Me, Tasha, Farm Girl, Lynn, Bionic, Megs, Cora and Pete = BFF’s :-D

Lucy woke me up this morning earlier than I had planned, but it turned out not to be a bad thing after all because it got my out of bed early enough to get a small pre-breakfast” before brunch with the girls later on at Coras and not too heavy before a little exercise.  I had a half of an apple with some PB2 for dipping and a cup of coffee with scotsburn blend cream, some sugar free cinnamon dolce syrup and I also put a tbsp of PB2 in my coffee to give it another try.  Again, it turned out not being worth the use of PB2.  It tends to settle to the bottom, so that’s my take on the PB2+coffee.  My “pre” breakfast was only 163 calories:

Then the Lu-ster and I got geared up for a nice walk since the sun came out and the poor little thing hasn’t had a decent walk in ages.  I got my iPod all ready, got all dressed and then I went to grab my iPod earphones from the car and I FOUND MY HAT!  I didn’t lose it after all!  It was hidden all tucked underneath the console by the emergency break the whole time! YAYYYYY!  I LOVE that hat!  I was ready to call the lululemon headquarters to try to order a new one! lol  So Lucy and I went on a 45 minute walk/jog.  Yes that’s right JOG!  I couldn’t help myself.  After about 30 minutes I just went for it and I wanted to see how it made me feel.  I really really really really want to run again and I want to do the 5K in the Bluenose Marathon this year and I really hope that my doctor “okay’s” it.  It felt great and I only ran for about 10 minutes of the whole thing, but it was a straight 10 and it reminded me of a time a few winter’s ago when it was an early morning walk with Lucy and I “tried” to run and the best I could do was try to go from one telephone pole to the next.  I remembered it clear as day and I remember the thoughts I was having at that time on how I was trying to encourage myself to “just go to the next telephone pole.”  Wow I have come a LONG way from then!  I am proud of myself for that.  :-D  That is why the 5K meant so much to me last year.  It broke my heart when the doc said that I should stop running “for now.”  I took the “for now” to be arbitrary and not “never again” so maybe I’ll test the waters and give it a try here and there to see how I tolerate it and whether or not my hip will scream at me.  So all in all I burned 275 calories through the entire walk/jog :-)

Then I jumped in the shower and got ready to meet the girls for Brunch at Cora’s since Tasha had an impromptu visit home from Toronto for the weekend and we had a great brunch with Farm Girl, Bionic, Lynn and Megs (non-blogger).  Brunch was great and I had a few pours of coffee with just milk and I had one tsp of sugar at the end.

I had in my mind before I went that I was ordering the “Peggy’s Poached” and I decided I wouldn’t even open the menu because that always leads to switching my plan and getting something not so easy on the ol’ calories.  So I stuck to my plan and got Peggy’s Poached with no butter on the toast either (impressive I know! :-D)  So basically it’s one slice of whole wheat toast, one poached egg, cottage cheese and fresh fruit!  I estimated Brunch to be about 456 calories going a little on the higher side with the cottage cheese not sure if it was skim or 2% or whatever:

Then we moved our party to Starbucks where I had already had quite enough coffee for one day and I tried the Passion flavour of Tazo tea.  It was delish!  My only concern was that it had a very strong pink colour to the tea, and it does have colour in the the ingredients, so I don’t know whether it’s a “safe” artificial colour or not.  Either way, it was a great way to get in a sbux treat calorie free:

Then Tasha had to split and spend some time with the hubby and Farm Girl went for her massage and the three of us went to Pete’s Frootique to stock up on some produce and to just have a look-see around the store because it’s an awesome grocery store. 

And LOOK what I got to try that they were giving samples of!  Dragon Fruit!!!!!!  I’ve never heard of it in my life and holy frig it’s actually that pretty pink colour on the outside!!!!  It was super tasty and not a strong flavoured fruit at all as I though it might be because of the outside colour.  It kind of reminded me of a kiwi from the tiny seeds.  It was quite good and if it wasn’t $7.99 I would have bought one just for kicks, but seriously $7.99??  It’s bad enough that I pay an arm and a leg for raspberries on a fairly regular basis!

The dragon fruit I think would have been only about 15 calories:

Then I tried one of these brown rice crisps samples which wasn’t worth counting the calories for and I liked it, but didn’t buy any because they were quite salty.

Okay and then there was the fudge and naughty food case at Pete’s.  I could have been reeeeeeeeeal bad and got a big piece of fudge, but instead I got a tiny cup of a few morsels of different kinds of fudge for a little treat.  I did refrain at Starbuck with only a tea and did super great with my brunch selection, so I enjoyed a few of these little guys and I estimated it to be about 280 calories in total because I had more later!  The whole point was to buy them “for hubby” but I’m ashamed to say he didn’t see much of it!:

And also while at Pete’s I bought a pork schnitzel and a mixed salad from the salad bar and I had that for Supper.  The pork was only 100g of pounded lean pork which was lightly breaded and I cooked it on a non-stick pan with some spray of EVOO.  The salad bar at Pete’s is awesome and I got a mix of:

• spring mix greens
• carrots
• red onion
• cucumber
• black olives
• chick peas
• egg
• I feel like I’m forgetting something else…

I had a balsamic lemon vinaigrette that I didn’t end up using.  I estimated the above to be about 380 calories. 

I was hankering for a sweet something and while at Pete’s I bought some more of the Fox Hill Vanilla yogurt suggested by one of you lovely people a while back because it is yummy stuff and even though I eat the Liberte on a regular basis, it’s nice to change it up! This stuff is full fat yogurt, so it did feel like a dessert treat.  I had 1/4c topped with a few organic raspberries for about 109 calories:

So all of that brought me to about 1403 calories for the day which allows me about another 80 to play with.  I may munch a bit on something later.

Oh and it was funny because I brought the umpteen jars of PB2 and Chocolate PB2 that I ordered back in December to share with the girls and I had it in my trunk and I joked with the girls about how I’m their “PB2 dealer” because we had to go back to my car to “do the deal” :-D  I snagged this picture from Lynn which would have been perfect except it was missing Tasha who had already split for the day!

All in all it was a fantastic day and I enjoyed hanging out with the girls so much.  I miss Tasha!!!!  I want you to hurry up and get a great job here sooooooooon!!!

And I wanted to shout out to Heather who we unintentionally left out of the loop about our brunch today and who’s celebrating a birthday!  Happy Birthday Heather!!!  We’re so sorry that we missed including you on our GTG loop! :-(  We’re going to have a
“make up” GTG soon and now we have a good excuse ;-)