Archive for the ‘running’ Category

Posted on June 9, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

Snakes and Spiders

Today’s Daily Special at FoodBuzz is a mandoline. I’ve often thought about buying a mandoline because I could make cool flat thin things with it, but I’d also probably slice my fingers off.

I’m pretty sure that 3/4 of my calories today came from M&Ms.

I feel like I slept well last night (haven’t checked the GoWear Fit today), but I was so tired when my alarm went off at 5:30AM that I shut it off and went back to bed. Bah. Need to stop doing that.

Breakfast was some Liberte and peanut butter M&Ms…

I started snacking on this big bowl of grapes before I took a picture…it was full when I started!

During lunch I took a walk. A shorter than normal walk. Because while I was walking by the marsh, I saw the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in the wild and not in a web. It was just walking across the path…I almost stepped on it! It squicked me out for the rest of the day. Also, I saw a snake that was folded up like an accordion and taking a nap in this hole!

Yes, I went back later with my camera in hopes that he would still be there…he was not.

Lunch was some leftover pasta from Monday’s dinner.

Here’s where things went bad…I knew I hadn’t brought enough to eat for the day, so I went to the vending machine and bought a giant bag of peanut M&Ms. But the machine gave me two bags.

I proceeded to eat them both. That was bad. It did keep me full for a very long time, though…

After work, I came home and decided to try out a run. I did my 3.2 mile route and started out with a walk, then manage to run about a mile before my left ankle started hurting badly enough that I felt it unwise to run through the pain. So I walked most of the rest of the way–did throw in some running on a downhill slope to see if that helped, and while my ankle didn’t hurt while I was running, it did hurt for a while after I stopped.

Also, I was attacked by mosquitoes while taking Heath out and now now my arm is swelling up. Awesome.

I actually wasn’t hungry when I got back from my walk, but I needed to take my medication so I had to eat something. I opted for a half cup of Peanut Butter Panda Puffs.

Gluten-free kid’s cereal…expensive but tasty.

Well, I’m going to crawl into bed and try to stay up for the finale of Top Chef Masters…I’m pulling for Susur, but I think Marcus has it in the bag…

Posted on March 28, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

P.S.

I have a pretty eclectic taste in music, but it’s pretty firmly anchored in tunes from the 90s. Which is why I’m very annoyed that my Toad the Wet Sprocket CD (P.S.: A Toad Retrospective) is nowhere to be found. In fact, it’s been missing for months, and probably at least a year. Where could it be? I misplace things left and right, but very rarely actually lose something. Fortunately, I’d ripped the CD to my computer at some point after I bought it, so I still have the music, and tonight I finally gave up the CD for lost and burned a new one for jammin’ in my car.

I’ll probably find the actual CD sometime this week.

This post is pretty much a testament to how little I eat on the weekends. Friday I had peanut M&Ms for breakfast, peanut butter M&Ms for lunch, strawberries and whipped cream for a snack at a meeting, and this for dinner:

A hot Italian sausage I found in my freezer and some grilled onions. Cooked on the George Foreman Grill. Don’t marvel at my cooking skills or anything.

Saturday I slept in–ahhhh!–and when I got up  I decided to eat the last of my wheat-free lemon poppyseed muffins. Taaasty.

And then I pretty much didn’t eat anything else until dinnertime. I did take Heath on a short run–my first run in weeks! We jogged for about 15 minutes probably, which tuckered the poor doggle out and set him sleeping the rest of the evening.

I made some sausage, spinach, and lentil soup for dinner, except instead of sausage I used ground pork and seasoned it myself.

It was different than last time–I didn’t have any onion left, and the lentils were different than the kind I used last time. But still good.

Something about springtime makes me crave Cook-Out milkshakes, and since I really hadn’t had much to eat, I took Heath with me and got a Reese’s milkshake. Mmmmm…

This morning–oh, this is bad–I didn’t get out of bed until a totally unreasonable time (I went to bed laaate and then got up at 5AM and did my state taxes and goofed off for two hours). Then I went to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Harris Teeter–remind me to NEVER do that again on a weekend. Oy vey. When I came home at 4PM, I had my first food of the day. Seriously. Some peanut butter M&Ms I picked up at Harris Teeter. I could live off M&Ms. But I won’t.

Hey, while I was at Trader Joe’s, I bought me a potato! Since I am a potato hog, I stopped eating them on January 1 and pledged not to have them again until April 1. Well, that’s this Thursday, and there’s gonna be a baked potato with Greek yogurt and butter and bacon and salt and it’s gonna be freakin’ awesome, baby.

I did eat real food today, promise.

I had a little steak, some hummus and carrots, and some grapes.

Also, to encourage myself to eat actual food instead of M&Ms for lunch (I’m sure you’ve noticed my tendency to eat them for at least two meals a day during the past two weeks), I went ahead and prepped my lunch for all four days that I’m working this week. Awesomesauce! Plus, I bought a box of Pure bars and lots of Liberte yogurt, so there’s breakfast for the next couple of weeks, and I bought some grapes and washed them and put them in the fridge for easy access. Cleaned out the fridge so I can see what’s in there, too.

Less than an hour until bedtime…yikes…

Posted on March 1, 2010 - by Ashley Jackson

In Like a Lion

I can’t believe that today was a beautiful day, in the mid-50s, and tomorrow it’s going to snow again! North Carolina has some of the craziest weather…

Last night I pedaled away on my recumbent bike for a half an hour while eating a homemade peanut butter cup and reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I was a bad child and never read the Chronicles of Narnia, although I’ve enjoyed the first two movies. I got about a third of the way through it before I went to bed at 10PM. Then, for some reason, I woke up at around 4:15AM, with my alarm not set to go off for another hour. After about fifteen minutes I realized I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I jumped out of bed and set about doing stuff…including unloading my dishwasher and putting away my clothes drying rack. It was so so so so nice to  come home to a clean apartment on a Monday afternoon…

…so anyway, I decided to go to work early, ’cause I was up. I got there at 6AM and ate my breakfast while reading e-mail and doing the sorts of things one can do while eating a Pure bar, a Chobani peach Greek yogurt, and three-quarters of a cup of Leapin’ Lemurs cereal.

Why so much for breakfast, you ask? I didn’t go to Whole Foods for my beloved Liberte yogurt over the weekend, so I grabbed some Chobani to eat for breakfast. But Chobani has about 100 calories less than Liberte. So I ate some delicious gluten-free peanut butter and chocolate cereal to add some more calories.

Speaking of peanut butter and chocolate…I started getting hungry around 10AM, since I’d eaten breakfast early. Look what was hiding in my bag…

Protein! In the form of a chocolate peanut butter cup! Yum.

I went for a lunchtime walk on a crazy convoluted path through campus because of some construction that’s being done on the trail. Afterward, I had some sausage, lentil, and spinach soup.

It doesn’t take the light too well, does it? Still good, though. I will add this to my potato-free soup file.

A little while before I left work, I started feeling hungry, so I got two little mini Snickers out of a coworker’s candy bowl. I checked the ingredients list to make sure they didn’t have wheat in them, and then double-checked online–hey, they’re gluten-free! So are M&Ms…mmm…

It somehow came about that I haven’t had wheat since last Tuesday, when I ate those four Girl Scout Cookies, and while I’m not necessarily trying  to embark on my I-Will-Eat-No-Wheat-For-Two-Weeks experiment…well, if it’s already been almost a week, why ruin it with some candy? I’ve noticed that my eczema doesn’t look as bad as it did, but I have no objective way of measuring that unless it clears up completely.

Also, one day I’m going to eat the rest of the Girl Scout Cookies.

After I got home from work I changed into my running clothes, threw my chef’s jacket on over top, set the kitchen timer for 15 minutes, and set about putting away the dishes I’d washed last night and washing the ones that were in my sink. Then I ran away! For 32 minutes! That was One Hour Runner Week 5, Day 2, if you’re counting.

My legs were tiiiiired after that. Still are. But I found the strength to make tacos…

…and I will confess here and now that I usually put a picture of three tacos up, but I generally eat five at a time (half the box). However, tonight I ate only the three you see here, and they were scrumptious. I was in taco heaven. Perfect tacos!

I also had a side of grapes.

And now, because I don’t have to clean my kitchen or my living room or my bathroom, I am going to take this glass of Crystal Light and this peanut butter cup and go sit on my exercise bike in the living room, with my lilies in bloom, and ride my bike while reading my book. Because I can.