Hooker Mascara and Vegan Food

Dustin and Lance like to tell Bogey (my oldest fur-baby on the right here-->) that his mascara is running. I think it's funny, but kind of mean. All dogs have tear ducts that run like this, but it's more prominent on white dogs, of course.

However, today while getting ready to leave and play racquetball, D, while playing with Bogey and petting his little yoda head says: "Bogey, you look like a crying hooker."

Ha. I thought I'd pee my pants, but, instead, we went and played racquetball and D barely beat me. This means I'm getting better. We've been playing consistently for about a week and he, in the beginning, whipped my butt and I would, in turn, get incredibly sore about it. I was never a sore loser before, but I'm not used to performing so poorly. I attribute it to being out of practice. So it felt pretty good to give him a run for his money today. When we came home, we were both pretty hungry (I begged D to stop at Schnuck's so I could get some harder-to-find groceries) and I whipped up a vegan stir fry using Quorn Chicken Tenders in place of tofu or meat. I've read that vegan diets are the best healthwise for a person, which is why I'm incorporating it into our meals as much as possible. It's not based on a feeling of not wanting to eat animal products. This may sound gross to ourveg/vegan readers, but we're fine with eating animals-especially if they came from the sea. We've both been vegetarians at one time or another, but we've come to terms with our eating habits and feel at one with our carnivorous meals. We're just not fine with being fat. (Don't hate!)

Last night, I prepped breakfast for this morning because I just knew I wasn't going to want to get up and make breakfast for D this morning, but I wanted him to have something good since he had to teach at 9am. So I whipped up a animal-bi-product-drenched- Scrambled Egg White and Veggie Casserole which had a mixture of some veggies we had on hand: broccoli, spinach and tomatoes, namely. I've been using a lot of pepper and onions in our meals and I think he's getting a little sick of them so I opted not to toss them in, though I ordinarily would. I ground some fresh pepper in there and whipped up 7 egg whites and one full egg (scrambled style), then mixed it all together in a small casserole dish and stuck it in the fridge. This morning, I popped it in the oven for 20 minutes at 400-degrees while D got ready for school and, voila! A super tasty meal for 6 (so there's plenty left over for the weekend hang-over heatup cure). I added a dash or two of Frank's Hot Sauce because it is incredibly tasty for a hot sauce (I love that it has a peppery taste rather than just a 'burn your mouth off and render your taste buds useless" taste). All together it was 77 calories a serving, 4 carbs, 2 fat and 11 protein. Not to mention it was filling and scrumptious.

Tonight, we had the quorn stiry fry which, essentially, consisted of our veggies: brocc, carrots, two cups of the quorn tenders, a small can of mushrooms, a can of cut baby corn, half a cup of chopped yellow squash, a small onion, four Tbl of sweet and sour sauce and half a cup of cooked rice for each of us. Basically, I just cooked up the veggies, added the Quorn, half a cup to a cup of water, the sweet and sour sauce and simmered away. When it was close to done, I tossed some premade veggie spring rolls in the oven that we bought at the store. They were also strikingly good for us and kosher. Four little spring rolls made up a serving and they were incredibly filling little suckers. Dinner was 343 cals, 65 carbs, 3 fat, 14 protein. There were, at least, six servings in the pan so we've also got plenty of that to eat up later this weekend, too.

Tomorrow, Beth's friend Hailey will be in town and they will probably head over our way, with Beth's bf Eli, to hang out and play Wii and have dinner. Since D and I have been missing our Ben Hedrick and Co. a lot, we're hoping to weasel some playtime out of them, as well! It's stacking up to be a busy weekend, my friends.

Although, it will be an unpleasant one for me if my throat doesn't feel better soon...so I'm off to consume some Cap'n and Coke with D-Diggity-Bones. A little numbing never hurt!

Hope you're all well and having a fab first day of the weekend!

xoxo

N

PS-I should say, though, I am in desperate need of some new fantastic bread recipes. We do NOT have a bread machine and I am not super crafty with the yeast. It never wants to rise for me...so any and all advice you might have, I'll take! Esp. if it has to do with zucchini, wheat or honey.

Plans and No Plans

Time is somersaulting by like a trapeze artist. It's true. 

Between hitting the gym as much as humanly possible without killing myself and still getting tons of work done for comps and preps for classes, there is little time to stop and enjoy the day. Today, however, was an exception.

For whatever strange reason, we were granted a brief reprise of our autumn weather and I basked in the 60-degree sunlight all over campus from my office building to class to the next class to the rec and back to my car. I'm not sure it could've been lovelier. 

The rec was sort of a bust since D and I planned to play racquetball, but couldn't because all the courts were reserved. A week ago, this wasn't an issue since the students weren't back yet and we could engage in racquetball playing as much as we wanted without having to reserve a court. Now-not so much. So we reserved one for tomorrow and trudged back out into the sunlight. No big-D's chariot (the scooter) awaited and glided me back to my car. 

We planned, then, to go for a nice long run on the Katy Trail (I was thinking somewhere in the 6-8 mile range), but after my lunch (oh, my friends, I made the tastiest saag paneer in the world last night, thanks to Steph's Christmas present: Didi Eammons' incredible Vegetarian cookbook!) which was saag paneer wrapped up in a Flatout wrap followed by my Fage-which is still holding strong in my staple-favorite food category-with a touch of wheat bran, dried cherries (I read in Runners World cherries are good for relieving soreness) and granola. I honestly think that is pretty much my favorite thing to eat in the whole wide world. However, when I finished, I was beat and had 0% motivation to go running as opposed to D's fleeting 60%, so today was my day of rest (Beth, Liz...etc...I took your advice, just not yesterday!). And I literally rested by falling asleep.

Before I knew it, some unexpected plans hatched. I had canceled drinking-at-the-Fugue-plans with my Liz (my head is still bothering me...can you believe it? And I can't shake this fatigue for anything in the world!) and Lance and Em showed up with dinner for four! Bacon, cheddar burgers and a hankering for grilling 'em up! So we did. While they grilled, I whipped up my planned dinner for D and I: black bean spicy burgers and no-fat potato chips! I have to admit, I've been stealing some tasty, mostly vegan recipes off of other websites I'm addictively searching for recipes, so I don't think I can technically reproduce them on here...? But if you're interested, the burgers were a hit and the potato chips were an even bigger hit! And how can you beat NO FAT??? Amazing what a microwave and thinly sliced and salted on four-minutes, stopping once to flip the 'chips', can do :) (See what I did there???) I wasn't sure how D would feel about the black bean burgers. I wasn't sure exactly how I felt about them, but when he finished his regular bacon cheese burger and his first black bean burger only to add another little black bean patty to his plate, I felt pretty damn good about it. So good, I ate another myself!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned that Dustin and I are also pretty obsessed with this website called SparkPeople which keeps track of our calorie intake and fitness each day (as long as we put the info in), but we both love it and religiously track our progress as the wedding day approaches. I came across this website while reading the blog FittingBackIn . Though, come to think of it, I'm not sure how I found this blog, but I can tell you it appeals to me because the author is very practical, nonpretentious, witty and, well, normal. She has a very relatable life so I like to peek in on her blog and see what she's reading or what she's eating, how her daily issues are going (apartment problems, missing her husband, looking for a new house, work...etc.). It's like reading one of those books that was enjoyable, engaging and fun to read. If you're in the mood for something like that-I suggest you visit her blog cus it's a good time and some of her quirkier comments totally remind me of my saavy sister. That, by the way, was a totally unsolicited plug and unexpected. 

Anyhow, the important thing is...if I hadn't stumbled across her blog, I don't know how long it would've taken me to find SparkPeople so I'm grateful for that. It has become somewhat of a game for D and I to see how many calories we've had in a day as opposed to how many SparkPeople thinks we should have based on our age, height...etc. It's fun to see what we've done in a day and a nice, easy way to keep track of your eating habits if you're trying to be conscious of them. (There's my plug for SparkPeople, too!) :)

Moving along, dinner was great, the company was even better and we all enjoyed a few cocktails (which succeeded in making me even more exhausted) while being entertained by the Wii playing. We discovered "boxing" tonight and what the numchuck is used for: boxing, as it were. Let me show you what it looks like to watch someone Wii-box in your living room.

And below is what it looks like to watch two people watching a person Wii-box in your living room.

It was wonderful to have Em and Lance over. Especially because I've been feeling a bit anti-social lately. I think it's the stress and fatigue and the sudden cooking obsession (seriously, if you catch me in the grocery store-keep walking. I have a really hard time concentrating on conversations when I'm grocery shopping. I'm so sorry. It's so sad and weird! Emily can attest to that!) Hopefully, we will start a Thursday Night Hang Out tradition with them since they're pretty fabulous.

And, hopefully, this weekend will bring about more interactions with more of our friends that we haven't seen since before Christmas break! We miss you guys (you know who you are) and talk about you all the time. If D doesn't answer his phone, try me!

Thank God it's Friday. Hope it's a good one!

xoxo

N

PS-If you're of the praying mindset. Please keep a friend of my oldest brother, Amit's, in your prayers. His friend's 26 year-old wife passed away the other day very unexpectedly during a fertility treatment that caused her to bleed to death. As you can imagine, his friend is devastated and everyone is quite shocked and upset. I'm sure they could use thoughts and prayers at this time in their lives. Thanks, everyone!