MIA blogger has returned!

I've missed you all (shout out to Mariposa, with your adorable comment! Thank you!), but I had a fantastic weekend and VeggieGirl had the right idea in her great video post on blogging about when you want to, versus out of obligation and I totally agree with her. I love you all, but I also enjoyed being out and about this weekend (and yesterday!) and spending time with my friends, mainly my boyfriend. *Roll eyes at me here* :)

As such, I am going to have to re-cap the weekend fairly quickly since I have a lot to do this afternoon before teaching all evening. Let's start with my amazing breakfast today.


With coffee. Currently drinking Komodo Dragon Bold roast from Starbucks, given to me by my wonderful boyfriend, who knows just how important coffee is to me! I had specifically mentioned to him that I had tried this roast and really liked it, so he brought me an entire pound!


The usual oats, pumpkin, flax, and noni juice topped with:

-goji berry trail mix (from WFs--this stuff is amazing!)
-soy nuts
-0% Greek Yogurt
-chocolate covered ginger!!! (From TJs; if you like ginger, this stuff will greatly contribute yumminess to your life! So incredible, melted over hot oatmeal!!)

(I have been snacking on small handfuls of this stuff all weekend! It's so addictive! Let's just say that I finished the container almost entirely by myself in about 5 days, which has 11 servings. Haha, oops.)

My breakfast yesterday was similar, with added blackberries, and no trail mix:

I went to TJs and WFs on Friday night while waiting for my boyfriend to finish a show he was playing. (Yes, he's another musician and composer! And he wrote a piece and dedicated it to me! It's a fantastic piece and I'm not biased at all! ;-) Anyway, I picked up quite a few things but only got pictures of some of it.
Most of it's pretty self-explanatory. I bought the feta which I'm excited about, but I'm coming up short on suggestions of what to do with it. What are your favorite ways to eat feta cheese? Any recipes you love with it?

I made a bunch of veggies on Saturday as they were starting to go bad in my fridge. I just boiled some green beans and brussel sprouts and sauteed a pan of red kale, white onion, cilantro and red pepper.


I also baked a sweet potato and ate a bit of it before I remembered to take its picture. :)

So now that you've seen my healthy food, here are the treats from this weekend. Only some of them! There were actually quite a few, unphotgraphed things, mostly eaten while out with friends! I think you all know my food philosophy by now, of never denying myself yummy food simply because it's not healthy. In fact, during my years with DE, I'm pretty sure I would have qualified as orthorexic (an obsession with healthy food) as I NEVER ate ANYTHING made without 100% whole grain flour, anything with more than 4 grams of sugar per serving, absolutely no fried foods, and quite a few other highly restrictive rules placed upon myself. Like I've mentioned before, I missed out on quite a bit of life, and I don't want to do that anymore. The treats I had all in the past 4 days included: 2 slices of chocolate cake (on different occasions), 3 martinis at a swanky martini bar downtown (I had a blueberry martini, a tropical martini and a blackberry-ginger martini! Yes, I know they were probably 300 calories each! Oops!), a couple random beers here and there, and a couple pieces of unphotographed chocolate here at home. I had an amazing dinner on Saturday night with my boyfriend after the wedding I played, which went really well! I got to play with my first choice violist which made it a pleasure, knowing he was so solid musically and my cellist is great, too! We went out and I had a grilled chicken sandwich with sun-dried tomato pesto on a whole grain ciabatta with rosemary fries on the side. And a Yuengling to drink! What a great meal!

So on a related note, here's some chocolate that did make it onto the camera, all of which was mightily enjoyed by MOI! :)


A couple random bars eaten to and from teaching on Saturday:

Plus I dumped this into a bottle of water.


And some snacks from way back on Friday, since they were on my camera:


This is a small piece of ww bread topped with a soy sausage link, FF cheese and homemade hummus!

Broccoli topped with more homemade hummus!

These were blooming in my back yard! I love them!


OK, I've got to go do laundry, go to the bank, get gas, workout and shower before teaching, so I've got to end here. I'll try to comment on your blogs tonight after teaching. Hope everyone's weeks are going fantastically well!

Congratulations Emily!!

I have fantastic news to share--Emily at the health nut rocked out her Wind Symphony audition (she's a clarinetist!) and got seated among the clarinet grad students (even though she's a nutrition major). I am so proud of her because I know how hard she was practicing! And as a musician myself, who's been through two performance degrees, I realize the stress of an audition, especially when you really want to play well and feel like you have something to prove to the faculty members. Auditions are just NOT fun. Performing, rehearsing, musical camaraderie, the physicality of playing and holding the instrument; these things are all fun. But auditions--not so much. I've never met anyone who actually liked auditioning. So congratulations Emily! Enjoy it, appreciate it! You're awesome! :)

Yay, I'm seriously still so happy for her! But I guess I should move onto food quickly, because I'm exhausted (it's past 1am!) and I want to get up early for a morning workout before my band and I leave for two shows in Maryland and New Jersey (Friday and Saturday nights). By the way, this also means that I won't be able to blog until Sunday night, but I will try to take interesting food pictures (although I can't make any promises because this blog is still pretty anonymous and I don't take foodie pictures in front of people). Also, the small task of packing, which I haven't even started on yet. Oops; thankfully I'm pretty good at it so it should be quick.

So I was craving protein all day. Like mad protein, and carbs just didn't sound good. I have know idea why, but I went with it. I'm actually quite puzzled, so please don't judge my (pretty ridiculously--but unintentional--) low carb day!

Breakfast:

-2 Morningstar soysage patties

-bowl of green beans (yeah I know, I'm weird! One of my best friends calls me an anomaly and this is a great example--seriously, who wakes up craving green beans?)


-1/2 Pure protein bar (had the other half about 2 hours later)



Then I went to a doctor's appt (just a check up) but had to drive around forever looking for parking!, went to the gym and did a 15 minute run, followed by arm/upper body weights for about 20 minutes, and then a 25 minutes fairly challenging Expresso bike ride (the Quicksilver route). Then I stopped at a store to get something for an upcoming blog giveaway!! I'm not announcing it yet, but I'm super excited for it! After all of that I went to Whole Foods and got a salad from their bar. It was heavenly!!



This salad had:

-spinach as the base
-a few tomatoes
-edamame
-2 pieces of grilled chicken (lower middle)
-3 marinated mushrooms (upper far right)
-broccoli slaw (lower left)
-two pieces of fake chicken (tempeh I think-upper left of the picture)
-eggplant salad (upper middle)
-southwestern tofu (lower right--this was good!)
-curried chicken salad (this was the star of the meal and one of the better things I've eaten! :)

The whole meal was only $6.57, which is too much for every day, but really not THAT bad. :)

On my way home from Whole Foods I had some cashews I bought: (there were more of these eaten at home!)


I didn't buy too much, but the highlights were:

-tofu
-wild rice tempeh (Ms. Gliding Calm eats this all the time and I really like it after I tried it!)
-celery (another thing I really wanted! Go figure)
-small carton of greek yogurt with a coupon
-Indian simmer sauce with a coupon--I can't wait till I'm home next week to cook up some chicken in it!)
-3 ThinkThin bars to travel with

(this one got eaten in small bites throughout the afternoon!)
-2 Luna bars (ditto)
-frozen Soy Boy (?) soysages because I finished the morningstar ones and they're delicious!

I came home, put away groceries and cooked up the tempeh. I drizzle it with tamari in cooking it and it gives it a wonderful flavor! I ended up eating about half a block (some then, some after I taught a 1 hour violin lesson, and some after gymnastics--but I'm getting to that). I also had two unphotographed stalks of celery with probably 2 TBs of PB on them.

The exciting thing about my day: I went to an adult gymnastics class! I love the sport so much and I want to be able to do all the stuff I could when I was younger, although admittedly I was never a crazy high level gymnast. I just loved it! And I still do! In fact, here is a video of Carly's floor routine in the all around competition at the 2004 Olympics. At the end when her winning score is announced and she starts crying on Evgeny Marchenko--I always lose it there. I never cry, but that moment is so beautiful! She has worked so much harder than I could ever imagine and it paid off and she accomplished her ultimate goal. And that is beautiful!



I might start doing a gymnastics video with many posts, because then I'd have a good excuse to watch them on YouTube. :)

I got home after gymanstics tonight and went to watch a rehearsal of my friends' band. It was great and I enjoyed it immensely. But I got home and was a little hungry so had probably two servings of these:



And I'll leave you with a cute picture I took this week at one of my student's lessons. I teach a young girl who has a 1/16th size violin!! It's so small that it looks like a toy. I put it next to mine for comparison. :)



OK, I'm off to pack quickly (good thing I did laundry today!) and hopefully be asleep by 2:30am. We'll see. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend. ANY FUN PLANS?