I'm not good at this posting thing...

...and because of that, this blog will never be crazy popular, but thats ok, because then I can post obnoxious crazy comments on here and no one will criticize!

I ALWAYS say "I'm going to update my blog today" and then everything goes nuts (or I get lazy...) and I don't.  So update!  here goes!

Although I've been saying for what like a year... "I'm going to get out of bed at 5am and exercise!" I still have yet to do that, and have decided that is never going to happen, so I'm done with it.  But i'm still exercising at the gym atleast 2x a week, and I'm lifting weights at work with my clients (its the only way I can get them to do it...) and I'm eating healthy, like for me, crazy healthy.  Due to our conflicting schedules, the fiance and I have een going out like once a week, rather than before when it was like once every other day...  I'm one pound away from 10 pounds and I'm barely trying now, I gave up on "GOTTA EAT ALL THIS AND NOT THIS!" and once I did, the pounds started coming off.  Still eating smoothies.  I stopped with the yogurt though.  It was too much.  But now I'm eating like greens and protein shakes with fruit in it and I keep cheetos in my car for those days where I REALLY want something fattening and crunchy and has tons of stuff I probably shouldn't eat in it...  BUT I have the snack bags, so once I'm done that snack bag, I'M DONE and no more Cheetos, until you know, the next day that I'm like DAMN I WANT SOME CHEETOS! lol.

Since eating healthier foods, my stomach is more sensitive to like, cheese-steaks...  this is a problem people,  I LOVE cheese steaks.  I grew up in Philly, if you can't in cheese steaks, you need to move to Jersey or like right outside the city, because it just sucks.  Everyone has them.  My fiance and I went with some friends to the bar and afterwards were like, LETS GET AUTHENTIC CHEESE STEAKS!!! Got them, paid an arm and a leg for them... weren't that great... I was like, "this is what we feed to people visiting Philly?  Is this a joke? I've had better ones at *insert multiple places here...*"  I was slightly ashamed of my city for putting this place on a pedestal... just saying.  But since eating like, lettuce, and spinach... (which I LOVE, just saying) I can't eat like, chicken wings, and beef with fake orange cheese on it... whats that about?

I've slowly started throwing spinach into my smoothies too.  I clean it real good, and just toss it in the blender with my strawberries.  Everyone I work with is like, "ew..." but you can't taste it, seriously.  Especially if you have the fruit flavors crazy overpowering it.

Current Favorite smoothie?  I'm back to the strawberry banana thing... BUT I'm mixing it up with vanilla protein powder, or chocolate protein powder.  If its just berries, I do vanilla, if its a banana, I do chocolate.  Can't have a vanilla banana, thats just weird, you need the chocolaty goodness.

This is how I prepare for all of last week and this week.

You need
  - 2 pounds of strawberries (now remember, this is 2 WEEKS and my berries were on sale at giant when I went shopping...)
  - 2 bananas
  - protein powder (chocolate is my preference)
  - Almond Milk (my mom out of no where bought it, and now we have no more dairy milk... its all almond, and I forced myself to like it...)

and a blender.

Section off the berries into little baggies, I did like a cup and a half of strawberries, and then cut my banana (I only had one...) into 2 of the bags.  I put everything in the freezer and made them the next day.  Thats it.  Stick those suckers (one bag a day people...) in the blender, add your almond milk, and protein powder, or heck just the milk... blend, and drink up!

 I bought a little single cup blender, because I didn't feel like cleaning this HUGE blender to make one smoothie, it was dumb, and I know consumer wise "why buy a blender when you have one?" time and energy wise for ME makes sense, AND! I have the same one at work... So if my strawberries aren't blending because they're TOO frozen, or I'm running late, I have the same blender at work, and the cups are interchangeable WHAT!?  So I've actually gotten up a couple times this week and made them at work before clocking in, because everything is still cold by the time I get there, BUT! its softer and blends quicker.  Yea.  Theres your once in a blue moon update.  ENJOY!!

Taxikab

PS!  Head over to Right Brain Bunch its a website my sister my mom and me put together (actually my sister put it together and we're pretty much just writing stuff to put on there...).  If you want to hear my lovely voice, and watch me knit, go to the Textiles section, but check out everything!  We're working hard!  That websites one reason I haven't updated in a while, I've been writing for that too! (and working ALOT! and planning my wedding...)

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?!