Friday and Dinner Out

Once again we started our morning at the gym. My knee is still not 100% so I was back to the elliptical for a while. I wish I could learn to like this machine since it doesn’t hurt my knee. As expected my calorie burn was not even close to what I wanted. Oh well, the important thing is that my knee is getting better. ;-)

When we got home Dan requested a green smoothie saying he hadn’t had any kale recently. Really? Needless to say I was a bit surprised. LOL

His smoothie included: 2 frozen bananas, 1 bunch purple kale, ½ cup frozen wild blueberries, 1 handful of walnuts (probably ½ cup), ¼ teaspoon cinnamon, ¼ teaspoon powdered ginger, stevia to taste and water to process. This made two big glasses of smoothie for Dan.

To accompany the smoothie I made a quick fresh juice. When we were at “Forks Over Knives” the other day Sheila asked if we were still juicing and I had to say that I have not been in the mood for juice since the weather turned cold. I took this as a sign I should be juicing and made some this morning.

Today’s juice included: 1 apple, 4 carrots, 1 lemon, and 1 inch piece ginger. I would have added kale for added nutrition but I used the end of it in the smoothie. This was almost too sweet for my taste buds now. Dan doesn’t have that same feeling. We split this before Dan left for work.

Dan’s lunch was the split pea soup from last night, quinoa for under the soup. I also added in an orange, and two Brazil nuts (for the selenium). Since we are going out to dinner tonight I don’t have to worry about whether Dan is getting enough calories today. ;-)

Once Dan left for work I made myself a small bowl of the split pea soup for my breakfast. I wasn’t really in the mood for breakfast food and finishing the soup got another container out of the refrigerator which is always good.

Lunch for me was a little of this and that like yesterday. I had a small bowl of leftover quinoa, a banana with reduced fat peanut butter, a small green salad with orange and walnuts and white miso and apple cider dressing.

Knowing that we were going out for dinner and would be out tomorrow I wasn’t feeling much cooking inspiration. I had considering making another pot of soup. However in the end lazy won out and I didn’t venture into the kitchen other than to grab lunch and make myself plenty of green tea.

Reporting Aggressive Drivers:

I am only bringing this up because I wish I had known this information before “the incident”. On the way to the restaurant we encountered a person behind the wheel with serious road rage issues. They erratically passed us on the right darted back in front of us so that they were ahead of us at the upcoming left turn lane (maybe 50 feet ahead). When the light turned green wouldn’t go through the intersection and backed up traffic at the next two intersections for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately we had no idea what to do while this was occurring. To make the situation more surreal the lunatic was taking pictures of us at the intersection they were blocking. I wanted to get out of the car to take the persons picture since we could only get the license number but Dan didn’t think it was safe for me to do this and he was probably correct. As soon as I got home I looked it up and in Maryland you can dial #77 to report an aggressive driving incident while it is occurring. Too bad we didn’t know that at the time.

Needless to say this didn’t really start our dinner off on the right foot. As soon as we got to the restaurant we shared the story with our friend Louis who also thought it was best that I didn’t get out of the car either. *shakes head* What makes people behave like this? I swear sometimes the more I interact with people the more I prefer spending time with my hubby and my cats. *rolls eyes*

I am telling this story so that all of you to know that it may be possible to report aggressive drivers in your state while the incident is occurring. I will be making use of #77 if/when this happens again to me.

Dinner Out:

Back to more pleasant topics … dinner tonight. We met our friend Louis at our usual place. Louis was in town from Delaware and we always get together when he is available. Everyone was at the restaurant tonight and it was great to see them all.

Dan ran into a developer he knows from work who also lives in the neighborhood. It always surprises me how the restaurant is like a gathering spot for people that live nearby. We all feel like we have our own little hidden treasure. Fortunately for us Ian can accommodate both omnivores and vegans. ;-)

Ian had a tuna nicoise on the menu that we asked him to turn into a tofu nicoise and it was great and very pretty.

There was also an interesting vegetable medley of potatoes, zucchini, carrots, celery and onions in a lemon dill vinaigrette that he was serving as a bed for a whole branzino. We asked that he take a whole wheat pizza shell cover it with hummus and then the veggies for our entrée. Louis thought it sounded good and he ordered the same thing. We all agreed it was yummy and flavorful. I always find it amazing how simple it really is to get tasty vegan food even in a non-vegan restaurant. Okay, it may help a little that we are regulars. LOL

Happy Thoughts:

Here are my happy thoughts for the day:

• My Friday workout was better than Thursday. Clearly my knee is improving which is a very good thing. Too bad there won’t be any trip to the gym on Saturday due to an outing. ;-)

• We had a great evening with my best friend Louis as we always do. Dinner was the lovely and conversation was excellent.

• Saturday was really good though it started early. We had to leave by 7:15 to drive to Philly for a cooking demonstration by Christina Pirello. Both Dan and I enjoyed it. This was one of my Christmas presents. We call everything we do in December a Christmas present. I will fill you in on all the details in the next post tomorrow. We both had a great time and I am very glad I finally went. I think we will be spending more time in Philly these days. It appears she has a cooking class monthly I can see myself going again.

Signing out:

Poor Dan is driving us home from Philly while I am typing away on my laptop. I wanted to finish this post and get a head start on the next one before I got home. But I need to take a break and chat with him for a while.

I hope all of you are having a great day. I will take you again tomorrow with the Christina Pirello post.