not goodbye, just see ya later.

friends! i was just sitting here procrastinating the task of packing for lake powell (typical) and thinking about how much i am going to miss y’all!  it was a short 2 weeks ago that i was in seattle and now i am leaving yet again for a 4 day weekend.  i feel like i just barely got caught up and back in the loop! but i can’t complain, lake powell is going to be epic!  and i have some super sweet guest posts lined up for while i am gone.

a big fat thank you for all the super sweet ideas for eats i can take on the road and to the lake.  i have been shopping up a storm today and i whipped up a few delicious treats for the trip that i will share with you in a few.  i also was stoked on all the feedback you guys gave on exercising without equipment!  if anybody is looking for ideas themselves, go take a gander at my comments from yesterday’s post. unreal! you guys are full of clever ideas. and finally, your answers to the foreign eats and treats that are not available here in the US of A basically just made me drool.. and a little sad.. i miss europe!

oh and i forgot to announce the fact that k and lynn both guess correctly the other day, i was in fact reading lauren’s blog when i ate my yogurt! so ladies.. you take paypal? i owe you both a dollar. holler at me :)

biggest news on the salt lake city home front? first snow of the season!! that is right my friends, it was raining all night, thundering super loud.. loud enough to wake me up a few times in fact.. and when i woke up there were snow capped mountains! majesty!  i freaking love snow. it is a shame it will not stick around until later in the year.. but it is always exciting to see the white stuff out my window :)

moving on, wednesday! you know what that means.. right? if you don’t.. you need to get with the program. f’reals.

meal 1: waffles! & eggs @ 9:50 AM

   
so i am not a genius and once again forgot to bring the nonstick cooking spray to work today.  since i did not want to have another waffle fail like last week, i went with the kashi go lean freezer waffles.. not as delish as my protein waffles, but they do the trick.  topped with some mighty maple and these waffles became something to talk about!

i know kashi go lean products boast their high protein content.. but i am sorry, 8g’s is just not enough for this body for life-r.  i needed to up those protein grams so i paired the waffles with one whole egg+2 egg whites, scrambled, and i added a laughing cow light wedge and a healthy dollup of TJ’s peach salsa which created an incredible explosion of flavor in my mouth!

my boss is in hawaii so i used his office floor for a backdrop. totally normal, right brandi?

well you may or may not have noticed i ate breakfast a little late.  this was due to drama in the office.  so needless to say, but i will say it anyway because that is how we do, i was pretty full for quite some time.  mommba b swooped by the office around 1:30 to pick up some surrrious cash that i owed to her and bid me farewell.. she will be taking off to the east coast for a golf vacay while i am in lake powell so i am not going to see her for like, a century! how will i ever manage?! :( 

since i was already downstairs near the office kitchen i decided it would be a wise idea to eat lunch even though i was not all too hungry yet.  who knew toaster waffles could be so filling? well i guess susan did.

meal 2: tuna & cottage cheese sandwich @ 2:00 PM

what a boring lunch.  i didn’t want to bring anything to the office today because i will be gone until monday.. so i just made do with what was here.  this was nothing to write home about.. and i was NOT in the mood for tuna but it was the only protein i had on hand.. meh, i don’t like eating food that i am not in the mood for.  noted.

i worked my face off for the next 2 hours, i hate the nonsense that comes with taking 2 days off of work!  but it will all be worth it when i am basking in the sun.  or.. freezing my face off, it is supposed to be a little cold, but i’m not scared.

after work i had a LOT of errands to run and i also had to get my workout in.  i wasn’t sure the best order to do this in but i figured it would be best to get my workout handled and out of the way or i might fail at doing it all together!
it was a lower body workout day today.. but since i will be wakeboarding all weekend i didn’t want to risk the chance of getting mayjuh DOMS in my hamstrings like i usually do from weight training so i opted to do a sesh of HIIT..plus HIIT only takes 20 minutes as opposed to the hour my weight training workouts take!

treadmill..i did something different. usually my HIIT has 4 sets of intervals.. so one set i did increasing speed and the next set i did increasing incline and then repeated this cycle and then i did some extra incline minutes.. i will try to type it so you can understand..

 

• 2 min @ 6.0 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 6.9 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 7.4 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 7.8 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=1.0
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=1.5
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=2.0
• 1 min @ 6.0 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 7.0 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 7.5 incline=0.5
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=1.0
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=1.5
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=2.0
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=2.5
• 1 min @ 6.5 incline=1.5
• 1 min @ 6.9 incline=1.5
• 1 min @ 7.4 incline=1.5
• 1 min @ 8.0 incline=1.5
• 1 min @ 9.0 incline=1.5
• 1 min @ 2.0 incline=0
• 1.5 min @ 3.0 incline=15
• 1.5 min @ 4.0 incline=15
• 2 min @ 5.0 incline=7
• 1 min @ 2.0 incline=0

whew! total 26 minute workout, try it! max HR 183, average HR 151, calories 201, distance 2.55 miles.

as i was driving home i stared at the glorious snow and almost wrecked my new ride.

it is not much but i’ll take it!

came home and ate something ridiculously necessary! a must try for all.

meal 3: pumpkin parfait a la k @ 6:00 PM

drool. i want another one.

to make this glorious pumpkin cheesecake parfait, i mixed 1 cup of this stuff:

with a hefty dollop of canned pumpkin, pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon

swirled it all together and then built a lovely parfait using a golden corn vitatop

this. was. remarkable.

go make one. i dare you.

double dog dare.

oh! and the plain chobs review?

 

well, i am a plain greek yogurt connoisseur.   i eat it daily. and plain chobani, you are not my favorite (for the record, oikos is).  i think this plain yogurt was more on the savory side.. it tasted more like a good sub for sour cream.. it would make a banging tzatziki. but i usually mix sweet stuff into my greek yogurt so this was not as lovely as my other go-tos.  however, it was by no means bad.  i LOVED every single bite and the nutrition stats are definitely something to make a fuss about. good work chobani!

final grade: A-

ok, after this i don’t even want to talk about what i did. but it involved 3+ hours of grocery shopping at costco, sunflower market, whole foods and the regular grocery store. by the end, i wanted to die.. i asked marshall to kill me but he refused. i usually love to grocery shop but oy vey, i was tired of it by 9 PM.

and i still had to do all the food prep for the trip!

i made the delicious chicken couscous chickpea salad and cleverly stored it in a ziplock for the trip..

love this salad. i ate some for dinner. at 10 PM.

and i chopped veggies, made marshall dinner, packed the nonperishable food up.. and now i still have to pack my clothes, shower and somewhere manage to sleep before the 6 AM wakeup call. by the way, it is 12:28 AM!

in other news!!~~

• danica is having a pumpkintastic giveaway over at danica’s daily
• amanda is having a couple different fun giveaways over at run to the finish
• abby posted a fun link the other day to this silly sandwich site, check it!
• susan’s sweetie of a cat passed away today, send her your love <3

and since i won’t be around tomorrow.. i wanted to tell you the food holidays that october will bring!!

the month of october is:

• eat better, eat healthier month
• eat country ham month
• apple month
• applejack month
• caramel month
• chili month
• cookie month
• pickled peppers month
• dessert month
• popcorn poppin’ month
• pizza festival month
• pork month
• pretzel month
• seafood month
• vegetarian awareness month
• pudding season begins

the first week in october is:

• chili week
• no salt week

the first few days in october:

• 1st: homemade cookies day
• 1st: world vegetarian day
• 2nd: fried scallops day
• 3rd: caramel custard day
• 4th: taco day
• 4th: vodka day
• 4th: cinnamon roll day (in sweden)
• 5th: apple betty day

WHEW! can you say food holiday overload or what?! but now you are in the know :D

Qs
1. what food holiday are you most excited for in the month of october? you can pick from the list above to answer this now.. but there will be several more individual day holidays coming up that you know i will inform you of!

2. what is your favorite thing to put on top of your waffle? this may or may not have been a previous question.. but it is a fun one so have at it! i loooved the mighty maple on mine today!

well ladies and gents (if there are any gents reading, that is).. the time has come to say goodbye once again! i will miss lurking your lives reading your blogs while i am on vacay so make sure to jot down anything worth telling me for when i get back!  and i hope you enjoy the guest posts :) i will miss you all <3

xo. janetha b.