Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Posted on September 27, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

Goodbye, extremely long weekend…

It’s weird to think that I haven’t been at work for nine days…this is the longest I’ve been away from work since I started my job! I needed a break, though, and now I’m eager to go back in the morning. And a little anxious, too–I’m worried that I’ll either have a ton of work waiting for me in my inbox, or none at all. We’ll find out in the morning…

Last night my parents had hamburgers, fried potatoes, and pinto beans. I would’ve settled for just the fried potatoes and pinto beans, but alas, all I have is dry pinto beans, and fried potatoes just aren’t the same without beans. Instead, I had a bunch of grapes…

…that are kind of weird-tasting. Grapes are so hit and miss. I also decided I wanted another salad, so I made the same salad I’d had for lunch–Romaine, Greek Feta dressing, bacon, tomatoes, and the addition of some blue cheese–and topped it with the leftover grilled red peppers, onions, and mushrooms from lunch.

And I had a piece of sourdough bread on the side. I’m determined to eat an entire loaf of fresh-baked bread before it goes bad!

After I ate, I settled down to watch the first disc of Season 2 of The Big Bang Theory. I live under a rock and have no TiVo, so I haven’t been watching this completely awesome show since House got moved to the same time. I’d seen all the episodes on the first disc, but they were all still funny.

I had the rest of my Heath toffee fudge while I was watching.

Later in the evening, I needed a quick snack, so I had some croutons.

After I took the picture, I went back and got some Greek Feta dressing to dip them in.

Today, I’ve been a lazy slug. I could be unpacking or cleaning or something, but instead I spent most of the day lazing in bed with my dog. My pulled muscle still hurts and my face is covered in these mysterious red dots, and really, I just wanted a day to do nothing.

I haven’t really been that hungry today, but I knew if I didn’t eat something I was going to end up sick. So I had a peanut butter cookie LaraBar.

[The doggy on my mousepad there is not puppy Heath--'tis a trick of the eye! It's actually my family's husky, Mysti, when she was a baby (with very sharp teeth).]

I proceeded to do nothing all day, not even eat, until after 6PM. I just wasn’t hungry. But when I finally did get the urge to eat, I knew what I wanted to do–make my entire meal in my food steamer!

I pulled out a piece of frozen salmon, some frozen baby lima beans, and some fresh broccoli, threw it in the steamer, set the timer for 22 minutes, and bing…

…out came deliciousness. I did add some pepper to the salmon, some blue cheese to the broccoli, and some kosher salt all around. Otherwise, all this awesomeness came straight from the steamer. I love steamed salmon–it always stays moist inside, something that’s sometimes difficult to achieve with broiling or grilling (my other two favorite salmon-preparation methods).

After dinner, I settled down to watch Breakfast at Tiffany’s, because I’d had it out from NetFlix for five weeks. No late fees, ha ha…just didn’t feel like watching it until now. Midway through I made myself a little desert.

A Tofutti Cutie broken up into quarters and topped with chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, some mini peanut butter cups, and a broken up chocolate-drizzled lemon cookie.

And I just had my pre-bedtime snack while I was writing this–a piece of sourdough bread topped with Asiago cheese, tomato, lettuce, and a bit more Penzey’s Sandwich Sprinkle than I intended. Oh well, still good…

Off to bed–gotta get up in the morning and go to work!

Posted on September 27, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

Getting Back on Track

After one last donut at the beach and a stop to fuel up (and grab a Diet Sunkist and a giant Nutty Bar), I arrived home at about 12:30 on Friday. I was going to wait to go to the vet and pick up Heath, but it looked like it was going to rain, and I missed my puppy. So I picked him up and we had a happy reunion in the Dogs Only waiting room at the vet.

I made a big fuss over how cute he looks in the bandanna he got after his bath, gave him a few treats from Bone Appetit, and then gave him his new toy.

I’m happy he likes it so much! Both of the rope arms are untied now, but apparently that just makes it more fun to fling around.

By now it was almost 3PM and I was starving, but the pickings at my apartment were slim. I nibbled on some fudge I’d brought back from Riverstreet Sweets while I contemplated lunch.

Maple fudge….

Mint chocolate fudge…

And Heath toffee fudge. The mint is my favorite of the three–the flavors in the others are a little too subtle.

I contemplated getting one of the new Mediterranean Veggie sandwiches from Domino’s, but instead I made some vegetable fried rice from Trader Joe’s…

And ate it while I was cooking some chuck steak with Chicago Steak seasoning from Penzey’s.

And then I slept for a while. When I got up I was hungry and again contemplated ordering from Domino’s, but I talked myself out of it and instead heated up some sausage, egg, and cheese Hot Pockets.

I (used to) love these things, but the last few times I’ve made them, they have not heated properly. I’ve had this problem in more than one microwave. And there is nothing more revolting than biting into a Hot Pocket that is cold in the middle. I don’t know if it was the Hot Pockets or just a combination of everything weird I’d eaten during the day, but I was up sick half the night. A wonderful way to spend my first night back at home…

I woke up late the next morning and had a strawberry Chobani 0% Greek Yogurt.

And after contemplating ordering Domino’s some more, and getting pretty hungry, I finally just went to Harris Teeter to get some food. I was very proud of myself–the vast majority of my order was fresh food. Fruits and veggies, bread from the bakery…and aside from that, I bought a big bag of brown rice, a bag of croutons, two jugs of drinking water, a bottle of HT Trader’s Greek Feta dressing, a package of bacon crumbles (can’t be without bacon for long!), a package of chicken thighs, and a package of small steaks. Honestly, I get a little thrill out of going to the grocery store and seeing that my cart is filled with healthier stuff than the person checking out in front of me (even though this time the person in front of me had a ton of organic food!). And yes, this even after I ate all those donuts this week…I’ll confess to being a hypocrite in this regard.

For my late lunch, I decided that I was going to make a grilled veggie sandwich, like the one I’d been wanting from Domino’s (only better). So I threw this big portabella mushroom cap on the George Foreman grill.

That thing is as big as my entire hand, but according to the package it was only 20 calories! Crazy! I ended up only eating half of it on my sandwich–ran out of room with the grilled onions, red peppers, tomatoes, and Asiago cheese that I piled on there…

I was craving a salad, too, so I made one with Romaine, garlic croutons, tomatoes, bacon crumbles, and Greek Feta dressing.

I ate it with my veggie sammich, which was on fresh-baked sourdough bread.

Later I was getting peckish and had some lemon cookies. These things are so battered after their trip to the beach…

And then I had a Kind bar–the “Fruit & Nuts in Yogurt”  variety.

It was okay, but honestly, I prefer the other the food bars that don’t have things like “yogurt compound” in them.

Posted on September 26, 2009 - by Ashley Jackson

On the Beach, Part III

Whoops! I left dinner out of my last post. This was dinner for Wednesday night:

Steak and baked potato, and a shot glass full of Brummel and Brown. Given that I’ve eaten just a baked potato for dinner on some recent nights, and that that potato was smaller than this one…this was way too much food. And I ate it anyway. And it was good, but I got into the pool later that night and was worn out after 20 minutes of swimming. And I was goofing off and launching off the wall into a backstroke, ended up going sideways, and rammed into the edge of the pool. I felt fine Thursday but since last night one of the muscles in my chest (the one that hurts a lot right now if I pretend I’m backstroking!) has been really sore–if I lay on my stomach or cough or move wrong it hurts. Baaaaah!

Could it be that the beach posts are almost over…?

Thursday, September 24: Day 6

No breakfast picture, so I’m assuming I had a donut. We were going to go to Broadway at the Beach in the afternoon so we could go to Margaritaville for dinner, but we decided to go ahead and go to Barefoot Landing and Broadway and then have Margaritaville for lunch.

On our way out of the resort, we fed the ducks. We were throwing bread to them in the water, but a bunch of them came up onto the walkway.

At one of the fudge places at Barefoot Landing, I saw this cool sign!

I only wanted to buy two things at either Barefoot Landing or Broadway at the beach: fudge and something for my dog. We stopped into Bone Appetit, an all-natural dog treat bakery. They had a little display case full of specially made treats–”donuts” (bagels with yogurt and sprinkles), gingerbread men, etc. They also had ten different varieties of treats that you could buy in half-pound or pound bags. Not knowing whether Heath would enjoy an entire bag of one kind of treat, I opted for the “doggie bag” option–filling a bag with loose treats from the buckets around the store.

They had peanut butter, beef & cheese…

…cheese pizza, chicken parmesan…

…cheese & apple, apple cinnamon (the only kind I didn’t get–seemed a little weird for a dog!)…

…peanut butter & honey, cheese & bacon…

….lamb & rice, and pumpkin!

I scooped some of all of them (except the apple cinnamon) into a bag and came out almost exactly at a pound–I think I hit 1.02 lb. Perfection!

They also had cute stuffed animals, and I couldn’t resist getting Heath this little guy.

He has a treat pouch and a squeaker, and supposedly he is made of triple-layers of fabric so he’ll be long-lasting. Heath loves him and while he has already managed to untie the knots in his arms, there are no holes so far. He might even make it through the week…!

We went on to Broadway at the Beach and Margaritaville.

Margaritaville, like Thorny’s, is a beach tradition. I decided to get something different this time and had a hard time choosing what i wanted. Finally, I went with the Monterey Chicken Sandwich.

I would have been happy just ordering my sandwich and eating–I was hungry!–but my dad and my aunt wanted to order the nachos (the inferior nachos!), so I had a plateful (or two) while waiting for my food to arrive. They do have good guacamole…but they’ve taken the bacon off their nachos! Shameful.

When my food arrived, it looked delicious!

Unfortunately, I’m so used to hunting for wheat bread made without oats that I didn’t think about whether the wheat bun might be, say, covered in oats. I avoid eating things made with oats because oats make me sick (and also because they’re naaasty). I ate about 1/3 of the bun and left the rest of it on my plate.

It was pretty good–needed more chicken, and I didn’t taste any cajun seasoning in the mayo. The french fries were nommy, as french fries usually are, and the pickle was very sour but good.

We didn’t eat dinner until late that night because we were so full from Margaritaville…but dinner was the taco salad I’d been looking forward to all week, so I laid into it.

…I had another, smaller plateful after this one, while moaning about how I’d eaten too much.

And that’s it! No more beach pictures! I got up Friday morning, had a donut that I did not take a picture of, and drove back home. Oh, and I stopped at the last gas station before I got onto I-95 and got a Diet Caffeine Free Coke and a huge Nutty Bar that had like 420 calories in it…I checked out the healthy food section and there was nothing I could eat (oats!). I tried. A little…

Tomorrow I’ll hit the rest of Friday and today, and then I’ll be all caught up. Yaaaay…