Bring on the Bluenose!

Okay I'm officially signed up for the Bluenose 5k again! I can hardly believe it's only 3 weeks (correction TWO WEEKS) away! My stomach better be feeling better by tomorrow because I got some serious pavement to pound! :-D

I'm a little disappointed that I wasn't able to shoot for the 10k this year with my buddy Lynn and my buddy Brooke, but I'm just happy that I'm able to run at all, so I'll take the 5k in an instant if it means that I can get out there, participate and beat my time from last year. So far so good on the hip issue and I think it's because I'm not pushing it. My blue and purple toe from our hike seems to be okay with the running too (it keeps getting darker though, I hope I don't lose the nail!) Isn't it crazy that it's all blue and purple from the shoe being too small?!

On a Dime

So just like that, about 2 hours after my run on Monday, I came down with the flu! Hubby had it last week and it lasted two days and I'm on day two right now (don't worry, it's the regular stomach flu variety!). The body aches have pretty much gone away now, and I'm left with a bad stomach, that seems to be easing up little by little. I've had some pretty bad luck with getting sick this year! Holy! So yesterday when Halifax had 29 degree (celsius) weather, I was inside on the couch in denial of it.

I'm sure I'll be back to as good as new tomorrow. It got me thinking though about that crazy calorie burn reading on my heart rate monitor on Monday. It seemed to be reading my heart rate properly the whole time and I wonder if my body was working harder than normal because I had the flu virus. Is that possible? My max heart rate was 185 It might not be the explanation, but the whole thing is odd because there was only one time that my HRM didn't work properly and it was when I was first learning how to use it and I didn't have the strap secured and moisened properly under my rib cage and it wasn't reading my heart rate. Strange. Oh well, I will just have to compare it to my exercise when I'm feeling better.

Regardless of the calorie burn of the run, it was a personal best for me for a 5km run. It was 31:18 which is 3 minutes faster than my time at the Bluenose last year. My Nike+ has been calibrated, so it's pretty close to accurate now. Last year when I was training for my first 5k, it wasn't calibrated and was underestimating my distances which made an actual 5k at race time a big surprise for a first timer. Brooke is going to let me try out her Garmin 305 to see how I fair out.

The Bluenose is only 3 weeks away! I better get my buns in gear and register!

Vanessa’s Kitchen Show Off!!

Well folks it was such a fun idea of Vanessa’s to challenge us to a Kitchen Show Off!  Since many of us take the time to try new recipes and take food pics for our blogs, it was a fun idea to take the time to show you where it all comes from!  All of us have scheduled our posts to appear for this morning.  I can’t wait to go and have a peek at who else has participated. 

Now, just a little disclaimer on my kitchen:  I have not changed anything about this kitchen since we moved into our house 4 years ago.  I am not crazy about that border all along the top there and had intentions of re-doing the entire kitchen since day 1, but never got around to it.  So, even though this is my kitchen, it’s not really a representation of tastes (except of course for my toys which we will get to).  So here’s a shot of the main part of the kitchen:

Here’s our dining area.  We don’t have a separate dining room in our current house, but it’s up for sale and we are upgrading, so I’ll have to do a whole new post in our new house when the time comes!  Here’s our dining area.  Nothing fancy, but it does the job.  Oh and a few extra stools (with red coushins to match my toys), which really only serve one purpose – to hold my purse and lunch bag every day when I get home!

Here’s where all the “chop chop” and into the frying pan happens:

Here is my coffee station (with my Empire Red KitchenAid coffee maker :-D) and my new teapot I just bought at Homesense with a little hint of red:

And my first love, my KitchenAid food processor which is amazing and I love it and it purrrrs like a kitten (oh and my bazillion cutting boards):

What’s a healthy kitchen without a food scale?

And my Harley Davison Stand Mixer (and blender – yes I am SPOILED):

And here’s a peek into my cupboards.  The shelf on the left is pretty much my “oatmeal shelf” with all sorts of nut butters and toppings galore:

Cupboard on the right has lots of grains and pastas and breads and the lazy susan has every kind of oil and vinegar and canned tomato etc. known to man:

           

And since my kitchen isn’t large enough to accommodate a hutch, for now I’ve settled for this little wine glass rack/shelf that has a few little glasses and trinkets”

So that’s a little peek into my little kitchen.  I will have to do another one when we get into our new house!  So, anybody want to buy a house? :-D

Ok Mini, Don't Get Your Shorts in a Knot! -->

I hit the streets during my lunch hour today and ran a 5k and acheived a personal best! Lance told me so himself on my Nike+ iPod! Woot! I didn't mess around with a walk warm up like I usually do and I just went for it. I guess I don't need as much of a warm up as I thought. The first 10 minutes getting warmed up and finding my stride was just as effective as walking.

My time was 31 and some change and there were hills involved (it is Halifax afterall) so my heart rate was pretty high the entire time and I burned a bazillion calories doing it! I finished it off with a nice walk burning another 300 calories on top of the 1050 from the run. I'll update my stats tonight when I get home since I can't stand the look of her pouty little face playing video games ----->

It occurred to me last night that there are many reasons by the time I get home from work that stand in the way from me getting in my exercise, whether it's fatigue or whatever. I find my most motivational and productive time of the day is between 9:30 - 2:00 so why not use my lunch hour to get a good exercise session in?! Seriously! I mean it's now actually Spring outside and getting out there during the peek time of the beautiful day is a perfect solution! A change of clothes is all that's needed and that's that.

Yay me!

Hey You! You with the Kitchen!...

Hey Everyone don't forget to take some pictures of your kitchen to participate in Vanessa's "Great Kitchen Show Off" which is scheduled for tomorrow morning. C'mon do it, it'll be fun!

Ode to the Nut Butter: A Nut Butter Nut

I now fancy myself a bit of a “nut butter connoisseur” you might say. It all starts with peanut butter as a kid and for the first 27 years of my life that was pretty much the only nut butter known. Now I’ve pretty much got an entire shelf in my fridge and cupboard devoted to nut butters! I can’t get enough of them! There are worse things in this world to have an addiction to, no? Although calorie dense, nut butters are pretty much all incredibly good for you. The only downfall to them is that one tablespoon is never enough!

So I decided to do a post dedicated to my nut butters!

Growing up there was no “natural” option for peanut butter and we all slathered our arteries with hydrogenated oils. Those kinds of peanut butters not only had trans fats, but were loaded with added sugar and salt. Knowing what we know now about that stuff, I am glad that my kids won’t be growing up eating that junk! Hubby is still a peanut butter lover and I’m pretty sure he’ll never cross over into the other nut butter worlds with me, so recently I noticed that the Sobeys had a Compliments brand of natural peanut butter and they had crunchy which is hubby’s favourite so I picked up a jar (for only $2.99 btw) for him to try hoping that he won’t mind that it’s not laden with sugar and salt. He has yet to try it, but I’m anxious to find out what he thinks.

This is now what I refer to as my “old faithful” of the nut butters, almond butter. You might be surprised that it’s not the peanut variety given that it was the “only” kind for most of my life, but after peanut butter I only had eyes spoons for almond butter and I’ve even upgraded to getting the Costco size which doesn’t really last all that long in my house:

Without fail I would have a spoonful of this yumminess along side my oatmeal. This stuff never stays on the spoon in a hot bowl of oatmeal though because it would melt into a delicious pool along the top:

Tip: with any natural nut butters, the oil tends to separate and rise to the top. If you give it a bit of a stir and store it in the fridge upside down, you won’t ever have that problem again!

And what goes better with peanut butter than chocolate, right??! Look what I came across one day at Planet Organic! It’s Peanut Butter & Co. Dark Chocolate Dreams.

That’s right people it’s actual peanut butter and chocolate! (I recently spotted a peanut butter and white chocolate flavour of this at Pete’s Frootique btw).

Judging from their website they have a whole SLEW of interesting peanut butter combos! Keep them coming here people!

My favourite way to eat this kind is smacked in the middle of a banana sammich!

Peanut butter +banana = YUM

Peanut butter +chocolate = YUM

Peanut butter + banana + chocolate = YUM squared :-D

And yesterday while perusing Pete’s Frootique, I stopped in my tracks when I saw this:

I had to try it right away and a swoop of the finger in the jar confirmed my suspicions. It’s awesome and I love it :-) I had on my spoon in my oatmeal this morning and it actually stays on the spoon and doesn’t melt into a puddle:

Absolutely perfect compliment to this bowl of oatmeal because I always put a ton of cinnamon in my oatmeal anyway! That and of course, all the other amazing toppings that totally make the bowl of oats!

There were no raisins at the top at all, but when I looked at the bottom of the jar you can see them in there:

It’s funny because I grew up hating raisins. Now I actually like them alot! I can hardly wait to try this on a toasted Ezekiel cinnamon raisin english muffin! It’ll be perfection!

And how could I not include my BFF PB2!! We all know that I just adore this stuff! THIS is the exception to the “con” that nut butters are calorie dense and the fact that one tablespoon is never enough for the amount of calories that you get.

You get two tablespoons of this (dry) for about 50 calories and another pro to this stuff is that when you constitute it with water, you can make it the consistency you want and you can stretch it as far as you want too. It makes great “dips” for apple slices or celery or whatever else you like with peanut butter. And the Chocolate PB2 makes an amazing dip for fresh strawberries btw! I love drizzling the chocolate over top of my oatmeal before adding my other toppings = DIVINE. If you’re into protein shakes, this stuff is THE KEY INGREDIENT into making an amazing shake. Mix it in your yogurt too…the possibilities are endless because it’s consistency is up to you.

Now I will not lie, this variety does not compare to the lip smacking quality you get with the real “full fat” nut butter, but that is the trade off – do you want to save calories or do you want the fat in it?

Then there’s coconut butter. This just became available at the Planet Organic here in Halifax and I am a huge fan of the Artisana Raw Organic Nut butters.

The downside is that this was incredibly expensive, but I simply had to try it! I was imagining it on my oatmeal and on top of my yogurt combos and before I knew it, it was in my cart and I was at the check out!

The best way I’ve found to work with this is to use a tiny fork and to scrape it from the jar. That way you can little shaving type crumbles of it instead of one hard lump. When you first scoop it, it’s not as creamy as other nut butters, but it melts into little soft creamy blobs on warm oatmeal:

Here it is in a yogurt combo on top. Because it was cold, it stayed fairly hard, but still oh soooooo goood because it melts in your mouth:

And the little sister to this brand of coconut butter is the Amazon Bliss variety which is AWESOME! I did a product review of it a little while ago here. It consists of: Artisana Raw Organic Coconut Butter, Organic Extra Virgin Coconut Oil, Organic Acai, Organic Yacon, Organic Cacao Nibs, Organic Goji Berries, Organic Agave Syrup.

It’s great over oatmeal and has just an amazing flavour (as you can imagine based on the ingredients):

….and over yogurt combos too:

And then there was the lonely little yucky SoyNut Butter. Don’t buy this….ewwwwwwww….I don’t know what I was thinking! I must have been in a nut butter stooper…

As you can see, I did the finger swoop test and that’s as far as it went! So that’s my little “Ode to Nut Butters” for you guys and all I can say is I feel bad for any of you who are allergic to nuts! :-( You poor people!!!!

I'm all Pumped!

for the beautiful weekend forecast! Wooot! That means activity outdoors! As much as I want to appease my little mini there on the side ----->

...given the fact that my big toe is blue and purple from last weekend's hike in trail shoes that were a bit too small (yeah it's black and blue under the nail!), the activity may be restricted to walking and/or biking and yoga. My butt is still sore from my bike ride earlier in the week!

I'm just as happy to get the bike rides in when I can anyway because biking uses different muscles than running, so it's a good plan to alternate and change it up!

Other weekend plans include:

1. a much needed pow wow with one of my bestest buds over coffee after work :-) followed by hitting up Pete's Frootique for a gorgeous and delicious Pete's salad;
2. making ourselves scarce for another viewing of our house tomorrow which means I gotta spin-n-span the place tonight;
3. attending my friend's bridal shower on Sunday and shopping for said friend's present;
4. attending a chorale concert Sunday night;
5. fitting in a hot yoga session if possible on Sunday

I hope you all have a wonderful Friday and I have plans of posting a recipe I concocted for last night's supper, so stay tuned :-)

Bring it on Tommy!!

Yayyy, go check out Amy's giveaway contest for your chance to win Tommy Europes e-book!

PICK MEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! :-D

Outdoorsie Mama

So my tootsies are still sore from our hike due to the fact that my new hikers are about a half size too small, BUT I popped into Coast Mountain Sports where I bought them and put on a sad face to the guy who sold them to me (and I even confessed that I was hiking in them) and he said that since they're waterproof I should be able to clean them up pretty good and they should be able to help me out with the exchange to a bigger size :-) Yay! I polished them up good as new last night and I'll make the exchange at lunch time. The insoles are still brand new because I use my own orthotics so hopefully that same guy will be working and he'll hook me up! Otherwise it would have been a waste of $130! :-S

So my little mini there on the side is a sad girl that I haven't been running, but my toes actually burn they are that sore from being smoooshed in the shoes on the hike on top of the healing blisters, so no running until that is feeling good. But INSTEAD I got my heart rate pumping for a hilly bike ride around my sub-division and enjoyed the beautiful sun we had. It's supposed to be rain for the next few days, so it was the perfect alternative to still getting exercise in. I've come to realize that I'm a total outdoor exercise person, with the exception of yoga which is usually indoors and I love that too. OH and my yoga instructor in my community holds Saturday morning yoga at Cleveland Beach during the summer, so I'm super looking forward to that! It will be pretty early in the morning, but she said it finishes up just in time to continue on to the Farmer's Market in Hubbards after, which to me sounds like a perfect Saturday morning!

Poor li'l Mini ------>

Look at her all sad that she hasn't been running :-(

Well sister, I'm sorry you didn't come along on Saturday for our hike, but that felt just as good! I felt on top of the world then too! Oh and I don't think you'll be coming for our bike ride after work today either, will ya?

Don't worry, as soon as my blisters have heeled up, we'll get on the beat and hit up the streets!

We Rocked Cape Split!

 

Hey everyone!!!!!  I have been chompin’ at the bit trying to get the chance to update you all on our big hike to Cape Split on Saturday.  I am finally back with some time to recap!  First of all, we could not have had a BETTER day here in the Maritimes for a kickoff of our Spring morale and our first hike to Cape Split.  It was bright and sunny, beautiful and just the right amount of crisp to keep you comfortable during the long hike.

We got an early start to the day and arrived at the hike start point ready to start at around 9:15.  We had no idea what to expect this time of year but we all anxiously made our way…

There was 10 of us in total including a few of our fellow bloggers (and awesome awesome cool chicks) Farm Girl, Bionic, Lynn and Heather.  Other awesome gals were some other pals of mine, Sarah, Brooke and Lena and a few other fine girls I met for the first time Jen and Angie (#2 taking the photo):

A few of us decided to stop here for a brief break and a photo op:

I swear I had a smile permanently on my face the entire time just enjoying the beautiful day and the fresh surroundings of mother nature around us.  Looks like Bionic felt the same way too:

Other than about 20 minutes in the beginning of the hike the trail was in great condition.  There was some mud and wet spots to maneuver around for about 20 minutes, but that was nothing for us super duper “experienced hikers” who were up for the challenge.  Other than that, there was lots of beautiful clear paths to enjoy too:      

We kind of got broken up into two groups on the way up and our group stopped at this beautiful place for a photo op (or two) not realizing we were almost there at the top.  We couldn’t pass this up though:

                    

Then we came up around the corner and there they were!

We all relaxed after our 2 hour trek up (mostly incline) for a well deserved picnic lunch.  I have a video clip I will attempt to get posted when I get some extra time this week.

My heart rate monitor calculated that I burned 740 calories in just the 2 hour hike up!

Then it was click, click, snap, snap and enjoyment of the absolutely GORGEOUS scenery we had around us.  It was absolutely STUNNING and was worth every single step. 

 

Then the breeze at the top started to get quite chilly and other hikers were starting to roll in, so we decided to hit the trail to head back.

We made it back in about the same time even though it was down hill, so it was pretty much exactly 4 hours of hiking time.

Farm Girl was little miss speedy and was a head of the pack the entire time pretty much!

My new trail shoes were awesome and didn’t bother me at all until we got about 1 hour 45 mins into it and that’s when the blisters started.  I really should have bought a half of a size bigger! Pffffffffffffft!  Too late now :-(  I may try to get them stretched if at all possible because they were pricey!  Anywho, my point is even though my feet hurt, they were dry and the fun of chatting with these girls the entire way and the beauty of every single thing completely compensated for it. 

Then we were pretty much right on schedule for our reservation at the Port Pub where we had a fantastic lunch.

We had one last stop before we all parted ways and wanted to check out the Just Us coffee roastery in Grand Pre were we got ourselves a cup o’ joe and I bought some organic sugar, organic chocolate and some organic preservative free pomegranate syrup (YUM!)!

WE HAD SO MUCH FUN!!!  I love hanging out with these girls and I never had so much fun burning over 1450 calories in my life!!!!!!!!  I swear it was over in an instant!!!  I am looking forward to doing that hike again AND checking out some other great hiking trails in our beautiful spot in the world!

Thank you ladies for yet another fine day hanging out together! *mwah*!