Confessions of a Seasonal Candy Chocoholic

Does anyone else find preparing for vacation to be a tad bit stressful? I feel like we have been scurrying around all week getting everything ready to go that by the time we are good to go well actually need a vacation!

I wasnt as hungry for breakfast as usual so I split my normal amount of oats with Matt. I ended up having 1/2 the recipe below in a fabulous mix of AB&J oats.

Base:

• 1/3 c oats
• water
• 1 banana

Toppings:

• tbsp grape jelly
• tbsp TJs almond butter
• few cashews

At work I had a couple of crackers with a piece of deer sausage – yes, deer! I had never had or even fathomed eating deer prior to moving to Iowa. Some people really dig it, I think its okay but prefer my crackers with cheese!

After leaving work I hurried home to make a tasty lunch of Grilled Cheddar & Pear Sandwiches.

I had my sandwich on WW bread and at top a salad of leftover Romaine & Caesar dressing.

Chocolate Orange Confession

I have a serious love for seasonal candy. Let me explain: Cadbury Eggs &  Chocolate Oranges aer two of my favorite candies. Basically, if it only comes out once a year and involves chocolate – I love it. So I buy a few extra or my sister gets some on sale for me after the season is over & I get to enjoy the sweet treats periodically during the year. Case & point for the chocolate orange that Matt & I devoured over 3 days time. The downside? Once candy like this is opened its pretty much impossible to keep myself away from it.

After lunch I had four slivers & then had four more after dinner! Its gone now – luckily!

Workout

After dessert I did some things around the house to get ready to leave & headed back to work (drag!). In between work shifts I ended up getting in a decent swim workout.

• 500 Front Crawl
• 6 minutes treading – mostly dolphin kick
• 30 push ups facing wall
• 15 push ups facing water
• 200 kick – alternating sprint & easy
• 15 minutes of reading SuperFreakonomics in the hot tub 🙂

As part of operation clean out the fridge before it all goes bad I made a quick dinner tonight using 5 star ingredients!

Lemon Penne with Asparagus & Feta

• WW Penne
• Asparagus
• Feta cheese
• Juice of 1/2 of a lemon
• S&P

Originally I had planned on not using Feta & instead roasting up some garlic with the asparagus, but we had a garlic casuality earlier this week. While I was cleaning out the fridge I pulled out some condiments (including a new glass jar of minced garlic) that were sort of sticky and needed to be washed & put them in the sink. I forgot they were there and didnt have a change to rinse them down & Matt thought that the jars had gone bad so he washed them out & recycled them! Needless to say our entire house smelled like garlic but there wasnt an ounce in our supper – so I had to improvise!

I began by brining a pot of water to a boil on the stove, and added some of my favorite WW pasta to the pot:

I love Barilla & it can usually be found at a reasonable sale price – but I just realized yesterday that it says made with 51% whole wheat! Should I be concerned?

While the Penne was cooking away, I roasted some asparagus on a cookie sheet for about 10 minutes. I always cut up the asparagus before I roast it if I plan on having it cut up in the dish – its such a pain otherwise! Ive been loving that asparagus has been on sale lately, cant wait until summer!

Once your asparagus & pasta are gone combine them in your pot. Cut 1/2 a lemon and squeeze over mixture.

At this point add some S&P and either feta or roasted garlic (or both!) to the mix.

Mix Mix Mix & Serve – it doesnt get easier than that, friends!

The rest of my day consists of :

• going to class
• going to work
• eating leftover Tortellini Soup – which I need to put a recipe up for
• crossing off a dozen to-do’s
• preparing to take off!

Have a great weekend!