Pancake Wednesday

My Pancake Tuesday plans were foiled yesterday by my well meaning husband. I came out to the kitchen after my post-workout shower to discover that he had forgotten all about pancakes and had heated up the leftover soup from Monday night. I couldn’t exactly be upset with him since he was trying to be helpful. And really, it was not a big deal. I am an equal opportunity pancake appreciator, so we just had our pancakes today.

I like to make my pancakes with Robin Hood Nutri Flour Blend. I’m not a fan of whole wheat pancakes, but the Nutri Flour makes a nice light and fluffy pancake. I think that it has a slightly nuttier flavor than white flour, and I actually think it makes better pancakes than using white flour.

I always do half a batch, since it’s just Husband and I, though today perhaps I should have made more. He was hungry tonight and was in the kitchen looking for more, even though I cooked him two eggs to go along with his.

I just had mine with strawberries & raspberries (from frozen, that I simmered on the stove while making the pancakes) and maple syrup.

I love pancakes!

…And the Fabulous Felines

I know you’ve all been been in suspense, wondering what those felines have been up to lately…

So I’ll tell you.

There has been some serious power napping going on…

I just love how you can barely see Frank’s face behind his fur.

Interspersed with some playing to work through that snow-induced cabin fever.

This would be the box that my piano came in. Yes, I kept it for the cats. There are a few cat toys in there and every so often I’ll be in the basement and hear this mad scuffling noise from the box as one of them gets in there and starts batting a toy around. We all think that’s fun.

The down side is that the box is sitting right behind my piano bench and every single time I sit down to play lately, Zappa will come and sit on the box and swat at me. He doesn’t seem to like sharing attention with the newest addition to the family, inanimate though it may be.

My mischievous felines also like to cause trouble in the kitchen.

That would be Frank, sitting on the counter. I mainly took this photo to try and give you some idea of the size of these cats. I’m not sure that really comes through in pictures. They are the largest cats I have ever owned. Frank is somewhere around 17 lbs, and he’s not fat.

And this is what Zappa does whenever he sees me get the carton of milk out of the fridge (sorry for the blur, but he wouldn’t hold still).

No, my cats are not spoiled at all….

Happy Valentines Weekend

It was 14 years ago on Valentine’s Day that Husband asked me out for the first time. Husband usually takes great enjoyment from reminding me of how I panicked and ran away. So far he hasn’t said anything, but since Valentine’s Day is actually tomorrow perhaps he’s saving it. Or maybe he’s decided it’s finally time to let me live that one down.

We went out and had our Valentine’s Dinner tonight because the restaurant that Husband wanted to take me to is closed on Sunday’s. What’s funny is I had thought of going there, then was disappointed when I realized they are closed on Sundays. So when Husband told me yesterday that he’d made reservations for tonight I knew right away where we were going. Apparently we are completely in tune with one another.

We went out to Taco Pica, on Germain Street in Uptown Saint John. We used to go there quite often when we lived Uptown – and this is not our first Valentine’s dinner there. Since we moved out of town we don’t get there as often, but we always enjoy it when we go.

Taco Pica is a Guatemalan restaurant. Husband used to travel a lot for work, and has been to Guatemala. He says the food at Taco Pica is very authentic based on what he had in his travels. Considering that the proprietors are Guatemalan, that is not surprising.

I love the colorful interior.

We ended up arriving quite early, so there weren’t many people there yet. By the time we left it was filling up.

It is traditional when we go there to order Margaritas.

For an appetizer, I had stuffed Jalapeno Peppers.

Husband had Snake Bites, which are like spicy chicken nuggets. Then for my entree I had the Black Bean Quesadilla with extra salsa and sour cream.

They make the best refried black beans, and when you put those black beans and cheese in a quesadilla, and serve with salsa and sour cream, I am a happy JavaChick.

Husband had a pork taco and a shrimp taco. That might not sound like much, and the pork taco is actually not that big (I didn’t get a picture) but the Shrimp taco is pretty impressive.

There is shrimp and potatoes and peppers and cheese and maybe onions in there. Husband ate a lot of it with a fork, until he could roll up the rest and eat it taco style.

I ate half my quesadilla and was full – the other half is in the fridge for lunch tomorrow.

There are also some chocolate dipped strawberries from Rocky Mountain Chocolate in the fridge for dessert, but right now we’re both too full.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone and have a great weekend!

Not Quite A Food Blogger

Food Blogging was fun. I like food. I like reading other food blogs. I like getting ideas for new recipes, finding out about new products and it was fun to participate. But, I’m finding that I just can’t keep up with a daily food blog at the moment. I’m not saying never again, but for now it’s just not working for me.

That doesn’t mean that I won’t still post food pictures sometimes…

Like this Red Thai Curry that Husband and I made on the weekend for example.

Really not difficult to do, and oh so good. In that bowl there was chicken, sweet potatoes, red bell peppers in a coconut milk based red curry sauce, served over Jasmine Rice. Leads to much contented-ness in the JavaChick household.

And, of course, I will be keeping up with my workouts…

Like the Tabata Intervals that I really didn’t want to do today. I kept puttering around, finding little things to do, putting off getting started which was silly. The faster you get started, the faster you’re through, right?

But at least I was well organized with my GymBoss to time the intervals, and my spare kitchen timer to time my rest periods.

I have to say, the GymBoss is a helpful little gadget. I’ve used it for other workouts, but today was the first time I used it to set up two intervals – 20 seconds of an exercise then 10 seconds of rest. That interval was used for 8 sets of an exercise, then I would rest for 1 minute, then move on to 8 sets of the next exercise. 

After my Tabata Intervals, I did 25 minutes of Steady State Cardio. I decided to save Abs for tomorrow.

As for the rest of whatever spare time I can find…For as long as I can remember I have wanted to take piano lessons. I finally have a piano again, and now I’m finally taking lessons. I’ve had two so far. The first lesson there was a lot of skipping through the book to figure out where to start. As far as musical notes go, I read piano music fairly well. But I’ve never learned any of the theory, never learned proper fingering technique, so there are definitely things for me to learn. So far, I feel like the lessons I’ve had are helping me to focus my practicing which is good.

Don’t worry though, garden season will get here eventually, then I’ll be back with pictures of [cats in] the garden .

Wednesday

As usual, quick-quick-quick so I can get on to other things – why do my evenings seem so short lately?

Last night’s dinner was one of our quick & easy favorites – PC Madras Curry Sauce with chicken, red bell pepper and cauliflower, served with Naan.

While the curry was cooking, I chopped some veggies and put then in a container in the fridge. Then set out some other things on the counter in preparation for the morning.

This morning I threw everything into the slow cooker.

Breakfast this morning – the famous carrot muffin and coffee.

For lunch, red bell pepper and Amy’s Lasagna (the one with cheese, not the non-diary kind; lasagna without cheese just seems wrong).

Dessert – my last two After Eights.

And an afternoon snack.

We actually left work by 5:30 today. To tell you the truth I considered skipping my workout when I got home – I sorta feel like maybe I’m coming down with the cold Husband had last week. But then I decided it was better to go ahead and do the workout.

Today was Supersets + Abs and Steady State Cardio. I actually only did two sets of the ab exercises though (it was supposed to be 3) because I started to feel a bit nauseous. And the cardio was short – 2o minutes – but better than nothing.

I think that Supersets are going to be my favorite workout of the rotation again. They were last month. But don’t tell Lindsey – I’m afraid she’ll decide she’s not making them hard enough or something. I definitely worked. I just like working out with weights.

Then dinner – one of our favorites, the Tex-Mex Taco Soup.

And dessert.

Time to get in a little piano and then clean up the kitchen (dontcha love my priorities?) and then it will be bedtime again!

Two more days to the weekend!

Play It Again, JavaChick

I forgot my iPhone today, which meant no food pics at work. Then Husband got held up at work and we didn’t get home until around 7 pm, so no workout tonight either. We’ll all have to be in suspense about those Cardio Intervals for a little bit longer.

At lunch time I read this post on Peas and Thank You. Mama Pea was having a rough day, so she recycled a post from a year ago. I got curious, so I had a look to see what I posted a year ago today. Turns out it was my workout summary for January, which looked something like this:

January 2009

Jan 29: Fat Burning Yoga[40 mins]
Jan 28: Treadmill Walk + Joy of Yoga[80 mins]
Jan 27: Slim Sculpt[45 mins]
Jan 26: Yoga[20 mins]
Jan 24: Treadmill Walk + 20 Min Yoga Buns & Thighs[65 mins]
Jan 23: Power Beauty Sweat[20 mins]
Jan 22: Joy of Yoga[35 mins]
Jan 21: Fat Burning Yoga[40 mins]
Jan 20: Kathy Smith Yoga[30 mins]
Jan 19: Candlelight Yoga[40 mins]
Jan 18: Slim Sculpt[45 mins]
Jan 15: Bikini Ready DVD[35 mins]
Jan 13: Slim Sculpt[45 mins]
Jan 11: Fat Burning Fusion[45 mins]
Jan 10: Yogini Workout[45 mins]
Jan 1 - 4: Clearing out spare room, painting, cleaning up, putting spare room back together. Whew! (Missed that the first time around and want to see the results? Click Here)

I had a hard time with motivation in January of last year. Last winter was just a hard one all around; it started early and stayed late.

As Husband complains about the snow and cold this winter, I keep saying that at least it’s been better than last winter. It tends to lose it’s impact what with that being then and this being now. But looking through my posts from February of last year, they were pretty much all snow, snow and more snow.

Granted, it’s just the beginning of February, there’s more snow to come. But here are a few photos that I posted on February 1, 2009…

Hope you enjoyed the rerun and with any luck we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow!

Happy Monday, Happy February

Last week got away from me, things were busier than usual, Himself came down with a cold, I was tired and blogging fell by the wayside.

There was some good stuff too – dinner and a movie with friends on Wednesday night being one of those. We saw The Lovely Bones – have you read it? I did, a few (probably 4) years ago now. I remember thinking that it would be a hard book to turn into a movie, I just couldn’t picture it. There were definitely some changes – there always are – but I thought they did a pretty good job capturing the essence. Plus, I always enjoy Mark Wahlberg. Heh.

I guess it’s that time, to review January’s workouts. I actually just realized it when I sat down to start this post.

January’s workouts were designed byLindsey at Lean Bodies Health & Fitness. It was definitely a challenging schedule (and some challenging workouts) for me, but I only ended up missing one workout which I can live with.

Here’s the recap:

Jan 26: Supersets + Steady State Cardio + Abs[45 mins]
Jan 25: Cardio Intervals[35 mins]
Jan 24: Hyperbolic RT + Steady State Cardio + Abs[60 min]
Jan 21: Hyperbolic RT + Steady State Cardio + Abs
Jan 20: Cardio Intervals[45 mins]
Jan 19: Supersets + Steady State Cardio + Abs
Jan 18: Cardio Intervals[45 mins]
Jan 17: Hyperbolic RT + Abs + Barefoot Cardio[60 mins]
Jan 16: Fat Burning Yoga DVD[40 mins]
Jan 14: Hyperbolic RT + Abs + Fat Burning Pilates DVD[60mins]
Jan 13: Cardio Intervals[45 mins]
Jan 12: Supersets + Steady State Cardio + Abs
Jan 11: Cardio Intervals[30 mins]
Jan 10: Rounds for 20 min + Steady State Cardio + Abs[60 mins]
Jan 09: Fusion Flow DVD[45 mins]
Jan 08: Timed Circuit + Steady State Cardio + Abs[60 mins]
Jan 07: Cardio Intervals + Abs[50 minutes]
Jan 06: Supersets + Steady State Cardio[60 mins]
Jan 05: Cardio Intervals[45 mins]
Jan 04: Hyperbolic RT + Steady State Cardio + Abs[50 mins]

I also seem to be down about 2 lbs, which may not be a huge difference but I’ll take it. Here’s hoping for another 2 lbs this month!

As I mentioned not too long ago, I decided to sign up for 3 more months with Lindsey. Today I started February’s plan and to tell the truth, I’m a little scared. It would seem that Lindsey has decided that she was too easy on me last month, and she’s making up for it now. Or she’s trying to kill me. Haven’t sussed that one out yet.

One Legged Burpees? If she thinks I can do those, she is way over-estimating my abilities. I’ve been known to end up collapsed on the floor, laughing hysterically, while trying to do regular burpees. But we shall see how it goes.

I did photo all of my meals/snacks today, but I have other things that I want to get to (piano!) so I’m going to cut this short and just leave you with two.

Saturday night I was on my own, so I tried a new recipe in the Slow Cooker for Refried Bean Soup. I got a little carried away with adding real Chipotle Peppers and some Chipotle Chili Powder (which I find is  hotter than regular Chili Powder), so it came out quite spicy.

I served it up with a quesadilla and it made quite a nice comfort food type meal.

The weather has turned downright cold and wintery which is a bit of a shock to the system after it was so mild last week. The office was quite cold today. I had a container of this soup for my lunch and I was quite thankful for all that Chipotle heat – it was the first time I was actually warm all day!

Yesterday we put our Slow Cooker to work again, and made Italian Chicken and Potatoes. We had leftovers tonight, with a very simple salad of cucumber & grape tomatoes. We also had a loaf of Focaccia bread to finish up. I topped my chicken & potatoes with a little parmesan, since we have some in the fridge.

That’s it for me tonight! I’ll be back tomorrow, if I survive the new Cardio Intervals that I’ve been assigned. Wish me luck!