The School Year Has Officially Begun…

I am back at school, and have been for the past five days. It’s amazing. And yesterday, the freshman arrived. I woke up at 9:30 to bumping subs outside in our courtyard.

My friends and I quickly escaped through a side staircase (of which the freshman and their families had not yet discovered), and went out to eat.

Came back at noon and the craziness was still occurring. It has not stopped yet, and for the whole of welcome weekend we will probably have to deal with scared freshman and overzealous parents.

I have the fortunate job of working from 6:45 to 9:45 every morning in our Commons (the dining hall). Today, all the JAM groups (orientation groups) had to eat in the commons. Normally, 6:45-9:45 is SLOW but today, it was intense. Not only was this the first time the kids had ever eaten in their, there were also A LOT of them.  They never stopped coming. It was insanity. I had to refill the orange juice, apple juice, cranberry juice, milk, cups and forks far more often than I would ever suspect. I not only ended up with several very nice wounds, but my pants became soaked in juice not once, but three times.

But overall it’s worth it. I work with my best friend, and I am so glad to be back at school. I forgot about all the amazingly fun times my friends and I can have just sitting around talking or doing anything.

I am very tired now, being as I didn’t go to sleep until 1:00, and woke up just 5 hours later… but I’ll definitely be updating this more later. Until then though, have fun kids.   

Tags: college, school, fun, work, freshmen, dining, friends

Late Night Snack

   
It’s just frozen fruit, but boy is it good.

Tags: food, fruit

A Sad Day…

… for my bottle of everclear. Fortunately, it was only water!

Went to the Ocean…

 

We went to the ocean today. That is to say, my brother, his friends, and I went to the ocean today. I wasn’t even aware we were going to the ocean until about noon. Then I got told I was going to the ocean. It’s about 1.5 hour drive there, so not to bad. But when we got there, in typical Gray’s Harbor fashion, it was completely grey. Yuck. Fortunately after a bit it warmed up and the sky turned blue. Still so windy thought! But it was a fun adventure that included pizza and being random… which is really what life is all about.

That is all! That was my day! Enough the few photos!    

Tags: oceanbeach fun friends adventure

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies

A few weeks ago, I found a post for these cookies on Sweets by Sarah. They are out of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. And the whole idea behind them fits pretty nicely into my new “hippie” world visions. Wholesome ingredients, a twist on a classic, and delicious taste.

So I had to try it. I printed it out into OneNote, and kept waiting for an opportune moment to make them. Then last night, my mom asked if I would make something sweet for our weekly tuesday night barbecue.  She thought of brownies, but my mind instantly went to these.

So I gathered my ingredients, and went to work!

My wet ingredients… butter, honey & vanilla, egg, and brown sugar.

My flours, 1/2 white flour, 1/2 whole wheat flour.

The rest of my dry team… nutmeg, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt.

The key ingredient, and far to much of it! I went a little crazy! It requires only 1 cup, but since I had so much, I added a little extra! (1/4 cup maybe)

A nice little egg, mixing away all by it’s lonesome…

Now. The recipe calls for the egg to be beat, and then to add it and the rest of the ingredients, and stir. I didn’t like this, and it doesn’t really fly with classic cookie knowledge. I did follow the instructions, and the cookies came out fine. But I would cream the butter and brown sugar together first… then add the other ingredients…

With the brown sugar added in….

Then the honey and vanilla. Look at how smooth it is! It almost looks like peanut butter.  Speaking of peanut butter, that will be my next cookie…

Fast forward to the addition of the zucchini and chocolate CHUNKS. Yeah. I decided to be all artsy and use chunks instead of chips. I mean really, why not? Chips are sort of generic looking…

And there is half the batch. A few moments after this photo was taken, I took one off and attempted to photograph it before eating. The pictures turned out crappy, so, that didn’t work. But was did happen, is as I was about to eat it, our neighbor walked in. “Can I have a cookie?” “Yeah, sure, but I haven’t tasted them yet, so I don’t know how they are…” and before I could finish my sentence, he replied “Oh. Oh. They’re good. ”

Now, aside from my previous thought on the creaming of the butter and the sugar, the only other thing I would suggest, is that I found the chocolate to be a little too harsh for the recipe. PERSONALLY I would prefer a milk chocolate chip. But of course, semi-sweet is healthier, and it’s perhaps a more grown up taste. But i am not grown up! Never!!!

With that in mind… enjoy.

Makes 2 dozen cookies

Wet:

1 egg, beaten

1/2 c butter, softened

1/2 c brown sugar

1/3 c honey

1 T vanilla extract

 

Combine in large bowl.

 

Dry:

1 c white flour

1 c whole wheat flour

1/2 t baking soda

1/4 t salt

1/4 t cinnamon

1/4 t nutmeg

 

Combine in a separate, small bowl and blend into liquid mixture.

 

1 c finely shredded zucchini

12 oz chocolate chips

 

Stir these ingredients into other ingredients, mix well. Drop by spoonful onto greased baking sheet, and flatten with the back of a spoon. Bake at 350 degrees, 10 to 15 minutes.

Serving Size: 1 cookie Calories: 102  Fat: 4.1g Saturated: 2.5g Cholesterol: 18mg Sodium: 82mg Carbs: 14.9g Sugar: 6.9g Protein: 1.4

 Vitamin A: 3% Calcium: 1% Iron: 3%

Recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle via Sweets by Sarah. Check it out!!!

Tags: zucchini, chocolate, cookies

Update for 08/11/08

What did I have to eat? Lets see…

Breakfast:
Bowl of Raisin Bran
with 1% milk and a splash of half and half (cas we ran out of milk )

Lunch
1.75 chimichangas. Frozen
light sour cream
salsa!

Dinner
a tiny bowl of macaroni
1/2 breast of chicken
green beans
heaping helping of my homemade baked beans

How many calories?
Breakfast: ~300
Lunch: ~700
Dinner: ~ 800

Bad day! That’s 1800 calories… but I guess it could be a lot worse.

I ran for about 23 minutes (doing the Couch to 5k W3D3), and burned (according to my heart rate monitor… 142 calories. Not too bad! My knee did okay today, after almost a week break, and I didn’t have to much of a problem jumping back right in at W3D3. Although I think I may do a W3D4, just to be safe. Week 4 sounds intense! I am sure I can do it, I’m a bit worried about my knee, but it did okay today, minimal pain. I wore knee braces in addition to my standard ankle braces. I don’t know if they helped. Afterward though they felt like they were cutting of the circumation in and around my knees…   I need to continue reading my Chirunning book, but I’ve been keeping myself busy lately, and I know this is one book I can’t read in bed. Need to make time for it…

Weight? Who knows today.

Tags: dieting, running, exercise, freezer, sad pandas

A Lunch :(

I show you this, beautiful, delicious ripe peach, because what I will show you after this… is, upsetting to say the least. I obviously did not eat just a peach for lunch. I would be famished within minutes! But I suppose calorie wise that would be fine, because I would be perfectly OK to eat something else minutes later…

But thats how how it went. This was my redemption. It was a pretty tasty redemption.

Anyway, what I REALLY had for lunch is below. Scroll on…

What is it? Yeah… it’s a Philly cheese steak lean pocket. And it sucked! Eating a wholesome sandwich is so, so much better. But I didn’t have anything to make sandwiches with This was an item of desperation…

Tags: leanpocket, sad pandas

Coming Clean on Weigh Loss

Back in the 11th grade, I was at a pretty healthy weight, 145 to be exact. This picture can prove that I looked pretty good. But then things happen. Shit happens, we all know that. I could give plenty of reasons for while these things happened. I wont make excuses though. I had a boyfriend I didn’t really love, I was overstressed, I lost friends and food became my outlet, a true friend if you will.

But, those things are not problems in my life anymore. My stress level is fairy low, as low as it can before for a college student. I have plenty of friends, and I am happily single. I no longer have a reason to have a food problem. But yet, I still do. I munch too much. Even on good things, I overdo it. I am working on it!!! But its hard.

Today, I weigh 170 lbs. I hate admitting this. At my fittest (which no, isn’t this picture, but I don’t have any pictures from this time), I was 135 lbs. I was a size 5/6. And I looked good.

I am working to be there again. I don’t have a date in mind, but I am shooting for January 2008. The food aspect takes work. But I am working on eating whole foods, real foods. You guys hold me accountable. KNOWING I have to post each and every thing I eat on here, and also that I have to show my weigh loss, that is MOTIVATION. I don’t want to put on here that I ate 20000 jelly beans, or that I bought a nasty burrito from the gas station (these things are rare, but still)… that’s embarrassing!

So, that is that. I am holding myself accountable to you. I vow to weigh into you once a week, and I vow to take a picture of everything I eat (and if I can’t, then I WILL at least post what I eat) once a day. AND I will let you know when I exercise, and what I do!

It wont be everything on here, but it will be something. And I think its the best motivation that there can be.

Tags: weightloss

A Late Night Snack…

I needed something else to finish the day off. Two sandwiches, some fruit, two ice creams and a bowl of cereal just wasn’t going to cut it for me. Yeah, I wasted a ton of calories on those ice creams (probably 300-350) but it could have been worse. I finished off with something extra hardy. Some homemade beans, and I added in a butt load of chopped onion. Just plain chopped onion.

I’ve decided I could probably eat 1-2 onions if they were in someway toned down, just the slightest bit. I would eat them now too, but all that sulfur doesn’t add up well when your allergic to it…

Tags: beans, onions, food, late night

Uneventful Dinner…

Tonight’s dinner was pretty boring . I was the only one home so I basically had a repeat of lunch. Some delicious Rainer cherries and a 2 egg salad sandwich.

Tags: food