Lent is a time for.... not eating meat.

So do to my Catholic upbringing, I am writing about LENT.  Yes ladies and gents, Lent starts tomorrow... My lovely boss talked me into giving up bread with her, and by bread she means, so pastas, no bread (obviously), bagels, sandwiches, pie crusts... basically anything flaky, AND starting tomorrow (you do it on Ash Wednesday too...) can't eat meat on Fridays or Ash Wednesday.  I had ice cream tonight because I'm going to try cutting out some sweets as well... we'll see how long this lasts...  won't be fun.  BUT! That's what its about! Doing something to change you into a better person, and doing something challenging.  So if you don't drink soda very often already DON'T GIVE UP SODA! give up something else, give up alcohol or something.

Anyway!  I've been scouring the internet trying to find different recipes for making lunches for work.  One can only eat salad so many times in a row.  I can make wraps using lettuce and various dip type foods (tuna or chicken salad with cucumbers and other vegetables, I haven't actually come up with any besides that yet...)  I see myself eating a large amount of fruit... and salad.  I am open to any suggestions!  I promised pictures last week., so thus I give you alot of pictures... Sorry.

To start:

My boss was going to throw out all these blue berries and strawberries or have the clients eat them... I in turn went, "can't we just blend them up?"  SO I DID!  We used blueberries, strawberries, 3 bananas and ice, and made 3 pitchers full of smoothie.  My clients love this stuff, I don't suggest making it ahead of time though unless you plan on making it like water ice or something because it gets jelled slightly if you leave it sitting out because the juice separates from the rest of it so...

 My sister and my mother are big into baking.  Below is the cupcake my big sister made me on Sunday, just because it was Sunday and she felt like making cupcakes...  Obviously she got creative...

This is the "Jelly Roll" my mother made for my dads birthday last week.  Its angel food cake (from a box...) home made whipped cream, and strawberries.  You can apparently make Angel food cake in a pan... or a muffin or cupcake tin... so my mother did it in a cookie sheet.  Then she coated it in powdered sugar, and it had to sit like that in a towel or something for awhile, THEN she filled the whole thing with the whipped cream and the strawberries, rolled it up covered it in powdered sugar again and wrapped it in a towel (coated in powdered sugar) and let it sit.  IT WAS DELICIOUS!  I don't know how many calories it was, but it was good...

I forget why my mother made this cupcake... but it was good as well.  I got dirty looks from my clients.  This was eaten awhile ago.

Whilst making my first batch of smoothies I found a raspberry that looked like a heart.  I loved it.

Time for smoothies!!

Chocolate Strawberry-raspberry smoothie.

1. 1 cup strawberries
2. 1 cup raspberries
3. 1 cup yogurt
4. 1 scoop protein powder
5. teaspoon of agave nectar

Makes like 3 smoothies at 1 cup each.  I usually put ice in them in the morning and shake it again.  Makes it foamy, I love it.  :)

THEN! I went to the grocery store with my other and got mixed frozen fruit (I LOVE THIS by itself, so in a smoothie? OMG)

Mixed Fruit Smoothie

1. 2 cups of Dole frozen mixed fruit.
2. 1 cup of greek yogurt (I use plain, but I say taste is taste, so whatever you want to eat is good, just check the calories and stuff first!)
3. teaspoon or Agave nectar

 Blend it all up, DRINK!  Again, makes like 3 (I only drink about a cup, cup and a half each morning)

This was my lunch last week.  Salad, cucumbers, carrots, cheese!  I love cheese...

Another lunch day.  Cherry tomatoes, in a salad with cucumbers (I also love cumbers, luckily, my fiance does not, So i can eat his.  YES!)  And half a pita pocket with turkey, lettuce and mayonnaise. 

I do everything now by measurements.  If it says a serving size is 1 tablespoon, I get out a teaspoon and measure out a teaspoon... my tupperware has measurement marks on it, so I can measure without dirtying more stuff too!!  

NOW I go to find more foods to eat seeing as I can't eat break Until the end of March... it doesn't seem like a long time, but I LOVE bread, and I love things with breading... hopefully it will change how I eat and my obvious bread addiction... and expand my ability to make various foods.  We shall see!

Happy Knitting! Happy Life!

taxikab

Smoothies!

So remember how I said that I was going to drag myself out of bed last Monday at 5am and go to the gym?  Yea, never happened...  It was really cold here in PA and crazy winds blowing, and bad weather, so like I said, never happened...   Monday I just went, "nope... not doing it" and went back to bed.  Tuesday I realized it was the first time I had gotten 8 hours of sleep in FOREVER, so I went back to bed to continue to 8 hours.  Wednesday I woke up, not by alarm, but by the crazy wind outside my house...  Went back to sleep, woke up to the alarm and when I saw it was 20mph winds outside my house, I went, "hell no!" and went back to bed.  When I went to leave for work 2 hours later, I had to wait for the wind to die down a bit because I couldn't get the door open!  It was crazy.

Anyway, Although I did not exercise like at all this week... I did go to PT and got my butt kicked because they upped all my weights and changed my exercises around.  I also was using the treadmill at work with my clients and lifting small weights when I could at work.  So I say I got some exercise... not the amount I would LIKE but still some.

Made smoothies (thus the title) last week.  And again today.  My one blender of smoothie mixture makes about 3 smoothies.  I could technically make more than 3, but I like to change up my breakfasts so...  On Tuesday I had a salad with my lunch and one of these smoothies for breakfast, and went, "shoot, I'm probably eating a billion calories in this smoothie and don't even realize it..."  So I checked the calorie count for the items that I put in the smoothie

1. 2 cups Strawberries
2. 2 cups raspberries
3. one whole banana
4. 1 scoop of chocolate protein powder
5. 1 cup of plain greek yogurt.
6. ice
7. little bit of water to smooth it out

my mother had me put Hersheys chocolate in it, but that just made it more bitter (i tried a little in one smoothie, didn't like it..)  So I added a pinch of sugar to each smoothie as I ate them (so like, a teaspoon total of sugar...).  This helped ALOT.  The yogurt, protein and banana all have that blah bitter taste... so the sugar brought out the natural sugar in the banana.

THIS TIME around I didn't use banana or the sugar.  I added a little agave nectar, and it tastes really sweet.  Searching for different recipes to make, because one can only have so much strawberry chocolate smoothies with yogurt and raspberries...

We buy fruit at work for my clients, and my boss said to me, "Cut up that fruit, and just give it out, its going to go bad..." and I look at the browning strawberries, not bad yet... and the blue berries in the bowl with it and went, "Why don't I make sorbet like last time?"  My guys are more inclined to eat something they think is a treat, rather than something they think is just food... So when I make Sorbet, they see, fruity water ice and often ask for seconds.  Nice way to sneak fruits and veggies to unwilling children too...  (easy recipe, take strawberries, and ice, stick in blender, blend, done, my guys at work LOVE IT)  So I gave a 3 clients each a banana and asked them to slice them up, and then had another client help me with cutting the strawberries.  A 5 client operated the blender for me.  We made smoothies/sorbet for EVERYONE.  Some people didn't want it, but it was reported that it was good!

So I weighed myself today, lost another 4 pounds, WHAT!?  yes, yes I did.  Heading to the gym after writing this post.  I need to "Build Muscle" more so than lose weight... that's the instructions from my Physical Therapist... I was also encouraged to try a fitness class, and if I was going to do this, I should try Tai Chi.  Whereupon I went, I DO THAT! (I was very excited).  I then had to stop myself and goes, "well, once a month...we have a woman who comes and does it with the clients, but some of my guys won't go if I don't... so I go too"

Basically, they are going to discharge me from PT (yay!) and save some appointments incase I need them for later.  My PT is making me an at home regimen to do, and I have been instructed to build up my muscle, and then the hypermobility website says people with HMS should pumped up the protein intake to build muscle... So we'll see how everything goes.  Pictures soon!  I was going to post them TODAY but I said, "oh I'll update my phone while I type this... shouldn't take too long..." then "an error has occurred" and it had to restore my phone to factory settings, (thank God I backed it up first...) and then I had to restore it from the backup stuff, and I'm STILL waiting...  I had some good pictures too...  Oh well

Happy Knitting! Happy life

Taxikab

Ps.  I even ate pizza this week and lost 4 pounds... WHAT?!