Posted on October 6, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

Kale Day

Let’s see if I can post super-fast before The Biggest Loser starts…

On Monday, I started the day off with one of the peach muffins from my freezer.

I’m going to see if I can eat down the muffin stash this month to make room for some apple-related goodies in the freezer, since apple season is upon us. But peach muffins are still good.

Mid-morning, I snacked on a light Babybel cheese.

It tasted a little funnier than usual…weird. I love unwrapping these things, though. It’s half the fun of eating them!

For lunch, I’d packed myself a sammich.

Roast beef, goat cheese, tomato, lettuce, and Penzey’s Sandwich Sprinkle, on bread from the farmers’ market. I managed to make this the night before and did so in such a way that it did not become soggy–hooray! I did realize over the weekend, though, that the bread I got from the bin marked “Sourdough” at the Swiss Chalet Bakery was not sourdough. This is the third time I’ve bought from them and the second time the bread’s been in the wrong bin…

I was starving in the afternoon–could it be I didn’t have enough calories in me for the day at that point? I went down to the vending machine and grabbed ye olde standby–a king-sized bag of peanut M&Ms.

I meant to only eat half, but they’re like Pringles…once you pop you can’t stop.

It was drizzling all day and I didn’t get to go outside for my walks during breaks, so I spent a few minutes in the afternoon amusing myself my decorating the pumpkin a co-worker bought for the lobby.

It’s bee-eautiful, no?

Dinner was a delicious affair. I mixed up some more of those scrumptious blue cheese and bacon potatoes. While they were in the oven, I threw a piece of salmon and half a head of cauliflower in the food steamer.

Later that evening, while watching House, I munched on a harvest cranberry scone from Trader Joe’s.

Not the best scone I’ve ever eaten. I didn’t quite finish it.

Tuesday was another one of those days were I was dragging in to work. I had an apple pie Larabar for breakfast.

I’ve been down about Chinese class all week–I feel like I’m not doing well at all. I decided to cheer myself up by walking with some co-workers over to a nearby Chinese take-out place.

I had the shrimp and broccoli with pork-fried rice, and I ate all of it, and it was good.

Later in the day, after Chinese class, I was much happier, having realized that my trouble lies mostly with pronunciation and that I can recognize the words and read whole paragraphs of Chinese, so long as they’re carefully constructed of words in my vocabulary. I walked to the convenience store and acquired a giant Kit-Kat.

I meant to only eat this half, but the other half found its way into my mouth. It was good.

On the way home, I stopped by my local polling place to cast my vote in some municipal elections. The turn-out was low–it was after 5PM and I was voter 119! But on a positive note, I was in and out in two minutes.

For dinner, I decided to try my best to atone for the day’s sins of nutrition. I decided to try the kale I bought!

I tried it baked since so many people rave about it. While it was baking, I threw together some blue cheese coleslaw with my cabbage and the last limp carrot in my fridge, and I reheated the rest of my pinto beans on the stove.

I pulled the kale chips out of the oven a little too soon for fear they’d burn, so not all of them crisped, but they were pretty good! Like extremely thin potato chips with a bit of a spinachy undertone. The blue cheese I got this time around was Trader Joe’s Salem Blue and it’s a little greenish and a much nicer texture than the other blue cheese, so the coleslaw turned out great. And the juice in my beans thickened way up in the fridge–yay! I’ll make more this Sunday.

Well, The Biggest Loser is 20 minutes underway now–I’m going to jump on my recumbent exercise bike and pedal my way through the rest of the show.