Friday, January 31, 2014

Blogging the Menu: Day 37

Well, I ended up home today.  Not the way I like to take PTO, but at least I have it to take?  Like a lot of it to take.  Seems I never go on vacation, so I have something like 350 hours of PTO built up.  The girl child ended up ralphing until around midnight, as expected.  Then she fell asleep, and so did I until two small boys burrowed into my bed around 4am.  One of them decided his own bed was more comfortable around 5 and went back to it, the other was still snoring on my pillow when I got out of the shower.  I got everyone dressed, got myself ready, made breakfast (toast for the barfer) and prepared for the day.  Then someone got up off the table and proceeded to spew toast and water all over the kitchen floor.  It was everywhere.  Seriously like a 6 foot projection with about 3 feet in width.  My gut feeling was that she just ate/drank too much to fast, but you can't take a puker to school.  It's bad form.

I'm not a great parent.  I do my best, but I'm pretty shoddy at it.  For instance, I'm fairly sure a good mom would have said something like "Oh, honey, are you okay?"  I said "God fucking dammit!" See the difference?  I did take the boys to daycare.  Partly to get them away from the barf zone, and partly to give them a chance at some active play and fresh air.  I did laundry, disinfected surfaces, and prepared to catch vomit.  I sometimes feel like my kids deserve a lot better.  Like a mom who's main feeling when her child is sick isn't mild irritation.  I am what I am.  I console myself with the fact that they are fed, clothed, and sheltered.

On to the menu!
As you might imagine, there's not a lot of time to cook when someone may potentially vomit at any time.  That's asking for burned food.  I had scraped up a fast breakfast this morning in anticipation of running out the door to work.  Instead I ate half, cleaned up a mega puddle of vomit, then finished up.  There are some benefits to being deeply insensitive.
Sunbutter and banana waffle sandwich.  Easy and delicious.

Lunch for the girl child consisted of saltines.  She managed to keep down some graham crackers earlier in the morning, and she requested crackers for lunch.  I'm not picky the day after a barfapalooza, so I gave her what she asked for.  Myself, I had leftover sloppy joe's on my paleo "buns".  The instructions for reheating were toaster oven or toaster, so I popped them in the toaster.  They are nice and biscuity from the toaster.  I need to get up a good paleo recipe for sausage gravy and I'm golden.

No idea why the fuck this is sideways.

Dinner was bland for the kids, whole wheat noodles with cheese and some garlic bread and bananas.  They ate pretty well and no puking ensued, so I was happy.  I just made the quickest dinner on earth.  Kai Jiao and bacon.  Tasty, filling, and fast.  There won't be any dessert tonight, I just don't care enough.  My plan is stuff the kids into their beds and 8 and be asleep well before 9.  Tomorrow is the Ice Bowl at CFGB and I'm volunteering so I can help out and still watch my friends compete.  I've been out of the box a week.  It feels like forever.

Fish sauce makes eggs magic.

People ask me for recipes a lot, which is cool, but I feel like posting them on a public forum like a blog is kind of stealing.  I'm not really a very good cook on my own (by which I mean I have no creative spark for it), but if you can read you can cook...and I can fucking read.  Every recipe I make is available online or in print form, and I'm happy to share the source.  I've said before that I'm linky stupid-I'll link a blog main page, but specific recipe linking escapes me.  I'm sure it's fairly simple, I just don't care enough to do it.  This is just a food log, after all.  So where do all these recipes come from?  Here are some of my favorite books!

This one is brand new, and has an Asian flair. 
Trivia: It's written by a hospital pharmacist!


All things pig, including how to render your own lard.
We are totally getting the leaf lard from our next pig and doing it.

Well Fed was the book that convinced me that paleo eating could be better
than "regular" eating.  I am forever grateful. 

The guide is nice and has some recipes in it, the cookbook fleshes out the 
plans.  Not all recipes are paleo, but most are or are easily adaptable.
Especially good for not-sweet treats.

A good basic reference.

Sideways, but some fabulous stuff, including paleo girl scout cookies and
olive oil brownies that are incredible.

Haven't had this one long, but it's promising.

Believe it or not, this magazine has some great recipes for eating clean.  
Many are paleo or adaptable.


Not much excitement on the menu here today.  Tomorrow will probably be coffee fueled, but I'm looking forward to it.  Hopefully tonight will be quiet and we can all get some rest.  Sunday's forecast looks to be suitable for an outside run, and I'd love to get a 5 miler even if it is on slightly mushy roads.  Feb. 8th is the Seroogy's 5k, and then half training begins in earnest.  I haven't run long forever, and I admit to feeling nostalgic for the solitude of an 8, 10, or 12 miler.  

As I write this, my boys are pantsing each other.  Part of me wants to laugh.  Part of me anticipates a trip to the emergency room.  There's already sand and smashed crackers all over the interior of my car.  I'd rather not add blood and vomit.  Leather cleans up nice, but not that nice.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Blogging the Menu: Day 36

Once again I'm catching vomit.  This time it's the girl child.  She hasn't tossed her cookies since she had appendicitis in 2012, and seeing as she had the damn thing removed at that point I'm pretty sure she doesn't have that again.  If this follows our usual pattern, she'll be right as rain (and starving) by morning.  I think being a RA in college made me immune to barf.  I used to be a sympathetic barfer, but after you've seen a shitload of twentysomethings technicolor yawn all over the place, you kind of get over that.  Having kids just reinforced it.  Oh, you're barfing?  Here's a bucket, try not to get any on the carpet m'kay? M'kay.

I ended up leaving work early and my co-worker covered my call tonight.  I truly hope this is resolved tomorrow, because I hate calling in sick for work (especially when it's not me that's sick).

On to the menu!
I used the biscuit/bun things I made last night for an egg sandwich this morning.  These are very much suited for that purpose.  It was perfect!  I missed egg sandwiches, and now I have them as an option again.  Yay!

Egg McMuffins can suck it.

I got a pretty good deal on some really nice grapes.  I always just cram the bag of them into my lunch box.  I should probably wash them or something, but I never have...and I never will.  

I like my grapes with snap...and pesticide.

Finally finished up the pizza casserole for lunch.  I had doubled the recipe, so there was quite a bit.  I took the last two pieces to work today.  I'm making this one again.  It was great.

I remembered to take a picture before destroying it today.

I got the "come get your puking kid" call at around 2:30pm, so I got the girl child, got the boys, and made it home.  It was hot dog night for the kids (the boys loooooooooove hot dogs) and I just sort of cobbled together stuff from the fridge and the counters.  I had a fresh pineapple I cut up for them, so I had a little of that, they asked for peas so I had some of those too.  There were a couple of leftover chorizo in the fridge so I just nuked them and called it good.  It's not like I really tasted any of it, and I had to get up twice to empty barf buckets.


Pretty good pineapple, though.

Historically in these situations I would open the pantry and power down a sleeve of cookies.  Instead tonight I made myself a coconut milk latte and ate some dates to kill the sweet craving.  It worked, fortunately.

I might go back for more.

It's kind of funny that we seem to be so prone to stomach viruses around here.  It gives the impression that we're sick all the time.  I think it's just seems worse because two of my kids are twins and they tend to get sick together or in rapid succession.  My daughter has had a couple of "What the fuck?!?" illnesses/injuries over the course of her life (a seizure following a barfing virus at 18mos, an appendectomy at 5, and a broken arm at 6),  but aside from that has rarely been ill.  One of my sons has had antibiotics exactly once, right around his first birthday for an ear infection.  The other has never had antibiotics, and for a nearly 4 year old that's not too shabby. We do barf a lot, but in the grand scheme that's pretty minor.  For all that its messy.  And poorly timed.  And highly contagious.  By the time the kids are grown they'll have cast iron stomachs.

We're going to have to replace every fucking carpet in this place.  FYI fruit snack barf never comes out of carpeting.  Never.



Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Blogging the Menu: Day 35

Is it seriously only Wednesday?  I'm staring down a few days solo with the rugrats as my husband gets his CE on at a conference.  Saturday is the Ice Bowl at CFGB and I'm volunteering this year.  I'm pretty excited, since I've never seen a live CrossFit competition, and this one will involve a lot of my friends.  I've been out of the gym for what seems like forever, even though it's been less than a week.  I just can't seem to make it happen this week.  Monday I overslept and the last two days it's been un-doable with our home schedule.  That feels like such a cop out, but it's true.  I'll be firing up the WODgenius tonight for a workout, and tomorrow is a treadmill tempo run.  I'm really hoping that Sunday will be halfway decent.  If I don't get outside for a run I'm going to freak out.

On to the menu!
For breakfast I was feeling something a little different, so I made banana pancakes and smothered them with ghee (no syrup).  This is such a simple recipe, but it always turns out flawlessly.  1 egg + 1 banana + 1/4c almond meal = pancakes for one.  Just increase by one unit for each person and you're good to go.
They're very light and fluffy, extra good fried in bacon fat.

I managed to spend so much time fucking around this morning that I didn't have time to pack a lunch.  Luckily for me, no one at work wanted what they had for lunch so we went out.  I had a buffalo burger (no bun) and some sweet potato fries.  Clearly I didn't take a picture.  Oh well.  I'm sure you can picture it.  Not much to a burger and fries.

Tonight was sloppy joe night.  We've made several versions of this over the past few years, but I love this one with red peppers in it.  It's really tasty.  Way better than that scary canned stuff.  Normally I just eat it with a fork or sometimes a piece of paleo bread, but I got the new 21 Day Sugar Detox cookbook and there was a recipe for biscuits/buns that I wanted to try.  I made the buns while my husband was frying up some thick cut sweet potato chips in lard.  It's actually possible to eat sloppy joe's nacho style with these puppies.  The bun was good.  It had a nice consistency, if a little eggy. Tomorrow I'm totally making an egg and bacon sandwich with these.  

Whole food can be fun!

It dawns on me that I didn't really eat much today.  I decided to indulge in a little treat after dinner, so I dished up some banana chia pudding.  It's so pretty.

Banana?  Banana.

On a completely unrelated note:  Why are none of my cable shows premiering until April or later? Game of Thrones?  April.  Outlander?  SUMMER?!?!  I started watching Black Sails, but I can't tell yet if that's going to fill the void.  My early impression is...no.  It's okay, but I'm not sure if I can bring myself to care about any of the characters.  I guess I'll just go back to reading the Earth's Children series and re-watch season 3 of GoT.

Tonight I get to wash the smalls.  Hurrah.  One day they will all be able to wash their own bodies and wipe their own asses.  That will be a great day.  It's amazing how being a parent changes your dreams.  I used to want to travel the world.  Now I'd just like to not have other people's poop on my hands (which would be a primary reason I didn't become a nurse-I really only end up talking about poop at work, not actually touching it).

And with that?  I'm out.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Blogging the Menu: Day 34

Once again school was closed today.  At this rate they'll be in school until July.  Honestly, I didn't think it was that bad this morning.  It wasn't warm, but it wasn't that freaky "THE AIR IS KNIVES!!!" cold we had two weeks ago.  I'm sort of done with winter at this point, and I like winter.  I can't imagine how all you hot weather whores are faring.  I just want to go out for a run...is that really so much to ask?  I'd like the air to not be knives anymore this year. I'm a simple gal.

On to the menu!
The kids all went to day care today since school was closed, which means that's where they eat their breakfast.  It feels mean for me to sit down and have a meal when they aren't eating until later.  That and the little vultures just whine and circle and I wouldn't be able to enjoy it anyway.  I made a sunbutter and half-a-banana sandwich with waffles.  Good stuff.  I have yet to make an egg sandwich with these puppies, but I bet it would work just fine.

Sweet and savory.

I took along the remainder of my first jar of banana chia pudding for a morning snack.  This is the remainder of the breakfast banana with a sprinkle of walnuts.  This is such great stuff.  It's just very slightly sweet (bananas, you know) with a creamy texture.  The little bit of cinnamon in this recipe is just right.  Feels like it's naughty, but it's really a nice filling snack.

The earth hearts Ball jars.

For lunch I brought two helpings of spaghetti squash pizza casserole.  And then I mashed it into my face without taking a picture until I was pretty much done with it.  

mmmphrhhfm, mrrusphr mphrphrn

It was leftover night and the kids had pork chops by request.  I wasn't feeling the chops tonight, so I opted for leftover beef roast and sprouts.  It's so cold in the garage that my seltzer water froze into a slushy.

Say it with me: MEAT AND VEG!

After dinner I was craving a sweet treat, so I rummaged around in the cupboard for some prunes.  

A clean colon is a happy colon.

Oh, there was also summer sausage at work.  I love summer sausage.  Venison sausage is better, but I'm not a sausage snob. I love all sausage.  I'm a sausage girl.  

That's what she said.

One of my co-workers brought in some snacks today.  She's gluten free, so it wasn't like donuts and cookies or anything, but it was chips and jalapeno cheese dip.  It smelled pretty good.  I wasn't even tempted.  Our house isn't 100% paleo, so there's various kid food and random snacks around.  I guess technically I'm resisting temptation with that stuff all the time, but I really don't notice it anymore. It's just there.  Same thing happened today.  The food was there, less than 3 feet from my station, but I didn't think about it at all.  Except for the sausage.  Mmmm...sausage.  It's kind of a liberating feeling.  I've been in this place before, where I'm less "OH MAH GAH I CAN'T EAT THAT I WANT TO EAT THAT BUT I CAN'T EAT THAT!!" and more "No thanks, I don't eat that."  The goal is to hang out here for a while.  Historically I sabotage myself with something stupid right when I start seeing results.  I am an amazing self-saboteur.  I know exactly what I like.  The key is to avoid processed sweets.  Once I get a taste of sandwich cookies or buttercream frosting I'm right back "in the life" because that shit is H-E-R-O-I-N for me.

There should be a 12 step program for sugar addicts.  That shit is destructive.  I shudder to think of all the amends I'd have to make to various candy bowls across the USA.  

Also sausage.



Monday, January 27, 2014

Blogging the Menu: Day 33

Today I made a big change.  It's one I've made before...a lot, truthfully.  I've had long hair on and off my whole life.  When I very young, my mom kept my hair boy short for her own ease.  I have really fine, thin hair that is made of broken ends and flyaways and she didn't want to deal with it.  Not that I blame her.  As soon as I was allowed, I grew it out.  And permed it.  Yikes.  I wore long permed hair until I was a senior in high school when I cut it "short" as in it just brushed my shoulders.  The response was overwhelmingly negative.  So I let it grow out again, and it got very, very long.  I went to college in Iowa, one of the coldest windiest places on earth and since I am by nature a bit of a lazy whore I never dried it.  So it froze.  Daily.  For a year.  Until I finally went to a GreatClips and said "Take it OFF!!".  Thus began my love affair with drastic haircuts and colors.  My hair has been to the scalp short, waist length and everything in between.  It has been black, purple, DOT orange, dark red with blond streaks, brown, white blonde, and combinations of all of these.  Lately I'd been growing my hair out.  I don't know why, exactly.  I hate styling my hair, and I hate drying it, and I'm a total idiot when it comes to product.  Here's how I looked this morning.
I wore make-up today.  And jewelry.  Who am I?

This is an unusually nice picture of me.  Yay for selfies that don't suck.  My hair actually looks fairly decent in this picture, but it was seriously boring me to death.  So I had it cut off.  Here's what I look like now.
Oh.  There I am.  Lookin' jowly.

It's a little fucked up from the wind and wearing a hat, but you get the idea.  It's brown in the back and fading to blonde up front.  Some of the highlights are a little brassy (a remnant of the red shade my hair was in August), but they'll fade with time.  I'm not exactly Jennifer Lawrence, but who is?

On to the menu! My loving husband made breakfast, including homemade sausage patties.  Tasty, but we are totally getting the leaf lard from our next pig.  Breakfast sausage needs to be nice and fatty.

I love pig in all forms.

For lunch I had leftover pizza casserole.  Only one serving, which was stupid of me.  You don't need to see it again, do you?  Good, because I forgot to take a picture.  I also ate a Blueberry Muffin Larabar.

Dinner was beef roast.  A good beef roast is hard to describe.  It falls apart.  I'm not a fan of gristle on steaks and will often cut away fat (it's a texture thing, I could give a shit about the calories), but on roasts I eat it.  It melts in your mouth.  I love it when you can cut a piece of beef with a fork.  And when it's done to about a medium rare to medium level?  It tastes the way happiness feels.  Just warm and glowy.  Which is why there are never any goddamn leftovers.

Oh yeah, and there were also peas.  Technically legumes, but I won't tell if you don't.

I was in the mood for a treat, and I didn't eat much today, so I made pudding.  Avocado, banana, coconut milk and cocoa powder combined into a bowl of awesome.

Yes I ate both servings.  I can feel you judging me from here.

So that's it!  I hacked off my hair.  I've done it before. I'll do it again.  How do you get rid of split ends, you ask?  Cut all your fucking hair off and start over.  It works every time.  



Sunday, January 26, 2014

Blogging the Menu: Day 32

Today was odd.  Not bad, just a busier on call than is the usual lately.  The boys crawled into bed with me this morning and (get this) actually slept.  Granted, they were sort of sleeping on top of me, but the were sleeping.  In the early morning.  Weird.  It was so pleasant that we stayed in bed until almost 7:30am.  I didn't know it was possible to sleep that late!  Aside from answering six pages and delivering some formula to the hospital I didn't do a whole lot.  Except 4 loads of laundry.  And grocery shopping.  Maybe I did more than I thought.

I didn't work out, though.  I should have.  I still could.  But I'm not going to.

On to the menu!

The banana chia pudding is better with the Thai Kitchen coconut milk.  Creamier and slightly sweeter.  Just look how fucking gorgeous this is.  Love this recipe.

I don't even like walnuts, but sweet baby dolphins they are magical on this pudding.

I didn't snack this morning, I delivered the formula and took a couple of my clean eating cookbooks to a friend (I used them a lot before I went paleo-they are clean books, but include grain and dairy), then shot the breeze with a former co-worker for a bit.  Then I went to the grocery store and got four pages.  It's really hard to get  info while you're standing by the organic lettuce.  Because even though you deliberately tried to get out of the way, some bitch is going to give you the evil eye.  So I went home, unloaded the food, snarfed some lunch and went back to work.  I'm not sure why I dish one piece of this stuff.  I always end up eating two.  It's inefficient to go back for seconds. Don't judge me.

So tasty.

I munched on some goji squares at the office while I got all my stuff together.  Didn't take a picture, but you get the general idea.  I also popped a couple of prunes when I got home.  Dinner was steak and asparagus on the grill courtesy of my husband.  Because -5 and blowing snow is grill weather, unless you're some kind of pansy.  And we ain't no damn pansies.


Meat and veg.  Basic, yet beautiful.

After dinner I was uncomfortably full.  I folded eight million baskets of laundry, the boys got haircuts, all the smalls got washed, and now they're upstairs fucking around as usual.  I'm kind of digging the Pro Bowl concept this year.  Less lame than years past, anyway.

Tomorrow, a change is coming.  Stay tuned.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Blogging the Menu: Day 31

Whew!  Today was a long one.  It started with two little boys burrowing into my bed, a trip to the grocery store followed by a call in right after we got home (and got our boots off), a LOT of cooking and NO napping, and will hopefully finish uneventfully.

I figured today was as good a day as any to put up some multiple serving dishes in preparation for the coming week.  I don't cook in bulk very often, so I'm pretty proud that I got so many things done today.  Of course, cooking also means that shit starts hitting the proverbial fan as soon as I pick up a knife.  Does anyone else have children with a clear kitchen death wish?  Because I can't think of why else the "Stay out of the kitchen" rule gets violated almost immediately when I open the oven, fire up a burner, or pick up a really sharp knife.  It makes me insane.  I do a lot of shouting from the kitchen as well, because as soon as I am clearly occupied in a potentially dangerous activity every child decides to do something extremely naughty.  Leaping off the furniture, throwing heavy toys at the TV, standing on each other's heads (or kidney punching each other), that kind of thing.  It's a miracle I ever get anything done.

So what did I do today?

I started with a batch of waffles.  At this point there are still 4 in the waffle maker.  These are going into the freezer for mornings I am too lazy to fry eggs.  I cannot tell you how much I love these things.  They are so simple, and for not a lot of effort you get so much delicious.

The leaning tower of waffles.

I've mentioned my discovery of the "paleo pb&j" in a previous post.  This is a waffle AB&R.  Waffles, almond butter and raisins.  It. is. magic.  I used to love peanut butter and jelly.  Not one of those ingredients is acceptable in a paleo plan.  Now I have a substitute that's just as comforting.  Yay!


Also bacon.

I realized this morning that I was going to run out of eggs.  In my house that is cause for serious alarm, so I loaded up the kids and went to the grocery store for eggs and a small can of diced green chiles.  An odd combo, I'll grant you.  We got home and I made a batch of pizza sauce and nuked a couple of spaghetti squashes.  Then I got a page.  So back in the car we went to the office.  By the time we got home and I finished putting this together (and baked it for an hour), lunch was delayed until almost 1pm.  We are 11:30am lunch eaters around here (breakfast is usually at 6:30am), so the kids were freaking out when I served lunch.  Which they then refused to eat.  Kids are assholes.  When they are 21 and broke I'm going to text them pictures of what I'm eating so they can feel bad about eating canned beenie weenie.  I made this pizza casserole from PaleOMG and it was awesome.  I had two helpings, and I am not ashamed.


OMNOMNOMNOMNOM

While the demon spawn were "napping" I made a batch of banana chia pudding.  I've made this before with Goya coconut milk.  This time I used the Thai Kitchen to compare the result.  It's already fluffier looking than the last batch.  Breakfast for tomorrow is made.

Ball jars are fantastic.  So versatile.

Since I still had some date puree and coconut milk from the last coffee creamer escapade I decided to try Almond Joy creamer.  Dates, coconut milk, cocoa powder, and a little almond extract.  It's quite nice, and used up all my miscellaneous leftovers.

Takes the edge off a chocolate craving.

For dinner I made Fiesta Pork Chops from Well Fed 2.  It's a nice easy pan-fried recipe, which is good because it's freezing and windy and the grill would be ill advised.  We bought a whole pig (~300lbs) in August and this is the second-to-last pack of chops.  Thick cut and beautiful.  My favorite thing about this recipe?  The instruction to "salt and pepper the meat exuberantly".  What is not great about that?  So season exuberantly I did.  I can't believe we have to wait until the summer to get more awesome pork, but I'm pretty sure it's almost whole cow time (last one was ~700lbs), which is lucky because I can totally see the bottom of my giant chest freezer and that is NOT okay.

That'll do, pig, that'll do.

The finished product was pretty damn tasty.  I also made some brussels sprouts sauteed in liquid love.  That sounds dirty.  It's bacon grease, pervert.

Pork is the universe telling us that everything is going to be okay.

Oh, I almost forgot! I bought a bag of prunes the other day and had a few this afternoon for a sweet treat.  Dried fruit is nature's candy.  Indulge in her bounty, motherfuckers.

They're not just for constipated old people anymore.

Later I will consume this lovely bowl of lemon chia pudding.  I could kick myself for not getting a container of raspberries to go with it.  They positively screw you over this time of year on the price, but I think the combo of creamy lemon and sweet berries would have been worth $4.


Lemony.

I need to hit the treader for a little speedwork tonight and it's off to the box tomorrow.  The next few days are supposed to be arctic AGAIN.  I despair of ever being able to run outside again.  Hopefully the temps will improve a bit before the Seroogy's 5k on Saturday.  I do not want to run that bitch in sub-zero weather again this year.  It's hard to run a PR when you're wearing every piece of gear you own.

Happy Saturday!

Friday, January 24, 2014

Blogging the Menu: Day 30

Day 30?!?  Holy shit!  This is a quickie as it's late and I want to sleep.  I didn't go to Milwaukee for the Icebreaker tonight, which sucks, because I was really looking forward to it.  Blowing snow and shitty roads meant I wasn't going to be able to get down there fast and back here fast and it wasn't worth the risk.

On to the menu!

The usual.


Leftover Taj Mahal chicken and cauli rice.

Since I didn't go to Milwaukee for the race and we had a sitter, I went with my husband to the FOP Christmas party.  I don't make it to much of his work stuff, because I am typically working.  Also I hate parties, and my crippling social awkwardness makes me want to hide under the table at these things.  Honestly it wasn't too bad.  I drank seltzer with lime and had at the appetizer buffet.  Thank little baby dolphins for fruit and veggie trays.

Party food.

Last night I made lemon chia pudding.  Sugar free, just chia, coconut milk, and lemon.  It's good.  Rich tasting and filling.  A winner.

Looks like dairy, but it's noooooooot.

That's it!  I'm planning a pretty big cooking day tomorrow, so stay tuned.


Thursday, January 23, 2014

Blogging the Menu: Day 29

I need a change.  Do you ever feel that way?  Like you just need to do something drastic to get out of a rut? That's why I decided to play rugby.  It's why I decided to train for my first half marathon.  It's why I joined CrossFit.  Every now and then I just get a wild hair and make a leap of faith.  It generally works out pretty well.  The three things I listed off got me a husband, a new hobby, and visible traps.  All good things.  Other wild hairs have been my arm sleeve, various outlandish haircuts, and motorcycle riding lessons.  I know how to pick 'em.

What to do, what to do...I'll think of something.  Soon.  Because all wild hairs are done as quickly as possible.

On to the menu!

Breakfast was "the usual".
With coconut "latte".

I'm going to pause to wax poetic about Thai Kitchen coconut milk.  It is so worth the extra cash over Goya if you can swing it.  I believe you could make coconut whipped cream right out of the can with this stuff.  It is just lovely and creamy and ever so slightly sweet.  Perfect.  I will never go back.  End advertisement.

Considering I've been off since last Friday, today went pretty well in the office.  Some stuff to catch up on, but nothing too outlandish.  There was some leftover spaghetti squash and meat sauce, so that was elected for lunch.

There's quite a bit of squash under all that sauce.

Dinner was a new recipe from Well Fed 2.  Taj Mahal chicken with cauli rice.  I have no idea what goes into the prep as my husband made it.  I just snarfed it down happily and am eagerly anticipating the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Get in mah belly.

I made a quick run to the store tonight for some dates and picked up some goji squares.  They are really tasty and made from all whole foods (no sugar or sweeteners).  It's pricey to buy it, so one of these days I'm going to figure out how to make them myself so I don't have to.  


Paleo fudge, y'all.

It's nice to be in control of my meals again.  I didn't really do any snacking today, which was fine since aside from meal times I wasn't really hungry.  

Tomorrow I have an indoor 5k after work (if the weather holds, it's in Milwaukee) and I'm planning to hit the box early in the morning.  A fun fitness filled day, with work smushed in between.  I need to hit the lottery.  There just isn't time to work and do all the fun stuff I want to do.  Of course, you have to buy a ticket to win.  There's always a fly in the ointment.