There’s more than one way to slice a banana.

I haven’t cooked a thing in the last six months.  That’s not true.  I have cooked my weekly batch of oatmeal and my one-whole-egg-plus-three-egg-whites scramble every morning.  I’ve also cooked at least fifty English muffins slathered in peanut butter and sliced bananas, and cooked a bazillion or so no-cook salads for lunch.  But, I haven’t done any REAL cooking lately simply because I’ve been swamped with work (and life) and because it was just way too friggin hot this summer to bother with anything involving the oven.  As I sit here eating my late night peanut butter toast that I slaved over a hot toaster for, it dawned on me that just because I’m not cooking doesn’t mean we can’t talk food!

A month or so ago, my mom came to visit, and since I was under the weather she cooked me one of those peanut butter and banana English muffins I mentioned earlier.  My whole life, I’ve been making this little snack with strategically placed slices of banana perched atop the muffin halves, so you can imagine how baffled I was when my mom appeared with this:

peanut butter banana sandwich

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Starting the week off on the right foot

Happy Monday 😀

This morning I decided to start my week off on the right foot with a 2.5 mile power walking session.  This was a follow up to Day#1 of my interval running/walking plan, which I started yesterday.  My knee only bothered me slightly during the running intervals yesterday, so I ended up swapping the 5th running interval for a cool-down walk.   I definitely want to err on the side of caution as I start building myself back up to running.

I thought walking today would be good to help keep things loose.  I’m also making sure to not sit in the same position for too long while I’m working so that my knee doesn’t lock up.  I’m determined to get my knee back into running shape!

 

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Early bird catches the corn dog

It’s Saturday, and you know what that means.  Yard work!     

You’d think for as much time as I devote to my yard, it’d be in pristine shape….  Oh what a pain in the ass homeownership is  the joys of home ownership 🙂    

There is one specific area of the yard that I leave completely untouched.  You can see I have quite the crop of poison ivy growing:    

area of infestation

 

     

I hit up the Home Depot this morning to pick up some spray to (hopefully) help with my poison ivy.  Did you know Home Depot opens at 6am???   I leaned this little nugget of information when I called them at 7am to see when they opened.  6am?  Those customers must be hard-core home improvers.     

Before I got to work in the back yard, I cooked up my favorite egg breakfast:  1 dippy egg & 3 egg white scramble with S&P, Red Pepper Flakes, and Frank’s Red Hot.  I always add a splash of liquid (usually skim milk or water) to the egg whites to help them stay fluffy.  Also, toasted up a Thomas’ multi grain english muffin on the side.     

    

    

Stats on breakfast:  218 calories, 28g carbs, 6g fat, 22g protien, 8g fiber    

After chowing down, I headed to the yard.    

Until last summer, I was one of those people who thought I wasn’t allergic to poison ivy.  Well, that is until I accidently weed wacked some of it.  I really didn’t know what poison ivy even looked like, so I was unaware of the horrible mistake I had made and basically let myself marinate in the poison ivy juices all day while I worked away in the yard.  This resulted in what I will call a immobilizing infestation of poison ivy all over my legs.  Since then I will not go near the stuff.    

Today, I put on pants and long sleeves (despite temps in the mid 80’s) just so that I could approach the “infested area.”  My luck, I’ll get poison ivy on the only part that was left exposed:  my face 🙁   I’m sure I’ll have nightmares about that tonight!    

I’ll have to post some before and after shots once I get it all finished (which will be never sometime soon).    

After all the yard work, I was starving!     

Sometimes I just get cravings for weird foods.  Case in point, today I had a sudden craving for a corn dog!  I can’t remember the last time I had one, but something triggered the corn dog eating machine deep inside me.  So, I decided to try and make a healthified version of a corn dog.  Even typing “healthified corn dog” makes me scoff.  How ridiculous sounding is that?    

I had some frozen Jennie-O turkey sausages in the freezer and also some Joseph’s Lavash bread, so I pulled them out to defrost before hitting up the yard early this morning.    

I cooked up 2 turkey sausages – 1 for the “corn dog” and 1 for a healthified jambalaya recipe I’m going to try later in the week.  Once cooked, I wrapped 1 turkey sausage in 1/2 a Joseph’s Low-Carb lavash bread, stuck in on a skewer, and threw it back on the grill.    

    

    

Ridiculous, I know…    

Once the lavash was crispy, I pulled it off the grill and served it up with a big squirt of mustard.     

    

    

Ok – so it’s not exactly a corn dog, but eating it off a stick sure made it seem like one and it definitely hit the spot 🙂  I’m a BIG fan of Jennie-O’s hot turkey sausage.    

Corn dog stats:  210 calories, 7g carbs, 12g fat, 22g protien, 3g fiber    

BTW –  yesterday while volunteering I had a Smores Luna Bar – and I wasn’t a big fan.  It wasn’t bad tasting — just didn’t remind me of a smore AT ALL.  Definitely the least favorite of all the flavors I have tried to date.  I also had a few bites of a Chocolate Cherry Bear Naked Grain-ola Bar.  It was OK – but again, I wasn’t super impressed.  Apparently I was hard to please yesterday…   

What did hit the spot, however, was the Gioniono’s pizza we had for dinner:    

Abundant vegetables to make me feel better about eating pizza, amazing Gionino's pizza, pool of hot sauce goodness 🙂

 

    

Still trying to decide what to cook up for dinner tonight…  Suffering from foodie’s block.

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