Kitchen Staples

Well today has been much better than yesterday. I came into work this morning completely focused on getting caught up from yesterday and trucked through my entire “to-do” list before lunch. I felt so productive and was hardly interrupted. It also stopped raining and warmed up and the weekend forecast looks fantastic, so that is something to get excited about.

Since I did so well today with getting my tasks complete, I decided to reward myself by going home for lunch. I would go home more often (since I live a mile or two away from my work) but I find its so hard to go back once I am home. Anyways, being at home gave me the chance to have a “hot” lunch for a change. I heated up an Amy’s Organic Spinach and Feta pocket with some steamed broccoli. These spinach pockets are a definite favorite of mine. I microwaved it for a few minutes and then popped it in the toaster to get a crisper crust, but I accidentally burnt the top..opps! Oh well, Sammy was quite happy with my burnt crust top.
I also cut up some orange slices and grapes. Fruit is so good right now, I seriously can not get enough of it. I am going to go into fruit overload pretty soon, but when everything is so darn cheap and good, its almost impossible not to buy and consume it all.

So as I was making out a store list for next week, I was thinking about the “staple” foods that I buy. I usually purchase the same necessities every week, and then depending on what I am making for dinner, I will get the extra ingredients. Here is a list of what I came up with for my staple food items.

• Cottage Cheese
• Soy Milk
• Cereal (Bran flakes and All Bran)- I just these as my base and then add another portion of a fun cereal to this mix.
• Vegetables (pretty much any and everything)
• Fruit (strawberries, blueberries, bananas, and whatever else is on sale)
• Lettuce (Spinach, Kale, Romaine)
• Yogurt (Greek and Dannon)
• Frozen Fruit (I eat this practically every day)
• Oats
• Peanut Butter and fruit spreads
• Egg Beaters
• Cool Whip (aka, crack or my guilty pleasure)
• Newmans Own Double Fiber Whole Wheat Bread (The best bread in the world!)
• Seltzer water
• Feta/Goat Cheese
  

That’s all I can think off the top of my head, but I am sure this is more. It’s pretty safe to assume that these things will always be in my kitchen.

So what about you? What are you’re staple food items???

Continuing on with the day…

Toly and I conducted our normal Tues/Thurs lifting after work. I’m finding that lifting is getting much easier for me, so I’ve gradually been upping my weight. It took months and months, but I am finally seeing definition in my twig arms (which is what I have been striving so hard for) and a few people have actually commented on them. Heck yeah, finally all the gruesome weight training is paying off!

Check out these two studs. Sammy apparently had a rough day and felt that he needed a much deserved belly rub.

We worked up our appetites for a good dinner- Grilled Chicken Sausage, Sweet Potato Fries (regular for him) and Salad.

Check out this sweet potato. One of the biggest I have seen! I used a little less than a 1/3 of this monster.

The chicken sausage was TJ’s Sweet Apple Chardonnay (love these) with some sauteed red onions and spinach for a quick and tasty relish. You need to give this a try, all I do is saute red onions and once they are soft, I throw in a pinch of brown sugar until they become browned and caramelized. I add a big handful of spinach at the end and splash balsamic vinegar to deglaze and pan and bring all of the flavors together. It's sooooooo good, trust me!

Salad tonight was a beauty- Romaine, chopped green apple, dried cranberries, walnuts, purple cabbage, cucumber and feta.

T’was a very tasty meal, if I do say so.

One more question- I am thinking of converting over to World Press?!?! I’ve been playing around, and I definitely like the layout better and they seem to offer more features that I want to add to my blog. For those of you who use world press, what do you think? I like Blogger, but I really want to add some more features and I can’t seem to figure out how. Every time I think I find a new template or layout and I go to download it and upload it into Blogger, it fails! :( Any suggestions???

Hope you had a tremendous day!