my name.  This recipe came from the veganomicon book that I have doing a lot of experimenting in.  I got the book from the library but I have high hopes of adding this book to my collection.  I also make the bbq sauce from the book which was quick easy and quite delicious.  I have plenty of seitan left over and I have a feeling I will be visiting this recipe again soon.  (probably tonight’s dinner! )

A few days ago I mention that I had a dear friend that I love as a sister and she was going through a very rough patch in her life.  It has gotten very rough and I hesitate blogging about this.  She found out this week that a biopsy she had done of her cervix came back cancerous.  I know for myself when I hear the big “C” word I automatically think  death.  I had to serious switch my thinking and have hope that it was caught early and that she will recovery fully from this bump in the road.  It seems these days that there are very few people who are not affected by this disease or know someone close to them has endured this disease.  I have never have had some one this close to me endure something like this and it has been some thing new that I must learn to deal with.  I want to be her rock her soft place to fall when she feels like she can’t deal what my lie ahead.  Have you know someone close to you that got the diagnosis of cancer?  How did you deal with?  How where you able to support this person?

I thought I would let you know how my goals went for this week.  I only had to be reminded by my husband once to not go over board so I guess that is and indication that since I was only reminded once that I was doing pretty good.

I was able to ride the bike three times this week with the average rides being about 10 miles.  I have to admit I am really enjoying the riding and look forward continuing with that this week.

Lifting weights I did that three times this week and one of them was a video I did online.  It has been nice getting back in to lifting again but I do have to continue to remind myself it doesn’t matter how heavy the weight as long as you are doing it.

Running:  I had a really good interval this morning and it made me smile.  I have noticed how much easier is for me to run in the morning and I wish there was a way that I could do it in the morning during the week but it just isn’t possible so I have to be happy with my good runs on Sundays.  I finished up week four of the couch to 5K and I look forward to the challenge ahead for this week.   I am half way through the program and need to pat myself on the back for continuing the course.

Food:   I love food!  And we have really been enjoying the fresh food from the market.  Yesterday at the market I bought some corn and zucchini and yellow squash.  We cooked the corn up on the grill and I roasted the zucchini and yellow squash in the oven.  It was pure heaven!  The corn didn’t need anything.  It was sweet and fresh!  I will definitely be picking some more of that next week at the market.  I also made some black bean burgers that was out of the veganomicon cook book.  They grilled nicely on the grill and I froze the other patties and look forward to having more of them during the week.

After my run this morning I was struggling to figure out what I should have for breakfast since I had pancakes yesterday I wanted something different.  I remembered that I had bought buckwheat grouts to make a Blueberry Buckwheat Cakes that I had seen on Peas and Thank You

I turned out perfect!  I loved the added crunch from the whole buckwheat grouts.  It was my first time working with them and I look forward to having more with them.  I also noticed that it really filled me up.  I am thinking about heating one of these up before work and eating cold at work.  I am still struggling to find things to bring to work for breakfast that doesn’t need a microwave and keep me satisfied.  If you have any ideas I would love to hear them because I really am struggling on this one.

It is going to be a very hot one today and tomorrow so I am glad that I got the run in early when it was only a mere 75 degrees at 7:15 am.  Looks like it will be an indoor day today.  Only other activity I have planned is watching with hubby and the dog.

I have to admit I am a BIG blog reader and I get so much motivation and ideas from them.  One thing I see a lot of is Goal Setting and setting new goals to work on each month.  I have thought a lot about doing them but just never have.  What are you thoughts on goals?  What do you choose as goals?

I always feel like I just don’t know what to set as a goal and how to I set a goal without being totally obsessed about it.  I have learned on things about myself,  I can become very obsessed very quickly and this had led me into very unhealthy paths.  But I do want to start working toward some things and I feel that my fear of becoming obsessed as made me stagnant. 

Here is a picture of me after my run yesterday.  As you can see I am a big sweater and I get SO red!  It was a very hot day and I made every excuse in the book why I shouldn’t run.  But I did it and it was tough.  I am on week 4 of the couch to 5K and I have to admit I was frightened by the amount of running I had to do this week.  I started telling myself there was no way I was going to do it and I was already feeling defeated before I even began.  As I was doing the long run time I just had to keep telling myself I can do it, I can do it!  And you know what?  I can and I did.  It was a good feeling to have such a sense of accomplishment and this is one of the reason why I want to make some goals for me this month.

I remember as a young girl wishing and praying that I would have a sister.  I wanted  someone to share my boy troubles with, clothing dilemmas and just another girls point of view.  I was not blessed with a biological sister but I have been blessed with a sister.  We have been through thick and thin and have had years when we didn’t talk much but I know when we meet we always pick up where we left off.  Now that we both have an empty nest we are becoming closer than ever. She is going through a very difficult time in her life at the moment and I know that I lover like her sister because my heart breaks for her.  I want to run to her and give her all the love and support she need right now.  In these times I wish that I could drop all the stuff that is not as important as this.  I them begin to question what I truly want for my life.  I want to be there for my “sister”  I want to shatter her with love and support as long as she needs it.  I want to leave all the monetary things behind.  So why must it be so difficult to do it?  Why do we live in a world that revolves around money and things?  It hurts me to think that is what my life is.  But I do not know how to choose anything different.