It’s an unusual breakfast, but I love it. I usually get an egg and cheese sandwich on an English muffin for breakfast, at the Stone Town Café, here in St Marys, but I was all egg sandwiched out. The cafe lets you order off the lunch menu early in the morning, so I got the Mediterranean wrap and a latte. My spouse made the order while I waited outside. He knows I love their oatmeal cookies, so he picked one up for me, which made a huge breakfast. We sat down by the river to eat our breakfast and went for a stroll afterwards. I was full after the sandwich and chips, so I saved the cookie for later.
When I got home I did some cleaning which made me thirsty, and I had a pineapple Bubly. Cleaning took awhile and I had the oatmeal cookie when I was done
For lunch I had a salad with balsamic vinaigrette, topped with cheese, and cashews. I love this salad. The cheese and cashews make it very filling.
After the salad I made a mug of vanilla chai tea and then had a second one right after. I’ve noticed since I’ve stopped eating anything after dinner, that I’ve been a lot thirstier lately. I rarely feel thirsty and usually drink tea just because I like it.
Mid afternoon I was back to crafting. Once I finished, I sat outside to enjoy the sunshine, and split a Stella with my spouse. It’s was 30 degrees out and sunny, the perfect day for a beer.
Dinner was a veggie burger and potato salad. I love potato salad. I did end up having a couple more spoon fulls of it that I didn’t take a photo of. It’s one of my favourite things to eat.
After dinner, I had a glass of wine and now I’m done eating for the day.
Friday, my day started with my sweetheart making me breakfast. He upped his breakfast game by adding strawberries. I had egg on a whole wheat English muffin and black coffee.
I had my mid morning tea of Earl Grey.
I skipped the mid morning snack of a Larabar because I knew I was going to the Snapping Turtle for a latte. I was craving cookies and I added a peanut butter cookie to go with my latte. Their lattes are out of this world.
Lunch was lentil soup… again. I am so happy to see the end of this soup. It’s gone now and I’ll be needing to come up with some new lunch ideas. I think it will be a long time before I have more lentil soup again, but then again, it’s super easy.
Later in the afternoon I had the last dilbahar. Just yum.
I was feeling thirsty and didn’t feel like having anything hot. When I’m thirsty I want something cold. I had a pineapple Bubly.
Around dinner time I was hungry,, but I was busy crafting and didn’t feel like stopping. My plan had been to have a salad for dinner, but my spouse suggested pizza. When I’m hungry I’m weak. I was a solid yes for that idea and awhile later pizza showed up at the door. Banana peppers, mushroom, goat cheese, and chili flakes. It was awesome. I like to make pizza even healthier and get it with dipping sauce. I had the three slices you see in the photo. So far, posting what I eat in a day, for anybody to see, is keeping me in check, because I would have had another slice, maybe even another one after that. I couldn’t handle the shame of posting that, so I stopped at three.
After dinner, I went back to crafting and got into this mini bottle of wine. The whole bottle contained 250mL and I drank the whole bottle.
That was everything I ate for the day. I’ve been really good about not eating after dinner. I had a glass of water and called it a day.
I had my usual breakfast today of an egg on a whole wheat English muffin with coffee. Later that morning I had a mug of earl grey tea.
I had a Larabar for a mid morning snack
Lunch was lentil soup again. I have one last bowl left that I will have for lunch tomorrow. I’ll be happy to see the end of this soup.
For a late afternoon snack someone brought me dilbahar! I LOOOOVE dilbahar. It’s a syrup soaked ooey gooey sweet.
I went to my in laws for a barbeque this evening and I had two glasses of red wine.
Dinner was delicious, some of my favourite things. There was potato salad and burgers. The burger patty was a Beyond Burger and done on the barbeque, which is a real treat for me as I don’t have a barbeque. I usually pan fry my burgers. It was delicious and so nice to see people again.
I was pretty stuffed after dinner, but didn’t turn down a small bowl of chocolate ice cream. After dinner we went for a short walk and then it was time to go home.
Halfway home I caved and had another dilbahar. I should have cut out some of the snacks since I was going to a dinner, but I didn’t. I’m thirsty but it’s late. I’m going to have a small glass of water and go to bed.
This morning I had my usual weekday breakfast, an egg on a whole wheat English muffin, with black coffee. This is a recycled photo because I always dig in before I remember I’m supposed to take a photo of my breakfast. I’m not all there in the morning.
Mid morning I had my usual cup of tea. This is also a recycled photo, but it’s so sunny it makes me happy. I love this tea.
Mid morning I had a Larabar. I usually have a second one in the afternoon, but I didn’t need it today. I was really busy this afternoon and didn’t have time to think about food. Maybe that’s the secret… keep busy!
For lunch, again I had homemade lentil soup. I still have at least another two bowls of it left, so you’re going to see it a couple more times. I’m starting to get sick of it, but I’ll finish it.
For dinner I had a pita. I had my favourite pita. Halloumi! I got a small halloumi on whole wheat. It was delicious and I ate the whole thing. I always think to myself “I’ll just have half now, and half later”. That never happens. I chow down and it’s gone.
After dinner I had a glass of oat milk. I’m writing oat milk, like it’s supposed to be called, but I always call it oaty milk. WIth the y. Oateeeee. Oaty milk.
I just finished drinking this can of peach Bubly. I may be up all night peeing. That happened last night too! I starting drinking it too late.
You’re going to see repeating photos from yesterday. I had a lot of the same foods. Breakfast was an egg on a whole wheat English muffin and black coffee, made by my spouse. We love the Hamilton Beach sandwich maker. It makes breakfast a breeze.
Later that morning I had a cup of tea. I’ll buy another box when this one is done. I really like it.
I had two of these Lara bars, one mid morning and the other late afternoon. I had two macadamia nuts with the second bar, but I forgot to take a photo of it. It’s hard to get used to taking photos of everything you eat.
For lunch I had a bowl of homemade lentil soup. I have a lot of this soup left, it’s going to show up for many days to come.
Check out this monster strawberry! This is the biggest one I’ve ever seen! I split it with my spouse and then had a second strawberry (about a third of the size of this one), but again, I forgot to take a photo of it.
This was my dinner. It was a monster salad with balsamic vinaigrette. I was craving it all day. It’s pretty awesome for me when I crave salad. I made it with spinach, cherry tomatoes, a shredded carrot, red pepper, cucumber, shredded cheese and cashews. I topped it with a packet of pita strips and slivered almonds. This came out of another salad packet that someone gave me. She doesn’t like the salad toppers that come in the kits. What the what!?!? That’s the best part of the salad! I had this salad with a big glass of oat milk.
I had a couple sips of my spouses gin and juice cocktail, I made it for him after he finished mowing the lawn. I was going to do that today, but he beat me to it. This cocktail is delicious! I don’t like gin, but I like this drink and I’ll tell you how I make it. Take a small bottle of cheap gin and throw in about 6 sticks of Juicy Fruit gum. Let it soak in there over night and then strain it (be careful because the Juicy Fruit will be soft and will get all over everything. To make the cocktail, use the juice of half a squeezed lemon, a shot of the infused gin, and then 1/2 a cup to 1 cup of sprite. It’s fantastic.
I’m currently drinking a pineapple Bubly and have finished eating for the day. I did great today! I know I should drink more water, but I’m not there yet.
My day started with my spouse making me breakfast while I slept (the man is a saint), an egg on a whole wheat muffin , and black coffee. I asked him to skip the cheese from now on to make it lighter on the calories. He added some curry powder and it was good. I didn’t miss the cheese at all. I got on the scale this morning and I’ve gained weight. I knew I did because I’ve been indulging every craving I’ve had and binging a lot. From now on, I’m blogging what I eat. I’ve read that writing down everything you eat helps keep you in check. I wonder if taking photos works the same.
During the week, I like to have a mug of tea mid morning. I haven’t had Earl Grey in awhile. I forgot how much I like it. Usually I have green tea, this was a nice change. I refill the mug and toss the tea bag back in and make a second cup which I sip on until evening.
I’ve been having Larabars for snacks. I had two of these today. One mid morning and the second late afternoon. They are really good and have ingredients you can pronounce.
This is a terrible photo of my lunch. It’s homemade lentil soup. This is one of my fridge clean out specials. I make this a lot when I don’t have anything particular planned. I chuck soup stock, lentils, and whatever else I can find in my fridge in a pot and make it into soup. This one had onion, lentils, vegetarian soup stock, spinach, corn, carrots, and chickpeas. It was okay. This is a 500mL mason jar full of the soup.
My dinner is where I took a wrong turn.
I had to pick up something at Home Depot and my spouse suggested we stop at Harveys. I was more than happy to go along with that idea. I love love love Harvey’s veggie burgers. I got one and we shared the fries.
After that I went to Healthy Planet… and bought a cookie. Yep, I bought junk food at the health food store. I messed up a little here. Maybe there is something to keeping track of your food because going over this again, I realized I wasn’t anywhere near as well behaved as I thought I had been today. The cookies and fries should have stayed at the stores.
When I got home I had a glass of Earth’s Own Unsweetened Oat Milk. I love this milk, it’s the first milk I’ve tried that I want to drink a plain glass of. This was a 250mL size glass of milk. After that I mowed half the lawn (the battery died and the second battery wasn’t charged. I can’t say I was super sad about it. I’ll finish that job tomorrow… maybe) and then had a can of Peach Bubly. I’m starting to get hungry again, but I’ll be going to bed very shortly and have finished eating for the day. I’m putting an end to late night snacking.
I have no idea how many calories this is. I don’t want to get into calorie counting. I’ve tried it before and find it too time consuming and I don’t stick with it. I’m still searching for what works for me.
I’m relaxing on the couch listening to thunder and light rain. I love these sounds, they’re relaxing. I am having cravings for chocolate. It hit me hard near the end of the day. I went to Healthy Planet for vegetarian beef chunks and sprouting seeds, and I left with those things, but I also left with a cookie. I’ve noticed that if I stay up too late I end up snacking, so I’m going to go back to going to bed early.
Except for the cookie, I ate pretty good today. Breakfast on weekdays is always an egg and cheese sandwich on a whole wheat English muffin, with black coffee. My spouse is the one that wakes up and makes breakfast during the week, so he gets to decide what we’re eating. I enjoy those extra minutes for more snoozing. For lunch I had my usual Healthy Choice bowl. Dinner was the above photo, with brown rice, sprouts, broccoli, beefless chunks, and avocado, with squeezed lemon and some toasted sesame oil. I also put sauerkraut on it too. These bowls are fast and easy. I steam enough rice for the whole week and if anything needs to be cooked I usually toss it into the air fryer. Easy peasy.
Shark week is coming and I can feel a raging froth of PMS broiling inside me. My spouse is watching television and it’s killing my peaceful vibe of nature sounds. He’s already turned the sound down and it’s still irritating me. I AM GROUCHY!!!! Murderous rage!!!!!! I must look into sound proofing.
I’m still working my way up the treadmill. Yesterday I was on it for 20 minutes at 3.6mph, it’s come up from 15 minutes. I’m working on lengthening the time, then I’ll tackle speed. I’ve been enjoying it!
As for soapy nuts… I fell down the YouTube rabbit hole and stumbled on soap nuts. I’ve known about them for awhile and have even had them before (I think I had them for laundry), but I don’t think I’ve ever washed my hair with them before. This girl in the video washes her hair with them and her hair looks good to me. I tried them this morning. I boiled 7 soap nuts in two cups of water and applied it on my dry hair. I left in on for a couple minutes and then rinsed it off. I didn’t use conditioner either. It seemed to work pretty well.
My hair was still pretty easy to comb out afterwards and it did clean my hair. As a bonus my scalp wasn’t itchy like it usually is after washing it (I think it’s because I let my hair air dry). Once isn’t enough to tell how they work, I’ll post an update after using them for a month. I still plan on using shampoo and conditioner to wash out my bimonthly hair dye. I seriously doubt soap nuts could handle that nightmare, but who knows. Not this person.
I paid for one of these plants, the other I traded years ago for an espresso maker, I didn’t use anymore. Guess which is which? The large dieffenbachia is the one I traded for. It was half the size and not very happy. Where the trunk(?) stalk(?) curves is how tall it was when I got it and it only had a couple really droopy leaves. I had to move it around a lot before I found a place for this guy to be happy. Turns out it likes a really dark corner. It’s beside a window, but it still doesn’t get very much light at all. It’s taken over a year, but this plant is finally starting to grow. It’s doubled in size and growing a lot more leaves. The leaves are getting big too.
The second plant, the leafless stem, I got on clearance at a big box store a long time ago too. It had a couple leaves on it when I bought it, but it was doing poorly. I decided to see if I could revive it. I also moved this plant to a lot of different places (including a dark bathroom), but I couldn’t make it happy. Eventually it dropped all it’s leaves and I was going to give up on it. Then I saw a video of Harli G on YouTube (she’s a plant Youtuber) and she picked up a stem that looked just like this one and was going to replant it. I thought once a plant lost all its leaves, it was done for. I decided to repot the plant in different soil (I don’t know why I didn’t try this a long time ago) and put it beside it’s sister plant (I call it sister plant because they are both dieffenbachias, but the leafless stalk has much lighter leaves), and try again.
It seems to be working. Something is starting to happen, and this is also why this plant will forever be known as Nubbin. I’m going to keep it where it is and hope it can be revived.
Sunday breakfast satisfied a craving I’ve had for days. My spouse was craving bagels, which got me craving berry cream cheese. So for breakfast today, I made scrambled eggs and bagels and cream cheese, and I loaded that bagel with cream cheese. The coffee was an instant cappuccino that I got as a sample, and I hated it. We both did. It tasted artificial and chemically. We dumped it out and made a regular coffee that was much better.
My healthy eating took a nose dive this weekend. We ordered a pizza last night and I had it for lunch today too. I went on a short hike with my spouse, but it was really cold and the trail was mucky so we turned around. I had another bagel with cream cheese when I got home, followed by a piece of dark chocolate. and I’m currently craving another bagel (I think shark week is coming). I’m going to wait and have a proper dinner, made with much healthier options. I don’t want to get on the scale Monday.
I made some cards this weekend. I like these vanilla bean cards. I don’t know what sentiment I want on them yet, so they remain unfinished. I was thinking something to do with beans, but nah, I’ll probably just stamp a “Hello” on them, or something similar.
I was meh about these two. I would like the autumn one more with a different colour. The green didn’t go very well, and this castle card needs something more.
I liked these two. My favourite of all of them was the girl reading on the chair. I liked the Hello card a lot too, but my glue seeped out at the edges. I can get rid of that with an eraser and a little patience. I’ll post a video of the supplies I used to make the cards, below.
This weekend’s big breakfast was scrambled eggs, papaya, and a croissant. I ditched the home fries. My spouse and I were at the dentist last weekend and they checked his blood pressure, it was high (and I had a cavity). It was not good news. We’re making changes. I’m cutting way back on sugar and he’s cutting down on salt. This past week we’ve been eating a lot healthier. Way more vegetables, whole grains, and less junk. My sweet tooth is still raging, so when I want chocolate, I have dark chocolate. If it’s over 70% I can have it in the home without obsessing about it all day.
I’ve also worked out a few times this week, and not just walking (although I did that too, a 9km-10km walk through the woods). I went for a jog and lifted some weights as well. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked out. I’m really proud of myself.
I made cards this weekend. You might notice I ended up gluing the happy paper upside down on the card above. OOPS! I messed up that one, but the dog is cute.
The butterfly is a 3D one, that is propped off the card, but presses down to fit in the envelope. I wasn’t sure about that one at first, but now I really like it. I made the left one with an embossing folder. It’s pretty. I will make that one in pink too, with black ink.
The left card in this one is a gift card holder. I really like the paper on that one. The top slides off and reveals the gift card. The second one is an easel style card. There were no instructions or score lines to help. I had to guess and I have no idea if I made it right. I like the card but it was a pain to put together. You can use the dies to make a house in the Winter, or a Halloween house too. I really like how they all turned out, not so much the upside down gumball machine, but the rest were great. I’ll post a link to a video of the supplies I used below.
This was the spoils of my grocery cart and I’m feeling proud of it (if that container of potato salad wasn’t in there, I’d be downright smug about it). I’m trying the “Fake it till you make it” approach to healthy habits. I’m pretending I’m a health nut, someone like Chris Traeger on Parks and Recreation (which I’m currently binging), so this came home with me. I bought more healthy Power Bowls for those times I don’t make lunch, and fruits and veggies.
I made a meal that I’m calling Weirdy Bowl. I cooked cauliflower, eggplants, kale, and mushrooms and them added them to tofu in a coconut milk broth that I seasoned with curry powder, garam masala, turmeric, and salt, and put it over steamed quinoa. I topped it with a dollop of hummus and potato salad (yes the potato salad is very weird, hence why I called it Weirdy Bowl). The hummus though… pretty good. I’m currently fermenting sauerkraut and growing sprouts, the potato salad will be replaced by these things in the future. It was easy to make and didn’t take too long. I’ll be making more things like this in the future. May my inner Chris Traeger cook all my future meals.