Salad & Champagne

Fitness:
I ended up running 5 miles. I usually like to run without music so I can clear my head, but today I took my Ipod with me and I have to admit it makes the run go by so much faster!

Food:
Snacks: A bite of a cookie cake I had made for Lucas’s birthday (the pre-challenge me would have had a nice slice); a small apple
Dinner: A salad of shredded carrots & cabbage, spinach leaves, chopped celery, brown rice, tossed in olive oil, salt pepper, and topped with a few chunks of mozzarella cheese; a small glass of Champagne
Dessert: I am pondering a couple of tablespoons of raisins & chocolate chips. Just to satisfy the sweet tooth (challenge-friendly!)

Good night!

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Dear Blog: I’m just not that into you

I’ve been in a bit of a blogging slump. Gone are the days of posting thrice daily. Quite frankly, it consumes precious time and energy, and let’s face it: it’s not exactly the most interesting material.

But I can’t just give it up. I still want the message of my blog to be out there: live well, eat whole & organic, and be as green as you can be. Maybe the direction of the blog will change, in fact I’m pretty sure it will, but for now, I’m forging ahead. I just might not cover as much distance as I did in the previous months. We shall see.

Food:
Breakfast: Two fried eggs with mozzarella cheese and two slices of toasted baguette topped with olive oil, parsley, and garlic
Snack: Two whole carrots; raisins
Lunch: Whole grain toast with crunchy peanut butter, one slice topped with Jan’s jam and the other topped with honey

Fitness:
Friday….went to the gym and later ran 4 miles after work
Saturday…..soccer game. We didn’t have any subs, so I played the whole game. This old lady was tired!
Sunday….plan to go on a run. 4 to 8 miles, not sure yet.

I’ve put on at least 5 pounds in the past few months, exercising less and eating more sweets.  Ellen, what gives? I have no good excuses. So I’ve created a little challenge for myself. I was going to call it the Lose Weight, Look Great Challenge or something like that, but that’s lame and overdone, so I’m going to call it like I see it….

The “I’m-28-and-have-not-had-kids-so-if-I-can’t-look-hot-now-when-will-I-ever?!? Challenge”.

I don’t want to get all crazy with a diet. I just can’t do diets. Don’t like them, don’t support them, especially for someone that is not technically overweight. Basically, I’m focusing on two things: I am trying to make my exercise more consistent and frequent. Everyone thinks I work out all the time, but that’s not true. Maybe 3 days or 4 days a week? Time to step it up. The second thing is cutting back on the ice cream, chocolate, etc. So far, so good. (It’s day 3 of the challenge).

Wish me luck!

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Riddle me this: what’s better than brunch?

Riddle me this: what’s better than brunch?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Brunch. It was a brilliant man (or woman) that invented brunch.

Why, you ask?

Because of this:

Mood:
A good day.

Food:
Brunch: Scrambled eggs, roasted potatoes, 2 slices of white bread with butter and homemade strawberry jam (courtesy of my friend, Jan), a scone with more of that kickass jam, strawberries and berries, and a couple bites of a horrid banana sandwich that I made based on a recipe I saw online.  And naturally, mimosas.
Snacks: An orange and before dinner, a small apple
Dinner: Happy rice, shredded cabbage and carrot salad, tomatoes with fresh basil, fresh spinach

Fitness:
Ran 60 minutes.

I want to do some reading before bed, so goodnight!

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Lindsey & Joey Strike Again

Below is my post from Monday. Monday. It has been sitting in my drafts for four days. Four days.

Sometimes you have to repeat things to get the point across. And italicize. Italicize.

Did I spell italicize right? Because that does not look right. But spell check didn’t catch it. And if spell check doesn’t catch it…it gots to be right. Right?

Anyways…

This past weekend we played host to Lindsey and Joey, our friends and new-parents-to-be. (Lindsey, can I say that? Or is that like blasting it all over Facebook? Oh, no. Tell me!) Lindsey and I virtually grew up together. We’ve been friends since first grade, remained friends during my mean years in Junior High, grew closer during high school when we would have our cherished Snack Time Talk: after-school brown sugar & cinnamon Pop-Tarts with cranberry juice combined with gossip about boys and biyatches, and college, when Lindsey surpassed me as “the runner.” And now, as aging adults, rounding the last curve and entering the home stretch for the great 30. Together. We’re Aquarians.

It was a great weekend: there was fitness (Joey played with our soccer team and scored the winning (tying) goal), there was food (empanadas, pizza, cookies), there was fun (double date night with Date Night at the Alamo Drafthouse. Funny!!).  Memories! On the corner of my mind…….

Without further adieu (sp?), the Monday draft:

Mood:
B-

Food:
Breakfast: A cup of fresh juice (oranges, apple, pineapple, carrots) and a large bowl of oatmeal

Fitness Yesterday:
Ran 55 minutes

Food Yesterday:
It felt good to eat well after a weekend of repeated indulging.
Breakfast: A glass of fresh juice
Lunch: A bad of spinach leaves topped with brown rice and two sunny-side up eggs, drizzled in olive oil
Snack: An apple and a banana
Dinner: Oven baked sweet potatoes and potatoes and a salad of shredded carrots and cabbage

We’re trying to cleanse for a few days: no wheat, no dairy, no sugar. Monday was a success!

This weekend, in photos….

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Interview with a Blogger: Ashley Sparger

Check out my interview with the ultra fabulous Ashley, one of the Out of Control Fatroll girls. Click here or on the Interview with a Blogger tab.

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Sweet Melissa Sundays: Sweet Potato Bread with Cinnamon-Rum-Orange Glaze

I was rip-roaring to go with this recipe. I bought all of my ingredients last week and had planned to bake away this past Friday night. Only we got locked out of the house. So that changed things, and tonight was the first opportunity I had to bake. I was supposed to post on Sunday; this is definitely past due.

This week’s host was Lorelei of Mermaid Sweets. Hers was the first blog that I stumbled up in the world of food and baking blogs, so naturally she is near and dear to my baking and blogging heart. If you like what you see below, you can find the recipe on Lorelei’s blog. Check it out!

This recipe was a piece of cake, no pun intended. So easy. I wanted to go hard core and use fresh sweet potatoes rather than canned, but I wanted this to be as easy as possible. I skipped the pecans as called for in the recipe, and I used pineapple rum because that’s all that I had available.

The result: moist and pumpkin-like in flavor. The texture and weight of the bread is similar to that of bread pudding. I’m not sure if mine turned out as it was meant to; in looking at other SMS bakers’ blogs, the bread appeared to be more dry. Mine was almost mush-like in the middle. Was that the sweet potatoes? Or was it undercooked? I’m not sure, but I know that I ate it and liked it!

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Into the wild

Mood:
Isn’t Monday a holiday? No? Well….why not?

Lucas and I went camping this weekend at Perdenales Falls. It’s so good to get away and in touch with nature!…

…And thanks to Lucas, one does not have to resort to eating rough while roughin’ it.

Food:
Breakfast: Two slices of whole grain toast topped with peanut butter and honey

Lunch:
Whole wheat pasta with fresh tomato sauce and parmesan cheese

Yesterday recap:
Lunch: Leftover lentil and garbanzo bean salads and brown rice

Dinner: Bulgur with chopped tomatoes, celery, cucumber and walnuts

Tonight’s food:

(back to “civilization”…)
Pre-dinner: Fruit salad
Dinner: Naan (non-organic) slathered with red pepper hummus (non-organic) and topped with alfalfa sprouts and fresh spinach leaves. I also chomped on a big ol’ carrot, some pita chips, and finished off Brittaney’s Korean leftovers. Yum!
Dessert: 1/2 dark swiss chocolate bar (1 serving)

Good night!

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Hiding from Jehovah’s witnesses….and oatmeal

Mood:
Happy to be home.

We locked ourselves out of our house last night.

Ring, ring.

“Hiiii Ellen.”

“Hi, Bill. I am so, so sorry to be calling so late.”

“That’s ok. I’m downtown.”

To myself: Really? That’s odd. (My landlord is a family man with two little kids). “Um, we locked ourselves out of the house. Do you have a spare key?”

Pause.

Pause.

“A spare key?”

Um, yes, a spare key.“Yes, uh-huh.”

Then it hit me. I had called Soccer Friend Bill, not Landlord Bill. Whoops.

An embarrassed apology, a rushed good-bye, and another phone call that resulted in a key ring with at least 20 keys on it (it was 11:30 at night, so we went over to his house to pick up the keys). After multiple tries with each key on each door and various failed attempts to burglarize our own home by finding and entering an open window, we called it quits and went over to Liz’s house to spend the night. Thanks, Liz!

I suppose this little story is getting a bit long…ok, to wrap it up: we called our landlord this morning, told him we weren’t able to get in, he went looking for another key that he remembered on the floor of his truck, came over, tried the key, and opened the door. We were in. Yes.

Food:
Breakfast: A big bowl of oatmeal. As I was placing the bowl on the front windowsill to take the food photos, I spotted two Jehovah’s witnesses walking towards our front door. They didn’t see me see them. But did they see me before I saw them?

“Hide! Hide!” I whispered to Lucas, as I tiptoed towards the corner of the dining room.

“What?”

“Hide! They’re coming to the front door!”

“Who?”

“Shhh! Jehovah’s witnesses!”

There was a knock on the door. We flattened ourselves against the wall. We could see their reflection in the t.v. Could they see ours. I was so embarrassed. Surely they had seen me and knew someone was home.

I placed my finger to my lips, and slid my back down the wall to crouch position on the floor. We froze.

Knock, knock, knock.

These poor ladies. I’m certain we are not the only ones that blatantly ignored them. But really. I didn’t want to be cornered into talking about religion, plus we had just gotten home but had somewhere to be.

They knocked again. There was a long pause, and then we heard a faint knocking on our neighbors’ door. We were in the clear. Whew.

I was going to post a recap of yesterday, but we’ve got to get going and I’ve got to get cleaned up. I still have make-up on from last night, I stink, and I want to brush my teeth with my own toothbrush. I was so desperate this morning that at Liz’s I used an abandoned toothbrush that was in her bathroom. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

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Amy’s, Brownies, and The Office

Fitness:
This evening’s weather was my kind of lovely: low, gray clouds and relentless rain. The climate was going to keep me indoors and without a workout, until Lucas mentioned he was making brownies. That was enough to get me out in the rain for a 4 mile jog—it takes some of the guilt out of the pleasure of decadent desserts!

What does one wear when they leave the house for a deliberate soaking? In my case, a dirty hat that was in the hamper waiting to be washing, a pair of shorts already worn to the gym, old sneakers awaiting a trip to the Nike outlet to be thrown in the bin for recycling shoes. Betcha I was a sight for sore eyes!

Food:
Snack: Tea and two slices of banana bread
Dinner: A large slice of vegetable quiche, made my Lucas
Dessert: Half a pint of Amy’s Mexican Vanilla, and one brownie. Then another brownie. Then one more. Oops. All that, plus a heaping portion of The Office on NBC.com (I caught up on 3 episodes!). Perfect night.

Eyes > stomach.

Waaaah.

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Two Doors Down – The story of my love for a coffee house

Are you a small town kid living in the big city? Did you buy a one-way ticket to follow your dreams and swear to never look back? Do you shudder at the thought of Main Street and its Mom and Pop stores and sigh with relief at the thought of fancy boutiques?

Well then I guess you are just a walking cliche. Me? Only slightly.

I am from a relatively small town: Corsicana, Texas, population 30,000+ and I live in a small city (Keep Austin Weird. Please don’t move here.) And although, as you may have noticed, I am obsessed with Austin (Keep Austin Weird. Please don’t move here), I love my hometown and have wonderful memories of growing up there.

Now here’s for the slightly cliche part: the complaints about what’s there, or rather, what isn’t. There’s no cool place to hang out! No where to get a decent coffee! Practically everything is chain! There’s no visible love for green or whole (that’s the BTGH in me)!

Until I discovered Two Doors Down.

Ok, so I didn’t discover it. Everyone in town knows about it, and I believe it’s been around for a few years. But I’ve only heard about it within the last year, and every time that I went home for a visit and went to check it out, it was closed (it does seem to close for virtually every holiday).

Finally, finally, I had the chance to go a few weeks ago with my sister Jocelyn and my mom.

OMG. This is a place you would find in Austin. In fact, if this place was in Austin, I bet it would be one of THE coffee houses.

-it’s cool. It’s housed in an old building in the warehouse district of Corsicana. The exterior is brick and the spaces inside are open and airy. Two Doors Down (herein referred to as “TDD”) is broken up into different rooms, and you have both nooks and crannies where you can sit and enjoy your coffee and clack away on your laptop as well as big rooms where you can chatter away or even host a get together. The decor is a mix of eclectic and country and vintage; it’s charming, laid-back, fun, and cool.

-staff is super nice. We met the owner Todd, who welcomed us and showed us around as though we were guests at his home. When I asked if I could take pictures, he said “Absolutely, as many as you want!”So friendly. The barista was polite and made a dang good hot mocha. The waitress came over and encouraged me to put my photos on Facebook, where she would look at them. So sweet!
–coffee is good. I had a hot mocha, so perhaps I am not yet qualified to judge their coffee, but like I said, that mocha was dang good
–food is good: I ordered a vegetarian sandwich: veggies on an onion bagel. Yum. Jocelyn raved about her chicken salad sandwich…

Sidenote: A sweet tea came with my meal. I don’t drink sweet tea. But I did that day. And boy was I glad. It was sooooooo good. I don’t know what it was or where it was from, but it had me at hello.

–BTGH (Blue Tree Green Heart)-friendly: I forgot to ask for my mocha in a mug, because that would have been the ultimate Green Heart, but at least the cups they use are made by Ingeo, a company that uses 100% renewable resources to make their products….TDD promotes eating locally….TDD serve free trade organic coffee….TDD serves homemade foods…..TDD earns the BTGH stamp of approval.

Two Doors Down…..

…..A coffee house after my own heart. I can’t wait to go back!

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