Tag Archives: bagels

Inching closer

Thanks for reading the AIM posts and leaving feedback.  It’s always nice to hear the different opinions on what we write.  I  loved this comment from Kathy that says

Maintenance does not equal stasis!

I think that nails it pretty much, don’t you?

I can’t believe the week is half over already.  Being busy helps with that, but sometimes I am thinking a day behind.  Part of that is from work because I am almost always dating files from the day previous, so I start to think it is that day. The other part of that is just me 😀

I did remember it was Wednesday when I woke up, which is Bagel Day!  It’s embarrassing that the person behind the counter had sliced  a wheat bagel and put it in the toaster when she saw us walk in.  😳   Guess I had better not ever change it up.

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Today turned out to be quite a nice day weather wise. At this time of year, a nice day usually precedes cold weather or rain, so we will have to see what tomorrow brings.  I knew I could get out for a ride today, though! 

First was lunch.  We are stocked up on food prep this week. I did crockpot red beans on Monday, which we have been eating the last couple days.  John made a wonderful clam chowder on Sunday which we finished up at lunch.

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Yummers!

I worked a bit more and headed out for my ride. First time I was able to get out since Saturday.  It was 58, which is a nice temp. Not too cold, all though it was pretty breezy out.  The first part of the ride was very fast with a tail wind. The second part was a bit tougher.  I have my usual routes I ride depending on how many miles I want around the neighborhoods and today I wanted about 9 miles.  That means road/path/road/path/road. 

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Loving the ride!

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And yay for Pixie hairs on my gloves. 🙄

Check out my mileage.

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Shade under 45 miles to go.  Too bad I couldn’t get a really nice Saturday and I would have that done in one fell swoop. I think I am just going to have to nibble it out for the next couple of weeks.  With shorter days, work and cold weather – it really makes it hard to keep riding.  Looking at temps in the 30s next week. Brrr….

 

John made my latte after I got home. He had made a pumpkin spice syrup that he drizzled on top. I am a lucky lady.  Another thumb’s up!

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I needed that latte to keep working the rest of the day.

coffee

My brain was fried after work. Some days of work are easy and some days make my brain tired.  Today was one of those days. So, I just made a PB &J sandwich for dinner. 

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Striking out today on the 2 different veggies a day today. Unless you want to count the celery and onion in my soup, which I won’t (even though I want to).

 

I hope to get semi caught up on blog reading tonight. I am behind! But, first going out for coffee with my hubby because you just can’t have enough coffee in a day (it will be decaf, don’t worry).  We love to do lots of talking and planning when we have coffee, too. 😀

Weekend wrap up!

It was a good weekend.  We didn’t get in as much biking as we would have liked, but we did get in a nice ride.  I also took more butterfly pictures. As if you didn’t see enough from Friday’s post!  Today the monarch was sunning on the sedum.

My little Olympus does a good job. This was taken on super macro setting and I was about 4 inches away from him.  Some day I want a DSLR, but with the other projects going on, that will have to wait.

Saturday ended up with rain and quite humid. after getting in a 4 mile walk before the rain came,  we took the opportunity to do some window shopping and home improvement planning over coffee.  John is in the market for new desk and I am looking for some type of storage cabinet for the bathroom.  I am hoping to find something and reclaim it or refinish it.  We stopped at a couple antique and new furniture stores.

This store has some fun stuff.  Look at all these old prams!

They had some bikes, too, which would be fun to stick in the garden, but I need to find a beat up one for next to no money and not one sold in a store if I am going to shove it in the dirt  :mrgreen:

I didn’t find anything I wanted, but John has a list of several different desks to think about from a couple different stores.

We are going to be putting laminate in the downstairs of our house.  We did the upstairs after we moved in and now we are ready to do the downstairs.  John paid for the driveway and I am going to shell out the funds for the flooring.  We have it down to 2:

The cherry one is nice, but the color doesn’t go as well with all of our stuff, so I think we we go with the lighter oak.  I’ll be glad to get rid of this berber carpet! Hopefully we will get this started by the end of August. We have 3 rooms to do (and a piano to move… eeek!! ). Hopefully we can have it finished by the time we do our holiday dinner.  😀  I really have the home improvement bug again.

Sunday we decided to squeak in our ride in the morning. There was forecast for rain showers in the afternoon (which never happened), so we wanted to get it in early.  It was a cloudy morning.  First stop Coffee Planet.

This is about 6 miles from home.

I guess they were all decked out for the Olympics.  They also had free little pins for everybody.  Not sure what that was about, but they were little butterflies, so I had to have one and put it on my bike bag.

After breakfast, we decided to swing up to the lake.  I was feeling slow.  I have reduced the pressure in my tires and I think that was just making me too slow. I am going to go back to the 28 mm tires so I can pump them up more.  Here was a stop along the way at about mile 11 or so.  We just came down a hill after some climbs and my tummy was complaining about doing that when full.

Don’t you like how the telephone poles are right in the middle of the bike path?  Not sure who designed that or what they were thinking.

Mile 15 and Lake George!

This sign is of a photo from 1912 when a train used to come right up next to the lake and drop off the wealthy people for their vacations 😀  Now it is just a road.

I have ridden on at least 3 of the tour boats on Lake George.  That one in this picture is the Lac du Saint Sacrement and the one we had our anniversary brunch on last year.

The lake was not super busy because it was somewhat early.

It was a little hazy from humidity today.  We didn’t stay long at the lake, just a bit of rest and then we headed back.  Now the path was getting busy with a lot of people.  Tons of bikers.  When you leave the lake, there is a 2 mile climb back up.  Right near the top, my chain fell off.  Ugh.  At least I didn’t fall over, but I was all ramped up to get to the top!

At the top, you end up by Magic Forest, which is a kid’s amusement park.  Sorta cheesy.

That’s just in the parking lot, too.

I never knew Mighty Mouse rode an elephant, but there you go!

It was a fairly uneventful ride home and we didn’t stop the rest of the way home.

I spy a new driveway in the background!!!!  

Almost 31 miles done by noon  Short ride, but lots of hills.

No yogurt during the ride, but we did go out for it later  😉

Coconut lime yogurt with toasted coconut!  One of my faves.

Bagels and BBs.

My gosh you are all the best internet people!  I am done whining, but maybe the whining actually fixed the comment issue!  Hooray (pleasedon’tjinx).  I am back to my usual self today – actually as of last night.  Grumpiness and I don’t mesh for very long.

Looks like my rose bushes survived the freeze.  A couple bits got crisped, but the rest of the plants look good.  Can we please get back to spring?

We headed out for bagel day! One of my 10% meals!  Nom, nom.  I was hungry this morning.

My Wednesday schedule shifted a bit.  I am now going to meet with my literacy learner in the evenings on Wednesday after work, which meant pushing mother/daughter night to another day.  That actually makes Wednesdays feel a little less hectic for me.

I also was very remiss yesterday not to mention the shoutout I got from Carla at MizFit yesterday.  I was so surprised and pleased to see me as her surprise commenter!  I like how she described me in a nutshell poem, too.  If you don’t read her blog, you should.  It’s very inspirational and very much a ‘thinking about things’ place to go.  The other nice thing was reading the wonderful comments people left as well. That surely makes up for any poopy emails or comments I may ever get  :mrgreen:  I do like our tribe very much.

Ready for another new food?  I bought some of these at the store.

And it is perky to boot.  How nice! I can have a lot of problems with cereal in the house, but this is not sweetened, so it shouldn’t be bad.  I just wanted some crunch in my yogurt.

2% Fage with the cereal and a drizzle of honey.

They look like BBs!  Or possibly rabbit pellet food. They remind me a lot of Grape Nuts, only not sweet at all.  I guess they are the gluten-free Grape Nuts.

Afternoon latte today.

On days that we go out for breakfast, I have an almond milk latte in the afternoon.  I have found that my skin doesn’t break out when I limit the dairy and since I stopped eating most vegetable oils.  Or maybe I just got old enough LOL!

Another typical Lori plate for dinner.

Some people hate leftovers, but I like them because it makes meals easy.

I am off to do my tutoring.  I will say that the tutoring has been different than I was expecting.  It’s actually kind of tiring!  Also, the training can’t really prepare you for the things that pop up and you just kind of wing it.

And half of the week is over – everybody raise your hands in the air!!

Pi Day and pushups!

Happy Pi Day!  3/14. A celebration of the circle and its irrational number.

How about a circle for breakfast?

Bagel – showcasing pi with the diameter and circumference references!  Learning – it’s what’s for breakfast.

Wednesday bagels are one of my 10% meals of the week.  It was a gorgeous and sunny morning as well.  So hard to sit my butt down and work.  It’s also my really busy day, too.  I did make a point to get some lunch before leaving for my literacy tutoring appointment.  More circles!

This is 2% Fage topped with 1/2 cup of pumpkin, 1 teaspoon of honey and cinnamon.  I thought it would be nice to photo it before mushing it all together.  Good, but needed something crunchy on top like pecans. Too bad I had to eat this fast and not savor it.

After tutoring, back to work until latte time!  More pi =

:mrgreen:

Fran had asked me about learning to do pushups.  I now do straight military style pushups.  (I hate calling them man pushups because women can do them, too).  I used to do pushups on my knees, like girls were taught to do.  The problem with this is that you can never learn to do them on your toes this way. What I did was to do incline pushups.  I started leaning against a wall, then progressively dropped down the angle until I was straight on the floor.  This gives your body time to build the upper body strength it needs to support the ‘real’ pushup stance.  It’s too hard to just start in the pushup position and work from there because pushups on your toes are really an advanced exercise.  They aren’t easy!  Give yourself time to work down.

(source)

You can use anything for the support.  A weight bench, a chair, a step stool.  As the pushups get easier, lower the height of the object.

* My one piece of advice is to anchor the object that you will be pushing against so that it doesn’t slide away from you causing you to fall to the floor.  Not that I have ever done that or anything.  I just want to make sure it doesn’t happen to you, because it hurts – or I imagine it would hurt. Not that I know anything about that…

I ate dinner later because work was running out and I wanted to make sure I got as much as I could.  Ah, the lovely part of working on production.  I did a quick dinner of shrimp stir fry.  This is 4 oz of shrimp with some sauteed broccoli, 1/2 cup of leftover rice and 1 tablespoon of Kikkoman ginger teriyaki sauce.

This was really yummy!

More working after dinner until files run out.  Taking 2 hours out of my day for tutoring means adding them in at night. I am actually ahead for the week, so no big deal.

My mother is coming over tonight for a visit.  Too bad I didn’t make any pi(e).  We like to have pie on pi day, but just didn’t make any this year and too tired to go out tonight!  Guess I will have to settle for nuts and dried pineapple.

Tomorrow is workout B of the Fit Female!

Signs of spring!

This weekend, I some how conned my mother into going to the gym with me. I had no car, so she came and got me. Saturday was chest/back/abs.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Flat Chest Press 4 sets of 8 with 25# DBs
Drop Set 1: 20# for 5 reps
Drop set 2: 15# for 5 reps
Chest
Incline Chest Fly 3 sets of 8 at 15#
Drop Set 1: 10# for 10 reps
Drop set 2: 5# for 5
Chest
Incline Chest Press 3 sets of 8 with 15# DBs
Drop Set 1: 10# for 6 reps
Drop set 2: 5# for 6 reps
Chest
Assisted Chin Ups 3 sets of 8 at 100#
Drop Set 1: 120# for 6 reps
Drop set 2: 150# for 9 reps
Upper Body
Single-arm low cable row 3 sets of 8 at 35#
Drop Set 1: 25# for 6 reps
Drop set 2: 20# for 6 reps
Back
Cable Kneeling Pull Down 3 sets of 8 at 35#
Drop Set 1: 30# for 6 reps
Drop Set 2: 20# for 8 reps
Back
Crunches 2 sets of 10
Drop Set 1: 16
Core
Bicycle 2 sets of 10
Drop set 1: 24
Core

This was a tough workout! It’s hard to do drop sets with core work, so I just did the third set until I couldn’t do anymore. Then I walked for 25 minutes on the dreadmill.

Our reward was going out for lunch afterwards. We chose East End Eatery, where I had a  side salad and a wheat pizza wrap with banana peppers!


This tasted so good after a hard workout!  I really should make these at home.

Saturday was such a gorgeous day.  A lot of the snow is melting and when I went out for a walk, I saw some tulips start to peek up from someone’s garden.  Flower time soon!

Speaking of flowers, I was planting some seeds.  I am trying the flowering tobacco again.  A lot of my seedlings died last year, so I am trying yet again.

I also made some little seed pots from toilet paper tubes.

These are so clever I will post a little demo of them.  No more buying the peat pellets!

Sunday was a nice relaxing day.  My bagel buddy is back, so we were out for our Sunday breakfast at Coffee Planet.

Oat bran bagel!

Today has been going through recipes to figure out what to make.  How do people do this without it taking forever?  I like reading cookbooks, but it’s hard to plan out meals this way, I have to say. Too many choices.

I did wake my sourdough starter up, aka Breadipus Rex, so that I can make some sourdough english muffins this week.  Or hopefully to make them!

On the nibbling front, did very well over the weekend.  I find that I actually do better when I limit the chocolate.  John bought me a little Tortuga rum cake to have, which I am saving (good thing rum is a preservative!).  He also had a chocolate covered macaroon and I had him slice me a piece off – it’s huge!  After eating that, I really wanted more and had another bite.  I could feel myself really sitting on the edge of wanting to eat more and more and it took a fair amount of internal wrestling not to keep eating. Maybe it’s a little easier now 10 days out from no nibbling? It’s hard to say.

Now for a new week and the last week of the 28 Day Shapeover workouts!

Question:  Do you plan any meals or menus?

Happy Leap Day!

Snow is here!  Our first real major storm – can you believe it?  And on Leap Day, too.  Does Hallmark make a card for Leap Day?  I wouldn’t be surprised.

The snow didn’t start until the afternoon, so we were free and clear for Bagel Day this morning!  I love bagel day.

In truth, Wednesday we actually call Bagel Day junior because official Bagel Day is Sunday.  We tried to keep it to 1 day a week, but it’s hard.  Back in our fat days, John and I often would go 5 or 6 days a week for breakfast out, either bagels, coffeecake or muffins.  Always with sweet coffee.  How times have changed.  You know that thing called moderation?  We found our level of moderation with the bagels now.

I had literacy tutoring today and I stopped work in time enough to have a quick lunch today before I left.

1-minute muffin done 1-minute style!  This was the applesauce version, which is the version I almost always make anymore.

After the tutoring, I walked home in the snow.  It started to get serious around 1 p.m.

Will have to shovel soon. My arms are not too sore today from yesterday’s workout.  They actually only are  sore when I lift my arms up over my head.  Last night, I went to carry a laundry basket upstairs that was full and had some wet stuff in it for hanging.  I couldn’t pick it up enough to get it up the stairs and had to have John take it up for me!  How embarrassing! 😳  I can’t imagine what my legs will feel like after tomorrow’s drop sets, although I don’t know if I can get to the gym with the snow.

Lattes were welcome today.

I thawed out shrimp for  a  protein dinner today.  These are the large shrimp. I am now spoiled enough to only buy the more expensive uncooked shrimp.  Guess I had better ask for another raise.

I just sauteed them in a little coconut oil with salt and pepper, with shredded brussel sprouts on the side. 4 ounces of shrimp looks pretty puny, doesn’t it?

It’s funny, I can eat more veggies if they are shredded or cut into little pieces.  Not sure why that is, but whatever it takes to get me to eat more!

I had to catch up some work tonight since it was a tutoring day.  Finally finished and am ready for a snack, which will be some fruit or nuts (haven’t quite decided yet).  I have been doing great with my no nibbling.  It gets a little easier each day breaking that bad habit.

I didn’t really set any goals for February, but now I have to plan out some for March!

Question: How was your February?

New lifting program

Wednesday – I had to keep reminding myself it was Wednesday. I am a day off. I hate it when that happens. I got up to go to the gym this morning when I remembered it was bagel day! So, I went back to bed for a little before we got ready to go.

Wheat bagel today. Tasty!

I forgot to photograph the rest of my food today. How weird is that? I think I was just very distracted or something.

Yesterday I started a new lifting program. I am now doing the 28-day shapeover

I have done this program before and I liked it.  I have been in a bit of a rut with my lifting, so it was time to shake it up.  This does a 3 day split with alternating days of cardio and 1 rest day each week.   Yesterday was arms and shoulders.

Exercise Set/rep/weight Muscle worked
Dumbell Shoulder Press 4 sets of 10 with 10# DBs Shoulders
Dumbbell Upright Row 3 sets of 8 with 15# DBs Shoulders
Dumbbell Bent Lateral Raise 3 sets of 10 with 10# DBs Shoulders
Cable Curls 3 sets of 10 at 25# Biceps
Barbell Drag Curl 2 sets of 10 with 25 bar Biceps
Dumbbell Concentration Curl 2 sets of 10 with 10# DBs Biceps
Dumbbell Kickbacks 3 sets of 10 with 10# DBs Triceps
Single Dumbbell Overhead Triceps Press 3 sets of 10 with 15# DB Triceps
Reverse Cable Press Down 3 sets of 10 at 25# Triceps

It took 30 minutes to get through this workout.  I will tell you – my arms are *sore* today!  I haven’t worked my arms like this in over a year. Normally, you know I eschew doing single muscle exercises, particularly for my arms.  My arms will develop much faster than the rest of my body, so I need to keep the weights lighter while doing this program.

Tomorrow is lower body and then Saturday is chest/back/core.

On another front – look what arrived today!

 

Can’t wait to try it out tomorrow morning!

Productive weekend and fall colors

We had a nice relaxing weekend. No real long rides (somewhat weather dependent).  We have just been doing so much on weekends that it was nice to kick back at home and get stuff done!

I was quite productive on Sunday, though.  We did manage to bike 12 miles round trip to breakfast today to Orange Cat.

I had a gluten-free cinnamon raisin bagel.

We did some grocery shopping today and the store had carving pumpkins on sale for $3.99 each!  That is an awesome bargain as normally you pay by the pound and we got 2 giant pumpkins to carve.  Look how big:

It dwarfs the gallon of milk!  These would have been $12 pumpkins easily.  I may have to get another one this week as I love carving.

I settled in for some batch cooking after lunch, which included a feta cheese omelet and grapes!

Things that were made this weekend:

Gluten-free pumpkin scones  (recipe coming)

Pumpkin Granola

Alton Brown’s Easy Brown Rice:

Coffee roasting:

 

Dang!  When we don’t pack our weekends with other stuff, it is amazing what can actually get done at home.  I even vacuumed!

I also did some work.  John made up lattes, which I had with one of my scones.

The fall colors are  here.  I thought you might enjoy some of the views on my walk this afternoon.

Burning bushes have one of my favorite fall colors – the bright pink.

I love this bright orange of the maples as well:

So beautiful and only lasts for such a short time!

Dinner time was Mexican.  We cooked up some ground beef with somespices, salsa, and a little chilis in adobo sauce (hot!).  Served on corn tortillas with some cheddar cheese, more salsa and a bit of sour cream.  Yum!  Salsa counts as a veggie, right?  :mrgreen:

Note to self: Get light box out for pictures.

Football tonight and currently looking like I will be losing the picks for the week.  Oh well, it was a good run while it lasted!

Pink item of the day. My cold weather jammies!

 

The Breast Cancer Site

Sundae on Sunday

What a gorgeous fall weekend! Saturday started rainy and cloudy, but it did stop.  I made a fall inspired breakfast:

This was the flax muffle topped with apple/cranberry topping.  Yum!

John went to play a poker tournament Saturday and he placed 6 out of 23. Not in the money, but I think he did pretty well.  He doesn’t like tournaments and just prefers the cash games.

I did a lot of errands and checked out a craft show.

I bought a bowl from a woman who totally underpriced her handmade ceramics.

New bowl? $5!  Like I really need another bowl…

Sunday turned out the best weather wise and we did a double dip ride.  First was to Panera Bread and bagels! We have a My Panera card, which is the PB rewards card, and had a free bagel on it. Score!

It was humid this morning and I was pretty sweaty.

Over breakfast, we talked about where we wanted to bike to.  We thought cupcakes, but that would have been a 42+ mile ride on top of a 16 mile breakfast ride – and we weren’t sure about 60 miles on the day.  Instead, we decided to keep it more local and hit one of the ice cream shops.

After lunch, it was time to ride again.

We headed out the long way on the roads and then hit the path.

I love this part of the path. This is the beginning of the hill stretch for a couple of miles.

With all this rain and warm weather, the mosquitoes were swarming. I started getting bitten as soon as I stopped. Ick.

We actually did not go on the hill today. This was the turn around spot on our way to Martha’s!

In the background is Great Escape. It’s right across the street from Martha’s. Still open until the end of October.

Martha’s only does soft serve ice cream, but they do it well.

I decided on a sundae. It is called the Scholarship sundae for some weird reason.  It is your flavor of ice cream topped with raspberry sauce, hot fudge and cookie crumbs.  I had raspberry creme twist as my flavor.

This is the small  😯 It looks smaller in this picture, too.  Oh – and I *never* eat cherries.  The one fruit I really don’t ever eat.

We enjoyed listening to the screams as we ate our ice cream  :mrgreen:

I didn’t think I was going to be able to finish this sundae, but then I forget how much I actually can eat without getting full  LOL.  Not to mention it was really, really good. I am not afraid of food!  I was totally carbed up for the ride home.

Daily total:

Total miles: 40.5

Ride time: 3 hours 30 seconds

Average speed: 13.5 mph

Top speed: 23.2 mph

Calories burned: 1264

I could have done 60 miles today, but I think I would have been a bit tired. Plus, there was football to watch!

I picked against the Broncos (which breaks my heart), but I still supported them by wearing my jersey.  Guess it paid off because I won the football picks for the week.  Go Team Lori!!  Woo Hoo!

Bageling around

Yes, I think I can make a new verb called ‘bageling.’ That is the act of going to and having a bagel!  As per usual on Wednesday mornings.  Yesterday’s rain made it a very foggy morning for riding. I don’t love riding in the fog becuase I don’t trust drivers very much (which is a good thing because it keeps me alert). It’s definitely feeling like fall around here now – at least in the mornings.  We headed out to North Country Cafe where I had a wheat bagel:

With some caramel apple coffee! New flavor.  I don’t sweeten my coffee, so sometimes it is odd to have a flavored coffee and not taste anything sweet.

Had a nice view from the window.

The building across the street was torn down and now a new bank building is going up in its place. It is going to be a long process because the whole street itself will be redone as well.

We then headed on home.  12 miles round trip for breakfast! I was just thinking how much more I enjoyed the biking than the riding. Even when there are poopy drivers and flat tires.  I really am this:

(Shelley, I found one! :D) I may have to get myself one of these shirts. Thanks for all the pep talk on my running feelings. I think a lot of it confirmed that I will likely end running all together and just do what I really love to do.  What is that saying about insanity being when you do the same thing over and over again with the same result? I may be a little on the crazy side, but it is a good kind of crazy. I’d like to keep it that way.

Lots and lots of work to do today. It’s been busy lately, which is always good in our industry. I stopped for a quick lunch:

This is ricotta cheese mixed with a little honey and some whey protein isolate on top of blueberry sauce and some toasted pecans. It was a warm lunch, even though it looks cool.  Next time I would have more ricotta.

Today was wonderful payday, too, so I hopped on the bike for another 3 miles to go to the bank and back.  It’s nice that it is so close. Plus it was a nice activity break, although I was already a bit behind where I like to be at this time of day (that seems to be the Wednesday norm at any rate). Lattes upon return.  This is in front of my last plumeria – which didn’t bloom this year.

In my effort to work on September goals, I made another new to me recipe tonight for dinner. It’s called Best Captain’s Chicken from a WW cookbook and I will post the recipe tomorrow (hope that is kosher).  It didn’t take too long and turned out good!

It has chicken, apples, onions, peppers, ginger, cinnamon, curry powder and raisins in it.  While that sounds strange, it was very good. We both really liked it a lot.  Kind of a cross between a soup and stew (stoup).

There also has been some snacking on this:

Several handfuls of cashews.  These are starting to get in danger zone for me.

Well, I must run. John is off for poker and I am off for some socializing of my own!