Friday = Gionino’s Pizza
Gionino’s Pizza = Happy Mary
Gionino’s Pizza + Hot Sauce = Heaven
Heaven I say… HEAAAAAVEN
Friday Theft?
It’s FRIIIIDAAYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!! Do you know what this means?!?! It’s our first Gionino’s Friday in many weeks! Alas, that will have to wait til after work…..
I was having technical difficulties while working on last night’s post — but good news! I was able to add the video I wanted.. Check it out if you want a laugh!
Just for fun this friday, I used snapshots of my personal myfitnesspal page to show the stats on my meals. Yes, that qualifies as “fun” in my mind 🙂
Breakfast #1
Fun fact about me: I steal…. Um… let’s call it “hoard.” Yes, hoard. I hoard the Smucker’s Blackberry Preserves from our free office breakfasts. “Steal” is too strong of a word for single serving preserve packet… Right???
I love these blackberry preserves… They have little bits of seeds and taste awesome:
Today I brought a Sweet Wheat Alternative bagel from home, and then we ended up having free bagels from Panera at work! I stuck to my guns, and went with my Alternative bagel topped with about 1 tbsp of Panera’s low calorie walnut & honey cream cheese, and 1 packet of Smucker’s blackberry preserves:
Check out the comparison on the sweat wheat Alternative Bagel and a whole wheat panera bagel:
Sometimes, life is just about compromises! It’s crazy how different those stats are, and the Alternative bagel actually tastes like a real life bagel (unlike bagel thins).
Sad news though. I only have 1 of my blackberry preserve packets left…. I hope we get some more soon!
Stats:
Breakfast #2
Was the breakfast I accidently left at home yesterday! It consisted of some dannon vanilla greek yogurt and slice up strawberries:
Perfection!
Stats:
Lunch
In anticipation of having PIZZZZAAAAAA for dinner tonight, I figured I’d go with a healthy salad for lunch. Today’s salad consisted of:
- 1/2 bag romaine lettuce
- 2 ounces chopped up grilled chicken (heated up in the microwave)
- 1 hardboiled egg
- 1/2 a green pepper
- 1 roma tomato
- 1/4 cup red onion
- 2 tbsp Ken’s Steakhouse Lite Italian Romano Dressing
Giant salad:
Stats:
Delicious lunch, but lets be honest. All I can think about is pizza now…..
Saturday is for the Chirpy
Good news! I woke up this morning, and I literally had a smile on my face 😀 The sun was shining and the birds were chirping (which some people find annoying but I happen to love)… Come to think of it, that is odd for me considering I have a phobia of birds…
After my rough start to the day yesterday, we thought the best cure would be Gionino’s pizza and their amazing hot sauce for dinner last night (we will take any excuse for the G, really):
After dinner, I walked 2.5 miles at about a 4 mile per hour pace. I’m not 100% sure the walking is helping me to rebuild the strength in my knee, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting so I’m going to keep on keeping on!
For breakfast #1 today I decided to make up some eggs. I swear my body goes through egg withdrawal if I am sans-eggs for more than a couple days! I chopped up a small potato into bite size pieces, then microwaved for 4 minutes flipping the little guys over half way through.
Then I threw them into a hot pan to crisp up on both sides. Once the potatoes were crispy, I added the following mixture: 4 egg whites, some Frank’s red hot, S&P, red pepper flakes, and a splash of water.
Served em up with a dollop of ketchup 🙂
Stats on breakfast #1: 215 calories, 36g carbs, 9g fat, 17g protein, 3g fiber
After the eggs, I completed Day #1, Week #2 of my interval training plan which consisted of 5 intervals of 3 minutes walking and 3 minutes running. No knee pain! Boo ya! I got to the 2.5 mile marker in 27 minutes.
Breakfast #2 today was some overnight oats 😀
Last night I threw the following into a bowl then popped it into the fridge:
- 1/2 cup uncooked quick oats
- 1/2 cup unsweetened almond breeze vanilla almond milk
- 1 tsp JIF peanut butter
- 1 tsp brown sugar
- sprinkling of cinnamon
This morning, I topped the oats off with some fresh strawberries. Mmmm mmmm gooooood 🙂
Stats on breakfast #2: 233 calories, 36g carbs, 8g fat, 7g protein, 6g fiber
You know what I really love about overnight oats (besides the delicious creamy coolness)? It’s like a little surprise for yourself. You take 1 minute of time for yourself the night before, and the next morning you have this little bundle of joy just waiting for you!
Speaking of preparing, I haven’t been doing a very good job of planning my meals out for the week in advance. During tax season, I am amazing at this (not to brag or anything 😉 ) and not only do I shop for the meals on Sunday, but I also cook EVERYTHING for the week on Sunday. Lately, it feels like I’ve been going to the grocery store several times a week, instead of one large trip over the weekend. So, this week I’m going to do my best to sit down and plan everything out. Speaking of planning… I need to plan out what to make for dinner tonight!
Headed to the yard for hours of glorious yard work 🙂
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:
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:
Still trying to decide what to cook up for dinner tonight… Suffering from foodie’s block.
Ten Cheese Pizza
Usually on Friday nights, my BF (AKA man candy) and I order up some Gionino’s pizza with hot sauce. This week, however, we’ve got big plans for dinner Sunday night ( 😉 😉 Tim), so we decided to go the healthy route tonight.
The BF follows a strict diet and workout plan, which I have declared the “Road-to-Ultimate Fitness.” He eats the same meals every day. Day in and day out. I would never succeed on the road to ultimate fitness. I love food far too much, and get bored far too easily to do such a thing.
Although the plan was to eat healthy tonight, there were no pizza sacrifices on my behalf! I whipped up a flat bread pizza using a Joseph’s Middle eastern Bakery Lavash bread, some Classico Fire Roasted Tomato & Garlic sauce, leftover grilled chicken, thinly sliced tomato and onion, and a random assortment of cheeses that have accumulated in my fridge.
It’s real easy to go over board on the cheese – so I made sure to measure everything out. 1 tbsp Kraft Italian Style Five cheese blend, 1 tbsp Athenos Reduced Fat Feta, 1 tbsp Digorno Shredded Three Cheese, and 2 tbsp fat free ricotta. That’s ten — count ’em — ten cheeses 😀
Some people hate ricotta cheese but I adore it. I feel it adds a layer of delicious decadence to any meal. (Which reminds me — I’ve been wanting to try out this recipe for Lemon Ricotta Cookies)
So back to the main event–THE PIZZA. I seasoned the pizza up with some garlic salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, and some dried parsley and baked at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Served up with some leftover cucumber salad.
For a person whose favorite part of a pizza is the crust, I was extremely happy with how this turned out! The flavors of the cheeses and seasonings were perfection! Only item to modify for next time will be to put the Lavash in the oven for a few minutes before topping it — that will give it time to crisp up so the sauce doesn’t make it soggy in the middle.
Stats for the whole lavash pizza (and I was only able to eat 2/3 of it): 431 calories, 35g carbs, 13g fat, 48g protein, 10g fiber
I do want to make side note of my afternoon snack — I had an afternoon meeting so I grabbed a Peanut Butter Cookie Luna bar to take with me. I’ve heard mixed reviews on this specific flavor, but I thought it was downright tasty! Though, it did remind me more of a peanut butter rice crispie treat than a cookie, but I’m content with that!
After the pizza eatin’, I decided to mix up a breakfast cookie. I follow a few different food blogs, and I kept seeing this “breakfast cookie” popping up so I decided to look into it. According to her website, Fitnessista is the brains behind the breakfast cookie. I’m pumped to give this one a go!
My cookie consisted of oats, optimum nutrition chocolate whey, Trader Joe’s crunchy Almond butter, skim milk, some mashed up blackberries, and little brown sugar.
