Happy Birthday Amanda

Saturday is my bestest friend Amanda's birthday. May 8th!

Amanda's boyfriend, Nick booked a hotel room at The Royal York downtown Toronto for Amanda.

Then booked a reservation for 8+ at a Mexican restaurant. Amanda (and I) love Mexican.
Lots of great fun, friends and drinks. Now, just to note, I intended to only have 1 drink because I was scheduled to run my first official 5k run in Lakefield Saturday morning at 8:45am. The pictures will show how that plan went. Amber (Amanda's sister) & I.

The birthday girl herself, Amanda & Nick.

Kevin & I.

The newly engaged Ross & Pritzi.

Recent MBA grad Gina & Mike.

Gotta give Amber this picture to make up for the next one of me with her in the background. Sorry Amber.

When it came time to order food, I couldn't decide. I had already been lured in to eating the delicious homemade tortillas and guacamole. On top of that the large orange margarita I'd almost finished was influencing me in a negative way.

Pollo Con Mole.

The chicken was so good. Cooked perfectly (that is what's under all that mole sauce). Moist, juicy and tender.

However when Kevin's meal arrived, I instantly became jealous. Tostadas Dona Flora.

Comon how smashing does this look. And way WAAAAY more healthy looking than what I ordered.

Waiting for her man Paul to come.

Nick ordered the table some tequila shots. Tequila at a Mexican restaurant?! No way!

Ugh, this was so not the kind of night I was planning. I only wanted 1 drink, and I had already had 2 large margaritas. I tried to say no, but Nick wasn't having any of it.

With some tomato juice chaser.

I didn't enjoy it all that much. I guess I'm getting too old for tequila shots.

Happy Birthday Amanda!

Amanda was loving the hat!

What a great way to end the night!

Amber & everyone's favourite boyfriend Paul!

Hope you had a good Friday night.

Fabulous Friday

Friday was a great day though the afternoon dragged on. Usually my boss leaves work around 3/3:30, so when he left at 2:30, I still had 1 hour to sit around at work and wait out the clock.

My afternoon snack tied me over.
Check out the short list of ingredients. Can you pounce them all? That means it's even better for you and your body if you can!
Pretty impressive nutritional information.
Key Lime Pie is also a high ranking favorite of mine. It doesn't beat out the apple flavour, but this one is so good. Coconut, tart, a nice crunch to it. Though I wouldn't eat this one for a breakfast before a workout. Key Lime Pie is more a dessert/snack type bar than a breakfast bar.
After work I had 2 lovely ladies I was meeting for a dinner date. Though because I was early I went to Home Sense and picked out some new dishes. You'll see them starting to make appearances here and there.

After I was done shopping I started to head over to Lone Star. While sitting in traffic (darn accident, a 5 minute drive took me 20), I saw a fox right beside the off ramp to the HWY401.
Finally making it to the restaurant, I had the best of intentions for the evening. I would make as many healthy choices as I could. Well that went right down the crappier.

I was hungrier than I realized I was and ended up mowing down on more greasy nacho chips than I should have. Man they were salty too!
I also gave in to peer pressure. Well no that isn't far to say, I just went along with the masses. I ordered myself a margarita. Gotta say it was pretty tasty. Only had the one and then had a glass of water after that.
Originally, we, as a table ordered a spinach dip. I knew I was going to end up eating way more calories for the day than I would need to, especially with a spinach dip. *right now I am working on not eating food just because it is in front of me*

Well lucky for me the waitress forgot to put in our order for the spinach dip so rather than keep waiting we asked her to take it off the bill.

For dinner at Lone Star, let me tell you the healthy options are sparse if non-existent. I ended up choosing the Veggie Fajita. Wow, lots of food!
I made 2 fajitas, and then,
I piled all the veggies a sprinkle of cheese, guacamole and a itsy bitsy bit of sour cream and mixed it all together. It was good, but man those veggies sure are coated in grease!
After dinner me and my two girlfriends went and saw Death at a Funeral. The movie was hilarious. I recommend going out and seeing it.

After dinner we went to Demetres. Now I again had the best of intentions of making a healthy choice. Instead of ordering a Belgian waffle with peanut butter ice cream and brownies, I thought I would ordered a fruit bowl. Well I didn't and I ended up getting the Belgian waffle, ice cream and brownie combination.

Question: Do you struggle to make healthy choices when you are eating at a restaurant with people? Do you feel a strong pull to snack on food just because it is sitting in front of you, and its the sociable thing to do?

Friendly skies

Wow! What a difference a bright blue sky makes in the morning when it comes to dragging your butt out of bed at 5am. As we remember yesterday I failed to get up at 5am to make it to the gym for swimming at 6:30. I blamed it on the overcast looking sky. Well as per this mornings results, I do believe that was the true cause ;)

This morning the sky was so bright looking (yes it is looking bright at 5am here now). It looked like it was such nice weather out, how could I stay in bed and not get out to enjoy the day.

More on that later.

Last night I met up with one of my bestest friends Amanda. Amanda and I live a good hour and a half apart (she in Mississauga and I in Bowmanville). But we make efforts to get together as often as possible. Even for dinners after work.

Amanda was great and found this sushi place just off the 401 at Avenue road called Nara Sushi. It is a pretty good half way meeting point for us both, that way one isn't driving further than the other.

Being that it was 7 before we got together we were pretty hungry, though I just didn't know it yet.

We decided to order together and share. Mmmmm so much goodness!
California rolls, spicy crab rolls, and salmon skin rolls. Sashimi and some sushi to boot!

I really love the smiling fish boat it came out on.

Amanda and I spend almost 2 hours at dinner, eating and catching up. With the amount of work that I have been working lately (just in case I had been laid off) and with Amanda's school schedule (finishing up her MBA - 601 class), we had a lot to catch each other up on.

We parted ways and decided we would find more random places to try that are half way for us both every few weeks until our schedules slow down.

So as I said I got up this morning for a bike ride to the swimming pool. I live a 5 minute bike ride to the local pool. But I wasn't going to ride there. PEOPLE I'M TRAINING FOR A TRY-A-TRI! I was going to ride my bike 8k to Newcastle to use the pool there.

I knew that I was in for a good hour and a half and a lot of burning of calories. So no working out on an empty stomach. I needed something that was going to give me energy, but not be too heavy in my stomach. The last apple Larabar. I don't know why until this morning I didn't fully appreciate the yumminess of this flavour. I kept trying all these other 'exotic' flavours, and didn't like them one bit. But this was just what I needed. While eating I turned on CP24 to catch up on some news, weather and all is going on in the world.

WHOAH! Cam Wolley says that it feels like it's in the minus out this morning! ACK! Good thing I turned on the news.

I grabbed my winter tuque, my mini mitts and fluffed the hood of my sweater around my neck like a scarf to go out on my bike.

Oh boy! It sure was crisp out at 6am this morning. But so calm, peaceful and relaxing. The sun was slowly coming up. This made the ride that much more enjoyable. And I was surprised that the ride wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be (lots of long gradual inclines). I'm kinda proud of myself.

During the 31 minutes I spent in the pool, I went between elation at how quick I went to frustration at my stroke technique. Sadly I felt more the later the majority of the swim. 2 weeks away from the pool clearly effected me. I am def gonna ramp up my swimming because with out the technique I'm not gonna do well in an open body of water with 50+ other swimmers.

I tried to go through my changing quickly to simulate T1 of the Tri. Took me about 8-9 minutes, but I also had to pack up my backpack too, which I won't be doing at the Tri.

The ride home I think was much windier, and really the time difference shows it. It took me 20 minutes to ride to the pool and 23 to ride home. If the wind wasn't blowing at me from my right side, it shifted to blow at me from head on. The best part of the ride home has got to be passing Algoma Orchards. All I could smell was apple pies being baked. The apple cinnamony goodness!

Back home jumped in the shower to wash all the chemicals off me and lotion up so that my skin doesn't dry out. Then true breakfast time.

Here I needed something that was going to sit in my stomach and keep me full until lunch time. Nothing keeps you full like some oatmeal. But not just any kind of oatmeal.

OIAJ!!

Almond butter this time instead of the cashew butter that I had last round.

About 2 tbsp left, perfect amount!

1/3 cup of quick oats.

* Not pictured *

• 1/8 cup of egg whites (1egg white)
• 2/3 cup of water
• 1tbsp chia seeds

Take 1 banana and break it into several pieces. Then I toss it in the microwave to make it easier to mash up. Add some cinnamon and nutmeg (inspiration from the apple pie aroma from earlier) & mash! Toss the banana mixture into the jar and heat for 1.5 mins. Then I mix it up, making sure to get all that nut buttery goodness from the bottom of the jar. Heat for another 30 seconds. Voila! I topped today's OIAJ with some pumpkin seeds for some crunch and some dried blueberries. Mix together and enjoy.All gone! I love OIAJ. They are quite possibly my favourite new food I discovered through following blogs. Do you eat OIAJ? What is your favourite flavour combinations?