WIAW: No Measuring Required.

Good morning! Once again, we’ve reached the middle of the week. Which means:

WIAW. Of course!

Breakfast

Breakfast yesterday was a two-parter.

One part savoury:

(Two eggs + a pour of egg whites)

And one one part sweet:

A mix of All Bran, Leapin’ Lemurs, and blueberries with almond coconut milk.

While I was putting this breakfast together, I couldn’t help but think about my relationship with these little buggers:

The measuring cups. A few months ago, I was counting macros/protein grams again, so I was breaking out the measuring cups. Especially with cereals, oatmeal and dairy. Even though I got off macro counting (it’s ridiculous and there’s no reason for me to do it) I was still habitually using them. A couple of weeks ago, I thought about why I was doing that, and I realized that I didn’t have an answer – because there was absolutely no good reason. I know it’s pretty typical in the HLB community (for some individuals, anyways) to count macros, carbs, all that stuff. But in ‘the real world’…that stuff doesn’t really happen. I mean, I don’t know too many people who break out the measuring cups for their cereal in the morning. I certainly don’t need to either.

So, the last couple of weeks those cups have been staying right in the drawer. And it feels much better that way

Pre/Post Workout

Today felt like a gym day. More specifically, legs day.

So the BCAAs were broken out before and after. Mmm, watermelon.

Lunch

I decided to go the snack plate route.

Shredded chicken, baby carrots, bell pepper strips, hummus, pretzels, and feta. One of those I-don’t-know-what-I-want-so-I’ll-have-everything sort of lunches. Kind of the best ones to have

And as a palate cleanser:

A Kiss, Hawaiian style

A little while after lunch, I made my way to class, where I had a presentation to deliver. So, I wore my presentation shoes:

So, I bought these shoes when I was in the first year of my undergrad. I got them on a fantastic sale – I think they were about $20. Ever since, I have deemed them my lucky presentation shoes. I’ve worn them to 98% of school-related presentations in the last…oh…six years? I guess I consider them to be a good luck charm.

At least they’re a pretty good luck charm

A Cinnamon Pecan Simply Bar was inhaled on my way to class:

Which apparently was not enough food for the afternoon, because I got home from school ready to chew my arm off.

But I settled for a spoonful of almond butter and some baby carrots:

Good enough to tide me over until dinner!

Dinner by the way, was interesting:

I made the squash and perogie stew from the March issue of Food Network magazine. The combination was a little odd so I didn’t know what to expect: the main ingredients were turkey sausage, cremini mushrooms, coleslaw mix, butternut squash and frozen perogies. It actually turned out really good though! I can’t even remember the last time I had perogies – I’m happy there’s leftovers

And after an evening of cuddling with the boy and watching Mad Men (I can’t even. I love that show. But do you know what I’m not loving? All the sideburns) I had a bedtime snack while typing this up:

A deep chocolate vitatop with Bee’s Knees peanut butter. Ending the day on a good note.

And today…I have one more presentation! Gotta love the last week of classes.

Have a good one!

<— Do you use measuring cups/spoons on a regular basis?

<— Are you superstitious? Do you have a lucky charm of some sort?

WIAW: Money Rules.

Hello there!

Yup…it’s (What I Ate) Wednesday! Thanks as always, goes to Jenn for hosting. Today’s post is from yesterday – I was on-the-go pretty much all day, so there were some quick-but-fabulous  meals and snacks. And a lot of greens stuffed in a lunch – so yay following the theme!

Because I had so much going on yesterday, I had to hit the gym when it opened right at 8 am (yes, student gym means it opens at 8 on weekdays. Noon on weekends. lame). My ACV mix (ACV, lemon juice, water, stevia) when I woke up and a quick snack before I left:

I had a few of the pumpkin protein bars I made a while back stashed in the freezer, so I heated up two of those and added some coconut Oikos on top. I stand by what I said when I made the bars – they’re tasty, but not sweet enough.

After the gym was unpictured watermelon BCAAs, followed by an “Oh-crap-I-have-to-leave-in-10-minutes” breakfast.

Oatmeal, egg + egg whites and blueberry jam. Definitely nothing new there. A word to the wise – in a desperate bid to make your eggs cook faster, don’t crank up the heat. Half of those whites did not make it out of the pan. Yup…I’m impatient.

Lunch

I had a long but successful meeting with my Thesis supervisor, followed by a lunch meeting at The Piston Broke. It’s a gastropub close to the school that I’ve been multiple times – it’s good!

I was feeling something leafy, so I went with the chevre salad with chicken.

Spinach, arugula, mandarin orange segments, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds tossed in a maple vinaigrette and topped with chicken and goat cheese. The chicken was on the dry side, but everything else was delicious. And it reminded me that I need more goat cheese in my life – chevre is amazing.

Followed by two of little mints that come with the cheque – I love those.

Snack

I had a 6 pm presentation last night, so I had a quick snack around 5:30 to tide me over.

Baby carrots and hummus. It’s a classic.

So that presentation?

Gail is a Canadian financial writer and TV personality who helps people manage their money. She has a show called “Till Debt Do Us Part”, which I’ve seen a handful of times. So when Laurier was hosting her for a free presentation, I decided to go – you can never learn too much about money, right?

I don’t think I’m bad with it – I usually do ok with savings. But I know I could probably stand to improve a little bit. The main takeaways I got from her presentation:

• people tend to be irresponsible with credit cards. Do not put more on credit than you can afford to pay off at the end of the month.
• Pay off your mortgage, your car, your debt, and put away money for retirement. Then you can start buying all the status symbol-y things, if that’s how you want to spend your money. (fancy cars, designer clothes, etc.)
• start saving for retirement. Like ASAP. If you start in your 20’s, you only have to put away 6% of your earnings, versus 3 times that if you start in your 40’s.
• Have an emergency fund – about 6 months worth of rent and groceries.
• Don’t expect to have everything at once – buy a house, have a wedding, and have a baby. You’re going to live a long time; it’s ok to space it out a bit.
• Keep track of your spending. Keep a notebook and keep track of everything penny you spend, and every penny you earn.

A lot of what she said was common sense, but I did learn some things. And as a presenter – she is hilarious. I have this thing where I absolutely love hearing people swear unexpectedly…whether it’s an older person, a super-polite friend, or my Russian professor. It just cracks me up so much. And she had quite the mouth on her, which kept me giggling the whole presentation.

Her presentation made me realize that I need to focus a little bit more on my ‘emergency fund’ a little bit more, and that I need to keep better track of my finances. Might have to start an Excel spreadsheet or something!

Dinner

I channeled Amanda for my late dinner:

Yogurt bowl! Coconut Oikos, a sliced banana, sliced fig, Fibre 1, the last of my Dark Chocolate and Red Berries Granola, and almond butter. So good.

And of course, even brinner needs dessert.

A graham cracker with Bee’s Knees peanut butter and dark chocolate. And that may have been followed by another spoonful of peanut butter out of the jar I like the Bee’s Knee’s flavour, but I have to say – Cinnamon Raisin is still the best!

Have a lovely Wednesday!

<— Do you think you’re good with money?

<— What’s the tastiest thing you’ve eaten lately?

Most Creative Gift Ever + Sushi with Blends.

Happy Monday!

How was everyone’s weekend? Mine was busy (ridiculously so) but it was one of the best weekend’s I’ve had in a long, long time. Full of time with family and friends, great food, and wine. That sounds pretty ideal to me.

Friday

On Friday, my dad drove up to Brantford to take my back to London for the weekend. I was only home for a few days over Christmas, so I wanted to take an extra weekend before I got to busy with school to head home and catch up with everyone. The fact that I planned this over the London Food and Wine show just might have been a bit more than a coincidence.

When my dad got to the apartment, he set up the Christmas present he got for me. If you were a reader back in September, you might remember that I absolutely adore the “grains-in-a-mason-jar” trend.

Well, as pretty as they are, having them a few inches away from the ceiling makes them a tad hard to get at, even for a 5’7 girl like myself.

So my dad built us a mason jar rack and attached it to the wall.

And he built it on a whiteboard, so I can change the labels as necessary, and use the other side to write grocery lists, recipe ideas as the like. Seriously, one of the most inventive presents I’ve ever received. Thanks dad!

Dinner

Of course, I’m always eager to get back to my mom’s cooking.

Roast beef, potatoes, and a yorkshire pudding, all covered in mushroom gravy. Not a particularly colourful plate, but delicious nonetheless.

And I got to enjoy one of the tv shows I miss most (I don’t have cable):

(source)

Yup, Jeopardy is amazing. Eric and I have had many conversations that if there was ever some sort of tag-team jeopardy, we would own. He’d take all the geography, history and English questions, and I would take the social sciences, exercise and nutrition questions. We’d be pretty unstoppable.

And as I said yesterday, I watched this movie with my mom (I actually saw it with her in theatres too).  Love.

I’m going to save Saturday for another day and skip right into Sunday.

Sunday

After getting in a quick treadmill interval workout, breakfast, and brownie baking (my mom had one of those recipe-in-a-jar things) I drove into London to meet the lovely Chelsea for a sushi lunch!

When she asked me what sort of restaurant I had in mind for lunch this weekend, I suggested sushi, because I know she loves the stuff just as much as I do. Although it took us forever to actually find an open sushi restaurant (the first three or four we passed were closed. Fail), we ended up at Green Tea on Richmond Street.

Green Tea offers both All-You-Can-Eat and a la carte, and we went with the latter. We both got a seaweed salad to start:

I will never understand why I love it so much, but it is amazing. Green Tea gives a healthy portion too, which is always a bonus.

The first roll I ordered was a B.C. roll:

BBQ eel, avocado and spicy sauce. I always seek out rolls with BBQ eel, and this one did not disappoint.

For the second roll:

Although it was delicious, I had three fails when it came to this roll.

One: I ate half of it before I remembered to snap a pic. Bad blogger.

Two: I’m not 100% sure what it was called. I think it was the London Roll? It was smoked salmon and fish roe rolled in a Japanese tea leaf. Not something I would usually order, but it was pretty good! Smoked salmon is always amazing, and the lead added a really nice crunch.

Three: I managed to demonstrate my extreme grace and coordination by dropping a piece on the table and sending fish roe flying everywhere. Yes, I am that good.

It was a fabulous lunch! I had never had a blogger meet up before, so Chelsea “popped my blend-meet-up cherry”,’ so to speak. And it’s definitely something I’m going to need to do as often as possible; we chatted non-stop the entire time. One of the (many) reasons I wanted to get into blogging was to meet people with similar interests, so lunch demonstrated that I am definitely accomplishing that. It was awesome and I can’t wait until I can hang out with Chelsea again

Although, we realized when we left that we had forgotten to get a picture together. Blogger fail – but there’s always next time!

After a bit more running around town (I met up with my parents and my aunt and uncle at Costco, and then I went to visit a friend I hadn’t seen since before the move) I headed home for dinner.

My mom made pepper steak – although I make it from her recipe, hers is always that much better. Just a mom thing, I suppose!

Afterwards, they drove me back to the apartment, where I had a lot of food (and laundry) to unpack. Of course, Costco means stocking up on some necessities:

• Egg whites
• Fish oil capsules
• Jalepeno yogurt dip
• Roasted red pepper hummus (both of those came in packages of two, so I took one and my parents took one)
• Food Should Taste Good brown rice crackers – I’ve had a few different flavours of FSTG chips, but I hadn’t tried their crackers before. A little plain, but with the aforementioned yogurt dip or hummus, they’re great.
• Batteries (always good to have extras of those)
• MaraNatha almond butter – I’ve been on a peanut butter kick for so long, I figured it was time to mix it up a little. It’s not my beloved Justin’s Vanilla Almond, but it’ll do for now
• Massive sweet potatoes
• Gum
• Rainbow baby carrots

I pretty much had to have these just for the cuteness factor. Yes, I think food can be cute.

So definitely kept myself busy! Unfortunately, today is all about catching up on the homework I didn’t get done. Oops.

Have a great one!

<— If you were on Jeopardy, which categories would you kick ass in?

<— What are your Costco necessities? I was hoping for Greek yogurt too, but they didn’t have the plain Greek. Unfortunately.