Sooo... This weekend some non-Eat to Live activities occurred..

Those activities mostly revolving around drinking booze. I am all about the vegan thing; just the teetotaler-vegan thing make socializing super hard!

We found a little slice of home here in Portland- The Landmark Saloon. They have live music every night and we went there every night this weekend. The music was a bit honky-tonky, which I love, and it was a laid-back, with cheap beer and a big patio. Sitting and listening to steel guitar while drinking High Life made us feel like we were back home for a little while.

To make up for all our drinking, we did work out several times this weekend. I discovered my cardio flies by, so long as I'm reading! I've bought all my groceries for the week and flagged a bunch of potential recipes for dinner. Usually, I try to plan what meals I'll be cooking and just buy the necessary ingredients on Sunday. This week I just bought good materials and am just going to see what I come up with.

What stumbling blocks have y'all come across this week? What have been some healthy pleasant surprises?

I hope y'all are doing this too!

Day 2 (or 3) of hooray, we're vegan! I drank lots of coffee today, but did resist eating caramel corn. That balances out, right?
My menu for today ended up being this and this is what I'll be eating tomorrow. 
Do y'all want to know this? It feels very weird detailing all the food I eat publicly.

	Thursday	Friday
Breakfast	Coffee	Banana Smoothie
Morning Snack		Coffee
Lunch	Peaches, blackberries and Strawberries	Falafel at Pita Pit
Afternoon Snack	Meeting over Coffee	blackberries
Dinner	Thai Lettuce Wraps: Cucumber, spinach, zucchini, scallions, carrots, radishes with peanut sauce wrapped in Butter Lettuce	Salad somewhere out!
Dessert	banana, spinach, strawberry, almond butter, and orange juice smoothie	peppermint tea

Awesome website: Healthy Girl's Kitchen

Just stumbled across an awesome website before my post-run shower. Though it was such a short run, it barely counts.
http://healthygirlskitchen.blogspot.com/
She has awesome no-oil dressings, vegan pesto, non-fried falafel, and the most yummy looking crunchy thai salad, pictured below.

Please expect all future recipes to come from this website!

And we're back! It has been a couple of years, but since a couple of us are trying to do Eat to Live, here we are.
Since my house is full of chips, bread and cheese, veggies (and some fruit) needed to be purchased. I was planning on going to Fred Meyer, but since it is beautiful outside here, I decided to make a run to a local farmer's market nearby. I think this is going to have to be a regular occurrence until the farmer's markets close for winter as I got everything pictured below for $19! 

To help out all of us, I'm going to be posting menu plans and recipe links for what I've got going on.
First, some helpful links!
Five simple vegan breakfasts
Pinterest- Vegan!
Awesome looking breakfast or dessert smoothie/neat health website

What I ate yesterday and I'm eating today, with warning notice.
I love Eat to Live, but there are 2 things I'm not willing to compromise on: Salt and Coffee. I will always have those two on my menu, so sorry for starting out with cheats already built in!

	Wednesday	Thursday
Breakfast	Coffee	Coffee
Morning Snack	White bread toast	Peaches and Strawberries
Lunch	Carrots with Almond butter and celery with black beans and salsa	Mexican Salad: Green lettuce with red onion, black beans, cucumber, radish and tomato
Afternoon Snack	Blackberries	Meeting over Coffee
Dinner	Heirloom tomatoes with balsamic, salt and pepper and toast	Thai Lettuce Wraps: Cucumber, bean sprouts, quinoa, carrots, celery, peanut sauce wrapped in Butter Lettuce
Dessert	strawberries	peppermint tea

Good luck today and check back tonight or tomorrow!

Weight watchers, attempt 2

Cowbell! You're posting again! I'll do WW with you, and hopefully I'm now mature enough not to go crazy like last time. My problem isn't with eliminating foods, its the tiny portions! For some reason, the keeping track of points plus eating tiny meals made me cut down my food more and more until I got sick and luckily, I don't mix diets and illness. I'm on for class, since I'll be a member until end of November because it takes 30 days for cancellations to be processed. I tried to go to our old gym this morning but didn't have enough change in my car for the meter! :( Damn $.99 cones at TCBY! So, I just went home and ran. I wanted to run through the graveyard, but remembered mid-run that they don't open the gates until after 8am. Then when I came home, I caught the dog in the act. Cat food bowl on the ground, empty, with his face in it finishing off the crumbs!! He got a spank and then everytime I looked at him afterward he would crawl under the coffee table, like I was going to attack him. Mean mommy! Also, after J woke up he told me that he woke up last night to the sounds of the cat vomiting in my underwear drawer. Bleh. Luckily, he got up and handled the situation so I didn't have any unpleasant surprises while dressing in the dark this morning! Tonight J and I are going to go to the gym and weight lift. I hate doing that with him because he is such a pusher, "Come on, you can do more reps than that!", but lazy folks like me need pushers I guess. Call me if you wanna come over while we clean the kitchen and watch Pushing Daisies. That's the big plans for the night. :) Btw, do you think you could make this? Click on the picture to see the construction piece by piece. Sooo cute!

Weight Watchers!

B, why don't you do weight watcher's with me? It's really good bc there aren't any foods that you CAN'T eat. I think the vegan thing is so hard to do because there are so many restrictions. I can give you my ww online password, and you can look up point values of things. I think that you can be more successful if you don't have so many limitations. Plus, you know how well it's already worked out for me. Are you still going to come to Thursday class with me? I get 2 guest passes a month. Let me know what you think.

One step forward, two steps back

So, I've been a bit MIA, though unfortunately it has not been because I've suddenly become Miss Outdoors/Sporty. I've been a working woman, climbing the corporate food chain! With that extra time in front of the computer and not behind a stove, I've also earned a few extra lbs. So, I've signed on as J's spouse at our Alma Mater so I can get the cheap gym membership! Now, I just need to cancel my current membership at my fancy wonderful gym that is very far from everywhere I am. The only downside to this situation is that I will have to workout around younger, fitter undergrads. :( It doesn't matter though, because the more I go, the fitter I'll be! Also, I need to get it better shape because J let me know that regarding him popping the question, "Things are happening". Once that happens, I want to be able to have pictures taken without needing to have Barbara Walters lighting.
As far as diet goes, I've been pondering going back to being vegan. It is inconvenient and time-consuming, but I never have felt better and lost weight as easily as that time period of my life. It is something I've been thinking about a lot, but not necessarily doing anything about. I need to bust out my Eat to Live book again and remind myself of why I went vegan in the first place.
A deterrent to my vegan dreams is the discovery that my younger brother subscribed to Gourmet magazine and forgot about it, so my mother is giving me all the issues he received and will receive! That mag is serious food porn. Everything is beautiful and they have at least 20 recipes per issue and explain how to do the hard stuff. Would I ever have thought to poach meringue in milk? No, but now all I want to do is cook these beautiful, heart stopping recipes! I think I will and will post my results (with a photo comparison).