It’s the most important meal of the day!

Whenever I’m in a rush, one of the things that makes me late is breakfast. I may not always eat it at home (I rarely ever do), but I always make it a point to eat SOMEthing. When I was in college, I had a 45-minute commute (one-way), and then classes from 845am-1215pm, with 15-minute breaks every hour. All in different buildings around campus. If I forgot to eat, I’d be steps away from eating the glue from the spine of my textbook around 10am. As a result, I’d overeat at lunch, feel awful…and let’s just say this behavior is what led to my first big weight gain—30 pounds (my version of the Freshman 15…I always was an overachiever).

If I have time, I love to make oatmeal on the stove top and add in different things, like fruit, nuts or even chocolate chips! I just recently tried Kath’s oats-in-a-jar concept (actually, I think Kath was the one who came up with it…not sure exactly), where you make oatmeal and pour it into a near-empty jar, be it peanut butter, almond butter, etc…I’ve even seen people use preserves jars. Whatever works! Regardless of the strange looks I may have gotten from people around me at work, it’s delicious, filling and portable.

I also recently started eating eggs, so one-egg omelets and egg sandwiches are always delicious. Especially if I have leftover peppers or onions (like on Saturday). Waffles are a favorite, too. Sometimes I’ll make a bunch on a Sunday and freeze what’s left and bam! A time-consuming breakfast gets a little less so!

I have a couple of go-to items when I’m in a hurry: packets of instant oatmeal, Larabars (usually paired with some fruit I’ve managed to salvage from the fridge at work), and instant grits (I try not to eat this one as much recently, but it used to be a staple breakfast for me). Or if I’m in between having not enough time and plenty of it, I’ll do what I did this morning: cereal.

I’m a bit of a carb addict, and at any given time, I probably have several boxes of cereal in my cabinet (I’m not counting granola…don’t get me started). Right now I have a box of Fiber One original, two boxes of Kashi Go Lean! cereal, four boxes of Quaker Oatmeal Squares and some Cheerios in my pantry. Today I went with Kashi and unsweetened Almond Breeze.

Now you might think that cereal isn’t an on-the-go food, but it can be if you have containers for it all. Enter the Fit and Fresh! I wanted one ever since I saw it on Meghann‘s blog. I tried to win her giveaway, but alas, I did not.  (Additionally, when going back to link that to Meghann’s post February, I realized her blog title was almost the same as this one—I swear I didn’t realize!)   Luckily I found one at a decent price at Ross.

There’s an ice ring to keep your milk (or yogurt) cold, space on the bottom for fruit, an even a spoon in the lid! It’s so super convenient. I want the sandwich/ lunch kit too…I’m a sucker things like this.

What’s your favorite breakfast food? Do you have time to make breakfast in the mornings?

sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted sisters

My weekend was super full!  Saturday morning I was planning to head to my sister’s place (2 hours away, I might add) early, but as the saying goes, the best laid plans…anyhow, I went with breakfast on a plate instead of on the go.

My roomie and I started shopping at Sam’s (hence the 50 pound jar of artichokes from Friday’s pizza), and on the last trip we bought a massive amount of eggs.  I decided to use the peppers, onions, mushrooms and sweet sausage from the pizza in an omelet.  Also from Sam’s we have a 10 pound bag of potatoes, so I diced some up really small and made hash browns with onion.

Hot veggies, just waiting for eggs!

Season skillet potatoes, yum!

All together, with juice and coffee.

After my breakfast sufficiently filled my tummy, I hit the road.  I stopped by a Ross store, hoping to find an iPod transmitter.  While it was a no-go, I did find a clear hard case for my iPod Touch and a…thing, for lack of a better word, that attaches to my air vent and will keep my iPod or phone close by at all times.  I don’t know if I’m the only one with this problem, but things tend to disappear in my purse, especially when someone tries to call me.

I stopped about halfway through for a pit stop and some fuel—for me, that is!  I don’t know what it is, but no matter if I’ve packed healthy snacks, the minute I set foot in a service station, all I want are salty, crunchy, fatty things…and spicy beef sticks.  They’re disgusting, I know.  But still.  I compromised by getting a granola bar and a diet Sun Drop—something I can only seem to find north of Birmingham.  It’s like a lemonade and 7 Up had a baby.  And liquefied it.  For me to drink.

Once I made it safely to Autumn’s apartment, we decided to grab some lunch and doing some shopping.  One of our stops?  Earthfare.  Oh.  Mah.  Gah.  Loved it!  It was like a Whole Foods…but the prices and sales seemed better.  I got a great deal on some almond milk (the kind that isn’t refrigerated), grabbed some amazing organic strawberries, and the kicker—I was finally able to taste almond butter.  I’ve been reading and hearing about it forever, especially in the blog world, so I decided to take the opportunity to grind some of my own.  Verdict?  Two thumbs up!  And maybe one in the jar of almond butter…and then in my mouth.  I picked up a small tub of freshly ground dark chocolate peanut butter, too—can’t wait to have some with apples.  Earthfare, will you be mine?  Sadly, we do not have one here in Birmingham, so I guess Whole Foods will do 😉

After a full afternoon of shopping and watching tv and movies (thank you, streaming Netflix for the Wii), we decided to make dinner.  On the menu:  grilled steaks with steamed shrimp; fresh green beans, served cold with dill and feta; and mashed potatoes (from a bag–hey, no one’s perfect all the time).  I started trying to cut up some of the block feta Autumn had in her fridge when this happened:

Feta FAIL.

Luckily, there was still a decent amount left on the block, so I just did what I should have done used my sister’s hand grater and voila!  Shredded feta.  Just call me the Feta Shreddah 🙂  Our finished plates:

While eating, we watched Confessions of a Shopaholic.  Totally a guilty girl pleasure—I really liked it!  We may have treated ourselves to a little frozen yogurt from Publix…it may have been amazing.

Sunday morning, Autumn showed me the trail she’ll be running for her triathlon coming up in a few weeks—it was rough!  Trail running is so different, and she just started running this past winter.  I’m so impressed/proud of her.  we walked the 3 miles in about an hour—with a heat index of 104.  NBD.  Well, it was kind of a D.  We kept hydrated with Gatorade and water.  I definitely felt better about the rest of the day after doing something active.

I headed home later in the evening after resting a spell at her apartment.  I miss my sister so much sometimes.  We’ve lived at least an hour apart for the past few years, but now that we’re two hours apart, it makes it more difficult for us to visit as often as we’d like.  It was nice to go see her this weekend for just no reason at all except for the fact that we’re sisters.  Now that we’re both running, we’ve been able to do races here and there:  We did her first 5k last March here, then a 10k there in May, then a 5k there on Memorial Day.  She’ll be coming down for Race for the Cure, and I think we’re going to do another 10k together in November.  I’m so glad she got bitten by the running bug!

From left to right:  my friend Jen, roomie Reagan, sister Autumn, and me!

This is a bad picture, I know, but it’s one of the only ones where I think we look a lot alike.  (People tell me we do all the time; I don’t really see it.)

One of my favorites of us—I love to get her to be silly with me!

Well, that’s my weekend!  Hope yours was fantastic, too!

mad for mad men…and pizza.

Phew! What a full weekend. Friday night, Jonathan and I decided to spend the evening hanging out and making epic pizza epicness. Last week at Sam’s I bought a 50 pound jar of artichoke hearts and had been trying to think of different ways to use them, and Friday night I kept envisioning a delicious pizza with those, some feta, olive oil, garlic, tomatoes…pretty much everything amazing. Here’s a peek at the process:

with cheese!

Aaaand the finished delicious after!

Jonathan has to have meat on his pizza (if we order a mega veggie at Mellow Mushroom, he always wants to add chicken or pepperoni), and I didn’t want to force him into vegetarian pizza night. So we made another whole wheat thin crust pizza with red sauce, sweet turkey sausage, peppers, onions and roasted red peppers (thanks, Emily!) that was pretty freakin’ sweet, too.

That’s the sausage pizza in the back…we got a little hungry and devoured most of it before I could get a good picture 🙂

You can see below that Jonathan still enjoyed the veggie pizza, too.

We spent a relaxing evening watching the X-Files movie (the first one, trust me, the second one sucked) and just being couch bums. After we sufficiently filled our bellies with all we could stand, we headed over to Jason and Nadria‘s condo to celebrate Nadria‘s second year of being 29 🙂 Happy birthday, girl!

We had to skedaddle early, though, because my car was running dangerously low on oil. My dad always stays on me to check the oil, add when its needed, check my gauges, etc. Well, apparently it’d been so long since I’d checked the oil on my newish-to-me car that I couldn’t remember where the dipstick was! (That’s what she said…did I ever tell you about the time my friend had to explain TWSS to one of our more naive buddies? Twas a confusing conversation.) Boyfriend to the rescue! We managed to make it to the AutoZone just in time, and MAY have stopped by the Sonic for an Oceanwater to share. It might have been delicious and refreshing all at once.

I was able to cap the night by talking my friend Andy–he just proposed to his girlfriend! Congratulations Andy and Sarah Louise! I’ve known since Thursday, and I could barely hold the secret in. I was so excited! I actually introduced them to one another, and they’re just so sweet together. I’ll raise a glass to you both!

Right now I’m raising a glass to the season premiere of Mad Men. Oh, holy crap, do I love Joan Holloway, aka Christina Hendricks.

This past Halloween, I celebrated Hollo-ween and paid tribute to my favorite sassy secretary. See if you can guess who Jonathan was:

My mom totally rocked out making that dress. I even made a knock-off of her gold pen necklace! It was really a cheap chain from the Body Shop with a gold gel pen attached. I can’t wait to see what happens with season 4. I’m sure nothing can top Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency…(warning, this links to AMC and a recap of episode 6, season 4)

Have a good night, all! I’ll have a small recap of the rest of my weekend tomorrow. Still getting used to blogging more and hoping to have more in a timely fashion!

BLFeet

I think that my love for food demands that I have these.

Look at all that color—imagine the possibilites of things to pair these with!  You can find them here.

cat in the hat…and in the closet, in the cabinet, under the bed…

Morning all!  If you don’t know me, you have noticed from previous posts that I have a cat.  His name is Dave, and he is my heart.  He’s not living with me right now due to the pricey pet deposit at my new digs, but he is resting comfortably with his grandparents, AKA my mom and dad.

I got Dave about four years ago, while I was living in Jacksonville and going to school.  My love for cats is nothing new, though:  I’ve owned several, and two of my cats, Shenzi and Mollie—not names of my own choosing—I had for over ten years.  (Sadly, they’ve disappeared recently…off to find that farm I’ve heard so much about, I suppose.)

While Dave is a pretty laid back cat, he can be quite a handful sometimes.  He had a brother, Tim, but I couldn’t take care of two kittens and gave one away.  There have been several moments, however, that I’ve thought, “Hey!  I should get another cat!  How fun!”  Sometimes I see strays and I think, “Oh, I should take that cat home and love on it!”  Upon hearing me says this probably more than a few times, my friend Craig told me that he was afraid that I was just steps away from being a crazy cat lady.

Enter the real crazy cat lady:  I saw this story yesterday morning on the Today show, referring to “cat hoarding.”  (Fun mental images were had before watching the actual story.)  It made my heart hurt.  What’s even scarier than my heart going out to the poor woman who thought she was doing a good thing were my thoughts about how I wanted to get another cat even more now that I’d see all these cuties in one place.  Had it been a local story, my hand might have already been on the phone.

(Still learning how to embed video…here’s the link: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/23612118)

What about you?  Have you ever had a pet?  Have you ever had more than one and felt overwhelmed?  When I was a kid, we had three cats, and they all had kittens at the same time.  There were 13 of the little fuzzballs!  My parents were never so grateful for Vacation Bible School, a place where we could load all the kittens up in cardboard boxes and find loving homes for them.  (And, yes, we spay and neuter all our pets now.)