Off to the Hawkeye State!

I'm heading out here very shortly, but I wanted to put a post up. I'll be playing three live shows plus a radio show and I'll be home on Sunday night. I will miss you all and I'll miss my boyfriend quite a lot, but I will have my return home to look forward to. I do really love to travel though, and I've never seen Iowa, so it'll be great! :)

Here are some quick eats over the past few days. This is by no means anywhere close to everything I've eaten! But I took a few blog worthy ones.

I had gotten a free Kashi entree a while back and I needed to use it up from my freezer before I move, so I pulled it out over the weekend when I didn't have much time.


With an apple.

Up close and personal. Spinach, cheese, bell peppers, chicken, whole grains, mushrooms. YUM!

I found a new bar at the store. It's pretty good. Not my favorite, but decent.

And I made a really good meal of yellow split peas cooked in lite coconut milk with some dried onion and garlic salt. I also cooked up some zucchini in olive oil with an onion and added one frozen chicken tender for some protein.

Dessert! :)

I also had this drink while making it:


I love the cute messages on their bottles! :)


I'm so late getting out of the house! I've got to leave, but I can't wait until I'm home on Sunday at which point I will really try to be much better about commenting on your blogs!

HAVE A GREAT WEEK! :)

Off to West Virginia!

I'm posting quickly before I leave to play two shows in West Virginia tonight and tomorrow. I'm not sure of the venue tonight, but I'm REALLY hoping that they have TV screens and that they will be showing the Penguin's hockey game! It's the FINAL game 7 between Detroit and Pittsburgh and I am cheering on Pittsburgh all the way! If they win tonight, they win the Stanley Cup!

(By the way, I don't know why this formatting is acting up, but I know that it looks strange. I apologize!) On the note of my upcoming schedule, I'll be away until Sunday afternoon with the West Virginia shows, then I'm playing a show here in town at an arts festival and teaching a few lessons on Sunday night. I have a full day of teaching on Monday (but will DEFINITELY try to post a blog!) and on Tuesday I'm leaving again with my band to play 3 shows in Iowa! Woo! I've never been to Iowa and I'm excited for them. We'll have shows on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week, with a possibility of doing a radio show on the way home on Sunday. But anyway, the point is that after Monday, I won't be able to blog until the following Monday! Please be patient with me because I love the blogging world and I'm really not trying to be neglectful of either my blog or of reading and commenting on your blogs. It's just been really busy for me and I'm excited to get to have the opportunity to travel this coming week. I thought of Iowa Girl Eats with my trip coming up. I don't know her very well though, so a blogger meet up probably won't happen.

Ok, let me leave you with some pictures a few of my eats from the last couple of days. Nothing too exciting, but it's been a whirlwind of birthday stuff and packing and hanging out with my wonderful boyfriend, so I haven't gotten to take a lot of pictures.

WW tortilla with cabbage, onion, cheese and shredded chicken, topped with salsa.

Fresh red peppers are one of my favorite foods and I love just eating them whole and raw!

I made a breakfast off scrambled eggs (mostly egg whites) with a little cheese, a piece of ww bread with FF cheese, a tomato and some more of the cabbage mix I cooked up.

A mini non-whole grain bagel with cream cheese. It's delicious, but not my first choice to be eating refined grains. I snagged it at a recital that I played at with a bunch of kids. I was helping out and it was available.

I also grabbed these at that recital and ate them in the car on my way to another recital that 3 of my students were performing at. :)

Another couple of breakfasts. :)





Two particularly great meals that aren't photographed were a chicken pesto sandwich with provolone cheese and fries (on my birthday with my friends) and yesterday my boyfriend made an incredible crock pot chili for me with lots of veggies and ground turkey over top of brown rice. I can't quite explain how wonderful he is. He is so selfless and caring. I couldn't see him yesterday so today he had to play a gig that's an hour away and passed up the chance to carpool with the singer in order to get to see me for a little while while we got breakfast at Wendy's. Again, not my first choice, but I really wanted to see him and he's WAAAYYY more important than eating only unprocessed healthy food. Sadly, he wouldn't have been if I had been dating him 3 or 4 years ago, but now I am grateful that I have learned this lesson. People, and especially my sweet boyfriend, are ALWAYS more important than food. I've said it before on this blog, but I firmly believe that food is simply a means by which we get the energy to be FULLY engaged in life, to be able to love and serve others better, and to be and become a better person! That is why I would prefer to eat more nutritious foods that will provide nutrients for my body to use, but fast food or refined carbs, or too much fat, or whatever does not matter in the long run and certainly should not make you feel bad about yourself for having eaten it!! I feel VERY strongly about this due to my ED/DE years and I am sad that I missed out on parts of my life for far too long.

And here is the Wendy's sandwich that I had.

I tried a hash brown and it was kind of gross, so I didn't eat any more of them.


OK, I'm off to pack now and then practice/rehearse before leaving in a few hours. So I'll "see" you all on Monday and then be away again for a while! I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend planned! PLEASE leave me comments, because I will be checking for them and I'd love to hear from you all while I'm away from my friends here at home!

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THIS WEEKEND?

And as my second question of this blog, WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE U.S. STATE TO VISIT? I personally have loved Tennessee (Nashville is such a great city! We recorded our most recent CD down there! Also made me think of Heather from Heather Eats Almond Butter!) I also like NYC (wouldn't really want to live there) and North Carolina is great! (Haven't been to Charlotte, but I always think of Kath from Kath Eats anyway.)

Have a great day!

Blogger returns just in time for her 23rd birthday!

I am SOO sorry for being away for so long!!! I'm back though, in the second hour of my 23rd birthday! I am mostly celebrating in style with my friends later today, but I played darts and drank beer with my "formerly best friend, now second best friend". It's been a busy week for me and I'm just going to re-cap the most exciting parts:

Yesterday (Monday): My new apartment got confirmed that I can move in at the end of June!! Being a recently ex-grad student (got my master's degree a year ago!) I am still paying rent! And my roommate found an out-of-state job so I needed to move. I'm glad it got confirmed! I think it will be a good living situation!

Today (Tuesday): Baby-sat (9-11), moved few boxes over to my new place (12-2), taught violin (3-10pm).

Sunday: Played a children's concert with Peter of "Peter, Paul and Mary" (a band from the 70s and 80s) and several of my students had a recital. Then I hung out with my boyfriend and several of our mutual friends at a local bar.

Saturday: Taught in the morning then drove directly to play an outdoor wedding (solo violin!)

Friday: Played a late afternoon wedding (also solo violin!)

All the while, in my free time, I've been packing up boxes. Almost everything that I won't need for the next month is already packed up.

My birthday plans (after I wake up as I'm blogging at 2am before technically going to sleep!) include getting a massage, going shopping, getting free coffee, working out (!), going to a park with my boyfriend (Frisbee?), teaching violin, and hanging out at a local bar with friends. There will be copious amounts of coffee, chocolate and beer/shots consumed. It'll be a good birthday! It's already been a good birthday and I've only been 23 for an hour and a half! :)

I'll just post a few food pictures, quickly. Mostly this blog was to let you all know that I'm alive and well and I'll try to be much better about consistent blogging in the future!

I've been making a pretty big dent in the bars from my bar swap with Mi. They have all been delicious and I'm so glad we did it! She's emailed me to let me know that she received my package and she'll be blogging about it when she has time!



I've been eating cereal (mainly Kashi GoLean Crunch) with yogurt or cottage cheese and some kind of fruit every day and it keep me surprisingly full, even without very much fat, which I find hard to believe. No complaining here.


I still add fat to breakfast every morning, even when I think "hmm, I don't need any fat with this!" Because I know that I do.

Wow, my breakfasts start to look REALLY repetitive! Sorry!

Instant human; just add caffeine!

I made a huge pan of sauteed cabbage, lake and onion and have been eating quite a bit of it every day! I truly love sauteed veggies and I can't get enough of them!



My mom sent me some Pecan Almond Peanut Clusters and I finished the bag in 2 days flat. (Yay for healthy fats. And by the way, these are DELICIOUS, in case you were wondering!)



This bowl is a delicious mix of Amy's refried beans, fat free cheese, full-fat cheddar, broccoli, green beans, corn, and salsa.



Happy JUNE 10th everyone! I'll party it up for all of you who are stuck working or doing non-birthday, non-exciting things! :) I'll report back on my birthday festivities later this week! Have a great day!!

Life is precious!

I'm sorry for missing two days of blogging! I've been around, just fairly busy (and spending WAAAYY too much time hanging with my boyfriend!) A quick recap of the past two days: Yesterday is my longest teaching day each week. I have gotten 3 new students in the past 2 weeks, so I am now teaching from 3:30 to 9:15pm plus driving time. No breaks! It's hard to teach for that long straight through, but it's WONDERFUL! I LOVE my students. Like seriously, I want to be the best teacher for them; someone they can look up to, but still relate with. One of my new students had been diagnosed with leukemia last year. In one way, I'm sooo proud of her for fighting and being strong enough to come back to the violin, but at the same time it BREAKS MY HEART. I cannot imagine what her parents and she have gone through! It was a good reminder to me that life is PRECIOUS! Good health is a gift and not something that we can take for granted. I was instantly reminded of those affected by EDs. We (formerly was myself, too!) work so hard to lose weight, in the process lose health, happiness, time (years!), and occasionally even life. This is the most wretched, horrible, EVIL thing I can imagine, especially when there are other women, men and children in the world losing their own health and lives to other, perhaps "less preventable" diseases. In all cases the children (and adults!) are bright, unique, creative, wonderful people with so much to offer the world! And that's what breaks my heart!

On a related note, by the way, I watched a documentary from Britain on an 8 year old anorexic girl. Speaking of HEART-BREAKING, I cried several times while watching this two part documentary. I am going to post the link, but please know that it could be a trigger and DON'T watch it if you feel you may be at risk of being triggered. That being said, I do feel like it had a lot of good things to say and it was fascinating to watch.


Watch Dana: The 8 Year Old Anorexic [Part 1] in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

I'm also starting to pack because I am going to have to move in a few weeks! I'm not moving too far, but my current lease is up at the end of June and I would have either had to find a new roommate (she's moving out of the state!) or find somewhere else. Plus my insulation is terrible (old house) so the heating bill is astronomical in the winter! So I've been sending out a ton of emails to try and find a place

I had a lovely bowl of oatmeal yesterday morning:

Full, fantastic breakfast:

1/2 oatmeal
trail mix, 1 fig
1/2 C (?) cottage cheese
1 TB (?) sunflower seed butter
1 pear cut up
coffee

I had a really delicious bar from Mi on Sunday afternoon between church and teaching.




I'm not going to make this post too long because I have to practice and I'd like to work out before teaching today.

Sorry for not leaving comments. I've really barely been around blog land. I've tried to read a few blogs, but I feel like I had been spending too much time on them and I needed to cut back a bit, so I'll try to keep up the best I can, while still having time for other things.

Have a great Wednesday!