Sorry for the blurry pick.  I was moving and am not sure what the gym’s policy is on taking photos, so was in a hurry.

I was tired today and a bit sore from yesterday’s workout.  Today I had planned to take a Yoga class and a weight training class.  However my back hurt bad.  Instead I opted for cardio.

I got on the treadmill and had it in my mind I would walk at a good steady pace on a 2 incline for 10 minutes.  My legs got tired at 5 minutes and I was thinking the elliptical sounded much better.  However, at 10 minutes I really got into a good pace and even opted to run on and off.  I stayed on for 30 minutes and went over 2 miles.  It is a good first start.

Then I was going to go swim in the pool, but when I got out there they had swim lessons.  I sat in the hot tub for at least a half an hour, it felt so good.  Later I drank a lot of water to replenish.

I am not doing the best workouts of my life, but it is a start.  I am trying to ease into it gently as I know I am good at pushing myself once I get a good routine going.

Tomorrow I am going to do the Yoga.  I really want to try and do Yoga at least twice a week.

Accountability:  Not doing so well with tracking food on Sparkspeople.  The idea is great and they make it so easy.  I have an app on my phone and if I ate mostly the same thing every day I could sort it by groups.

Breakfast I ate coffee and a peanut butter and honey sandwich (don’t judge.)

Lunch:  homemade hummus w/ whole grain crackers and a plum.

Dinner:  Taco Salad:  Turkey meat, multiple types of lettuce (including arugula,) salsa, cheese (small pinch,) refried beans, green onions, and radishes…..Oh, and a side dish of green beans and leeks sauteed in olive oil.

Looking at it all, I think I am okay calorie wise, but am just too tired to plug it all in….tired from the gym.  I want to think in a month this will get easier, but I will be going to school and there will be no easy.

Really, it is easier to track foods if you eat processed foods and can say, “I ate 3 cookies.”  When you cook most dinners from scratch it is hard to then go back and write it all down (or enter it in.)  Maybe this is lazy.

Finally, school is back in session and I can have gym time.  It was so awesome!  I road the bike for 10 minutes, then did some leg work, back, and arms (light.)  Then I followed it with 10+ minutes on the elliptical.  I was there an hour.

Tomorrow I am going to take a weight and yoga class.  Love it!

Tip:  If you try to eat the same foods, then you only have to add up your calories for that meal once.  In fact, Spark People has a Grouping Feature so if you eat the same thing for breakfast or lunch or whatever, you can just go to Groupings and choose which one it is and the calories are already added for you.  This is very time saving!

Dinner:

1/2 Chicken Breast Sauteed w/ red onions

Massaged Kale Salad (w/ 2 types of Kale – Portuguese and Russian Kale)  w/ Raspberries, Baked Chioggia Beets, Slivered Almonds in Honey Mustard Dressing (honey, mustard, vinegar, and olive oil)

Organic Whole Grain Brown Rice

Japanese Turnips

Sauteed w/ Garlic and Onion

Turnips have never tasted so good!   Calorie count:  500

This chart is offset, carbs are 67, fats 11, protein, 35.

I generally start cooking at 4 pm and I finish at 6:30.  This is a rough estimate of my prep/cook time and I do have some down time in there that I am doing dishes and cleaning.  So, after I eat and then do the dishes again, it is hard to then try and calculate calories of what I just ate.  It is worth it though.  I am doing this to track and get a good idea where I am.  However, I am learning that I am in my calorie zone without having to journal it.

Oh, and one last thing.  When I was a kid, my father made mushed turnips.  I believe it is like mashed potatoes, but they were mush and gross.  It probably was the worst thing my father ever cooked.  My children ate these turnips first.  They loved them.  Whether mushed turnips are just gross or my kids have exotic tastes for veggies that I never had as a kid, I am happy that they liked them.

Why journal your calories?  Well, for me I need to find out how I am doing calorie wise.  This will be especially beneficial when I get back into the gym in a couple of weeks.  (Count down to when the kids go back to school.)

Today I weighed myself and I was 239.  There, I said it.  Yes, it is high, but in perspective at one time I was really close to 300.  When I moved I got down to 228 and then gained to 255, where I was at the end of April.  So I am happy the number is going down, the right direction.   I definitely have the diet, something I didn’t have when I had originally lost the weight.  Now I just need the exercise.

Calorie Goal:  1,270 - 1,620 (I noticed this is a lot lower than a lot of other calorie calculators.)

On top of this, I am taking Nutrition, Weight Management, and the Wellness Challenge this Fall semester.  How is that for Accountability?

At the farmer’s market we spent some time talking to the hippy cheese guy.  I have yet to get his name, total oversight on my part.  He is a really nice man and the girls and I have enjoyed talking with him.  I buy bread from him that I love.  He gets it from a local bread bakery that supplies to just a few stores and to him.  The bread has no preservatives.  It doesn’t need any, I will eat it all in less than a week.  I also buy his Parmesan Cheese.  Once you try the cheese, you can never go back to store bought cheese.  It is so good and I only put a little bit on salads or on top of sauteed green beans.

Also at the farmer’s market I bought Green Leaf Lettuce (noticed a lot of farmers did not have lettuce,) Red Onions, Portuguese Kale (is a flat leafed kale that looks like Collard Greens,)  Dino Kale (what can I say?  I love Kale,) Scallions, and Pluots (mix between a Plum and an Apricot.)  Yum!

From memory in our farm share we got Red Leaf lettuce (small heads,) Potatoes, Arugula, Spinach, Chioggia Beets (told they have a large bulls eye in them,) French Breakfast Radishes, Japanese White Turnips, Chard,  Basil, Green Beans, Pickling Cucumbers, Strawberries, Raspberries, and Padron Peppers.

Today I put the Padron Peppers in a bowl of olive oil and then grilled them and topped with salt.  I fed them to my spicy hating children and my husband and they all loved them.  Most were sweet, but every once in awhile you get a spicy one!

I believe this is week 11 or 12 on my farm pickup.  Picture is clickable if you want to see the purslane closer.

Starting at the top clockwise we have Raspberries and Strawberries, our fruit staple.  Then there is Arugula, Green Beans, Lettuce, Purslane*, Yellow Squash, Red Radishes, Basil, Peppers, Radicchio, Potatoes (Yellow Finn,) Cucumbers, and small Leeks.

I linked Purslane to some info on it.  Don’t get it mixed up with spurge….white sap = bad.  However, Purslane has the highest in Omega 3′s than any other leafy vegetable.

Now, I want to like purslane.  I love arugula, when a lot of people don’t.  I was hoping the purslane would taste like arugula as it is suppose to have a nutty like taste.  However, I found it to taste more lemony and I don’t particularly care for it raw.  I might try and sautee it.   It also makes me nervous that purslane grows near a look alike, spurge that is poisonous.  Do I trust that the farmworker didn’t get spurge in my mix?  Do I need to break every stalk to look for white sap?  Hmmm…

Around the Corner:  In the upcoming weeks I am going to change the structure of my blog.   I will talk about the farm veggies on Tuesday and Friday, do a cooking/food post on Wednesday.  Then on Thursday will highlight something fitness related.  On the bottom of every post I will keep a running tab of calories inputed and calories burned.  Monday I will leave open to either cooking/fitness related/update on the weekend/ or a weigh in post.  I will do a weigh in at the beginning of the month.  I will probably do all of this in a week or so after my house company has left and I have time for the blog.

Also, if you are looking for me on facebook, I have taken a short hiatus.

Couscous and Beet Green Salad

Ingredients:

Couscous:  1 cup cooked and then cooled.

Beet Greens* (sautee them first and cool.  I ran them under cold water in a strainer.)

*Cook as many as you want.  I cooked at least a dozen.

2 Green Onions (raw and chopped)

1 Can of red Kidney Beans (rinse and drain)

1 Can of Garbanzo Beans (rinse and drain)

1 Tbsp Olive Oil

1 Tbsp White Vinegar or Rice Vinegar

Salt (to taste)

Season (to taste…I have some Mediterranean seasoning/salt that I sprinkle on.

It has a nice mix of dried basil, oregano, etc..)

Directions:  Pretty much what ingredients say, cook the Couscous as directed on the package and then cool.  Sautee some beet greens (or any greens you want) and cool.  Chop 2 green onions.  You could also add garlic (I omitted this from mine.) Then add the beans.  Mix the olive oil and vinegar together with salt and seasoning (look you just made a salad dressing…note, you can dress any salad with this.)  Mix dressing to all the other ingredients.  Let it chill in the fridge if you want, then eat.

This is a light tasting salad with lots of protein.  We will be eating it with tacos and green beans tonight.

I made this salad:  Wilted Tatsoi Salad  I pretty much followed the recipe.  I didn’t have ginger, so omitted it, which is fine as my husband isn’t fond of ginger.  I also used honey in lieu of sugar.  My husband loved this salad.  He said it reminded him of Korean side dishes.

I put the salad in the fridge to chill and I started on the Asian Cabbage Rolls.   I used this recipe as a guideline.  I decided to precook my ground turkey, just put it in a pan and cooked it on the stove with a spatula, like I was making taco or spaghetti sauce meat.  The reason I did this is that I have had problems waiting for the turkey to cook in the oven and figured this would ensure it was cooked.

I took garlic, onions, carrots, leeks, and cilantro and sauteed them lightly.  Then I added them to the soy sauce/sesame oil/egg mixture.

I added the precooked ground turkey and the black japonica rice  that I cooked.  I added the cabbage to it that I soaked and the pepper.  I didn’t have mushrooms, those would have been great in this.

I then precooked the cabbage leaves for about 10 minutes in boiling water.  I didn’t time them.  I just guessed.  I also didn’t have Napa Cabbage.  It would be better as they are larger, but this worked okay.  I got these small cabbage heads in my farm share.

I spooned them in the leaves and then closed the leaves shut and placed the seam down in the pan.  There wasn’t enough cabbage to fold them up.

Here they are in the pan.  Some of the contents spilled out during the cooking.  We eat that, too. 

Kind of homey.  It works for us.

My dinner.  It was so good.  This must be in my top 5 dishes.  I will definitely be making this again.  The nice thing is you can prepare the cabbage rolls the night before and then cook them the next day.  I think you can even freeze them, it just suggest doing so without the sauce.

Finally, our dessert.  Yes, we have dessert.  It is called fresh organic fruit.  Tonight we each had a Santa Rosa Plum.

Okay…this is Finally, I don’t think I put too many photos of myself on here.  I got a hair cut today.  It feels great.  I feel great.

I have changed for sure.  Nothing seems as satisfying as a nice green salad with lots of veggies in it.  I just use a vinegar/olive oil dressing and sometimes will change it up by adding some mustard or honey, depending on what is in the salad.
I also bought some blueberries, shown in the brown paper bag and black berries, Tony has been wanting those.  Oh, and a few onions as Tony asked for onions for the salad and they did taste great in them.

This seems to be our usual weekly dinner.  It is either tacos or tostadas.  These are ground turkey.  Calorie wise each tostad is under 200 calories.  Our salad had raspberries, carrots, red onions, radishes, and 3 different types of lettuces.  Our dessert was a mixed fruit salad.  It was blueberries, black berries, and strawberries.  All of the veggies are from either my local farm share or the farmer’s market.  The only processed food is our tostada shell and then the lean ground turkey.

I do have my feelings against turkey meat, but am not going to go vegetarian.  It is just one of those things at the moment.  I think I try my best, but know it could be better and a lot of that has to do with the cost of food.  It is like pastured eggs, trying to afford a dozen eggs for $7.  I really digressed there, sorry.  I am looking for organic taco shells.  I think they have those at Trader Joe’s.  It is nice to not have to depend so much on the grocery store for my food and more for the farmers in my area.  It really just makes me want to be a farmer and have my own chickens.  I know it is a lot of hard work, we had a large garden when I was a kid and so I understand the concept of it, I just want it.  If I could go back in life and start over I think I would strive to have my own farm.

Finally, this was my dinner at the Green Valley Grill.  It is one of the nicer restaurants in town.  I can’t remember what this is called, but it has Ahi Tuna and Shrimp with Fettuccine.  The weird part, and really what made the flavors of this taste so good is that it had cilantro in it, Parmesan cheese, basil/pine-nut pesto, garlic, and I think soy sauce.  It was Asian and also Italian and then with the cilantro…just very interesting.  I loved it.  Sadly, the glutton in me tried to drink the broth with my fork, but I really just wanted to pick up the bowl and drink it.  I didn’t, but I wanted to.  I tried to remember every flavor to one day go home and make it.  I guess it is considered a fusion dish.  I love it.  It probably is a million calories.

I wanted to get out and exercise today, but I still have a bad sunburn and a cut on my foot.  I realize these are all excuses.  I guess I am in that phase.  I am not without exercise, I just am not in a routine and I haven’t been doing weightlifting or running.  Being without kids for a couple of weeks, I should look into the exercise classes in my gym and go there not just to get fit, but perhaps to meet a few people.

I am excited to be getting plums, yum!  We will be getting a lot of green beans, that is new.

I did some terrible eating over the holiday weekend.  Ice cream cake dessert and big juicy steaks.  I excused it because I don’t eat like that daily.  On the way home, my husband and I “junked out” on chips and candy.  We came home feeling terrible and I woke up with the worst back pain, dehydrated and feeling hung over.  I had a junk food hangover.  I am looking forward to healthier eating this week with a lot of greens.

I might stop at the farmer’s market in Santa Cruz tomorrow to buy some salad greens and supplement what I haven’t been getting in the box.

I have noticed a few things.  The first is bad eating occurs around holidays.  The second is that bad eating occurs when I am around my family.  The third is when I am on a long car ride and have not prepared myself with food for the ride.  I can evaluate and learn from it.

I am kid free this week.  Tomorrow I am going to head to the gym and enjoy a workout without kids.  I would go today but my back is killing me, I am sunburned and badly dehydrated.  This is just a bad combination to workout at the gym.  I will be ready tomorrow.  I am looking forward to it.