Veg Day 5

This morning I stopped into Starbucks on my way to work. I usually get an ice tea and I enjoy their "Perfect Oatmeal." Most days it is actually pretty perfect! They do a much better job than I do at getting the proportion of water to packet mix. They give you a choice of brown sugar, dried fruit, and/or nuts. I generally put in the brown sugar and the dried fruit. I am a bit picky (I know) and I take out the fig and golden raisin pieces. Dried fruit can have a lot of sugar and be calorie packed so I don't want to eat the ones I don't like. Therefore I pick them out and my oatmeal contains dried cranberries, blueberries, and raisins. I mix them in then go to work and eat the oatmeal when I get there. That allows the fruit to plump up a bit. I know you didn't realize instant oatmeal could be so scientific and complicated!

Lunch was with my co-worker and blog enthusiast Er and her fun kid Z at Looney's pub. We had a great lunch including visit from one of her former students and naming the fly that was entertaining Z. So lunch was a delicious tomato and mozzarella salad with a feta vinaigrette and some nice bread that comes with it.

Dinner was one of our Let's Dish meals, veggie pockets. It came with a veggie mix, pita bread, feta and chick peas. The peas went back into the freezer for hummus one day. The veggies get roasted. It was pretty good, not one of our favorites but decent. We also cooked up some spinach and chive pasta from Trader Joe's that we had lying around. It made a nice side dish.

We surprisingly haven't relied on pasta too much to get us through the week which is what I was definitely expecting. Still eating yummy food!

Veg Day 4

Today I did cycle class at the Columbia Gym in the morning. In the River Hill village center is a Bagel Bin. At the Bagel Bin I love to get the Powerhouse sandwich. It is a sandwich on toasted multi-grain bread with lettuce, avocado, cheese, carrots, cucumbers, and sprouts. Traditionally it also has dressing and mushrooms but I omit those. It is a nice healthy and filling breakfast. When you dine it the sandwich comes with bagel chips and a pickle.

Lunch was at Noodles and Co. At this restaurant meat with your pasta is an add on so it's pretty easy to go veg. I like to get the pesto cavatappi without mushrooms and spinach instead. It is delicious and green!

Dinner was kind of boring. The hubby was out so I had leftover Dough Roller pizza and some green beans.

I feel like we are going strong. We are even able to have leftovers! Thinking this might definitely be do-able for a longer period of time!

Veg Day 2

Today nothing real exciting to post. Breakfast was a chocolate chip bagel and cream cheese from the Bagel Bin. Lunch was leftover tomato soup from and half a calzone from when I had my teeth out. Dinner though was amazing! We had tomatoes from our garden and the non-Amish Amish market with some fresh mozzarella over salad greens. I made a dressing of garden chives and garden basil with EVOO. Salt, peppper, balsamic vinegar, and my dressing over the mozz, tomatoes, and salad greens made for a yummy dinner. A picture to come soon. Today didn't feel like a stretch for no mean except when Scriv had a chicken biscuit from Chikfila for breakfast and that smelled yummmmmy. Other than that boring day of eatins.

Veg eatin day 1

A few more reasons this week made sense to go veg. First well its summer and veggies have water so they can be refreshing. It is also a bajillion degrees outside. Tomorrow's high is 101 so having salads to eat this week will be amazing. Also has my three followers know I have water retention problems so for me a focus on foods with water isn't a bad idea. Last week I got my wisdom teeth out and gnawing on meat just isn't going to happen. I had some wings on Saturday and my stitches in one spot fell out. Meat is still too chewy right now, granted crispy veggies don't work great either. Last week I bought some vegetarian eating magazines for fun and we thought it might be fun to try some of the recipes, not that we can't try them anytime we want. Finally we stocked up at the Amish Market (which wasn't very Amish) on our way home from Ocean City on tomatoes, green beans, tomatoes, and potatoes. We are set. So what did we eat on our first day you ask? Well only one of you didn't have a meal with me at all.

Breakfast from A Bagel and ...

I got the NY roll with cheddar cheese. They had the big block of cheese in the case and it just looked yummy. Hubby got a plain bagel with butter. We hadn't decided at that point to have veg week but it fits

Lunch from Houlihans

We both got the chop salad which is delicious. I remembered at the last second to order it without bacon. Hubby seemed to survive without his bacon on the salad. We also shared an order of their parmesan frites which are super yummy and come with dipping sauces

Snacks

I had a banana from a gas station and some watermelon M brought by last week

Dinner was at The Grilled Cheese & Co

This was our first visit to this restaurant. We will definitely be back! Hubby go the original which was grilled cheese with American. I got the Fresco which was more like a panini. It had fresh mozzarella, tomato, roasted peppers, pesto, evoo, and balsamic. It was quite tasty and we share some shoe string fries. Their menu doesn't seem to list custom sandwiches such as an original with cheddar instead of American but I don't see any reason why not since everything is made fresh. Lots of grease but lots of tastiness! We will be back

So overall a good day, not sure if I was any healthier especially with dinner....my snacks were better than normal. Although there is some Fishers caramel popcorn waiting for me when this mouth is better! Hopefully some pictures on other days. My pic of the grilled cheese doesn't look as good as it tasted! Happy Eating!

Veg Week

So I am going to try this blogging thing and see where it takes me. As of now I have one follower which is my bestest bud. This could end up being more of a journal for me to look back on in 30 years and laugh at myself at where my life was and what I was thinking about. So linking the title Veg Week to the thoughts from a swimmer and triathlons. Well I consider myself a swimmer first and athlete/triathlete second or tenth maybe with a few other things in between. One thing that is important to all athletes is food! I am also Italian which means I really love food especially fresh food!! The hubby and I have decided that this week is going to be our vegetarian week. We do this every few months or so as kind of a cleansing and to prove to ourselves that we can. We decided on our way back from Ocean City today that this week would be perfect since we don't have any races coming up where we would really be missing the protein. Don't get me wrong I love meat! Hubby and I went to Outback Steakhouse so much we had to restrict ourselves to once a month. We also go to Ruth Chris steakhouse a few times and year and on vacation we always end up seeking out the high end steakhouse in the area. Is being a veg sustainable for me or am I more likely to be in a Go Meat Hillshire Farms commercial? Well probably not to both, I already have low iron levels and I don't really like beans so I really kinda need my animal protein but I can certainly reduce the amount I eat and make sure that I am not just eating some meat product to eat it as opposed to really enjoying it for what it is and making sure I am putting in my body the highest quality meat possible. Wow that was a total run-on sentence. Am I going to consider a vegan week? Well I may consider the notion but this week I will be relying on cheese for protein and I can't do milk and ice cream so cheese and yogurt are kinda important to my nutrition. A vegan week is possible but I am more likely to do a veg month which is a possibility in the future, probably in a winter month where I am not leading up to a big event. My goal for this week is to blog each day, I can commit to 7 days right? We'll see I don't really like writing that much but I think I can do at least once a day this week. I do have a stickie note on my monitor reminding me to write about it. Hopefully I get a few more followers. I intend to share how to eat veg when you go out (we eat out a lot) and also some yummy recipes I find. If nothing else I will remind myself of these yummy recipes (or my poor writing skills) when I read this in 30 years. That's it for now. Feel free to leave any questions but that is more likely to come from Casper the friendly ghost or myself in 30 years in which case unless there is time travel or I find a blue police box there won't be an answer.