Posted on August 26, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

Ah, the old familiar places…

Ever have one of those days were you just don’t feel like eating anything? That’s how I’ve felt most of the day. I rolled out of bed at 5:30AM after a good night’s sleep and the thought of eating  yogurt or a muffin (or anything, really) disgusted me. I threw a strawberry Chobani 0%, a banana, my Smucker’s All Natural Crunchy Peanut Butter, a Babybel cheese, and my packages of colby-jack and Genoa salami into my lunch bag on the off-chance that I’d be interested in eating later, filled up my water bottle, and went to work.

When you leave for work at 6AM in Raleigh, there’s hardly any traffic, so it was a quick 15 minutes to the office. I spent it rocking out to “Superman’s Dead,” “One Man Army,” and “Is Anybody Home?” from the live Our Lady Peace CD.

When I got to work, I still didn’t feel like eating, so I fell back on my old stand-by–a “Tear & Share” size bag of Peanut M&Ms and a Diet Dr. Pepper from the vending machine at work.

Tragic, I know. I was so engrossed with what I was working on that I looked down and there were six M&Ms left in the bag, and I said, “Oh,” and ate them.

This would also be a fine time to point out my strange relationship with cups. I hate almost all cups, and I have a strange complusion wherein I must rinse a cup out before using it. Doesn’t matter if it came from the cabinet or the dishwasher, or if I just washed it by hand with a brand-new sponge…I gotta rinse it out. And the only way I can finish a bottle of soda or water, it seems, is by pouring it bit by bit into one of the cups I’ve designated as okay for drinking from. This is one of those cups. Look well upon it!

By the time I’d taken my lunchtime walk, I was getting hungry but still wasn’t too keen on eating, so I sliced up three pieces of salami, tore apart a piece of cheese, and made little Lunchable-type things using the Cream Cheese & Chive Wheat Thins that live in one of my cabinets at work. They were easy to eat while I worked, so I took my time making them vanish.

I ate at around noon and then hung out at work a little longer than I intended, so at around 3PM I grabbed another Diet Dr. Pepper from the vending machine and a snack-sized bag of Whoppers from a co-worker’s candy dish to hold me over until I left a while later.

At this point, I was feeling pretty bad about my food choices for the day. There’s not a vegetable in the bunch, unless you count the chives in the crackers or the corn syrup in the candy. I usually give myself one day a week where I don’t pay much attention to what I eat, anyway. But I decided there would be vegetables at some point, so I grabbed a box of HeartSmart Bisquick, the leftover vegetables from yesterday’s lunch, the bacon crumbles, and a mozzarella cheese stick from the fridge. Oh, and an egg. And I made this:A mini pizza, crust seasoned with Penzey’s Italian Herb mix, and topped with steamed broccoli, mushrooms, and carrots mixed with marina sauce, with a little bit of bacon and cheese sprinkled on top. I made this on my George Foreman grill in stages–I baked the crust, then put the veggies on top to warm them up, then added the cheese and used the grill’s broiler feature to melt it. I had a bowl of grapes on the side, and the rest of my Diet Dr. Pepper.

While I was looking at the recipes on the back of the Bisquick box, I noticed one for strawberry shortcakes, so I whipped some up for dessert. I cooked them on the George Foreman grill, too.

When they were done cooking, I peeled one off the aluminum foil, since I always forget to spray it, and spread some of my Fage 0% Greek yogurt on the top since I didn’t have any whipped cream and I figured Greek yogurt was more nutritious anyway. Then I spooned some strawberries mixed with a bit of sugar over the top…

…and it was good. The old me would have taken out both shortcakes and the rest of the strawberries in the same sitting, but I put them up for tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, I’m going to set my alarm for 4:30AM in yet another attempt to get up in the morning for my Couch to 5K jog…which reminds me, I need to charge my MP3 player…